skill costs

[Iron]

In the modern era of nodeka, pools are relatively cheap and easy to come by. It doesn't take too much time or effort to run enough endurance/mana/spirit to run or PK without ever running out. The skills in the game are generally designed for a much smaller pool base. I'm sure some of you remember when running out of a pool was a common occurrence.

Should skill/spell costs be re-evaluated? I think the really powerful ones that are basically "I win" skills or the ones that radically change a battle (bleed, dreynan, full heal, fade, forge to name a few) should be changed to use a % (up to 50%) instead of a fixed number. If you use a skill that turns your opponent into a punching bag or quadruples your damage or makes you invulnerable, there should be a real cost. If your class has 3-4 of these and you use them all, you should run a real risk of running out of X pool before the fight is over. With people being able to ascend to multiple sub-classes (and multiple big skills/spells), this is much more relevant.

For regular skills (spammables, buffs, etc blah blah), maybe the cost to use should go up with training % (e.g. 200% training = 200% cost to use). For most skills/classes, that doesn't mean much as the most commonly used skills, such as spammables, generally don't have a high cost anyway.

The general idea here is to get beyond the "train 20k in pools and be done" and require at least some thought/risk that if you spam out all the uber-skills at one time, you run an actual risk of burning out through the course of a fight. At the very least, suffer the endurance penalty or the evasion/pool comparison penalty. It adds a bit of strategy instead of the "spam all" hotkey.

Iron