Spell Balance Suggestions

[Perdition]

Decided to provide more in depth suggestions for Occult. I think playing around the already existing Drain Life and Drain Soul spells and making the overall theme 'stealing' from the enemy and repurposing for your own benefit.

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Spell: Occult Flame

Suggestion: The armor buff is kind of pointless here. You can change the flat 30 power buff to something else, but I'd like to focus more on the special given by the aura. Add some small amount of lifesteal to all attacks (outside of Drain Life), maybe 5-10%, for a 10 second or so duration. 

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Spell: Corruption

Suggestion: Make the AoE follow the user for its duration. It still gives +10% AP, but also reduces enemies AP -10% if they're in range. 

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Spell: Dark Shield

Suggestion: Reflect a portion of damage dealt to you while the effect is active.

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Spell: Curse

Suggestion: While the enemy is cursed, their healing is still reduced, but all heal effects on yourself are enhanced. (Including your own Drain Life.)

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Spell: Drain Soul

Suggestion: Now increases your DR by the amount decreased from enemy, increases your speed by amount their move is slowed.

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Spell: Desecrated Land
 
Suggestion: Increase its duration, remove the damage aspect. Instead, while in Desecrated Land, you still get +10% AP and enemies get -10% AP, also, the effectiveness of all your Occult spells secondary effects used inside of it are doubled. (ie, Dark Shield reflects twice the damage it normally does, curse nerfs their healing 2x more and buffs yours 2x more. Corruption gives you 20% AP and reduces their AP by 20%. DR/Slow drain from Drain Soul is 2x. Actual damage of skills is -not- doubled)

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Drain Life and Shadow Ball are in a good spot, however Shadow Ball is sort of buggy. It doesn't hit multiple times if the enemy is directly in front of you when it's cast. Seems to hit more if used diagonally? Idk, as long as it multi hits like it should consistently, should be fine. I'd also like to see its cooldown lowered to 10 or so, to make it the Occultist's bread and butter attacking spell. Maybe lower damage accordingly to accommodate for this.

My suggestions are made to make the spells more flavorful and give them a theme, and also give the Occultist clear windows of opportunity to use their kit together and maximize their effectiveness. Use Curse and then Drain Life to get the most out of Drain Life's healing, or use it in a team fight alongside someone who can heal you when they're using their heal skills.

Drop Desecrated land to have the above combo be even more effective, or if you want to try and close out a fight with the increased power you'd get from your corruption. Punish enemies trying to kite you or play safe from ranged by using DL and popping your shield to reflect more of their damage back at them while they try to stay out of the land's aoe. Desecrated Land should really feel like the terrain is corrupted and it's the Occultist 'home field' while in effect imo.

Some stuff here might be overtuned, numbers may need to be changed, but I feel like it should be a -strong- tree. This magic is held up to such high scrutiny in regards to actually apping for it/obtaining it, so at the very least, it shouldn't be mediocre.

I haven't played Dark but these suggestions are way too high in terms of power. If you want to drain life your attacks should not be as oppressive as this suggested scheme. Also there is a reason Corrupted/Desecrated don't follow caster.

If you want corruption could add +10% extra chance to life steal instead. Curse adds another +10% chance while active. Stuff that plays with life stealing.
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You haven't seen E3 Occult then if you think any of this is too high in power. Literally the only worthwhile skills right now are Dark Shield and Drain Life, and Drain Life got buffed some days ago because it was -2- spell power. Also, Desecrated Land would still be stationary, I guess I forgot to specify that.

As it stands you have Shadow Ball, which doesn't damage the way it's supposed to consistently and has a 16 second cooldown. Drain Life is in a good spot now which is why I didn't suggest any changes for it on its own. 15 second cooldown on that. Corruption has a 25 second cooldown and is like... a 3x3 aoe? 4x4? And it lasts 3 or so seconds. The damage is like 6 iirc. It pulses, but if you play with Occult, you'll realize people will just be out of range of Corruption without trying because people move a lot, or they're ranged mages and you will literally -never- get any use out of that skill. Stay in the small patch for the 10% AP bonus? That's cool, except not only are all of your damaging skills high cooldowns, they're fixed range. If the enemy isn't in range after you drop Corruption and the GCD is up for you to attack again, have fun waiting in that aoe getting attacked from a range because you want to use your 10% AP.

Desecrated Land is bigger, yes, but it does the -same- damage as Corruption. And has a 35 second or so cooldown. Also, again, your spells have long cooldowns and fixed ranges. The stars have to align for even Desecrated Land with how big it is to give you any meaningful benefit from the 10% AP buff, and the damage is irrelevant. Corruption and DL also don't stack, just in case you might have thought so.

Curse. Curse has a -30- second cooldown. That's honestly a joke. Even if it hits 4 times (not even sure it does, might just be 3), it's 3 spell damage per tick, and since it ticks, they can also guard in the midst of this since they know it's coming. Then it's gone for another 30 seconds. Not to mention heal reduction is good in the situations it comes up in, but it's ultimately still a niche. There will absolutely be fights where that aspect of the skill does actually nothing for you.

Then you have Occult Flame which is a flat 30 power buff which is worse than most auras. And Dark Shield is Dark Shield. I haven't used Drain Soul yet because it has to be apped for and I had to invest more in armed because of how bad most of the occult skills are anyway. So, all in all, you have Drain Life with a 15 second cd, Shadow Ball (which halfway works) 16 second cooldown, Corruption 25 sec CD, Desecrated 35 sec CD, Curse with a 30 sec CD, and Dark Shield with 30 CD. Like... you have no idea how many fights go by where you use your skills, the GCD prevents your corruption from doing anything and/or because all of your cooldowns are high, you can't make use of it anyway. Meanwhile your opponent has used several parts of their kit multiple times before most of your shit has come up for the 2nd time in the fight. 

Then, if you want to argue that you can try and utilize these things with other magic, Occult is expensive as fuck. If you focus on the Occult stuff first you have hotbar full of mostly garbage while you try and get actually good spells, but at that point... why not just use the spells from your other tree with something actually good, like unarmed/armed, or Cosmic, etc. 

And then as I said before, this magic is held up to such high scrutiny and is supposedly hard to be approved for. Why wouldn't it be strong if there's all that hype around it?