Storm Calling Mages' Fury Execute Range Needs Buffed

randconfig · August 29

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

The animation is an instant cast, it is no different than any other instant cast. It plays and cancels the same. Just remember that secretly it is a projectile skill.

Not exactly, instant just means what's suppose to happen, happens when you press the key instead of requiring a channel or cast time first. It does not mean it instantly lands. Wrecking Blow has a 0.8s cast time, then instantly hits. Fury has a 0.0s cast time, but has a massive delay before it hits, even in melee range.

There's 2 terms important here I'll use:
Projectile Speed (PS) = speed at which the projectile travels through the air to your target, eg, 28 meters per second.

Minimum projectile travel time (MPTT) = a locked in time that the projectile must complete before landing, even if the caster is right on top of the target. This is implemented case by case, most likely as a balancing/counterplay design choice.

MPTT is the reason why some players may prefer a melee over a ranged playstyle without realizing it. Why does Impale feel less reliable than Killer's Blade for a melee player? Why does your instant Frag miss more often than not when following up Streak vs something like Executioner? Why is Mage's Fury the absolute worst feeling execute in the game outside of spamming it from a back of zerg back when it had a 5s duration? MPTT is why.

From my memory of like 2016 patch notes, a general feeling, and some light testing, the average MPTT is between 0.2s to 0.3s. This whole MPTT thing is why not all instant ranged abilites feel equally as satisifying to cast, most likely because not all ranged skills have the same travel time or animations, thus the hit detection can feel weird, and even effect your weaving. Something like Crushing Shock has historically been praised, while Swallow Soul has been complained about as a good example.

Give or take some mileseconds, human input, and ping, you can work out what's going on here. Keep in mind to -1s between each damage instance to get the actual delays due to the Global Cooldown. Also, I did not do this multiple times, nor did I use a macro, these would be required to get more accurate numbers.
Impale has 0.3s MPTT vs the instant 0.0s hit of Killer's Blade.

Crystal Frag has 0.5s MPTT, making it 0.2s slower than Impale, and based on the 1.1s it took to land at 28m, it travels at 25m a second.

Mage's Fury has 0.8s MPTT, at 28m it does not change so it does not seem to have PS at all or if it does, it's insanely fast to give the appearance of the damage teleporting. My guess is it's just insanely fast so that it can still be absorbed by something like Ball of Lightning. If it actually teleported to the caster, then BOL wouldn't work, although I haven't actually tested this.

This is why Mage's Fury feels bad the closer you are to your target, because it doesn't land any easier, it just makes it easier to counter.

Imagine a situation where you Fossilze, then follow up with Executioner, Killer's Blade, or Whirling Blades, the target would have about 1.0s to react, replace that with Mage's Fury and they have 1.8s, +80% more time to break free, and roll dodge. This is why despite being conceptually a cool ability I'd love to use even though I find it very weak, I can't, it's just way too unreliable.

If I were to improve the feeling, I'd start by lowering the MPTT from 0.8s to 0.3s, then introducing a real PS so range matters. Frag's feels quite slow, and even it takes 1.1s at 28m meaning Mage's Fury only becomes beneficial at 20m or above.

This is insanely insightful and explains a lot why whenever I used fury/wrath it always shows up with "dodged" or "missed". my ping (minimum 300ms, typically closer to 400-500ms) + the GCD of 1 second + the 0.8s MPTT essentially meant that anyone I cast it on had a minimum 2.1 second window to dodge roll my "execute". No wonder it never hit anything. Even with my horrible ping, I would have enough time to break free and dodge roll that execute cast, without needing slippery champion point slottable...

100% agree on reducing the MPTT of fury.

Also interesting on frags MPTT too, always felt unreliable compared to crushing shock unless the target was stunned or not paying attention, now I know why. It basically has the same dodge window that fury does when I cast it with my ping.

Also explains why I've wanted to make melee magsorc work this whole time, true instant abilities (basically all melee abilities without a built in cast time) have always been super reliable for those with high ping than ranged abilities (outside of specifically force pulse/morphs), especially those with long MPTT.

Frags received min travel time a very long while ago but there actually was time when it had none and distance actually held meaning which added another layer of depth imo.

I think the idea was that a ranged ability shouldn't be stronger in melee range, especially not an ability like frags which would outperform melee range abilities in melee range.

So I personally think that is a good change for balancing the game.

YandereGirlfriend · August 29

randconfig wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Minimum Travel Times, Cast Times on ultimates... things that the game never needed yet here we are dealing with them and their baggage anyway.

Personally I think these minor adjustments to abilities make sense, as they let the ability animation play out correctly, making the game better visually. A lot of people point out how the minimum travel time makes this ability feel bad to use, but the issue isn't the minimum travel time being so great, it's that the ability itself is so underwhelming/doesn't last long enough to feel good to use.

When they finally buffed the damage and added the corpse mechanic to Flame Skull necromancer grave lord ability, it went from being a meme to being a class staple ability, despite having the long minimum travel time.

Mage's Wrath was already a class staple ability when it's duration was 4seconds, the 2 seconds duration nerf is the reason the ability is trash now. The only way they could make this work is if the base damage of Mage's Wrath was equal to a standard spammable class ability, and the 2 second execute bonus damage was left in place.

I'm fine with either, revert the duration nerf to bring it back to 4 seconds, or buff the base damage to be equal to a spammable single target ability in addition to the 2 second execute bonus.

Going to agree to disagree that Mage's Wrath or the other morph were good or useful prior to the duration nerf.

Nobody used them in actual content, they literally were kill-stealing tools for low-tier players in PvP formats. Which is not good enough or broadly useful enough to continue justifying its existence.

As has been stated better by others in this thread, there needs to be a PvE morph and better execute threshold scaling.

randconfig · August 29

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

randconfig wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Minimum Travel Times, Cast Times on ultimates... things that the game never needed yet here we are dealing with them and their baggage anyway.

Personally I think these minor adjustments to abilities make sense, as they let the ability animation play out correctly, making the game better visually. A lot of people point out how the minimum travel time makes this ability feel bad to use, but the issue isn't the minimum travel time being so great, it's that the ability itself is so underwhelming/doesn't last long enough to feel good to use.

When they finally buffed the damage and added the corpse mechanic to Flame Skull necromancer grave lord ability, it went from being a meme to being a class staple ability, despite having the long minimum travel time.

Mage's Wrath was already a class staple ability when it's duration was 4seconds, the 2 seconds duration nerf is the reason the ability is trash now. The only way they could make this work is if the base damage of Mage's Wrath was equal to a standard spammable class ability, and the 2 second execute bonus damage was left in place.

I'm fine with either, revert the duration nerf to bring it back to 4 seconds, or buff the base damage to be equal to a spammable single target ability in addition to the 2 second execute bonus.

Going to agree to disagree that Mage's Wrath or the other morph were good or useful prior to the duration nerf.

Nobody used them in actual content, they literally were kill-stealing tools for low-tier players in PvP formats. Which is not good enough or broadly useful enough to continue justifying its existence.

As has been stated better by others in this thread, there needs to be a PvE morph and better execute threshold scaling.

You say "kill-stealing", I say "kill-securing or execution" ability. With the 4 second duration, you could time it for decent combos in PvP, which is a lot of the content I play. It's also useful in PvE when farming/killing large mobs of enemies.

The reduced cost morph I agree should be reworked completely since it has no purpose.

YandereGirlfriend · August 29

randconfig wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

randconfig wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Minimum Travel Times, Cast Times on ultimates... things that the game never needed yet here we are dealing with them and their baggage anyway.

Personally I think these minor adjustments to abilities make sense, as they let the ability animation play out correctly, making the game better visually. A lot of people point out how the minimum travel time makes this ability feel bad to use, but the issue isn't the minimum travel time being so great, it's that the ability itself is so underwhelming/doesn't last long enough to feel good to use.

When they finally buffed the damage and added the corpse mechanic to Flame Skull necromancer grave lord ability, it went from being a meme to being a class staple ability, despite having the long minimum travel time.

Mage's Wrath was already a class staple ability when it's duration was 4seconds, the 2 seconds duration nerf is the reason the ability is trash now. The only way they could make this work is if the base damage of Mage's Wrath was equal to a standard spammable class ability, and the 2 second execute bonus damage was left in place.

I'm fine with either, revert the duration nerf to bring it back to 4 seconds, or buff the base damage to be equal to a spammable single target ability in addition to the 2 second execute bonus.

Going to agree to disagree that Mage's Wrath or the other morph were good or useful prior to the duration nerf.

Nobody used them in actual content, they literally were kill-stealing tools for low-tier players in PvP formats. Which is not good enough or broadly useful enough to continue justifying its existence.

As has been stated better by others in this thread, there needs to be a PvE morph and better execute threshold scaling.

You say "kill-stealing", I say "kill-securing or execution" ability. With the 4 second duration, you could time it for decent combos in PvP, which is a lot of the content I play. It's also useful in PvE when farming/killing large mobs of enemies.

The reduced cost morph I agree should be reworked completely since it has no purpose.

I mean, my experience is having about 40 zerglings spamming it on me in Cyro as their only source of damage, hoping that someone else does the actual work of getting it to proc. And back-line Sorcs in BGs doing the same thing.

It was done because it allows otherwise low-tier players to get kills when otherwise they would have no chance. To the annoyance of basically everyone else, teammate and enemy alike.

One morph definitely needs to remain as an execute but I would vastly prefer a more responsive instant-cast ability that kicks in at a higher % of health.

randconfig · August 29

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I mean, my experience is having about 40 zerglings spamming it on me in Cyro as their only source of damage, hoping that someone else does the actual work of getting it to proc. And back-line Sorcs in BGs doing the same thing.

It was done because it allows otherwise low-tier players to get kills when otherwise they would have no chance. To the annoyance of basically everyone else, teammate and enemy alike.

One morph definitely needs to remain as an execute but I would vastly prefer a more responsive instant-cast ability that kicks in at a higher % of health.

I don't think that's how the combat balance team thinks about ability design, but we can agree to disagree.

That said, wouldn't a more responsive instant-cast ability make the 40 zerglings more annoying to you? Or are you wanting the execute damage to be gutted in exchange for a wider scaling threshold starting at 50% hp?

MashmalloMan · September 1

randconfig wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I mean, my experience is having about 40 zerglings spamming it on me in Cyro as their only source of damage, hoping that someone else does the actual work of getting it to proc. And back-line Sorcs in BGs doing the same thing.

It was done because it allows otherwise low-tier players to get kills when otherwise they would have no chance. To the annoyance of basically everyone else, teammate and enemy alike.

One morph definitely needs to remain as an execute but I would vastly prefer a more responsive instant-cast ability that kicks in at a higher % of health.

I don't think that's how the combat balance team thinks about ability design, but we can agree to disagree.

That said, wouldn't a more responsive instant-cast ability make the 40 zerglings more annoying to you? Or are you wanting the execute damage to be gutted in exchange for a wider scaling threshold starting at 50% hp?

I believe they're referring to some of the concepts I raised in my previous comments. There is no gutting necessary when it's already underperforming in multiple categories. Wrath could be buffed, Endless can be reworked.

20% -> 25% HP, keep the low 2s delay, but add a bit more juice. The skill was already subpar, they nerfed the combo window with 0 compensation. The same zerglings spamming it before, are still spamming it now, it doesn't make much of a difference for them because it's the only skill they were casting anyway. The delay change only deleted the classic Curse+Meteor combo which is fine, but give some compensation.
As I covered, it takes 0.8s from any distance to land, make the ability more responsive by making distance matter. Impale takes 0.3s - 1.0s from 1-28m, copy/paste. This is how most projectiles function. This would only nerf players spamming it from 20m+ because they'd get about +0.2s delay, but it should be easier to counter from range.
If the 2s delay is removed on 1 morph, it could get instant scaling from 33% like Radiant Oppression morphs and hopefully Impale 1 day, or if it started from 50% it would increase in damage per health missing like every other execute. You would need to be intentional of when you cast it without the 2s buffer, thus the scaling can be much higher and it would actually be competitive for PvE. Mobs do not heal, delayed burst is not important, only average DPS, this is why no one uses Fury in PvE right now.
People are fine with skill reworks especially when morphs are too similar because they can be consolidated into 1, as long as a morph retains the original identity and the new skill introduces a new identity. As an example, ZOS came close, but ultimately failed at this concept with the Blastbones rework because they did not retain the Stalking morph's +10-50% damage, flame damage, nor did they give it a dynamic cost. BB is a fantastic ability all things considered, especially in a subclassing world, but GLS is absolutely terrible, uninspiring, and unrewarding. The original Stalking Blastbones enjoyers are rightfully still peaved. It should of been reworked/tweaked 10x over since it was introduced a year+ ago. Missed opportunity.

MashmalloMan · September 1

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cVrDfv0-fyXYA22T0Xv7atamqeTMbALloneFZaoDxcg/edit?usp=drivesdk

@MincMincMinc

Here's a spreadsheet I'm working on with a bit more accurate tests for projectile travel times using combat metrix's log and the "cast" category instead of relying on Ele Sus. Although I did find out that Ele Sus is indeed instant from any range.

Some interesting results so far.

Streak is instant damage, makes sense cuz I remember using it for the Diamond's Victory set to proc the melee requirement for my ranged skills if I'm not mistaken.
All projectiles have a 0.3s minimum, kinda like the Global Cooldown is 1s.
Hard cast Frags follows the 0.3s rule, Instant Frags has +0.2s which only applies up until the speed + 0.3s global minimum is passed. In my tests and using math, this is roughly around 10-11m, meaning up to that point, there is always a 0.5s delay.
Grim Focus for whatever reason does not have an inbuilt additional minimum travel time, despite the 2 abilities often being compared/balanced against each other in the 1st 4-5 years of the game.
As I thought, Crushing Shock is very quick. It still follows the 0.3s minimum, but caps out at 0.6s from 28m instead of 1s like most ranged spammables.
Cliff Racer like Fury, has a locked in 1.2s travel time from any distance. Interestingly, the animation does change. In melee, the bird spawns behind you, about 5-7m from target, still takes 1.2s. at 28m, it spawns beside you, but since it travels that distance in 1.2s, it looks WAY faster.
Ranged dots like Soul Trap and Fetcher Infection are extremely slow, they take 1.7s at 28m.
Conals like Bombard and Breath are instant, I wouldn't be surprised if they're considered melee for sets like Diamonds Victory.
Bound Armaments tooltip seems to be lying. I consistently found a 0.25s delay between Daggers instead of the 0.3s delay it mentions, probably done for rounding simplicity. The projectiles do move faster than most, but the delay makes it the slowest semi spammable in the game. At 1m it takes 0.6 to 1.35s, at 28m it takes 1.1 to 1.85s.

MashmalloMan · September 1

randconfig wrote: »

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

The animation is an instant cast, it is no different than any other instant cast. It plays and cancels the same. Just remember that secretly it is a projectile skill.

Not exactly, instant just means what's suppose to happen, happens when you press the key instead of requiring a channel or cast time first. It does not mean it instantly lands. Wrecking Blow has a 0.8s cast time, then instantly hits. Fury has a 0.0s cast time, but has a massive delay before it hits, even in melee range.

There's 2 terms important here I'll use:
Projectile Speed (PS) = speed at which the projectile travels through the air to your target, eg, 28 meters per second.

Minimum projectile travel time (MPTT) = a locked in time that the projectile must complete before landing, even if the caster is right on top of the target. This is implemented case by case, most likely as a balancing/counterplay design choice.

MPTT is the reason why some players may prefer a melee over a ranged playstyle without realizing it. Why does Impale feel less reliable than Killer's Blade for a melee player? Why does your instant Frag miss more often than not when following up Streak vs something like Executioner? Why is Mage's Fury the absolute worst feeling execute in the game outside of spamming it from a back of zerg back when it had a 5s duration? MPTT is why.

From my memory of like 2016 patch notes, a general feeling, and some light testing, the average MPTT is between 0.2s to 0.3s. This whole MPTT thing is why not all instant ranged abilites feel equally as satisifying to cast, most likely because not all ranged skills have the same travel time or animations, thus the hit detection can feel weird, and even effect your weaving. Something like Crushing Shock has historically been praised, while Swallow Soul has been complained about as a good example.

Give or take some mileseconds, human input, and ping, you can work out what's going on here. Keep in mind to -1s between each damage instance to get the actual delays due to the Global Cooldown. Also, I did not do this multiple times, nor did I use a macro, these would be required to get more accurate numbers.
Impale has 0.3s MPTT vs the instant 0.0s hit of Killer's Blade.

Crystal Frag has 0.5s MPTT, making it 0.2s slower than Impale, and based on the 1.1s it took to land at 28m, it travels at 25m a second.

Mage's Fury has 0.8s MPTT, at 28m it does not change so it does not seem to have PS at all or if it does, it's insanely fast to give the appearance of the damage teleporting. My guess is it's just insanely fast so that it can still be absorbed by something like Ball of Lightning. If it actually teleported to the caster, then BOL wouldn't work, although I haven't actually tested this.

This is why Mage's Fury feels bad the closer you are to your target, because it doesn't land any easier, it just makes it easier to counter.

Imagine a situation where you Fossilze, then follow up with Executioner, Killer's Blade, or Whirling Blades, the target would have about 1.0s to react, replace that with Mage's Fury and they have 1.8s, +80% more time to break free, and roll dodge. This is why despite being conceptually a cool ability I'd love to use even though I find it very weak, I can't, it's just way too unreliable.

If I were to improve the feeling, I'd start by lowering the MPTT from 0.8s to 0.3s, then introducing a real PS so range matters. Frag's feels quite slow, and even it takes 1.1s at 28m meaning Mage's Fury only becomes beneficial at 20m or above.

This is insanely insightful and explains a lot why whenever I used fury/wrath it always shows up with "dodged" or "missed". my ping (minimum 300ms, typically closer to 400-500ms) + the GCD of 1 second + the 0.8s MPTT essentially meant that anyone I cast it on had a minimum 2.1 second window to dodge roll my "execute". No wonder it never hit anything. Even with my horrible ping, I would have enough time to break free and dodge roll that execute cast, without needing slippery champion point slottable...

100% agree on reducing the MPTT of fury.

Also interesting on frags MPTT too, always felt unreliable compared to crushing shock unless the target was stunned or not paying attention, now I know why. It basically has the same dodge window that fury does when I cast it with my ping.

Also explains why I've wanted to make melee magsorc work this whole time, true instant abilities (basically all melee abilities without a built in cast time) have always been super reliable for those with high ping than ranged abilities (outside of specifically force pulse/morphs), especially those with long MPTT.

Frags received min travel time a very long while ago but there actually was time when it had none and distance actually held meaning which added another layer of depth imo.

I think the idea was that a ranged ability shouldn't be stronger in melee range, especially not an ability like frags which would outperform melee range abilities in melee range.

So I personally think that is a good change for balancing the game.

In theory, yes, in practice no. All projectiles already have a 0.3s minimum for balancing purposes, if Frags has an additional 0.2s for a total of 0.5s, you would think Grim Focus which hits much harder and can stack twice would too, but nope. Bound Armaments basically has the same thing with the 0.3s (0.25s) delay, and I'd say it's currently next to useless the majority of the time even with the sunder chance and major prophecy, I'm still having much better luck with Grim Focus this patch.

Crystal Frags is pretty much the only skill in that cateogory with an additional delay and I presume this is simply because someone 8 years ago chose to balance it that way, but none of the devs since then have done the same thing to other abilities. It frankly seems to just be a relic of the past, Frags used to stun, there was no Warden or Necro, pretty sure the damage was brought down at some point too, and we didn't have subclassing which introduced a number of more potent abilities to everyones toolkit.

You don't even need to worry about projectiles or cleanses with burst abilities like Contingency, Scorch, and Blastbones. The way they balanced Sorc skills for pure classing back then doesn't seem to be holding up anymore today.

MincMincMinc · 4:01PM

MashmalloMan wrote: »

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cVrDfv0-fyXYA22T0Xv7atamqeTMbALloneFZaoDxcg/edit?usp=drivesdk

@MincMincMinc

Here's a spreadsheet I'm working on with a bit more accurate tests for projectile travel times using combat metrix's log and the "cast" category instead of relying on Ele Sus. Although I did find out that Ele Sus is indeed instant from any range.

Some interesting results so far.
Streak is instant damage, makes sense cuz I remember using it for the Diamond's Victory set to proc the melee requirement for my ranged skills if I'm not mistaken.

All projectiles have a 0.3s minimum, kinda like the Global Cooldown is 1s.

Hard cast Frags follows the 0.3s rule, Instant Frags has +0.2s which only applies up until the speed + 0.3s global minimum is passed. In my tests and using math, this is roughly around 10-11m, meaning up to that point, there is always a 0.5s delay.

Grim Focus for whatever reason does not have an inbuilt additional minimum travel time, despite the 2 abilities often being compared/balanced against each other in the 1st 4-5 years of the game.

As I thought, Crushing Shock is very quick. It still follows the 0.3s minimum, but caps out at 0.6s from 28m instead of 1s like most ranged spammables.

Cliff Racer like Fury, has a locked in 1.2s travel time from any distance. Interestingly, the animation does change. In melee, the bird spawns behind you, about 5-7m from target, still takes 1.2s. at 28m, it spawns beside you, but since it travels that distance in 1.2s, it looks WAY faster.

Ranged dots like Soul Trap and Fetcher Infection are extremely slow, they take 1.7s at 28m.

Conals like Bombard and Breath are instant, I wouldn't be surprised if they're considered melee for sets like Diamonds Victory.

Bound Armaments tooltip seems to be lying. I consistently found a 0.25s delay between Daggers instead of the 0.3s delay it mentions, probably done for rounding simplicity. The projectiles do move faster than most, but the delay makes it the slowest semi spammable in the game. At 1m it takes 0.6 to 1.35s, at 28m it takes 1.1 to 1.85s.

The projectile mechanics are something that is a lost art. I think the problem comes down to power creep and the game becoming more boring in a way. As player demanded power creep through sets and passive effects more, we lost the old balance and variety with skills. For instance back in the day, theses timing meant far more, but now they are an annoyance that just feels like a skill is worse than the generic template.

Comes back around to people not wanting template pvp....but asking for templated generic builds/skills anyways.