Mob Ability Indicators

It's kind of a pet peeve of mine that enemies never really have an indicator of when they're going to use their Ability.

I was thinking a simple QOL change could be slapped onto the 'Boss-Bar' which displays the Ability which the Mob you're targeting will use next, and how long you have until Ability go brrrrr-!

It'd be a simple upgrade from this:
HP Remaining, DMGs, Weaknesses, DEFs
To this:
DMGs/Weaknesses/DEFs/[Ability] in X (IE: [Charge] in 5 -> [Charge] in 4 -> [Charge] in 3...)
X = Seconds until Ability goes off

So, instead of never realizing you're in deep heck until you see flames at a Boss' feet, wonder what that could possibly mean, and then what in the name of Salted-!
...Die to an unfair, unexpected Charge Ability which people fighting a Boss for the first time would never know about, you'd have fair warning that they're about to do something big, and that you should prepare yourself for anything.
Remember that first-time fighters won't really know if the Boss can Teleport or Charge (or BOTH) until they're suddenly getting "Omae wa moe...Shinderu!"-ed because they didn't know better.

This would also help indicate if the Mobs you're fighting can use Abilities at all, because right now, you'd probably never find out what they could really do to you if you ever gave them the chance, and never feel like you're up against something new.

 

I like this. Though I fear that it would make the eye too easy as once you learn patterns the fight is already not that difficult.

 

Cool, but I feel like that would take hours on end to implement for every single mob

 

The way that abilities work now is that it's actually a chain of spells. Sometimes a move spell will signify that a meteor is coming, and other times you just have to remember the patterns. With this in mind a lot of abilities that are considered fair can be avoided. I do have to say though that I would like more methods of telegraphing spells. All we have right now is the white circles and the fizzing particles for explode, and in some cases move spell combos. I think that this suggestion would be too easy, but maybe instead of white particles some spells will have different ones, like teleport having nether portal particles converging on the mob.

 

I would prefer an option to have that enabled or not.

If there are 20 minions in a fight i dont want to see [flamethrower] in 45039 flame thrower 903843 in flame39845 with a bunch of text all over the place

Even if it was a single boss, I think i'd still prefer not to have the feature enabled

 

It can be a /toggle feature.

 

add a poll?

 

poll please!

 

add a poll

also, I'm personally against this. Fist of all, the CT design mobs with there attacks in mind - so you'll be able to get visual queues about when a mob is going to teleport/attack/whatever. Instead of adding more numbers in battle that you have to look at, I would personally rather see more organic implementations like attack charging (if they don't already do that).

 

A better indication that still requires players to think on their feet and learn the battle would be colored spell ring indicators based on what kind of spell the enemy is about to use- Offensive spells could be orange or red if they're heavy, movement spells could be white or yellow, etc. Having to give every mob spell a specific, exclusive particle would have us run out of particles way too quickly, so it would have to be generalized.

 

I don't mean a particle effect for each and every single Mob - that'd be too much for the variety of enemies there are!
Just make a title for the Ability [Like This], and then put it on the Health Bar at the top of the screen, put a number countdown next to the [Ability], and call it a day.
(You could also have it 'charge up' the Ability by making it's [Ability] a grey color, and then fill it up with a text color like green or red as the Ability comes closer to being ready for the Mob to activate, IE: [||Ability||] -> [||Ability||] -> [||Ability||] -> [||Ability||]).

 

This would be really cool. especially for raid/bosses

 

I think this could be cool, but honestly I'm not sure of any enemy that has such a large profile of spells that would warrant this. Evenmore so that most enemies and bosses repeat the spells in patterns. Just sounds like a bunch of extra fluff that isn't going to help you much if you fight them for a few seconds.

 

I believe that that isn't going to help enough, because the bar isn't always there and with how quickly mobs cast some spells it may be completely impossible to read fast enough for most people. Color indications are more easily learnable and general- After a while you'd see an orange circle and think "okay this is gonna be some offensive spell" and know generally how to react.

 

Well in that case I guess this feature could be added

 

most mobs cast their spell 2s-3s after signalling it currently; redirecting this to its nametag isn't going to make it easier to anticipate

 

coloured particles is the idea i support