Why locking blessing over limited slot

[FatSushi]

Probably the most disappointing update I've seen in a long time, in my own opinion.

I tried to force myself to play this new update for at least 10 hours (to unlock the talent tree) before passing any judgment, but I am forced to conclude that it is bad.

To be more clear, it's more about your style of build and how you played before. For comparison, I am talking about playing as Meris before/after the update, which I do all the time. I think the major screw-up was limiting what blessings you can have per character.

Before, I was combining 'shuriken,' 'lightning chain,' and other abilities to deal massive damage to the horde. But now, because the developers want to force me into a specific 'class style,' my fun is gone. Don't get me wrong, I can understand the skill tree, the overall difficulty, and others (except for removing healing from blessings, which sucks). If you replace something with a 'better' system, fair enough.

But I feel like someone came into my fun, took my gameplay, and told me, 'No, no, that’s not how you want to play it, you need to do it like this' as a game master in a roleplay who wants you to not deviate from the archetype you were assigned at the beginning.

I don't know about you, but that kind of game master sucks.
Removing freedom from your players sucks. As it stands, the game sucks. The excuse of "it's early access" does not change anything that this choice is still is the mistake (again restricting sucks).

I would highly advise, rather than forcing a number of slots, to allocate a total sum and let the player choose where they want to distribute it.

[NorionV]

Originally posted by Nerex7:

I'm in the same boat. The campfire passive system was narrow, just a single thing but it was more impactful than the entire skill tree.

I went for a couple runs to see how many skillpoints I'd get. Full clear of Act 1 is 4 points. For just that one character. Meaning I'd need 9 full clears per character to unlock the entire tree. That's already pretty grindy but...what do I actually get?

1% Damage here, 2% attack speed there. It's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ meaningless. It doesn't impact your gameplay at all and if you get to the big nodes, you are stuck with those forever. Diversity is dead.

This is just patently untrue. Sigils let you pick one, and it was some silly level-based stat boost, like armor per level or something.

Off the top of my head, Knight can get things like innate smiting, exalting, blocking, dash charge on block, ability to upgrade to Master blessings, ability to completely remove Novice blessings, armor into damage, attack damage into power damage, a damage immunity shield, a hit shield... and some other stuff. And he can do more than one of them. He can combine them together. We call this a 'build' in the RPG community. Something you couldn't do with sigils.

It seems like people are just glancing at the first row of talents and then scoffing before running to the forums to complain. The talent system is way more interesting than those garbage camp fire sigils.

[Prophet419]

Sooo you wanna play a ranged based strike character? Play lorian lol

The talent tree design isnt so you can play every character in every way. Its so you can play each character in their shoes. A mage by definition shouldnt be good at striking, or tanking so she doesnt have a single talent for either. Other characters fill that gap by being better at it than the other.

Why even have different characters in the first place if your idea for a solution is let everyone spec exactly how they want to without ANY identity. May as well just remove all the current characters and add a create a character screen

[Red]

https://imgur.com/a/YGd8aP3

You are looking for this specific item I think.
That combined with + slot gear will give a lot more diversity options.

[Ignis Imperia]

Originally posted by Red:

https://imgur.com/a/YGd8aP3

You are looking for this specific item I think.
That combined with + slot gear will give a lot more diversity options.

Kinda sucks you gotta sacrifice a jewel slot to enable a playstyle. But at least as bare minimum the option is there I suppose.

[Nerex7]

Originally posted by Cranor:

Originally posted by Nerex7:

I'm in the same boat. The campfire passive system was narrow, just a single thing but it was more impactful than the entire skill tree.

I went for a couple runs to see how many skillpoints I'd get. Full clear of Act 1 is 4 points. For just that one character. Meaning I'd need 9 full clears per character to unlock the entire tree. That's already pretty grindy but...what do I actually get?

1% Damage here, 2% attack speed there. It's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ meaningless. It doesn't impact your gameplay at all and if you get to the big nodes, you are stuck with those forever. Diversity is dead.

Stuck how with what forever? You can respec for a measly 500 gold and get all your points back

With the same damn tree that does the same damn thing. It doesn't matter how I max it out lol. The skills don't magically change when I respec. There's less builds than before the tree was added plus that build is hidden behind a huge grind.

[Cranor]

Originally posted by Nerex7:

Originally posted by Cranor:

Stuck how with what forever? You can respec for a measly 500 gold and get all your points back

With the same damn tree that does the same damn thing. It doesn't matter how I max it out lol. The skills don't magically change when I respec. There's less builds than before the tree was added plus that build is hidden behind a huge grind.

How in the world are the trees providing less than the previous marks or whatever, like I don't even remember what most of those did because they were that lackluster.

[Zoid13]

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

Originally posted by Red:

https://imgur.com/a/YGd8aP3

You are looking for this specific item I think.
That combined with + slot gear will give a lot more diversity options.

Kinda sucks you gotta sacrifice a jewel slot to enable a playstyle. But at least as bare minimum the option is there I suppose.

ive been using it on skadi. its actually awesome fun. every run is different with an assload of passives lol. can easily clear D30 act 2 with it every run. did about 7 runs with it and won them all.
skadi with status talent + hoarfrost, malady, vampirism, gem high, hurricane, god of war, along with Ninh's giant attack area.
and you can get them pretty reliably with 25%+ master offers and 100% legendary offers on T2 gear
fun item :D

i wish there was another item that you could combine with it to get +6 all slots or something so you can go super crazy with it.

[Ignis Imperia]

Originally posted by Zoid13:

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

Kinda sucks you gotta sacrifice a jewel slot to enable a playstyle. But at least as bare minimum the option is there I suppose.

ive been using it on skadi. its actually awesome fun. every run is different with an assload of passives lol. can easily clear D30 act 2 with it every run. did about 7 runs with it and won them all.
skadi with status talent + hoarfrost, malady, vampirism, gem high, hurricane, god of war, along with Ninh's giant attack area.
fun item :D

i wish there was another item that you could combine with it to get +6 all slots or something so you can go super crazy with it.

I can imagine the chaos being really interesting if you pump alteration ritual really high and at same time take powers from many different gods along the way.

Alteration was always fun to mess around with in builds.

[Eternal Wanderer]

There are few games of this genre (which I like to call horde survivor) that allow you to stack up as many blessings/skills as you want.

If you had played one of these, you'd have seen how much of a bad idea that is.

Also, there are items that give you extra blessing slots. I think this will be more fleshed out as more updates are released.

[Red]

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

Originally posted by Red:

https://imgur.com/a/YGd8aP3

You are looking for this specific item I think.
That combined with + slot gear will give a lot more diversity options.

Kinda sucks you gotta sacrifice a jewel slot to enable a playstyle. But at least as bare minimum the option is there I suppose.

Yea you can still have all options this way.

But personally I don't even like it and also don’t recommend it. I tried it and you get so many different random blessings that you won't be able to stack the ones you need properly to advance in the higher darkness levels.

[ChexMixKitty]

tbh, I that it limits what you can draw once the slots fill up.

[FAST&BULBOUS]

Originally posted by Red:

https://imgur.com/a/YGd8aP3

You are looking for this specific item I think.
That combined with + slot gear will give a lot more diversity options.

In practice I find this item to be not so great. I was also running it with legendary focused gear but not being able to consistently level up the good blessings I get is annoying.

Plus if I pick up Warped Strike now while holding this item, now I have far fewer chances to get Gem High. There are a couple other similar situations where it's much harder to get two synergizing blessings from one god.

Also how are you getting 25% master and 100% legendary? I got up to 14% master and 70% legend and the only spot I know could give me more is the head slot (I have a unique on Skadi that only gives 6.5% but it's too good to swap for a basic 9.5%). I thought my build was popping off when I got this high, didn't realize it could go that high.

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

Originally posted by Red:

https://imgur.com/a/YGd8aP3

You are looking for this specific item I think.
That combined with + slot gear will give a lot more diversity options.

Kinda sucks you gotta sacrifice a jewel slot to enable a playstyle. But at least as bare minimum the option is there I suppose.

What do you mean? Of course you have to use gear slots to make a specific build work. You also have to use gear slots to make any other build work.

[Chief Inspector Rucket]

Originally posted by FatSushi:

Originally posted by Eudicots:

I see the freedom and flexibility as being moved to armor. If I want a strike build with Merris I equip items with +strike slot. It's what I am doing to level up her talent tree. You can get a fairly decent build going even tho her talent tree is more in favor of casting and summoning.

Did not see any item allowing more blessing slot, you got them on the second act ?

I think you have a better chance of seeing that stat on act 2 items but I'm not sure now that you mention, but I have + 2 strike slots on my gear as the archer dude and I mostly do Act 2

[Ignis Imperia]

Originally posted by FAST&BULBOUS:

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

Kinda sucks you gotta sacrifice a jewel slot to enable a playstyle. But at least as bare minimum the option is there I suppose.

What do you mean? Of course you have to use gear slots to make a specific build work. You also have to use gear slots to make any other build work.

Except when you wanna go for time + death build, where you could enter with no gear whatsoever, no skill tree whatsoever, on basically any character and as long as RNG favors you and you get warped strike + force + execution + mayhem + soulstealers and then you just stack luck and you can easily clear up to like 40 skulls in act 2 like this... (done this twice by now, once as Skadi, another time as Lorien).

And to address the question "What do I mean", I mean that this was not the case before this patch. You didn't need gear to ENABLE a build unless we were talking that one specific build where you got 3 dashes, which admittedly was annoying but it was 1 build. Rest you could always build through RNG, gear served purely to amplify the effect of that RNG. If you picked 20 powers that didn't work together back then, no amount of gear would save you because you messed up the actual build. Meanwhile now gear can carry you where you click random blessings through like 30 skulls with brain on standby, but powers feel a lot less impactful.

How to clear up to 50 skulls with 0 effort on Lorien, gets strike gear, get luck gear, get some attack dmg gear, pick every strike option that comes up in the run, ideally save attack slot for warped strike because it continues to be utterly broken, then just run around and collect ♥♥♥♥ while clearing every enemy before they even appear on your screen. Riveting gameplay. You of course also want to take talents that amplify strikes, attack speed, pull range & pierce/bounce.

[Zoid13]

the slot limits are actually great to help customise further.
for the most part you want LESS slots so you can fill your core skills that you are gearing for faster then just level those to max as early as possible.
and if you want more you can get 6 slots if you want.
though in general it does spread your damage thin across too many strikes / casts / powers