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Action Combat
Mayhem
Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha One
Made this thread to give feedback and suggestions on Action Combat and ''Action Combat Mode''
Right now alot of the abilities function as TAB even in ''Action Mode'' but Action Mode is just a crosshair on your screen and does not make your abilities go where you aim.
This does not feel good, the reason i play ''Crosshair Mode'' is i want to aim my abilities/weapon (atleast my Main abilities).
Action Mode should fire projectiles where you aim (Mage Fireball and such/Projectile Weapons) or have an option with Talent Points to make your TAB Ability/Weapon change into an Action Skillshot Ability (personal pref).
(Example Mage Fireball)
Lvl 1: Fire a fireball at your target (TAB)
Lvl 2: adds burn dot damage to target (still TAB)
Lvl 3: Your Fireball and Burn deal more damage (Skillshot projectile)
Or maybe add a cast bar and you could charge the ability longer by holding down the ability button to deal more dmg in Action.
Action should give a DMG/Range boost to your ability/projectile.
''But that's OP in PVE'' Yes it is, but in this game you PVE to be better in PVP and this would make PvP more skillbased for Action. (Which most ppl will play in PvP since Hard CC is Action)
A Projectile that fires in a straight line is alot easier to sidestep and dodge without using cooldowns than an auto homing ability that you have to use a cooldown for.
Speaking of which an ability like the Dodge Roll should Dodge/Evade the attack entirely and not just reduce dmg, this resulted being CC'd by abilities like Tank Onslaught and Javelin even tho i timed my dodge roll perfectly.
Also active blocking/parry needs to be a thing
+ Please allow us to use abilities while holding down LMB again, it feels clunky as hell to let go of LMB to use an ability in action. This works better in TAB
Right now alot of the abilities function as TAB even in ''Action Mode'' but Action Mode is just a crosshair on your screen and does not make your abilities go where you aim.
This does not feel good, the reason i play ''Crosshair Mode'' is i want to aim my abilities/weapon (atleast my Main abilities).
Action Mode should fire projectiles where you aim (Mage Fireball and such/Projectile Weapons) or have an option with Talent Points to make your TAB Ability/Weapon change into an Action Skillshot Ability (personal pref).
(Example Mage Fireball)
Lvl 1: Fire a fireball at your target (TAB)
Lvl 2: adds burn dot damage to target (still TAB)
Lvl 3: Your Fireball and Burn deal more damage (Skillshot projectile)
Or maybe add a cast bar and you could charge the ability longer by holding down the ability button to deal more dmg in Action.
Action should give a DMG/Range boost to your ability/projectile.
''But that's OP in PVE'' Yes it is, but in this game you PVE to be better in PVP and this would make PvP more skillbased for Action. (Which most ppl will play in PvP since Hard CC is Action)
A Projectile that fires in a straight line is alot easier to sidestep and dodge without using cooldowns than an auto homing ability that you have to use a cooldown for.
Speaking of which an ability like the Dodge Roll should Dodge/Evade the attack entirely and not just reduce dmg, this resulted being CC'd by abilities like Tank Onslaught and Javelin even tho i timed my dodge roll perfectly.
Also active blocking/parry needs to be a thing
+ Please allow us to use abilities while holding down LMB again, it feels clunky as hell to let go of LMB to use an ability in action. This works better in TAB
3
Comments
(on a side note i think the action cam needs placement work where you are still looking somewhat downwards on your characters whilst being able to aim forwards or make the placement customizable.)
I also agree to adding iframes on dodge rolling so you can dodge CC/spell effects as well as damage. It really adds to the action/skill/feel of the game if you can dodge someone spells - it's a feelsgoodman moment. The dodge rolling atm seems to have about twice the CD as it has in GW2 which is nice so you really need to make use of your dodge effectively when you have it available and can't just spam it which is important.
In terms of active blocking I think it still makes more sense to have active block as skills rather than as a seperate shield weapon mechanic and still keep some passive parrying/blocking for the RPG lovers out there. However reducing the RnG in the blocking/parrying would be better so you block or parry for a certain %damage amount rather than for an extreme example 10% chance to avoid all damage because then that can make combat not feel so good if the damage feels super RnG. The important part of RnG for me is to have it within a somewhat narrow more average range rather than allowing it to be in a system where you can you can have huge spikes either side of what the averages come out like. You could even use a system like Dota 2 has, I'm not sure what it's called but it uses a mathmatical system where say you have 20% crit chance if you miss 3 crits in a row your 4th hit in that actual window it much more likely to crit, which helps spread the RnG out more evenly.
Just to add I think the current hard CC RnG system should be changed from it either hit for full length or doesn't hit at all to something in between like it hits but only stuns for half time rather than a full knockdown or completely remove RnG from hard CCs as it can be too important in a fight to make heavy RnG. Once again this would keep RnG in a more average window so if there was RnG it would be in a more acceptable average range.
All the things I mentioned above I think would make for a well rounded enhanced tab game, I guess you could also call it hybrid.
Adding a cast bar and holding down the ability key would work well for this. Make the crosshair show up while casting and spell goes to the aimed location when you let go.
Personally prefer projectile weapons to shoot where i'm aiming (Wand,Book,Bow) It just feels weird to have that TAB because it's such an often used attack.
It does need work, when firing wand on mage without a target i noticed the projectiles kinda spawning around waist level of character and then need a really long range to go where your crosshair is. So ur actually shooting lower on close range than where ur aiming.
This.
One idea i also had is what if you ''Choose your preferred playstyle'' when you first login your character.
Choose between TAB and Action.
If you chose TAB, most your spells would be TAB while still having AOE template abilities
If you chose Action, you would Aim everything and have AOE templates (This would make you pretty much 100% action) Then maybe have similar talent trees for both but a little bit different. Like having hard CC available only for ppl that chose action. Idk
+ Personally prefer crosshair aiming even with tab skills over tab aim.
- I agree with your idea of clicking fireball and it starts casting and you use that time to aim the crosshair at your opponent but you can still move whilst casting, then you click at the end to shoot (or the option to autoshoot at end of cast), fits really well.
- I guess you could do it the same for aoe templates as you stated in a previous thread. It just auto shoots at the end of the cast (or you click at the end of the cast, have both options avilable) to the aoe template but for this cast time you can not move. These do sound like really fun gameplay mechanics to me.
- Actually click to start casting then click to shoot, but if you click during the cast it wil auto shoot at the end of the cast I think makes the most sense in these scenarios.
- There are a variety of reasons for having the ranged regular weapon attacks as tab. Firstly it's hard to balance with tab and action damage amounts across PvP and PvE. Also using NW as an example crosshair aiming every regular shot is taxing and diffcult in pvp, in NW you miss a lot of the shots. Also for me this system works better in a more action oriented game where you have fewer skills like NW but in a system like ashes which has many of the more classic tab target style skills for me it doesn't really fit the gameplay and style of the game. Also I think as you get to the higher levels most of your attacks will be skills and only a small proportion will be your weapon skill although maybe they are evolving it a lot from what they have now, not sure.
- I think you have to choose a side you either have enhanced tab system like GW2 with tab and action elements / skillshot skills or you have a fully action game like NW or BDO, I don't believe it's feasable to have both. I believe you require different skill designs for both. For example imo if you go fully action you need to have a rooted combat system whilst in enhanced tab you want the more split body combat design in general, ofc there are some places that are in between. Hence the regular attacks are tab targetted in the enhanced tab game design.
- If you prefer crosshair targetting in an enhanced tab game I see no issue with leaving that in as an option.
- Even if you had an enhanced tab game you could still have up to 75% of your skills as aimed skillshots as per what had been said so it may not feel overly like a tab game still but it wouldn't feel like BDO, NW, Dark Soul kind of combat.