Slime Squisher
Posts: 392
Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21
Searing Ray Targeting
1) Target a location and repeatedly hit the same squares, regardless of whether anything is in them.
2) Target an enemy and adjust aim to focus on it each turn, ignoring other units (defaults to mode 1 if the target enemy dies).
However, there are a few issues with the current behavior, including:
1) Sometimes the player will want to target a square under an enemy, but cannot do so because the spell will target the enemy instead. (UI)
2) If the player can adjust the aim to focus on an enemy, then one would expect it to be possible to adjust the aim to change the target to a different enemy. (consistency)
3) Players are incentivized to lure groups of enemies to long, straight hallways where all of the enemy movement will not cause them to slip out of the spell's AoE. (grind)
4) Inexperienced players may not know the relevant consequences to a targeted enemy's movement before deciding whether or not to maintain the ray. (clarity)
There are quite a few potential behavior modifications that could be made to address these issues, but I recommend the following: while under Ray, Ray+, or Ray++, automatically reenter targeting mode, whereupon escaping out of targeting mode would cancel the spell. This approach effectively solves all the above-listed issues without adding to the player's burden in cases where targeting adjustment is not desired. To the contrary, it actually simplifies that use case slightly because the player can press the same key for each time (s)he wants the ray to fire. It also has the added benefit of making it more immediately obvious whether or not Ray status is still active, which can prevent accidentally skipped turns in cases where the spell is disrupted by enemy action (e.g., in case of confusion under the current behavior, the player can easily pass a turn they would have rather used to drink a potion of curing if they don't take a moment to glance at their status effect list each turn).
This suggestion does technically qualify as a buff to the spell, however, I think in practice it would be a very minor one. In prolonged fights, spending an extra MP to interrupt and recast the spell rarely makes the difference between a player running dry mid-combat or not, at least in my experience. If a player is playing in a way where this scenario would occur frequently, then I think they're not going to survive very long regardless.