After a few hours of play to level 6, both solo and grouped, I thought it would be nice to expand upon the gameplay surrounding healing potions to make the experience more... satisfying.
Currently, potions are just a hotkey away with a little heal and a cooldown. This cooldown period seems like an afterthought, though, but I know why it's there - to keep us from spamming heals. While that is important for game balance, I think it would be interesting to take it a few steps further:
1. Allow drinking consecutive potions, but, the cooldown period provides a -% reduction in efficiency. For example, if you drink a 2nd potion right after the 1st, it has almost no effect. Drinking a potion half-way through the cooldown will have 50% efficiency, but then boost the cooldown back up to 150% of it's original value. This essentially treats potions as a "toxin", similar to how the Witcher was with all potions - drink too many and it'll negatively effect your health. Perhaps drinking too many during the cooldown will have a -% to max health until the effects wear off (or a support class assists you in idea #2).
2. Provide a meaningful way to reduce/suppress cooldowns. Support classes could assist with this - perhaps there is a type of ointment/skill that can heal + reduce built-up toxins so a player can use another potion sooner. The reagents to this could be more rare than typical reagents for normal healing.
3. Introduce a way to build-up resistance to potion toxicity for a brief period of time - perhaps this would be something to prepare with a crafting skill to bring with you into battle, eating/drinking this would slow toxin buildup so you could heal more in battle, but afterwards you become more susceptible to toxin buildup, and healing potions have reduced efficiency (temporarily) to keep things balanced.
Thoughts?
Currently, potions are just a hotkey away with a little heal and a cooldown. This cooldown period seems like an afterthought, though, but I know why it's there - to keep us from spamming heals. While that is important for game balance, I think it would be interesting to take it a few steps further:
1. Allow drinking consecutive potions, but, the cooldown period provides a -% reduction in efficiency. For example, if you drink a 2nd potion right after the 1st, it has almost no effect. Drinking a potion half-way through the cooldown will have 50% efficiency, but then boost the cooldown back up to 150% of it's original value. This essentially treats potions as a "toxin", similar to how the Witcher was with all potions - drink too many and it'll negatively effect your health. Perhaps drinking too many during the cooldown will have a -% to max health until the effects wear off (or a support class assists you in idea #2).
2. Provide a meaningful way to reduce/suppress cooldowns. Support classes could assist with this - perhaps there is a type of ointment/skill that can heal + reduce built-up toxins so a player can use another potion sooner. The reagents to this could be more rare than typical reagents for normal healing.
3. Introduce a way to build-up resistance to potion toxicity for a brief period of time - perhaps this would be something to prepare with a crafting skill to bring with you into battle, eating/drinking this would slow toxin buildup so you could heal more in battle, but afterwards you become more susceptible to toxin buildup, and healing potions have reduced efficiency (temporarily) to keep things balanced.
Thoughts?
