Molten Strike Retrospective

I’m Rory Rackham from the Design & Balance team, and today I’ll be talking about the design process behind Molten Strike, the skill we added to the game in the recent 1.1.3 patch.

Concept

It all started with the need for a Melee skill. While Glacial Cascade was in development (Called Upheaval at the time), I had seismic activity on the brain, and the idea of a Volcano themed attack appealed to me. Creating flying projectiles that did area splash damage was the logical realization of the concept.

Here is my initial “concept artwork”:

Prototypes and Adjustments

This skill moved much faster than usual between concept and completion, as the combination of a strong theme and the need for a new Melee skill in the game caught the imagination of many of the developers involved in approving new skills. We soon had a prototype ready to play with, using the Glutinous Gull/Avian Wretch blood projectile as a stand-in effect.

The initial prototype had the projectiles only doing the fire damage of the attack. Though this was appealing because it created a unique support gem conundrum for players and synergized well with Avatar of Fire, we ended up changing to a more mundane “reduced damage of projectiles” mechanic to enable greater build diversity, and let the skill be more powerful at lower levels.

Originally, projectiles picked locations in a 360° circle around the enemy. This was later changed to a 180° arc to prevent these projectiles landing on top of you, but when used this felt like 90°. It was changed to the current 270°, which if you’ve played with the skill, feels a lot like a 180° arc.

The prototype also had Increased Area of Effect modify only the size of projectiles, not the area they could be placed. This was changed as well, as the damage to a single target from overlapping explosions when you had increased Area of Effect passives was too powerful.

Here is a diagram showing the change that was made:

Russell created the rock effect for the skill, which gave it the nickname “Popcorn Strike” until the rock colour was darkened and he added the molten magma bursts.

Balance and Testing

QA spent some time with the skill, discovering and ironing out the kinks, and pushing the skill to its limits.

Here is a screenshot QA took during testing of a bug with the splash effect looping:

QA and and the balance team tried out the item with simulated characters. The balance of the skill was deemed to be in a good place - Not the most powerful leveling skill, but still an enjoyable and most importantly a unique experience with a variety of possible builds to use with it at end game.

Final touches were placed on the skill, 2D art was created for the gem and the skill icon, and it was placed as a Hillock quest reward so players could obtain and level with it from the get-go.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little insight into the skill creation process, and that you enjoy playing with Molten Strike!