are there any objectively bad skills?

[eqalidan]

beyond just looking at how classes function, I like going into games like this makeing my own builds, and after a few classes felt really crap im wondering if there are any objectively bad skills that just shouldn't be used, or is it all down to build?

[RhodosGuard]

Just spam the "more damage" nodes and it should work out fine.

This game boils down to:
"Get more "more damage" and dont stand in stuff"

[Katitoff]

Paladin heal, because it has no talent tree.

There is no bad skill, there is only player not finding out its potential use.

And a lot of skills can be transformed into something completely else.

[hutchinsonjc]

I don't think Multistrikes is good. There's basically no ladder representation for it, either.

I honestly wonder if EHG is even looking at skill representation on the ladder. Lastepochtools gives some really great percentages and analysis to that effect about the current ladder place holders, too. It's a really great tool to look at the placement of the different classes and masteries and even skills and to see to what effect the players are able to use these combinations. EHG honestly should've had internal tools to investigate this kind of analysis from the beginning of their Early Access and should've been making adjustments through the last few years to bring this kind of balance. Some stuff has stagnated into practical irrelevance for anything meaningful.

Anyway, using analysis like this, you can see how something like Rebuke can be used to good effect to climb the ladder, and yet despite that, it has really low representation which is almost 100% because using it is an absolute crawl for kill speed - I tried once a Rebuke Paladin build in Arena and the game crashed around Wave ~250 after using a Memory Key [game still has a memory leak, yay] and taking me something like 2.5hours to even get that far, I basically swore a Rebuke build off after that. If I'm going to invest that kind of play time into something that kills that slow, memory leaks can't be messing up my progression in an arena.

I think Rive needs adjustment, too. There's a lot of fun things you can try with it, but some of the nodes and interactions of the nodes really just leaves you wondering about their idea of scaling.

I think vengeance needs a boost in the context of mana generation. Vengeance is naturally slower hitting than something like Rive, so the on-use mana generation nodes that sentinel provides is going to very obviously provide Vengeance with less. Then they throw +Vengeance Skill on a very slow weapon and it's like... are you trying to make Vengeance mana starved? Like, is that the design intention? Or is it just a oopsie, didn't really consider how that might affect things. I don't know, maybe they did want Vengeance to generate less mana.

I think EHG has a lot of good starting points for stuff, I think a lot of stuff is really fun, like seriously it is; I've enjoyed myself a lot, but I don't think they have what it takes to seriously balance a lot of this stuff for the purposes of a competitive ladder driven seasons based purely on what I've seen so far. It doesn't help when they throw around ideas of creating mechanics to shorten a boss fight for those who aren't doing high dps, either. It's like, are they not doing enough DPS because they CHOSE to not do enough dps (choosing talents to be built like a tank), or are they not doing enough DPS because you failed to allow their tools to scale?

And it's crazy to me because I look at a lot of this stuff and see a lot of the imbalances and I immediately recognize the imbalance for what it is *and* what would need to be fixed to bring a better balance (like the mana generation deficiency with Vengeance, but maybe they intend for that despite how I see no practical or logical reason for it - it can stay being a slower hitting ability and still have a way to generate mana a bit faster. Even the affix for mana generation for Vengeance is weaker than the affix for Rive, despite Rive being able to hit a lot faster by default lol)

Watching all these live streams and their answers to things and some of the quoted stuff, it just feels like they are creating a game that is fun, but in no practical way will ladders actually be representative of ANYTHING meaningful when trying to compare different classes and masteries, or even abilities. They have no sense of balance.

The game can NOT basically turn into "This build is best for ladder"... and if you want to ladder and do it seriously, that's the only build to focus on.

Another thing I saw, is that the Covenant monsters (even if EHG finally did nerf spawn rate of them) were one of the singular most game breaking monsters to have to deal with at higher corruptions in the event that you had to deal with more than one of them as a melee class. The Fire Giants (whatever they are called), the ones that make a big red circle targeting you at range and launch something at you, breathe fire, and do a big almost pulsed circular damage over time fire damage in a radius around them, are a close 2nd for the most annoying to deal with multiples of as a melee. It's like "oh great, the game of move, and move again, and move again" all when my abilities can't be used at range, and when I do go to use them, they prevent me from moving. Like, I can't Rive and move at the same time, so I guess if I want to live, I'll just run around to try not to die to this, and to this, and to that, and then what? I won't be able to kill anything myself because I can't stay still long enough to even use Rive.

In 100 to 400 corruption this issue really doesn't manifest itself too too badly because the monster difficulty just isn't there yet, but beyond that it definitely does. And I would wager a guess that Wave ~320 in Arena is roughly equivalent to 1500 corruption with no opponent plus damage modifiers. And I'm really quite confident of that approximation, though it's possible it's closer to 1800 corruption equivalence. It's that ballpark, in any case.

And that's about where a Rive build caps out at in capability lol... Wave ~320 and then Rive is just done. And that's weaving in Vengeance religiously for it's DR, too. Meanwhile, other builds can get QUITE a bit higher than Wave 320 because their damage is not as reliant on being directly in the face of an opponent and standing still there to even use their attack.

And me personally, I REFUSE to play a game of Dodge the incoming damage every 0.5 secs because the opponents in a collective group want to do a really dangerous attack that requires you to move, but once you move, another opponent has done the same thing with a really dangerous attack, etc... BUT your chosen ability as a melee literally requires you to STAND STILL to even PERFORM the ability. There's not many opponents that trigger this frustration for me, but Covenant was the absolute worst for this. In *1,000 corruption* if I saw a double Covenant it was almost instant warp out for me because it was that level of BS to even attempt with Rive - it's impossible to move that much and kill them; it just turns into a big giant dance off swirling around and running lalalala this is going no where. And as I said, the Fire Giants are a very close 2nd to that level of frustration in 1,000 corruption and thankfully most other targets are distant to these two in bringing up this frustration as a melee in my experience.

Minion builds can run/move all day long dodging stuff on the ground while their minions do all or most of the work, even if at reduced performance due to the character itself not being able to attack as often as they'd like with attacks (due to running to dodge something) that trigger some kind of synergistic boost for their minions. I know for example Beast Master has some interesting options that effectively boost the damage of their minions if the player is also meleeing. But you don't have an equivalence with Rive where you can still Rive and kill at reduced performance while moving... because you can't Rive and move lol.

Anyway, this game caters a LOT to ranged and minion for survivability IMO. Marskman can basically play a game of permanent keep-away with a knockback hitting everything in sight on literal spam... it's hilarious to watch. I dabbled in some arena echos with it and I could just stand in a corner on attack from that position and the arena would eventually be over with me never having had to move from that spot, AND with me never getting hit by a SINGLE thing, AND most targets that ever did come into view on the screen, were QUICKLY knocked back off screen and out of view by ranged attacks that would kill those targets being knocked back, even if I couldn't see it happening offscreen. There was no way anything could kill me or even have a chance to try.

[Scipo0419]

Początkowo opublikowane przez hutchinsonjc:

I don't think Multistrikes is good. There's basically no ladder representation for it, either.

Multistrike on Paladin with the "replace extra swords with Smite" node is incredibly powerful. Then it just gets better when you get the "swords that kill their target have a chance to hit an extra target" you literally just call down fire (or lightning if you change Smite) from the heavens.

Edit: I suppose it could be very good on Void Knight as well for the same reason as Smite is very strong and making Multistrike cast smite is bonkers.

[Linguistically Inept]

smelters wrath

i mean you can use it to decent effect with specific gear, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ everything about that skill; the gameplay, the effects, the animation; everything

[Fargol]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Scipo0419:

Początkowo opublikowane przez hutchinsonjc:

I don't think Multistrikes is good. There's basically no ladder representation for it, either.

Multistrike on Paladin with the "replace extra swords with Smite" node is incredibly powerful. Then it just gets better when you get the "swords that kill their target have a chance to hit an extra target" you literally just call down fire (or lightning if you change Smite) from the heavens.

Edit: I suppose it could be very good on Void Knight as well for the same reason as Smite is very strong and making Multistrike cast smite is bonkers.

That exact Paladin build is my top favorite build. It is amazing and visually / viscerally very satisfying.

[hutchinsonjc]

It might be fun, but is it going to get you to Arena Wave 300... nevermind anything remotely close to 1000? The highest Multistrike Arena in 1player mode is wave 200 by a level 95 Void Knight. The skill has a 4.3% representation across all sentinels on the ladder board. Smelter's Wrath has 0.8%, since it was mentioned above.

Smite has 33.8%, Hammer Throw 19.8%, Lunge 36.6%, Judgement 15.6%, Sigils has the highest representation for Sentinels at 59.7%.

To me, Sigils having that high of representation should suggest that it is too powerful in some way that ~60% of all sentinels would take it. Whatever is making it that attractive to use needs to be mirrored in some way to other skills in such a way that your skill choice is more balanced across the player base. 60% of all sentinels using Sigils, which you *have* to spec into Paladin tree some to even get, looks like bad balance design when there are three different sentinel masteries and 60% of them are taking Sigils from the Paladin options.

One thing I noticed while playing Marksman is that there's a fair amount of skills that give you a buff that persists outside of the use of that skill. So you can use one ranged attack to get/proc a buff, and then carry that buff over into how you use a different ranged attack. There's one buff like that that gives you Bleed Chance as example, and another that gives attack speed as another. So you can proc those, but then use a different attack entirely and still keep that bleed chance and/or attack speed. I don't feel like Paladin has access to that same level of interskill synergy that I see in Marksman.

And EHG's internal tools, assuming they made some decent ones, should be able to track across the entire playerbase what percent of skills are being used, most common used nodes within a skill, etc and not just Arena Participation figures, which is all I can see thanks to lastepochtools and *their* analysis tools.

I tried Multistrikes on a few different occasions and rolled my eyes and changed from it and I did try the Smite Procs. And I'm talking about attempts at 1,000 corruption (with minimal or no +opponent damage modifiers [1,000 corruption is ~400% base increased opponent damage]), which is probably similar to Arena Wave ~250.

This is where you get into the question the OP asked, which is "objectively". Subjectively I think a lot of the game is fun, I did say as much in my original comment here. But it's not balanced. And for a game wanting to do seasonal competitive play, they just have to fix that. Otherwise, I'm going to treat it as the fun game it currently is, and blow off the competitive component when the game launches, since I enjoy the gear chase of these types of games regardless of a competitive component. If they don't fix the balance, all the game is going to be is 60%+ of the playerbase doing seasons doing the same 2 or 3 basic builds.

They need to find out WHY 0.8% are using Smelter's Wrath, 2.1% are using Disintegrate, 1% are using Tempest Strike, 1.5% are using Ballista, etc, and etc, and some of the other stand out anomalies like 87.9% of mages using Flame Ward and fix it. They should have far superior internal tools than what I can look at and they've been working on this game for years.

[Ravenkid9266]

Początkowo opublikowane przez hutchinsonjc:

To me, Sigils having that high of representation should suggest that it is too powerful in some way that ~60% of all sentinels would take it. Whatever is making it that attractive to use needs to be mirrored in some way to other skills in such a way that your skill choice is more balanced across the player base.

If we applied that logic broadly across LE then something like 85-90% of all nodes need to be looked at to say nothing of the skills themselves. Take a look at Throw Hammer for example that skill tree has it all: cross skill synergy, heals, CC, mana restore, ailments, shred, multiple types of AoE, targeting adjustments but when was the last time you saw any of it used?

Great Googly Moogly Void Knight only has one skill that takes advantage of their mastery, everything else has to be bootstrapped from another source. Even with Forge Guard, according to LEtools the top two skills are Paladin/Void Knight respectively.

Really makes you wonder how all these years of EA were spent, remember according to mike every single patch has had "a huge section of updates to existing skills".

[Scipo0419]

Początkowo opublikowane przez hutchinsonjc:

*snip*

I don't disagree with your overall point, but I will point out that comparing a Basic Attack Replacer (BAR from here on out) with something like Sigil's, Lunge, or Judgement is not what you should be doing. The only BARs in Sentinel's kit are Multistrike, Vengeance, Rive, and Arguably Smite based on "Time and Faith". Multistrike and Vengeance are both at 4.3% and 4.7% usage respectively, while Rive is at 15.8% and Smite is at 33.8%.

If we narrow this down by Subclass:

Void Knight

1. Rive: 23.8%
   
2. Smite: 23.3%
   
3. Vengeance: 7.3%
   
4. Multistrike: 1.7%

Forge Guard

1. Smite: 22.9%
   
2. Rive: 21.6%
   
3. Multistrike: 15.2%
   
4. Vengeance: 4.8%

Paladin

1. Smite: 43.8%
   
2. Rive: 8.8%
   
3. Multistrike: 3.3%
   
4. Vengeance: 2.9%

As you can see, Smite and Rive are top spot every time, though that's mainly because of how powerful Smite is. Multistrike sees a lot of usage in Forge Guard builds, namely because of it's synergy with Forge Strike and Armament Stacks. You can also extrapolate that Smite has a high usage due to Lunge's high usage as the best/only movement skill on Sentinel, and it's respective subclasses, giving a chance to proc Smite on nearby targets. The Multi-Smite playstyle doesn't fit the "gotta go fast" gameplay meta as you have to stop and swing at enemies, building stacks to rain more fire/lightning down upon your enemies, so unless EHG add a way for Sentinel to autocast Multistrike/Vengeance while moving, BARs will never be the top of the leaderboards, it's actually a miracle that Rive is as high as it is, though it was the last one reworked. The Meta is "gotta go fast" not "have fun playing with something that looks flashy and will kill everything while keeping you alive"

[hutchinsonjc]

You say "Basic Attack Replacer" like I *should* think of them lowly.

You say "meta" and "go fast" like *competition* won't dictate what the meta is when it comes to competitive seasons. You want 1st on the board? The build with the highest mechanical advantages & stat advantages will get you there. And that's literally part of the review and take I'm providing. The Mechanical *and* Stat advantages.

That Rebuke build I mentioned probably took hours and hours to get to Wave ~1,000, and it CERTAINLY wasn't "gotta go fast". And so it literally does NOT matter what's necessarily fun, or what goes fast, *if* that's the build that can get a person to Wave 1,000.

Anyway, I'm not trying to do a full exhaustive analysis in what I'm presenting here - to do so would be a giant wall of text more than I've already provided and said. I'm trying to provide basic concepts and rationalizing at least a couple examples of both how a skill can be under represented and be obviously weak (Multistrikes), or be under represented and actually be fairly powerful in the context of usefulness to survive (Rebuke). Also, emphasizing that EHG should have internal tools to do a much better job of the analysis across the entire player base whether they are on the ladder board or not. They have all the save data.

Yes, you can easily see coupled skills in a proper analysis - skills that have high synergy between them. I'm not denying that. You can see a heck of a lot more than that, too.

What I'm trying to emphasize is a small few dramatic and obvious examples of problems, and to the point of the Original Post, leaving my take on some objectively bad skills in a context that this game's direction will be going: seasons/ladders.

Multistrike has ZERO represenation past Wave 200 in Arena. Zero. There are *many* scores across all classes going beyond 350, and a fair amount beyond 450, before you start getting into some really crazy numbers going up to Wave 1,000.

Rive has representation up to Wave 319 (me). I have the highest Rive build on the ladder. And *I* say it needs a boost and *I* outlined some reasons including how Rive as a basic mechanic of how it functions has a requirement that you're in the face of some opponents and that the skill requires you to stay still to even be able to use the ability. You can side step a big nasty on the ground easily enough, but you can not just 80% movement speed gear and run and dodge everything or even half of everything *and* Rive. And some opponents in those situations where you have to fight multiples of, and that's all they do is spam big nasties, it is possible to *mechanically* kill the player as a result of them no longer being able to use their DPS tools in favor of continually moving (Covenant were my big example there). You are *going* to get hit as a basic mechanic of how the ability works, and for prolonged periods of time. The same concept applies to Multistrike and Vengeance, where at least Vengeance can provide you with a respectable DR buff, which as I've already mentioned, the 319 Wave Rive build was using Vengeance religiously - read "practically without fail", which is its own pain in the rear to even do well - to weave those Vengeance uses in continually, and optimally, a skill beyond what most would have the patience or ability to do over a large stretch of time. The only reason Rive got to 319 was a strong result of Vengeance's use every ~2secs. A pure Vengeance build would've offered a bit more DR over doing it the way I did with Rive through heightened activation of Riposte, but my build's weak spot or failing point was actually damage over time, not hits.

Because EHG has had some years of Early Access going on and we are now months from release, those looking at this game for what it might offer competitively have strong reservations. There's going to be 2 or 3 builds that will have any proper contending on the board overall, with maybe another 1 or 2 builds at least being able to dominate their class, and another few builds who will only ever be able to say they were the top of their mastery, something like Void Knight's current top spot Wave 452 comes to mind.

Even if Season 1 is not perfect, I would *love* to have seen some half-serious attempts at resolving some of the most glaring issues through the last 6 months.