Deliberate Combat - try and Experiment GGG! :)

Preface:
I wanted to write a 'lazy' set of suggestions I think PoE2 should experiment with to try and achieve it's combat fantasy that it failed to achieve during the beta. I want that good action-game high level combat in PoE2, so I'm hoping what I'm writing is attractive enough to encourage GGG to try and do one more marathon in Combat Design.

The hope of theseideas and design patterns for making the combat more action-y in a way that doesn't compromise on the RPG aspects is to instead enhance them. I wrote this thesis and some of the ideas got in but no 'core' principles https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3822091 , and also other suggestions I made like the betrayal crafting rework were also seen and used by 666.

As a gamemodder and programmer, I've even tested some of the suggested mechanics in games I've modded myself (WC3, TES, Dota) and I know they're not too complicated to implement.

If possible, I think GGG should get external consultants, whether from an action game company or someone like Ongbal (a Sekiro youtuber who was so good at the game he was consulted by the Last Khazan: Berserker game's devs as to how to polish the games combat).

PoE2s action combat shouldn't just be a series of MMO tier filler combat with nicer animations, because right now PoE2 combat is not even halfway to the principles of action games.

Those principles involve a focus on smoothness, timings, creating and using opportunity, no loss of control but rather the ability to stack 'opportunities' to create exponentially smoothness and most importantly enemies enemies ENEMIES and bosses bosses BOSSES, dynamic ones that make you play in interesting ways by pushing you into what famous DOOM designer "Hugo Martin" refers to as the FUN ZONE., making your tools ALL (or almost all) have defensive or utility aspects you'd want to use or rely on, with conditional spontaneous combustion determining escalation. Optional escalation is a common and smooth feature of some action games too, and that could tie into PoE2s loot system vs optional difficulty. Understanding what kind of spells on monsters (passive and active) create fun gameplay, which create frustrating gameplay and which do not create gameplay at all should be the crux of an eventual combat facelift.

Main games used for inspiration: God Hand, Devil May Cry, ULTRAKILL, DOOM2, DOOM Eternal, Sekiro, Elden Ring, Dark Messiah, Dishonored all played at maximum difficulty or even modded. My suggestion is that the devs play and analyze more action games, including shooters, to see what they do well at a high level and ape the specifics. For example, most of these games will have weak mobs in the tutorial level, but will have one REALLY strong mob type that can kill you early on if you don't dodge it, and can only be damaged with some good timing/positioning, just to set a precedent of difficulty.

The point of the suggestions below is just to show how easily PoE2s combat CAN be adapted into the higher 'action game' standard.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed reading this essay as much as I enjoyed writing it :D 

Here are some videos showcasing things some generic action gameplay I think GGG should learn from, ESPECIALLY regarding the "action vibe".
Feel free to come back to these after this essay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdHVt7cTwXc
https://youtu.be/VZ72u0gMxAc?t=3238

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcxX-RSRNdM - example of weak point/limb/headshot 'targeting' in a top down game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs3wo4tIZks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1GLZILJc24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzJFBVSUylU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cS9XSGSzgE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwwj3lFK4HA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC9YVpR77B8

https://youtu.be/q2OEHDz1kVg?list=PLc3QkV-L-tFsYAsIOsgu16D0jNGdrsvAX&t=175

Gameplay / Combat Notes
=======================

0. Any issues with pacing regarding loot can be mathematically achieved by boosting Loot/mobs and creating constant immersive optional challenges that give more loot.

1. If an action games combat does not go well with fast paced music, then its bad combat. There has never false. In essence, PoE2s 'combo' gameplay is endlessly slow and does not have any context where you can do something clever or funny to get exponential value. Instead, everything is flat and linear but also slow. When combining BIG EXPLOSIONS in a cool game like DMC or DOOM you get the reward of exponentially effective gameplay. In PoE2 the reliance on cooldowns and slow gameplay is making it so 'clever facerolling of your keyboard' does not lead to cool explosions of gameplay, instead just to sluggish responses. To put it simply, deliberate combat requires the player being faster, as to combo faster, as to use more skills, so that the player can react more to the enemy's special openings as well as offensives, so that the player can be more engaged and press more buttons so that the player can have more freedom of expression.

2. Feedback - doing well should be rewarded with doing everything faster, as well as doing more. PoE2s combat loop most resembles ULTRAKILLs weapon combo system, but lacks the enemies for it, as well as interconnectedness of ALL your abilities, only some. Regarding Combos, the things that make PoE2 and ULTRAKILL very similar is their approach to combos and their damage rewards. Resources, speed and swapping. What makes them differ is that 1. ULTRAKILL is more tactile and satisfying, as well as focused on speed (both of attacking and of movement) while PoE2s slowness and limited range of combos make it "degenerate" away from what ULTRAKILL does well 2. ULTRAKILLs combos require strategy with a good understanding of defensives and survival and 3. ULTRAKILLs enemy roster is actually challenging and has direct counters that when executed are very satisfying. 4. when you get new tools in ULTRAKILL you use them. In PoE2 the design of the abilities makes it so that no matter what, player builds CONVERGE to less abilities because a) abilities dont combo exponentially or with 'all other abilities' b) the game is too sluggish with not enough enemy variety to make it so you'd ever not want to just use your core skills c) the mentality of 'the game is repetitive' lends itself to less friction ergo the need for 1 button builds.
Check out ULTRAKILLs bosses from hardest to easiest to see how it ends up https://youtu.be/cuxsYTFwA3I?t=3026

3. Dynamic rewarding defensives on intuitive motions - Rolling through wolf attacks stuns them. Dodging through most projectiles erases them. Not because it has to but because extending the power of defensive tools and making it so there's more ways to use them makes 1v100 fights actually manageable without screen wipes. And the rewards of good defensive usage is often not just offensive but also 'more defenses' aka healing, shields, screen projectile clears etc. The ability to mitigate or reverse damage or have reliable defensives is what lets action games have their aggressive playstyles in multi-enemy encounters (in 1v1 encounters this is usually done by making the boss have openings which require perfect timing and aggression during risky moments)

4. Attacking enemies mid-attack may either stun them, damage them, apply a perma debuff, give you a buff, or remove an ability/weak point from the target. If done to a Magic pack, it affects all in the pack. If done to a Rare, it affects all their minions.

5. Aimed shots for ranged characters — weak points: if aiming over a weak point and it hits after launch, apply extra damage/stun/perma effect.

6. All ailments should be 'solvable' by action-game mechanics, so that they're manageable on a small scale. The freedom a player gets from solving them in an RPG sense should be felt in gameplay too.

7. Reward combining offensives and defensives Dodging, then queuing an attack, reduces the wind-up based on the duration of the dodge in the direction of the wound-up direction. Dodge straight forward and attack forward, and 100% of the dodge time going forward is removed from the attack time. This does not scale w/ dodge reduction effects.

8. New Generic Charge — Metacharge used across all skills. The goal should be budgeting a variety of your defensive tools — parries, stuns, dodges, etc. — to counter enemies in different ways, as many at once as possible, using their “perfections.” Perfect uses of skills give all your other skills up to 20 Metacharges per skill, giving them perfections. Skills expend Metacharges on use to make them more powerful.

9. Reward the players with playstyle altering (keystone tier) uniques in the campaign they can experiment with, instead of keeping those only for 'Build Enabling' systems. Otherwise it cheapens the Action-layer of the game where fun stuff ONLY exists for DPS min maxing and not for actually fighting. By act 1 each class should have a few alternate playstyles.

10. To add upon that, the approach to vareity between classes through a limited skill tree (that's almost entirely just damage and EHP boosts) and a limited range of skills (with a limited range of combos BETWEEN them) is very bad. At the very least, if all skills dont combo with all skills, the support system should be enabling each skill to combo with each skill, and the exponential stacking of like 5 or 6 skills should create a meaningful layer of 'skill expression'.

11. "Combos" shouldn't just be more damage, but also sustain, resources, mobility and defensives. Also the game should not see itself as 'combo based' but rather as 'dynamic, fluid, strategic, clever, snappy'

12. The skill system does not create an environment for onboarding high skill gameplay and instead the nature of 'you have <4 skills up until lvl 15 that barely interact' is keeping the offensive aspect Diablo2 tier.

13. Glory Kills from DOOM - Killing enemies may release Globes, which, if picked up, restore charges and reset CDs. Blue Globes also reset CDs, including Metacharges. Red enemies give healing Globes that also restore Potion charges, but these decay if not picked up, being pro-melee. Blue-tinted mobs give Blue Globes. Globes shrink over time, and their boon is based on their size on pickup.

14. Defensive rewards - On picking up a Globe, the player gets 1 second of invulnerability, stuns and knocks back nearby mobs, and destroys nearby projectiles and ground effects.

15. Even more Balls - Some mobs are purple and create Void Globes which, when picked up, still stun and give some invulnerability but also temporarily empower nearby mobs. If you kill those mobs during this period, they drop more loot and restore life, mana, and ES.

16. More Variety - Tainted/Magic mobs are marked with a “drops Globe” effect only upon the last one remaining. This is relevant for cases where Magic/Taint is distributed across many guys vs only one. Magic mobs small in smaller packs but when they do spawn, instead of focusing on a random effect, they're high in Health and must be treated as real enemies in DOOM Eternal, not something that can be blown up. The smaller the pack the stronger the blue.

17. Level design - consider making a clever 'mob setup' systems that create engaging permutations of mobs with strengths and weaknesses that create actual encounters like in FPS or Action Games

18. Evolving Battles - A lot of mobs are now weaker in damage, but if they succeed in hitting you, they may activate new weapons/spells/limbs, give permanent buffs to their allies, or summon new mobs. These usually happen if you fail to counter them — wherein the punishment is not immediate damage — or in regard to special moves or characteristics, like hitting them in dead zones. Mobs can regrow weak points.

19. Mobs need more spacing awareness - Mobs are now more distance-aware and have dead zones in which they’re very effective defensively.

20. Grenades could explode on 'hitting an attacking monster' to counter big monsters and interrupt small ones. Like an explosive parry.

21. Skills all have a defensive component, either as a parry, tank, block, leech, etc., OR give a permanent buff that lasts until a condition “undoes” it. Most of those bonus effects are “if you parry a mob w/ this skill, do this, or get this buff.” A lot more of them destroy projectiles or clear ground effects.


22. Tainted Mobs apply a LOT of taint, which is the equivalent of -max HP until a potion is used.

23. Potions now have a cast time and heal a lot more, but at the end, and over a shorter period. Not too short.

24. Shrines, when uncovered on the map, buff all mobs in AoE until you get to the shrine and use it.

25. Stuns are now more controlled. Anything that activates a stun activates a relative stun based on the amount of stun buildup, as long as the amount is greater than the unit’s “minimum,” which regenerates slowly and starts at 0 at the start of combat. As long as you get the enemy’s stun over the minimum once, they count as primed to stun.

26. Ministuns are also now consistent against small mobs, while against large mobs they activate once every X attacks, an amount decreased by the skill’s stun multiplier.

27. More mobility - Tapping space at the end of a Roll does a long jump that can’t change direction but still affects the wind-up of attacks.

28. Some mobs can only be damaged fully by Charge-spending skills. Those tend to have charges themselves.

29. Some mobs, when hitting you, duel you, making it so you can only damage mobs dueling you until they are all dead.

30. Added one-way “movement” paths. These are one-way for both mobs and players. After a player crosses them, they get 1s of 50% increased speed and double roll/long jump speed.

31. You may see more one-way portals in areas. These are only usable by players and exist to allow for more tactical combat.

32. And then there’s ofc mobs that explode on death, mobs that are invul unless attacking with specific dead zones, mobs that instantly do a lot of AoE dmg if you get close to them, etc.

33. Mobs can get a queued AI pulse to cast a spell with limited range after you enter their zone, even if you leave it during the pulse’s activation timer.

34. Mob animations need to go back to the drawing board regarding timing, and be re-timed with better understanding of action game principles and the nature of animation exaggeration in relation to camera position.

35. Variety of niche passive nodes - Jewels are on every “connect 4 attribute nodes” place. On every “connect 3 attribute nodes” place, instead you get Ecstasy Nodes, which can take in an Ecstatic Jewel. These usually read: with only one notable allocated in a medium radius, copy that notable’s effect and gain +2 skill points. Some have “in a large circle” but give 3 points; some have “in a small circle” and give 1 point. So you can have cool, niche, interesting nodes for Ice in the Marauder area, and the player can surround them with Ecstasy to get x3 of that really good notable because otherwise they don’t need anything from the region.

36. Anti Rush, pro stay-in-an-area XP rework - XP changed from 'just a number' to an internal tracker of the 'level of the source of the XP given'. And when XP is gained in a large amount, it recalculates which mobs you killed when so that ultimately, spending more time in a level 30 area (grinding up to level 35) and grinding 35-40 in a level 40 area, is ultimately the same leveling rate as grinding 30-40 in a level 40 area. Why? So people aren't encouraged to rush, in fact it should be the opposite, they SHOULD be encouraged to grind out all the mobs in an area especially if they're fun to fight. Or in other words, in the campaign (up to lvl 70) where you grind shouldn't matter for XP

37. Instead of fearing players dying, make dying less of a pain in the ass. Less loading screens, less walking, more combat-based compensation. In general since the campaigns moment to moment gameplay doesn't feel consistently rewarding but rather just like a long walk from point A to B with nothing in between, death just feels like 'wasted time' rather than 'damn I need to learn these enemies'

38. Just create a 'testing ground' with some premade characters, create some Unique-AId monsters and encounters fight against those monsters until the action gameplay feels right. Right now PoE2s mob design is missing ALL fundamental action game principles covered by games cited in the preface with no single mob really standing out outside the one miniboss that can one shot.

39. Just because it's an RPG does not mean that the 'rewarding loot' in the campaign can only be uncontrolled, random, generic items swayed only by quantity of monsters slain. Ways to target farm cool unique effects in the campaign would be dope, and integrating progressive and compounding optional difficulty systems in the campaign in a way that lets good players challenge themselves as much as they want on a New-League, by rewarding them with more XP and loot is a no brainer for bridging the gap between PoE2s genre borders.

Class Observations
=======

Warrior Observations
--------------------

- Too linear/simple. Satisfying, but doesn’t start becoming dynamic enough because of skills. The only pressure is from his insanely weak Life pool.
- Depends too much on mobs surviving to combo. If you are too strong, they die before you can use their damage to kill bigger mobs.
- If you don’t play in a weird way, you get hit.

Needs 2 things:

- Spells that can be used while attacking. These should be in the first level of skill gems. You can even combine them with slower attack/cast speeds in exchange for more power to make it work.

1. Charge: While attacking and before a strike/slam lands, dash forward for 0.2s really fast, delaying the attack until you make contact. If you don’t hit an enemy, this goes on a long cooldown.
2. Tank Up: Slow movement during attack down, but give a big shield/dmg reduction. 10-second cooldown, reduced by 1 second per hit taken.
3. Hurry: Accelerate your attack/spell animation by 1 second. 5-second cooldown, reduced by 0.1 for each Power the spell gets, even if it’s Rolling Slam — 1 per normal mob, 5 per Rare, etc.
4. Stun the Dead Support — or as a normalized mechanic: Corpses can build up stun. After a proc removes heavy stun from them, destroy their corpse. It’s generally really bad to want to use Boneshatter to remove a surround on you, only for the stun to never build up.
5. Bonk Support: Meta skill. Add another skill/slam to this skill’s supports. It becomes part of this skill’s combo — eg Rolling Slam → Boneshatter, or Basic Attack → Earthquake — just with one button.
6. Great Calm: Recoup all dmg taken during this attack after it ends.

In theory, you can let players use the default keybinds for these “while attacking” skills, and make them override the normal ones but only during an attack. Warrior risks being way too linear and simple, and needs something extra while keeping his identity. This is what I think is least intrusive and most “enabling” to his design.

- Also, “primed for stun activating” should work on stunned targets. No reason not to — ever. It’s an incredibly rigid mechanic. Please reconsider this type of mechanic deeply.
- Animations are “wrong.” Boneshatter’s animation/control doesn’t make sense. It seems like it should be near-instant, being something you hold-and-release as you charge forward dragging the weapon behind, but at melee range, the animation/movement/timing looks off. Rolling Slam should start off slower, then get really fast near the end — same gameplay speed, different timing — instead it’s a linear speed?
- I killed Draven with just basic attack and club, no gear, affirming that DPS race is too often the name of the game. I love bragging, but that’s not important right now. What I noticed was that the basic attack rooting is off and inconsistent if you don’t move during the attack. You can check this by doing a basic attack normally, vs doing a basic attack to the right of your screen while holding down LEFT. When letting go of left and trying to move, you will be rooted in place. Feels awful, and isn’t how any action or Souls games feel with their basic attacks. The post-attack rooting is too long.
- Not enough spirit gems for the Warrior stat line, also not enough access to armor break for Scavenged Plating. Also, you kill a lot of mobs too fast to scavenge them. Let us hit mobs with skills to circumvent this.
- You often use an attack and then walk past your target trying to hit them due to the nature of the animation. Not just Rolling Slam, but the other smaller moving skills too.
- Summon Totem feels like it shouldn’t entirely stop movement.
- Perfect Strike feels like it should have double utility, either as perfect timing or as a basic attack replacer, but spamming it is awkward.

Merc Observations
-----------------

- Relies far more on grenades than bolts. The bolts don’t give enough of a reason to keep switching or combo well, but the grenades are mad strong. In part, Crossbow feels bad to use because the recovery delay for the “gun” is too long if you grenade. IMO, a perfect change would be making it so the “recovery” for Grenades doesn’t apply to shooting.
- Combos well with spear in off hand, and on some level relies on it a bit too much due to not being versatile.
- Skills are too similar even in the first 2 rows. Wayyyy too little variety.
- Would be nice to have some crossbow skills that worked more generically: shooting grenades mid-air, builds that encourage more or faster ammo switching like some FPS, or a bola-bolt that binds enemies together. I like the idea. Merc is pretty cool in the twin-stick gameplay, but he lacks variety.
- Supports for “quickshot bolt that’s only effective on enemies that have not aggroed” and “pinning enemies with each different ammo type” more easily would be necessary at the start to allow Mercs to have a gameplan.
- If Monk is about deliberate range and positioning, Merc should be about some level of “make every shot count.” Making it so players are rewarded for targeting 'weak points' like in Synthetik would be dope.
- Merc misses his skill if he is clicking directly on a target.

Witch / Sorc Spell Observations
-------------------------------

- IMO the second-best class, but also the most variance. A bit overtuned, but a lot more capacity for expression and skill some of the time — but not all of the time. It’s a coinflip depending on gem setup and minion RNG.
- Too much focus on “maintaining buffs and debuffs” makes it end up repetitive a lot of the time though. In general, it’s not fun to blanketly reapply skills on the ground, as positioning doesn’t matter enough. It just ends up MMOish.
- Instead of focusing on recasting Orb of Storms, Flame Wall, etc. every 10 seconds, the spells should be more expensive and last longer, possibly influencing mana gain/max mana while active, as to encourage the importance of positioning. It’s really odd that both INT classes — Witch and Sorc — fall into this pitfall. I’d write a longer dissertation on them, but I’m trying to be succinct for now.
- Profanity Support should be able to consume temporary minions, or there should be an alternative to Profanity Support.
- ALL minions respawning at once after the “last minion hasn’t died for 10 seconds” doesn’t make sense. Shouldn’t it be “10 seconds of the Witch not being hit” instead? The first has regressive timing and design without reward for skilled play.
- The tree starts out nice but highlights a big problem, one that is highlighted by the weapon swap system but has been bad for PoE1’s Witch and was always “bad”: minion damage and spell damage being separate stats is a huge pain and makes Witch less diverse. Minions already require either a scepter equipped or reserving spirit, and different goals and style than the other classes. The way it is now is “triple dipping in friction.” No minion master should need to have less spell DPS using Sorc spells because of the tree. Sacrificing a shield and spirit and a few niche stats/pathing, especially Ascendancy, was already enough. As per usual, if someone wants a dagger and scepter with minions, it’s effectively impossible unless there’s a “gimmick,” but “natural minion progression/style” has too high an opportunity cost, especially in PoE2. In concept and practice, the idea of minions is as generic as an Armor class — Armour/Evasion/ES — not as a weapon.
- Offerings now force all your minions, depending on type of minion impaled, to gather around the target location. On casting, holding it lets you move the offering location. Offerings now last until destroyed or until you move too far from them. The effect of offerings is stronger the closer the caster is to the offering.
- PoE1 Witch leveling is always painful, as, due to each possible Witch build process needing too exclusive a type of stat, there was never enough to go around for every Witch, leading to lots of wasted nodes, wasted travel nodes, and a lack of variety/strategy/actual building, as well as too few interesting keystones and notables for Witches.

Skills for limited-use and power weapon types — caster staffs lol. Skills for spells vs attacks vs universal — really bad IMO. If you ctrl+F Spell Damage in PoE2, the top side of the tree lights up in an awkward pattern IMO. Skills for different elements that don’t do everything for said element, with too many lightning clusters — you need to go too far left for fire damage. Skills for mana with varying degrees of uselessness, ES recharge clusters, a few big Herald/Curse/Reservation clusters most people have not touched unless playing a specific build.

And for some reason, the most sparse area in the tree is the area where Witch nodes end up crossing over to Templar or Shadow nodes?? So much empty space. Bad opportunity cost for going into the Scion area without Jewels. Recovery, Flask, Brand, Arcane Surge, Protection Masteries that don’t favor Witch, and not to mention all the minion clusters of really-low-interesting-mechanics sprinkled about. And everything on the Templar/Shadow side is exclusively good for Templar/Shadow/Marauder/Ranger.

From personal experience, even RF builds have more variety in choice, while Occ/Ele/Necro builds fish for a very low variety of clusters and can’t pivot — over-relying on Jewels, going out of the Witch zone for more Life and generic defensives/charges/jewels — meaning little strategy or pivot capacity or variety per build, even if the class is usually the most popular, which should speak to how beloved the fantasy/archetype is.

tl;dr: please stat-variety squish Witch in PoE1 and 2 by about x4 times, preferentially until not a single stat is redundant for every archetype.

- Same issue in PoE2, except worse, and weapon swapping doesn’t help due to how Scepters and Wands work anyway. The “different types of stat text” for Witch archetypes should be squished. There are 12 of them and they’re split off way too much, but they mostly do the same things that are not useful for most builds — eg recoup vs resistances vs crit, too many simple flavor variants on the same thing that on-some-very-deeply-mathematical-level are too “all or nothing to be worth it.” All of them have generally simple features with a lot of overlap while requiring too many points to feel “satisfying.” They can be OP for all anyone cares; that doesn’t matter.
- This also means that no one but the Witch can play a Necromancer/Death Knight. Sad.
- Instead, either just make minions capable of inheriting “all stats” from either:

1. The player, including everything in the tree; ergo, everything you do benefits your minions. Minions are simply expensive by virtue of requiring spirit and taking up skill/support slots, but bring different kinds of utility.
2. Different minions inherit different stats to different %s. This is “already the case” softly, as obviously a Fire Sorc would much rather have a Skeletal Arsonist that scales with Fire than a Skeletal Archer with Poison. But on top of that, Skeletal Warriors would say “inherit 100% defensive stats, 50% life stats, and 50% attack and crit stats.”
3. The player, but the player chooses which ones/from which pieces of gear — possibly just Weapon/Shield would make the most sense.
4. The player chooses whether minions inherit crit, leech, attack speed, or damage.
5. It is decided by some kind of “Necrotattoo system” where you can mark individual clusters in your tree and make it so your minions inherit them as well, without inheriting from gear, with different % that increase as you progress.

PoE relies on exponentially increasing scaling. Splitting half your scaling on minions and half on spells doesn’t work without “build enablers” making it too rigid.

Would be nice if the “growing our undead hordes” aspect of gameplay included some sense of permanence or objectives in progression, possibly making offering skills last until the minions die? I see no reason they should be timed. In general, the over-reliance on simply juggling buffs and debuffs doesn’t lend itself to gameplay without a dynamic.

A simple spell with: “cull to give your permanent minions +1% dmg done until death, stacking to 100%.”

For the Witch skills, one “basic skill” is missing. I’d describe it as FORCE CHARGE. Rather than relying on an inefficient RTS-style “order,” the combination of said “order” with a “spell” that is:

- spammable
- nudges mobs toward their direction but doesn’t lead them
- has tactical use as to when and on whom it is used
- makes “targeting”/direction really important
- discernible and deterministic

The way I’d describe this ability is:

> On use: Each of your minions rushes in a vector.
> The vector is “your position towards your cursor.”
> Distance is about 3 meters.
> Your minions apply pushiness to enemies, and this stacks together, while being partially slowed down by enemies.
> If melee minions are pushed “away” from any units, they won’t immediately go back. Instead, they will wait 3 seconds.
> Cooldown is 1.5 seconds.
> Secondary features could be applying stun on hit enemies, or making minions with skills cast those skills.

Lastly, a skill that makes temporary living minions “usable as corpses, counting as 2 corpses for said targeting, except for the spell that summoned them” would go well with Unearth, as it’s a spammable skill. If used spammably, it ends up eating away at all corpses you’d want to use elsewhere.

Sorceress
---------

- Something something: infusions, temporary shields that are consumed on casting a spell to boost their damage.
- Essentially, spells only gain Metacharges from approved “elemental” spells to simulate the previous infusion system. Infusions instead give a temporary shield that is consumed on casting a spell of the same element to boost that spell’s damage, encouraging big spells like Flameblast.

Excess “right play stuns” are stacked but with a malus past a point, and exist so that as you do “phases” of a Rare, you have time to notice them switching phases/powering up more actiony elements.

Essentially, to keep most playstyles, doing the “right thing” buys you time. Not just one-offs — eg killing a Rare’s units to stun it — but also the “combination of mobs” can buy you time on counters, thus “spreading them.”

The best advice though, is just interview high level action game players from YouTube like Ongbal or w/e (or me :^) )

Thank you for reading
-A player