In this world, Magic is Everything. All people, all races, are granted with the power to perform mystical and magical feats via grimories, mystical tomes granted to each and every child on their 15th birthday. Those blessed by the mana can have their names written down in legend.
Shattered Grimoires is the work of the mind(s) of Ardere & Shattered Grimoire's staff. All characters and content are copyright their creators, and may not be replicated without their creators' permission. Black Clover is owned by Yuki Tabata and published by Viz Shonen Jump. All images belong to their original owners. The theme you are currently viewing was made by Eliza of ElizaCodes exclusively for Shattered Grimoires.
Post by Gaius Stonewall on May 21, 2020 9:30:31 GMT -5
Attack Creation
What I think
This is probably the most basic specialization that others are balanced around, in the sense that Defense and Restraining and Supplementary are all balanced around how much damage they can take from an Attack, Healing and Hex are balanced around how they mitigate or enhance damage from Attack, and so on. It’s a very important spec that I think is inherently well balanced.
What I want
What I would like to see in the future regarding it is an option for variety in terms of strengths and weaknesses to different ways of attacking. For instance, 9/10 times it is beneficial to have a spell be ranged rather than melee because they both do the same damage, the spell may likely be as effective at close range as it is at long range, and so you can either choose to be Close, Mid, and Long range or you could choose to be just Close range. Perhaps allowing people to scale the stats of a spell in more interesting ways could resolve this.
Here’s my thought on how I’d like to see this practically: You make attacks have a scale between Range and Power. For instance, you could reduce a spell’s maximum range by 10% for +2 Power. So 25 Meter Junior Attack would have +0 Power, a 12.5 Meter Junior Attack would have +10 Power for its shorter range, and a melee Junior Attack would have +20 Power. By making it percentage-based, we can also scale this on spells that have much longer ranges than Junior. This alone might provide dedicated Attackers with a more accessible Bunker-Busting option and make their spells feel more customized than the bland two options of max-range AoE or max-range single-target attack, because unless you have an element like Darkness there’s no reason you shouldn’t be using your max-range on a spell. Even if you like the aesthetic of a sword, you’d want to word it such that you can have maximum range on your slashes. By giving benefits to lower ranges, it could incentivise more creative attacks. Similarly, it could be interesting to do the reverse, increase range at the cost of power, just so lower ranks could potentially have an option against those that can simply out-range and often outmaneuver them.
Post by Gaius Stonewall on May 21, 2020 9:49:24 GMT -5
Defense Creation
What I think
I think Defense is just a powerful spec to focus on due to its nature. Certainly, if you take all the perks for Defense and match it against an Attack that has all the perks as well, Defense will lose out, or break even. But that’s assuming your opponent goes all into Power, goes all into Attack perks. If they don’t, if you become able to fully block an attack because you went all into Defense, you will likely gain more value from Defense than if an Attacker had the stat advantage. Certainly I understand why Defense has these mechanics to help it outsustain Attack in a match-up, and that’s fair, but I feel like the primary anxiety around bunker/defense comps is that if they get their “All-Side” defense up, and their Durability is just better than your Power, you have no real way of touching them ever. They’re protected 100% from all your spells and you’ve lost the match. At least if an Attacker has an overwhelming Power advantage you they can only deal so much damage and there are alternative ways to defend like evasion, but with Defense the only way to them is through. I understand why Defense is balanced this way, but I believe that it may be too easy and too strong to use at the moment To demonstrate my point, Attack breaks through a Defense, it has way more Power, but it will only ever deal its rank in damage. Meanwhile a Defense blocks 50 Attacks, it has way more in Durability, and has reduced all their damage to nothing. In this way, Attacks have a set amount of value they can provide from stat difference while Defense has infinite potential value in similar situations.
What I want
What I’d like to see is mostly a balancing of All-Side Defenses to encourage more active play. Have All-Side Defenses lose Durability, maybe -10 Durability, to encourage more single-side Defenses, kinda like World Binding does for AoE Restraining. Have All-Side Defenses cost more mana to maintain. Easier to keep up a single shield than full armor or a dome. Perhaps make All-Side Defenses unable to fully block, so they always take some damage, even if it’s just Junior Rank. This would balance in the way that sure, they can tank hits from every side, but that defense will never be outright invincible in certain match-ups. This might be an extreme change, but perhaps make Full Blocking an attack of equal rank, meaning a Defense Spell not taking any damage from tanking a hit, not a thing? I know it seems like a lot, but much like how Attacks have a fixed value no matter how many Defenses they break through, I feel Defense Spells shouldn't fully undervalue the Attacks. Even in an even match-up, you'd still block 2 Attacks per 1 Defense, so perhaps make Durability at most reduce an Attack to half damage. If you do this, you should also think about Attack Spells no longer perfectly penetrating Defenses, perhaps their Power advantage instead allowing them to deal twice damage to the Defenses instead of going through them, in doing so allowing Defenses to still block Attacks at equal rank that overwhelm them, but are more easily destroyed by such attacks. In that vein, I would suggest to have any "leftover" damage upon breaking a Defense, up to the Attack spell's rank, be allowed to continue on to hit the target.
The primary concern is that Defense gains a lot of value compared to Attack with a significantly less amount of effort (You actually have to land an attack). Dome or full armor defenses are definitely important, but they shouldn't be outright superior, in the same way I feel that Ranged Attacks shouldn't be the outright superior option 9/10 times.
Post by Gaius Stonewall on Jun 5, 2020 2:22:11 GMT -5
Hex & Curse
What I think
I feel hexes and curses are a bit underpowered, to be honest. Perhaps I'm not considering them correctly, but I think of it like this: If I can land a hit to apply a hex or curse, I may as well deal damage with an Attack creation or immobilize with a Restraining spell, as I would already be able to assumedly get through their defenses one way or another. Perhaps you could attach it to other specs as a dual spec spell, but as I provide later on, buffs are just a naturally better benefit on a whole. Now, perhaps you want to be a support mage that buffs and debuffs, and that's fine, getting double value from each spell and that's cool. What I think, though, is that hexes and curses are naturally riskier than buff-type spells, yet only provide the same or possibly less value compared to buffs. Whether I use a buff or debuff, I'll gain +4 Power on an enemy, but I can just auto-apply the buff to myself whereas a debuff has to land as a hit and also avoid being removed by low-effort healing spell (in that healing, too, doesn't have a hard time being applied to a target).
What I want
Debuffs should have bigger numbers than buffs
This is about risk and reward. Buffs will rarely lose value, so they get a clean 1:1 value. Debuffs, however, are able to miss. Their value is also inherently different. Consider these “best case scenario” for both buffs and debuffs:
When you buff yourself, you gain an advantage against every other enemy. So if your strength is 2 and you have 5 enemies that are also 2 in strength, you buff yourself and might think that it just makes you a 3, but that’s not quite the case. Consider this, whatever stat difference you now have with each enemy is the same stat difference you’d have if you debuffs every single enemy. So rather than your 2 turning to a 3, it’s more like you turned every other enemy’s 2 into a 1. In such a scenario, you have basically debuffed every enemy without ever having to hit them.
[2] vs [2,2,2,2,2] [3] vs [2,2,2,2,2] = [2] vs [1,1,1,1,1]
Now, of course, let’s consider the inverse scenario. You are part of a group of 5 facing one person, everybody has a strength of 2. You land a debuff on the enemy, and now they become a strength of 1 instead of 2. Same scenario, right? It’s as if you just buffed everybody else by 1 each. Not quite. The scenarios are fundamentally different in that you have turned an advantageous position into an even more advantageous position, a “win-more” button, if you will. Meanwhile the buff works in turning a disadvantageous position into a less disadvantageous situation. This difference may seem similar at first, but if you consider in terms of gambling, you would know that the buff is much more valuable.
[2,2,2,2,2] vs [2] [2,2,2,2,2] vs [1] = [3,3,3,3,3] vs [2]
For instance, let us say in the buff situation, you have a 20% chance to win and in the debuff situation you have an 80% chance to win. Now, given the two potential scenarios of outnumbering or being outnumbered in a fight, which one do you want to raise your win chance more? I believe a rational person would choose the situation where you’re outnumbered, turn that 20% into maybe a 40%, because the situation is relatively high-risk compared to its counterpart. When you’re outnumbered, sure you might want to confirm the fight, but you feel safe thus making the debuff a redundancy.
However, let us also put this to a 1v1 scenario. One buffer and one debuffer each of strength 2. Are they even? Of course not. The buffer wins because he can automatically turn his 2 into a 3 while the debuffer needs to land a hit to even it out. Say the buffer chooses to buff their speed to evade getting hit, the debuffer cannot reduce that speed because their debuffs are too slow. Meanwhile, for all the trouble they have to go through to land such a debuff, what do they get? To just undo what it took the buffer no effort to do.
Tl;dr: Buffs gain higher value fundamentally than debuffs. We should increase the numbers in debuffs to appropriately compensate this different value.
