How many spells do you want?

Simple question. How many spells or abilities do you want access to at a time? Would you prefer it to be like the original Guildwars where you could only have 8 abilities on your bar at a time, or as it is in WoW or FFXIV where some classes have up to 30 abilities they can use in combat?

For me personally, I prefer to have fewer buttons to press since I don't like using a lot of modifier keys when I'm playing. I also prefer to be able to use my abilities in multiple different ways rather than having a separate spell for each occasion. For example, instead of having a separate spell for healing and dealing damage, I like having an ability that, depending on the target, would either heal or deal damage.

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ArgentDawn

georgeblack wrote: »

After all, there are a set number of good Keys, easy to reach.

Somewhere around 40? 12 mouse, 12 mouse with
button modifier, Q E R, 1-6, 1-6 with button modifier.

Jokes aside I'm used to playing with somewhere between 30-45 active keybinds/macros depending on what class I play and that feels good. The problem is making the abilities appropriate. Not everything should be used all the time and the fact a lot of games have moved away from situational abilities has been disappointing. I understand it appeals to a broader audience and in the end makes more money but it's led to the dumbing down of most online games and eliminating skill based play in favor of who got the first attack off because everyone plays using the exact same 4 skills.

Altodor

You know I had a lot of fun in WoW when I had lots of spells. A lot of them were pointless when I started playing, but the more I played I found specific uses for them that were handy. Like the taunt ability in pvp being useless to me until id use it to tag rogues so they wouldnt stealth. Or this fireblossom skill was good for placing mines behind me when i ran. It was better than just running. Made me feel optimal on a micro level. Definitely felt better than 2 expansions later where I had few spells and hit the same buttons all the time. More things to play around with sounds fun.

Damokles

I just read a bit how people talked about easily reached hotkeys etc. here is my bid:

24 spells/abilities

q, e, r, f, v, c, x, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, shift-q, shift-e, shift-r, shift-f, shift-v, shift-c, shift-x, shift-1, shift-2, shift-3, shift-4, shift-5
These hotkeys are what i always use in all of my mmorpgs.

georgeblack

The main point remains that cooldowns are more important than how many abilities can be slotted

caedwyn

i want to have so many spells and abilities that give me a challenge to select and use them

sivanna

I want a Large spell book, but I think having the properly equipped spells is part of knowing your class, playstyle and the situation you're heading into. They keep saying our choices in game need to matter, and that should also influence our abilities. ESO had too few on each bar, but I enjoyed the weapon swapping mechanic (after awhile).

tankenka

I like the idea of a massive number of spells and possible combinations - then choosing the ones that work best for our play/character style (and having to be selective, or forfeit other things - such as quick-access mounts or healing potions). Being able to play and tinker to see what creative combinations I can come up with is a big part of the fun - plus, I like the idea of building up my own style through trial and error. I'm an old-school gamer, so I like having to think about how best to fill my hot-bars (and I *really* hope they let us customize our hotbars and move em about etc - a la EQ / DAoC, or *even better* a la UO!)

tugowar

28.

Some of these should be situational- ensnare, free from ensnare, fear, etc.

Some should be consumables.

Your most important spells should be amplified by good effect management.

Frostbolt does 20% more damage to entangled targets.
Fireball triggers burning. Conflagration critically hits against burning targets. Etc.

Jokuc

As many as possible. I heard somewhere in a livestream that you won't be able to use the weaker versions of spells once you upgrade them with the augments. I very much oppose this. If I want to use the old standard versions of a spell for fun, why shouldn't I be able to?

As for active/usable spells, I do think 30 at a time is a little bit too much since it's difficult to keybind them all. But at the same time I think 10 is too little. So maybe 20 ish?

Plateau

Wandering Mist

@Leonerdo it should be noted that just because you are given a lot of skills to use doesn't necessarily make the game more complex. I personally prefer less abilities with higher synergy, allowing me to use those abilities in many different ways.

League of Legends is proof that you don't need a ton of abilities to make an exciting and complex combat system.

Plateau

Varkun

Personally, I think that the variety of spells and abilities will come more from the augments that can be applied rather than having 50 different spells. Having said that I do want a good selection of spells but feel it will be the augments that will provide the variety and IMO there will be many augments available through gameplay.

Wandering Mist

@Leonerdo You're right that an mmorpg can't really copy LoL's combat system, but they can certainly take inspiration from it, by incorporating more synergy in class kits than what you typically see in a lot of mmorpgs. Healing classes especially are notorious for just having a bunch of spells that have no synergy or interaction with one-another. Just look at the list of spells we have been given for the Cleric in Ashes. None of the spells have any synergy with any other spell in the kit, which will create very stagnant gameplay (in my opinion).

Adding more spells to the mix won't inherently make the gameplay more interesting, but instead, let's look at how we can make one of the existing spells more interesting.

Righteous Blessing
Target a friendly player to burst heal them and provide healing over time, as well as deal damage over time to enemies near friend.

This will be your bread and butter heal that you'd use on the tank for added dps. Fairly simple right? It should be noted that the damaging portion of the spell is rather irrelevant in your decision-making, as you would probably use this heal regardless of whether there are enemies near enough to take damage from it. The next spell on the list is

Stolen Blessing
Drop a totem to damage enemies within range and provide that damage done as heals to your allies in range

Now it's a little unclear how this would work (is the damage single-target, or aoe? Does it deal just one shot or stay for a set amount of time, etc?), but let's assume that the totem stays on the ground for 30 seconds and deals a small amount of damage to all enemies every 5 seconds.

Right now there is almost no synergy between those 2 abilities, but why not change that? For example, if you use Righteous Blessing on the totem, it will deal all of its damage and healing in one big burst as opposed to over time. Suddenly you have a choice to make on how you use those spells. You can choose to put the totem down and have it pulse for continuous damage and healing, or you can put it down and use your single target heal to deliver a big burst of aoe.

Blackhearted

Im hoping for 20+ abilities with a few on use armor pieces. Learning new abilities as u level makes the experience so much better. In modern games I hardly ever feel like my character is evolving.

After max level u get to try so many different ways to play the class and finally find a style that feels natural for u.

Damokles

Because some starte dtalking about skill synergies and complexity (quality above quantity).
Most complex standart rotations that i have ever seen: GW2
Go to metabattle.com and look at the raid rotation for herald power dps, chronomancer power dps, weaver power dps fresh air sword and berserker condi bannerslave (yes you heard right bannerslave

).
Those are complex rotations and you only have 3 utility spells together with 1 ultimate and 5 weapon abilities for each weapon (14 normal skills without powerbar skills).

Wandering Mist

damokles wrote: »

Because some starte dtalking about skill synergies and complexity (quality above quantity).
Most complex standart rotations that i have ever seen: GW2
Go to metabattle.com and look at the raid rotation for herald power dps, chronomancer power dps, weaver power dps fresh air sword and berserker condi bannerslave (yes you heard right bannerslave ).
Those are complex rotations and you only have 3 utility spells together with 1 ultimate and 5 weapon abilities for each weapon (14 normal skills without powerbar skills).

I wouldn't really call the gw2 rotations complex as there is little to no decision making required. All you have to do is memorise the sequence and repeat it over and over.

Damokles

wanderingmist wrote: »

damokles wrote: »

Because some starte dtalking about skill synergies and complexity (quality above quantity).
Most complex standart rotations that i have ever seen: GW2
Go to metabattle.com and look at the raid rotation for herald power dps, chronomancer power dps, weaver power dps fresh air sword and berserker condi bannerslave (yes you heard right bannerslave ).
Those are complex rotations and you only have 3 utility spells together with 1 ultimate and 5 weapon abilities for each weapon (14 normal skills without powerbar skills).

I wouldn't really call the gw2 rotations complex as there is little to no decision making required. All you have to do is memorise the sequence and repeat it over and over.

Yes for Power Thiefs (or thiefs in general xD) or Shortbow Rangers. It gets another thing when your rotation is 50 moves long ;D.

Blackhearted

I prefer having possibility to play the class according to ur own personal approach.

If its possible let a castsequence macro play the game for me, it has let me down...

Amist

I prefer having the oppotunity to customize my character and its playstyle as much as possible, however I don't like having a ton of spells on my hotbar as I tend to get confused very quickly if there are too many situational spells that I won't make much use of

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