You would think a skill costing 30 skill points per level (150 skill points at level 5, thus 8 character levels for a single skill), having a 0.9s cast time, a roughly 3s animation time and 45~30s cooldown time would be absurdly powerful. Some kind of disguised ultimate, way to wipe a whole expert Verdurous Forest mini-boss room and inflict massive damage to the mini-boss itself.
And you would be right! In most role-playing games anyway. Dragon Saga, as often, has it the other way around.
The only thing that feels correct with this skill is its graphical effect: much impressive, huge meteors (a little larger than a Dragonkin is tall) crashing down from the sky into the earth in quick succession, as if the dark mage had torn of the fabric of space to summon near-godly attributes (think Buddha's prayer beads if yours has any; if he does not, well! Think something else) and use them to destroy their foes.
Quite striking if you ask me.
The major problem of this skill is that its cost is immense compared to its actual effect:
- sort of heavy prerequisites (two near-useless damage spells, lv.1 and lv.3, plus a passive that reduces mana costs by 2% per level, lv.3);
- skill points aplenty (150!);
- over three seconds of complete standstill at lv.5;
- only some half superarmor during animation that allows a number of attacks to knock you down and thus break the ability;
- long cooldown (45~30s);
- rather small area of damage (by mages' standards) that also is strictly circumscribed to a circle in front of the caster (which means a monster right beside or on top of you will often not be endangered);
- fifth meteor sometimes does not hit because enemies were sent too high by the first four (also happens rarely with fourth meteor for monsters near the limit of the area of effect);
- low damage, thus only used effectively against crowds of scattered weak monsters.
Having its cost (skill points, cast time) reduced would make it an ability as any other, and go from "murderer of builds" to "other skills are just better", thus not giving any regular player a reason to pick it either. I recommend simply making it a little more powerful while fixing its range: slightly increase its vertical range so that all five meteors hit rather than just four; increase its damage (tremendously I would say) so that it actually deals more, and if possible tons more than Emblem of Fire.
These would be the first two step in rehabilitating Meteor Strike as the ultimate crowd-wrecking skill, while still being vulnerable to interruption.
Because being vulnerable while casting is a good thing: it sort of rewards you for taking calculated risks.
Onward, Warlock! Unleash chaos upon these lands!
PS: notice I have been reasonable; I do not want to cast all Dragotaka in disarray with a row of mind-blowing changes making this spell a "press to win" button. Although I am quite sure this would not happen anyway. Well! better be cautious.
Edited by XiongmaoLin, 30 January 2018 - 02:38 PM.