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It’s the last day of the Prologue reveal week and we’re going to talk about the new talents coming your way!
Before we launch into the new stuff, I want to take a minute to talk about talents in a more general way.
Talents are one of the ways we’re going to intentionally change up builds / the “meta” from patch to patch, due to either rotating talents out, adding new ones, or just by simply changing some numbers. The goal is to keep the game fresh and evolve it over time, rather than let it settle and grow stagnant. There’s a line to walk here, though…we want players to be able to discover and build around things between patches and not yank the rug out from under them, but we also want to bring new strategies to the fore and let previously dominant ones wane.
This should go without saying, but not all talents need to appeal to all builds / playstyles / game modes. Talents aren’t meant to be balanced 1:1. Certain ones will be better for certain builds or players while others might be weaker. However, you should always be able to make a case for every talent and none should be universally The Best Pick in all circumstances.
This post is only going to go over the NEW talents. There are a number of other changes to existing talents happening as well (mostly costs and the numeric parts, but also a few changes to functionality). For those, you’ll have to wait for the patch notes stream on Wednesday, October 21, at 1PM EDT with me and another member of the development team on https://www.twitch.tv/proletariat_inc
You may also notice that these talents thematically don’t match up especially well with their categories. While unfortunate, it’s more important that they remain balanced with what you can take than to be thematically sound. Sorry!
On to the goods!
Vigor
- Mind
- Cost: 3
- Description:
- Max Health: +25/30/35/50
While this isn’t “flashy,” it’s very powerful. This is a straightforward, thicc talent. If you want something that’ll make you beefy but don’t want to think about it past that, Vigor’s your pick. Combine it with Recovery and good fight management and you’ll be very difficult to take down.
Foresight
- Body
- Cost: 3
- Description:
- See Future Storms and Mana Vaults
- See Enemies on the Minimap every 10/9/8/5s
This talent “flips” its strength over time. At the start of the match, while the “ping” cooldown is long and enemies are often spread out, you’ll be able to leverage knowledge of the upcoming vaults and storms to better plan your movement and looting. Towards the latter part of the game, though, as your ping becomes more frequent and you’re in closer proximity to your enemies, you’ll be able to direct yourself and your team to them while they try to hide or heal up.
Generally speaking, we like making “support” talents that benefit a whole team while also providing benefit to solo players. We want to continue to explore talents like this over time and what support could mean in a game like Spellbreak that doesn’t just relegate it to being something for heal/aura characters that are stuck in a passive role. You can see this thought process play out with Foresight (and before that, Thirsty, Finders Keepers, and Tracking). That said, we also need to be careful to not make things that become must-have for a team to the point where someone ends up being “forced” to take one for the team.
Ambidextrous
- Spirit
- Cost: 3
- Description:
- Gain Level 1 Skill of Offhand Gauntlet's Class
- Offhand Spell Mana Cost: -5/10/15/25%
Yes, this is exactly as crazy as you think. And yes, it works with Spellslinger.
This potentially breaks the game wide open and returns some of the combinatoric craziness that we had during pre-alpha with dual classes. Ever wanted to have Combust on Conduit? Done! Want Stoneskin on Frostborn? Sure, let’s do it! Wind Surge on Stoneshaper? Who am I to stand in your way!? Go nuts!
Of the three talents, this definitely has the largest potential impact on the game due to the build flexibility it creates. It’s no longer possible to immediately determine that an opponent is a Pyromancer just because you see one of their Fireballs explode; likewise, if you need to get somewhere quickly, you can always pick up a Frost Gauntlet to utilize those ice skating skills.
Edit: Someone asked how these will be unlocked and I wanted to call it out in the post itself and not in the comments. These are all unlocked from the start, so enjoy them from the moment the patch goes live!
Alright, that wraps up our week of reveals ahead of the Prologue and we haven’t even touched on Clash itself! We’ll see if we can’t share more info about that next week…
P.S. I mentioned something yesterday about a way to find more potions and something on a stream the other day about Finders Keepers getting a buff, so I’ll peek over my glasses, raise my eyebrows, and say, “I leave this as an exercise for the reader.”
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