New support gem : Added Cooldown

A few days ago, there was a forum thread about how having powerful skills on cooldown can add depth to the gameplay of an action rpg such as PoE. Currently, the only skills on cooldown are Flicker Strike (2 seconds), Cold Snap (4 seconds) and Enduring Cry (2 seconds). Flicker Strike and Cold Snap cooldowns can be bypassed by expending a frenzy and power charge, respectively.

Long cooldowns to diversify combat?

While many ppl in the thread didn't like the idea of having to deal with skills on cooldown ala Diablo 3, many agreed that having powerful skills on cooldown would add many new gameplay possibilities, including the use of secondary skills. Right now, except totems and traps, there's not much place for secondary skills in PoE. The gameplay is pretty much about spamming your most powerful skill.

Personally, I like the idea of a new support gem that would add a cooldown and a damage bonus to any skill it's attached to. What's nice with support gems is that you can use the ones that fit your playstyle and ignore the others. So no one would be forced to use the added cooldown support just like no one has to use traps, mines or totems supports right now.

However, contrary to traps, mines and totems support gems, a cooldown support gem would work with melee skills. I can easily imagine someone having skills like sweep, shield charge, glacial hammer + melee splash or leap slam on cooldown.

So, how long should be the cooldown and how big should be the damage bonus. Since some players are gonna want short cooldown with lower damage bonus and others may want longer cooldown with higher damage bonus, I thought that having 2 cooldown support gems instead of 1 would be a good idea :

Added Short Cooldown and Added Long Cooldown

Pretty much the same way that we currently have Lesser Multiple Projectiles (LMP) and Greater Multiple Projectiles (GMP). LMP only add 2 projectiles but the damage penalty is lower (-30%) while GMP adds 4 projectile with a bigger damage penalty (-50%).

Added Short Cooldown

I'm thinking 4 seconds would be a nice balanced cooldown for the Added Short Cooldown support. 4 seconds is the same cooldown as traps, cold snap and enduring cry. What damage bonus would compensate a 4 seconds cooldown ? Personnally, I think the same damage bonus that comes with the Trap support gem would be fine. I'd also use the same mana multiplier : 140%. So, at level 1-10-20, it would look like this :

Level 1 : 20% more dmg. 140% mana multiplier. Adds a 4 seconds cooldown to the supported skill.
Level 10 : 29% more dmg. 140% mana multiplier. Adds a 4 seconds cooldown to the supported skill.
Level 20 : 39% more dmg. 140% mana multiplier. Adds a 4 seconds cooldown to the supported skill.

Added Long Cooldown

I think 12 seconds for the long cooldown support would be a nice number, 3 times as long as the short cooldown but still short enough to be usable. And if you decide to use both the short and long cooldown support, you still have a pretty usable 16 seconds cooldown skill, 4 times as long as the short version and 33% longer than the long version.

The damage bonus coming with "Added Long Cooldown" should obviously be higher than the short version but not too big either since we don't want anything unbalanced. So, I suggest the same damage multiplier that comes with Remote Mine support gem, +49% at level 20 and the same mana multiplier : 150%. So, at level 1-10-20, it would look like this :

Level 1 : 30% more dmg. 150% mana multiplier. Adds a 12 seconds cooldown to the supported skill.
Level 10 : 39% more dmg. 150% mana multiplier. Adds a 12 seconds cooldown to the supported skill.
Level 20 : 49% more dmg. 150% mana multiplier. Adds a 12 seconds cooldown to the supported skill.

Quality % could either increase damage or lower cooldown.

So, what do you think ? Would it be balanced ?

The things with cooldowns that you need to be aware of is that you need to avoid people making the gameplay decision "go make a sandwich" which is to say you need to make cooldowns short enough where people aren't feeling to incentive to not play the game for a bit because it's just a better idea to wait for the cooldown to end than do anything else. I do however like the idea of having semi long cooldowns on high power skills that encourage the use of more than 2 attacks, because currently most builds only use 2 attack one for aoe and one single target.

Yes and no.

In current form, way OP.

This would also have to a be gem with the new included "gem has no effect on linked skills in pvp arena"

Also, damage numbers seem interesting. I'm sure they could put something like this in pretty easily for the alpha testers to at least poke around with.

In my opinion your cooldowns and mana costs need to be reworked.

Short cooldown from 4 --> 7 seconds mana cost multiplier from %140 --> %170
Long cooldown from 12 --> 16 seconds mana cost multiplier from %150 --> %220

Long cooldown at level 20 should be %58 more damage.

Quality % on gem is %2 critical strike chance and %1 critical strike multiplier. For a total on a Q20 gem being %40 increased critical strike chance and %20 increased critical strike multiplier.

I think crits are one of the best fits for a skill on a long cooldown (I can't imagine anyone using a skill with cooldowns not using crits in their build IMO) so it makes sense to give quality level critical bonuses. I feel that the cooldowns on these gems should NOT be able to be lowered.

I found the cooldown times and mana costs that I suggest bring this skill more into balance, the numbers you were using just seem way too strong to me and with the mana costs being insignificant (matching costs of most other support gems) there was no drawbacks or requirement for players to have to actually form a build around using these cooldown supports. Which creates the unfortunate "every build uses this gem with no build diversity" that sadly we see in some gems.

I would love to see more diversity in the game, unique builds, less common but very strong builds. Different play styles. A way for characters to achieve the same results in combat but utilizing very different and creative approaches. Your cooldown support gem seems very interesting to me, would love to see more things like this in the game.

What do you think about my recommended changes to your proposal?
Great idea here Velkor!
A very strong +1 from me!

GGG pls

Quite interesting idea. Would bring certain builds to life, while even enhancing current builds. Some of them at least. I can see this being used with some super nuke builds. This would also bring new combos of skills together and I would love to have this support gem for the combo character that I'm working on.

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bchan wrote:

Yes and no.

In current form, way OP.

This would also have to a be gem with the new included "gem has no effect on linked skills in pvp arena"

Also, damage numbers seem interesting. I'm sure they could put something like this in pretty easily for the alpha testers to at least poke around with.

In my opinion your cooldowns and mana costs need to be reworked.

Short cooldown from 4 --> 7 seconds mana cost multiplier from %140 --> %170
Long cooldown from 12 --> 16 seconds mana cost multiplier from %150 --> %220

Long cooldown at level 20 should be %58 more damage.

Quality % on gem is %2 critical strike chance and %1 critical strike multiplier. For a total on a Q20 gem being %40 increased critical strike chance and %20 increased critical strike multiplier.

I think crits are one of the best fits for a skill on a long cooldown (I can't imagine anyone using a skill with cooldowns not using crits in their build IMO) so it makes sense to give quality level critical bonuses. I feel that the cooldowns on these gems should NOT be able to be lowered.

I found the cooldown times and mana costs that I suggest bring this skill more into balance, the numbers you were using just seem way too strong to me and with the mana costs being insignificant (matching costs of most other support gems) there was no drawbacks or requirement for players to have to actually form a build around using these cooldown supports. Which creates the unfortunate "every build uses this gem with no build diversity" that sadly we see in some gems.

(...)

Thanks for your comments.

I'm not against the idea of higher mana multipliers. However, I think 7 seconds for the short cooldown is too long. It would make the gem unusable for its intended purpose. Even 4 seconds is kinda long. I even had 3 seconds cooldown in mind for the 20% quality version. In other words, each 1% of quality would reduce the cooldown by 0.05 seconds.

For the long cooldown, you suggested a 58% damage multiplier. That's very close to the number I had in mind for the 20% quality version = 59%. In other words, +0.5% damage per 1% of quality.

You think that in its current form, it would be Overpowered ? Could you give me an example of a skill or a build that would be overpowered with these support gems ? Because even with the damage bonus, any skill linked with this support get a reduction of damage per second. This support is designed for secondary skills, not main skills. However, unless you use a 2h weapon, secondary skills are limited to 4L, so even with this support gem, they couldn't be this powerful. In term of pure damage, I guess a 4L with a skill on cooldown could get higher numbers or similar numbers than a 5L skill without cooldown. But that's the goal. If, even with a cooldown, a 4L skill is weaker than 5L skill, then there's almost no point of using it, even as a secondary skill.

Lets use an example :

Ice Nova

At level 20, the spell deal 185-289 damage. Or an average of 237 damage. The cast time is 0.935. Or 1.07 casts per second.

Now, lets imagine a character having +200% spell damage from passives and gear and +20% faster casting.

In a 5L set up with Concentrated Effect (68% more damage), added chaos damage, added lighting damage and faster casting, the would do :

185-289 cold dmg
81-122 chaos damage
5-101 lightning dmg

or 271-522 damage. With 200% spell damage, that's 813-1566 damage. With concentrated effect, that's 1366-2631 damage. Or an average damage of 1999. With 69% fasting casting from gear and the gem, it casts 1.8 times per second. That means a dps of 3598. For a mana cost of 40*1.6*1.5*1.4*1.2 = 161 mana.

Now, what Ice Nova with a short cooldown would look like in a 4L set up with concentrated effect, added chaos damage and added short cooldown (39% more damage)

185-289 cold dmg
81-122 chaos damage

Or 266-411 damage. With 200% spell damage, that's a 798-1233 damage. With concentrated effect, that's 1341-2071 damage. With Added Short Cooldown (39% more damage), it means 1863-2879. Or an average damage of 2370. So, 18% higher damage than the 5L version. But what would be the dps ? Lets say a 20% quality added cooldown adds 3 seconds. That means you can cast it once every 3.935 seconds. In other words, a dps of 602, almost 6 times lower than the 5L version. For 40*1.6*1.5*1.4 = 134 mana.

Conclusion, every 4 seconds or so, it would be worth it to cast the short cooldown version of Ice Nova, for 18% boost in damage (hardly imbalancing), but just enough to make it worth casting. You couldn't make it your main skill though.

The mana multiplier could be increased to 160% or reduced to 120%. I'll let GGG skill designers decide what's best.

What's important here is the concept of having an added cooldown support gem. That exact numbers (cooldown, mana multiplier, damage bonus) can be tweaked and tested by GGG.

This isn't a bad concept, but I'm not a big fan of cooldowns.

I only like flicker strike and cold snap cooldowns because there are ways to bypass them.
It creates a compromise, and that's awesome.

The solution to repetitivity is through passives and new mechanics.
By passives, I mean stuff that mixes up your priorities.
By new mechanics, I mean things like additional gem slots on gear that can only be filled with damage gems.
No curse/aura/buff/debuff ones.

This means instead of a 6L that you can put with 5x support and 1x damage skill gem, you might have items with a total of 8L, but 3 or 4 of the slots can only be filled with damage skill gems.
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That being said, let's assume your idea gets implemented.
I think on top of your suggested "long cooldown" and "short cooldown" (I'd call them Lesser and Greater Overcharge), you should have "Endurance Overcharge", "Power Overcharge" and "Frenzy Overcharge" support gems, each adding a "X% more damage" multiplier, adding a cooldown to the skill(s) and allowing their cooldown to be bypassed, but requiring you to spend a charge of the respective type to do so.

Both the cooldown and the "charge to bypass cooldown" of ANY Overcharge gem would be cumulative, so putting a Flicker Strike + Frenzy Overcharge + Power Overcharge + Lesser Overcharge support on the same skill, would make the skill alot more powerful, but add all cooldowns together (example: 2s+3s+3s+3s=11s), and require you to spend 2 Frenzy + 1 Power Charge to bypass the cooldown.

This also means, however, that you could put - for example - Greater Overcharge plus Flicker Strike or Frenzy Overcharge, giving you a very powerful skill with very high cooldown, but bypassable by spending a Frenzy Charge.

If the above is too powerful, Greater Overcharge can be given a "Doubles the amount of charges required to bypass cooldown." effect.
If you put Greater + Frenzy Overcharge + Flicker Strike, it would require 2*(1+1) = 4 Frenzy Charges to bypass cooldown, but it would hit like a truck.

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Furthermore, taking into account your cooldown gem is replacing another support gem, and that you're trying to give an incentive to use multiple skills in your gameplay, the bonus needs to be pretty heavy.

The short cooldown should be 2-3, and the long cooldown should be 4-6.
Otherwise no one would use it.

I like this idea.
As long as it remains an optional support. The cool down being dependent on level is a good idea too, gives you more control of the skill.

Like it very much, anything that goes against 'spam one skill' is fine by me. It would have to be finetuned, of course but it makes a lot of sense to have such supports.

Well, my only concern are unspammable skills that don't already have a cooldown, like discharge. Well, I would have nothing against introducing CD on discharge, the skill isn't supposed to be spammable. I'd consider using that unique that gives you a charge for every charge spent a cheap exploit on a discharger, if I didn't know it wasn't made specifically for that.

I like the suggestion because it would make it possible to go hybrid, most spells require you to spam them and you can't really attack ad cast at the same time, this would enable to do just that, after a fashion, boosting your spell and putting it on CD will be equivalent to casting it a couple more times.

I'm really big on battlemage style and it's kinda dumb you could do it in D&D or even games like dragon age and in the most customizable arpg out there you can't, not really.