Ricochet has always felt a little strong, but I've never actually built around it heavily before, so maybe first impressions are wrong?  IIRC, this is one of those skills whose cast time is based on AS, so the DPS would scale with AS squared overall if so, which is kind of absurd.

I'm considering slowing the animation significantly but buffing the damage somewhat.  Something like 2x as long to fire, but 1.5x damage or so.  Maybe also increase mana cost by 10%.  I'm not sure if the skill needs it overall, but at the very least, Ascetic might fit better with a slower, heavier Ricochet variant just for them.  The other thing I could try is USEDPS:0 and then compensate the numbers for it somewhat.  The assumption I generally use 1.5 or 2 attacks per second.

I'm leaving it alone for now, since it's not worth a whole update.  But it's something I thought about a little.  I'm kind of indecisive about it and don't want to test it five different ways without an idea first.

Quote from: MTaur on June 10, 2016, 08:02:29 pm

Ricochet has always felt a little strong, but I've never actually built around it heavily before, so maybe first impressions are wrong?

As long as you don't have retarget or piercing on, I think ricochet shouldn't be unbalancing.  But it does change missile trajectory if it hits something, so if you're looking to have it avoid landscape obstacles, this may only be trading one problem for another (missiles hitting landscape becomes missiles bouncing off the landscape).

Another idea would be to use a timed-duration friendly monster unit to emulate the "missile" and have it auto-target (something like spider mines).  I haven't played much with it, but you probably need a custom model, as you can't just specify particles.  You'd largely avoid the obstacle headaches, but you'd trade that off for AI quirks and more complex implementation.

Quote

The other thing I could try is USEDPS:0 and then compensate the numbers for it somewhat.

This will favor slower weapons.  Beyond speed > 1.0, WDMG outperforms WDPS.

It always seems like attacks get below 1 sec late-game regardless.  Maybe some big 2H weapons are exceptions.

I think the DPS scaling is only a problem if the casting speed is also based on modified AS, which I think actually is the case for some skills.  Scaling off of AS once is ok, but twice is problematic.

I'm not especially looking to modify the mechanics of the skill, either.  (I might have the name wrong - NAME is CHAOSSHOT, but I thought the display name was Ricochet, not to be confused with the TL1 skill...)  If the general opinion seems to be that it's not an OP skill, then I don't have a specific need to change it, other than to possibly exchange cast speed for cast damage in a mostly proportional manner for a custom class only.  But it does seem like you can spam a screenful of the suckers, like three per second at 40%+ DPS each, hitting multiple units.

Nice to know that AS^2 scaling is never a thing, and that this has been tested.  I guess I don't have to worry anymore.  Still, I might still use USEDPS:0 on skills that are supposed to favor 2H weapons regardless.

I could use some testing on this mod.  Should it have a separate post in Help Wanted?

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