Farsight trap sensing ability

[johndramey]

Hello there folks,

So I just played through a little of Normal P2 alpha and, well, lots of cool stuff. One thing that is a bit of a question mark for me is the new Farsight ability. I know how it works, but it seems to only trigger a green puff of smoke if you cast the spell directly on a trap. I've tested this over and over, and the only time I'll get a green puff is if my spell is cast directly on an untriggered trap. That seems like a bad decision, because we just traded one problem (casting disarming touch on every square) to another problem (casting farsight on every square). Not only that, but due to the balancing that was done disarming touch now costs less SP than farsight.

Am I mistaken in how Farsight is working? I think it should detect in an area, that would justify it's use. I was hoping that it would, ideally, put a green puff of smoke on the trap square, but I would be ok with having the smoke be green if there is a trap in the vicinity.

*edit* oops, meant to put this in the discussion thread. Sorry about that!

[fallen]

johndramey - agreed, we will work on that one. The intention was "within a few tiles" but it is not working as intended. On the list!

[Cory Trese]

What level of Farsight are you using? If you are using level 1 and expecting area effect, I agree, you will be disappointed.

Great feedback -- the long term application of Farsight will not replace Disarming Touch, or a good sense of the map hints that accompany traps.

[slayernz]

Nobody will expect Farsight to replace Disarming Touch - but you'd expect even at level 1, you'd get the chance of trap detection within x squares of where the spell was cast. The area of possible detection plus the probability of successful detection should increase as you increase to Farsight 2 and above.

Disarming Touch should still be single square, BUT as you increase Disarming Touch level, it might be nice to get the green puffs ala Farsight in the area around where you cast should there be a trap detected. Yes, you get double-up of effect when you have Farsight and Disarming Touch 2, but they both serve different purposes.

Farsight is meant to help you see beyond your normal Fog of War ... and detecting traps is an expected byproduct/possibility

Disarming Touch is meant to disarm traps in areas you think there are traps, but it might also detect traps as a byproduct too.

[Cory Trese]

It sounds like we just need to work on clearing up the confusion about Farsight at Level 1.

The ability to remove fog, detect monsters, costs low SP + detects traps? Pretty good -- the traps is a bonus at level 1 and should start to really AoE around 5 or so?

Fallen has to chip in a bit here.

[johndramey]

Ah! That would actually make a lot of sense. I was using level 1 Farsight, but I buffed it up to level 2 just now to see what increases it gives. Didn't get a chance to test, but could I expect a greater AoE on the fog clearing? Something like Cory Trese just said would make a lot of sense, but should be clearly marked. Possibly in the talent flavor text?

Something like this.

level 1 = 3x3 sight / point trap detection
level 2 = 3x3 sight / "plus" trap detection (think current AoE for Choking Sands)
level 3 = 4x4 sight / "plus" trap detection
level 4 = 4x4 sight / 3x3 trap detection
level 5 = 5x5 sight / 3x3
level 6 = 6x6 / 3x3
level 7 = 7x7 / 3x3
level 8 = 8x8 / 4x4
level 9 = 8x8 / 4x4 (reduce SP cost?)
level 10 = 8x8 / 5x5

Just an idea, but that would be pretty cool and give some real good incentive to boost farsight.

[fallen]

We are working on showing all 10 levels of the talents in their leveling screen so you can clearly see this.

We are also working on showing AoE rules in the talent screen, which is currently lacking.

johndramey - you are not far off from the actual progression - fog clearing increases, trap sight increase, the AP cost also comes down a little bit.

[fallen]

You'll be able to see this progression better in the next update and we can return to the discussion. I agree with Cory that adding area effect trap detect to level 1 makes Farsight level 1 too powerful and fails to put an incentive behind raising it.

[johndramey]

Cool, excited to see what you guys do with it. I kind of like the idea of having to pump a skill a bit to get full use out of it. Makes planning your build a little more important. Hopefully we can come back to this discussion later, maybe in.... Phase 3?? *wink* *wink*

[fallen]

johndramey - yes, it might have to be phase 3. We have just made some breaking changes to the database schema again, so if we publish an update everyone would lose their groups again. We don't want to make this annoying for everyone (restarting constantly!) so we are considering holding off and update until P3 is ready!