What if the size and speed of the daemon bolt is effected by the amount of time that you charge it. For example, if you hardly charge a daemon bolt it will have a small projectile model, with reduced damage, and splash range, but inversely has increased velocity. Similarly, if you charge the daemon bolt, it acts similar how it currently acts, a large wide slow projectile with high damage and wide splash range. Thoughts?
I think that it should be faster than it is now, the charge time feature you mentioned is a good idea imo. It would be nice to be able to change the fire mode it has. like a rain of "mini bolts " that explodes in aoe when hit the ground or targets ( check the sorceror doombolt in dawn of war 2)
That would be the best of both worlds, give it that alternate fire mode too. So we'd have Doom Bolt and Daemon Bolt in one fell swoop. And make the Doom Bolt fire mode mildly inaccurate so it hits a wider target audience. Like the accuracy of the Ork Rokkits, that wild fire arc would be wicked. A bunch of mini explosions all over the place, could decimate a squad, or could totally do nothing.
The idea isn't that bad honestly, sometimes you need 50 damage in 1 sec rather then 500 in 3. My concern is that how you would cancel it, the only way would be to release it...and shoot what you have which could be work but that would be one of those unintentional 'features' -which wouldn't be entirely unreasonable- that or rolling or meleeing. I like the idea of an alternate fire mode though. Long story short, it could work but there's functionality issues to be addressed.
I think it would be a good idea to have fast moving small bolts, that do decent infantry damage, like a charged up plasma shot speed/damage I think would be balanced for it, especially if we just increased the warp charge cost. Then the fully charged up bolt should do a good amount of hefty damage for like anti-vehicle, so maybe like 750 with like 200 pen? Not as heavy as a lascannon or a powerfist strong attack but it wouldn't be like smacking it with a useless charged up plasma shot.
For the amount it costs, it should be more versatile. It's more expensive than a plasma pistol. However going for the "plasma" approach, would result in many many many tears. It would be a no brainer choice. The idea of multiple bolts, and big blast alternate fire mode seems reasonable to me. Like the charged shot from the reaper guy, that fires multiple small bolts, with not that much accuracy. In general, offensive spells all need a re work, but daemon bolt, is not right there yet. Take this into consideration, the closer it is to a plasma gun/cannon, with charge up...the more people will cry about it. Since they want sorcerers to support from "ranged" due to armor nerf. You suggestions is a way to go. "transforming" offensive spells into actual weapon equivelants
From one of the old threads: http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/daemon-bolt-possible-solutions.58648/ I will quote myself from months ago: "There are alot of problems with this spell: 1.It takes forever to cast. 2.The visuals of the spell makes it very difficult to see what you are trying to hit. 3.AOE seems small. 4.It's difficult to see where the hitbox of the spell is, so you constantly hit something you don't want to. 5.Sounds cool as all hell but the enemy will notice you immediately and shoot you to bites. 6.Railing kills you. 7.The bolt is slow reeeeeeeally slow. So 10/10 for style points but over all a worse plasmacannon." BE only needs to address the rest of these problems
From what i noticed is that all Sorcrer offensive spells are total crap. Demonbolt is at best, AT BEST situational, while the flickering fire... might not even exist and take pracious AP to get to Boon of Change. To be honest when i started playing as a Chaos Sorceror i was expecting to not even have a secondary weapon like bolter or plasma, but i find it better at range fights than the god awfull spells.
