#92 - May 10, 2012, 2:17 a.m.
...what does "making the bubbles scale with your crit chance" mean?
If your chance to crit is 20%, your bubbles are 20% stronger. If your chance to crit is 100%, you get double bubbles.
For Divine Aegis, the heals are 30% times your crit chance, except for PoH which is just +30%.
Logically, I understand this, but in practice... it's a bit more difficult since sometimes the numbers DO define the fun, or at least what some people think of as fun.
Yep, we get that. When understanding the target numbers is key to understanding how you'd use the spell, we try to get things in the ballpark. On the other hand, it's not a good use of development time to balance a mechanic if we ultimately (and sometimes quickly) remove it. We could have spent many more hours balancing the previous version of Spirit Shell, which we ended up scrapping. Everyone in this business very quickly gets used to "wasted" design time like that, but it's better for the project as a whole if we spend our polish time once everything has stabilized a bit more.
If the numbers go up to something reasonable, then it becomes intensely fun again because it gives a choice. Is there about to be a ton of aoe coming in? Pre-shield. Is there only some aoe coming in? PoH. If I chcoose wrong.. if I pre-shield and it is a little damage.. I wasted absorbs. If I choose not to shield and it is a lot of damage, then I tax myself (and the other healer) trying to get everyone back up. Having options and needing to know when each particular option is the right thing to do is what is fun for me.
That's the intent. Also, because it's not a very long cooldown, you're not overly punished for making the wrong call. It will be back soon enough.
That said, GC, can we get more clarity to the dev team's vision of the mechanic-- specifically how it's meant to stack on itself and refresh?
We're not sure yet. :( Stacking sometimes leads to behavior where you feel like you have to spam something over and over to the max stack. We wouldn't want Spirit Shell to only be used on a tank for instance. That may not happen, but the mechanic is still in it's toddler stages, so we need to evaluate it some more.