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I like the fact that with enough investment you could get focus generation and plan a very specific build around that.
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hmm I mean I guess that’s one way to do it. But there is plenty of open space for brainstorming around this.
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this is interesting idea, altho what if people wanted to play full plate and still invest in and use focus? Maybe with enough equip load stat investment people could use plate and still be medium weight and use focus strategy? It’s quite tricky this one I think.
Another idea. They are thinking about implementing a skill tree and I really hope they do. I also hope, that perks in that tree are rune related. Here is what I think and I will use cone shot as an example:
- Almost all runes have cooldown. Coneshot 15 seconds. You will however get focus back, but cannot spam it.
- There is a perk removing the cooldown, however, you cannot, under no circumstances, get any focus out of it anymore.
- This would create two playstyles. You go in melee, increase your focus, roll out and burst out damage like no tomorrow. However, you are depleted afterwards. Need to go in melee again,
- You can burst a bit from time to time, but you will need to use other runes as well and probably switch your weapon.
Both cases require a focused based build.
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It’s an interesting idea. I assume this perk would be in a talent tree?
- would promote more of a bursty defensive in and out of combat playstyle.
- would promote an aggressive playstyle, constantly being in battle generating focus and using rune attacks.
it would take quite some work to balance and test that, but it’s interesting 
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You are right. It would be in a talent tree.
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One of the things I’m enjoying the most in the game is the fact that after investing in your gear you can become actualy strong and face roll previously challengeing enemies.
After patch 1 my 2h weapon throw build is still strong but I no longer have infinte focus and I have to start or finish combat with other attacks to get focus or use potions.
Right now i think focus gain is in a good place maybe not perfect but good.
Insted of nerfing the builds we find I radher have the devs spend more time adding new enemies that counter those builds.
Example introduce monsters with reflect and counter spall they should work similar to parry but for bows and spells. Maybe they can also throw the projectal back at you. This will also cause that skill not generate any focuse and break your routine.
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Just make the primary rune attack of mage (fireball on gnarled staff) do 1/3 the damage but give maybe 10-30 focus back on cast (I gave a range depending on other focus gain systems in place). These attacks could also be stamina based like bow uses for its basic attack.
Enchanting should not remove rune slots. It kills diversity.
Parry giving focus back is fine.
Channel could use a buff if the AI was smarter (dodged more ranged attacks-had better closers-too easy to snipe from distance).
If focus gain on damage dealt is to stay, it shouldn’t trigger per hit, make it gain on per cast if it hits.
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Im for this idea, and why not another reason to implement armor advantages cloth has no decay, plate has 100% decay kinda thing helps mages and people who need it and would thematically makes sense. Or if you have a staff decay doesnt happen since that more thematically shows yes i wanna play a mage vs cloth armor. I think one of the issues with focus is the sheer amount of it you can get i feel it would be very balanced if i couldnt get 500 on a level 3 character with 16 focus and 3 rings my mage build was ready and had 500 focus i think the amount per focus level should just stay 10 per till a soft cap and the rings should maybe give 50 or have an rng roll like the others flat 100 this is insane.
Plus not to mention when everything is %based it goes off total and with such inflated numbers this gets out of hand fast. In my playtime the only thing that felt truly “busted” was cone shot but i wrote about that and why it litterally was broken in another post. I think the system as is is good but with a lil tweaking will be great. I also agree focus attacks should not charge focus. But an enchantment could roll on staffs to say gain x% focus on dmg like they allready have giving mages a leg up for their playstyle.
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I think Focus on damage dealt is too much of an issue. It should be removed completely. It throws weapon and rune balance out the window. Otherwise Focus generation and consumption is fine. Maybe add other ways to gain Focus.
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Is unnecessary from my pov, can also feel bad
Building a ressource that stays is a perfectly viable approach. Also I want to go exploring and not use the last drop of Focus at the end of a combat and not be punished for it. -
Would be an uninteresting stat… - What about Focus regen during (close) combat / Focus regen (not gain!) after dealing or receiving damage?
Imo Focus should primarily be gained by engaging in activities that add tension (staying in combat, dodging/blocking/parrying hits).
Successfull tandard Attacks (or potentially other basic runes), that depend on weapon damage could also count (you are taking extra risks by trying to get some normal/basic attacks in) → Focus gained should should scale up with less weapon/rune attackspeed
Yes and no. While I agree, that enemies are not smart enough to deal with ranged attacks right now, they should not get a general dodge for ranged or smth. Otherwise we will end up in eldenring, where you can throw bows in a trash bin, since hitting smth with it is a miracle and not a playstyle. I always found that sad, I mean, why implement a bow if you don’t want players to use it. I also think, that shields are a good solution currently. Try to cone shot an enimy with a great shield und almost nothing will happen. Thats good. But I love the idea of enemies punishing me for it, however what will you do about mages. They should not be punished for their playstyle… It’s difficult
Agreed, the damage between runes and normal attack is a bit off, though I have seen builds that destory the content without runes. But yeah, I feel the same. However removing focus gain will become a problem for mages for example. Even if you have a fireball giving you focus, I still feel, that the solution I proposed would provide more freedom.
However I do want to add smth. I feel that you should never be able to get more focus than you have spent. And getting the max out of it again should require a very optimized build. However, this is early access currently, I suppose the devs wanted us to get a taste of the endgame and they will rebalance stuff.
I think this discussion points exactly into where i see the niche of this game.
This game is somewhat souls like in combat, however does not punish the hell out of you for failing, i.e. skips the most frustrating part.
On the other hand you have access to arpg playstyles where you can just thresh everything in your way, and this is the point… IF you have a good character/gear setup. This boils down to: if you have skill you can do X, if you are good at collecting, organizing and planning you can do Y. If you do both you are godlike.
Sure this game still needs polishing, however i would be sad if it gets reduced to “another soulslike” or “another diablo II clone attempt”.And by e.g. creating focus drain you would just block out casters completely. You could then also just remove the ranged runes, because if they are not used anymore you dont need them. And …woosh… yet another soulslike.
I like that this game is in the middle and lets you chose. If you are able to handle the soulslike meele dance, you can shine… but if not, you could just use a caster that handles this differently.
In the end everything needs a counter. So meele soulslike dancers have a hard time with multiple enemys at once. Ranged attacks have problems with confined space and gap closers. Glasscannons have problems with hard hitters and evaders have a problem with bullet hell.
If you want to play a caster, but you “have” to parry to cast, the bossfights will be much much much much harder than compared to a tank. I.e. there should not be chokepoints for certain playstyles…
The key is not to force people to something. What you consider “meaningful and challenging combat” could be annoying and frustrating for someone else, because e.g. they are simply s*** at timing.
This game is already unique in itself because its not Elden Ring or Diablo, its actually somewhere in the middle.
The point you mentioned about casters having to “parry”, was already discussed in previous comments, and I shouldnt be an issue. But I am already thinking of something entirely different as a solution to the focus system, that would add more versatility.
I have been thinking about the current focus system for some time now. And, I have reached the following, probably controversial, conclusion for myself:
Just remove the Focus System, and give Runes Cooldowns.
Some of the issues that I see are too complex to fix with number tweaks. I think that the focus system will introduce META Runes.
- Cone Shot for bows.
- Flurry for dagger.
- Throw for 2-handers.
If not these people will look at, animation time, damage, rune cost to optimize punishment windows. People will default to 1 Rune, since it is the best rune to use.
With the dynamic nature of combat I think cooldowns will feel a lot more natural. Let’s say Rune’s have about a 8-16 second cooldown and their damage is lowered to the point where it deals more damage than an attack but not more than X% of hp relative to the power of the rune.
Players will now have a lot more options to approach combat, and combat will feel more natural. Runes are now limited by a cooldown, but, can be used more intuitively. You can simply use evasive runes when they are off cooldown rather than having to think if you want to spend focus on it. I think this will make combat feel a lot better and fluid in a way.
Right now it feels like I am either not using runes or use them too frequently and combat becomes trivial. Having cooldowns and lowering damage on runes will incentivize varied rune usage without messing with the combat loop too much. Instead, it adds more depth to the combat loop.
For me a lot of the time I feel like I am banking focus on trash mobs to then later 1 shot a more difficult enemy. I’d much rather have Runes become part of my combo to deal with an enemy. I think it will allow for more skill expression. Players will try to use all 4 runes as much as possible rather than thinking about which rune to use, which usually ends up in 1 rune being spammed. I think this will make combat with runes feel more natural and interactive as you can use them more frequently.
I feel like Focus is gatekeeping varied rune usage in a sense. And to me at least, it seems easier to just remove focus and add cooldowns to runes rather than trying to consistently balance focus and focus gain.
With the Focus System I have to consistently think what Rune to use. It’s a tradeoff since Runes share the same resource. With Rune Cooldowns I have effectively more tools readily available, and makes combat feel more fluid. Varied rune usage is more easily achieved which adds more depth to combat rather than disrupting the combat loop.
Swapping weapons will transfer over the rune cooldowns.
A talent tree could have a branch focusing on runes specifically. Like cooldowns, damage etc.
I understand this is probably very controversial, but, I do believe this is a better.
Edits: wanted to add some more things.
Well…
I am not saying remove Focus gain completely. There are options. Some already in the game. Also we can introduce new options, for example through mage weapons (other than Staves) with basic attacks, or convert some Runes to ones that consume Stamina and build Focus (should be affected by weapon speed and reach).
In any case - Priority should be to solve the issue not creating new problems.
Some potential Issues from my pov with you proposition (Cooldowns in addition to Focus):
- We would narrow down build options to those with a good balance of cooldowns to Focus spending to Focus building
- If cooldowns are too long, there would be a lot of waiting or being stuck at max Focus involved
I think what you propose is indeed a solution, but at same time it removes a fun aspect of the game, resource management. I see how things would change and there would be other things to think about and manage, such as cooldown but I think, having resources to manage adds more depth to the game, you can always add cooldowns later if it gets too crazy. But as a matter of fact I would rather introduce new resources for each play style.
For example… Im gonna use wow concepts since we are all familiar with them as an example.
If you equipped staff, it would come with its on resource - mana. And you would have to work around that resource, mana regen etc. So the runes that currently apply for staves would have mana cost.
Then if you had melee weapons, they would come with their own resource - rage, and hitting or being hit would increase that rage etc. Melee runes would have rage cost on them.
Lastly bows, would come with energy resource which allows for consistent combat. Bow runes would cost energy.
Then you would have for example hybrid runes that cost x mana or y rage for example, and those runes you would be able to put either on staff or melee weapon.
Then same would apply for runes which would cost energy or rage and energy or mana etc. All of the combinations.
Obviously there would have to be a lot of balancing and work around such concept, but it would provide much more in depth resource management. At same time it would provide many additional possibilities for talents, gear stats etc.
It would add much more variety to the game in my opinion and you would still choose your playstyle. Also weapon switching would give additional style options, but would also prove a challenge to balance.
This is just me brainstorming here. Tell me what you guys think about this in general… I didnt have the time to challenge myself with this yet.
I am sorry, i think i disagree. We already have channeling time. Additional cooldown would just slow everything down further. I also think that focus as “mana” adds the aspect of resource management. This is important for arpg games since if it gets too simple it gets bland very fast. Also the interconnection between skills gets lost. It brings depth if you can fully blow all resources you have into one foe in a short time, because you need it now.
Having mana for 3 shots in 15 seconds is not the same as 1 shot having a cooldown of 5 seconds. Also how to improve this aspect of the character? With a resource you can have different ways to obtain it and a maximum (that can be modified, btw even now already). With a cooldown you would loose all these options for personalization of the character and replace it by “%reduced cooldowns”.
I remember from guild wars, that cooldowns lead to a “standard button routine” so you dont act and react, but just time your standard combination, rinse and repeat.
If adding cooldowns (and i dislike them tbh.) then only in combination with some resource, not as a replacement.
Edit:
That idea sounds not bad.
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Passive Focus Regeneration
with the Current Focus Pool is Unhealthy because you can Chain 2-3 Focus Attacks at the Start of Every Combat.
Instead maybe less Focus decay and more Focus on Kill (can be %) for Focus you are awarded for fast Gameplay. And not for idle to refill your Focus pool.
Focus % on Hit
Needs a intern modifier for Weapon Speed and Rune Attacks dont trigger this effect or Dual Daggers with Multihit Attacks Rock to much.
Max Focus Pool
maybe malke the Rune Cost a Minimum Requirment and a “Charge” Bonus
Most DMG Attacks Cost 100 Focus. Why not 75 ans up to 50 extra. The 125 make x2 Damage so bigger Focus Pool has is usage. Later maybe Runes with higher Focus usage 100-150 / 125 - 175 / 150 -200 can be found.
In genereal the game needs some sort of “normalize” the focus Pool and Weapons Speed/ DMG ratios.
Well there‘s an approach that would solve the initial issue. 
Still a tradeoff to be sure, but I like the idea! Could be a system alternative that works.
Some thoughts I habe right now:
Pros:
- As you said a reason to use all Runes consistently
- No additional spendable Resource to manage
Cons:
- Cooldown management becomes a thing → Can be cumbersome
- Can strongly restrict choice of Runes based on their Cooldown - If we have Focus, one can invest heavily into Focus gain to make an expensive ability more or less readily accessible (Being a deliberate onetrick pony becomes harder)
- Balance between white and blue/purple/Legendary items has to be readdressed
Ideas:
- Maybe limit weapons to two instead of shared rune cooldowns (the same ability should still share its own cooldown)
→ More possible Combos, more fluid Gameplay, less Cooldowns to manage - Introduce Cooldown reduction as an alternative to Focus Gain
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I dont see the problem here:
Yes what you said is true, but then… what. Maybe an enemy survived and now you are “empty”. What now?
What if there are 2 or 3 enemies… you are empty latest after the second. This is a classical caster advantage and the disadvantage is that you have to budget your resources. Also what about a boss… you will never have enough focus to kill a boss with 2-3 attacks. Also you need to invest skill points into that resource, that miss somewhere else… e.g. health.
And if you adjusted your gear to have tons of regeneration, you miss other perks like e.g. fire resistance. Everything comes with a price.
By the same logic: You can also chain 2-3 meele attacks at the start of every combat (before enemy sees you). Why is this not a problem then?
Only if there is some balancing to be done does not mean that one should dumb down an entire core mechanic, (that imho has very high potential).
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I would argue that cooldown management would then be the new resource management. Managing cooldowns is a lot easier since you will time your abilities to what the boss is doing. But, more on that later since someone else also touched upon this. I also think it is a lot easier for the developers to balance cooldowns against balancing focus and focus gain.
I have played wow a lot, mostly as a Brewmaster, Prot Warrior and Guardian Druid in wod/legion. And the ‘‘resources’’ there are a lot more balanced. And as you level you can use your abilities more easily since you achieve a net neutral state. The most comparable thing to the current focus system would be, I think, Guardian Druid. Since you would have to prep rage to deal with boss mechanics. I think in that setting the tradeoff makes sense. Since you have a balanced ‘‘resource’’ system, cooldowns and a lot more abilities.
If focus is here to stay. Then the end goal should be to create a net neutral state. Where it doesn’t matter what you do, you will always have enough focus. To me that is too limiting since you will only reach that as you reach the end of the game. And from an outsider perspective it seems like a balancing nightmare with, focus potions, affixes. I do think rune cooldowns are required, regardless with what they decide.
It’s a pretty controversial take yeah, haha.
I disagree that channeling/animation time and cooldowns are comparable, since they are too different in what they do. Animation/channeling time is more relevant to punishment windows. Whereas, cooldowns are a resource similar to how focus is a resource. But, the limiting factor is no longer the amount of focus but an amount of time.
I also don’t think it would slow combat down. I feel like the current focus system is what is slowing combat down for me. Not always having focus and it being a shared resource limits my options. Unless , I achieve a net neutral state, and then it becomes spam, which is unhealthy. That paired with runes dealing a lot of damage that they override the combat loop to an extent. If I can delete an enemy with 1 rune it is no longer combat, level difference also probably plays a factor.
I also disagree with the standard button routine from MMORPGs. That is mostly true for DPS players in a PVE setting; Tank and Healers only to an extent as their role is more reactive. But, I think it is better to compare it to PVP in MMORPGs. Where you save certain abilities for certain enemy abilities.
You can also compare it to V Rising where you use dashes, attacks, counters, ranged attacks, weapon skills and shields in a reactive manner to the boss. And managing cooldowns becomes the resource management.
I think it is a worthwhile tradeoff 
It makes balancing for the devs easier, we get more varied combat quicker. And cooldowns become the new resource management. Which, honestly, I prefer over focus management. Since it is easier to predict. You internalize when a certain ability has an 8 second cooldown. It is much harder to think about how many hits equals enough focus for Rune 2.
I don’t know what focus would be then. Maybe investing into it increases rune damage?
I do think it is contingent on runes having a specific purpose like:
- AOE
- Buffs
- Dodge
- Parry
- Ultimate
- Reflect
- Leap
I do like the combo suggestion of chaining runes together, would be so sick. CDR reduction could become available as an affix or something.
Also would you be so kind to further specify what you mean with the following. I feel like I am missing something 
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You can never kill a boss is no argument.
The normal gameplay becomes weird when everybody can start with 2-3 Focus Attacks and ignore the enemy mechanic. Its for normal enemies that you cant “delete” them easy. You say 2-3 enemies? Sorry but that means without focus the player is fucked, means the enmy placement is shit. Dont make a " i need a solution for 3 enemies" at the same time a " i delete every single enemy".