1.11 Skill Balance Changes Discussion
- Thread starter Origin
- Start date
Origin said:
That would deal with the level requirement. It wouldn't deal with the balance issue. Once again, if you make every skill hell viable, then you simply remove the necessity of having skill levels. Why would I decide to wait and go with a level 30 skill (making the first 29 levels much more difficult) when I can simply take a level 1 skill, and run it all the way through the game? The reason that Frozen Orb, Meteor, Chain Lightning, etc, are higher level skills is because they are better skills.
And your idea is especially silly when you consider the title of this thread. It's hard enough for them to balance the skills that are viable in hell. How much more difficult do you think it would be if every skill was?
Bh
Bhruic said:
That is a non issue since you generally use a minimum of one spam skill and one timered skill and all of the timered skills are higher up the tree. Nobody is saying you should be able to solo hell with firebolt alone. What I'm saying is that firebolt should be a viable PART of a fire sorc build in hell when it is fully synnergised. Say all of the changes in the fire tree took place just like I said. You could then see people for an example using Firebolt, Fireball, Blaze, Hydra, and Meteor in the same build. Rather than right now you see people using fireball and meteor only (and if youre lucky you see some variant build with firewall or hydra). People might have all those 5 skills i mentioned maxed but they will still only use 2 of them. That's not a good game to me. Makes it all extremely simple.
edit:
oh and um
"Why would I decide to wait and go with a level 30 skill (making the first 29 levels much more difficult) when I can simply take a level 1 skill, and run it all the way through the game? "
You consider that good game design? To force a player into not using any skills for the first 30 levels in order to gain maximum efficiency later on? Luckily synnergies took care of that though (on most occasions at least) so your argument again is a non issue.
Origin said:
Hydra is a level 30 spell - it should be better than it is. Blaze is a level 12 spell, so should be moderately better than it is, and I think I already mentioned that. Generally because it's not really useful even at level 12.
However, your suggestion is pretty silly. You get a total of 111 skill points in the game, assuming you hit level 99, which rarely happens. You can't max Firebolt/Fireball/Blaze/Hydra/Meteor/Fire Mastery. But let's say we drop some skills so you can max them. What exactly are they supposed to do that isn't already done? What is Firebolt going to do that is going to make it preferable to Fireball? And how is it not going to be preferable to Fireball all the time?
And suddenly you are into skill balancing. And as I said, there are already enough imbalances in the skills as they are now, without having to try and consider every single skill.
Absolutely I consider it good game design. To force the player to make a choice about immediate vs long term gains. And no, it's not a "non-issue", because in a lot of cases, saving skill points is a much better choice than not. When I hit level 30 as a meteorb sorc, for example, I darn well better have at least 3 points on hand to put one in fire mastery/cold mastery/frozen orb. If I've used all my skill points already on synergies, then my char is going to be a lot less effective than she could be.
Of course, you're right, it's a somewhat non-issue because your example is silly, and not at all what I said. Level 30 skills (other than the masteries, which do nothing on their own) all have prereqs. Waiting until level 30 to take them would be stupid, you'd take them as you go. So it's not like you'd have no skills at all. You just wouldn't have very high skills (ie, level 20 firebolt).
Bh
Xenon[XoA]
Banned
Firebolt and Iceblast both work very well as end-game spells. Firebolt, because its fast, requires 2.5 mana / shot, and is a lot harder to dodge than fireball in pvp. Damage is almost as high as fireball, minus the splash. In pvm, the mana cost alone should speak for it.
Iceblast can reach at least 12k, and is good for spamming in btw (or as a main attack) bliz's.
I wanna see frost nova get some synergies :/
And maybe a slight reduction in mana cost.
Iceblast can reach at least 12k, and is good for spamming in btw (or as a main attack) bliz's.
I wanna see frost nova get some synergies :/
And maybe a slight reduction in mana cost.
Bhruic said:
If you read my first post thoroughly and applied some brainpower you would see that those 5 skills could then all be used together with benefits.
Start by laying down some hydras who with their increased duration will add firepower for the whole fight. Then activate blaze and run back a bit. Call a meteor on yourself as the enemies continue towards you. They are walking in your blaze, taking damage from your hydras and from the fireballs you spam and as they finally catch up to you your meteor lands on them. Then say from all that splash damage you managed to kill all the minions but not the unique. Then you switch to firebolt instead of fireball to finish him off more quickly (and you already have firebolt anyway since its a synnergy).
Sounds alot more interesting than using only fireball and meteor doesn't it?
About forcing a player to go without skills I think you are wrong there. It's not at all an interesting decision. No one in their right mind would chose the short term benefit to damage their character in the long turn. All this does is force the player to play through normal in an extremely mundane way. With a limited collection of skills that all do minimal damage it becomes not a game of strategy anymore but a game of patience and boredom-endurance. It's not like you have to be smart to finish normal with crappy skills, you just need to have the patience to do it (and most people do have that patience but are they having fun? hell no!). Rule number one in game design: the most efficient path should always be the most fun path.
Xenon[KoA] said:
Like I said I'm not very much into PvP so go ahead and make suggestions for that if you wish. For PvM however mana cost is seldom a problem except with extremely costly spam-spells like nova and frost nova. Also I don't see how you would use ice blast instead of glacial in PvM as Glacial does more damage in total as long as you hit more than 1 enemy, is faster, and can potentially imobilize 6 or so enemies rather than 1.
What you're forgetting is that the whole game used to be built on redundant skills. There were no synergies so you could dump points into a skill and then simply start using another more effective one when it became available.
Consequently, a lot of people would simply melee or XP leech their way to level 30 so they could simply use all their points on the higher level stuff like the Tri Sorc builds. Synergies were introduced to change that so that investing in the lower level skills was still a useful thing to do. Unfortunately this also reduced build variety since you really had to use synergies to enhance a skill's effectiveness in order to survive. I think it's okay that the lowest level skills still become redundant outside of synergies but I do think skills beyond that should have more advantage and disadvantage tradeoffs like longer freeze durations or higher damage over a splash effect.
I also think that synergy requirements should be reduced. Sorcs really ought to be able to max out the effectiveness of two skills from different elements, IMO and one of them shouldn't always have to be Frozen Orb.
I have a hunch they aren't going to change skills at all though. I think this new patch is simply an update with some new secret bosses and toys to play with to keep Diablo 2 fresh until they're finally ready to put out Diablo 3 which I suspect they've started production on at this point given all the hirings and the new music created.
Consequently, a lot of people would simply melee or XP leech their way to level 30 so they could simply use all their points on the higher level stuff like the Tri Sorc builds. Synergies were introduced to change that so that investing in the lower level skills was still a useful thing to do. Unfortunately this also reduced build variety since you really had to use synergies to enhance a skill's effectiveness in order to survive. I think it's okay that the lowest level skills still become redundant outside of synergies but I do think skills beyond that should have more advantage and disadvantage tradeoffs like longer freeze durations or higher damage over a splash effect.
I also think that synergy requirements should be reduced. Sorcs really ought to be able to max out the effectiveness of two skills from different elements, IMO and one of them shouldn't always have to be Frozen Orb.
I have a hunch they aren't going to change skills at all though. I think this new patch is simply an update with some new secret bosses and toys to play with to keep Diablo 2 fresh until they're finally ready to put out Diablo 3 which I suspect they've started production on at this point given all the hirings and the new music created.
Origin said:
And if you'd quit acting all superior and insulting, maybe you'd recognize the validity of other opinions.
Yes it did. How about this:
"Sneak around the corner, and spot the enemies conversing around an old oak table. They haven't spotted you, so you start the long incantation to summon a flaming meteor from the sky. As it streaks towards the earth, one of them looks up and spots it, and cries a warning to the rest. Too late, as the meteor impacts with the earth, flames spilling outward. A few of the weaker enemies have fallen, but the more powerful evaded the worst of the blast. Summoning forth the mystic energy of the ether, you call balls of pure flame forth, and cause them to shoot towards the remaining foes. Blast after blast hit them, and they finally succomb. You are victorious!"
Sounds a lot more interesting than "using fireball and meteor", doesn't it? Unfortunately, what "sounds interesting", and what is actually practical in game terms, isn't the same thing at all. Do you think people spam fireballs simply because there is nothing better? No, it's because it's much easier and less difficult to simply spam a single spell instead of scrolling through 5 of them. Sure, you might do what you describe a time or two. Or even a dozen times. But after a hundred, you're likely to get tired of constantly switching through spells, pick one, and start spamming it.
Of course some would. I play a lot of games with a friend, and he tries a bunch of different chars. He's constantly spending points on what I consider silly skills early on, that's going to hamper him later. He most certainly is in his right mind.
As for your "rule number one"... That is, of course, the stupidest rule I've heard yet. By your reasoning, the most fun in D2 should be had by doing Trist runs til 15, then tombs til 20, cows til 24, ancients, baal runs, nm rush, nm baal runs, hell rush, hell baal runs. Because that's the most efficient way to level up in the game. Is it the most fun? Not for a lot of people. A lot of people actually enjoy playing through the quests. In fact, I doubt anyone did otherwise, the first time they played. It certainly isn't the most efficient, but it was the most fun.
Bh
Xenon[XoA]
Banned
Glacial costs more mana, and in hell, the freeze time is so negligable, I'd prolly want something with more thunk to it. That, and it'd be the blizzard for the main source, iceblast + merc just to kill the stragglers. Much more mana-efficient than glacial'ing singles until the blizzard can be recast.Origin said:
Bhruic said:
OH my god...... -_-
Ok first of all people who want to spam fireball can still do that. But some people with a bit more intelect like more complex and challenging things than clicking enemies over and over again. In todays D2 you cannot use that example with the 5 skills because it is LESS efficient than the simpler method of spamming fireballs.
Secondly, this is where you're getting so way off that I'm not convinced you're even serious.. but whatever. You got it totally backwards. The MOST FUN thing in the game. Should be balanced so that it is ALSO the most EFFICIENT thing. god the stupidity. Nowadays runs are the most efficient things while they are far from the most fun thing. Thus blizzard has broken this rule. What they should do is to change it so that runs are NOT efficient but so that the thing most people would consider fun would become the new most efficient thing.
edit:
also "Of course some would. I play a lot of games with a friend, and he tries a bunch of different chars. He's constantly spending points on what I consider silly skills early on, that's going to hamper him later. He most certainly is in his right mind."
This applies of course only to people who know the game and who play it seriously with the intent of "winning". Nothing ever applies to newcomers because they are 100% unpredictable as they do not hold all the parts of the equation plus their experience is more geared toards learning and toying around with stuff than progressing with the game and "winning".
Bhruic said:
Charged bolt is a hell viable skill and it's level 1.
Anyway some thoughts about skill balancing:
-Firewall needs synergies and needs them badly. Since Diablo 1, Firewall has always been the most damaging sorc skill. That changed in 1.10 and it shouldn't have. If FW isn't the most damaging sorc skill it's pretty much useless.
-How bad ass would it be if Telekinesis were a hell viable skill? Ever take your high level sorc to the blood moor in normal and point quill rats out of existence? So awesome!!
-Even though nova sorcs were the 1.09 equivalent of 1.10's hammerdins, I'd like to see nova sorcs make a comeback by throwing some synergies nova's way.
-After 11 patches it'd be nice if Spear Zons didn't suck for once.
oh and blaze is actually good through parts of normal as it is now, its nearly free damage to stack on top of whatever other skills you use (the only "cost" is that you have to move around a little every once in a while).
of course that's not good enough, it should be hell viable.
of course that's not good enough, it should be hell viable.
IzZ-Lethal
New member
id personaly like to see light nova given more damage. i miss nova sorcs. what character cleared cows faster in .09 then a Good nova sorc.
