As soon as you are in the Ice part things get a bit ugly untill you have enough ele resis you didn’t need before but that’s the only breakepoint if you aren’t aware of it.
First, I suspect this thread is less relevant (in the short to medium term) to players who aren’t at the B21/L8 level of play and/or have less time. Frankly, I’d argue that’s most of us. This is in no way a criticism. I’ve said elsewhere that I value B21’s focus, intellect and community contributions.
Some thoughts:
- I’m fairly sanguine about min-maxing. It’s going to happen. Unless there’s clear value in rotating skills for DPS or survivability that dog don’t hunt.
- Slowing down combat is not something I see value in (Warhammer: Inquisitor – Martyr, I’m looking at you). Personally, I play ARPGs for a fast paced gaming experience. If I wanted slower combat, I’d spend more time in WoW Classic.
- Slowing down combat also implicitly means slowing down loot drops. In LE, the capriciousness of RNG for gear improvement is such that slower combat = slower XP gain AND less loot = slower progress. That’s fine for elite players but for the vast majority of the playerbase, I contend it’s less attractive.
- Increasing skill interaction increases the need for player skill. The more a player needs to cycle the game’s OODA loop, the greater number of players that will fail. The science is balance, the art is reward, and my gut feeling is that a game is more likely to broadly succeed if it is slightly too easy rather than slightly too hard.
- LE’s skill design does have interaction but it’s mostly synergistic interaction of buffs and like effects, and therefore is as much a feature of toon build as it is of toon play. To break this performance phalanx you need to have reasons to go antergistic (I may have made that word up).
- Getting rid of “on kill” buffs and replacing them with “on hit” buffs would – if I understand the mechanics right – negatively impact dots.
Righto, some ideas:
- Add a mob tier: Trash > Magic > Rare > Elite.
- Add a class or specialisation mechanic with two contrary resource pools. Think D3 Demon Hunter.
- Add mob single damage type invulnerability (with due warning so that players don’t gimp their builds).
- Add an innate mob vulnerability that the more damage types hit them in a short period, they buff each other in some way.
- Over the medium to long term, rotate the meta through regular patches and content. Don’t worry too much about perfect balance. Take an agile approach: keep what works, ditch what doesn’t.
Finally, as I’ve said elsewhere, I tend to play sub-optimal/non-meta builds. I ratchet up the difficulty through deliberate stupidity.
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Which is precisely why i want buffs to last longer for increased health bosses to have less health and for skills to synergize together better… Imagine this set up below, Just a small example.
Vengeance gives 36% DR for 10 seconds when you use it.
Rive gains 25% more Melee Physical Base damage for each different melee skill you have used in last 4 seconds against rares and bosses multiplicatively. 4/4 points possible
Passives.
5% more DR per different melee skill used last 4 seconds
5% more melee damage against rares and bosses For each different Skill used last 4 seconds
Well to apply the dots you would have to first HIT the mobs so I wouldn’t see dot builds hurt much if at all.
Everything else I agree with.
Even though I mention slowing down the pace of the game I didnt mean slow slow. I mean more like trash mobs should take 2 hits not 1 and rares should take 15-30 seconds not 3 seconds or 5 min depending on the build. Alot more of this has to just do with balancing the masteries. All in due time. I also just want buffs to last longer from skill use so we are more tempted to use more skills
I don’t agree, changing the game’s pace and having more skills interact with each other is something that will impact each and everyplayer, regardless of skilllevel/time investment.
First of i think OP and alot of other people here in this thread don’t actually meant to “slow down the game”, but instead to change the flow of combat a little bit.
Trash mobs shouldn’t die in 1 hit and might take some seconds and rare mobs or some of the bigger mobs should still take quite a while to kill(of course balanced for high scaling content).
So basically change the pace so you don’t just breeze through everything, while keeping the rare/stronger enemies meaningfull/tough
Loot/exp/progress can be still rebalanced/tweaked if there will be any changes. Just because trash mobs take a little bit longer to fight doesn’t inherantly mean you progress slower.
I think the pace of combat is mostly very good. Excellent, even, at least in the campaign. It’s quick, but still deliberate in the right ways. In my opinion, there is one way it should slow down: enemies should do less damage, but players should have less sustain. The current situation is the typical arpg paradigm where players are pretty much either always at full health or they’re instantly dead. It would be nice if your health went down more slowly so you could take more deliberate actions to replenish it. That would also make healing skills feel more impactful, because you would deliberately choose to use them when you see your health going down, then see it bump back up. As it is, even if a burst heal does help your sustain, the actual impact is mostly invisible to the player because it’s just a blip among the constant fluctuations of your life orb.
Without some further changes to the skill trees, this doesn’t sound good to me, and in fact actually sounds bad. The issue is, in terms of the way your skill choices inform how you approach solving a combat encounter, there’s little difference between this and just using rive supported by a series of buffs and support. In fact it’s more restrictive, in a bad way, since it forces you to activate and maintain mid-duration buffs in melee while taking up a skill slot that could be used by a more interesting support ability. As I mentioned in my previous post, Grim Dawn encourages this on some builds (e.g. melee shaman builds pretty much have to take and use savagery, even if it’s not doing any damage for them) and I’ve only ever seen people complain about that.
In order for cycling different damage skills to be good, each one has to have a strong sense of impact when you use it, not just provide a passive buff. If you want to cycle vengeance and rive, for example, I can imagine a couple of nodes that would make the combo more interesting:
-
Vengeance gets a cooldown, but the buff is extended to 10 seconds. Every riposte is replaced with rive’s third hit for two seconds after using vengeance. Then using vengeance has immediate feedback to the player, and when you choose to use it matters.
-
Vengeance deals reduced damage and causes health loss to the player, but applies a stack of “delayed vengeance” on its targets that lasts for 5 seconds. Rive’s third hit explodes all stacks of delayed vengeance for AoE fire damage. Then you have to make decisions about how much delayed vengeance to build up before you blow the enemy up with rive.
Both of those ideas might suck for reasons I’m not aware of, but both are intended to actually make combat more active and to require more decision making. Just attaching passive buffs to active skills that don’t have immediate impact doesn’t substantially change the way people play compared with one DPS skill and 4 supports.
On another topic, I’m playing a sorcerer specced into three different offensive skills now and so far (just cleared temple of Heorot) it feels, like, perfect. I’m cycling mana strike, volcanic orb and ice barrage, and while I haven’t even gotten to the passives in sorcerer and spellblade that encourage mixing skills, each individual skill does lots of damage in ways that complement the others. I don’t know how it will hold up in the end game, but I feel considerably safer and stronger than my paladin did at this point.
Took me a while to work out what you meant there. Though I (& the devs) disagree, they’ve said before that they value feedback from the less hardcore players as the game isn’t meant for just “us”.
Personally I’d also like higher mob density in the campaign & monoliths. I enjoy arenas due to the amount of mobs in them, but I’d also like more tactical play & interaction between the skills.
Except skills with the DoT tag (eg Disintegrate) don’t hit so would be nerfed by this. Skills that hit & apply poison would be fine, but anything else would be gimped a bit.
I am in this category and fully disagree. Game pace and the need for more intelligent/tactical play both have a huge impact on how the game feels no matter your investment in the game.
3 Likes
I should rephrase. No skills that people actually use would be hurt by this 
But still on kill effects need a huge buff in terms of proc chance and duration. You kill 1 batch of mobs and get a buff or get some ward and its gone before you get to the next batch of mobs. Feelsbadman
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Soz, that’s my unclear expression. What I meant to say was: “First, I suspect this thread is less relevant (in the short to medium term) to players who aren’t at the B21/L8 level of play and/or have less time. Frankly, I’d argue that’s the vast majority of the playerbase, myself included.”
My hardcore ARPG days ended with D2LOD. My hardcore MMO days ended with running Oceanic warbands as part of Titan Alliance in the first 30 days of GW2’s release. I now consider myself firm-but-yielding-core.
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I think we’re largely in furious agreement. I res ipsa loquitor that game pace and balanced tactical play are critical. However, I think it’s worthwhile noting that it took B21 xxxx hours of play to reach the point where he felt the need to make this thread (and become Boredman21?).
My contention is that the vast majority of the playerbase won’t put in B21-like hours and play themselves into ennui anytime soon. Chat is full of praise for the game from new players and the game’s sitting on VP reviews. So, my guess is that this is unlikely to be a pressing issue for LE anytime following launch.
I think LE is sufficiently well paced and interactive as it stands. Now, good enough shouldn’t be the aim and the Devs should absolutely improve pace & interactivity. But, personally, I want them to prioritise other features. Or rather, to have a ruthless focus on avoiding:
- Borked multiplayer.
- Poorly differentiated new skill trees.
- A sucky final class.
- Meh endgame additions.
If the LE team has the resources to do 1-4 and simultaneously rework skills and combat, then that’s Christmas on a stick. Analogy time … I’d prefer them to work on navigating the chicanes leading to the horizon before worrying about drivers getting tired 6 hours into the journey.
So yeppers, you’re right and I do agree. It’s the timeframe that’s in question.
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What does B21 or L8 means ?
And i’m kinda bored of reading the same arguments over and over again. Yes, the devs are working on other things, we all know that.
It doesn’t mean our feedback is not welcome. Or won’t be of any use. Also, don’t forget that they are still designing some spells for existing classes, some new masteries and even a new class. If we can give some ideas that help them go in the right direction for those incoming skills, it’s all good.
The rest (like monsters health, affixes etc.) is still relevant. Changing them is just a “minor” tweak, and can be done later on. But don’t forget that they still haven’t either finish developping the end game zones, and the latest acts. So they can design them while having in mind the feedback of the community.
I think this is litterally why we are playing this early access. To give feedback on ALL part (even not yet existing) of the game. Because we care as much as the devs, and want to see this project comes to fruition and lives up to its expectations.
About your legitimate other concerns, why not make a thread about them ? If they are not some already. I’m pretty sure on this one we agreed to talk about the combat system.
Finally, when will there be a better time to give feedback ? Once everything is set in stones ? Once we’ve reached PoE level of combat pace, and the community would leave the game if anything changed ? I actually think there is no better timeframe than now, because the game is not out yet. It’s still finding its own identity. Wheter it is from its mastery system, its skill tree system, loot system or combat inter-activeness.
I’m not sure how “i sound” like. English is not my native tongue, and i don’t want to show any aggressive behavior or anything. It’s just that i keep on reading the same things over and over on a lot of topics, as a mean to close a discussion that has as worst no effect on the developpement of the game, and at best make devs reconsider or double down on their choices. This kind of discussion is purely beneficial to the game, even if there are other areas to be improved.
Me and llama8 just shortened initials
Though capitalised correctly…
Rogue is my fav wow class. The combo system would be cool to see in some aspect in le or another arpg. I also like the rune system from dk. Anything that adds to or “progresses” standard resource generation can be cool when done right.
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It’s all good Anuwiel - I think it’s awesome that you’re posting in a your second (or more). My intent wasn’t to close discussion but to offer my feedback.
I haven’t been around as long as you have … apologies that it’s repetitive from what’s been said before.
LLAMA8
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C - O - R - R - E - C - T - L - Y!
It’s a name & therefore the first letter should be capitalised, unless you’re (not your, 
) shouting!
You missed one L8, lmao.
…I’ll see myself out.
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True, I forgot to mention that he should have said “Llama8 & I”, not “me & Llama8”.
I will teach @Boardman21 good grammar (or at the very least, better grammar) even if it kills him.
Me dont think you be able teach me much.
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