Dev's Concerning Black Hole

Is there a possibility of having some sort of discussion on what the plans are for this skill it really felt like a ender spell and really created a fun build that i think with some tweaks to the way that it functions.

I think that the cooldown nerf was a little extreme for the spell. Not expecting it to be something that i can have go off every few seconds. but possibly making a node to lower cooldown by some degree on the far leg of a tree. The we would have to sacrifice some damage production to be able to speed the spell up.

Maybe a legendary item that does some cooldown reduction to this particular spell while also adding one of the nodes to the spell without having to access that node on the tree. Would obviously be more late game.
You could also change up the way it works by changing meteor to being one large meteor that falls at the end of the duration. this would make creatures that teleport more effective against a mage that uses the spell.

In short i think the nerf to cooldown was a little harsh. while i understand the spell in its current form is very very strong.

The devs wanna rework the skill quite a bit at some point, the core mechanics of it. It has been problematic since it came out.

How has it been a problem. i mean its how the spell should be done its a freaking black hole. its used for the exact same build in mutiple other games. now if they wanna make it do less damage and be a pure pull mechanic i am all for that but they need to do some serious buffing to the other useless skills mages have. Mages are seriously lacking in most areas of the game from what i have seen build wise. this was really one of the only viable builds.

The pull mechanic is the problem. It has been too powerful, locking all enemies to a point in space for long periods of time, including bosses, which is a problem. From what I have heard from the devs, they agree, which is why they want to rework it at some point. It was especially apparent during the beta race event, where mages had it easier than others, due to the super powerful pull mechanic of the Black Hole. I like the idea of it, but I think it needs some changes.
Mages got a lot of damage, and they can get good ward generation if you build around it -especially as a Spellblade.

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The pull mechanic is not a problem , problem is mobs donā€™t have resistance to crowd control like they did for D3.
Black hole is the most powerul and misundertood entity on the galaxy , i hope you guys will keep this pride intact ^^

Thanks for the post.

The honest answer is our plan for the skill is to discuss it at a future design meeting. Since youā€™re interested in the skill, Iā€™ll talk about some of the design challenges we face with it.

Any skill system needs to consistently work the same way for every skill. Our specialization trees have certain requirements. Each skill needs to do something prior to any nodes on the specialization tree being taken. There has to be a sizable number of ways in which to modify the skill. The base functionality cannot be too complete a package, or else being able to add to it causes problems. In short, we need a certain amount of design space.

By default, Black Hole offers both damage and a crowd control effect. The crowd control effect is one of the best in the game in terms of increasing the casterā€™s survivability when properly utilized (and utilized outside of the somewhat contrived Arena zones). The ā€˜pullā€™ effect also concentrates enemies, making Area of Effect skills more effective against them.

The issue with Black Hole was that it easily rivalled 20 point skills prior to having any points invested into it. Thereā€™s a few adjustments we could make. I think the two most realistic are either having it not deal damage by default so that it is balanced purely as a crowd control skill which can be given some damage through the tree, or alternatively have both damage and the pull effect - though with both being somewhat anemic without investment.

Having it not deal damage by default somewhat redefines the skill - making it more focused, and helps to justify its iconic pull effect being more powerful initially. The tree could offer branches associated with different damage types, allowing you to opt-in to dealing damage with it - and if so, choosing what kind of damage to deal. That could be interesting.

Giving it both damage and crowd control by default but having both feeling weak would keep it more ā€˜intactā€™ thematically, but result in it being less exciting to unlock. This would also mean having more nodes which just make numbers bigger. While thereā€™s a place for these nodes, they donā€™t keep anyone up at night - we want to limit how many of them we have.

Personally, I lean in favor of it not dealing damage by default. Our skill system is at its best when baseline skill effects are focused and powerful. Black Hole tries to do a lot straight away, and this has balance implications while also making the tree awkward to design. But thatā€™s just my take as an individual; Iā€™m not speaking for the team here. What do you think?

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First let me say thank you for the in-depth explanation.
This is why i like this game so far.
I think without getting into huge message.
I felt like the idea of focusing on it being a pull only, and then by selecting nodes on the tree adding damage to it.
With that being said i really did like the way it feels with meteor, but i think adding maybe a pure pull tree that would maybe add some additional cc or damage reduction. Would be awesome. Would start to make mages possibly a support class. Which i know hasnā€™t been broached. I donā€™t know if this is something in the future or not.

The only thing that important for me is the pull effect and also the node that draw a nearby meteor i find it very cool , other than that iā€™m open to anything for BH even if it not doing damage initially.

Nice another open topic to keep people informed I like it :).

Blackhole should be a CC spell and thatā€™s it. I would disconnect it from any sources of dmg by itself. There could be stuff like vulnarabilitys in there sure, there could be +X% ammount of dmg per enemy suffering the holes pull effect. Outside of this I would just increase the AoE, the speed that gravitates enemys to the center of the skill and the duration. This specifics should be disconnected from each other because it would be bad if everything was skillable ;).

From my point of view BH is a CC spell only there to keep enemys away and pool them for nukes. From this point of view nodes like ā€œYour next spell after casting BH is freeā€ can be integrated there to back it even more veneficial but still without dealing dmg and using it as the CC tool Iā€™m pretty sure it was ment for.

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See i agree with making it a CC only skill to start. But see no reason to remove the ability for it to damage. A black hole is going to cause damage to some degree regardless. Even if itā€™s from all the crap thatā€™s flying into itā€¦ If i recall BH from Diablo 3 would pull missiles into it from nearby. And pull ground effect damage abilities into it as wellā€¦
Now i donā€™t expect all this to be something this does. But perhaps leaving some of the damage spec to the tree would be nice, especially the meteor tree. Maybe make it a 15 point grab to get it. And then make the max pull effect to come from a 15 point investment to the opposite side of the tree. Or you could have a third tree that converts it to sub zero BH that creates a regular black hole that then explodes doing x damage and freezing all enemies in x range.
There are many ways to make this spell very interesting i am mulling over different things but i am more happy that the devs are keeping us in the loop.
I am currently playing a BH mage and i am no master at the game but i can see how it could be over powered with the right gear.

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Howdy!

After discussing the possibility of us discussing this discussion regarding Black Hole, we found the time to discuss this discussion at one of our recent design meetings. Letā€™s discuss that discussion of this discussion in the hope that it will benefit this discussion.

While I had suggested the idea of making the base Black Hole skill a pure crowd control ability with options to add various damage types as part of different branches on the specialization tree, we have decided against this for a few reasons.

The main one is that although Black Hole has been a challenging skill to balance, this has been due to the crowd control effect itself. To remove the damage and use that as justification for reducing either the Mana cost or the cooldown may not have the intended effect of making the skill easier to balance; the skillā€™s most powerful aspect would be more readily available.

Weā€™re going to keep an eye on the skill, but we arenā€™t currently planning any major reworks to either the base skill or its specialization tree. We might adjust some numbers here and there.

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I like discussions where you discuss things, that are discussable.

That seems fair enough.
But my concern about Black Hole is mostly towards the too powerful crowd control capabilities against bosses and rare enemies. I havenā€™t played around it for a while, so I donā€™t vividly remember how it feels in its current state. But from what I remember it could keep all enemies, including bosses, fixed to a single point in space. So will bosses especially have some kind of resistance towards this pulling effect? So they just get slowed instead?

So it does have the ability to hold them in place but with ghe huge hit to cooldown time ita very difficult to use it effectively against bosses you typically just use u spam glacier and then run around in circles until the skill is off cool down, which really makes the game boring. While i understand the reasoning behind the cooldown nerf. I really think finding a way to create some sort of resistance to cc to be a much more effective way to counter this ability. As it stands now i just run around until i get a decent sized group and then hit bh then sit around waiting on cooldown to expire. Then repeat and now that my character is heavily invested in this build itā€™s not feasible to spec out of it

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I actually think the spell in current form is quite weak. The cool-down increase makes it very situational and the damage isnā€™t great either. And if you want to deal more damage with 200 mana cost. The duration isnā€™t great either.

Letā€™s just say I wonā€™t keep it on my specialized skill in the future. If I want crowd control, I can just Teleport, decoy.

I agree i am going to have to find anything specialization because itā€™s become almost useless.

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