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View Full Version : Suggestions: Ice Magic



Novacat
07-06-2017, 03:46 PM
Ice magic is a fairly fun skillset, but it's lacking in some of the refinements one finds in its predecessor fire. This is not to harp on fire, but rather to point out that there are several quality-of-life and fun factors - though also a little bit of balance - that could be brought up to its own par.

First, a few notes:
1) There are 3 more bosses immune to cold than there are to fire, and marginally more cold 'ineffectives' than fire ones
2) Somehow both cold AND electrical type elementals are weak to cold and acid, and immune to electricity. This is likely a little bug or oversight
3) Staves very often drop with +2 fire magic damage, even when it's an ice magic staff with ice magic requirements off an ice creature in an icy place

Suggestions:
Ice Magic only has two damage types really (chill's its own issue): Cold and Electrical. There are no damage-type alterations; no "piercing" crystal spears or *ICE* lightning (speaking of; ice lightning's icon is beautiful and I hope the ability one day gets to look like it) or anything of the sort. There's no third-type or mods. However, unlike Mentalism (which is more support-oriented) cold and electric are often paired together in the "ineffective(very)", "effective" or even immunity (that one ghoul) category, offering less target variety than fire would even without room-temp ball.

Chill: 1/3 the range of fireball, but not really anything to show for it. In fact, Trauma is often more "ineffective(very)" or immunized against than fire, but it's also not a damage type affected by the skills or mods available to ice magic. It could use some improvements, or at worst be given range. Mindreave's excuse is it bypasses armor for devastating effect against targets not outright immune to psychic damage.

Point-Blanks: Ice and Fire have no shortage of point-blank AoEs. But not only are the fire ones of two different damage types, they are also fun and different from each-other. Ice has Blizzard (firebolts analogue) and Tundra Spikes (defensive burst but immobilize instead of knockback). And then it has Tundra-Spikes but without the immobilize (ice nova), and then it has Tundra-Spikes but without the immobilize, and cheaper but low damage and requiring + dispelling an additional ability you need in your bar just to use it (shardblast). Neither Ice Nova or Shardblast offer anything interesting: one gets a tradeoff and a drawback, the other just gets nothing, and all the play-changing mods are on Blizzard anyhow.

Perhaps give Shardblast some bonus trauma-over-time to represent a shrapnel explosion. Ice Nova could be modded into a crushing avalanche, gaining range and being centered on target rather than point-blank; it already deals significantly less damage than tundra spikes to go with its slightly lower cost. Chill could become a longer ranged snowball toss; maybe range 20 but with a tiny slow to stack with blizzard's. There's mods for ice-lightning to buff fire damage; maybe tundra spikes could get a mod that helps it ground targets for better electricity output?