Shadow PIP Revamp: Suggestion to better management
First off, this concept is a response to the increasing RNG factors in both PvP and PvE; although written with the former as main perspective I see great potential for it in PvE challenges.
Introduction: This is aimed at the shadow-enhanced spell, the school ones first introduced in Darkmoor and which were further developed in Polaris and Mirage. Expanding Shadow PIP's into regular non-Shadow spells was a creative twist, and a great way to ensure we continue to receive spells of our school; however it was also a major twist in gameplay as for the first time we couldn't tell for certain when we can cast that card.
Although we always had Power PIPs which is also based on chance, they were a shortcut and we could always wait building on reg pips in order to cast higher rank magic; by the time we had spells that truly required to have Power PIPs we were all too used to gaining them through base chance and gear, not to mention our wands ensured at least 1 Power PIP per battle.
Unlike our previous power system, a player can wait for 5 rounds and still not be able to cast that spell. In theory, one could wait a whole battle and never get a Shadow and the bigger issue: anyone can get that powerful PIP at anytime, by surprise. That sound somewhat troublesome when you think that magician could harm your team to unrecoverable extents if he uses that PIP.
Proposed Solution: In essence there's no way to ban Shadow from the game, they're an essential part of the high-lvl gameplay. Thus I suggest to change the way we get access to these spells, the Shadow PIPs. The idea I put together some months ago is of a second Shadow bar.
This bar would function similarly to the build-up system we had with Power PIPs to cast spells, every round it'd fill a portion of it with a dark bar until the meter is full which will then grant the player a Shadow PIP. I loosely imagined the conversion of our current Shadow PIP chance into stats boosting this bar... although still random, they're sure to give you better ways to manage it.
Your base Shadow chance (a value we're still unaware of) would determinate how much the meter fills per round, in order to keep the random factor the minimum percent the bar will fill is half of your base stat. In example let's consider our base Shadow to be 25%, without any gear your meter will fill a random value between 12.5% and 25% of its total.
Your Bonus Shadow would also play a role, though in a more reliable way than your base chance. The Bonus Shadow from gear would be added in both ends in its full value, so if you got 9% Bonus Shadow it increase your max gain per round to 34% but the nine would also be added in full to the minimum end making it 21.5%.
Such a system would also make this stat far more reliable/useful and thus desirable, as sadly the small boosts we have today are hardly worth the sacrifices.
Thank you for reading thus far! I hope KI can see our concerns, and maybe it'll inspire them to some ideas to rework Shadow Magic.
