Part of they key to a great ARPG like Grim Dawn is having a great fighting system, as that’s what you’ll be doing most of the time. Hence my suggestion is aimed at reducing/removing some of the bad stuff and capitalize on the good stuff of the current fighting system.
My observations:
- In my experience a fair range of bosses/heroes have heals; either in burst of self-heal, through their minions, or regeneration.
- Most bosses/heroes do not have obviously different animations for different moves/spells.
- Most CC skills are cast whenever they are off cooldown, in a very non-reactive manner. That is, CC aren’t used to react to specific events, but because they are off cooldown and help kill stuff.
My proposal:
- Increase the variance in the casting animation of heroes/bosses, such that some spells have a longer (and different animation), and
- Specifically, change (all) the heals into a semi-channeling spells with a clear casting animation, and
- Make these animations be interruptible by CC
In effect, this will enable more reactive gameplay where you have to anticipate the enemy’s use of more powerful channeling which you might want to interrupt. I believe that this will make fighting even more interesting. Furthermore, given that non-reactive gameplay only depends on your variables (e.g. you always use the same skill combo in every fight) it becomes stale much faster than reactive gameplay, as the latter adds variance due to having to consider enemy variables.