Spell Variance

[Zaela]

Uh, it seems to me that a free increase to every single nuke and heal would inevitably lead to nerfs, if that's what we're talking about here.

 

[Dimmi]

yes pretty much i am asking if that is unpalatable? i got no hidden motives i'm just testing for consistency .

if it was consistant and predictable in amount like a crit is, that would be cool. the reliability of spell damage amounts is what we <3

 

[kallemur4]

well if the variance was just working upwards but still had a span of lets say 0%-40% so the damage would be like
base damage<your actual damage<base damage *1.4

isnt that more or less the same as
base damage*0.8<your actual damage<base damage*1.2
but with a small increase in over all damage that will lead to base damage being nerfed to not be OP?

The parsing problems still remains. If you make every cast be 20 spell hits (isnt that as many hits a melee get off in same time as a caster get off one spell?) then we can get good numbers from the parcers.

Otherwise it is just the same bad idea with some frosting on the top that will be removed in 2 weeks.

 

[Tarutao]

ok just to put a lid on this, if there was variance but the variance only had a chance to add damage to your familiar values, would this also be unpalatable?

Barring what Dimmi said, yes. I would despise that equally.

Anticipated response: "You know you aren't a good indicator of normal, Tao. Go back to your fishing and baking spreadsheets."

Pre-preared reponse to the anticipated response: "I know, and I will, but my answer stands. I would hate it like I hate this."

 

[Silosobi]

ok just to put a lid on this, if there was variance but the variance only had a chance to add damage to your familiar values, would this also be unpalatable?

Yes. Crits/resists can be frustrating mechanics, but they are rare enough that it remains easy to see the "normal" value of a spell. Anything that removes player ability to see and parse our normal spell heal/damage numbers is bad, because it weakens our ability to understand workings of the game, and nearly removes our ability to bug test things.

 

[Silosobi]

Also, I know you didn't actually mean my wizard familiar, but if you want to add some extra damage to him that is fine. He scales very poorly.

 

[Loxo]

If the goal was to add flavor to spell casting in the game I think that's a great idea, but perhaps flavor changes to spells should be flavor-based, like adding chances for small effects that fit the theme of the spell or something.

 

[Raxton]

The ability to notice small changes to my heals is what i miss. Next i dislike rolling -10% on a nightime fast heal twice in a row and dying cuz nothing crit.

Id be in favor of some variability if we could still usually discern the normal value.
People would be more willing to accept something like this i think:

+1% to spells happens 3% of casts
+2% at 3%
+3% at 3%

9% chance for a tiny bump to spells could still parse and never roll negative multiple times in a row.