Channeling Skills Are Underperforming

[ABCbarbecue]

I like how the “logical” consensus being made is that the devs are idiots.

Or maybe our balance goals aren’t the same as that of the top 1% of players…

The DPS formula for channeled skills is based on the same formula as most other spells in the game, which presents an error as it quantifies animation length. This is how it should work for most abilities, but channeled skills function differently due to their use of a “time between attacks” variable, which effectively negates the standard animation length factor. So we’ll be addressing that in v1.0.6.0 so the correct DPS is displayed on the character sheet for channeled skills.

As for what we use for balancing purposes, I’d like to think anybody that knows the game’s mechanics this thoroughly would know better than to imply that the DPS display on the character sheet is the definitive way to compare Anything considering it does not account for OA/DA, resists, armor, deflection, etc. etc…

And maybe, just maybe, the people that made everything you’re so deeply analyzing might know this too?

As an example, during the beta period of Ashes of Malmouth, we went back and forth on the tuning of Drain Essence because it was basically stupidly easy to play on Normal/Vet, but fell off by Ultimate. The feedback was that it’s too weak, which was an accurate statement if you looked at it from the absolute end-game; but in the early game, where I’d like to reiterate the vast majority of players play and stop playing, it was basically broken in how effective it was.

Over time, we made adjustments to Drain Essence and skills like it, but mostly focused on buffing them in ways that mainly impacted the end-game (such as through ultimate ranks and end-game gear). I suppose this may continue to some degree until the hardcore-gamer minority is satisfied.

Oh, dear Z, please don’t be offended and misguided by eszvgy’s poor way of expression. I don’t think he is coming after devs and to make a fool out of yo. With very struggled expression of English, he is trying very hard to speak some facts with downsides of channeling skills, which you guys are now apparently aware of and which he is wishing for some positive changes as a keen player as he is.

If what he says is not true, you can merely look at this as some discucsion and warmup of the forum. But if he acutally is onto something, it’s not a bad thing you can hear actual feedback. Over the years till recent, there’s very few people who can or wants to develop an AAR build or builds of any type of channelling skills in my community. It doesn’t speak for all GD groups, but it is an awefully big sample group, ain’t it?

Some factors why they are not popular:
1 requires continous casting
which makes other skill-casting very interruptive to them. not enjoyable experience.
2 efficiency issue
as game difficulty goes harder to ultimate mode, performance of these skills will be narrowed. Others skill will be having this issue too, but these are very prominent in the challenges. and it’s quite noticable DPS data is overly fluctuated. How is that? I hope devs can fix it.
3 special skill presence, special surviability.
it’s hard to argue over the fact to realize maxed output these channelling type of skills will demand a character to have advantageous facetank ability, which is a key chanllenge to forge a build in this game.
4 animation effect lost
there’re two ways to lose these animation attraction, AAR is lost to the aggresive short distance between a monster and the caster; and ED is lost in the rains of other colorful and distinguishable skills.

With what’s been said, I guess we really like this game and really hope all skills can shine. We will be supportive as always and looking for the best.

Edit 1: it doesn’t mean no build can be developped for these skills, but with all mentioned, they are just hard to win over hearts of common gamers. All these skills have same feature, first glance of attraction, then reduced passion with dorminance difficulty.