Frontline has just been released on EU servers, under the name "Frontline EU".
Brief Description
Frontline is a class based cooperative Hero Survival/RPG where you play a persistent hero character in short battles (around 15 minutes) against waves of AI enemies in different arenas.
To goal in each arena is to survive the waves and then defeat the boss. What enemies and boss you will face is determined randomly, and how many waves and strength of enemies depends on settings for the game in that arena.
By successfully completing games in arenas, your hero will gain levels, improving in different ways and being able to learn new abilities.
Features
Persistent hero characters which are saved and can be resumed at a later time.
Flexible length; play a short game or stay for several depending on available time and preference.
Designed to place focus on combat and teamplay, not distractions.
User friendly no-nonsense UI which shows relevant information, and only that.
Randomization of enemy attack waves to ensure no games are ever identical.
Different game settings available to provide further variety.
Numeric features
9 unique hero classes, each with different niche and playing style.
6 class-specific abilities; 5 usable and 1 passive per hero class.
15 arenas, all thematically distinct and highly detailed.
9 bosses, 3 for each race, with different special abilities.
Video
Notes
As this is a beta, there may still be a few bugs or balance issues. Please report these in this thread or via forum messages.
The map will be published on NA at some point soon. Other regions are yet undecided, it depends on finding suitable maintainers.
I can be contacted on Battle.net using my character code or in channel Frontline, if you wish to play or have questions.
This. There needs to be more maps like this. I don't mean hero survivals, I mean maps with this level of production value.
Comments/Suggestions:
-Not sure if possible (I haven't played around with custom layouts at all), but could the buff icons be placed horizontally across the action bar to centralize the users attention more?
-Where's the boss promo videos?
-looking forward to NA publish
I've recently played your map with a friend of mine. We both enjoyed playing MCpsycho's The last stand and I am referring to this latter game, because there are similarities with your map. I also think that a comparison will help me identify strong points and weak points [from my pov!]:
What I believe is good about 'the last stand':
- the heroes themselves can be played in multiple ways depending on what selection of skills you take. Though there is a promise of 432 combinations, in practise, there are a lot less, but still there are some real awesome combinations that make playing heroes in multiple ways incredibly funny. The heroes are also very diverse to one another. What is really good is that the early abilities are still very useful in some builds. In that sense, it is more about the combination, than simply picking the latest and greatest.
- the levels themselves are 7/10 in terms of fun. Some are very tedious, some are real fun. overall it is still a 7 though. The good thing about the levels is, that there are some tactics involved to beat them. This aspect should however be improved still as overall the feeling is that you simply stand still and beat the hell out of things.
- overall the levelling process gives you a sense of involvement. You learn to play your hero better, you master it, the hero grows stronger after beating certain bosses, you get to select a wider range of abilities, etc. It works out really well.
- I also liked to get the achievements, which made playing the game after a certain point still fun to do to some degree.
- Throughout the levelling process, difficulty is determined by your level of play (how well you understand and control your heroes) and the combination of heroes/abilities.
Your map also has some lovely aspects:
- multiple lvl characters can play 'together' in the same map, which is a smart innovation
- very well polished map. things look great, interface is gorgeous
However, there are some downsides:
- the levels themselves are quite boring: you get a wave of monsters to beat and that's it. You either kill them or not, there is not a sense of genuine strategy. Also if your dps is too low you simply get overwhelmed after a while.
- despite the fact that you can manipulate levels (fewer difficult monsters vs a lot of weaker ones), that difficulty is determined by the number of players, etc, this is immensely difficult to balance properly. I think it would be better to make things less flexible and put effort in creating interesting levels (e.g. monster combinations) that force you to play your character good rather than simply level the character to a point where the content becomes trivial.
- the heroes are also too linear.
From a development perspective I'm guessing you put in too much too soon. I think it will help the map a lot if you take out a lot of stuff and start smaller and build onwards from that. It takes a lot of time developing good heroes and levels. Though you developed a fantastic system, it feels too much like a create units at position Y and be done with it. I don't think that will generate a lot of involvement. At least not for me.
I realize I've been rather critical, but hopefully in a constructive manner. I also have n 8 month old baby on my lap, which doesn't help concentrating either.
Just wanted to compliment you on a lovely map that has great potential! :D
I thought The Last Stand was a horrid, poorly designed map, personally.
I don't agree with your points. If it's boring, well, that's entirely subjective. Strategy is needed more on higher tiers, not so much tier 1 which is intended to be easy.
Yes, it's hard to balance options, but they are options. If you find them too hard do not use them. And while making specific combinations instead of randomly generated content might be interesting, at least the first few times you play, the workload is much greater. And after enough times playing it it turns routine anyway.
Heroes are intentionally not designed to use any sort of tree, where you have to invest points, as people will end up investing points in something and find they don't like it, thus being stuck with a gimped character. At level 20 you have all the abilities, your character may be less unique but it's also not gimped because you made a bad choice at level 1. This relates to my design philosophy and is not something I intend to change.
I don't think I put in too much, and I have no intention of redoing half my work. I've had a lot of time during summer, but I need to get a job, and having a enormous mapping workload is not an option.
I don't mind constructive criticism, though I don't always agree with it. I have my design goals and my time constraints.
Even tho I've left the project sort off, I agree with the words of my fellow partner.
This map took us days and days just planning and writing out stuff.
We've created many theory ideas that didn't see daylight really.
I'm glad you finished it in such a good state, we should play it sometime together really ;)
Barely finding any spare time lately though, especially this week.
And FYI I've done 80% of the map design if people need to know stuff on that just ask.
All fair. I think you and your mates did some really cool stuff, had some super hot ideas, but nailing the sweet spot isn't there yet. maybe next year.
Good luck finding a job. Put this game in your portfolio. Lots of people out there that use their leisure time far less constructive than you. Should give you a competitive edge! :)
Well, thanks for the input. I think the map could be better, things can always be better, but it's still good, I'm rather pleased with it.
I have some job angles going. Hopefully I'll still have time and energy to work on map, though probably won't be making many major changes when I have to work 8 hours a day etc.
hi, i just have one question to the author:
how did you make banks work with that size? one bank for a player is 2 KB.... i read somewhere that banks are limited to 8 KB for a working map...
edit: i meant: 8 KB for 1 player, 4KB for 2 players etc
That must be some old information. I haven't done any special bank magic, just saving integers mostly. I think banks used to be very limited though, but that was later fixed. Clearly it works.
Well, except for that battle.net bug that drops you and deletes your bank... Remember to backup your bank file, Frontline.sc2bank, so if it happens to you, you don't lose all your heroes. Fortunately it seems to be rather rare.
Wow, i played it the first time today. Couldn't stop at all. I played 5 straight hours. So much fun.
I also tried PschoMCs LastStand and i always wanted to have some more RPG in it.
And so here we go: i found your map :) (dont wanna compare it to LastStand though!!)
It's nice to have different classes with different assignments (tank, dmg, heal).
It almost remembers me of Worl of Warcraft ( yeah i played it years ago :( but liked the way you have to be there, do your job and your group needs you )
Except Frontline is in Waves and WoW you got levels/dungeons ( which would be really great, but yeah i know this would be
too much work ( but maybe lets dont forget about this completely in the future))
I have two suggestions (for improvement?) though:
- I play primarily the Medic and it would be so nice if you could click the name/healtbar/portrait to heal someone.
It gets really confusing with much enemies and/or many players.
- I played with 4 people to lvl 20. cant remember the classes right now.
but it seems we had too much crowd control. the enemies just died almost instantly without dealing much damage
so at some level ( about 10+) the tank class was needed almost only for the bosses.
mabye less crowd control spells and more spells to get "agro" for the tank ( if you know what i mean)
But I know this would have to change too much maybe (because for example then you'd have to decrease the cooldown of heal)
I'm just brainstorming, ignore 40% what i say :)
Okay i should go to bed now :)
Well thanks for this great map, I really liked it and I will tell it to all my friends :)
I played with the DT and there were a few things that i found annoying:
1. The camera, being locked on or w/e its called is kinda hard to blink to anything coming from the other part of the map.
2. Most people dont actually move and its kinda hard for any melee to pass through the blockade of people.
There were more but i kinda forgot em :\ . Other than that the map is pretty good.
I've seen the upgrade today. Great for Medic :) But the Shieldbutton doestn seem to work for me. Maybe another one for the energyregeneration?
Have a nice day!
I added Synergy Link buttons today. Don't know why shield doesn't work for some people. More information would help. Are you sure it's not on cooldown? What level of it are you using? Is it only on certain players? Is the player not incapacitated? Does the shield ability still work if you cast it manually?
I see map finally got posted on front page!
Also I uploaded a bigger update today. While I've done a lot of small updates over time, this one adds levels 21-30 as well as tier 6. Since I can't add more learnable abilities beyond 20, I added a very powerful ability to each class that's gained at level 25. You still improve your passive and gain attributes too.
NA version might be updated soon, just want to make sure this update is working as intended first.
A brief list of additions (not bugfixes/balance changes/minor tweaks) since release that I can think of right now:
Levels 21-30.
Another ability gained at level 25.
Tier 5 and 6.
Endless mode, try for a record for how long you survive.
Kittun, non-combat pet gained from Tier 5 & 6.
Angry Kittun, combat pet gained from Endless.
Medic UI that allows easier healing/buffing of allies.
Can gain 20% of levels for playing arenas 1 Tier below yours.
Stuns can be avoided. Omegalisk stuns with Stomp, when you see it casting that, move away from it. Engineer uses Flash Grenade, there's a target indicator that tells you where he's shooting, move out of the area. Stone Zealot only stuns in melee, if you move around it's not an issue.
The stuns are really only an issue if you solo, and aren't paying attention to casting indicators or get yourself trapped in a corner. So I don't share your views there.
I have to say i'm very impressed by this map. I only played it a couple hours and I really like the gameplay, and with so much amount of work, this map really doesn't feel like a beta-stage one. Cheers to the devs.
So, I'm posting this to submit some feedback about the Dark Templar, which is the only class I played for now.
First, a bit about myself, I played a lot of RPGs, and I always liked any class that was sneaky, so, it mean rogues, scouts, thiefs, assassins, ... Anything among those lines.
So this is why i'm playing the Dark Templar. I'm only level 13 actualy.
Now, i'll list off abilites, and give my two cents about each, so you know how I'm feeling about these, and maybe agree with some changes. I'm not saying you MUST change them like i'm saying, but again, it's only my cents, and i'm giving this post as a player feedback.
1. Shadowstride
I really like the way this ability work, exept that you really can't use it to go in the middle of a wave and strike everything at once, because you can't force your way in the middle of the wave in most cases. You can only strike of the edge of waves, which greatly reduces the impact of this ability, which isn't even doing as much damage as any caster's Aoe-spell.
A fix to this would be to allow the dark templar to go through all units while stealth is active ( either by making the dark templar able to "push" units in his way, or to simply go through them ( like drones do when on the same mineral line ).
Also, it is actualy kinda hard to make the dark templar attack an ennemy while he is stealthed. I understand why you force the Dark Templar's autoattack off while stealthed, because people can use it defensively, and I sometimes do use it that way, but even using A+Click doesn't make the DT attack the nearest ennemy.
If you want to attack one precise ennemy ( because this is the only way to make the AoE-damage of this ability ), it is very hard when there's a lot of small-sized units that constently moves towards you nearest ally ( because, after all, you're stealthed, so ennemies completly ignores you ). Because this flow of units constently move, the unit you wanted to attack will probably get body-blocked a second later, thus making the use of this ability very hard under some circunstances.
2. Reaver's Scythe
Ok ability to hold some health while attacking ennemies. But I really feel that this ability should have another utility. I don't have any idea atm of what could be added to it, but I think it should do a little more than just keeping you alive when you attack.
3. Blink Strike
I really like this, because it feels assassin-like.
However, I drop the most point out of it in favor of Crippling Slash, because Crippling Slash's cooldown is way faster, and deals the same damage. So Dps-wise, Crippling Slash is better, plus it reduces ennemy's dps. However, I have spent the minimal points in Blink Strike because I wanted it to gain some mobility. But this is the last ability I level up, ( only when i'm forced to ).
Also, there could be a synergy with Shadowstride. Like I said about Shadowstride, the problem is that you can't strike exactly where you want in a big small-sized ennemy wave. It would be really nice if Blink Strike could trigger Shadowstride when you use it while stealthed, which, used that way, would also deal Blink Strike's damage as aoe damage, at the same range of Shadowstride.
This way, Blink Strike wouldn't feel like useless to put points in, since it could be used for AoE, thus making the player having to choose between putting points in Blink Strike ( more aoe damage ), or Crippling Strike ( more monotarget dps ). However, if you do this, reduce Blink Strike damage if used that way ( Because, let's face it, it would clearly be overpowered ). Making it dealing as much damage as Shadowstride would be ideal, so players still have to put points in Shadowstride AND Blink Strike.
4. Crippling Strike
Nice ability. I don't see any tweak we could do there.
5. Voidstride
Didn't use it for now, since I don't have the level.
However, this really feels too much Shadowstride-like for me. But I don't have any idea about changing it. So i'll say it's ok for now.
6. Death Mark
I don't think this is really useful, but on bosses, and is probably overpowered on bosses. But I don't have any idea of changing it. But it definetly should be changed to something else.
About items, I don't see the point of having two book with the same price/level. Making the 20% one cost like 12 minerals could help to have a difference between the two I think.
Since this is only beta, then i'll say "Keep up the good work". This map clearly deserves to be on front page.
See you.
Frontline has just been released on EU servers, under the name "Frontline EU".
Brief Description
Frontline is a class based cooperative Hero Survival/RPG where you play a persistent hero character in short battles (around 15 minutes) against waves of AI enemies in different arenas.
To goal in each arena is to survive the waves and then defeat the boss. What enemies and boss you will face is determined randomly, and how many waves and strength of enemies depends on settings for the game in that arena.
By successfully completing games in arenas, your hero will gain levels, improving in different ways and being able to learn new abilities.
Features
Numeric features
Video
Notes
Credits
Nash - Lead Developer
Dresnia - Level Design
Hawker - Level Design
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Curse PremiumThis. There needs to be more maps like this. I don't mean hero survivals, I mean maps with this level of production value.
Comments/Suggestions:
-Not sure if possible (I haven't played around with custom layouts at all), but could the buff icons be placed horizontally across the action bar to centralize the users attention more?
-Where's the boss promo videos?
-looking forward to NA publish
@PirateArcade | I make games | Ask me things on Discord
No, you can't do much with the BehaviorBar (atleast if you don't want the game to crash half of the time).
And there aren't many maps like this because they take 3 months to make.
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Curse Premium@Nashadun: Go
bump. for justice.
Mo' people need to spend mo' time on mo' maps.
@PirateArcade | I make games | Ask me things on Discord
cool. Let me know if it got popular. If not, we can maybe have it on the map of the week :)
Hello Nashadun,
I've recently played your map with a friend of mine. We both enjoyed playing MCpsycho's The last stand and I am referring to this latter game, because there are similarities with your map. I also think that a comparison will help me identify strong points and weak points [from my pov!]:
What I believe is good about 'the last stand':
- the heroes themselves can be played in multiple ways depending on what selection of skills you take. Though there is a promise of 432 combinations, in practise, there are a lot less, but still there are some real awesome combinations that make playing heroes in multiple ways incredibly funny. The heroes are also very diverse to one another. What is really good is that the early abilities are still very useful in some builds. In that sense, it is more about the combination, than simply picking the latest and greatest.
- the levels themselves are 7/10 in terms of fun. Some are very tedious, some are real fun. overall it is still a 7 though. The good thing about the levels is, that there are some tactics involved to beat them. This aspect should however be improved still as overall the feeling is that you simply stand still and beat the hell out of things.
- overall the levelling process gives you a sense of involvement. You learn to play your hero better, you master it, the hero grows stronger after beating certain bosses, you get to select a wider range of abilities, etc. It works out really well.
- I also liked to get the achievements, which made playing the game after a certain point still fun to do to some degree.
- Throughout the levelling process, difficulty is determined by your level of play (how well you understand and control your heroes) and the combination of heroes/abilities.
Your map also has some lovely aspects:
- multiple lvl characters can play 'together' in the same map, which is a smart innovation
- very well polished map. things look great, interface is gorgeous
However, there are some downsides:
- the levels themselves are quite boring: you get a wave of monsters to beat and that's it. You either kill them or not, there is not a sense of genuine strategy. Also if your dps is too low you simply get overwhelmed after a while.
- despite the fact that you can manipulate levels (fewer difficult monsters vs a lot of weaker ones), that difficulty is determined by the number of players, etc, this is immensely difficult to balance properly. I think it would be better to make things less flexible and put effort in creating interesting levels (e.g. monster combinations) that force you to play your character good rather than simply level the character to a point where the content becomes trivial.
- the heroes are also too linear.
From a development perspective I'm guessing you put in too much too soon. I think it will help the map a lot if you take out a lot of stuff and start smaller and build onwards from that. It takes a lot of time developing good heroes and levels. Though you developed a fantastic system, it feels too much like a create units at position Y and be done with it. I don't think that will generate a lot of involvement. At least not for me.
I realize I've been rather critical, but hopefully in a constructive manner. I also have n 8 month old baby on my lap, which doesn't help concentrating either.
Just wanted to compliment you on a lovely map that has great potential! :D
@RodrigoAlves: Go
It's at 716 hours, page 1 of Custom category, so I'd say it's popular.
@Morkph: Go
I thought The Last Stand was a horrid, poorly designed map, personally.
I don't agree with your points. If it's boring, well, that's entirely subjective. Strategy is needed more on higher tiers, not so much tier 1 which is intended to be easy.
Yes, it's hard to balance options, but they are options. If you find them too hard do not use them. And while making specific combinations instead of randomly generated content might be interesting, at least the first few times you play, the workload is much greater. And after enough times playing it it turns routine anyway.
Heroes are intentionally not designed to use any sort of tree, where you have to invest points, as people will end up investing points in something and find they don't like it, thus being stuck with a gimped character. At level 20 you have all the abilities, your character may be less unique but it's also not gimped because you made a bad choice at level 1. This relates to my design philosophy and is not something I intend to change.
I don't think I put in too much, and I have no intention of redoing half my work. I've had a lot of time during summer, but I need to get a job, and having a enormous mapping workload is not an option.
I don't mind constructive criticism, though I don't always agree with it. I have my design goals and my time constraints.
@Nashadun: Go
Even tho I've left the project sort off, I agree with the words of my fellow partner. This map took us days and days just planning and writing out stuff. We've created many theory ideas that didn't see daylight really.
I'm glad you finished it in such a good state, we should play it sometime together really ;)
Barely finding any spare time lately though, especially this week. And FYI I've done 80% of the map design if people need to know stuff on that just ask.
PS : Hook me up on Skype sometime Nash ;)
@Nashadun:
All fair. I think you and your mates did some really cool stuff, had some super hot ideas, but nailing the sweet spot isn't there yet. maybe next year.
Good luck finding a job. Put this game in your portfolio. Lots of people out there that use their leisure time far less constructive than you. Should give you a competitive edge! :)
Well, thanks for the input. I think the map could be better, things can always be better, but it's still good, I'm rather pleased with it.
I have some job angles going. Hopefully I'll still have time and energy to work on map, though probably won't be making many major changes when I have to work 8 hours a day etc.
hi, i just have one question to the author: how did you make banks work with that size? one bank for a player is 2 KB.... i read somewhere that banks are limited to 8 KB for a working map...
edit: i meant: 8 KB for 1 player, 4KB for 2 players etc
That must be some old information. I haven't done any special bank magic, just saving integers mostly. I think banks used to be very limited though, but that was later fixed. Clearly it works.
Well, except for that battle.net bug that drops you and deletes your bank... Remember to backup your bank file, Frontline.sc2bank, so if it happens to you, you don't lose all your heroes. Fortunately it seems to be rather rare.
Hey there!
Wow, i played it the first time today. Couldn't stop at all. I played 5 straight hours. So much fun.
I also tried PschoMCs LastStand and i always wanted to have some more RPG in it. And so here we go: i found your map :) (dont wanna compare it to LastStand though!!)
It's nice to have different classes with different assignments (tank, dmg, heal). It almost remembers me of Worl of Warcraft ( yeah i played it years ago :( but liked the way you have to be there, do your job and your group needs you ) Except Frontline is in Waves and WoW you got levels/dungeons ( which would be really great, but yeah i know this would be too much work ( but maybe lets dont forget about this completely in the future))
I have two suggestions (for improvement?) though:
- I play primarily the Medic and it would be so nice if you could click the name/healtbar/portrait to heal someone. It gets really confusing with much enemies and/or many players.
- I played with 4 people to lvl 20. cant remember the classes right now. but it seems we had too much crowd control. the enemies just died almost instantly without dealing much damage so at some level ( about 10+) the tank class was needed almost only for the bosses. mabye less crowd control spells and more spells to get "agro" for the tank ( if you know what i mean) But I know this would have to change too much maybe (because for example then you'd have to decrease the cooldown of heal)
I'm just brainstorming, ignore 40% what i say :)
Okay i should go to bed now :)
Well thanks for this great map, I really liked it and I will tell it to all my friends :)
Have a good day!
I played with the DT and there were a few things that i found annoying: 1. The camera, being locked on or w/e its called is kinda hard to blink to anything coming from the other part of the map. 2. Most people dont actually move and its kinda hard for any melee to pass through the blockade of people. There were more but i kinda forgot em :\ . Other than that the map is pretty good.
I've seen the upgrade today. Great for Medic :) But the Shieldbutton doestn seem to work for me. Maybe another one for the energyregeneration?
Have a nice day!
I added Synergy Link buttons today. Don't know why shield doesn't work for some people. More information would help. Are you sure it's not on cooldown? What level of it are you using? Is it only on certain players? Is the player not incapacitated? Does the shield ability still work if you cast it manually?
I see map finally got posted on front page! Also I uploaded a bigger update today. While I've done a lot of small updates over time, this one adds levels 21-30 as well as tier 6. Since I can't add more learnable abilities beyond 20, I added a very powerful ability to each class that's gained at level 25. You still improve your passive and gain attributes too.
NA version might be updated soon, just want to make sure this update is working as intended first.
A brief list of additions (not bugfixes/balance changes/minor tweaks) since release that I can think of right now:
u gotta fix the bosses all they do is trap you in a stun perminatly and then you die
@morphman220: Go
Stuns can be avoided. Omegalisk stuns with Stomp, when you see it casting that, move away from it. Engineer uses Flash Grenade, there's a target indicator that tells you where he's shooting, move out of the area. Stone Zealot only stuns in melee, if you move around it's not an issue.
The stuns are really only an issue if you solo, and aren't paying attention to casting indicators or get yourself trapped in a corner. So I don't share your views there.
Hello,
I have to say i'm very impressed by this map. I only played it a couple hours and I really like the gameplay, and with so much amount of work, this map really doesn't feel like a beta-stage one. Cheers to the devs.
So, I'm posting this to submit some feedback about the Dark Templar, which is the only class I played for now.
First, a bit about myself, I played a lot of RPGs, and I always liked any class that was sneaky, so, it mean rogues, scouts, thiefs, assassins, ... Anything among those lines. So this is why i'm playing the Dark Templar. I'm only level 13 actualy.
Now, i'll list off abilites, and give my two cents about each, so you know how I'm feeling about these, and maybe agree with some changes. I'm not saying you MUST change them like i'm saying, but again, it's only my cents, and i'm giving this post as a player feedback.
1. Shadowstride
I really like the way this ability work, exept that you really can't use it to go in the middle of a wave and strike everything at once, because you can't force your way in the middle of the wave in most cases. You can only strike of the edge of waves, which greatly reduces the impact of this ability, which isn't even doing as much damage as any caster's Aoe-spell.
A fix to this would be to allow the dark templar to go through all units while stealth is active ( either by making the dark templar able to "push" units in his way, or to simply go through them ( like drones do when on the same mineral line ).
Also, it is actualy kinda hard to make the dark templar attack an ennemy while he is stealthed. I understand why you force the Dark Templar's autoattack off while stealthed, because people can use it defensively, and I sometimes do use it that way, but even using A+Click doesn't make the DT attack the nearest ennemy. If you want to attack one precise ennemy ( because this is the only way to make the AoE-damage of this ability ), it is very hard when there's a lot of small-sized units that constently moves towards you nearest ally ( because, after all, you're stealthed, so ennemies completly ignores you ). Because this flow of units constently move, the unit you wanted to attack will probably get body-blocked a second later, thus making the use of this ability very hard under some circunstances.
2. Reaver's Scythe
Ok ability to hold some health while attacking ennemies. But I really feel that this ability should have another utility. I don't have any idea atm of what could be added to it, but I think it should do a little more than just keeping you alive when you attack.
3. Blink Strike
I really like this, because it feels assassin-like.
However, I drop the most point out of it in favor of Crippling Slash, because Crippling Slash's cooldown is way faster, and deals the same damage. So Dps-wise, Crippling Slash is better, plus it reduces ennemy's dps. However, I have spent the minimal points in Blink Strike because I wanted it to gain some mobility. But this is the last ability I level up, ( only when i'm forced to ).
Also, there could be a synergy with Shadowstride. Like I said about Shadowstride, the problem is that you can't strike exactly where you want in a big small-sized ennemy wave. It would be really nice if Blink Strike could trigger Shadowstride when you use it while stealthed, which, used that way, would also deal Blink Strike's damage as aoe damage, at the same range of Shadowstride.
This way, Blink Strike wouldn't feel like useless to put points in, since it could be used for AoE, thus making the player having to choose between putting points in Blink Strike ( more aoe damage ), or Crippling Strike ( more monotarget dps ). However, if you do this, reduce Blink Strike damage if used that way ( Because, let's face it, it would clearly be overpowered ). Making it dealing as much damage as Shadowstride would be ideal, so players still have to put points in Shadowstride AND Blink Strike.
4. Crippling Strike
Nice ability. I don't see any tweak we could do there.
5. Voidstride
Didn't use it for now, since I don't have the level.
However, this really feels too much Shadowstride-like for me. But I don't have any idea about changing it. So i'll say it's ok for now.
6. Death Mark
I don't think this is really useful, but on bosses, and is probably overpowered on bosses. But I don't have any idea of changing it. But it definetly should be changed to something else.
About items, I don't see the point of having two book with the same price/level. Making the 20% one cost like 12 minerals could help to have a difference between the two I think.
Since this is only beta, then i'll say "Keep up the good work". This map clearly deserves to be on front page. See you.
-Destrid.584