Game Mechanics Improving the 3 Most Controversial "Ultimate Abilities"

mamma mia

Huge thanks to @Elysium_ for giving me a lot of support, inspiration, and motivation that helped make this post! Elysium my man you are very cool and a very good acrobat player and I hope you never trip on anything for the rest of your life

Hello, suggestions people! I'll be talking about the three popularly unpopular ultimate abilities: Timelock, Blood Sorrow, and Crepuscular Ray: These 3 abilities consume a lot of your resources to grant you a burst of power. However the amount of resources they consume can leave you lacking in power for a longer amount of time; it's unwise to use these abilities in extended fights. Blood Sorrow is a pretty special case where it's powerful and even spammable sometimes, but puts you in great jeopardy that makes it not worth using in most cases.

Let's reimagine these abilities in a way that makes them powerful and worth using no matter the situation by turning them into the culmination of an archetype's performance.

Spoiler: Timelock

Timelock consumes Winded stacks from nearby enemies and enables you to bombard them with lots of spells for a limited amount of time. While this is a spike in a riftwalker's dps, it leaves them without Winded afterwards which overall reduces their damage potential. It's usually wisest for a riftwalker to maintain 30 Winded on enemies, especially against 1v1's, instead of consuming them for a powerful but short-lasting buff.

I decided to work with Timelock's Winded absorption concept and instead reimagined it into something new. This ability rework would let riftwalkers use all the wind and time energy around them to form powerful whirlwinds brimming with temporal energy. With the whirlwinds under your command, you shall weather your enemies through time and space.





How does it work?
By holding shift and casting Heal, you utilize all Winded energy from nearby enemies to form temporal whirlwinds. The range within which you can take Winded from enemies and the range of the whirlwinds itself would share the same range of 10 blocks. These whirlwinds would always surround you, and would allow you to float up to around 3 blocks above the ground. The speed of your movement while floating would be the same as your speed of movement while walking.

You may enable or disable the float mechanic whenever you like by double-clicking space. While floating is enabled, your Teleport spell would turn to a penetrating beam, similar to with Timelock. While floating is disabled, it would return to its usual function.

The whirlwinds would have an amount of stored Winded which would be shown using a boss bar, up to 30 Winded. Enemies caught in the whirlwinds would be considered to additionally have the amount of Winded the whirlwinds have. For example: if an enemy has 30 Winded and is inside whirlwinds with 20 Winded, that enemy would take damage from your spells as if they have 50 Winded stacks.

The whirlwinds would disperse overtime, losing 1 Winded every 0.4s. Whenever this happens, enemies caught in the whirlwinds would take damage and 1 stack of Winded. The amount of damage enemies would take would depend on the amount of Winded they have plus the amount of Winded the whirlwinds have. The whirlwinds' application of Winded does not share a cooldown with Windsweeper; the whirlwinds will steadily apply 1 stack of Winded every 0.4s regardless of whether you have recently applied Winded with your Main Attack or not. It will also not put your Main Attack's application of Winded on cooldown. Gust also would not interact with the whirlwinds' Winded application.

While the whirlwinds are active, you may use your Main Attack and your Spells normally. You may also hold shift and cast Heal again to accumulate more Winded for the whirlwinds. Once the whirlwinds reach 0 stacks of Winded, the ability ends.

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Why is it designed this way?
One of the biggest problems of Timelock's design is that it feels conditional to use; it's better to use the ability if you can easily apply a total of around 60 Winded on nearby enemies. Winded application can be very slow, and to use it all up for a powerful but short-lasting burst of power doesn't feel worth it in 1v1s.

I took inspiration from the ultimate ability of Swain from League of Legends which allows you to stay in an empowered form for as long as you are draining health from at least 1 nearby champion. Timelocked Tempest functions similarly: for as long as you can consistently apply and absorb Winded from nearby enemies, you can maintain the whirlwinds. As Elysium has described it, "With enough skill, you can sustain being Timelocked indefinitely during combat."

You may also have a question about Teleport and the float mechanic: why is it toggleable? Timelock is free to take your movement spell away from you and turn it to a damage spell because its duration is short. If its duration can be extended like with Timelocked Tempest, you would be barred off of your mobility spell for a longer amount of time which can be a liability. Making this function toggleable allows riftwalkers to use Teleport for dps like with Timelock, and still allow them to use it for movement when it's necessary.

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How would this ability help the archetype?
Timelock offers 3 things to riftwalkers: damage, distance, and free spells. I tried to keep what makes Timelock iconic and powerful by keeping its floating mechanic that allows you to maintain distance and use Teleport as a non-disruptive damage spell option. However, the floating mechanic would be more limited and would no longer protect you from crowd control. In terms of damage, Timelocked Tempest wouldn't compare to Timelock in terms of burst potential. The ability would not reduce the mana costs of your spells, which means you can't spam them anymore. The damage boost from absorbed Winded is also dynamic and is limited to the whirlwinds' range, meaning your spells wouldn't be as consistently powerful as with Timelock.

However, the ability compensates for all of these with its open-ended duration and the consistent high damage from the whirlwinds. Timelocked Tempest would allow riftwalkers to overperform their role as battlemage that becomes more powerful overtime. Activating this ability would no longer give you a short and sweet burst of damage, but would instead make your Winded application and damage output more effective and efficient. You could simply continue the same gameplay loop of alternating between Main Attacks and Spells and you would yield more considerable results, but only if you can maintain the whirlwinds for as long as possible.

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EDIT: Missing the mana costs reduction?

Hey! Timelocked Tempest used to have a mana cost reduction for all of your spells based on the amount of Winded the whirlwinds have. This was to preserve its ability to make your spells spammable like with Timelock. However I felt like it made Timelocked Tempest do so much for a single node, so I scrapped it. I also didn't feel like I could add it as an additional node since the riftwalker archetype already has a good amount of AP requirement.

If you wanna know how the ability would work, here's what its ability description would look like!


(a bigger screenshot so y'all can see where it can be placed at in the tree)

With this ability, your spells would be more spammable like with Timelock! Since Timelocked Tempest can last indefinitely, I think it's only fair if the mana cost reduction on your spells is limited. If you also wanna see this added to the game, include this one in your votes in the poll!

Spoiler: Blood Sorrow

Blood Sorrow has recently been buffed and can now deal a lot of damage in such a short amount of time. Using it, however, is very risky and unforgiving. While it's ok for abilities to be designed this way, it has made players less fond of Blood Sorrow. I looked for a way to make it more approachable and accessible, but would still require skill and good health management in order to bring out its full potential. You shall become a conduit through which your god begets agony and sorrow. AWAKENED BLEED



(btw you can cast spells while the ability is active)


How does it work?
If you have 90 points of Blood Pool or more, cast Uproot or Haunting Memory to activate Vessel of Despair. While the ability is active, you would be channeling a long destructive beam that bends towards enemies near your aim, and can reach enemies up to 24 blocks away from you. Every 0.2s, the beam would consume 3 points of Blood Pool and deal damage to all enemies in contact with the beam.

While the ability is active, you may cast Spells and use Main Attacks. Casting Uproot or Haunting Memory would not cancel Vessel of Despair or interact with it in any way at all. Instead, Uproot and Haunting Memory would revert to their usual functions while the ability is active.

Vessel of Despair would end once you reach 60 points of Blood Pool or lower.

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Why is it designed this way?
Blood Sorrow is very unforgiving to use and can single-handedly throw a fight because of how it disables most of your sustain. Because of this, Blood Sorrow feels unusable in a lot of cases and can leave acolytes who opt for this ability lacking in power compared to those who don't. The first thing I wanted to add is the ability for acolytes to use their Spells and Main Attacks while the spell is active. Not only would this make the ability less limiting, this would also make the acolyte's damage potential not depend on the ability alone which would make it easier to balance. With Aura available for sustain, I decided to remove its overhealth function.

As for how it works, I went with a design similar to Timelocked Tempest where you can keep the ability going for as long as you have the resources to feed it. Acolytes usually have a lot of Blood Pool points once a fight has dragged on for a while, and could use an ability that can make sure they're always draining more Blood Pool points. This way, players can make the most of every moment by always consuming Blood Pool points and always gaining more. This design rewards those who can manage their health and Blood Pool well. If Vessel of Despair consumes too much Blood Pool points, perhaps the acolyte archetype can get some changes in some of its nodes, or even get a new one!


(what is doubled is the amount drained not the rate of drain, which means it's not just Furious Effigy)

You may also be wondering why I changed the name of the ability to "Vessel of Despair." Here's my reasoning: as shown with Sacrificial Shrine's visuals, your Blood Pool is stored in your Totem. However, the ability is channeled from the player, which doesn't make sense if large amounts of Blood Pool points are consumed. Blood Sorrow does not have this issue because of how its visuals look: the player is shown to absorb a lot of blood beforehand, likely from the Totem. Since Vessel of Despair consumes Blood Pool points overtime, the player would also need to absorb blood from their Totem overtime. This means the player would essentially be the "vessel" through which blood is channeled from their Totem to their enemies.

I went with the word "despair" because it's a word synonymous to "sorrow" that sounds nice with the word "vessel." I tried other words, and I felt like "despair" fits the best.

If you think ability still feels like a "Blood Sorrow," then yeah it can still be named Blood Sorrow!

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How would this ability help the archetype?
This version of Blood Sorrow rewards acolytes who can keep a steady stream of Blood Pool gain. Since it can last for as long as the player can sustain it, it can have more damage potential than other acolyte options such as with Aura + Mask of the Lunatic and Double Totem. Acolytes can still opt for these abilities if they want more consistent results. However if they want to test their limits as the self-sacrificing archetype with the most unstable amount of current health, Vessel of Despair would reward them with lots and lots of damage potential.

Spoiler: Crepuscular Ray

I've only played the sharpshooter archetype recently, and it's a lot of fun! I'm playing with a melee-focused build that uses Twain's Arc, so I don't use Crepuscular Ray much since it deals spell damage. I use it sometimes to get distance from mobs whenever I get overwhelmed, and it feels really great to use! However, it suffers the same problem as with Timelock where it consumes all of your resources from which you get your damage from. While Focus is gained faster than Winded, using Crepuscular Ray still leaves you weaker than before which makes its viability dubious. This is especially evident for melee-focused builds where Twain's Arc has more damage potential than Crepuscular Ray.

Crepuscular Ray can be a good defensive measure for sharpshooters who just can't maintain their distance from their targets. Instead of changing the ability itself, I decided to design a node that can support the ability. Whether you use overwhelming rays or overpowering beams, your enemies shall be purified before the ever-lasting twilight.





How does it work?
While Crepuscular Ray is active, you may hold shift to summon and begin charging a more powerful Empowered Twain's Arc. If you used Escape before casting Crepuscular Ray, holding shift would no longer cancel Escape or trigger Fierce Stomp. You may use the Empowered Twain's Arc regardless of the amount of Focus you have, compared to regular Twain's Arc which requires you to have at least 2 Focus. If Crepuscular Ray would end while the Empowered Twain's Arc is summoned, it would disappear and would be replaced by a regular Twain's Arc.

Once the Empowered Twain's Arc is fully charged, use your Main Attack to fire it. It would deal regular Twain's Arc's damage with the addition of Twilight's Arc's damage increase which is also dealt as Main Attack damage. Regular Twain's Arc would not benefit from this damage increase outside of Crepuscular Ray.

The Empowered Twain's Arc benefits from the ability Focus: hitting an aggressive enemy 5+ blocks away would grant +1 Focus, which would increase the duration of Crepuscular Ray. Missing, however, would reset your Focus, which would end Crepuscular Ray.

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Why is it designed this way?
Like with the other two node changes, I looked for a way to allow players to extend their ultimate ability's duration in order to make its resource consumption worthwhile. Unlike with the other two abilities though, Twilight's Arc cannot make Crepuscular Ray last indefinitely: Focus gain has a cooldown of 1.1s, while Crepuscular Ray consumes 1 Focus per 1s. This means you can never gain Focus faster than Crepuscular Ray consumes it.

I decided not to look for a way to work around this because of how good Crepuscular Ray feels: it gives sharpshooters both distance and a good bird's eye view, allowing them to shoot their enemies down from a safe and undisturbed spot. Allowing players to extend the duration of such a powerful defensive ability indefinitely would make it overpowered. Nerfing it's utility in favor of duration, on the other hand, would lose the power fantasy Crepuscular Ray provides. I felt like sharpshooters need the utility more, especially with how hard it can be to maintain distance from enemies with of the lack of safe spots in most, if not all, boss fights. This way, Crepuscular Ray's utility can still be useful for sharpshooters no matter the situation or environment.

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How would this ability help the archetype?
Crepuscular Ray offers sharpshooters the luxury of maintaining distance from your targets: something any sharpshooter can make use of regardless of their build. With the addition of Twilight's Arc, melee-focused sharpshooters would find Crepuscular Ray worth taking, while spell-focused sharpshooters would appreciate the ability's longer duration. Sharpshooters would be rewarded for their good aim by allowing them to appreciate the utility Crepuscular Ray provides a bit longer, letting them flourish as the game's sniper archetype.

Overall, the goal of these changes is to add more dimension to these ultimate abilities by allowing players to interact with their duration. This way, their power wouldn't be limited to how much damage they can deal in a short amount of time. It would allow players to feel and be powerful, but only if they can successfully maintain the gameplay loop or make use of the skills their archetype requires.

I would love to hear your thoughts about these changes! I especially want to know your thoughts about how it would fit their respective archetypes thematically: would it fit their archetype's design? would it feel like you're still playing the archetype it belongs to? would it meet your expectations regarding how the archetype is played? and most importantly: would it feel fun and great to use?

Thank you so much for reading! Remember to like the post and vote in the poll!

Part 2
Part 3

 

What about Diversion? It was very bad before 2.0.3 and they nerfed it for no reason, its probably worst ultimate ability now

 

A lot of players prefer glassy builds with tons of damage so they pick Flow State over Diversion. According to Xavier from Olinus' interview, Diversion is actually strong. I guess that's why they nerfed it?

But yeah, I don't play a lot of trickster so I don't really know what the archetype needs.

 

Really liking these ideas, especially Timelocked Tempest. It would make Riftwalker more like the consistent damage-over-time archetype it was always meant to be, without cutting out any core aspects of the archetype. It also heavily rewards skill with more mobility, damage, and generally just versatility.

Vessel of Despair also seems good because it doesn’t just take out all of your power. I haven’t used the original one much so I don’t know how it would feel, but it seems like a great ability. With being able to cast spells during this time, you won’t be totally helpless.

Twilight’s Arc is also pretty great because you have to pay attention to reach your full potential. Crep Ray is no longer just 7 seconds of AFK time, but an actual gameplay element that you can interact with, like increasing the duration with the empowered arc. It also fits thematically as a, well, sharpshooter.

Overall, amazing suggestions. I feel like they would fix all of the issues with these abilities, somehow making them fun to use. And, most importantly, worth the cost.

 

Neat ideas, only suggestions I have would be to bring back some more minor features of the red abilities reworked, mainly with Timelock & Vessel of Despair.

Maybe there could be a white or orange node that prevents you from losing mana when you're in a whirlwind.

For VoD there could also be an orange node that lets you have the +2% overhealth for every second the ability is sustained, and the overhealth decays over 15 seconds.

Other than that these are all pretty good, though granted the only one I ever tried was sharpshooter, so I can't really say if these are improvements over what's currently in the game.

 

Those are really good points, especially with Twilight's Arc. Crepuscular Ray is fun to use, but you don't really do much other than aim and move around while it's going. Twilight's Arc maintains that gameplay loop going of having to hit enemies from afar, and it rewards you with lots more damage and utility.

Thank you for all the support, my man!!!

It actually used to have a function where it reduces the mana cost of your spells based on the amount of winded the whirlwinds have, but it felt like it overloaded the node too much (and the description would be wayy longer than it already is). It could definitely work as an additional node, but idk if riftwalker has room for more. Lemme add it to the post!

I like this idea! Another reason why I removed the overhealth is because it could pay for VoD's cost, making it last wayy longer to the point of being overpowered. If VoD doesn't grant overhealth at the same rate as it consumes Blood Pool points, then yeah it wouldn't be too powerful! It would also make it easier to maintain VoD, and can replace Zealotry if it's a better node to have.

Anyways, thank you so much for the feedback my guy!

 

Made a little edit and gave a better explanation as to why Twilight's Arc can't extend Crepuscular Ray's duration indefinitely.

 

Edit: I added the node that reduces the mana costs of your spells while Timelocked Tempest is active! Vote it in the poll if you also like this idea!

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I can't edit the way the options in the poll are arranged so uhh, consider Eye of the Storm part of the "None of the above" option :'D

 

Now all trickster trees looks the same - all trickster but no diversion instead flow state, but most importantly Weightless for free mana sustain. They should buff diversion or make it gives dmg buff. If Xavier think that Diversion is usefull please firstly look at some builds at for example in looni's discord or blue builds. Non of them had Diversion before nerf and now. This is because wynncraft is anti-tank game. You don't need tank in tna because it deal low damadge and can pierce defense. But this is possible in wynncraft. In pro guild wars there is usually 2 tanks (because multihit can target only 2 peoples), 2 damadge dealers, and a healer.
Ps: I only saw trickster tank build once and it has no diversion.

 

Well @Elysium_ and I got something cooking for Diversion sooo, look forward to it!

 

You're right but even though the ability tree was designed to be "customizable" there's always going to be a meta. As you said even if they buff diversion to make it tanky it's not gonna be used unless it outtanks paladin, cause trickster already has enough ehp for general purposes

 

Looks nice, at least from my limited experience. But could you please change "Twilight's Arc" to "Twilight Arc"? The former sounds a little strange to me.

 

I'am not saying just to straight buff diversion, rework it. About trickobat: there is a diffrence between meta and usability. Look for example at bmonk. Most powerfull playstyle now is probably charge spam. But other play styles like: basch-scream, upper surfing, axe kick generalist, screem surf generalist are good. But trickster has only trickobat. And there is literally NOTHING else, even for fun.

 

I definitely agree with Diversion being reworked, however I don’t think Assassin can ever get as many different playstyles as Warrior because Shadestepper sucks so much. IMO it needs a full revamp to make it less awful gameplay-wise and more flexible atree-wise.

 

Welcome to suggestions, my friend!

Perhaps! However, the naming was deliberate: it is the Arc of the Twilight, rather than an Arc with Twilight properties. Thus, I named it "Twilight's Arc" instead of "Twilight Arc".

I was going for a feeling that you are serving the Twilight rather than making use of it; the Twilight sees all, and you are merely through which it exerts its will. It fits this ghostly theme with "Phantom Ray," or "Twain's Arc" which most possibly refers to the archer Mael Twain: you are a conduit for a power, perhaps Mael Twain's power.

The naming also ties it to the ability it is dependent on: Crepuscular Ray. Crepuscular rays are emitted through the clouds when it is twilight. The Arc you would make use of in Crepuscular Ray's duration is not a separate ability, but rather a part of the ability: the Arc is part of the same twilight Crepuscular Ray gathers its power from.

However this is how I see the archetype, and I could be mistaken. If the name "Twilight Arc" fits what the actual theme of sharpshooter is, then yes! it would be much better for it to be named "Twilight Arc" instead.

Thank you for the feedback, my friend! I hope this explanation clarifies things.

 

OMG yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes I NEED ALL OF THESE.
Viable Riftwalker. Yes
Viable Crep Ray. Yes
Never played acolyte before but yes.

 

I'm glad you like them!

 

Yeah, assassin need compleet revamp:p
Diversion could reduce enemies defense it woud pair with archetype. I know that warrior has just most playstyles of all classes, but it pissed me of that Shadestepper sucks, acrobat is too hard to me (seriously, I watched guides but timing hop and lacerate si impossible), and I only can play one playstyle-trickobat.

 

yeah tbh the assassin "rework" just made trickacro destroy everything and leave the rest of the archetypes in the dust

 

If anything, Shepard should be on that list considering that spot could be used for a third summon and make Shepard a purple skill or a side skill of the puppet master ability that gives +1 puppets per mob killed (max 3) for a 15 second puppet spawn duration.