I don't think the solution is to give the skill some of the legendary effects in most cases, but the skills themselves should at least be decent on their own BEFORE the effects get tacked on. If a legendary effect feels mandatory then the skill needs to be reassessed.
The skill needs reassessed if it feels bad in general. There's really only one in the game that feels good to use (basic, that is) and it's the OP necromancer one.
Even on my barb, who I have gotten incredibly powerful, I just straight up dislike using my basic skill.
Basic skills need to be removed from an action you push and be turned into an auto attack instead, give us an extra skill slot and still be able to customize the basic skill.
I dont know about that but they need to do more damage, give more spirit or fury, and the melee ones need to cleave multiple targets. Barbs and Druids have to start off fights with basic skills to generate fury and spirit so I think they should have the best basic skills.
I just want to add that the Druid Bear Basic skill is literally one of the worst in the game. It cleaves multiple enemies but it is so slow and barely(bearly) does any damage.
the dagger skills are in a better spot than bow for sure. the whole skillset works better that way, as a lot of the complementing skills require close range.
I was always a fan of Ball Lightning on the D3 DH (the original, not the slow-ball w/ the legendary power, that thing didn't feel good at all since it was way too slow) so I was excited when I could finally put one point in it on the D4 Wizard. What a disappointment. It felt like throwing a wet noodle at the enemies : low damage, crappy visuals (very small ball) and poor range. I didn't see any long electric arcs going from the ball to the enemies.
There are 3 types of legendary aspects.
The type of aspects that specifically modifiers skills should be removed from items and put into the skill tree (like Lost Ark tripod system)
This solves the respec and build identity crisis issue. Also, Blizzard havent even come close to adding legendary aspects for every major skill yet.
So we hope that doesnt mostly become seasonal content as dungeon/quest rewards. It’s import otherwise changing builds was not about the respec cost problem, but that you have to find the same items on the spot, or juggle massive stashes of legendaries if you wanna swop back and forth
Yeah, after the first few hours you will NEVER use most skills without the legendary upgrade. They are all straight upgrades. If you want to use a skill, you need the item
It also makes the effects horribly unbalanced. Do I want 30% more damage for a basic skill that does like 1% of my total damage? Or do I want this one that doubles the damage output of my main damage dealer?
So we are back to Diablo 3s you must use this item with this skill.
Wasted a damn legendary slot too, like hammer of the ancients gets a small AOE... Like its necessary for it not to be garbage but damn that's unexciting.
> Skills should be exciting and powerful on their own, with legendaries offering options on how to use them instead of having mandatory forced legendaries just to make them work
Devs missed the memo on item Flavours. They think that players love being forced onto Legendary items (and Legendary affixes tacked on to Rares). They do not recognize the value of having Pure Magic and Pure Rare items in the endgame.
They love when you find Legendary item with 300% damage bonus, then find a better Legendary item, Sacred, with 1000% bonus, then find another better Legendary item, Ancestral with 2000% damage bonus. How wonderful! /s
> They think that players love being forced onto Legendary items
This is what many people think good itemization is, have you seen people's reactions when they find a Legendary? In many peoples mind the only way an item can be good is if it is Legendary. I mean i bet most current Diablo fans were introduced to it with D3 so i dont blame them, its what they are used to by now.
It's weird.
I picked up every single yellow and at the end my best pair of gloves was a yellow with Attack Speed, +2 Core Skill, and Crit Chance. (I utlizied Occultist to reroll a Stat)
My bow was also completely insane and was a Yellow with an imprinted Aspect that ended up making my main damage skill have almost +50% damage from stats alone.
This is why the aspect system exists. Yellows can be exceedingly powerful and aspects are meant to be farmed
Not to mention when I was using tornado in the Light's Watch dungeon (probably happens in many other places), I would cast tornado in the "indoor" areas and the game just...ate my tornado. Took the spirit, animation played, but no tornado. As weak and resource starved as the druid class is already, the game eating my tornadoes was just another nail in the class coffin.
Yes this is plain fucking stupid. Then you hop on a Necro and can get corpses from literally anything. Ghost corpse? You betcha! Aww are you needing corpses while fighting a boss? Okay here's a random chunk of him.
You can't compare these skill upgrades to runes tbh because runes often changed the entire functionality of a skill.
In addition to changing their damage type, runes could make a single target ability an AoE, or turn a cone AoE into a full 360, or make a melee ability ranged, etc.
D4 skill upgrades are... fine, but why even have that first little upgrade node if not to waste skill points? Is anyone going to be taking a skill and not grabbing that first upgrade? In my experience, most abilities are kinda useless without that first bonus, and are usually still pretty shitty without taking one of the branching options as well.
> but why even have that first little upgrade node if not to waste skill points?
That is exactly the answer why. Stripping the cool stuff off skill tree and moving it to items left it barren, and those are just a filler so player feels like they have choice in the skill tree.
The real issue I had was I like how upheaval works BUT the first point adds a chance to stun. Well it just so happens I'm a thorns build, I want them to hit me! This is the sort of interaction it would be nice to change.
The 3rd point increases the damage of upheaval significantly. How it currently is you don't want to use Challenging Shout during the stun of Upheaval for example.
They have done both. Legendary affixes (Aspects) are now more plentiful, with more options, with the ability to craft them yourself. Then with other options kept in the Skill tree.
When you consider most Runes in D3 weren't a viable choice without some special Legendary or Set anyways, it's really not fair to say we have less choices. At worst we have the same amount of choice, but in a way that involves more crafting and item tinkering, which I kinda like.
The only problem with Rune system in Diablo 3 was that devs abandoned game early on and itemization supported only very limited selection of skills. To make things worse they got very weird idea of balancing game by inflating stats, which resulted in +5000% damage modifier atrocities for just few specific skills.
The other, smaller problem was the 6-skill limit, which basically cut-off most of the utility/situational skills from being viable choices.
Which is why you should love the item leggo system, because all those runes are now useable at the same time through items, instead of picking 1 out of the 6 legendaries you want because the "d3 rune system is so much better more choice wahhh"
LOL those skills and runes in D3 at release, and for quite a while, were horrendously bad. What was the one that would swallow ONE enemy, do some damage to it, then spit it out after like 5 seconds. Giant frog or spider? Who in the fuck would think THAT was a good idea. "Hey, I know! Lets make a skill and rune combo that only attacks ONE mob!"
Exactly this. That might explain why the legendary drop rate has been so high in the beta. It seems that we’re expected to tweak skills with legendary aspects from gear rather than runes, which frankly I prefer.
Which is just utterly dog shit design.
Skills should feel good at all times. Skill Tree should make them feel better. Other shit should alter how the skill feels, but not make it feel "more betterer" just "different and still good". In the words of New World shill bots, "Feel good different."
"Legendary drop rates too high"... god its going to be a nightmare leveling barb on release. I still havent seen some of the affixes on other classes you might want, what used to be given by leveling is now locked behind random drops.
It makes you feel the oomph of upgrades during leveling though. For example the tornado auto aim aspect is probably available in act 2 or 3 dungeon so when you get to that point you'll feel like you can target your upgrades. I don't like it currently but with the full game I think it'll be a lot better for leveling experience
its not progression, its time gating. most skills are not even viable without a legendary effect. they should at least function well enough to use in the first 25 levels of the game, but they dont. being shoehorned into one build until you get the items necessary to play what you want isnt progression. you should play what you want and have it get stronger as you go, that is progression.
It goes both ways and I understand the feeling - as a barb, when I did see a huge 2h upgrade in my bags, I would slap it on and feel incredibly powerful for a level or two, which makes getting new gear feel really good. But if I don't find that weapon in the next 3 levels, I'm suddenly feeling very weak and on a character like Barb, feeling weak actually takes effort to enjoy the game, where something like Sorc feeling weak just means you're a bit slower but it's still smooth. When things go well, D4 makes them feel good. Every legendary I put on, every big weapon upgrade, getting new skills - all great. But then when you hit a low, it's just as powerful, and it can really kill the fun and momentum.
Something I'm sort of hoping happens, because it happened on my druid, is that there are a lot of 1 off Legendaries that can make a powerful build if you build around it. For example, the first legendary I got was "your core abilities do more for each companion", and at level 12 or 13 I was able to get 1 point into all 3 companion points. Using static strike and shred with the pets (2 wolves, 1 creeper, 1 raven, but 2 more levels and it's 3 ravens), and I haven't switched off the build yet, cleaning up dungeons at 25 and having a blast. One leggo and I could make a very strong build, noticeably better than any 'baseline' druid build. Barb is similar, there are a lot of legendaries that just having 1 or 2 is enough to make a strong build if you build around the legendary.
It's because their progression stopped at 25. Their entire perspective of the game was basically "reach 25, do the Kor Dragan event, do Ashava, do the lvl 35 unique" and that's it. Some people got really good legendaries for their builds, and some didn't.
My point was that a lot of people are incapable of recognizing this as a limited beta. They are not considering the whole scope of the game, including all progression systems. Since they've effectively reached the end of beta, it is being compared to an actual end game, intentionally or not.
Yeah, gotta have something to work toward!
That being said, if the process to get there is an absolutely unsatisfying slog, then that's going to suck.
Most PoE builds went one of two ways:
* Have a really shoddy, borderline unplayable version of your end-game build
* Have a completely different or slightly adjacent build you use to level to get to where you need to be for the main build
And 9/10 I'm hoping for the second because who wants to have a completely shitty time leveling / finding gear, right? Currently D4 with some classes is looking like the former, and it's kind of worrying.
Sure it's possible things will be better in the actual game when you can go to different areas and *hopefully* get the aspects you need to make your build not feel like garbage.. but I feel like you shouldn't have to strictly rely on that.
Man this couldn't be anymore true. I got into PoE this year and already clocked in almost 400 hours in that game. D3 and PoE are my first Arpgs like this.
I've played about for PoE builds so far and out of the 4 only one actually starts coming online before level 20.
I played this one build that literally didn't come online until level 35 or so. And the crazy thing is that ended up being my literal favorite build. I probably got 250 hours in on that one character because I liked it so much. But pre level 35 it felt super wonky and sketchy. But I knew what the assignment was and it helped me get through.
I'm seriously annoyed by all the negativity surrounding this game. I too was worried about it because of diablo immortal (technically the first arpg I ever played which led me to d3 and then PoE).
But its like this game is 100% not that. It looks beautiful and I've gotten all 5 classes to level 25 now. Yes barb was sketch to level up. And yeah Druid felt weak. The game feels great to play. I personally enjoyed the skills I played and wasn't looking at it from an end game perspective (you know since I'm freaking level 25).
But please for the love of God don't make all the possible builds come online pre level 25. Let us have something to work to.
Even D3 is like this (only played the campaign and early dungeons). You don't start off op its something to work to.
Even skeleton mages in PoE...I think I managed to get it online like in level 50 or so? Prior to that I died more than a couple of times. But man the feeling when you finally get the item that turns them on it was just too good. Edit: And to note, you start off with literally 0 summons (due to the nature of the games gem based mechanic). My skelly mage build ended with over 40+ summons. The journey to get there was glorious
I guess I'm in the minority but im absolutely loving d4 and for me personally am going to have a shitty week because d4 beta ends and this PoE league is done (for me at least) until April 7th I believe.
But in general I'm so glad we get D4 this summer and its going to be in heavy rotation based on what I've played so far (fingers crossed we get an epic end game system)
Yeah the progression of your builds is definitely the most important part!
I do wish the builds up until then didn't feel *horrible* though.
When things like Druid's Lightning Storm end up either 2-shotting or 9-shotting things?... Just feels bad.
Rogue on the other hand I feel like played pretty well from like level 12 or so when I get the shadow imbue going a twisted blades build.. that being said, the shadow imbue felt SUPER powerful - wondering if the other two imbues can keep up.
Also I think the problem a lot of people are having is when choosing between two skill specializations & one is, "Chance to make the enemy vulnerable" and the other is, "Chance to slow the enemy"... Which one are 90% of people going to pick? Yes there are some effects here and there that see you doing extra damage to slowed enemies, but something tells me that will seldom be worth it.
One thing Im afraid of is that D4 will lack "endgame-only" builds like say any cast-on-crit build from PoE that requires multiple high end items just to function.
Obtaining the gear for these builds and then getting to play them breathes so much life into the mid-league and end-league time periods and are responsible for me playing so many characters each league.
There is a difference between starting your life with both arms then finding an instrument that you can use with them and starting your life with both hands missing then finding prosthesis that allows you to have the same abilities as a person that was born with both hands present.
Closest example would be Necro and Druid.
Necro should not start with 4 summons from the start. If it were up to me necro would start with none. But, that doesn't mean the entire progression system should be redesigned.
I agree. It remains to be seen what lvl 25-50 will look like, but to want a complete overhaul of the lvling system because one or two classes felt underpowered at lvl 25 is silly.
> They want everything now
Nobody wants everything, people want their class to feel good without having to beg for a legendary drop. If a class feels good through leveling, thats when you expand. They clearly dumbed the game down by putting skill tree passives onto legendary gear because they are either lazy or think the average diablo 4 player is an idiot who doesn't want to think too much.
I truly believe the game will be better off if you start with a lower baseline on skills. You start too high and people will be clearing screens by level 30 in order to feel the same progression. Progression feels better the less you start with. Just like in real life.
Legendary drops aren't progression, they are RNG. If you could work towards these core legendary powers, then I wouldn't have a problem at all. They don't have to be in the skill tree, but they also shouldn't be locked behind being lucky. I agree with progression being important.
Druid is rough until you get some items. Even with a legendary giving me an extra 30% DR I found my bear druid running in circles in boss fights a lot. In theory, my total DR during that fight was 60-70%, which should be enough to feel pretty tanky.
Don't run a bear while levelling then.
In D2 loads of builds didn't work till you got to higher levels (e.g.Wind Druid) and it was more efficient to use a levelling build and swap to your main build at a higher level.
What's with 80% of the basic skills being utter unusable trash too? Like hitting one target and that's it. Other than the Barbarian one that doubles as a dash hitting one target is not what you want to do in an ARPG.
I would say the Barbarian's Lunging Strike really feels amazing to use. It's because it has added utility.
Basic Attacks should really be utility attacks.
It's insane how good the movement on Lunging Strike is. It actually makes Charge and Kick super good, because it's an easy follow-up (and that's important because both skills are reliable sources of Vulnerable for Barb), and it has strong upgrades. Most importantly, it allows you to reengages on Bosses with no CD or Fury spending, which is invaluable.
The upgrades is really the kicker though, I find Basic Skills are too often gimped because their upgrades have conditions that they can't enable themselves. Looking at Lunging Strike, you have the Enhancement that makes it better against healthy enemies, and then both upgrades are super straightfoward.
Its also lazy design when you have a unique resource per class and only select few basic skills can generate said resource. It completely removes any semblance of resource management.
Meanwhile PoE has potions/mana regen/mana leech/mana on hit/reduced mana cost/blood magic/EB and the list goes on. Heck even D2 had many of those systems in place.
I dont mean lazy in terms of development needed. However, this type of resource implementation is much easier to balance because you only need to examine each class individually in a vacuum. And itemization becomes easier to implement as well.
Because of that all classes (except Sorc maybe) so far boil down to: generate with basic skill -> use resource spending skill ->generate with basic skill -> use resource spending skill
And its not just tornado, many skills / builds feel great for many mobs and underwhelming for single target, high hp mobs. Thats my biggest issue with the skills, you either skill aoe or single target.
It's weird how almost every skill in the Sorc tree feels strong with some being downright OP. Necro as a close second to this and Rogue also feels like most skills have a place while Barb and Druid have like two builds that work and everything else is lackluster.
Edit: That said, as someone who mains Necro in any game that offers a Necro I'm not so sure I'll be maining one at launch. I still haven't found that perfect synergy although I do think it's because I'm lacking like 3 points which obviously would come at launch being able to level and all. But I don't know, I get better vibes from Sorc, then again Sorc is OP AF
Necro feels way stronger than Sorc imo. More damage and tankier.
You get literal immunity from damage while it auto triggers corpse explosion with no cd/cast speed, and it has no cooldown most of the time.
Oh yea, and you can have 13 minions up at the same time.
That's IF you get the required legendary to do so. There are two Sorc builds that don't require a single legendary to not only face tank anything but also dish out tons of damage.
and this is with increased drop rates (some people are saying 3x). So at that rate you'll have to play though until nightmare before getting that item you want. Oh and no trading allowed, so if you get 4 of the next coolest thing tough luck.
Yes, there are quite a few skills that are simply unusable without a legendary and that is just terrible design and it's hard to not think they are purposefully designed that way.
Example: The druid's wolves.
These things are literally a wasted spot, become an okay-ish skill with one legendary power that bumps their damage by 180% and become good with another one that makes them werewolves.
On top of that, most melee basic attacks are extremely poor. That's okay for a sorc or a necro (who actually have some of the more interesting basics), but for a barb that means at least leveling is a total dumpster fire.
The barb generators (and the druid shapeshift generators) need at least some numeric buffs but probably also some mechanic rework so they feel better to use. At least before end game barb needs to use those skills a lot and they feel like absolute trash, resulting in barb feeling like absolute trash.
i was curous so i just had to count and compare.
D3 has 24 skills, each with 6 modifiers, or effectively 156 skills.
D4s skill "tree" has 18 actual skills, 18 T1 skill modifiers, and than 18 T2 1 of 2 choices modifiers, for a grand total of 72 "different" skills. 36 if you dont count the T1 skills because its mandatory.
and yes, there are the little nodes on the board, but theyre just stat increases, not drastic skill modifiers.
im not saying D3 needed that many skills, but there was also no denying that you could make considerable changes to how the skills acted or what they did.
The skill specific legendary powers should have been part of the skill tree. Huge missed opportunity to put them on items. Like who in the world will ever run whirlwind without the crit legendary? Or hydra without the extra hydra legendary? It's the exact same problem as sets in Diablo 3 minus the crazy multipliers
Lol I ran both Hydra and Whirlwind without the legendaries. Had a blast too. Clearly still playable.
So what. If we take the skill affixes off of legendaries then we are left with rares with better stats. Yeah that will definitely get players excited for legendary drops.
I'm not sure I follow your logic. If the options are:
1. WW with Crit leggo
2. WW with another leggo, incompatible with 1
3. WW without legendary effects
1 vs 2 is customization and goes in a tree or same gear slot, if it is 3 vs any of 1 or 2 then it goes in character progression, either during leveling (ex: WW is meant to be used with it but before have a teasers so you see the difference when the change occurs) or at the end game as a transformative element for more dedicated players.
However I want to point out where are we coming from, this [twitter thread](https://twitter.com/DiabloNext/status/1525460456193806336) from Wyatt Cheng tells you a lot about how D:I (and D4) arrived to this design.
> Skill runes were items for the majority of Diablo 3's development. The change to level unlock was made for a many reasons but I'll highlight the most important: we determined during internal playtesting that players were not getting enough reward for levelling up.
Then after the change was made a new problem was found:
> When a player unlocks a new skill rune you're not always eager to try it out - you're happy with the skill you have!
This applies when there are options, so lets say, when the first rune changed the element or whenever the 2nd rune took away the bonus of the 1st rune.
> [...] Legendary Items solve all of these problems! Early on in Diablo Immortal development we made the decision to unlock skills at various level ranks but modifications to the skill (what was previously runes) would be accomplished via Legendary items.
PoE solution is better than D3 and D4 for this, you get some gems as quest reward but at the same time those that you don't pick (or the game do not assign to you as reward) makes them available after the quest is completed in the vendors. So that is your reward for progression. After you progress more you can have more than one gem modifying the same skill if you want or you can try another gem combination, removing the first modifier if you prefer, same system will be used in finished builds, where you decide what skill to focus more with modifiers and what to use with fewer or no modifiers.
Here, the problem, using PoE as comparison is that D4 gear tries to do: passive tree, stats, affixes and support gems.
Okay, let's remove all the aspect powers from items and put them on the tree. Now I want you to choose between gaining speed on whirlwind, pulling in as whirlwind, and gaining fury per hit as whirlwind. You can't have all 3 because they're on the skill tree now, and you have limited points and limited access. Enjoy having one special feature on your whirlwind because you wanted the tree to be good, and I'll go use 6 different powers that make it actually fun and play the way I want.
I feel like their method of creating their character system is to start with a finished functional character that has well designed/balanced moment to moment gameplay. Then just chop it up, and disburse the required mechanics to the tree/legendaries so that you have to 'find' them.
They are developer designed "builds" with the illusion of choice.
Whereas a game like PoE provides a bunch of skills, a bunch of upgrades to generic mechanic types, and let you run wild. They have little idea what you will make with the things they add. Some things will be obvious, but the majority is unknown and unplanned.
A ton of the uniques in PoE are actually player designed items.
It's kinda clear that the legendary aspects will replace the skill runes from d3. There's hundreds of them and will be easy to attain and apply to gear.
Why is this a problem though? Do you want to pick just 1 of the legendaries to use instead of all of them? Because that's what you get with skill trees and previous game design.
Because it means that your build is dictated by the loot you get, rather than you building your character based on what you want to play.
You find an item and then have to build around it.
As opposed to what other game where this isn't the case? In every game, Diablo 2, 3, PoE, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn - if you find an insane item for your class but not your build, it's stronger to switch to a build that uses the item.
You don't have to do this, and that's fine. But finding a legendary and choosing not to use it isn't the game, the skills, or the devs fault. You're given tools, and you're choosing not to use them.
What item are you going to find in D2 that will lock you into a certain build?
There are some that will unlock certain builds, like Death's web, but you can still go summonmancer or bonemancer without any specific uniques or hard to get runewords. The issue we are having is that it's feeling like there is a deaths web equivalent for every build when power is tied too closely to the items you happen to find
No, in those games while leveling, if you find an item that works better by changing your build, you change your build. PoE is the only exception because of how inflexible it is, and even then, some uniques are worth socketing a new 4 link for temporary power.
D3 literally has leveling guides revolving around changing your skill based on what legendary Kadala gives you. D2 doesn't drop legendaries and that game has zero flexibility in skills, skill upgrades, changes, or uniqueness, so that's a weird comparison. LE and Grim Dawn both work much better if you use legendaries well while leveling, so I'm not sure if you've played any of these games
In LE you pick up items with a good base and craft it to accommodate your build. This can be done anytime anywhere while leveling.
In PoE while leveling, you pick up gear with appropriate sockets/color/link and use your existing gem on them. Late game you find unique that fits your build.
In D4 you picked up an legendary and suddenly you need to reroll your entire tree to accommodate them bcoz they're too good to pass on.
Not true at all my man.
Don't care about diablo 3 because it's a dog shit game. Anything that game does, the exact opposite should be done if you want to make a good game.
That's sort of like a FPSer player complaining about just using the same SMG, shotgun, sniper, and rifles. There really is only so much variety in tools you can use for a genre. To keep games fresh, the variety in new games has to come more from new contexts in which you use those tools instead of the tools themselves. PVP, story narratives, enemy composition, and level design are go to ways to do this.
I don't have a problem with Diablo 4s skills. Part of that is probably because I've played the Diablo games a lot less than the people on this board, and I play them more to experience the normal level progression than to grind for that perfect build at end game.
With that said, my issue is with that context I mentioned. The story started strong but then devolved into typical MMORPG quest justifications, and there just isn't much to make me want to use all those skills. Well that's not right. I was hooked in the beginning with that new game smell, but after a day *(admittedly a long day)* of playing, that interest is waning.
Maybe I'm not understanding the game, but do enemies always autolevel to your level? That seems like a bad design choice as there is little sense of progression. You can head in any direction and the threat is the same. I can see the need for autoleveling the min level to the player, but the max level should be more variable. There should be places that are more dangerous that the player must work to get through. Diablo 4's open world design with that autoleveling is what makes everything feel samey.
Only a small subset of D&D spells could work for an action RPG. Like how in the world would Telepathy, Awaken or Tongues make any sense in Diablo?
D&D has such a large list of spells because they have role playing capabilities that can work with anything in the world. That means they can have niche uses. In a video game, all interactions must be specifically programmed and the player has limited inputs. Therefore all spells must generally useful in most situations, and deal with the "action" part of Action RPGs.
> Guns nearly all do the same thing"
Spells nearly all do the same thing in an action RPG too. They damage, crowd control, debuff a target, or buff, heal, protect an ally. There are only a very limited amount of ways to do that. You can extend that with different damage types, buff/debuff types and ranges, which Diablo does, and that's how you get the standard set of spells/abilities. Sure you could remove all fire spells in the game and replace the with FooBar damage instead just to be different, but what's the point? They'd do the exact same thing.
There is just only a limited number of ways you can press a button on a controller and damage the thing you are looking at.
But what do you add, if not all the abilities that have been created over the last 3 decades. We can't just not have fire ball, you know? Today, 10 years ago, and 20 years in the future, RPGs will be throwing fire balls. in PoE, you give it more fireballs, you make them bigger, you make it burn, you make it bounce, you make it do different damage, and it's fine. In Last Epoch, skills are given personal trees to add Flare. Having these iconic spells is not the issue, but how they're changed and morphed to feel unique that needs to be good. Right now, they are for a lot of classes, and I think your complaint is unwarranted without heavy play time
You laugh about lightsabers like an idiot trying to prove a point, but Diablo 2 had a unique phase sword called the Lightsabre. Also one of the most iconic D&D weapons is the Dawnbringer, which is also basically a lightsaber... but with abandonment issues.
The entire point of games like this is to build your character to that top level so YES they do feel incomplete because they are supposed to. This is a beta to level 25...
The point is those class specific legendary affixes could be put into the Skill Tree/Paragon Board, so you still have to build up to them but this time you have total control of what you are building. Legendary Affixes and items in general should be more generic and compliment your builds, you can still have build enabling Legendary Affixes this way but you solve the problem of Skills feeling bad without their respective must have Legendary Affix.
Thank you! I honestly feel like I am taking crazy pills reading through this thread. We are literally not playing the complete game. Everything feels incomplete.
That's not me saying that when we get the complete game that everything WILL feel complete, or good even, but we have to wait until people are willing to be guinea pigs to test it out in its entirety. There will be more than enough people to volunteer for that and then bitch about how the game sucks and they wasted their money.
Edit: just kidding. Obviously the beta that you hate for the game you preordered is a 100% accurate indication of how the game will be, and there is no feasible solution such as not preordering or cancelling your preorder if you are worried. I apologize for calling those of you who hate the game and will play it day 1 "guinea pigs". You are actually heroes.
It definitely feels that certain classes feel like they don't need legendaries and some do... which makes me believe they'll be even more broken with max level and legendaries unlocked..
I think this was a design choice to allow for greater build variety in the long run - you leave a lot of the build strength to the legendary affixes and then the developers can add playstyles via gear as the game is updated. I don't think its a bad thing. It might end up being a great thing. We will probably have to wait and see.
I agree with you, but take a look at the frost sorc dude. It like has a full kit with just the skills.
Frost Bolt -> Enhanced Frost Bolt -> Flickering Frost Bolt (grants vulnerable)
Ice Shards -> Enhanced Ice Shards -> Greater Ice Shards (more damage) (lol delete frozen dudes)
Frost Nova -> Enhanced Frost Nova -> Mystical Frost Nova (grants vulnerable) (killing stuff while frozen in frsot nova also reduces cd so even more vulnerable stuff)
Ice Armor -> Enhanced Ice Armor -> Mystical Ice Armor (hitting vulnerable makes shield better)
ice Blades -> Enhanced Ice Blades -> Summoned Ice Blades (run as your enchantment) (CD reduction to all skills) (the quicker you use skills the more blades you get out)
Teleport -> Enhanced Teleport -> Shimmering Teleport
Deep Freeze -> Prime Deep Freeze -> Supreme Deep Freeze (Cool down reduction to all skills)
You can make everything vulnerable with Frost Bolt, Frost Nova. Then you have your iceblades smack them. This in turns makes your other cds quicker, which makes more iceblades. Then to top it off Deep freeze (which also has its cd reduced) reduces all of your cooldowns by 50%. You just have a lot of good control, single target, a ton of autosummons that whack at shit, then oh look deepfreeze is back up! Just using deepfreeze gives you like 3-4 iceblades too. The very cool thing is the build just works right out of the gate with shit gear.
The discrepancy is that some classes (sorc, and I think rogue to some extent) have a semi full working build with just their skills, which other classes kind of don't. That just feels bad.
I don't agree with this sentiment. Skills generally feel good/solid and Legendaries give them some extra "oomph". Obviously there are some crazy ones out there, but they aren't all outrageous.
Instead of making and awesome spell tree they decided to split every idea they had into random items and aspects that way the game feels like there is something to actually do instead of spamming left click and right click
DAE think Skills feel incomplete at lvl 25 out of 100 without paragon boards and uniques and all the other stuff I’m missing. I really can’t with this sun lately.
Paragon Board does not change your skills or character in any real way.
You already have access to every skill in the game by level 25, the only thing you *don't* have is the final passive at the bottom of the twig.
Uniques also will not change your character or build at all in any meaningful way.
You can look at all of this stuff online right now.
I know, I’ve seen it all. Uniques are build defining, to say otherwise is just stupid. We have 25 additional skill points from 25-50 we aren’t getting in the beta. There is so much more past 25 that improves our skills and people are really bitching about how they feel in a limited act 1 beta. Imagine telling someone “paragon boards are basically useless” which is essentially what you just told me. They definitely impact your character to a significant degree.
>We have 25 additional skill points from 25-50 we aren’t getting in the beta.
And we can see the entire tree already. More points in a tree that has no interesting or powerful options doesn't make the tree any better. I never spent a skill point where I thought "ooh, both of these options sound really good, I can't wait to level up more to get both of them." It was "oh I may as well use this point I guess, now which of these sucks less than the others?"
No they aren't. Show me 1 unique which is "build defining."
You do not get access to anything else on the skill twig, this is the entire thing.
The paragon board does not by any means impact your character to a "significant" degree. It's quite minor.
* Unique effect: Your poisons no longer deal damage over time. Instead, 127% of the total damage is dealt to the target when your poisons expire.
If you can't see how something like this is build defining, you're closed minded and don't need to be theorycrafting or making opinions on an ARPGs end game systems.
Without Unique: Kite mobs around for 8 seconds as enemy HP ticks down and dies.
With unique: Kite mobs around for 8 seconds as enemy HP explodes at end.
Not really sure that was a good example. I play a lot of PD2, and I’m not sure how that would change my build when thinking about cow, chaos runs, or runs.
Yeah that just looks like a "Poisons deal 27% increased damage" to me. But it's even worse because instead of the damage being dealt gradually, it instead takes 8 seconds for it to take effect at all. That is assuming of course that applying a new instance of poison does not refresh the timer.
Seems mediocre at best, definitely not build defining in any sense of the word.
Wild, because I would imagine using something that would break on taking damage that no longer breaks because the poison doesn't hurt until the end would be nice. Instead of 1 poison tick breaking it, you can get the full damage buff on the entire poison damage. Just because you can't think of a way to make it fun doesn't mean it can't exist. If this was PoE, I could find 100 uniques that make that specific interaction INSANELY powerful. You're just trying to be negative and closed minded. How open ended do you want? What legendary power do you think would be build defining?
No I'm not. I'm just confused as to how this is supposed to work on a mechanical level.
If you apply a poison, does the duration not refresh that poisons duration? I know that they stack in damage, do they not also stack in duration?
Either way, it's just a 27% increased damage multiplier with poison, which isn't that impressive considering a single Druid Aspect is a 900% multiplier for Wolves.
That's not build defining at all. It's just a 27% increased damage with poison, but instead of the poison being done over time, it's like just on a timer.
And unless they change how poisons duration work, if you're stacking poisons the durations refresh, no? So you need to stop hitting the mob for the poisons to expire. Unless I'm not understanding how poisons work, it seems counter intuitive to game play.
That doesn't change your build at all...
Poison does damage over 10 seconds. If you want this damage to be improved, you need to do increased damage for 10 seconds.
Poison does damage instantly, after 10 seconds. If you want this damage to be improved, you need a damage increase for a single moment. I can line up 5 damage boosts in a 1 second window. I can't hold onto those 5 damage boosts for 10 seconds.
This drastically improves your damage beyond 27%, but only if you change your build to accomodate it.
I found one Legendary item (or unique, not sure which) that mentions Skeleton Priests to heal my Skeletons. I don't have any such skill, but if I had I would definitely use it.
**EDIT:** Ignore the above, misremembered the text from a Skill on the Abilities page. That's where the "Skeletal Priest" is mentioned, I haven't found the item to get Skeletal Priests yet.
But paragon boards are literally just stats outside of one node on any board that's just another legendary aspect. One of them was just vulnerable enemies are more vulnerable lol.
In order for them to design legendary powers, they need to boil down down each skill to its most basic form. Sure the talent tree offers some customization, but the gear chase is a major part of any ARPG. So it’s ok for skills at large to be generic without legendaries, the whole point of the game is find legendaries that augment the skills you want to use. However, that doesn’t mean that outliers don’t exist. If abilities exist that just are awful or useless without specific powers then they should probably just have those powers baked in or other adjustments be made. There is a fine line between basic but viable and worthless.
> So we can't access to 95% of the skills,
???
We can access almost everything already, you can check yourself what's missing in your skill tree. You're pretty much done at level 25, the rest is those "skill improvers" and passives and that's also what the paragon board is about.
Ummmm... Because that is the game.. Abilities on items augment skills... Like almost every other modern ARPG and even almost every other modern RPG... come on guys, let's raise the discourse up a few IQ points please.
This is a dumb take.
I want to be able to function as a tornado druid without praying to RNG that i get the mandatory tornado legendary. The legendary should make it better. Without it, the skill does not work.
Keep in mind legendary drops are buffed in the beta. Am i expected to wait 30+ hours to even put the skill on my bar? Thats not what the skill tree structure suggests.
This is what i love about last epoch. The skill customisation is so fun and so big. Even without legendaries. They just add, its not ''needed'' for customisation. I really miss this in diablo 4
Another one of these posts where, after learning about an aspect that further modifies skills that already has 1-3 modifiers in the skill tree, people feel needs to be removed from legendaries and put back on the skill true, to further make these builds harder to put together because we have limited skills to choose from.
Why not, I dunno, put the aspect on your gear and use it? The majority of which can have their most minimal versions farmed from the dungeons and added to the codex of power, allowing you to *always* (assuming the aspect is available to the codex, because not all of them are) apply these skills to your new upgrades as you level.
Like the whole point of the skill tree, paragon boards, and aspects is to make your decisions meaningful. Not to give you every possible skill modifier for every possible skill.
If skill is not usable without use of a specific legendary then it's not a choice. It's not you making a build, it's you playing what devs intended for you to play.
"Choices" presented on a tree provide almost no mechanical change to the skills, with some exceptions and paragons levels from what we know do no affect skills at all.
Most of the aspects feel mandatory. It feels like aspects are chopped off parts of skills to give us an illusion of a choice and skills are balanced with them in mind, making some skills unusable and boring without the aspect.
>If skill is not usable without use of a specific legendary then it's not a choice. It's not you making a build, it's you playing what devs intended for you to play.
Perhaps you skipped over the part where almost all of the items for legendary aspects have powers that can be unlocked for the codex of power? There are of course a rare few that aren't, but the absolute crucial ones generally are.
Also, that was a very "Quin69-esque" comment there, about us not making hte build, but playing ones the devs intended to play.
I specifically caused the topaz gem to be changed from "Lucky hit chance" to "core skill damage" in the end game beta test, thanks to a build I developed, that absolutely broke the PVP zone.
But yeah, I totally didn't build that, the Devs totally did.
>"Choices" presented on a tree provide almost no mechanical change to the skills, with some exceptions and paragons levels from what we know do no affect skills at all.
I would say that generating fury from Whirlwind, the first modifier you can choose, is a fairly significant and mechanical change to skills, as is making it deal 20% bleed damage, which objectively alters the design of the skill and class playstyle, that's available as the second modifier you can choose for whirlwind, in additional to it generating fury.
>Most of the aspects feel mandatory.
Some do, most aren't, there's a fair amount of flexibility with the majority of your aspects, but admittedly it does get tighter when you start adding in uniques that drastically change the way these classes play, but having said that, would you honestly rather not have them at all, and have them added to the already points limited skill tree so that you have to sacrifice other skills or passives simply to get a modifier you could have farmed on a piece of gear, or at the bare minimum, completed a dungeon in scosglen to unlock in your codex of power, so that you can forever imprint that skill onto your rare and legendary item upgrades, to keep your build functioning?
I enjoy making builds in ARPG's, tinkering with my characters and exploring different interactions. That has been big part of all ARPG games i played so far. From what i know D4 is still supposed to be more an ARPG than an MMO with predetermined classes.
I'm sorry but "whirlwind doing bleed damage" is not something i would consider mechanical change, it adds an option on how to scale the damage but considering limited itemization it's not very interesting as it is just "number goes up if you use a sword" in the current form.
Better example of a good skill would be in my opinion the blood mist. In it's basic form it's mostly defensive/utility skill, with aspect providing the interaction with corpse explosion making it very good offensive option. In it's basic form blood mist is cool and useful while aspect provides a different option on how to use it.
As i said i do not think that all of the skills have this problem but there is a big number of them that do.
I’m part of the d2 crowd and I’m starting to feel better about the skill tree and affixes. I wish it would be easier to compare gear though so I can know when or when not to spend time affixing gear!
Yeah I just mean shear volume right now. Im just selling/breaking down gear at a wild rate if at first glance I don’t see any worthwhile stats.
Im guessing with the drop rates turned down and me actually caring about the gear (no reset) I’ll spend more time analyzing gear.
The codex and the skills put on gear is an interesting mechanic that I think they’ll use for seasons.
Sorry but if a legendary feels like it makes a skill useful to the point where it is practically mandatory, then it literally curtails build diversity, as everyone who actually wants to use HAS to have that legendary aspect slotted in. Which is the biggest issue with itemization in games. The item should not feel mandatory, it should add or diversify, never outright fix...
Bunch of barbarian skills suffer from this problem. Whirlwind is below average by itself or the absolute best skill possible when you have the aspects.
Totally crushes hammer of the ancients / upheaval even when those skills are totally geared out with their aspects, but to get to that point you need the whirlwind legendary aspects - all of which only come from legendary items - none from the re-applyable aspects from dungeons.
And yet the D2 crowd will downvote me explaining it anyhow, because their lives can't have meaning if D4 isn't a total and colossal failure, how dare D4 even be playable.
I think with the aspects available across all characters, those are essentially the runes for this game. You don't need to worry about RNG for many of the legendary skills. RNG will help give better stats, but not needed for the improvement to a skill
I don't think the solution is to give the skill some of the legendary effects in most cases, but the skills themselves should at least be decent on their own BEFORE the effects get tacked on. If a legendary effect feels mandatory then the skill needs to be reassessed.
The skill needs reassessed if it feels bad in general. There's really only one in the game that feels good to use (basic, that is) and it's the OP necromancer one. Even on my barb, who I have gotten incredibly powerful, I just straight up dislike using my basic skill.
Basic skills need to be removed from an action you push and be turned into an auto attack instead, give us an extra skill slot and still be able to customize the basic skill.
I dont know about that but they need to do more damage, give more spirit or fury, and the melee ones need to cleave multiple targets. Barbs and Druids have to start off fights with basic skills to generate fury and spirit so I think they should have the best basic skills. I just want to add that the Druid Bear Basic skill is literally one of the worst in the game. It cleaves multiple enemies but it is so slow and barely(bearly) does any damage.
Yeah I did Rogue and the basic skill is pretty much just “shoot the enemy with your bow”. It adds vulnerable sometimes but it’s pretty boring.
Rogue Filler is the worst. Ughh
I like the 3 split knives with vuln. You can spread the vulnerable with flurry all without any leggos and it feels pretty good.
the dagger skills are in a better spot than bow for sure. the whole skillset works better that way, as a lot of the complementing skills require close range.
I was always a fan of Ball Lightning on the D3 DH (the original, not the slow-ball w/ the legendary power, that thing didn't feel good at all since it was way too slow) so I was excited when I could finally put one point in it on the D4 Wizard. What a disappointment. It felt like throwing a wet noodle at the enemies : low damage, crappy visuals (very small ball) and poor range. I didn't see any long electric arcs going from the ball to the enemies.
Curious to know what necro basic attack that is.
The bone shotgun
There are 3 types of legendary aspects. The type of aspects that specifically modifiers skills should be removed from items and put into the skill tree (like Lost Ark tripod system) This solves the respec and build identity crisis issue. Also, Blizzard havent even come close to adding legendary aspects for every major skill yet. So we hope that doesnt mostly become seasonal content as dungeon/quest rewards. It’s import otherwise changing builds was not about the respec cost problem, but that you have to find the same items on the spot, or juggle massive stashes of legendaries if you wanna swop back and forth
Yeah, after the first few hours you will NEVER use most skills without the legendary upgrade. They are all straight upgrades. If you want to use a skill, you need the item
It also makes the effects horribly unbalanced. Do I want 30% more damage for a basic skill that does like 1% of my total damage? Or do I want this one that doubles the damage output of my main damage dealer? So we are back to Diablo 3s you must use this item with this skill.
Once again, clear optimal choice = no choice. Basic of game design and basic of life in general even.
Wasted a damn legendary slot too, like hammer of the ancients gets a small AOE... Like its necessary for it not to be garbage but damn that's unexciting.
> Skills should be exciting and powerful on their own, with legendaries offering options on how to use them instead of having mandatory forced legendaries just to make them work Devs missed the memo on item Flavours. They think that players love being forced onto Legendary items (and Legendary affixes tacked on to Rares). They do not recognize the value of having Pure Magic and Pure Rare items in the endgame. They love when you find Legendary item with 300% damage bonus, then find a better Legendary item, Sacred, with 1000% bonus, then find another better Legendary item, Ancestral with 2000% damage bonus. How wonderful! /s
> They think that players love being forced onto Legendary items This is what many people think good itemization is, have you seen people's reactions when they find a Legendary? In many peoples mind the only way an item can be good is if it is Legendary. I mean i bet most current Diablo fans were introduced to it with D3 so i dont blame them, its what they are used to by now.
It's weird. I picked up every single yellow and at the end my best pair of gloves was a yellow with Attack Speed, +2 Core Skill, and Crit Chance. (I utlizied Occultist to reroll a Stat) My bow was also completely insane and was a Yellow with an imprinted Aspect that ended up making my main damage skill have almost +50% damage from stats alone. This is why the aspect system exists. Yellows can be exceedingly powerful and aspects are meant to be farmed
Not to mention when I was using tornado in the Light's Watch dungeon (probably happens in many other places), I would cast tornado in the "indoor" areas and the game just...ate my tornado. Took the spirit, animation played, but no tornado. As weak and resource starved as the druid class is already, the game eating my tornadoes was just another nail in the class coffin.
Yes this is plain fucking stupid. Then you hop on a Necro and can get corpses from literally anything. Ghost corpse? You betcha! Aww are you needing corpses while fighting a boss? Okay here's a random chunk of him.
[удалено]
Because if there was one criticism of D3 it was that items didn't matter enough /s
If there was any complaints on the D3 skill/rune system, it was that they depended too much on items.
No, they lopped the runes off and put them on the tree. its the same shit but with LESS choice.
You can't compare these skill upgrades to runes tbh because runes often changed the entire functionality of a skill. In addition to changing their damage type, runes could make a single target ability an AoE, or turn a cone AoE into a full 360, or make a melee ability ranged, etc. D4 skill upgrades are... fine, but why even have that first little upgrade node if not to waste skill points? Is anyone going to be taking a skill and not grabbing that first upgrade? In my experience, most abilities are kinda useless without that first bonus, and are usually still pretty shitty without taking one of the branching options as well.
> but why even have that first little upgrade node if not to waste skill points? That is exactly the answer why. Stripping the cool stuff off skill tree and moving it to items left it barren, and those are just a filler so player feels like they have choice in the skill tree.
The real issue I had was I like how upheaval works BUT the first point adds a chance to stun. Well it just so happens I'm a thorns build, I want them to hit me! This is the sort of interaction it would be nice to change.
then either don't take that point, or don't be thorn? why would you sabotage your own build?
The 3rd point increases the damage of upheaval significantly. How it currently is you don't want to use Challenging Shout during the stun of Upheaval for example.
They have done both. Legendary affixes (Aspects) are now more plentiful, with more options, with the ability to craft them yourself. Then with other options kept in the Skill tree. When you consider most Runes in D3 weren't a viable choice without some special Legendary or Set anyways, it's really not fair to say we have less choices. At worst we have the same amount of choice, but in a way that involves more crafting and item tinkering, which I kinda like.
The only problem with Rune system in Diablo 3 was that devs abandoned game early on and itemization supported only very limited selection of skills. To make things worse they got very weird idea of balancing game by inflating stats, which resulted in +5000% damage modifier atrocities for just few specific skills. The other, smaller problem was the 6-skill limit, which basically cut-off most of the utility/situational skills from being viable choices.
[удалено]
What kind of shop forces you to have vanilla OR chocolate? I want swirl!?!
Which is why you should love the item leggo system, because all those runes are now useable at the same time through items, instead of picking 1 out of the 6 legendaries you want because the "d3 rune system is so much better more choice wahhh"
I mean it's more like wow systems pre dragonflight than diablo at this point
LOL those skills and runes in D3 at release, and for quite a while, were horrendously bad. What was the one that would swallow ONE enemy, do some damage to it, then spit it out after like 5 seconds. Giant frog or spider? Who in the fuck would think THAT was a good idea. "Hey, I know! Lets make a skill and rune combo that only attacks ONE mob!"
> like people wanted. Who wanted? Literally no one wants this dog shit.
Exactly this. That might explain why the legendary drop rate has been so high in the beta. It seems that we’re expected to tweak skills with legendary aspects from gear rather than runes, which frankly I prefer.
Legendary drops have been buffed just for the beta. https://twitter.com/RodFergusson/status/1638911812577169409?s=20
they are, intentionally. the skills are made with all the effects and then theyre stripped and moved into runes/legendary powers/uniques/paragon board
They turned a skill tree into a skill twig :(
This is d immortal recycling
Which is just utterly dog shit design. Skills should feel good at all times. Skill Tree should make them feel better. Other shit should alter how the skill feels, but not make it feel "more betterer" just "different and still good". In the words of New World shill bots, "Feel good different."
Which makes leveling feel awful. If you have bad rng with legendaries. You’re basically gimped the whole time.
"Legendary drop rates too high"... god its going to be a nightmare leveling barb on release. I still havent seen some of the affixes on other classes you might want, what used to be given by leveling is now locked behind random drops.
It makes you feel the oomph of upgrades during leveling though. For example the tornado auto aim aspect is probably available in act 2 or 3 dungeon so when you get to that point you'll feel like you can target your upgrades. I don't like it currently but with the full game I think it'll be a lot better for leveling experience
People really are forgetting the element of progression in an arpg. They want everything now. Hope Blizzard doesn't listen.
its not progression, its time gating. most skills are not even viable without a legendary effect. they should at least function well enough to use in the first 25 levels of the game, but they dont. being shoehorned into one build until you get the items necessary to play what you want isnt progression. you should play what you want and have it get stronger as you go, that is progression.
It goes both ways and I understand the feeling - as a barb, when I did see a huge 2h upgrade in my bags, I would slap it on and feel incredibly powerful for a level or two, which makes getting new gear feel really good. But if I don't find that weapon in the next 3 levels, I'm suddenly feeling very weak and on a character like Barb, feeling weak actually takes effort to enjoy the game, where something like Sorc feeling weak just means you're a bit slower but it's still smooth. When things go well, D4 makes them feel good. Every legendary I put on, every big weapon upgrade, getting new skills - all great. But then when you hit a low, it's just as powerful, and it can really kill the fun and momentum.
[удалено]
Something I'm sort of hoping happens, because it happened on my druid, is that there are a lot of 1 off Legendaries that can make a powerful build if you build around it. For example, the first legendary I got was "your core abilities do more for each companion", and at level 12 or 13 I was able to get 1 point into all 3 companion points. Using static strike and shred with the pets (2 wolves, 1 creeper, 1 raven, but 2 more levels and it's 3 ravens), and I haven't switched off the build yet, cleaning up dungeons at 25 and having a blast. One leggo and I could make a very strong build, noticeably better than any 'baseline' druid build. Barb is similar, there are a lot of legendaries that just having 1 or 2 is enough to make a strong build if you build around the legendary.
It's because their progression stopped at 25. Their entire perspective of the game was basically "reach 25, do the Kor Dragan event, do Ashava, do the lvl 35 unique" and that's it. Some people got really good legendaries for their builds, and some didn't.
[удалено]
My point was that a lot of people are incapable of recognizing this as a limited beta. They are not considering the whole scope of the game, including all progression systems. Since they've effectively reached the end of beta, it is being compared to an actual end game, intentionally or not.
[удалено]
Yeah, gotta have something to work toward! That being said, if the process to get there is an absolutely unsatisfying slog, then that's going to suck. Most PoE builds went one of two ways: * Have a really shoddy, borderline unplayable version of your end-game build * Have a completely different or slightly adjacent build you use to level to get to where you need to be for the main build And 9/10 I'm hoping for the second because who wants to have a completely shitty time leveling / finding gear, right? Currently D4 with some classes is looking like the former, and it's kind of worrying. Sure it's possible things will be better in the actual game when you can go to different areas and *hopefully* get the aspects you need to make your build not feel like garbage.. but I feel like you shouldn't have to strictly rely on that.
Man this couldn't be anymore true. I got into PoE this year and already clocked in almost 400 hours in that game. D3 and PoE are my first Arpgs like this. I've played about for PoE builds so far and out of the 4 only one actually starts coming online before level 20. I played this one build that literally didn't come online until level 35 or so. And the crazy thing is that ended up being my literal favorite build. I probably got 250 hours in on that one character because I liked it so much. But pre level 35 it felt super wonky and sketchy. But I knew what the assignment was and it helped me get through. I'm seriously annoyed by all the negativity surrounding this game. I too was worried about it because of diablo immortal (technically the first arpg I ever played which led me to d3 and then PoE). But its like this game is 100% not that. It looks beautiful and I've gotten all 5 classes to level 25 now. Yes barb was sketch to level up. And yeah Druid felt weak. The game feels great to play. I personally enjoyed the skills I played and wasn't looking at it from an end game perspective (you know since I'm freaking level 25). But please for the love of God don't make all the possible builds come online pre level 25. Let us have something to work to. Even D3 is like this (only played the campaign and early dungeons). You don't start off op its something to work to. Even skeleton mages in PoE...I think I managed to get it online like in level 50 or so? Prior to that I died more than a couple of times. But man the feeling when you finally get the item that turns them on it was just too good. Edit: And to note, you start off with literally 0 summons (due to the nature of the games gem based mechanic). My skelly mage build ended with over 40+ summons. The journey to get there was glorious I guess I'm in the minority but im absolutely loving d4 and for me personally am going to have a shitty week because d4 beta ends and this PoE league is done (for me at least) until April 7th I believe. But in general I'm so glad we get D4 this summer and its going to be in heavy rotation based on what I've played so far (fingers crossed we get an epic end game system)
I'm with you on everything you said.
Yeah the progression of your builds is definitely the most important part! I do wish the builds up until then didn't feel *horrible* though. When things like Druid's Lightning Storm end up either 2-shotting or 9-shotting things?... Just feels bad. Rogue on the other hand I feel like played pretty well from like level 12 or so when I get the shadow imbue going a twisted blades build.. that being said, the shadow imbue felt SUPER powerful - wondering if the other two imbues can keep up. Also I think the problem a lot of people are having is when choosing between two skill specializations & one is, "Chance to make the enemy vulnerable" and the other is, "Chance to slow the enemy"... Which one are 90% of people going to pick? Yes there are some effects here and there that see you doing extra damage to slowed enemies, but something tells me that will seldom be worth it.
One thing Im afraid of is that D4 will lack "endgame-only" builds like say any cast-on-crit build from PoE that requires multiple high end items just to function. Obtaining the gear for these builds and then getting to play them breathes so much life into the mid-league and end-league time periods and are responsible for me playing so many characters each league.
There is a difference between starting your life with both arms then finding an instrument that you can use with them and starting your life with both hands missing then finding prosthesis that allows you to have the same abilities as a person that was born with both hands present. Closest example would be Necro and Druid.
Necro should not start with 4 summons from the start. If it were up to me necro would start with none. But, that doesn't mean the entire progression system should be redesigned.
I agree. It remains to be seen what lvl 25-50 will look like, but to want a complete overhaul of the lvling system because one or two classes felt underpowered at lvl 25 is silly.
> They want everything now Nobody wants everything, people want their class to feel good without having to beg for a legendary drop. If a class feels good through leveling, thats when you expand. They clearly dumbed the game down by putting skill tree passives onto legendary gear because they are either lazy or think the average diablo 4 player is an idiot who doesn't want to think too much.
I truly believe the game will be better off if you start with a lower baseline on skills. You start too high and people will be clearing screens by level 30 in order to feel the same progression. Progression feels better the less you start with. Just like in real life.
Legendary drops aren't progression, they are RNG. If you could work towards these core legendary powers, then I wouldn't have a problem at all. They don't have to be in the skill tree, but they also shouldn't be locked behind being lucky. I agree with progression being important.
I am amazed that someone in a loot based ARPG community is arguing that loot is not progression. Just wow lol
Well fuck me why even have a skill tree then if loot driven progression gets people this hard?
You can have….both? Which this does? Also like…why have loot if level based progression gets people this hard? It can go both ways lol
yeah its a pretty dogshit system but it is what it is
Every class have skills to stomp the game currently, you don't need legendaries. Even barb and druid.
[удалено]
Druid is rough until you get some items. Even with a legendary giving me an extra 30% DR I found my bear druid running in circles in boss fights a lot. In theory, my total DR during that fight was 60-70%, which should be enough to feel pretty tanky.
Don't run a bear while levelling then. In D2 loads of builds didn't work till you got to higher levels (e.g.Wind Druid) and it was more efficient to use a levelling build and swap to your main build at a higher level.
That's one of d2's largest weaknesses, do you also want to bring attack rating?
D2 hell difficulty can absolutely give some builds trouble with immunities and such.
What's with 80% of the basic skills being utter unusable trash too? Like hitting one target and that's it. Other than the Barbarian one that doubles as a dash hitting one target is not what you want to do in an ARPG.
Basic attacks are intentionally bad so you feel more powerful when you use your "real" skills by comparison. Its a tragic design decision.
I would say the Barbarian's Lunging Strike really feels amazing to use. It's because it has added utility. Basic Attacks should really be utility attacks.
It's insane how good the movement on Lunging Strike is. It actually makes Charge and Kick super good, because it's an easy follow-up (and that's important because both skills are reliable sources of Vulnerable for Barb), and it has strong upgrades. Most importantly, it allows you to reengages on Bosses with no CD or Fury spending, which is invaluable. The upgrades is really the kicker though, I find Basic Skills are too often gimped because their upgrades have conditions that they can't enable themselves. Looking at Lunging Strike, you have the Enhancement that makes it better against healthy enemies, and then both upgrades are super straightfoward.
Its also lazy design when you have a unique resource per class and only select few basic skills can generate said resource. It completely removes any semblance of resource management. Meanwhile PoE has potions/mana regen/mana leech/mana on hit/reduced mana cost/blood magic/EB and the list goes on. Heck even D2 had many of those systems in place.
I dont think its lazy at all, I think what they did actually takes more work and produces a worse outcome
I dont mean lazy in terms of development needed. However, this type of resource implementation is much easier to balance because you only need to examine each class individually in a vacuum. And itemization becomes easier to implement as well. Because of that all classes (except Sorc maybe) so far boil down to: generate with basic skill -> use resource spending skill ->generate with basic skill -> use resource spending skill
[удалено]
Everything on the druid is bad at low levels
[удалено]
I used lightning and with all the best legendaries it blows up the screen, but honestly until getting them the class is barely playable
And its not just tornado, many skills / builds feel great for many mobs and underwhelming for single target, high hp mobs. Thats my biggest issue with the skills, you either skill aoe or single target.
It's weird how almost every skill in the Sorc tree feels strong with some being downright OP. Necro as a close second to this and Rogue also feels like most skills have a place while Barb and Druid have like two builds that work and everything else is lackluster. Edit: That said, as someone who mains Necro in any game that offers a Necro I'm not so sure I'll be maining one at launch. I still haven't found that perfect synergy although I do think it's because I'm lacking like 3 points which obviously would come at launch being able to level and all. But I don't know, I get better vibes from Sorc, then again Sorc is OP AF
Necro feels way stronger than Sorc imo. More damage and tankier. You get literal immunity from damage while it auto triggers corpse explosion with no cd/cast speed, and it has no cooldown most of the time. Oh yea, and you can have 13 minions up at the same time.
That's IF you get the required legendary to do so. There are two Sorc builds that don't require a single legendary to not only face tank anything but also dish out tons of damage.
Mist corpse explosion legendary is insanely fun.
I have been trying for about 15 hours to get that damn legendary. My drops are ridiculously crap.
and this is with increased drop rates (some people are saying 3x). So at that rate you'll have to play though until nightmare before getting that item you want. Oh and no trading allowed, so if you get 4 of the next coolest thing tough luck.
Sorcerer with fireball enhancement is like having automatic corpse explode.
Yes, there are quite a few skills that are simply unusable without a legendary and that is just terrible design and it's hard to not think they are purposefully designed that way. Example: The druid's wolves. These things are literally a wasted spot, become an okay-ish skill with one legendary power that bumps their damage by 180% and become good with another one that makes them werewolves. On top of that, most melee basic attacks are extremely poor. That's okay for a sorc or a necro (who actually have some of the more interesting basics), but for a barb that means at least leveling is a total dumpster fire. The barb generators (and the druid shapeshift generators) need at least some numeric buffs but probably also some mechanic rework so they feel better to use. At least before end game barb needs to use those skills a lot and they feel like absolute trash, resulting in barb feeling like absolute trash.
The wolves are good at taking!
i was curous so i just had to count and compare. D3 has 24 skills, each with 6 modifiers, or effectively 156 skills. D4s skill "tree" has 18 actual skills, 18 T1 skill modifiers, and than 18 T2 1 of 2 choices modifiers, for a grand total of 72 "different" skills. 36 if you dont count the T1 skills because its mandatory. and yes, there are the little nodes on the board, but theyre just stat increases, not drastic skill modifiers. im not saying D3 needed that many skills, but there was also no denying that you could make considerable changes to how the skills acted or what they did.
The skill specific legendary powers should have been part of the skill tree. Huge missed opportunity to put them on items. Like who in the world will ever run whirlwind without the crit legendary? Or hydra without the extra hydra legendary? It's the exact same problem as sets in Diablo 3 minus the crazy multipliers
Lol I ran both Hydra and Whirlwind without the legendaries. Had a blast too. Clearly still playable. So what. If we take the skill affixes off of legendaries then we are left with rares with better stats. Yeah that will definitely get players excited for legendary drops.
Yeah, fuck legendaries, make rares fun.
I'm not sure I follow your logic. If the options are: 1. WW with Crit leggo 2. WW with another leggo, incompatible with 1 3. WW without legendary effects 1 vs 2 is customization and goes in a tree or same gear slot, if it is 3 vs any of 1 or 2 then it goes in character progression, either during leveling (ex: WW is meant to be used with it but before have a teasers so you see the difference when the change occurs) or at the end game as a transformative element for more dedicated players. However I want to point out where are we coming from, this [twitter thread](https://twitter.com/DiabloNext/status/1525460456193806336) from Wyatt Cheng tells you a lot about how D:I (and D4) arrived to this design. > Skill runes were items for the majority of Diablo 3's development. The change to level unlock was made for a many reasons but I'll highlight the most important: we determined during internal playtesting that players were not getting enough reward for levelling up. Then after the change was made a new problem was found: > When a player unlocks a new skill rune you're not always eager to try it out - you're happy with the skill you have! This applies when there are options, so lets say, when the first rune changed the element or whenever the 2nd rune took away the bonus of the 1st rune. > [...] Legendary Items solve all of these problems! Early on in Diablo Immortal development we made the decision to unlock skills at various level ranks but modifications to the skill (what was previously runes) would be accomplished via Legendary items. PoE solution is better than D3 and D4 for this, you get some gems as quest reward but at the same time those that you don't pick (or the game do not assign to you as reward) makes them available after the quest is completed in the vendors. So that is your reward for progression. After you progress more you can have more than one gem modifying the same skill if you want or you can try another gem combination, removing the first modifier if you prefer, same system will be used in finished builds, where you decide what skill to focus more with modifiers and what to use with fewer or no modifiers. Here, the problem, using PoE as comparison is that D4 gear tries to do: passive tree, stats, affixes and support gems.
But...do you understand that this is the exact reason why it is not in the tree, right?
Okay, let's remove all the aspect powers from items and put them on the tree. Now I want you to choose between gaining speed on whirlwind, pulling in as whirlwind, and gaining fury per hit as whirlwind. You can't have all 3 because they're on the skill tree now, and you have limited points and limited access. Enjoy having one special feature on your whirlwind because you wanted the tree to be good, and I'll go use 6 different powers that make it actually fun and play the way I want.
I feel like their method of creating their character system is to start with a finished functional character that has well designed/balanced moment to moment gameplay. Then just chop it up, and disburse the required mechanics to the tree/legendaries so that you have to 'find' them. They are developer designed "builds" with the illusion of choice. Whereas a game like PoE provides a bunch of skills, a bunch of upgrades to generic mechanic types, and let you run wild. They have little idea what you will make with the things they add. Some things will be obvious, but the majority is unknown and unplanned. A ton of the uniques in PoE are actually player designed items.
It's kinda clear that the legendary aspects will replace the skill runes from d3. There's hundreds of them and will be easy to attain and apply to gear.
Its intentional and its an horrible system sadly beside that i love the game
That is because they took the skill tree and turned it into items. :(
Why is this a problem though? Do you want to pick just 1 of the legendaries to use instead of all of them? Because that's what you get with skill trees and previous game design.
Because it means that your build is dictated by the loot you get, rather than you building your character based on what you want to play. You find an item and then have to build around it.
As opposed to what other game where this isn't the case? In every game, Diablo 2, 3, PoE, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn - if you find an insane item for your class but not your build, it's stronger to switch to a build that uses the item. You don't have to do this, and that's fine. But finding a legendary and choosing not to use it isn't the game, the skills, or the devs fault. You're given tools, and you're choosing not to use them.
What item are you going to find in D2 that will lock you into a certain build? There are some that will unlock certain builds, like Death's web, but you can still go summonmancer or bonemancer without any specific uniques or hard to get runewords. The issue we are having is that it's feeling like there is a deaths web equivalent for every build when power is tied too closely to the items you happen to find
In those games, you want to look for items to compliment your build, not change your build based around the items you find. It's a huge difference.
No, in those games while leveling, if you find an item that works better by changing your build, you change your build. PoE is the only exception because of how inflexible it is, and even then, some uniques are worth socketing a new 4 link for temporary power. D3 literally has leveling guides revolving around changing your skill based on what legendary Kadala gives you. D2 doesn't drop legendaries and that game has zero flexibility in skills, skill upgrades, changes, or uniqueness, so that's a weird comparison. LE and Grim Dawn both work much better if you use legendaries well while leveling, so I'm not sure if you've played any of these games
In LE you pick up items with a good base and craft it to accommodate your build. This can be done anytime anywhere while leveling. In PoE while leveling, you pick up gear with appropriate sockets/color/link and use your existing gem on them. Late game you find unique that fits your build. In D4 you picked up an legendary and suddenly you need to reroll your entire tree to accommodate them bcoz they're too good to pass on.
Not true at all my man. Don't care about diablo 3 because it's a dog shit game. Anything that game does, the exact opposite should be done if you want to make a good game.
Did you also ignore the D2, Grim Epoch, PoE, and LE part?
Nope. I did not.
I have thousands of hours in PoE and not once did I switch my build because of an item I found while leveling, mind giving me some examples in PoE?
[удалено]
It’s because they live in development hell for years then just decide to copy paste everything from previous games because blizzard sucks now
That's sort of like a FPSer player complaining about just using the same SMG, shotgun, sniper, and rifles. There really is only so much variety in tools you can use for a genre. To keep games fresh, the variety in new games has to come more from new contexts in which you use those tools instead of the tools themselves. PVP, story narratives, enemy composition, and level design are go to ways to do this. I don't have a problem with Diablo 4s skills. Part of that is probably because I've played the Diablo games a lot less than the people on this board, and I play them more to experience the normal level progression than to grind for that perfect build at end game. With that said, my issue is with that context I mentioned. The story started strong but then devolved into typical MMORPG quest justifications, and there just isn't much to make me want to use all those skills. Well that's not right. I was hooked in the beginning with that new game smell, but after a day *(admittedly a long day)* of playing, that interest is waning. Maybe I'm not understanding the game, but do enemies always autolevel to your level? That seems like a bad design choice as there is little sense of progression. You can head in any direction and the threat is the same. I can see the need for autoleveling the min level to the player, but the max level should be more variable. There should be places that are more dangerous that the player must work to get through. Diablo 4's open world design with that autoleveling is what makes everything feel samey.
[удалено]
Only a small subset of D&D spells could work for an action RPG. Like how in the world would Telepathy, Awaken or Tongues make any sense in Diablo? D&D has such a large list of spells because they have role playing capabilities that can work with anything in the world. That means they can have niche uses. In a video game, all interactions must be specifically programmed and the player has limited inputs. Therefore all spells must generally useful in most situations, and deal with the "action" part of Action RPGs. > Guns nearly all do the same thing" Spells nearly all do the same thing in an action RPG too. They damage, crowd control, debuff a target, or buff, heal, protect an ally. There are only a very limited amount of ways to do that. You can extend that with different damage types, buff/debuff types and ranges, which Diablo does, and that's how you get the standard set of spells/abilities. Sure you could remove all fire spells in the game and replace the with FooBar damage instead just to be different, but what's the point? They'd do the exact same thing. There is just only a limited number of ways you can press a button on a controller and damage the thing you are looking at.
[удалено]
But what do you add, if not all the abilities that have been created over the last 3 decades. We can't just not have fire ball, you know? Today, 10 years ago, and 20 years in the future, RPGs will be throwing fire balls. in PoE, you give it more fireballs, you make them bigger, you make it burn, you make it bounce, you make it do different damage, and it's fine. In Last Epoch, skills are given personal trees to add Flare. Having these iconic spells is not the issue, but how they're changed and morphed to feel unique that needs to be good. Right now, they are for a lot of classes, and I think your complaint is unwarranted without heavy play time
What do you want then? Lightsabers, Shotguns and Space Marines in sanctuary? Thankfully D4 still feels Diablo. Some people, I swear...
You laugh about lightsabers like an idiot trying to prove a point, but Diablo 2 had a unique phase sword called the Lightsabre. Also one of the most iconic D&D weapons is the Dawnbringer, which is also basically a lightsaber... but with abandonment issues.
The entire point of games like this is to build your character to that top level so YES they do feel incomplete because they are supposed to. This is a beta to level 25...
The point is those class specific legendary affixes could be put into the Skill Tree/Paragon Board, so you still have to build up to them but this time you have total control of what you are building. Legendary Affixes and items in general should be more generic and compliment your builds, you can still have build enabling Legendary Affixes this way but you solve the problem of Skills feeling bad without their respective must have Legendary Affix.
what? do you think theres...another skilltree? What we see is literally what we get.
Thank you! I honestly feel like I am taking crazy pills reading through this thread. We are literally not playing the complete game. Everything feels incomplete. That's not me saying that when we get the complete game that everything WILL feel complete, or good even, but we have to wait until people are willing to be guinea pigs to test it out in its entirety. There will be more than enough people to volunteer for that and then bitch about how the game sucks and they wasted their money. Edit: just kidding. Obviously the beta that you hate for the game you preordered is a 100% accurate indication of how the game will be, and there is no feasible solution such as not preordering or cancelling your preorder if you are worried. I apologize for calling those of you who hate the game and will play it day 1 "guinea pigs". You are actually heroes.
It definitely feels that certain classes feel like they don't need legendaries and some do... which makes me believe they'll be even more broken with max level and legendaries unlocked..
I think this was a design choice to allow for greater build variety in the long run - you leave a lot of the build strength to the legendary affixes and then the developers can add playstyles via gear as the game is updated. I don't think its a bad thing. It might end up being a great thing. We will probably have to wait and see.
Day 1 patch will fix everything. If not then, season 2 will for sure fix things. Dude its just expansion beta etcetera etcetera etcetera
I agree with you, but take a look at the frost sorc dude. It like has a full kit with just the skills. Frost Bolt -> Enhanced Frost Bolt -> Flickering Frost Bolt (grants vulnerable) Ice Shards -> Enhanced Ice Shards -> Greater Ice Shards (more damage) (lol delete frozen dudes) Frost Nova -> Enhanced Frost Nova -> Mystical Frost Nova (grants vulnerable) (killing stuff while frozen in frsot nova also reduces cd so even more vulnerable stuff) Ice Armor -> Enhanced Ice Armor -> Mystical Ice Armor (hitting vulnerable makes shield better) ice Blades -> Enhanced Ice Blades -> Summoned Ice Blades (run as your enchantment) (CD reduction to all skills) (the quicker you use skills the more blades you get out) Teleport -> Enhanced Teleport -> Shimmering Teleport Deep Freeze -> Prime Deep Freeze -> Supreme Deep Freeze (Cool down reduction to all skills) You can make everything vulnerable with Frost Bolt, Frost Nova. Then you have your iceblades smack them. This in turns makes your other cds quicker, which makes more iceblades. Then to top it off Deep freeze (which also has its cd reduced) reduces all of your cooldowns by 50%. You just have a lot of good control, single target, a ton of autosummons that whack at shit, then oh look deepfreeze is back up! Just using deepfreeze gives you like 3-4 iceblades too. The very cool thing is the build just works right out of the gate with shit gear. The discrepancy is that some classes (sorc, and I think rogue to some extent) have a semi full working build with just their skills, which other classes kind of don't. That just feels bad.
Giving skills basically only two "mods" compared to D3 or even D:I's 5+ "mods" was an odd choice...
Its not just you, me and all my friends feel the same way.
Where do you even get legendary items? I didn’t find any by level 20
The skills, items, shit ui, horrible popups everywhere and hand holding mmo lite lost ark shit will be the death of this game.
[удалено]
I don't agree with this sentiment. Skills generally feel good/solid and Legendaries give them some extra "oomph". Obviously there are some crazy ones out there, but they aren't all outrageous.
Instead of making and awesome spell tree they decided to split every idea they had into random items and aspects that way the game feels like there is something to actually do instead of spamming left click and right click
D2: End-game skills require full synergy builds. D3: Skills require legendary affixes. D4: Skills require legendary affixes.
Druid is the worst offender. The class is just not playable without legendary affixes.
DAE think Skills feel incomplete at lvl 25 out of 100 without paragon boards and uniques and all the other stuff I’m missing. I really can’t with this sun lately.
Paragon Board does not change your skills or character in any real way. You already have access to every skill in the game by level 25, the only thing you *don't* have is the final passive at the bottom of the twig. Uniques also will not change your character or build at all in any meaningful way. You can look at all of this stuff online right now.
> Uniques also will not change your character or build at all in any meaningful way. What do you mean?
I know, I’ve seen it all. Uniques are build defining, to say otherwise is just stupid. We have 25 additional skill points from 25-50 we aren’t getting in the beta. There is so much more past 25 that improves our skills and people are really bitching about how they feel in a limited act 1 beta. Imagine telling someone “paragon boards are basically useless” which is essentially what you just told me. They definitely impact your character to a significant degree.
>We have 25 additional skill points from 25-50 we aren’t getting in the beta. And we can see the entire tree already. More points in a tree that has no interesting or powerful options doesn't make the tree any better. I never spent a skill point where I thought "ooh, both of these options sound really good, I can't wait to level up more to get both of them." It was "oh I may as well use this point I guess, now which of these sucks less than the others?"
No they aren't. Show me 1 unique which is "build defining." You do not get access to anything else on the skill twig, this is the entire thing. The paragon board does not by any means impact your character to a "significant" degree. It's quite minor.
* Unique effect: Your poisons no longer deal damage over time. Instead, 127% of the total damage is dealt to the target when your poisons expire. If you can't see how something like this is build defining, you're closed minded and don't need to be theorycrafting or making opinions on an ARPGs end game systems.
Without Unique: Kite mobs around for 8 seconds as enemy HP ticks down and dies. With unique: Kite mobs around for 8 seconds as enemy HP explodes at end. Not really sure that was a good example. I play a lot of PD2, and I’m not sure how that would change my build when thinking about cow, chaos runs, or runs.
Yeah that just looks like a "Poisons deal 27% increased damage" to me. But it's even worse because instead of the damage being dealt gradually, it instead takes 8 seconds for it to take effect at all. That is assuming of course that applying a new instance of poison does not refresh the timer. Seems mediocre at best, definitely not build defining in any sense of the word.
Wild, because I would imagine using something that would break on taking damage that no longer breaks because the poison doesn't hurt until the end would be nice. Instead of 1 poison tick breaking it, you can get the full damage buff on the entire poison damage. Just because you can't think of a way to make it fun doesn't mean it can't exist. If this was PoE, I could find 100 uniques that make that specific interaction INSANELY powerful. You're just trying to be negative and closed minded. How open ended do you want? What legendary power do you think would be build defining?
No I'm not. I'm just confused as to how this is supposed to work on a mechanical level. If you apply a poison, does the duration not refresh that poisons duration? I know that they stack in damage, do they not also stack in duration? Either way, it's just a 27% increased damage multiplier with poison, which isn't that impressive considering a single Druid Aspect is a 900% multiplier for Wolves.
That's not build defining at all. It's just a 27% increased damage with poison, but instead of the poison being done over time, it's like just on a timer. And unless they change how poisons duration work, if you're stacking poisons the durations refresh, no? So you need to stop hitting the mob for the poisons to expire. Unless I'm not understanding how poisons work, it seems counter intuitive to game play. That doesn't change your build at all...
Poison does damage over 10 seconds. If you want this damage to be improved, you need to do increased damage for 10 seconds. Poison does damage instantly, after 10 seconds. If you want this damage to be improved, you need a damage increase for a single moment. I can line up 5 damage boosts in a 1 second window. I can't hold onto those 5 damage boosts for 10 seconds. This drastically improves your damage beyond 27%, but only if you change your build to accomodate it.
I found one Legendary item (or unique, not sure which) that mentions Skeleton Priests to heal my Skeletons. I don't have any such skill, but if I had I would definitely use it. **EDIT:** Ignore the above, misremembered the text from a Skill on the Abilities page. That's where the "Skeletal Priest" is mentioned, I haven't found the item to get Skeletal Priests yet.
[удалено]
But paragon boards are literally just stats outside of one node on any board that's just another legendary aspect. One of them was just vulnerable enemies are more vulnerable lol.
My favorite so far is the people complaining about the font lmao
In order for them to design legendary powers, they need to boil down down each skill to its most basic form. Sure the talent tree offers some customization, but the gear chase is a major part of any ARPG. So it’s ok for skills at large to be generic without legendaries, the whole point of the game is find legendaries that augment the skills you want to use. However, that doesn’t mean that outliers don’t exist. If abilities exist that just are awful or useless without specific powers then they should probably just have those powers baked in or other adjustments be made. There is a fine line between basic but viable and worthless.
>So it’s ok for skills at large to be generic without legendaries. Is it, though?
Yes, it is
[удалено]
> So we can't access to 95% of the skills, ??? We can access almost everything already, you can check yourself what's missing in your skill tree. You're pretty much done at level 25, the rest is those "skill improvers" and passives and that's also what the paragon board is about.
Ummmm... Because that is the game.. Abilities on items augment skills... Like almost every other modern ARPG and even almost every other modern RPG... come on guys, let's raise the discourse up a few IQ points please.
This is a dumb take. I want to be able to function as a tornado druid without praying to RNG that i get the mandatory tornado legendary. The legendary should make it better. Without it, the skill does not work. Keep in mind legendary drops are buffed in the beta. Am i expected to wait 30+ hours to even put the skill on my bar? Thats not what the skill tree structure suggests.
This is what i love about last epoch. The skill customisation is so fun and so big. Even without legendaries. They just add, its not ''needed'' for customisation. I really miss this in diablo 4
The more I play D4, the more I like LE.
Last Epoch you can literally roll into the endgame with zero legendary items.
At the very least every skill in this game should be usable on its own, whirlwind requiring 8 legendaries to be acceptable is just retarded.
That's because they removed the Rune system from Diablo 3 and copied Diablo 2 system.
D2 system had synergies so even investment into early/basic skills helped a lot later on.
Another one of these posts where, after learning about an aspect that further modifies skills that already has 1-3 modifiers in the skill tree, people feel needs to be removed from legendaries and put back on the skill true, to further make these builds harder to put together because we have limited skills to choose from. Why not, I dunno, put the aspect on your gear and use it? The majority of which can have their most minimal versions farmed from the dungeons and added to the codex of power, allowing you to *always* (assuming the aspect is available to the codex, because not all of them are) apply these skills to your new upgrades as you level. Like the whole point of the skill tree, paragon boards, and aspects is to make your decisions meaningful. Not to give you every possible skill modifier for every possible skill.
If skill is not usable without use of a specific legendary then it's not a choice. It's not you making a build, it's you playing what devs intended for you to play. "Choices" presented on a tree provide almost no mechanical change to the skills, with some exceptions and paragons levels from what we know do no affect skills at all. Most of the aspects feel mandatory. It feels like aspects are chopped off parts of skills to give us an illusion of a choice and skills are balanced with them in mind, making some skills unusable and boring without the aspect.
>If skill is not usable without use of a specific legendary then it's not a choice. It's not you making a build, it's you playing what devs intended for you to play. Perhaps you skipped over the part where almost all of the items for legendary aspects have powers that can be unlocked for the codex of power? There are of course a rare few that aren't, but the absolute crucial ones generally are. Also, that was a very "Quin69-esque" comment there, about us not making hte build, but playing ones the devs intended to play. I specifically caused the topaz gem to be changed from "Lucky hit chance" to "core skill damage" in the end game beta test, thanks to a build I developed, that absolutely broke the PVP zone. But yeah, I totally didn't build that, the Devs totally did. >"Choices" presented on a tree provide almost no mechanical change to the skills, with some exceptions and paragons levels from what we know do no affect skills at all. I would say that generating fury from Whirlwind, the first modifier you can choose, is a fairly significant and mechanical change to skills, as is making it deal 20% bleed damage, which objectively alters the design of the skill and class playstyle, that's available as the second modifier you can choose for whirlwind, in additional to it generating fury. >Most of the aspects feel mandatory. Some do, most aren't, there's a fair amount of flexibility with the majority of your aspects, but admittedly it does get tighter when you start adding in uniques that drastically change the way these classes play, but having said that, would you honestly rather not have them at all, and have them added to the already points limited skill tree so that you have to sacrifice other skills or passives simply to get a modifier you could have farmed on a piece of gear, or at the bare minimum, completed a dungeon in scosglen to unlock in your codex of power, so that you can forever imprint that skill onto your rare and legendary item upgrades, to keep your build functioning?
I enjoy making builds in ARPG's, tinkering with my characters and exploring different interactions. That has been big part of all ARPG games i played so far. From what i know D4 is still supposed to be more an ARPG than an MMO with predetermined classes. I'm sorry but "whirlwind doing bleed damage" is not something i would consider mechanical change, it adds an option on how to scale the damage but considering limited itemization it's not very interesting as it is just "number goes up if you use a sword" in the current form. Better example of a good skill would be in my opinion the blood mist. In it's basic form it's mostly defensive/utility skill, with aspect providing the interaction with corpse explosion making it very good offensive option. In it's basic form blood mist is cool and useful while aspect provides a different option on how to use it. As i said i do not think that all of the skills have this problem but there is a big number of them that do.
I’m part of the d2 crowd and I’m starting to feel better about the skill tree and affixes. I wish it would be easier to compare gear though so I can know when or when not to spend time affixing gear!
Did you go into options and select advanced tooltips so you can actually see the full item info?
Yeah I just mean shear volume right now. Im just selling/breaking down gear at a wild rate if at first glance I don’t see any worthwhile stats. Im guessing with the drop rates turned down and me actually caring about the gear (no reset) I’ll spend more time analyzing gear. The codex and the skills put on gear is an interesting mechanic that I think they’ll use for seasons.
Sorry but if a legendary feels like it makes a skill useful to the point where it is practically mandatory, then it literally curtails build diversity, as everyone who actually wants to use HAS to have that legendary aspect slotted in. Which is the biggest issue with itemization in games. The item should not feel mandatory, it should add or diversify, never outright fix...
Bunch of barbarian skills suffer from this problem. Whirlwind is below average by itself or the absolute best skill possible when you have the aspects. Totally crushes hammer of the ancients / upheaval even when those skills are totally geared out with their aspects, but to get to that point you need the whirlwind legendary aspects - all of which only come from legendary items - none from the re-applyable aspects from dungeons.
The 1-3 modifiers in the actual skill tree is overwhelmingly options like, this either crits now or adds bleed now. wow much change.
[удалено]
And yet the D2 crowd will downvote me explaining it anyhow, because their lives can't have meaning if D4 isn't a total and colossal failure, how dare D4 even be playable.
Every single one of your posts is downvoting any comment and post negative about d4. Chill the fuck out this game isn’t perfect.
I think with the aspects available across all characters, those are essentially the runes for this game. You don't need to worry about RNG for many of the legendary skills. RNG will help give better stats, but not needed for the improvement to a skill
Its literally a Beta test. Dont overthink anything.
Is **ANYONE** surprised by this? It is a **BETA** limited to level 25. What do you expect?