It's always bothered me that I can select, say, fire breath to try to get a read on its area of effect, and fail due to equilibrium without ever actually "using" the skill. The same goes for paradox. I'd rather the failure/backfire/paradox checks happen after actually choosing your target, so I still have a chance to cancel the skill if I wouldn't be able to hit my target anyway.
Unfortunately this looks like a fairly difficult change, so instead what I'd like is the ability to change the indicator for "look" by hitting a key (say, tab). Doing so would cycle through different targeting reticules - the standard "beam," a cone that extends out to the cursor, and a self-centered ball with radius out to the cursor. The targeted "radius of X" ball would require adding some new controls that I think would be excessive, so that could be left out. This way, the "look" feature could be used to check line-of-sight for different attack types, getting rid of some of the guesswork.
Added "look" functionality
Moderator: Moderator
Added "look" functionality
Sorry about all the parentheses (sometimes I like to clarify things).
Re: Added "look" functionality
Honestly, while the targeting change seems harder, I think it'd be worth doing at some point. Better to do things right than to add a kludge. (And targeting needs to be overhauled to fix how targeted invoked magical items work anyway, doesn't it? I don't know the relevant code, but I assume that doing these two things at the same time would make sense.)
The code needs to more precisely define when you've irrevocably committed to using a talent, and delay several things until then. This is something that is going to have to be done eventually anyway to make targeted items work right, so...
The code needs to more precisely define when you've irrevocably committed to using a talent, and delay several things until then. This is something that is going to have to be done eventually anyway to make targeted items work right, so...