Disclaimer: I’ve played primalist up to Druid level 15 (just got werebear). I’ll probably wait until werebear’s passive tree is implemented to continue leveling this character. I’ll try to omit things that are obviously in need of improvment such as wolves flying across the screen when you have the Pack Leader node in Fury Leap and you leap in with your wolves way off screen. I’m happy to list the things I think are obviously in need of improvment if anyone likes.
Second disclaimer: I imagine some/most of the passive tree nodes are on their way to being the final “core version” of the node (e.g. numbers will be tweaked but not the core functionality) so I feel a more critical critique is warranted. Additionally, given that not all skills have trees yet I’m not going to get into the skills themselves just yet.
Primastlist Overall:
A versatile class that can spec towards caster, pet, or melee builds which leads to an open ended evolution of the character. However this leads to passive nodes which feel only useful for those build types. I didn’t come across many nodes that would be useful for all builds (caster, melee, pet), and this resulted in not having to make any tough choices once I had decided to go melee.
Passive Tree:
My main complaint with the class overall is probably the passive tree. Some nodes feel very weak while others feel very strong but only suited to one type of build.
Hunter’s Restoration (+hp on hit, once every 3 sec), Primal Medicine (pet’s get 50% of your potion), Primal Strength (+str, regen), and Natural Attunement (+attunement, +elemental resists) all mainly benefit only one type of build.
Examples of weak and/or uninspiring Nodes:
Nodes like Hunter’s Restoration are thematically uninspiring and also rather weak.
Hunter’s Restoration: Every three seconds your next hit restores 6 health per allocated point.
I’d rather have a passive regen node, or a passive regen when near pets (for both player and pets, lets call it “Hunter’s Bounty”) instead. That thematically fits the primalist’s connection with nature and would likely scale up better in the end game. The (up to) 18 health on hit every 3 seconds feels like it won’t scale very well into end game and doesn’t really translate into a more powerful feeling character.
Primal Medicine: Using a potion also heals your minions for 50% per point of the amount it heals you.
This feels rather weak given how unreliable potions are at keeping me alive, and given the regen nodes for pets I don’t see a much reason to take this passive.
I think there are plenty of ways to make potions more interesting, like having passives that grant buffs when you use a potion. This could be such a passive. The buff could even be random (from a fixed pool of skills).
Plenty of fun directions to go in other than the current version (no hard feelings).
Examples of good cross-build thematic nodes:
Onto some of the good nodes. There are some excellent cross-build nodes like Survival of the Pack.
Survival of the Pack: You and your minions deal 5% increased melee damage per allocated point, and leech 1% of melee damage as health per allocated point.
This node leaves out caster but supports melee and pet builds, so it is not as bad as serving only a single build. It could even but modified to include spell damage (at perhaps a different percentage) so that all builds are included.
Contrast this with the aforementioned Hunter’s Restoration which is only useful for melee builds and is rather weak.
Hunter’s Emanation: The healing from Hunter’s Restoration also applies to your minions. When you trigger Hunter’s Restoration, your minions gain 11% increased damage per allocated point for three seconds.
The weak Hunter’s Restoration node leads to this strong node. It is a well designed node that incentivizes the player to stay involved in the skirmish to keep the pet buff up, but having to take such a weak node to get this good node is not ideal.
Taking the Hunter’s Bounty idea above where pets and the player get increased health regen when they are in range of each other and the buff from Hunter’s Emanation could be adapted to fix the same “player and pets fighting in a party” theme.
Brief tangent:
The design of all nodes whether for the class or its skills should all strongly fit within the class’ theme. Consider the “+18 HP on hit” mechanic of Hunter’s Restoration versus “increased health regen when you are near your beasts” or “% of damage leeched as health when you are near you beasts”. One is a standard on-hit mechanic we’ve seen in dozens of games, the other speaks directly to the Primalist class itself. In other words the mechanics are designed around the class, rather than having mechanics inserted into the class.
More to come:
I still have a lot more Primalist to play (and I’m at work) so I’ll wrap this up for now. But I’ll be giving more feedback perhaps in its own thread in the future. Keep up the hard work EHG. Game is looking to be really fun.