Suggesting changes to Gazes and Touch skills.

It's not a secret that the vampiric life steal skills are problematic. I would like to offer a solution to these problems. It's not like there haven't been numerous suggestions already, I've posted some myself, but the problem is there, it isn't going anywhere, and one more thread isn't going to hurt.

I suggest the introduction of a Gaze spell. Characteristics: Requires line of sight to target. Unblockable. Neutralized by Blindness.

As for the touch skills, an appropriate change, I believe, would to make them blockable. Giving them full susceptibility to block would be too much, I think. I'd suggest half block chance.

Also I would like to have the life stealing mechanism changed to Shadow Damage healing the user proportionate to the damage inflicted.

This would make it possible to buff damage levels to acceptable numbers without making it a joke.

Again these aren't new suggestions but I'm posting them anyway for, hopefully, developers to see.

it used to be worse

I'd possibly be inclined to make Gaze Spells not negated, but affected by any miss chance on the caster - that would also cover things like Blurred Vision, Well of Darkness, and the like.

Something similar can probably work for Touch Skills as well. Arguably, a pure block might not necassarily protect against a touch attack (it might still 'conduct' through the shield or whatever is used to block) which makes it somewhat unfortunate that Block and Evade got combined, but a touch skill should be just as prone to missing due to blindness and the like as a regular attack.

In both cases, an added twist could be that the skill recharges instantly if it does fail due to missing - on the theory that the energy was gathered but not discharged (something like holding the charge in D&D) - so that if someone was willing to keep spending the time and energy, they can keep trying.

Imo turn the touch skills into spells,that way can be countered like any other spell out there,also 'unblockable spell that requires a line of sight' ,u could achieve that by turning the spells into projectile spells.Also i like the idea of the 'life stealing mechanism changed to shadow Damage healing the user proportionate to the damage inflicted'.

i suggested about a year ago to make touch skills attack skills so that they would be affected by blind but there was no support from the community.

personally i dont have an issue with any touch skills besides palm strike, that skill is utter trash. shock-exhaust makes it not spamable and on professions with high enough energy to use it repeatedly, you have soft armor, tradeoffs. vamp touch/bite, high energy cost and again, aside from touch rangers (who are annoying but can be countered easily enough) you have soft armor. shove- lose all adrenaline and disables non attack skills, pretty huge tradeoff if you ask me, plus its in an underused attribute line aside from fortress monking. palm strike on the otherhand, has no downsides, quick recharge, high priority condition, and allows the use a very powerful dual attack as the first option to block! and with duals, you have to block both or it will still allow the chain to continue. and there are no viable counters (cant touch this is trash, should apply to the whole team) aside from inting.

as for the gaze spells, line of sight would make sense. life steal will always be a touchy subject due to the hurt/help aspect. perhaps it should deal damage to the target and youd gain an equal amount of health as legacy said.

gaze skills sound good
but then ppl might argue that oh well my character wasnt looking at him so his gaze shouldnt affect me!

i dont believe touch skills will be made blockable..but im all for it


/signed

"Oh no! You blocked my touch!"
Or better yet, "Oh no! You touched my block!"

Ehh, I think they should change Blood Magic to be more support based instead of life steal.

Projectile spells can also be dodged.

(To be frank, while it won't happen in GW1, one thing that would REALLY help with anything that involves line-of-sight is for it to be clearer in-game whether you have line of sight or not. Plenty of times you think you have it only to find that you don't when you activate a skill (especially with the wall bug) or as happens occasionally when you think LOS is blocked until you realise you're still getting hit...)