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As long as you are paying a static amount to restore a %, growing mana pools will keep that ability overpowered. If you make it restore 25% all you accomplish is delaying its glory. But if you say "okay it's getting replaced" you don't have to immediately throw something in, I'll be happy playing with the other 11 abilities and the knowledge that this powerful but boring spell is getting removed

In fact I have a suggestion, pretty much stolen from WoW (even the name is), that could do nicely in that slot if programming allows it. Misdirection: For the next X turns, all hate caused by the hunter is redirected to the target. You cast it on your tank (hopefully lol) and help him get aggro

Well, if you want to keep it to % you could dump it down to 10%. I still think that 25 % might be too much.

And I still don't see the problem in the principle with the hunter having the option of function of a mana battery. As long as it is just not a game breaker mana battery. It is unusal for a thief class sure, but the druid is busy with healing and nuking and the warriors can buff them self (and debuff enemies too with the right skill set). So I think it is fine the thief support abilities is for sp/mp.

I still think that the game breaker might be the bombs. As said the right use (stock too many heavys) and you just might be able to handle any thing. At least I don't think we should be allowed heavy bombs in season one, because very few enemies can withstand those.

Well, hold on. Remember that you're dealing with small battles right now, like 3 people vs ~3 creatures. I'd wait and see how IP works out in larger parties before massively overhauling it. (Disclaimer: I've never actually used it.)

Saren had that power in Loren which could restore a bunch of SP, but when you have 12 characters in a battle, an individual character goes less frequently so that delay can potentially make a difference.

If IP is still powerful, it's likely because the difference between using a skill for damage and using a normal attack is pretty huge - so much so that it's almost worth giving up a turn of battle to do triple damage the next round. Exacerbated by the high SP costs for relatively low SP pool (with no SP regen) in Act 1.

I'm starting to get worried that we're over-tuning characters for the first act and not seeing how those changes have propagated to the later acts. Yes, the first act is important to get right because it's the demo that gets people to buy the game, but I think we'd have a better picture on how stuff worked with some encounters in a different section. Jack may still need to make changes to the early game balance, but at least then it would be easier to target changes so they don't disrupt the mid and late game.

I agree tend to agree Troyen, Elanor (who had a skill much like that in Loren) couldn't keep up with the sp loss for all characters once we had a full party. And I honestly I just hate to see the only SP filling skill go.

I still think keeping the % between 10-20 would be best, because 25 is a quarter which just sound like a lot. But perhaps it is fair. It is hard to say.

And I also don't mind the none of the player characters a pure thief/fighter/mage, because these a player characters and I think it is nice to have them so flexible that they can fullfill different roles.

OK for now I'll put it at 20% then. The value can be tweaked in later chapter without need to start again luckily
And yeah I'm removing the bombs completely. They really make no sense

edit: I had an idea, will reduce the damage of bombs a lot but have them cause bleeding. This way they can still be useful but not overpowered as they are now.

The Energy spell in Loren cost far more mana than this does. But it was much rarer in Loren to not heal to full between battles. Here it is the rule. I don't think IP is overpowered for a single battle. I think it is overpowered for 15 battles in a row. Typically I don't even start the regen dance until the enemy team has one guy left and I just tank him.

Also I don't think it's very constructive to decide which % you think sounds the prettiest a spell that has a static cost for a % restoration will be looking at the following scenarios: First, one where it costs more mana than it restores. At that point it would be a real emergency tool when it's really crucial that someone else has mana but the hunter can afford not to have it. However ATM that would only happen if people had under 30 maximum mana and no one ever does. I don't think you would take the skill for a what-if scenario like that even, unless maybe hunter skills were so bad and their attack damage so crap that they had nothing better to do than hand out their mana. Neither is the case.

The next scenario is where it restores as much as it costs. Happens at 30 mana. So again, it never happens. As soon as you have anything over 30 mana it's only about how much mana you need to spend surviving that last mob while you wait for the hunter to fill the blue bars up. The more mana the hunter has, the less he needs to use it on himself (because he loses a smaller % of his mana per cast, but he gets 50% minus 15 back for every selfcast). The more mana the healer has, the less he needs to use it there, because the heal too has a static cost. And mana pools grow with every level.

I do not think we should fiddle with the numbers here. The spell has a slider. Sucks - neutral - overpowered. Playing with the numbers will change where the "neutral" happens, but it is ever a small portion of the slider.

20% restore? Grats, you moved the neutral slider to 75SP at least that means I won't be using it in season one anymore.

Oh also, the more SP regen you get on the hunter the easier it is for the spell to become OP.

Just as a last side note, I am not breaking furniture* demanding this spell to be changed/removed, but I do think it's the demonstrably most overpowered ability currently. I post my thoughts as they enter my mind. It may very well be something we should take a look at in a month and not today

*stat derivation ran me out of furniture to break

So you think the best is to replace it?
I wonder if I could code it so that is a one-time use per battle...maybe raising it to 100% restore. That would be better, right? Otherwise I like your idea of a skill that increases aggro/hate on a party member

I think it's better to replace it than trying to find some magical %. I also don't like the idea of hunter as a mana battery. But if we want to allow that, maybe there is some smart way to change the spell. I think Troyen is right either way that it doesn't urgently require your attention. Maybe I'm the only one bothering to exploit it even. In which case it would be needlessly evil to nerf it.

If you actually can code once-per-battle spells I'm afraid I will be spending the rest of the day posting my ideas for fancy abilities. You said we couldn't have a cooldown

Do you think maybe you could introduce a second resource? Call it Awesomeness for now. Characters have very little Awesomeness, but it always heals to full between battles. There is no other way to restore Awesomeness than winning a battle. Then you could have some big fancy abilities using Awesomeness. I guess this is a little too much of a change by now though

No adding another resource would be too much work for sure. Cooldown not sure, I could try but perhaps is not a good idea at this stage indeed
OK will think about a replacement for this then

BTW I think Perfect Balance has come some way, but it's overshadowed by IP. If I didn't have IP I might consider this:

Druid/Hunter
1) Druid gets a little more constitution and a little less will than usual
2) Hunter casts PB on druid
3) Druids casts Eagle's Grace (you didn't rename it yet pff!) on self
4) Druid now has some powerful regen but not more than it could possibly spend, while Eagle's Grace largely negates the health loss

PB would probably turn out a nice way to always have SOME mana. With IP I can have pretty much full mana and health for every fight. I think I'm gonna try this party actually, I don't need to torture myself more with IP abuse :D

I also think I'd like PB to have no SP cost. Anyway what I just posted feels like nice synergy as long as I can fight off the thought "why not just go IP"

I will need to wait for next build though because I don't want to imagine what it's like to fight the goblins with d/h, I've beaten them with d/r and h/r, but it's been the ranger doing the killing every time.