Useless Skills (Kinda)

Discussion in 'Feedback' started by Cora Cuz'avich, Aug 1, 2020.

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  1. Anpu

    Anpu Avatar

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    https://twitter.com/catnipgames/status/1298232193660182528

    Ignite weapon will now also apply a fire resistance debuff on each hit. This fairly meaningless at low level where it is already powerful but more meaningful at high level where the small damage amount alone because less important.

    Reveal hidden will now reveal hidden every 2 seconds for 10-30+ seconds depending on skill level. Also, range has been increased from 5+ skill level/20 to 5+ skill level/10.

    Cocoon of Night in theory was not much weaker than Healing Grace but in reality, because there are so many ways to get bonuses on life spells, it was a tiny fraction of the effectiveness. Just boosted base heal for cocoon by 100% and added added agro debuff as well.


    Love the change to ignite weapon :thumbs up:
     
  2. Net

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    Very rarely. When I absolutely need sneaking, then yes, sometimes I use it when I wait for silent movement to recharge. But usually silent movement is good enough on its own.

    I like this change, need to test it out one day.
     
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  3. Barugon

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    Hey @Chris, How about adding a weapon buff to the other elemental magic schools as well? Something like Freeze Weapon for the Water tree, Electrify Weapon for the Air tree and Harden Weapon for the Earth tree.
     
  4. Anpu

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    That would be new content additions for the wishlist forum.
     
  5. Tiina Onir

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    While I would like to see the addition of new skills, I would really like to see them being really unique things, not making all the trees just minor variations of the same skills.
     
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  6. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    They could easily be combos. Ignite Weapon + Ice Fist = Freezing Weapon, etc. No need for everything to be in each tree if we can actually fill out the combo system.
     
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  7. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    It still annoys me that we have to train magic to do anything that people physically do. Dash (Air Magic) far outlasts Sprint (Light Armor); I'm a fat guy and I can sprint for more than a minute, come on! Why is there no Bandage Wounds type Tactics skill to use a gold-sink reagent (bandages) to add a small heal-over-time, so everyone has to train Life magic? Same for Counteract Poison vs Purify, can cure smaller amount but let it not be a spell. Combo the normal and magic version together to get exceptional version.

    Why is Elixir Extension a tier-4 Tactics skill (off Weapon Preservation of all things), yet Elixir Receptive is a tier-2 Focus skill? And can the unlearning be capped on these, so you can "master" one but the other drops to, say, 50 minimum? If you are going to put in the time to learn it, it would be nice to have some small benefit. (Plus, these could then be used to gate other skills, like the aforementioned Bandage and Counter Poison in a Tactics branch.)

    Offhand Attack would work much better as a stance. Set it, and you get offhand attacks thrown in during your normal attacks. It could still be used for combos, but the attacks themselves are fairly weak so there are better glyph options.

    Multi Shot is far too conditional for how high tier and expensive it is. Unless you don't care what you hit (i.e., you have a tank or are actively spamming UT), you can't use it without getting adds. Agro is hard enough to control. I don't necessarily want this to go away, because when you can use it, its great. But maybe make it a combo with Aimed Shot to turn it into a targeted aoe, like a short duration Ring of Fire where everything in the circle gets hit by arrows.

    Ignite Weapon and Poison still don't seem to work with ranged weapons. I'm assuming the plans for ammunition types is no longer in the cards, so fixing this would be great.

    The warding skills are in odd positions in some schools. Water Warding is under Fire Speed, which makes no sense; if you are going specifically for warding (and not fire attunement), it makes more sense under Fire Proof. Having more clear paths for players who don't want to skill up magic, but instead dip into them to get warding, would be nice. Not everyone wants to play a mage.

    Soothing Rain and Summon Water Elemental were supposed to be somewhat useful for those who didn't want to go full cleric/Life mage. However they are really not; the heal is negligible, the vfx are still annoying, and the elemental is weak, has control issues like many pets, it does not heal consistently at all.

    Subterfuge... the Pick Pockets skill (and are we going to get Pick Locks at some point?) needs a reason to exist outside of PvP. Camouflage and Silent Movement seem to be almost useless against NPCs/mobs. I'd love to dive into this tree, but half of it is useless. (Of note, I play almost exclusively offline now, so PvP-only skills are DOA, Conrad can't keep agro so I can't use most of the skills from behind a target, and few of these seem to work with ranged weapons.)

    Gathering - Meticulous Collection would be much better served to add bonus materials to the initial gather, rather than lock us into an animation loop. Watching the bar progress is the most boring way to play.

    I won't get into the issues wit masterwork and enchanting options opening up under skills, as that is a completely differnt can of worms.
     
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  8. Barugon

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    The way I look at it is that they're all skills. The only difference is that some might have a chance to not activate (fizzle) and some require that you have consumable items (reagents). Otherwise, they work exactly like all other skills. Don't limit yourself by getting stuck on the word "magic".
     
  9. majoria70

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    How about for treasure hunting? Pick locks would be perfect there as a pve skill too. Eso and many games have you needing stealth and subterfuge skills against npc's. Why not here as well? Well for one thing our Npc's would then have to react some to what's going on around them. Hmmm a novel idea ;)
     
  10. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    Its mostly *which* consumable it uses, and how annoying the vfx is for it. But when we come from such as lore laden background, having things like this are very annoying. I didn't come here to grind xp on bears for six years with no story (...despite having actually done that, I guess).
     
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  11. Tiina Onir

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    While Dash may last longer then Sprint, I never felt like Sprint was too short. Frankly they should just rename it "Marathon" for how long I can use it for, which is continually as it's cool down finishes before the effect expires, so I can use it indefinitely (and I stopped at relatively low level on it).
    I agree with you on Bandage.
    Counteract poison is already covered by the cure-poison potion. At best it would somehow increase the effectiveness of cure poison.

    Making offhand a stance isn't good either because then, as a offhand user, I'd have to give up my stance. Offhand used to be, basically, a free glyph, and it made a lot of sense as that. I don't know why it was changed, I was never so OP for melee to justify the change.
    To my knowledge there are no combos that use offhand.

    I don't know about Ignite Weapon, but Poison definitely works with ranged.


    I think the individual elemental warding are intended for magic users with a focus on certain trees. Magic Warding under the tactics tree is what's intended for those who don't want to use magic at all.

    I have a feeling that if we look at how often they are used, it's more then you think. Soothing rain in particular I see use regularly. It's strength is that it's an AoE Heal over time, so it works well in parties. There isn't anything like it in the life tree. As another point that it's not just for those who don't do life, it combos with banish.

    While Water Elementals are certainly used, I do think they could use some minor improvement. Give them a bit more favoritism to healing when someone in the part it damaged. Also, (being water and all) do they dose? (I'll admit, I'm not sure on that)

    Pickpocket is useless. Camo / Silent Movement should be effective against mobs, but you're right, it isn't.

    Engage Opponent would be okay, except that Heavies get Body Slam (better in every way) and if you are a light melee you can nightstep in moon and you can end up in a position to backstab (ergo, also better).

    With the changes to get the XP bonuses for metic, I'm content with it as-is. Most mines I would have to wait around anyway for nodes to respawn.

     
  12. Oremanger

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    Does any earth mage use root? If yes for what?
     
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  13. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Rooting, probably.
     
  14. Net

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    And getting higher attunement :p
    Root used to be quite good for taming, but does not seem to work for high level beasts, but I am not Earth specialized so maybe with enough xp sunk in the skill and the tree it is better.
     
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  15. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Unlikely. I think when they designed the original scales for things like this, they didn't expect people having skills in the 120s or mobs with STR in the 2000s. Chris did a pass on Disabling Shot this release, and it works great now. Haven't tried it on Torc yet, but it gives me a few seconds now on mobs where it never even registered before.
     
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  16. Violet Ronso

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    This is great news, if he could do a pass on Knockdowns, Roots and stuns the same way just to make sure that things work fine, I remember Rooting worked great on most archer mobs, but never tried against boss type monsters, works best when you are a melee type though, ranged it doesn't help much I think. as for knockdowns, I just feel like some mobs it works great, most like Torc or other trolls it feels really good, but other mobs sometimes you don't even notice they dropped that they already starting moving again.
     
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  17. Tiina Onir

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    Root used to be quite good for everything, but they decided it was OP and nerfed it into oblivion. If I remember right the current version does a strength check between the caster and target. The lowdown is that it only works on things so weak you don't need to root them anyway.
     
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  18. Barugon

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    Maybe they should rethink it, like Disabling Shot.
     
    Last edited: Aug 28, 2020
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  19. Ancev

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    @Alley Oop

    Certain skills use your stealth rating for a damage modifier, and camouflage has the highest stealth scale in the game, I believe.
     
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  20. ConjurerDragon

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    The avatar walks and runs with a press of a key without any use of skills (although most probably have it to alway run). What you do when sprinting in real life would be "sprint forward" so using W and W quickly which is limited by draining focus over time just like you run out of breath.

    "Sprint" on the contrary is the skill to do that *while wearing light armour*. So comparable to sprint in full combat gear wearing a backpack with spare clothes and a tent, gasmask, rifle, spaten, spare ammo etc.

    There are potions, starting with the lesser potion of healing that do that without life magic.
     
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