Weak leveling

[Abaddon]

Ok, first of all, I might be the only one who thinks like this, but this is how I feel about this game.

I got it on release, and since then I've felt the same way about the game, spells don't improve. How's this? Well, leveling up a skill from 1 to 2 for example will make you pay a lot more mana while MAYBE improving the skill from 65% weapon damage to 67%, where a 2% increase in weapon damage might represent 0.01 extra damage. While some spells might even be broken (poison glaive outlander prepatch anyone?) others are rendered useless by leveling them up (mage's teleport for example)

Now, does anybody know any mods to balance this across the board? I've been fiddling with SynergiesMod and other mods that I found on the workshop, but never came across one that made it worth playing. I seek something that makes skills evolve better with the character, and ACTUALLY become better rather than losing usefulness.

[cua_bien02]

You got it eskewed there. Open up your arcane statistics tab and look up how your weapon damage actually is after accounting for Str and Foc. Now multiply that with physical damage bonus and elemental dmg bonus. That's the real dmg. By lvl 50 and w/ good gear, bare weapon dmg could be about 1000 before bonus. 2% of 1000 is 20 dmg. That's still nothing of course, but the point of a skill is never to put 1 or 2 in, usually it's stopping at 10 and 15 for the real power, because you've got to admit, 20% or 30% is a lot. Now I didn't even factor in multiple-strike skills, such as Ravage, chaotic burst, shadowshot or venomous hail. Say, shadowshot increase 2% per rank. It's 4 shards, so 8% total and at the end tier it is an absolute beast.

A few mana cost for that? Pfff no brainer.

And don't know what patch you're talking abt because there have been several patch, but I've never seen a broken poison glaive, if anything it's quite powerful now that I've reached tier 2.

And please enlighten me how Frost phase is useless leveling up? Even and rank 1 it's a must-have for mages.

[Stainless Steel Rat]

Originally posted by cua_bien02:

You got it eskewed there. Open up your arcane statistics tab and look up how your weapon damage actually is after accounting for Str and Foc. Now multiply that with physical damage bonus and elemental dmg bonus. That's the real dmg. By lvl 50 and w/ good gear, bare weapon dmg could be about 1000 before bonus. 2% of 1000 is 20 dmg. That's still nothing of course, but the point of a skill is never to put 1 or 2 in, usually it's stopping at 10 and 15 for the real power, because you've got to admit, 20% or 30% is a lot. Now I didn't even factor in multiple-strike skills, such as Ravage, chaotic burst, shadowshot or venomous hail. Say, shadowshot increase 2% per rank. It's 4 shards, so 8% total and at the end tier it is an absolute beast.

A few mana cost for that? Pfff no brainer.

And don't know what patch you're talking abt because there have been several patch, but I've never seen a broken poison glaive, if anything it's quite powerful now that I've reached tier 2.

And please enlighten me how Frost phase is useless leveling up? Even at rank 1 it's a must-have for mages.

+1

[Abaddon]

Thanks for the answers!

First of all, a little example. The berserk has a passive that at level 1 heals you for 5% of max HP on crit!! Awesome, then each level adds a crappy 0.5% to the total, which at high levels becomes awesome too, but you are OBVIOUSLY better spending extra points somewhere else.

What I seek is a mod that instead of that could give you for example 1% of total HP + a base amount, like 25, per level spent. This way it gives 15% max hp plus a base extra healing to help for low vit build diversity and that stuff, to make people decide whether they want to spend 1 extra point on a little more healing or get some extra damage from your dear ravage, etc.

I know the numbers are broken there, just get them adjusted properly to be challenging enough.

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As I said before, it's about "leveling up", of course the mage teleport is a must-have, but beyond level 1 it only makes you waste mana faster. I don't really see any way to use it for the damage, but hey, diversity! :D

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About the glaive, it was patched around 3 or 4 months after release. You could beat anything with an almost-free spell that could get to 400 damage and bounced around forever as soon as level 10 if synergized with focus gear, focus stats and +poison damage passives. Just spam them at the general, and it goes down in elite difficulty in 15 seconds.

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To put it simple, I used to play berserk with another berserk friend. I was on the frost-lightning tree, focusing mainly on ice breath for AoE and vulnerability and chain lightning buffs to mop small mobs quickly. My friend was a shadow-zerker and his damage with the same items was WAY higher. Why? Because my chain lightning was epic at rank 1 with a hefty 40% dps as lightning damage, then each level added 3% extra damage. It because unplayable at level 20-ish because I wouldn't deal enough damage to survive, and eventually died with my hardcore piece of crap character.

Could be that I picked the wrong skills, but I don't really like it when a role-playing game doesn't let me play roles, and just forces me to play some sort of exponentially optimized build designed for endurance sacrificing everything in the name of an overextended HP pool.

Now I'd like to see what you think about that, maybe there's a way out. :3

[Peaceful Panda]

I was also let down by the skill trees. There are some skills that are almost useless, and you will gimp your character if you focus on them. Some are only good for 1 point. Others are really powerful but no fun to use (looking at you prismatic bolt). Just not much there that interests me. Many skills that seem like they would be cool end up having lame particle effects.

I really like the game and certainly got my moneys worth; but most of the skills are just underwhelming.

[cua_bien02]

Originally posted by Abaddon:

Thanks for the answers!

[Trim]

About the blood hunger skill, I actually made a berserker with only 1 point in it, and my current one has 9 points now. I do notice that my survival rate is better on elite with more points in blood hunger (melee/autoattack build). You mentioned frost/lightning zerker, so I can see why investing in blood hunger is really a bad deal for you. If I'm not wrong, it only procs on melee-based attack, same with stormclaw. So the chances that blood hunger (or stormclaw) procs for your build is lower than my build, especially when you go on full on Focus and use Frost Breath, Northern rage, storm hatchet and permafrost. None of these proc blood hunger and stormclaw. Now, at rank 1 it's 5%, and rank 9 it's 9% . That's 4% difference of max hp over 2s. With an overall higher proc rate, it's worth it for me. Not the best skill in the world, but I need to invest in it for extra survivability of a pure melee build (I also have ice shield, shadow burst, wolfshade, battle standard and howl).

I always advise every build except embermage to invest in Str only for about lvl 10 - 15, only throwing in the occasional vit/dex for the gear, even if they plan on building full Foc or sth else. Why? Because early Dex and Vit benefits are negligibly small, and all early game weapons except staves and wands deal PHYSICAL DAMAGE ONLY, so Str investment will yield the best result. Another reason is that the initial mana pull, no matter what you do, will not be enough to spam skills. You will need to attack with your weapons. Embermage is the exception because embermage charge bar allows them to spam w/o mana cost.

This same philosophy goes with many other skills, for some builds, they're only worth 1 rank, for others, they're worth more. With the base amount like you suggested, it could potentially become OP. Good elite melee zerker builds don't go with low hp (even if they have low vit). They get murdered very fast. So a high hp pool with a base amount could go awry pretty fast, design-wise. Second of all, I think they need to balance it with other classes. Outlander and embermages don't get defense skills and blood embers that early. Speck only steals 12 hp per hit. At 5%, assuming 300 hp, that's 15 hp from blood hunger alone. However, engineers... Oh well, they're nominally the support, so I guess I shouldn't fault them for being so damn thick-skinned. Still would love to see healing bot and forcefield get nerfed just a little bit one day though. AND a big nerf on Borris and some end lvl skills (looking at you, Wolfpack).

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Frost phase, I see your point. That's why people only put only 1 point lol. Not necessarily good or bad, but you know, how much can you do with a skill that helps you teleporting around lol. I also just looked at the mana cost, nothing more unreasonable than other skills.

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Agree about the glaive: I'm happy with it the way it is right now.

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Yes I also agree that vit/hp and dmg is badly optimized in the vanilla game. I mean, glass cannon build just doesn't freaking work from lvl 50 unless somebody takes point so you can stay back and do dmg.

And all I'm talking about is the leveling up part. If a skill is bad, it is bad, and there are plenty of them. But I just have to account for the fact that it's a matter of course in designing a game. It's hard to make everything work for everyone, and coming up with all awesome things.

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Last but not least, engis have a crappy role-play tree for electricity/fire builds, but not zerker. I think zerker tundra tree is quite well-made. All the power skills are available early.

[Abaddon]

Originally posted by cua_bien02:

Yes I also agree that vit/hp and dmg is badly optimized in the vanilla game. I mean, glass cannon build just doesn't freaking work from lvl 50 unless somebody takes point so you can stay back and do dmg.

And all I'm talking about is the leveling up part. If a skill is bad, it is bad, and there are plenty of them. But I just have to account for the fact that it's a matter of course in designing a game. It's hard to make everything work for everyone, and coming up with all awesome things.

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Last but not least, engis have a crappy role-play tree for electricity/fire builds, but not zerker. I think zerker tundra tree is quite well-made. All the power skills are available early.

On the vit side, I think it's good as it is right now. It gives an edge to customization. In diablo 2 this was the best build possible for ANY character:

STR: enough for gear
DEX: enough for gear + up to 75% block if you need it
VIT: the rest, often more than 300
EN: zero, nothing, null, void...

This is what devs were aiming for stats to stop cheesing, low HP output from vit, energy also gives magic dmg, dex gives crit chance and str gives actual damage, all 4 stats are quite balanced.

About making everything work for everyone, thats why in D2 skills synergized and empowered others within the tree. It makes sense that as long as you keep studying and mastering an art, the stronger it becomes, not because it has some broken OP spells, but because your grasp on that school is stronger.

And about engis, i think they are some of the best! 2-hand builds are lame, because you rely on gear too much, cannons are quite slow since you sacrifice DPS for AoE attacks, but those damn shield builds... they are insane. Shield bash for the AoE stuns + that passive that gives you extra damage when you attack a stunned enemy... and the insane amounts of healing you receive from using charge bars + aegis + force fields.... just broken in my opinion

Anyway, good to see I'm not the only one who thinks that this game needs just a tiny little tweaking. However, I don't regret a single euro I spent on it.

[cua_bien02]

Originally posted by Abaddon:

On the vit side, I think it's good as it is right now. It gives an edge to customization. In diablo 2 this was the best build possible for ANY character:

STR: enough for gear
DEX: enough for gear + up to 75% block if you need it
VIT: the rest, often more than 300
EN: zero, nothing, null, void...

This is what devs were aiming for stats to stop cheesing, low HP output from vit, energy also gives magic dmg, dex gives crit chance and str gives actual damage, all 4 stats are quite balanced.

About making everything work for everyone, thats why in D2 skills synergized and empowered others within the tree. It makes sense that as long as you keep studying and mastering an art, the stronger it becomes, not because it has some broken OP spells, but because your grasp on that school is stronger.

Didn't play D2 so can't really comment. But isn't the way stats work the same in T2? Str for all weapon dmg and crit dmg. Dex gives crit and dodge chance. Foc gives magic dmg and Vit for hp, armor and block chance.

They quite fail to make every skill work, but they couldn't and shouldn't make a skill system that works like D2, so I think this is one fundamental difference. From what you said, in D2 you basically concentrate in one tree and master it because they synergize with each other. Well in TL2 the synergizing skills are not in the same tree and they do it differently. For example, the Prismatic Bolt mages you see blasting everything in sight are firebrand + icebrand + shockbrand + PB build. In this case, I fault the ingenuity of players, not of the devs, because other people use these skills differently so nerfing either the brands or PB will result in a broken skill that no one wants (prismatic bolt alone is problematic as it is). Another example, ever try Howl + Shadowbind + Ravage + Shred armor? Or Tremor + Blast cannon + Fusilade. Glaive throw + Blade Pact + Venomous hail also deserve a mention.

So in short, in TL2, making a focused build in one tree does not work well.

Originally posted by Abaddon:

And about engis, i think they are some of the best! 2-hand builds are lame, because you rely on gear too much, cannons are quite slow since you sacrifice DPS for AoE attacks, but those damn shield builds... they are insane. Shield bash for the AoE stuns + that passive that gives you extra damage when you attack a stunned enemy... and the insane amounts of healing you receive from using charge bars + aegis + force fields.... just broken in my opinion

Oh no, 2-h and cannon engis are badasses, and no I don't think they rely on gear to be good. Of course survivability is nothing compared to sword and board type, but man. For 2-h and cannons Heavy Lift is a must (and of course this is one of those long-term investment). Supercharge and dynamo field for 2-h melee. Blast cannon and from lvl 60 up Fusilade for cannons. And of course all builds should have at least 1 rank in Charge Domination. With this build 2-handers and cannoneers can at least have a few charge "pips" for forcefield. I don't like Aegis much, too weak and proc chance too low for my liking. FF is much more powerful. I don't agree that cannons sacrifice dps for AoE as well. Blast cannon is the farthest from AoE you can see, compared to even Flame Hammer and later Emberquake, but it increases enemies' taken dmg so in the end I never noticed my cannoneer being underwhelmed, even early game. Tier 2 and tier 3 fusilade are just.... mind-boggling. Don't ever let people tell you fusilade is bad. Like most skills it needs investment before shining. If you want fusilade, you need to have at least tier 1. And unlike 1-h builds, these bad boys need ATTACK SPEED gems in their weapons, not +dmg.