Need a bit of help with spells and powers

So in my game which is some kind of a hack'n slash the player has a sword and powers.

The sword part is simple. You swing, you have a combo sequence you can give critical strikes etc.

But the power bit is a little tricky. I want my powers to be epic looking and powerful (and very big like kamehameha or well a metorite ). There are many different powers such as laser beams, meteors summon, huge fire blasts,fire-dragon drop and other monstrosities which cant be described in only few words( i planed out around 40 kinds of powers) . Basically what troubles me is how to balance them. I had in mind to use QWE to select powers (you would just assign a power to Q, W or E).

So should i put cooldowns and how long? Or mana usage?

The game is fast paced ( like Risk of Rain ) so should I put weaker powers with smaller cooldown or not?

Any help is helpful (lol), thanks.

I'm doing something similar - I'm giving all my spells a cooldown, mana cost and amount of damage, and I'm just going to wait til I've reached the stage that they're all implemented and then start twiddling the numbers until it feels balanced. Don't know if that helps but that's how I'm doing it!

I'd just say try the way that seems to complement your gameplay well (mana with slow reload, rage that builds up with hits, etc. - you will need some form of cooldown/delay between two attacks anyway). Then, you can just start with a tiny subset of your 40 planned powers, balance them out and get player feedback. This is really just a balancing act. The feel of a special attack will mainly come from your character's animation and SFX by the way.

Good luck!

Nathan

Thanks guys that was pretty helpful