I've been playing DotE forever. It's the only game in the Endless series I own, waiting to try EL. Need money for it. Plus, I get Kreyang if I get it, so that's a plus.



Trying not to be selfish, I'm going to call myself a veteran at DotE. I've played from almost the first time it came out. When I started the heroes only included the first few and Troe and Hikensha. I got to see all the new heroes from then on get added, along with the modules and pods and monsters. It's a great feeling. I decided I wanted to get in on it and made this account to do some community work. But what bothered me is that we've gotten all these great updates and additions, but no one seems to talk about the big problem with hero abilities. My three big issues are cooldowns, the usefulness of an ability, and the diversity of abilities.



Cooldowns:



I'm not saying get rid of them. Of course we need cooldowns. But some abilities, namely my biggest pet peeve Paramedic, take a bit too long to wait for. And maybe that's not the issue.

Maybe the cooldown is reasonable on paper, but the payoff from using it just isn't enough to balance how long it takes. Not to mention opening doors to recharge and ability only makes the dungeon

more dangerous. About Paramedic though, I feel like the cooldown should be at least one door shorter. Maybe every other door you could use it. To be honest, it's not even that good

of an ability. I'm sure it looked good on paper, but the fact that it heals such a measly about on health for such a short time takes away the ability to turn the tides of a battle, something all

abilities should be able to do and what I'm sure it was supposed to do in the first place. That leads me to my second point.



Usefulness:



Let's face it. Some abilities are just useless. Maybe they are useful but have a stupidly long cooldown. Maybe they're just horrible in both power and cooldown time. Some of the best abilities with cooldowns that

seem balanced and reasonable are things like Last Supper, Red Plume (I love Skroig for having both of these), Shrapnelizer, and Overclock. Definitely useful abilities when used correctly. And some of them have longer

cooldowns which is okay. But then there's some that don't quite live up to their potential. To name a few, War Face (I think that's what it's called, the one Hikensha uses), Paramedic, and Spider Web. There's

more, but I'll let you guys add to this list. It should be obvious why Spider Web is useless. No point slowing enemies when you gotta be in the room to slow them. War Face works in dark rooms, and anyone who's anyone

who's played the game long enough should know you fight in lit rooms with minor mods called Choke Points. It might be useful if Hikensha, or any sword user for that matter, had an even somewhat high DPS.

And last but certainly not best is Paramedic. I wrote this thread keeping this one in mind to bring up again and again. It's just plain bad. Way too long of a cooldown and no payoff. The healing hardly allows your heroes to survive

large attacks and a few autodoc shards at a Choke Point make any Paramedic user practically useless. I think it should either heal more or get a shorter cooldown. Maybe make Paramedic an ability that can be used

every door. Then it might actually be useful.



Diversity:



Oh boy, I love this. So many heroes with the same abilities. I'm okay with a few of them. Josh and Ragya having Overclocked is logical. They're both witty operators. But Troe and Gork having Psycho Rage and Ken and Hikensha having Sacrifice doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I feel like abilities are an extension of a hero's character and having two very different heroes use the same ability makes them stand out less. Sado-Selfish, Kneecapper, Run Away, Cooking with Gas, all of these suit their user very well and are even amusing or cool to unlock. I just don't see why some characters have to have similar abilities. It honestly makes strategy more dull and dungeons too easy, and most of all makes characters a bit less interesting and unique, which is what DotE seems to be about - Making every hero unique. I feel like this is the weakest argument because I don't have much to back it up, and there aren't even too many heroes with the same abilities. I guess it would be okay if we had a lot more heroes to choose from, because at that point blurring personalities would be a must-do if you wanted to have so many heroes.



I dunno, just something I feel the devs haven't touched on enough.



Paramedic needs a huge buff by the way. Let me know what you think about abilities.

My old thoughts on the matter; full discussion here.

Let's take a look at Warden Mormish, who I think might have the worst two abilities together. Mormish's 1st active gives him less DPS and doesn't synergize with "armchair general". Yes, his ability is horribly balanced with compared to other actives... but "horribly balanced ability" != "horribly balanced character".



Heroes are not solely defined by their active abilities, or even passives. The cost to level, and the stat gain from each level purchase is considerably different from hero to hero, and Mormish gains a lot more DPS/Defense/HP than the other "smart" operators (josh/rakya/opbot). Still, he's a high cost character to level up in the first place (gaining operate at level 4, and having a higher cost to level), making him a hard choice for a starting character, but an excellent choice, past floor 5.



Mormish has the potential to become a "switch" operator that can alternate between frontline and backline operating. No matter where he is, the value of one of his actives will counter-intuitively diminish the value of the other active, but his stats make up for that. A "switch" character with more options is only even more valuable in DotE, given that many floors are easy and many floors are difficult, Mormish can react accordingly. The sad thing is, this isn't readily apparent to my fellow dungeoneers, because you'd not only have to look closely at the hero wikis, but you'd have to do some math (excel recommended) to figure any of this out. I beat Sanitary Pod with Rakya, but if I found him on floor 8, I would have easily valued a level 6 Mormish over a level 7 Rakya.



Abilities do not solely define heroes.

Hi,



I think we generally agree with your remarks

We updated the skills in this direction for the release (/#/dungeon-of-the-endless/forum/46-general/thread/17581-dote-relase-notes see balancing).

But some of them can still be considered as *slightly* underpowered ^^. Yes, Paramedic for example needs a buff, and there should be one in a future update.



We decided to avoid having skills with a cooldown of 1 turn, because we want the player hesitating not only to wonder “is it the right moment to use it in the turn?” but also “is it the right turn to use it? (Or is the next one will be harder, for example)”.

It wasn't our intention to put the skills in DotE at the core of the gameplay. As EndlessRunner said, they are only a part of the elements that constitute a hero. For some of them, skills are really important in their gameplay, for others, not so much. I think we have unique heroes when you take into account all characteristics of each, even if there are some skill repetitions

I think it would be cool if you had a skill which had a cooldown of 1 turn, and the skill was so good or integral to the character that the player actually thinks "should I use it -twice- this turn with science?"

A nice skill I want Rosetta to have is one that pretty much adds "Abundance" to the floor for the next door. 4-6 door cooldown.