Gamedesign Journal: Combat For Beginners
by El Drijver
Aiming, clicking: check. But the rest?
This document should give quick insight in all things related to spellborn combat.
Please note that this is just an example on how to set-up one’s skilldeck. Players are advised to adapt it at their own discretion.
Organizing Skilldeck
There’s nearly an unlimited amount of possibilities to arrange your skilldeck. There is no ‘best’ arrangement, however, there is a ‘worst’ arrangement. This will be discussed later in the combo section.
The arrangement of your skilldeck is not something you’ll have sorted in 1 minute, especially at high level. It’s a process of finding what works best for your own style. I’ll try to explain some basic strategies in building your deck. For these strategies I’ll assume that all tiers and slots are available. (6 tiers, 5 slots/tier)
Type-arrangement
I think this will be the most used arrangement to start with, since it’s fairly basic to pickup and doesn’t require specific knowledge of every skill. The skilldeck is only viewed in columns, so on any tier, the same can be expected from each slot. In the example below, the player will at all time know that he can go from using slot 1 and 2 to slot 4 when ranged attacks are needed.
A setup could be:
Column 1: Melee
Column 2: Melee, with specialized buffs/debuffs
Column 3: Magic attacks
Column 4: Ranged attacks
Column 5: Healing / Panic
Sequence-arrangement
This arrangement assumes more knowledge of individual skill and also requires more thought. A player can set up to use 1 column for a certain string of attacks, not necessarily combos, for a complete or partial sequence. For example, the first column could contain a melee buff followed by a couple of melee attacks and melee related heals so a player would only have to stick to column 1 for a ‘complete’ package of melee combat.
Of course there are numerous variations, ordering by damage type or maybe even damage amount. It’s up to the player.
Working with combos
Adding combo’s to the skilldeck is also completely up to the player. However, combo openers are the only thing that can really destroy your skilldeck setup. This is because it’s not possible to use a combo opener when you’re already in a combo string. If a single tier consists entirely of combo openers, this will complete block you from doing any skills while the combo is active, since all skills of that tier can’t be executed.
A tip is to put a combo finisher on a diagonal in your skilldeck, that way you always have an optional finisher at your disposal, this is called the “Hesselian diagonal’.
Numbers and factors
States
States are 3 factors, which allow players to add another dimension to their tactics. Correctly manipulating your own as well as your targets’ states will result in a more favorable outcome. The three states are Physique, Morale and Concentration, affecting movement speed, damage output and resistance respectively.
The states start at a default 0 and can be raised as well as lowered, resulting in bonus or penalty for the associated effect.
Affinities
Your magic affinity determines your damage reduction for specific magic types. It’s split up three ways in Rune, Soul and Spirit. Affinity is increased by the attribute associated with it, these are Body, Focus and Mind respectively.
Resistances
Resistance makes up the second part damage reduction players can achieve. It reduces all damage from a certain attack type. These attack types are distinguished as Melee, Ranged and Magic. Resistance is 0 by default, players receive about 2% resistance for every type for drawing their weapon and thus being ‘combat ready’. Resistance can be influenced by skills, sigils, consumables and by the Concentration State, like mentioned above.
Basic Skill Characteristics
Above is part of a screenshot from the skillbook. It displays information about the skill ‘Dance of Blades’. (see attached pic no 1)
Associated Attribute (1 in pic no 1):
In the above case it’s Focus (text is shown on mouse over), this means that the skill benefits from having a high amount of Focus attribute points. The higher the amount, the more damage the skill will do. This is the only effect of the associated attribute on a skill.
Attack Types (2 in pic no 1):
The attack type basically defines what kind of weapon is needed for the attack, Melee, Ranged, or Magic. In case of Magic, no weapon is required. When Disarmed, Melee attacks won’t work, Blind disables Ranged and Silenced disables Magic attacks.
The above attack is a Melee attack, this also means it is reduced by the Melee Resistance of the target.
Magic Type (3 in pic no 1):
This is the Damage type of the skill. It can be Rune, Spirit, Soul or None. In the above screenshot, the magic type is Rune. This means the damage inflicted with this attack is counted as Rune damage. This means it’s reduced by the Rune Affinity of the target (as well as the Melee Resistance.)
Cooldown (4 in pic no 1):
This is the cooldown time (in seconds) of the skill before it can be re-used.
Choosing attribute points
Choosing which attribute points to increase when leveling up is fairly free as well. Much can be said for different strategies. The most basic one is to choose the attribute which most of your attacks are related to. Simply open your skillbook and check what the majority of your skills are associated with.
If you check the screenshot below, you can clearly see that ‘Focus’ is the main attribute for this class to pick at this moment, with Body coming in as secondary.
That’s it for this “Combat for Beginners” Article !
See you next time !
P.S. Please do not mind the quality of the screenshots, it got messed up somewhere down the line of editing.
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27-11-2007, 19:00
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