Yeah, sounds bat kitten crazy right? Hear me out.
I know this has been suggested by some before briefly but I wanted to elaborate on how reducing cool downs, and reducing skill effects, can reduce power creep. It’s very important that skill effects, such as duration, radius, condition stacks and auto attacks are also reduced to compensate.
By lowering durations of skills like shield stance you are promoting much more active skilled plays rather than just using it for 3s of near invincibility like we have now. Blocks will need to be more precise, even if the cooldown was reduced proportionately.
Radius is also quite important. Currently we have AoE effects so large, the skill isn’t concerned with accuracy (let’s not forget target locking), it’s concerned with how many other targets you can hit. Which is fine for PvE but in PvP when the gameplay should be dictated by skill, AoE effects should be reduced and locking disabled. You want skills with AoEs to have good, important effects, but require the player to aim it correctly. Also,
Weapon skill 2 currently is usually a 6 second cooldown skill which is almost like a second auto attack. You want to use it as often as you can. Some people also find that skill 2 is usually a better alternative to the last hit in an auto attack chain, such as the necromancer greatsword. If we reduced the cooldowns on skills like those, it could create interesting gameplay choices that promote active skill usage. For instance, using skill 2 every time instead of finishing your auto attack chain will give a DPS boost of your timing is right. Active skill usage rewards the player.
The major winners from these changes is that you actually address power creep quite well. Skills need to be more precise and also, after cast will remain the same. So even if all the numbers were reduced proportionately, there are less effects (duration wise) happening because there would be more instances of after cast.
Finally. Skill combos. Skill combos would happen more often since cool downs are reduced. While the current combo system is wonky thanks to field ownership, you can’t deny that allowing more opportunities for players to capitalise on them will further promote active skilled play.
The thing is, you want a PvP system that promotes higher APM (actions per minute). Almost all competitive games have APM as one of the indicators of high level play. These suggestions will promote higher APM. One way to reduce powercreep is to naturally phase out lower skill level play by awarding high APM/high skill level play.
that 400 points thing is something I haven’t thought about at all, gonna do some…..thinking.
) i have 3 ideas to boost necro pereonal dps and/or improve the utility value too (and yes, 1 of them is connected to op