Media Heavy Spell deserves more love and support

So lately I've become absolutely addicted to Heavy Spell, whether it's extreme heavy spell by using Ambivalence, or just 0-int heavy spell using Brainwash.

But honestly it's very hard to make good heavy spell builds when the only legitimate heavy-spell accessory is Ambivalence, and there's quite a lack of 0-int armors with spell cost ids. Cardiac Arrest is pretty much the only spell-cost armor that supports high-DPS heavy spell, which in my opinion is one of the biggest merits of heavy spell.

I tried all the solo-able endgame content using heavy spell (Panic-Zealot, The Eye, Legendary Island), I also did try raids but couldn't record because my laptop threatened to explode :| Anyways, in conclusion heavy spell seemed like an amazing concept that really should see more support.

I know that heavy spell has always been a highly discussed topic in the community, I just wanted to bring the discussion back to the surface for possibly more support when 1.2.1 comes along hehe

 

Honestly it's pretty cool that u made ambiv assassin work. best I could do was with shaman where it was easier cos slower spells anyway
kinda sucks that heavy spell only works with ambiv + several le worth of crafted lapis rings and mythics/crafted weapons. Concentration being the best armour powder for it is also a bit annoying.

also on a side not when is poison spell gonna happen. forest aconite is about it and is absolutely terrible

 

Haven't actually used conc with heavy spell because I preferred rage for heavy spell, it would be interesting to see actual support for using conc with heavy spell tho (non-int req water weapon - not sure if it'll ever happen tho lol)

 

The main barrier to heavy spell creation is probably all the other higher priority issues in classbuilding.

 

I feel like if heavy spell just got a liiiiitttle bit more support and it became more widespread, people would become more familiar with it and use it a bit more.

That's pretty much what happened with me, I was reluctant to use heavy spell at first due to the lack of support combined with the fact that I was worried about having high spell costs. If it had more support, more people could have the mindset of 'oh why not let's give it a try'

 

Problem is that heavy spell has to extremely restrictive, and unless several major things change around items (such as choosing to generally avoid spell costs on weapons, lowering general item spell costs on armour even more than some of them already are, changing the spell cosr formula, limiting mana access outside of intelligence again, etc) I don't see it becoming any more widespread soon. At the moment, the only places that heavy spell really fits are in Ambivalence because of the extremely specific spell cost spread in TFA & general lack of huge damage inside of that which in a way is almost specifically made to balance for Ambivalence, some sort of specific large piece set preferably with a weapon (the really strange current state of which is preventing such a set from existing, though a weaponless set certainly is still possible depending on exact circumstance), or a very specific Ambivalence-esque item that could be inserted inside an intelligence having item range or one with a very low amount of spell costs, although this one is so dependant on future items and item changes it may not even be worth going for.

tl;dr yeah more heavy spell would be nice but unlike heavy melee heavy spell is a lot more dependant on: literally everything so don't expect much more support of it anytime soon, as cool as it may be you gotta avoid more Brainwash-Large Lapis-Carduac Arrest stuff happening yknow

 

Literally just make more armor resembling bwash, cardiac, etc (coz let's face it, paradox sucks), also more armor like phage pins because as long as you have low spell costs on movement spell, I feel like heavy spell has very high survivability (ability to be more calm about assessing the situation as opposed to constantly spamming spells).

And armor/accessories that dont go so extreme like ambivalence, coz yeah 16cost multihits were rather hard to deal with at times. ambivalence just doesnt seem worth using due to large lapis accessories, maybe if it had like 500% spell damage it'd be worth using 16cost spells. Heavy spell would be less frowned upon if ambivalence didnt take spell costs so much to the extreme.

 

Um.

On a more serious note, Bart is right, heavy spell can't really be introduced unless a lot of things are fundamentally changed (like the spell cost formula being the most important one) and as it currently stands its kind of hard to introduce that stuff without making it utterly busted with a bit of finangling. We did a thread on it a while back and it was very clear that Ambivalence was not the type of item you want to be adding or even buffing to make heavy spell viable. To steal a quote from @touhoku :

"I am, ironically, ambivalent on the item Ambivalence. On the one hand, it shows to me that heavy spell is something that is wanted in the game. Ambivalence seems to be an attempt at that and I have respect for that. On the other hand, it is conceptually flawed to the point where ‘heavy spell’ is actually better without Ambivalence, and by no fault of the IMs. What Ambi tries to do is impossible—there is no way for a single item or even several items, let alone accessories, to successfully execute heavy spell within the game as it is now."

 

Literally just make Ambivalence have half the spell costs that it currently does, and it'd actually be quit usable. Yall keep talking about 'fundamentally flawed', and that 'heavy spell is better without Ambivalence', then just lower ambi's spell costs just a tad bit and it's problem solved. Heck, 10cost multihits would be very usable as heavy spell as opposed to 16cost mutlihits.

There's no end to the discussion if all we do is talk about 'oh it's flawed and hard to adjust'. Honestly it's not even that hard to change. You dont need to rework the entire spell cost formula, just change ambi's spell costs a little bit. Just like what they did with Slayer in the recent patch, it's not that hard to implement. It's because yall keep saying 'oh it's fundamentally flawed' that the IMs don't consider doing something about it. You could be making an argument to change the game for the better, but instead all yall are doing is just endlessly repeating 'oh its hard to change'

Or perhaps the IMs are too lazy to bother making a change. I highly doubt that's the case though given the amount of changes made in the latest patch.

 

new heavy spell thread dropped lets goo

I agree with most of what Bart and others have said;

Heavy Spell is unfortunately not gonna be a priority compared to glaring issues because, well, its absence is not actually an issue. Would it be nice? yes, absolutely. Will they get to it someday? also probably yes. But as one of the biggest heavy spell advocate on this server I will still concede that there are far greater issues for IMs and co. to deal with.

This just isn't true though, unfortunately. I hate to promote it because so much has changed since then, but I suggest you read the heavy spell thread from this spring if you haven't yet (should be linked in sig, it's here)—I'll probably reference it some and it has decent info that tends to be well agreed upon by now. You can't just "double the damage on ambi to 500%" or "fix the spell costs a little bit," neither of those actually bring the heavy spell you want. The former (500% spell damage) caters heavily to high base damage classes, and although mage doesn't suffer too bad because well, it's mage, this leaves warrior so far in the dust that it is hard to call balanced in any sense of the word. On the flipside, seriously nerfing the cost penalty (from 16-cost multi to 10-cost was your suggestion) would make cancelling the cost way way WAY too easy. Ambi sits at 130% 3rd cost right now, which puts an 8-cost spell like multi at 18-cost (I assume you are using deye to bring it down to 16). To get ambi + deye multi down to 10 cost, that puts us at around +50% 3rd cost. i.e., something straight cancellable with slayer.

While on the topic of slayer, I also wanna point out why that comparison is kinda difficult to make. Nerfing an item is ALWAYS easier than buffing it, because worst case scenario is it just sucks. Slayer was really strong (and still is imo but that's for another time), and so nerfing it slightly is, all things considered, not a hard change to make. Slayer users get angry, their builds are slightly worse, cool. Considerably buffing ambi runs the risk of cranking 0-int spell out of control, and makes it VERY hard to implement strong -% or -raw gimmicks in the future.

On top of all that, let me ask something: do we really want heavy spell as an archetype to revolve around one item? imo, no! Build diversity is one of the coolest things about Wynn to me, and trying to polish ambi into the perfect gimmick item that manages to barely toe the line of balance and has to be redone every major update to stay on that line? I would be against that on principle.

I wanna respond to this in particular too. Granted, I am not and have never been an IM. I don't have the power to change things, nor do I really have much influence But I spent a full 2-3 months of my year with a group of players theorycrafting and working through everything that would be needed to make heavy spell a fleshed out, well-supported archetype, and trying to find some means of how to implement it. When people say "oh the formula needs to be changed" or "yeah we need some centerpiece armors instead" they aren't doing so flippantly/thoughtlessly, they are citing the months of work that many did to arrive on those solutions. Is it way harder than we had hoped it would be? yeah absolutely, we would love if it was a simple fix, but it's not. Unfortunately I don't think there is some wonder solution hiding where no one has ever thought to look and that the IMs will whip it out tomorrow.

You even say yourself that

(spoiler there kinda is with crafteds, though i think we can agree that things only being possible with crafteds is sub-optimal)
These sorts of cool synergies don't work when you try to toe the line of balance in an imperfect system. In this case, the quirks of the spell cost formula require heavy spell to have high negative int, or it just falls apart into abusability. Obviously this isn't the only example of why some change is needed to make heavy spell work as well as we want it to, but I hope you get the idea.

will all that being said, it makes me really happy to see that want for heavy spell is still alive and well (it did seem to die down a bit over the summer), because that means that when its time comes it won't be ignored. and props for trying hspell assassin! it's not the most intuitive playstyle but i agree that it's fun in concept

 

I would argue that Ambivalence is in a pretty decent spot right now as it is. It fits in a niche where it gives players the option to try something new if they want to, without being dangerously close to broken with the stats it provides. It's possible to make 10 cost multis without sacrificing much if you really want to go for it.

https://hppeng-wynn.github.io/#4_06W0mM0WD0Qq0qo0050TN0uY00a1B11xf0o1B1g010009I10009I10009I1004fI
WynnBuilder build:
> Brainwash
> Sparkling Plate
> Paradox
> Slayer
> Unspeakable
> Summa
> Dragon's Eye Bracelet
> Ambivalence
> Slider [w6w6w6]

(any hpr tomers?????)

 

Not quite sure I like seeing 13cost spins that have less damage than regular 1cost spin builds...

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I never said heavy spell needs to revolve around ambi, I stated above that there needs to be more items like bwash / cardiac / ambi except with more variations.

Also, who cares if warrior is left so far in the dust. There's certain playstyles that work better with certain classes, for example spellsteal mage/shaman isnt nearly as effective as spellsteal assassin, while mr assassin is rather hard to use compared to mr every other class. Maybe heavy spell could literally become a niche thing for assassin. Items like RotS / Infernal Impulse have brought new playstyles to warrior, why not just make heavy spell be a playstyle for assassin (and realistically, it already is anyways) because not every playstyle can cater to every class.

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Also btw if you noticed how fast I defeated a 1.5mil hp Panic Zealot using heavy spell (roughly 30-35secs), you'd realise that I had about 50kdps against a moving target that is Panic Zealot. That's pretty damn good, dps comparable to/possibly higher than etw builds for fighting Panic Zealot.

 

Are you using Cataclysm and crafteds as a baseline? I've never seen any "regular" build get unboosted spins that high while still being sustainable. Daggers such as Black and Blur are easily obtainable to the average player and are more what I would consider regular builds, averaging maybe 7k-8k spins. Regardless, heavy spell doesn't have enough mana to use on a weak spell such as spin attack anyway in my opinion. I personally vanish multi multi. Others smoke vanish multi. Spin attack is rarely used.

I'm sure warrior mains would not be too happy to hear that they are getting screwed out of something else again. Every established archetype is already viable on every class. Even if you think some archetypes are stronger on some classes than others no archetype is borderline unplayable like heavy spell warrior is. I personally would not want a gimmick archetype locked behind one item and only viable on one class to be a thing in the game. That's unnecessarily restrictive. Rally is a major ID, it isn't comparable to an item unless that item also has a major ID (and a heavy spell major ID would be kind of disastrous) I think it's a bit of a non-starter to say that heavy spell needs more support, but only for a niche build with one item on assassin, and nobody else.

Also just to clarify: the thing that everyone is posting is a copypasta. It isn't serious.

 

Yes I mainly use vanish and smoke too as seen above in my videos. And yes, I did use Grimtrap/Cata as a baseline for dps, my bad on that part.

But I feel that it's completely fine for each class to have its own gimmicky builds because it'd be part of what makes that class unique. And perhaps heavy spell warrior might actually be usable if there was a way to use the Rally Major ID along with heavy spell for good sustain (you'd need 1 cost charge for it to be effective, that could be worked either with Phage Pins or NEW ARMOR SUPPORT).

Like I say above, there's ways to make it work if you think about it in-depth, but yall just decide to throw away the idea just because it's 'too gimmicky' and 'flawed'.

 

Phage Pins my beloved

 

I’m still very confused why people want heavy spell to begin with. Spells are already meant to be your main source of damage except for melee builds, and are inherently tied to intelligence so it seems counterintuitive to do a damage vs. cost trade off.

I guess more is better when it comes to play styles, but even if there was proper support that wasn’t abusable, I just don’t see the play style being fun or worth wild. Slow hitting play styles personally just don’t appeal to me bc it’s fairly easy to miss mobs, especially in the late game, bc of how janky Minecraft combat is when combined with high mob speeds and teleport and movement spells.

 

I find it frustrating that you simply assume we don't want it in the game because we criticize the current iteration of it in the game as being an off-meta gimmick. We made an entire thread with IM response on how we think heavy spell could have been best implemented into the game. If the changes that were mentioned earlier were made adding new armor support would be entirely viable. You can read the thread about the cost formula and the centerpiece model if you would like.

Classes are already unique. They have unique spells, damage baselines, and weapons. In my opinion every major playstyle should be available to every class at endgame. A new player on their first class upon reaching level 103 should have access to basically 99% of the content in the game.

 

As long as you can aim well, I feel that heavy spell actually allows you to be more relaxed during battles because you don't have to be clicking furiously for high dps. It's one of the biggest merits for those who either dont have high cps, or those who have trouble assessing the situation at hand while clicking furiously at the same time.

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It's easy for anyone to assume that you don't want it when you keep repeating the same 'oh its fundamentally flawed' and 'too gimmicky' 'too restrictive'. It's a playstyle that'll be gimmicky and restrictive no matter what you do because how wouldn't having like 10cost spells be not restrictive? It's a matter of adding more items for at least more variety in items for more diverse builds. I've looked at your post, I like the ideas of introducing new *centerpiece* items as you call it, yet you keep rejecting your own ideas. Also, Bart's response wasnt nearly close enough to be called an IM response / constructive feedback...

 

I heavily agree ;)

 

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