Wizard spell rebalance/rework

[FlameArrow57]

[GAME MODES][BALANCE][REWORK][ADD TO WIKI]

About the PR

This PR does a rebalance/rework of wizard spells

See design doc here for all changes/reasoning:
https://hackmd.io/@FlameArrow57/rJzcf8vXA

Why's this needed?

Hopefully makes wizards game mode more enjoyable (see design doc for more details)

Changelog

(u)FlameArrow57
(*)Large rebalance of Wizard spells. See minor changelog for details.
(+)Using a defensive spell now places all other defensive spells on a 5 second cooldown.
(+)Magic missile cooldown increased to 25 seconds.
(+)Empower spell duration and cooldown decreased to 15 and 30 seconds. It also removes 10 seconds of knockdown on use (relevant to stuns).
(+)Spell shield is reworked so that the shield has limited health, rather than 100% immunity, for its duration. Effectiveness from least to most is in the order of: melee attacks, baton stuns, ranged stuns, lethal projectiles, explosions.
(+)Forcewall duration decreased to 10 seconds.
(+)Animate Dead can now be used on alive monkeys.
(+)Prismatic Spray can now be used without a staff.

[TDHooligan]

ignoring the other changes, the defense spell cooldown thing might not actually help as much as you think - the key math is that having 2 or more defensive spells on cooldown at all is essentially a 50% cooldown reduction. 3 is a 66% as you get 3x the cooldown dedicated to getaway spells.

but also massively penalising defense spells is kinda lame too. i'd be happier seeing how this works at least

[flappybatpal]

I think Animate Dead would still be insanely situational. If it could summon a skeleton from under the floor at any non space turf (using the reveal effect) that would be much easier to use.

However, even with a change to make it cast easily I think this spell isn't great. It helps to perma due to gibbing corpses but in general use the skeleton only does about 50 brute to a staff assistant defending themselves unarmed.

Spell Shield could block spell casting to turn it more purely defensive.

[CalliopeSoups]

Just gonna throw my thoughts down cause I'm bored and like wizards, happy you're touching on them.

Really not sure about making phase shift and magic missile buyable. Having to buy those combined with nerfs to other abilities, I feel this would make wizard too weak unless in a group, and even then I'm not sure about reducing spell power near other wizards. It might be a fine band aid but it feels sort of invisible and hard to tell for newer players, who may want to be sticking with others more. I say this because wizards are hyper-targeted, they're this powerful because they're screwed the moment they're caught. People buy dozens of secbots and the whole crew goes into a killing frenzy when there's wizards.

Because of these reasons I feel wizards are more fun when there's only one or two, and these changes would not do much to actually change the feel of a wizard round apart from forcing them to split up, which might be even harder for the crew to deal with. Just in my opinion, but if there's a focus on wanting the wizard gamemode to be around more, I'd like that gamemode to have more to it than just wizards trying to kill people. Some objectives maybe?

I agree with wanting to limit evasive spells and this is something I'd have touched on too, but I'm not sure if adding a sort of global timer to them would work. My suggestion would just be to limit wizards to only buying one evasive spell, assuming they'd still have phase shift default. I say this because I find them only too much when someone combines two buyables, and really it's mostly just the combination of blink and the notorious doppelganger. There could perhaps be an effect to phase shift to betray the direction the wizard is going in?

Being able to use prismatic spray without a staff will be nice. This is entirely me wanting stuff for myself but, if there was a way to buff its damage against securitrons... I would like that.

5 seconds is far too little for force wall in my opinion, I'd rather it be 10 or 15 seconds. Or keep it 5 seconds and have it block projectiles. A duration nerf for empower is a good call, but I wouldn't increase its cooldown for it.

[M-Earthfire]

I think some of them are good changes, but a few tidbits:

I agree with Soups that magic missile and phase shift should stay as non-buyable and always on the wizard. An antag should have part of a set that you can expect them 100% to have and also a failsafe for beginners to not "misbuild" them. Phase shift and magic missile covers both.

I'm seriously not a fan of wizard spells being weakened by a factor that is outside of your control (Read: Other wizards near you). A wizard is in strenght and seriousness for a station compareable like a blob or flockmind, and maybe we should rather limit them to one in a round with other antags instead of having a mode with 3 of them going nuts. If we want to go in the direction with area-weakness for wizards, they seriously need an indicator that they are in vicinity of another wizard.

ignoring the other changes, the defense spell cooldown thing might not actually help as much as you think - the key math is that having 2 or more defensive spells on cooldown at all is essentially a 50% cooldown reduction. 3 is a 66% as you get 3x the cooldown dedicated to getaway spells.

but also massively penalising defense spells is kinda lame too. i'd be happier seeing how this works at least

Yeah, i would like to see this play out as well. Maybe a small slap on the wrist to multiple evasive spells does already the trick.

[FlameArrow57]

I think Animate Dead would still be insanely situational. If it could summon a skeleton from under the floor at any non space turf (using the reveal effect) that would be much easier to use.

However, even with a change to make it cast easily I think this spell isn't great. It helps to perma due to gibbing corpses but in general use the skeleton only does about 50 brute to a staff assistant defending themselves unarmed.

Agree that would make it more commonly usable but feels like that starts to fall into usability more than Sticks to Snakes or Summon Golem maybe, which similarly right now have different use cases. Skeletons do also have the ability to self revive. I could try looking at skeleton stats, but not sure about making them stronger, in comparison to snakes and golems

[FlameArrow57]

Because of these reasons I feel wizards are more fun when there's only one or two, and these changes would not do much to actually change the feel of a wizard round apart from forcing them to split up, which might be even harder for the crew to deal with. Just in my opinion, but if there's a focus on wanting the wizard gamemode to be around more, I'd like that gamemode to have more to it than just wizards trying to kill people. Some objectives maybe?

Intent is to weaken abilities not to the point where it decentivizes splitting up, but still enough to reduce how unstoppable it is. I think changing objectives could be fun, but unless the best option, I will probably just be keeping the scope of this PR to spell changes

My suggestion would just be to limit wizards to only buying one evasive spell, assuming they'd still have phase shift default.

Yea not sure. Makes sense, but I initially thinking restricting spells you have starts to go into the realm of being too restrictive, in terms of spell combos and decreasing spell variety. More evasive spells can be annoying, but there's still a trade off with what you spend your spell points on for offensive abilities. Too many isn't great tho...

[Flaborized]

These are just my personal opinions on the PR and not a "devs sponsored" post:

I think wizards weakening themselves by proximity would be really really bad. Many of the spells are made very weak by not having a staff, and being able to accidentally inflict that on other people accidentally by doing something like walking up to them is Bad. Wizard spells are (almost) all designed to not harm other wizards; this is designing an invisible mechanic that harms other wizards. If multiple wizards are enough of a problem that you'd need to implement something like this, I'd rather just there not be multiple wizards than this sort of implementation.

I also do not think it makes sense to make magic missile and phase shift spells you have to buy. Wizard as a whole is designed around having these abilities, there's really nothing as strong as them (especially phase shift), you would likely pick one or both every single time. To me this just introduces another mistake you can make (not buying phase shift) instead of opening up any meaningful spell choices.

I think that nerfing defensive spells will naturally lead to wizards Dying Horribly. This feels great for the person who killed the wiz but makes for much less interesting rounds, since the Antagonist Just Died Horribly. I agree that the defensive options they have are largely over-tuned right now, but they need to be able to get away with some bullshit, it's not fun if you have to play incredibly cautiously to get a little bit of mischief done.

Also specifically with the huge list of nerfs to forcewall it would go from a spell that I take Often (because it's fun and strong) to a spell that I could never imagine seeing being worth it. It would be outclassed by basically everything else wizard has. I think the spellshield and offensive spell changes are alright and make sense.

[Flaborized]

Also, in the process of writing my response I've also thought of an alternative way to make having reduced defensive abilities Fun: if all wizards had a limited, unrecoverable resource that let them "get out of jail" a few times, you could solve a lot of issues with fighting them. You bridge the gap between "Live Forever" and "Die Instantly" which are both quite bad; strong players can't live forever with the limited defense but newer players have a few chances to not die quickly. You let wizards take more Risks cuz they have a buffer built up for it. The crew could feel like they're doing Something Meaningful when they force the wizard to use it cuz it's limited and they're pushing them closer to actual death (though you'd want to communicate this Strongly to the crew). Tele scroll and soulguard are kinda like this but Bad, but I think implemented well it could be pretty fun.

This is just an Idea I had though re: this topic, please don't take me suggesting it as a "You have to Do This", and I'm not particularly sure how other devs think on this whole PR so also probs ask them if you do want to do it. There's probably a bunch of ways to make this work and I think that adjusting wiz to be more fun to play as and play against is Good.

[FlameArrow57]

Okay marking this PR ready for review. Everything I put in the design doc has been implemented, except for scaling spells when in a group. I thought it would help with group deadliness but seems disliked maybe.

Also, I think something intermediate based on what Flaborized suggested, around the die instantly versus live forever problem that can appear would be nice, would need to think more on the implementation though

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