The spell has a high magic energy cost, and shoots a small blast with a low/reduced clash rate that has NO impact damage. However if it hits, it applies that magic’s debuff. The intensity and duration of the debuff is scaled to how difficult it would normally be to apply it.
For instance, if the player has fire magic and uses hex, the burn effect will be stronger and longer-lasting than normal since burning has no health percentage requirements. If the player uses lightning with hex, the paralysis would last half as long as usual (2.5 seconds instead of 5), since paralysis normally requires an attack to do 33% of a player’s max health in a single hit. For any magic that has no special debuff, hex will apply bleeding instead.
Keep in mind that this spell would be costly to use and easy to dodge/block, as stated in the beginning. Also, effects that normally require a magic combo to activate (like scribed) would require you to hit your targets with the first debuff before you could use hex for its full effect. If you use paper hex on a non-inked target, it would apply bleeding instead of scribed. You can still apply combo effects with hex, but they would require their usual setup.
If you're interested, I have an idea for a side quest to unlock the spell.
This would likely be a midgame sidequest (but closer to the early side).
It starts with you hearing gossip about some dark wizard that’s been terrorizing the local town by blinding them with ink. You meet with one of the guards that then tasks you with capturing this dark wizard and bringing them back to town to face justice. You eventually track them down and find them in their hideout, only to realize that they aren’t really much of a dark wizard at all. They explain that they’ve just been using their unique spell to pull pranks on the local townsfolk, but you fill them in on how their pranks haven’t been well-received. You bring them back to town and they apologize to the guard, explaining that it was all just a prank. The guard isn’t convinced, so the “dark wizard” gives their spell scroll to the player to prove to the guard that they won’t be pranking people anymore. The guard also pays you for the bounty (but it wasn’t much since they hadn’t been killing anyone).
The main idea here is still the spell itself. I won’t mind if the side quest part of the idea is thrown out since it didn’t take long for me to come up with it.
Won’t the wet debuff make you cold and slightly slower in AO? Oh and the debuff would be stronger AND last longer if it has no special requirements, so there’s that as well.
By the way, if 2.5 seconds paralysis is still too long for lightning’s hex, it could be reduced further. I’m willing to tweak it if that’s the case. Keep in mind that this spell would still be very costly (energy-wise) and doesn’t win most clashes.
The intensity isn’t the only thing that can be boosted. It can also affect the duration. The duration just depends on how much it normally would be, then if there’s normally a 33% damage requirement, the duration is less than normal. I previously said it would be cut in half, but if that’s too much it could be cut down to a third.
Ok I can either improve my poison to wither people to the bone or I can use Water to make someone wet for a longer amount of time until they just charge.
There’s a clear imbalance in gains which isn’t typically bad for a spell, this just doesn’t even sound cool. Couldn’t you do the same as hex with just a 20% blast while also not losing impact?
Nobody would use this for anything but lightning or extremely niche strategies with DoT magics.
Rather than using hex with water, you could use water magic normally, then hex with ice to freeze for longer. I brought up the scribed example in the suggestion itself, but it would work with anything else. Also, if you used hex with water, being wet for longer would leave you more vulnerable to stuff like ice and lightning. Also if it was a more “intense” form of the debuff, it might also boost the damage of the positive interactions against wet targets.
But you gotta agree that literally nobody will use this for anything but a DoT magic no matter how much you change its interactions because it’s just not as worth it.(Tied for Second most cleared status effect (soaked) in the game btw)
Do you think it would be op for lightning? what about Gold which may slow you and increase bleed duration like damn bro that’s kinda op as in obliteration op. And then you have to apply the debuff first for the lightning which means 33% of your opponents hp then apply the hex to make it last for longer? As a lightning user, I’m better off using a barrage after a paralyze even with soaked.
You cold in this situation create different effects for different magics like Shadow actually blinding you light applying a DOT due to the Hex and Wind applying EXTRA knockback.
It seems as if you are lacking creativity thinking about the ways this can be applied ingame