How about a "ranged-only" Direct Damage spell ? (in General)

The idea would be for a minion that deals magic ranged damage and physical melee damage.
If you have it trained, you would only be able to use a melee weapon (ranged weapon gets ignored even in melee rounds).
On one hand, you want something that can pack a decent punch (since you'll need to divert ST/DX for the melee damage part), but it doesn't pack too much of a punch, so it doesn't render the other ranged spells obsolete.

Ideally, you'll want something that is situationally either beneficial or underpowered, from enemy to enemy.
Of course, I'm not hung on any of the spells as described below, just on the concept of "ranged-only" spells.


Something like, say, "Lightning Storm".
It would only fire in ranged combat (maybe even just in the first 4 ranged rounds, or 5 with HoC) and deal SG-like (but noticeably smaller) damage to all enemy minions.


Or maybe something like "Poisonous Gas", which would be a far less powerful but mass-effect version of Decay - say, only dealing up to 10% of max HP damage per round to all enemy minions ?

How about "Shooting Star", an ever so slightly more powerful Magic Missile version, dealing a bit over double of MM damage, but works only every other ranged round instead of every ranged round ?


Any of the above spells could be reduced in effectiveness as a trade-off for additional situational benefits, like, say, double damage against AS HP, or disabling regenerative effects for several rounds after casting (either TSA, VA or both) or reducing or disabling the enemy PL effects, ar any other number of quirky advantages.

how about having FB end in ranged? make it worth using?

I don't think fb is worth using in ranged anyway, with all the penalties etc. More then 1 minion and you got no chance.

Or you can just keep MM and give people the option of:

1) It fires every round with the current penalties in ranged.
2) It only fires in ranged only with decreased or no penalties. Once melee starts it does nothing.

I am not advocating this but it could be an option if the developers decide this is the way to proceed.

:D

Sick, a man after my own heart. ;)

In addtion to a new DD, I also offered the suggestion of allowing us to choose 'attack' priorities, so that DD doesn't always overight Melee, for example. ;)

Would allow us to use FB/MM with a Melee weapon. ;)

I'm very certain this has been thought of before. Perhaps someone can look back and find some thread involved (for old opinions)

I myself would be in favor of a ranged only spell. Would make more diversity to the mages.

I think if anything was to be changed for MM it should be that some AC should be decreased(blown away) on the targets it hits each time. If a missile hits and causes damage, some of the armor has to be effected or worn down, right? And MM should fire into melee and every round. I have thought this for the other DD's that don't have some element relative to the attack as well. SG and decay are the only ones that apply a feature that is relative. CoC could 'slow' people down (decrease DX), FB could have a 'continues to burn' feature where the current round hit can trickle into 1,2,3 rounds post the initial hit at a continued decrease in power until the fire is 'out' (stacking for extra hits that FB connects with until the FB minion is dead).

FB's current problem lies with splash. Always has, always will. Do something with splash, get rid of it, tone it down, make it where friendly minions have something other than the RoBF to protect themselves. Add a feature for this to the BoE, EH? It seems the way the suggestions for FB have gone, it is a DD for low level users. It would be nice to see it more universally played with.

As for an all ranged DD, it sounds interesting. One of my favorite magic spells from Final Fantasy was in II, Meteo. I also like the name of Linkin Park's album, Meteora.

It sounds like a fun Idea. But as in other posts, you are really stretching out your stats at this point.

Here's an idea I had for anew familiar on another thread.

Earthquake damage all enemies in range only, but...


Earthquake deals additional damage the higher your enemy minions NW is (NW value per minions seperatly)and have the special ability to separate minions of a multiple minion team. Wich enable spreading spell and attack to concentrate on a single minon at a time. :D

Exemple, Fireball would deal all is damage on 1 minion and not spread on the others.


Go FB and CoC and SoD :)

GA only in ranged rounds ;D