Tested Bill just now with my ranger. Even standing still, I couldn't pump enough ice shards into Bill to heal him faster than he was deteriorating. This is especially worrisome as a ranger with low mana, which I ran out of quickly while trying to heal Bill.

I'd like to hear from a high int mage to see how they do with Bill. He can't really be healed in pve combat due to mobs being in the way, so healing him (other than using Snow Globe) seems to be reserved for in between groups of mobs. That's a problem, since he's so low by that point that I can't heal him enough to matter.

Good points. With Bill, it's either he's getting overhealed or not being healed at all.

My idea is that bill shouldn't melt when you use the skill that covers him in an ice cube, but that's another story.

I think people won't even bother to heal him, as they would just wait for the cooldown to end and re-cast bill.

Took bill off my bar for the first time in ages last night. He was totally useless. I couldn't even keep him alive with snow globe since he melted faster than the timer for it. I used to use him as an extra tank along with the turkey leg but now will have to revert to poison aoe and retribution if mobs get on me. Am gonna miss him since we been friends a long time.

OK, I have made some tweaks to "On the Rocks" that basically double his healing rate when he is frozen. This change, coupled with the Ice Bolt/Shard healing increase change in the current build make Chill Bill quite viable. We will look into giving Ice Shot a similar heal mechaninc as Ice Bolt/Shards. Snow Globe already has a great deal of healing, and works quite well even when he is surrounded by mobs (even at level 100).

One thing to note, if you plan to summon up and forget about Bill, then yeah, he won't last long. Part of the "Summoner" game is keeping your summoned units alive and activating cool powers so they can do your bidding for you. It takes skill and effort to get Chill Bill to kill monsters and not die. I just played with the changes I made for about an hour and he died on me twice in that time, and that was because I started to neglect him.

Chill Bill is intended for mage types with a good deal of INT, so Ranger and Fighter types may have a harder time using him. We have Fighter and Ranger summoned units planned and in the works, but these take a lot of time since they usually require a great deal of custom code, art, and design time to make them fun.

When Bill was first introduced into the game I did a lot of testing to see if he was viable for my mage and found him distinctly lacking. He does not make up for the loss of DPS from skills given up to have a full Bill build. Plus Bill isn't the sharpest icicle hanging off the roof and I found him getting in the way more than he was helping so I gave up on him from a mage perspective.

The bolt heals don't work because the mob AI moves across the line of the spell and interrupts by changing the attack focus. Really I would suggest giving up on the bolt heal mechanic, unless you are going to change the AI that makes it useless.

I played Parkaboy for 40 levels as a Frozen Summoner and had a blast with a Bill and Bait combo that worked well for everything but bosses. The dps as a summoner was just too low and the bait doesn't stand up too well against most bosses. There are more efficient ways to tackle the bosses and the name of the game in high end DR is flexibility.

So I have done some testing of Melting Bill and I really tried to have an open mind about an adjustment that seemed unneeded. Yes, I can keep Bill alive with Snow Globe but the micro management isn't fun it's bloody tedious.

Here are my suggestions to help balance out Melting Bill:

1.Combine Nippy Twigs and Snow Globe into a single skill and lower it's cooldown to 20 seconds. Remove the bolt/shard heal mechanic.

2. Bill's AI is really often infuriating because when you want him to be attacking he runs away and stands at the player's side ...waiting. And now he waits and melts away his health. Part of the problem is the AI behaviors of the ranged mobs (spitters etc) that have huge attack range and just sit out of player range plugging away. Bill needs to have better "eyesight" to see those ranged mobs and to aggro them instead of retreating. His general aggressiveness should get bumped up a notch. I want him to be a Pit Bull not a Toy Poodle.

3. I think that On The Rocks is pretty good as it is, it doesn't heal but it stops damage and stops melt, no need to add the healing factor if you make Snow Globe better.

Great feedback! I hadn't really been focused on the dps tradeoff lately. We are thinking of ways to improve Bill's AI behavior and abilities to make him a better option in that regard too.

Melting Bill: Part Two

So I got some time this morning to try Melting Bill with MamaA, a level 100 Shadow Mage. Generally with Mama I use AoE's and a mix of debuffs/resists and make sure that I keep moving. You can't hurt what you cannot hit, right?

Anyway, I started off by changing to an Ice Sorcerer to try out the healing mechanism. I was running in Rasputin 1 which is a mix of Divine and Fire so from an elemental standpoint one might think I would have some advantages. Not so much...

Biggest problem? Mana cost of the bolt/shard spells is way too high, even with a starting point of 50k mana I was often below 50% after a group. This drives up potion usage and for lower level players might make purchase of skills tougher. Or you WAIT for your mana (and/or health) to regen and all the while Bill is losing health. Or you WAIT for the cooldown timers, once again Bill is still losing health. It became a lot of spell managment to keep him alive and to keep any sort of pace in engaging groups of mobs. So Bill died often and Mama did too because all of the effort keeping him alive dropped my dps(all my offense was shards/shadowlightning) or led me to forget to recast bluescreen... /facepalm So I tried the change to Hydrostatic Seer (same build but with Shadow Bolt instead of Ice Shards) to see if I could do a little better with more shadow damage. Didn't make much difference. Sometimes I could keep Bill alive for 1-2 groups in a row but the 3rd group would be stupid hard and kill him in seconds. Then I'm left without any bait or any AoE's or debuffs so I have to kite. Again any sort of pace is interrupted and that's ultimately frustrating instead of a challenge. A well geared level 100 character should NEVER feel weak against the game in a normal dungeon on normal difficulty.

There is more here than just Bill seeming as if he is underpowered but I don't want to veer too far off topic. To sum up, there is no need to adopt this mechanic at all from the players perspective, it only makes us weaker against the game system. If anything Bill's design and mechanic needs buffed not nerfed.



Edited by Mama_Anarchia (09/17/08 02:51 PM)