Arcane Storm

[Anolise]

This spell feels much too strong. It fires dozens of homing missiles killing everything in the level without effort, even far away from the caster! It is also a basic spell so it does not require a school. I recommend limiting the range and number of missiles considerably.

[zefz]

Thank you for the feedback! I will look into balancing the spell (especially at higher levels when the player has a lot of spell power).

[sasbot]

I have had a lot of thoughts about this spell, but most of them involve a complete redo of its pathfinding algorithm.

• The pathfinding for the bolts fails badly in wrapping levels (desert, forest, etc). You end up seeing bolts double back on the path they already traveled, or traveling the entire distance around the map just to get to a target that was a few squares away.
• The bolt pathfinding does not seem to update when the dungeon topology changes (portal, doors opening, boulders destroyed, secrets found).
• In 1.8, it was changed to have a max range. But it appears that the distance is based on distance in tiles from the player's current position, and completely ignores the distance the bolts themselves have to travel. This becomes very obvious when combined with a wrapping level, and bolts will sometimes still traverse the entire level despite the max distance cap.
• With larger levels and 1.7 or before, casting arcane storm when entering the level or while sitting on the nexus became both very optimal for gameplay, and very tedious for the player due to how powerful it was and how long it could take to wait for them all to hit their targets (well over a minute in some cases at deep levels). I haven't tested it yet, but this could still take just as long in 1.8 when combined with a wrapping level and the odd pathfinding.

So with that in mind, my suggestion to keep the spell in balance would be to
#1) improve the pathfinding algorithm to be able to handle wrapping levels
#2) remove the hard-cap on distance traveled BUT make the distance each bolt travels reduce the amount of damage it will do. Spellpower does have a maximum eventually, while the levels and monster HP just keep getting bigger.
#3) make the bolts travel faster! It does look really cool the first few times you cast it... but that gets old really quick if you have to keep waiting and waiting

alternatively, just make the bolts phase through walls and behave more like the current distance-from-player cap behaves. if they can only target things a certain absolute distance away ignoring walls, make the bolts themselves ignore intervening walls too.

[zefz]

I've improved Arcane Storm. The pathfinding should be smarter now and only travel a specific distance and not count distance through walls .

Further more the spell itself resloves faster and bolts have reduced travel time. I also added a small jiggle effect for more erratic movement and limited sound effects so that it doesn't become so loud when many bolts spawn or impact with their target.