Game Mechanics Making Ritualist More Coherent (Ritualist Mini Revamp!)

Believe it or not, I actually came up with the same idea! Although I didn't follow through it because it would make Frog Dance very different compared to the other Dances.

 

I don't know. I am not a big ritualist player, I merely use Mask of the Lunatic, Hymn of Hate and Mask of the Fanatic on Acolyte and that's it.

I am not the biggest fan of changing hymn of hate as I think it's a really cool aggressive ability for clearing groups of mobs and well yeah sacrificial shrine makes it really good (but that's acolyte and it has its own issues *cough cough blood sorrow and uproot in general*). I do see where you are going with the changes though.

I would say this time around chant of the coward's changes looked really nice, but that's the only thing I can say I really like.

Haunting memory just doesn't feel like it fits ritualist's current design or really any version of ritualist where there are still chants. Without awakened you can't spam it, with this you need embodiment to spam it. This does fix the issue of not having complete access to your chants when spamming it, but without embodiment this seems just really clunky as it can't be spammed which is the issue it currently has when you unlock it at level.

Masquerade / Depersonalization replacement is actually decent. Long gone are the days of silent ballet offhand spam to get mana back, though I think someone mentioned attack speed should probably effect it.

I guess the changes to totemic shatter (hymn of mania) are good? I would personally only use it to heal faster, but then looking at Hymn of Panic, that seems better for healing, Idk. What I am trying to understand is what exactly is totemic shatter doing that aura isn't already doing? It's why I never understood its introduction in the first place.

Frog dance in my opinion is better than what we currently have and I am not sure whether this bounce would be more vertical or horizontal. It would be pretty cool either way assuming it goes decently high or decently far.

Last thing, I don't like awakened in it's current state since it kind of contradicts the whole stance based play style thing.

Awakened here seems better, but the one thing that I don't like is the "save up mana to become empowered activation" that it has going for it, because it feels like it encourages the use of lower as an offhand, and I feel like having to swap to that every 10s so I can make use of awakened as optimally as possible is just unfun and is the biggest driver for why I don't play full ritualist.

The always active mask chant during awakened thing seems pretty cool I guess.

My biggest issue with ritualist is this:
The archetype revolves around three masks / stances: Offensive, Defensive and Mobility, but for whatever reason all of these only effect one ability at a time: Aura, Totem and Haul (we don't talk about seeking totem). It's obvious why it's like this, but it leaves quite a lot to be desired.

I feel like instead of trying to make every mask be good at one ability, the masks should instead change all abilities to do different things based on their theme. How you would go about doing this, I haven't really thought too much about, but that sounds far more interesting than the weird all over the place ritualist we have right now.

Anyways in regards to the thread, I do get how it is trying to work around all the random stuff that ritualist has currently, but I don't necessarily think this will make it anymore fluid to play.

If I have misinterpreted something feel free to absolutely slaughter me or something.

 

Hey, man! This is your heftiest feedback yet, and the biggest one I've received so far!

I do agree that Hymn of Hate can be incredibly strong! It would be a shame to lose such a great ability, but I do believe that solidifying ritualist's identity as a short-ranged spell-slinger would be a better design decision overall.

Yeah, I think we can all agree that Haunting Memory is just there to make summoner-ritualist or blood sorrow ritualist possible, but not really to serve ritualist itself. I also agree that the ability doesn't fit the archetype well, and that it feels really awkward to use as a full ritualist. We did our best to integrate it to the ritualist gameplay as much as possible, but perhaps a more drastic change would be better.

That's some interesting tech right there! And yep, Invocation/Conjuration will be adjusted to make their performance consistent across all attack speeds. I'll be making changes soon!

Making Hymn of Panic speed up Totem's effects does muddle its purpose with Hymn of Mania's effects. I did make Hymn of Mania drop your Totem faster, which in addition to the buffed Regeneration scaling would make it the better option for a quick burst of healing (not to mention having increased resistances, especially with the Chant).

As you wear the same Mask for a longer time, Hymn of Panic will eventually out-sustain Hymn of Mania, which I intended! I mainly designed Hymn of Mania (and MotF in general) as a great way to recover after taking a lot of damage from MotL's reduced resistances. However I also curbed its strength in longer fights, which it excels at right now. I think it's much safer for MotC to have this strength instead since the Mask reduces your damage.

I'm glad you like it! I imagine it would have as much vertical bounce as it has horizontal bounce, making it good for both kiting and travelling!

If I'm not mistaken, the mana cost reduction from Masks that counts towards Awakened comes after the mana cost reduction from identifications, meaning using Lower would make your spells charge Awakened for much less (unless you're spamming Totem).

Although if the possibility to charge Awakened fast enough to essentially "spam" the ability is a point of frustration, then perhaps the ability just needs a cooldown! This way, players won't feel pressured to have to be charging the ability all the time!

This kind of change would definitely take a lot of time, not just from implementing the abilities itself, but also from designing the abilities to begin with. We'll have to take into consideration that we're working with limitations such as: ability points, ability tree pages, the space available in these pages, and the fact that ritualist is the middle archetype which makes it the hotspot for hybrids with the other archetypes.

I think a good philosophy to adopt in game design is to keep the abilities simple, and instead create complexity within the environment and the many ways players can make use of these simple abilities. Wynncraft can have quite the fast-paced gameplay, and having simple and predictable abilities to rely on would be much better for these situations.

That's... a good point. I do my best to work with what the archetypes already have when working on these reworks because I want their implementation to take as little dev time as possible, ideally none at all! I understand how scarce dev time can be for the content team, especially right now with the ongoing development of Fruma.

Another thing I'm really worried about is disrupting the game balance by making a significant change to an archetype. In the grand scheme of things, spellbound is still a pretty recent development, and I'd rather have things settle down first before making more drastic changes.

I think we're still getting to know these archetypes, and I don't want to quickly dismiss any aspect of them that has potential; even the weird abilities! At the end of the day, these abilities are designed with intention, and I want to see the philosophy behind it first!

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Anyway, thank you so much for the feedback, man! I'm glad you took the time to provide feedback for these changes. I really appreciate it!

 

Hey, y'all! I (finally) changed Invocation and Conjuration to make its power consistent across all attack speed tiers! Check it out!

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I also added a cooldown to Awakened!

 

ehhhhhh sure, you can get a bump

I'll admit though, I'm not satisfied with these changes