Fred's Friday: More Utility Effects

In Fred's department, there's a lot of Utility skill stuff going on. First, the development of the blink:

From the beginning, what you see above is the effect we intended for the blink. However, because of how it looks when you're not travelling in a straight line (for instance, if you blink diagonally), it became more of a hassle than we first anticipated. We could either rotate the effect in engine, which left us with a bunch of ugly artifacts, or we could have Fred make the effect in 8 directions - both options which weren't too great. 

So, we ditched the above design and decided to go for light globes spawning around the character instead instead:

In the newest iteration, the globes are a bit smaller than what is seen in the above GIF, but it sill gives a good idea of what it looks like.

For the Stasis skill, we needed one more thing: an indicator of some sort above the enemies as you target them, before you unleash the skill. Fred came up with a bunch of suggestions based on our initial discussion, where we though it should either be a clock or an hour glass, indicating time stopping for the enemy in question:

In the end, we decided to go for the hourglass, and as an added bonus, Fred made a quick animation as you unleash the spell on an enemy: having the hourglass either turn of shatter as the skill lands. While we liked both ideas, the shattering hourglass is the one we'll use in the game for this skill:

The Focus skill, which allows you to regenerate EP faster, is still under development but this is what we have added so far: 

The purple lines beneath the character serve as a timer, of sorts. If you channel the spell until all four lines appear, you'll be able to cast the next skill free of EP. We'll also have a different channeling animation for this skill, possibly where the character is hovering above air - but we're still uncertain whether this will be available in the initial patch, or if it will be added in one of the many upcoming bug fixing patches once you start trying out (and breaking) these new skills!

Finally, a little sneak preview of the work in progress of that damage buff we've been talking about:

We're not 100% it'll look like this once it's done (could be a little too big for a skill that will be cast rather frequently), but it's just a bit too funny not to show!