Vehemoth's ultimate ability

[DreadKnight]

Part of meta issue #575

Falling Arrow - costs 35 energy pts. Performs 4 hexagon range attack that does extra damage to lower level units. 20 pierce + 3 frost per level difference. Upgrade: Adds 2 bonus pierce per level.

This ability is devastating against lower level units: up to 12 pierce and 18 frost damage will be granted as bonus if hitting a level 1 target. The upgrade makes things even worse for lower level enemies. Attacking another level 7 unit will give you a 0 damage bonus, while attacking a level 6 unit will give you a total of 5 points of damage (3 frost + 2 pierce). This ability works inline and diagonally, forward or behind, within given range, meaning it can target any units within defined range.

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[isbur]

I see several ways to approach this issue:

1. Add a preparation barrier for this skill, for example, it requires an additional turn to charge whilst unit being in vulnerable and immobilized way
2. "Live wall": damage halfens after hitting one target. 2.1. Or, even worse, damage decreases in such manner just with distance
3. Implement such mechanics: there are some special frost resistance points. Skill decreases these points and when they reach zero unit turns to frozen state. Depending on frost resistance recovery rate units automatically get out of this state. While in this state they get damage every turn and can be instantly destroyed by hitting once by any unit.

[DreadKnight]

@isbur I only see one point which is rather confusing anyway xD

[isbur]

@DreadKnight

Sorry, I started to type this from phone with broken screen and it seems like I accidentally pressed "Comment" button.

[DreadKnight]

@isbur Thought you might have encountered technical issues. Well, I was hoping you're talking on how to approach this coding wise, because this is not an issue up for brainstorm anymore, has bounty and it's pending coding. If you're talking mechanics, see ability combined with brainstorm, also feel free to drop by our Discord, https://discord.gg/KsbGap Anyway, thanks for input:

1. It's a turn based game, won't make things even more boring by having to wait up even more. Things get balanced this way best by having (energy) cost(s) on abilities, along with meditation and endurance ;) If you figure how those work (they're explained in-game), you'll see their beauty, since as far as I'm aware, no other game implements such a concept. Original stuff right here.
2. That's Nightmare's Icicle Tongue ultimate already and Cycloper's Optic Burst, I try to keep each skill as original as possible. And, unlike Mobas (complicated heroes from Dota 2 or most of the newer champions in League of Legends), I try to keep an ability down to a single core mechanic, that's very easy to explain and understand in a concise tweet like sentence or two.
3. Each creature has stats and masteries, there's one for frost already, which influences damage dealt, in some cases it can use more extreme, either doing/resisting a thing or not. Anyway, what you're saying sounds ULTRA overpowered, not only that it fully disables a target, but making it a 1 hit kill after, it's a total no go. And you even want a DoT on top of that, lulz. This reminds me of an old PvP arena fighting game, where the design was so bad, that certain characters had an easy to perform overpowered hit that could be performed first thing and would easily hit and kill your opponent xD I'm just missing the name.

[ChengYuuu]

Hi, Can I try taking this up? Question: When selecting enemy targets, do we need to show any dashed hexes to indicate possible attack range? Or is it okay to just show the monsters within the attack range?

[DreadKnight]

Heya! Alright, will assign you to it right away. Usually we only used dashed hexagons to showcase the full range of ranged non-area abilities on paths after a target was found. Even though that's not the case with this ability, feel free to showcase possible target locations like you did for the basic attack. Should at very least try to have some consistency within the abilities of this Vehemoth unit if not along with all other creatures.

[DreadKnight]

@ChengYuuu Heya, are you making progress with this one? Almost 2 weeks notice, which is usually the default deadline amount time.

[ChengYuuu]

err.. Maybe I will unassign myself first. Have been rather busy. Will just submit a PR if nobody is assigned this still.

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[nandastone]

@DreadKnight Can you please clarify the targeting method?

This ability works inline and diagonally, forward or behind, within given range, meaning it can target any units within defined range.

Should the targeting work like this:

Or like this (the same backwards)?

How I imagine the ability is that a falling projectile is summoned above the creature, so it doesn't necessarily need to be in line of sight, or following a specific line of hexes.

[DreadKnight]

@DreadKnight Can you please clarify the targeting method?

This ability works inline and diagonally, forward or behind, within given range, meaning it can target any units within defined range.

Should the targeting work like this:

Basically it's what I was initially thinking, but since we don't care about line of sight stuff, we can spice things up a bit with this one targeting wise.

Or like this (the same backwards)?

How I imagine the ability is that a falling projectile is summoned above the creature, so it doesn't necessarily need to be in line of sight, or following a specific line of hexes.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it is, as the unit will basically stand up, materialize an ice arrow in the nose cavity and then shoot it. Initially I had some concerns regarding actual unit animations and sprites, but we can easily trick this sort of stuff and give this ability/projectile way more targeting freedom compared to most other abilities in the game that would get a bit tricky visually animation wise since they usually deal with line of sight indeed. So we should go for this route, at least for now.