Fred's Friday: New Skill Effects

The skill rebalance is on it's way, and Fred has wasted no time jumping into refining and reworking the effects. One of the skills that's getting a visual and mechanic change is the Flamethrower, which as mentioned earlier won't deal damage as you move. This meant new smoke effects had to be used:

When we talked about this last, we decided that neither silver nor gold charge would deal damage when moving. However, upon seeing various players distress at the idea of making it that much less OP, we've decided to try to keep the damage-while-moving on the gold charge level (which also has new graphics, by the way!):

We'll balance this with a damage reduction instead, and if we still feel it's too OP we might still do the full nerf with no damage while moving. Our initial idea with Flamethrower was that positioning would be key to use it, and being able to move and do damage at the same time kind of takes away from that, which is the reason we wanted to make this change to begin with (aside from the skill being too OP, especially at silver level, compared to others). 

Hopefully this compromise will keep the fun feel of the skill while not making it too crazy good. It's always difficult nerfing skills in any game because when you're used to a skill being really OP, it typically also feels really great using it. Using such a skill after a nerf will of course cause some disappointment, but hopefully the game will be better and more balanced overall after some of these have been made. 

Next, there's been some additional graphics added to the Smash and its new ball!

Each time you hit the ball it changes color and does more damage. After three hits it'll disappear, so you have to summon it anew. We're still fiddling around with the arrow indicating which way the ball will go, and the graphic is likely to be changed again, at least slightly. 

We're listening to all of your feedback on our changes thus far, and it's no secret Smash is the source of a lot of discussion. We'll continue on this path for now, finalizing this version of the skill and uploading it with the rest once they're done. Once you can try all the rebalanced skills all at once we'll see how things turn out! There's still a possibility Smash might get scrapped altogether, it all depends on what you guys feel when it's all patched and ready for testing.

Finally, here's a bunch of the new and improved effects Fred has been working on: