[Open Beta Feedback] Spellblade and Death Knight Thoughts

[Fiaryn]

So, some thoughts on the changes so far:

Death Knights and Spellblades -almost- feel good, but there's a couple problems, some of which may be systemic holding them back:

-Not enough skill points. Between signature skills, trying to do the mixed melee and magic combatant thing, there's just not enough skill points per level up to do either thing particularly well. RPGs reward specialization, always have, over generalists. To solve this I think you're really going to need some combination of either more skill points available (a lot of builds don't feel like they come online until VERY late in the present paradigm, even for warriors and such, compared to Mages who just start blasting immediately), condensing nodes, etc.

-Related to the above, I'm not sure if taping segments of skill trees from other classes to make a hybrid is a good way to go. Historically, even as far back as Everquest, this has been a problem. Shadow Knights in Everquest were originally envisioned as half of a Necromancer and half of a fighter taped together, and surely the broader toolkit would make up for the loss of power right? Wrong. It sure didn't. It wasn't until Shadow Knights became Shadow Knights, their own thing, and not half of a Necromancer and half of a Fighter, that they became an actual good class. I bring up Shadow Knight in no small part because currently Death Knight is suffering from this problem way more than Spellblade. Spellblade has a lot more stuff that has been customized/made unique relative to its parent classes.

[Foefaller]

While I agree Death knight needs more of its own thing to shine, there are some things that are unique to it. Its sweep skill, for example, is considered a debuff skill (since it also sunders) and therefore benefits from the Hex skills that add more debuffs to curse. The mutual skills afterwards are unique to it as well (or at least don't show up in the warrior skill trees) and either weaken or drop morale of adjacent enemies at the end of their turn.

It suggests the role of a melee debuffer/hexer that is also weakening the enemy for their allies, not just for its own damage or survival, which I think would be a great niche between Warrior and Defender once it gets more to call its own.

[Phun]

Death Knight? What an odd choice to name a hero class when you've got Defender, Mage, Ranger, Ritualist, and Warrior as your existing options. Merge the Death Knight and Spellblade into a single hero and call it a Warlock. Theme it around Eldritch Sovereigns, interacting with the Abyss, and other Umbral stuff. Now we've got a proper niche for our new shiny hero and a gameplay reason to pick it beside just being a hybrid.

[Pantagruel]

The main value to a hybrid in AoW4 is to have both a melee and a ranged option, and both the death knight and the spellblade accomplish that. Unfortunately, this significantly devalues the signature 'melee mage', because you mostly aren't going to want to use it; if they're up in your face you probably want to just use a triple melee attack, and if not you want a spell.

I would suggest adding a bonus to melee mage that gives your magic attacks a bonus against adjacent enemies.

[Noraxthuul]

I definitely agree that Death Knight needs he's own unique skills to shine. The curse branch without spell penetration means next to nothing late game.

I would instead expand the undead branch much more, adding node to buff undead in his army (AND himself if undead). To go along with the Grim Reaper-esque vibe he could get abilities that trigger when he kills something (i.e Dark Rites from Reaper, Grim Executioner, etc) but that affect all undead in its army instead. I would also making them give static buff to magic origini undead units, especially mythic ones, so there is an actual incentive in not going "fully-enanched but different-flavored" Pyre Templar or Warbreeds every single time, and instead let necromancy use its actual tools.

[Foefaller]

Originally posted by Noraxthuul:

I definitely agree that Death Knight needs he's own unique skills to shine. The curse branch without spell penetration means next to nothing late game.

I would instead expand the undead branch much more, adding node to buff undead in his army (AND himself if undead). To go along with the Grim Reaper-esque vibe he could get abilities that trigger when he kills something (i.e Dark Rites from Reaper, Grim Executioner, etc) but that affect all undead in its army instead. I would also making them give static buff to magic origini undead units, especially mythic ones, so there is an actual incentive in not going "fully-enanched but different-flavored" Pyre Templar or Warbreeds every single time, and instead let necromancy use its actual tools.

They just changed Death Knight's curse today: Now it's a point blank, free action ability. If you go frost Hex it's basically free 30 points of damage every three turns.

Combined with the sweep, you could argue it's less about landing debuffs (at least late game) and more an extra side helping of them while otherwise smashing in faces thanks to their warrior skills. That said, wouldn't be a bad idea to give them a couple ways to inflict status vulnerability with their base attacks.

[Typha]

Originally posted by Noraxthuul:

I definitely agree that Death Knight needs he's own unique skills to shine. The curse branch without spell penetration means next to nothing late game.

In my current play-through I'm seeing this, the curse skills just don't work after early game and I feel like I wasted precious skill points.

Originally posted by Fiaryn:

So, some thoughts on the changes so far:

Death Knights and Spellblades -almost- feel good, but there's a couple problems, some of which may be systemic holding them back:

-Not enough skill points. Between signature skills, trying to do the mixed melee and magic combatant thing, there's just not enough skill points per level up to do either thing particularly well. RPGs reward specialization, always have, over generalists. To solve this I think you're really going to need some combination of either more skill points available (a lot of builds don't feel like they come online until VERY late in the present paradigm, even for warriors and such, compared to Mages who just start blasting immediately), condensing nodes, etc.

Exactly. And this is an issue with all heroes that try to do two things decently, it works early on (what doesn't?), but going into the second half of the game you end up with a really inferior hero that doesn't at all keep up with your specialists. It's just more of a problem with death knights.