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#594068 21/10/16 01:11 AM
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Let's analyze the Combat Abilities and form some opinions.

The options are:
Weapons
Dual Wielding: +3% damage, +1% Critical Chance
Ranged: +3% damage, +2% Accuracy
Single-Handed: +4% damage, +2% Accuracy
Two-Handed: +3% damage, +3% Critical Damage

Defence
Magic Armour: +7% on first point, 2% per additional
Physical Armour: +7% on first point, +2% per additional
Vitality: +4% on first point, +1% per additional

Skills
Aerotheurge: +1 and +3% damage to Magical Armour
Geomancer: +1 and +2% to all Poison Damage. +1 and +3% bonus to Fortifying Physical Armour
Huntsman: +4% high ground bonus, -4% low ground penalty (minimum of 0 penalty), +10% Range Bonus
Hydrosophist: +1 and +3% to restoring vitality and Fortifying Magical Armour
Necromancer: +1 and +3% self-heal from all vitality damage done.
Pyrokinetic: +1 and +4% to all Fire Damage
Scoundrel: +3% Critical Multiplier, +5% Movement
Warfare: +1 and +3% damage to Physical Armour

A few observations:
* Weapon Combat Abilities offer nice consistent damage increases, provided the corresponding weapon type is being used in the attack. i.e. Works for weapon attacks and abilities, does NOT work for other damaging spells/attacks.
* Defense Abilities have a MUCH higher value for the first point spent
* Skills currently allow the user to learn all spells with just 1 point invested. After the first point, the only bonus gained is more of the associated passive.

Individual Analysis
Dual Wielding:
+3% damage bonus is competitive
+Applies to any attacks and weapon-based skills
+Crit chance amounts to a 0.5% average damage increase with the base crit mult of 50%
-Crit chance damage bonus is small and useless on any Backstab or Enraged attacks
-Doesn't apply to non-weapon abilities

Overall, this is the best pick for melee users using 2 weapons.

Ranged:
+Great stat increases, very competitive
+Accuracy is a much stronger boost than crit chance/mult.
-Accuracy bonus is useless if hit chance is already at 100%

This will generally be the best pick when using Bows/XBows.

Single-Handed:
+Best damage stat increase of the weapon abilities
-Weapon skill costs aren't reduced for 1H, but damage is halved (compared to 2H/dual-wield)
-Bug: Doesn't affect wands, as incorrectly stated in-game

This ability is an under-performer in the current environment due to anti-synergy with weapon skills and not working with wands.

Two-Handed:
+Provides the most extra damage, if it crits
+Strong synergy with Rage.
-With the VERY low default crit chance, the crit damage boost is almost completely wasted.

If using a 2H weapon this is still your best bet, but a dual wielding style is preferable if weapon quality is the same. Either way, the damage difference between 2-handed and dual-wield is very minor as the 3% boost to all damage from both is the major factor.

Defence
I never felt the need to increase my defence. If one does feel it is necessary, these abilities are mostly 1-hit wonders as the initial bonus is large and drops off fast, especially for Vitality.
Vitality has the bonus of keeping you alive longer through both types of damage (and your vitality pool will likely be much larger than your armors), however, more armour means you will be suffer from CC and statuses less, and that is an important factor.

Skills
I do not wish to debate any 1-point Skill inclusions, as gaining access to ALL abilities from a school is obviously useful, only further points will be discussed.
Of note, a current feature allows learning abilities if equipping gear with +1 to a Skill. This can be leveraged to invest no points on under-performing passives while still being able to learn the most-desired set of moves. The elf racial can sometimes be leveraged for the same purpose, when the situation presents itself.

Aerotheurge:
+Affects every type of Magic Damage
-Only affects the damage done to Magic Armour, which many enemies don't have at all
-Doesn't affect damage done to vitality, and enemies have much more vitality than Magic Armour
-Encourages bad behavior of having Magic users target enemies with Magic Armour

This ability appears good at first glance, but is a bad choice to invest in as it only buffs the portion of the damage hitting Magic Armour. Have your physical attacks target mages, and skip this very under-performing Skill.

Geomancer:
+Bonus to Poison damage and Physical Armour restoration
-No primarily Poison weapons
-Few Poison abilities and low Poison bonus
-Additional armour component only applies 1 skill, Fortify

This passive feels very underwhelming because of the limitations and low numbers.

Huntsman:
+Big range bonus
+Competitive damage bonus
+Applies to ALL abilities/attacks done from highground
+Preferred pick on most Mages and sometimes Rangers
+Points synergize with default 20% high-ground advantage
+High ground achievable for most tough fights
-Useless without highground/lowground.

The best pick for Mages and sometimes Rangers due to its high damage, availability, and utility.

Tip: This Skill pairs well with Teleporting enemies to low ground or using mobility skills to gain high ground.

Hydrosophist:
+Nice magnitudes
+Numerous healing abilities available
+Fits well for a healer/cleric playstyle
+Good synergy between protective and recovery elements
-Boosting healing feels unnecessary
-Hydrosophist Ice Abilities left out in the cold.

Necromancer:
+Good magnitude on numbers
-Only kicks in when an amour is fully depleted
-Scales off of damage done, but reduces damage potential
-More vitality healing isn't usually helpful/necessary

As an aside, does anyone know if Hydrosophist bonus affects this bonus?

Pyrokinetic:
+Large bonus (+1 and +4% is very competative)
+Affects wand, stave, and skill damage
-Requires Fire damage type
-Reduces viable weapons significantly (Fire wands/staves only)
-Fire wands have lower base damage than same-level wands of other elemental types
-Countered by Fire Immune enemies (Phoenix Dive is prevalent)

Scoundrel:
+Movement bonus provides nice and significant utility
+Damage bonus applies to all crits
-Damage bonus is very poor compared to weapon passives and requires Crits/Backstabs

If you will crit on most of your attacks (due to Backstab mechanic) this is the preferred dagger pick over dual wielding. However, I'd strongly recommend just using Strength weapons instead as they have much higher base damage without requiring the user to get behind the target or invest a talent point in Backstab.

Warfare:
+Affects every type of Physical Damage
-Only affects the damage done to Physical Armour, which some enemies don't have at all
-Doesn't affect damage done to vitality, and enemies have much more vitality than Physical Armour
-Encourages bad behavior of having physical attacks target enemies with Physical Armour

Warfare is the Physical Armour counterpart to Aerotheurge. However, physical damage characters have MUCH better options from Weapon points. Skip additional points in Warfare in favor of your favorite weapon type, as the damage bonus from Warfare is abysmal by comparison.

Conclusion
There are many Combat Abilities, but few viable options to place additional points in. Some might think the passive bonuses are too weak, but I am more concerned with the imbalance of power. I'd like to see the under-performing Combat Point options placed in-line so as to be competitive picks.
The current system also causes a player to mostly dump all extra points into the same stat, which is pretty boring.

In the case of the abilities that require a specific niche to gain their damage boost, I would expect a much larger compensating number to make them attractive over the consistent picks, such as the Weapon Abilities. I think no number for Warfare/Aerotheurge passives would make them attractive, given their limitations.

A few options I think may help;
Require more than a single skill point to learn some skills.
Require an active skill point(s) to USE a skill. This would help far more. (prevents elf/gear abusers from having all skills with no skill points spent)
Increase the effectiveness of skills based on point investment in the corresponding Skill (not just damage or healing)
Revamp unattractive and weak Combat Abilities to have more interesting effects.

What is your take on the current Combat Ability system community?

error3 #594070 21/10/16 01:21 AM
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g a r b a g e

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Originally Posted by chocolate
g a r b a g e


I was hoping for a bit more discussion. Perhaps you can elaborate on that?

error3 #594072 21/10/16 01:31 AM
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I really like this thread smile

Bit busy at the moment, but I'll formulate my own wall of text in response later.

error3 #594077 21/10/16 03:04 AM
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The best defense is a good offense. This is because the defense abilities are lousy.

Vitality

The Vitality ability is useless. If you start out at level 1, with your +4% Vitality, that will amount to under 4 HP. The two Viscious Voidlings you meet near the start can do multiple attacks of 9 damage each. So that single point into Vitality will help you survive one half of one attack from the weakest enemy in the game.

No, that one point will not be any better 20 levels into the game either, because even though your scaling health gives that 4% more of a bang, it's still just 4%, and enemy damage will scale as well.

Vitality maxes out at 18%. You would need to dump in so many ability points into vitality that you'd sacrifice your combat prowess.

***

Originally Posted by error3

Aerotheurge:
+Affects every type of Magic Damage
-Only affects the damage done to Magic Armour, which many enemies don't have at all
-Doesn't affect damage done to vitality, and enemies have much more vitality than Magic Armour
-Encourages bad behavior of having Magic users target enemies with Magic Armour

This ability appears good at first glance, but is a bad choice to invest in as it only buffs the portion of the damage hitting Magic Armour. Have your physical attacks target mages, and skip this very under-performing Skill.

[snip]

Warfare:
+Affects every type of Physical Damage
-Only affects the damage done to Physical Armour, which some enemies don't have at all
-Doesn't affect damage done to vitality, and enemies have much more vitality than Physical Armour
-Encourages bad behavior of having physical attacks target enemies with Physical Armour


I'm going to gently contest your dismissal of Warfare and Aerothurge as being bad for their bonuses applying to physical and magical armor. It will not always be the case that you will face enemies which only have physical armor and no magical armor, or vice versa. There are times when you will be facing enemies with both.

Plus, even in the instances where there are enemies with only one type, after you successfully kill them, there will likely still be enemies remaining which have armor, and then the bonuses will matter.

Plus sometimes it might not always be possible or feasible to go for an enemy with no armour resistant to your damage type due to geography or surfaces or the amount of AP you have, and targeting an enemy which is close but has armor might be the better approach than walking into the middle of an enemy group to try and reach an enemy which has none.

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Originally Posted by Stabbey

I'm going to gently contest your dismissal of Warfare and Aerothurge as being bad for their bonuses applying to physical and magical armor. It will not always be the case that you will face enemies which only have physical armor and no magical armor, or vice versa. There are times when you will be facing enemies with both.

Plus, even in the instances where there are enemies with only one type, after you successfully kill them, there will likely still be enemies remaining which have armor, and then the bonuses will matter.

Plus sometimes it might not always be possible or feasible to go for an enemy with no armour resistant to your damage type due to geography or surfaces or the amount of AP you have, and targeting an enemy which is close but has armor might be the better approach than walking into the middle of an enemy group to try and reach an enemy which has none.


This is a fair point, but isn't he main reason for my assessment.

Even when you are attacking an enemy that does have the armour relevant to Warfare/Aerothurge, the damage bonuses will only apply to the armour portion, and the enemy will have far more health than armour.

For example, Patrolman Kraus, representative of the standard Archer Guard, has 168 health, 61 armour, and 56 magic armour.

That's 229 effective health against pure physical.
And 224 effective health against pure magic.
~73%/75% of his effective health will be completely unaffected by Warfare/Aerothurge, respectively.
If we reduce the bonus to the portion of our damage that actually gets boosted, we get +0.25 and 0.75%, which is a pretty abysmal bonus.
And keep in mind, this is when we are forced to hit someone that has armour to our damage type, which we actively try to avoid.
Granted, an enemy that has purely 1 armour type will have somewhat better ratios, but the amount of boost we see will always be quite low.
If we examine the toughest boss we've seen, I believe it's 500 armor to 2k health, so only 20% effectiveness, which is even worse!

At the very least those who would consider Warfare should instead invest in a Weapon skill. Since their best, average, and worst cases are all >= to a 3% boost per point, it will have better damage output in every fight.
However, mages have no "strictly better" option to compare with. Huntsman/Pyrokinetics are the only theoretical close ones, and each have drawbacks that weapon users don't have to deal with. The fights where these are leveraged will give much bigger bonuses though, and the extra range utility from Huntsman has a value that is hard to weight.

Last edited by error3; 21/10/16 03:43 AM.
error3 #594085 21/10/16 05:30 AM
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Very articulate thread! Thank you!

error3 #594088 21/10/16 06:11 AM
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The main thing I want changed is that spells should have requirements beyond 1 point. This is a pretty common opinion though and I don't feel strongly about about the bonuses one way or the other so instead I'll posit another thought.

What if they added requirements on gear to be worn? Respective defenses for armor and respective hand requirements for weapons. That would give us more incentive to invest points in defense beyond 1 point. If they did this they would have to buff the return on investment though it it would be a harsh tax for the "tankier" member of the group.


Chaotic neutral, not chaotic stupid.
error3 #594109 21/10/16 10:04 AM
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I'd love to the defensive skills add a flat amount plus a percentage, so it becomes a much more attractive option.

Magic Armour: +7% on first point, 2% per additional
CHANGE TO: +(2.5xLevel) flat Magic Armour and +2.5% increased total per point. (This way you gain increasing benefits and its actually a viable option in comparison to the offensive skills).

Physical Armour: +7% on first point, +2% per additional
This could be the same as the magic armor suggestion

Vitality: +4% on first point, +1% per additional
CHANGE TO: +(3xConstitution) flat Health and +3% increased total per point. This way, if you actually want a tanky character, you get increasing rewards as you increase your base health. Vitality is currently just a worse option then warefare, because with one talent you get almost the same health increase AND all the benefits that warefare gives you.

Obviously these exact numbers are just a stab in the dark, but it would make these skills viable. They just pale in comparison to the offensive ones.



EDIT:
Secondary idea

For every 5 points you put into Magic or Physical armour, you get a CC shield that blocks the first disable (after your armor has run out) of the appropriate type. This single shield happens once each combat. What do people think of this idea? It would certainly make them worth getting!

Last edited by Captain Fuzzy Pa; 21/10/16 10:55 AM. Reason: Added another idea #nodoubleposts
error3 #594112 21/10/16 11:12 AM
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I would argue that the buffs in warfare and aerothurgy are some of the more valuable ones, or are at least equally valuable.

The reason I say this is because of how CC works at the moment. The more damage you do to the relevant armor the faster you can cc lock an enemy, making his health value meaningless.

That being said it is strange that pyro kinetic gives better values.

error3 #594132 21/10/16 02:44 PM
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I did a run with a full Con, Picture of Health and Warfare Warrior. By the final boss of act 1, she had roughly 700-800 flat health, 300 armor and 100 magical armor. Due to the nature of rage and The Sunderer, this walking fortress also hit harder than the rest of my party. It would oneshot armor on almost any target and didn't die a single time.

Warfare isn't strong because of the passive. It's strong because you can get 40% bonus health out of it and still do high damage.

error3 #594139 21/10/16 03:48 PM
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A note on dual wielding that bugged me a little, its just not as good as scoundrel if you're going for back stabs. Back stab is auto crit, so the added crit chance is wasted, whereas you get bonus move speed if you put your points in scoundrel. I'd like to see some balance here so that both are viable for back-stabby people. Duel wield is okay if you're going swords, but not daggers.

Here is a few different ways to fix this:

Dual Wield: +X% base damage, +X% crit chance non-dagger weapons, +X% crit damage daggers only

Dual Wield: +X% base damage, +X% crit chance, +X% backstab damage

Dual Wield: +X% base damage (make it a larger percentage)

Dual Wield: +X% Crit chance, +X% Crit damage (larger percentages, 4% each maybe?)


There are other ways of doing this though, this is just a few suggestions. Currently its a no brainer, especially when finesse has so little choice as it is.

error3 #594156 21/10/16 06:48 PM
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All the combat skills are disappointing. I think they should do the same thing as in D:OS1 where if you don't have a the proper skill tree level for an ability you have, you get an AP cost increase. +1 AP cost per skill level needed would be fine (meaning better skills would need more investment, just as in D:OS1). I do like how the passives can be useful for various characters (e.g., Hunstman being good for mages).

Single handed should definitely have a bigger accuracy bonus. Accuracy should be its forte, imo, since you sacrifice a lot of skill damage to go one-handed.

It's also a bit weird there isn't a straight "shield" skill. I guess the defense skills improve shields, but it'd be nice to focus more directly on shields.

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Originally Posted by Fluffington
I did a run with a full Con, Picture of Health and Warfare Warrior. By the final boss of act 1, she had roughly 700-800 flat health, 300 armor and 100 magical armor.


I didn't consider Warfare being boosted by Picture of Health, mostly because I never felt like I needed extra defense. It sounds like points in Warfare+Picture of Health adds up to a noticeable health increase, good catch. If a player wants to go tanky this sounds like a better option than vitality, if one is okay investing the talent.

Originally Posted by NinjaSteave
I would argue that the buffs in warfare and aerothurgy are some of the more valuable ones, or are at least equally valuable.

The reason I say this is because of how CC works at the moment. The more damage you do to the relevant armor the faster you can cc lock an enemy, making his health value meaningless.


Okay, let's imagine that once armour is gone, we'll CC lock and our opponent is as good as dead.
Let's assume we have an enemy made of pure armor, and we do 100 average damage per attack, easily achievable by end of act 1.
Warfare will buff our attack to 103+1 damage, 104.
Dual Wield would do 103+0.5. Slightly less than warfare. If our user got lucky with a 200% crit damage weapon, it'll be equal.
One handed would do 104, and 2% accuracy, much better (unless accuracy was already perfect, and it usually isn't).
Ranged does 103 and 2% accuracy, much better.
Two-Handed does 103, 106 if using Rage, possibly much better, or slightly worse.
Hunstman does 104, and at greater range. Same damage, but better.

Most of these abilities will deplete the armor FASTER, or at least as-fast or very close.

And now, let's get back to reality.
In reality, we don't always have extra CC to spare against all enemies all the time.
In reality our opponents will have far more health than armours.

If we pick a skill other than Warfare we can usually deplete the armour as fast or faster. But we will STILL have our damage boost after it wears off, for the majority of the required damage.

Thoughts?

Originally Posted by Kilroy512512

What if they added requirements on gear to be worn? Respective defenses for armor and respective hand requirements for weapons. That would give us more incentive to invest points in defense beyond 1 point. If they did this they would have to buff the return on investment though it it would be a harsh tax for the "tankier" member of the group.


It would artificially force us to pick sub-par abilities to get new gear (or have no affect for the abilities that are already good), but I think it would be unfun and limit player choice. I'd be fine with a level or stat requirement, I suppose. I'm not unhappy with gear as-is.

More points to learn/use Skills makes sense. However, It will be a bit pointless if we can still learn the skills by equipping gear to get the required skill rank, if nothing else is changed.



error3 #594174 21/10/16 09:37 PM
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Originally Posted by error3

As an aside, does anyone know if Hydrosophist bonus affects this bonus?


Yes. It works like this:
The amount that Necromancer heals is equal to X+D(0.03*X) rounded up, where X is the amount of points in Necromancer. So if you deal 1 damage and have 1 point in Necromancy, you will heal ceil(1+0.03) = 2 health. [ceil=ceiling; rounding up the number]

This is analogous for the Hydrosophist bonus (let's use Y for the amount of points: Y+H(0.03*Y), where H is the base heal).
So if you have 1 Hydrosophist as well, the healing increase is equal to ceil(1+2(0.03)) = 2 health.
So you heal 4 health.

Example with 70 damage, 5 points in Necro and Hydro:
ceil(5+70(0.15)) = 16 health from Necro;
ceil(5+16(0.15)) = 8 health from Hydro.
So you heal 24 health.

In addition to every instance of direct damage to any character (including party members), status effects caused by you will also heal you this way, so with at least one point in Necro and Hydro you can burn, bleed and/or poison several enemies and heal for dozens of hp/turn from status effects alone.

Last edited by ivodeb; 21/10/16 09:39 PM.
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Really great summaries. I agree with your analysis and conclusions.
I feel that the first step is going to be adding skill point requirements for ability use.
Once that is done, the defensive stats needs to be tweaked, I like the scaling flat bonus and percentage bonus suggested earlier, with some tweaks to the numbers of course.

My individual suggestions for skills.
Dual wield - remove critical chance, increase damage to 4%.
Single handed, increase accuracy to 3%
two hand - remove critical damage component.

Then have all skills slightly increase effectiveness for the abilities that fall under those skill points. Though I have a hard time imagining exactly what this last step would look like.

Outliers, geo should have a greater increase to poison damage.
Warfare could absorb the critical damage bonus from 2h instead of bonus damage to physical armor.
In the same vein, aerotheurge should increase spell critical chance (huh?)
Oh yeah, spells should just have critical hits and savage sortilege should be removed

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Originally Posted by Surrealialis
Really great summaries. I agree with your analysis and conclusions.
I feel that the first step is going to be adding skill point requirements for ability use.
Once that is done, the defensive stats needs to be tweaked, I like the scaling flat bonus and percentage bonus suggested earlier, with some tweaks to the numbers of course.

My individual suggestions for skills.
Dual wield - remove critical chance, increase damage to 4%.
Single handed, increase accuracy to 3%
two hand - remove critical damage component.


What if they swapped the critical bonuses for Dual Wield and two-handed like so:
Dual wield - +3% damage, +3% critical modifier
Two Handed - +3% damage, +1% critical chance

That means that dual-wielding daggers gets a benefit from the second property, instead of the critical chance going to waste for backstabs, and Two-handed weapons are a bit less powerful when they crit.

I guess the downside though is that between Scoundrel and Dual-Wielding, the critical damage modifier will stack up a lot more. Perhaps too much more?

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Originally Posted by Surrealialis

My individual suggestions for skills.
Dual wield - remove critical chance, increase damage to 4%.
Single handed, increase accuracy to 3%
two hand - remove critical damage component.

Suggested DW change sounds good.
Single handed also needs to have weapon skill costs correlating to the attack cost of the weapon. E.g. Crippling Blow should cost 1 AP when done with just a 1-hander equipped.
IDK if removing the crit component from 2H is necessary. If we get the other skills in line it can stay. 2H style suffered the most from the Rage nerf, and Crippling blow was nerfed too.

Originally Posted by Surrealialis

Then have all skills slightly increase effectiveness for the abilities that fall under those skill points. Though I have a hard time imagining exactly what this last step would look like.


I like this idea. It would encourage people to specialize in a smaller number of skills to a high extent instead of learning every ability and then pumping the 1 best passive. It could lead to multi-classing being even weaker though, and less viable build-diversity is less fun.

Originally Posted by Surrealialis

Outliers, geo should have a greater increase to poison damage.


The big problem with Geomancy is the split between Poison/Earth damage among abilities and the lack of any Poison wands. If Earth damage was included I'd feel good about it. With this change Geomancy would just be scaling the power of all abilities under its domain, which is your suggestion from above. I think passives doing essentially this would be great across all abilities.
How would you feel if all Skill passives were essentially "be X% better at the things these Skills do?" I would like that. In lieu of unique and interesting effects, I'd settle for balanced and diverse playstyles.

Originally Posted by Surrealialis

Warfare could absorb the critical damage bonus from 2h instead of bonus damage to physical armor.
In the same vein, aerotheurge should increase spell critical chance (huh?)
Oh yeah, spells should just have critical hits and savage sortilege should be removed


Maybe Warfare/Aerothurge could be a smaller boost to all Physical/Magical damage. It could be the 'safe' and 'flexible' choice. If it was just a 3% bonus to physical/magical damage, it wouldn't be 'best', but it wouldn't lock the user into a single weapon or elemental type. It would be consistent.

Perhaps Aerothurge should just increase air damage, copying Pyrokinetics.
Heck, if every skill had a passive buffing all ability types under its domain that would be a good system. We could add an ice/water damage bonus on to Hydro. This kind of system would be a lot easier to balance, and there wouldn't be strictly better options, as the spells players choose would be the important factor in determining what Combat Abilities to put points into.
For example, as-is, if I really like Ice abilities, and I want to do damage, I have a tough time finding skill passives that reward that decision. I'd like players to be able to invest into bonuses that reward playing the way they want to play, with abilities/weapons they want to use.

I like your idea of Warfare doing something different. Anything to make it more broadly appealing. I like that the crit bonus idea could create a scenario of spending some points in Warfare, and some in a Weapon Skill too. The numbers would have to be right though. Other ideas could be adding some amounts of other general combat bonuses such as initiative, movement, crit damage, increased weapon reach, or chance to knockdown. Just brainstorming here.

With the nerf to Rage, Savage Sortilege is getting really hard to get value out of. Spending the talent, for only half crit chance, and crits only do 50% more damage, it's just a bum deal these days. If not using Rage, you wouldn't want to get the talent early, cause you'd have no Crit, and you wouldn't want to get it late, cause you hadn't been stacking crit. There's never a point where picking up the talent is a good decision.
I'm not a fan of spending a talent just to unlock what should be a core feature. Savage Sortilege and Backstab are both glaring culprits of this.

Originally Posted by Stabbey

I guess the downside though is that between Scoundrel and Dual-Wielding, the critical damage modifier will stack up a lot more. Perhaps too much more?


I wouldn't think this would be a problem. Each point players are only getting DW or Scoundrel, not both.
Players would get critical damage either way, and would then just be deciding between %movement or more damage.
This would make DW strong for Dagger users, so long as the Backstab was being achieved, which is more effort getting more reward, and I think that's okay.

@ivodeb
Nice research. That's the best synergy we could hope for on those 2 passives. It sounds like adding a point of Necro to a character with a lot of Hydro gives a big return on self-healing for a low investment.

Last edited by error3; 22/10/16 12:56 AM.
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This thread is full of win.

Probably why it's not getting the hundreds of responses that threads full of controversy get...

Originally Posted by error3
With the nerf to Rage, Savage Sortilege is getting really hard to get value out of. Spending the talent, for only half crit chance, and crits only do 50% more damage, it's just a bum deal these days. If not using Rage, you wouldn't want to get the talent early, cause you'd have no Crit, and you wouldn't want to get it late, cause you hadn't been stacking crit. There's never a point where picking up the talent is a good decision.
I'm not a fan of spending a talent just to unlock what should be a core feature. Savage Sortilege and Backstab are both glaring culprits of this.


+1.

Much prefer the ice king and demon and talents that truly change your character. I think they should remove bigger and better and all skilled up too. Generic talents are boring.

If they want to keep backstab as a talent, they need to seriously improve it's scope and the implementation of dagger fighting in game. 100% accuracy + guaranteed crit? (is it already 100% accurate?)
Savage Sortilege could be a spell crit magnifier, or a spell crit AP generator (similar to warlord?) but spells should have crit chances and wits should effect spell critical. Perhaps even twice the base critical chance bonus currently applied on wits.

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Originally Posted by Surrealialis
This thread is full of win.

Probably why it's not getting the hundreds of responses that threads full of controversy get...



o.O This thread should be stickied if anything to the front page.

And on Savage Sacrilege:
Why not just make it a crit multiplier bonus? If mages could crit like normal, which they should, then it'd make it relevant when compared to the base crit multiplier of 150% weapons get.

Or you could just have it add the ability to sacrifice large amounts of health for damage bonus?

I think the fear of giving mages crit chance on spells at base, and for full value, is fear of making them too strong. It'd explain the design decision to make them use a talent and only for gimmick purposes really.

Last edited by aj0413; 25/10/16 10:45 PM.

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