So many skills.... so little deck space

So i have 5 skills locked on my deck that i use constantly and cant risk them not cominv up at ttd right time.

Rest of my skills i want to use in blade, death, fire, heavy armor, tactics i need to put into a loop system, and rely on the rng gods.

Is there anyway to increase tye number if slots or anything? I have like 22 items (multiples of some course), in my loop.... but there's a bunch im not using.

I do like the system... but wanted to heaf others experiences with trying to get all those juicy skills to fit.

 

Even if you had 22 different skills in your deck, which you don't you can, even with 5 locked slots have 4 different skills on each other slot, organized by function and only have to deal with 1/4 chances. Card-based games only work with hand limitations. Making hard choices is a part of the game. You can still access an obscene amount of skills with only 10 slots.

 

In a game that allows you to dabble in everything - ranging from magecraft, archery, healing, tanking, melee - clearly you can't have access to everything at once or you'd have Super Characters (which is not to suggest the OP is advocating for that).

That said, 10 slots is just too skimpy to be able to fit everything onto a bar for certain legitimate concepts. I find this particularly true for Situational abilities and Buffs. You invest in them and want to use them, but when they are placed on a randomized cycle, they become annoyingly unreliable. I get why there aren't 20 slots but I'd love to see a handful more than 10 slots for 1-off and situational abilities to fit more comfortably.

 

That's what locked slots are for. Sure, you can only lock a few, I choose Knight's Grace to get me out of stuns, but if we could lock slot all of them, those debuffs mind as well not exist at that point. You have to choose which situational abilities you have access too, otherwise they're not situational at all.

 

We simply have a difference of opinion on what is the right amount of 'hard choice' and what is excessively hard as a choice.

Certainly I have enjoyed SotA. But when I make a comparison with other fantasy RPGs/MMOs, I feel like having 10 slots and locking 6 slots for reliability leaves me quite a bit more limited than the range of tricks up my sleeve in those other games (which tend to be class-spectrum based). If I had to gauge how much more limited my available tricks are...maybe 2-3-4 slots more limited.

 

That simply isn't true though. If you lock 6 slots that leaves 4 which can contain any number of skills. You can put 10 on each for 30 or 5 on each for 15 or 4 on each for 12. In most other games that I've played you only have 3-4 situational abilities and 10 other abilities that are more or less the same or in-rotation. You even get control over the probability of those skills being drawn in those 5 unlocked slots.

 

There are soooooo many excellent threads on deck building and how to make great or best use thereof without feeling limited, so I won't duplicate, but if I was at home, which I'm not, I'd try and post some nice links I have saved away which I think are among the best deck threads.

That said, 2 quick points, one to the OP, one to Nog -

Random pop up slots in rotations can be managed greatly by limiting or maximising the number of occurrences of the skill you load into your deck. So if your skill is developed to allow 5 cards, you can easily use a 5, 1, 1, 1, card occurrence for four skills in one slot and at least influence the rng gods.

Nog, I'm sure you know this anyway, but with a buff deck, and various saved decks for different zones, given each zone contains predictable mob spawns and damage types, you can be pretty dynamic and situational if you prep.

I'm not personally a big fan of mid combat deck swapping, even for a rebuff, but I'm sure others are. For me it takes too long to settle back into combat even if you are pretty quick on swapping and it messes up your heal rotations, or if you really screw up leaves you naked

 

I agree there. Deck swapping mid-combat - and even pre-combat - is a messy, cumbersome business. I say even pre-combat because if you forget to get your Buff Deck readied before an encounter, you find yourself fumbling from whatever deck you're actually on trying to quickly get your buff deck up, clicking the 2-6 temporary buffs you want up, then getting back to your actual combat deck before an enemy or enemies are on you. Versus other RPGs where I don't need to mess with swapping in and out of additional deck menus; I simply hit the key that is Buff #1, Buff #2, Buff #3, etc. and the buff goes off.

I've found a few good threads on deck building that have been helpful. Though I still find randomized abilities that may be what I want or not (even with mitigating probability) something to take some getting used to compared to having my 15-20ish always-reliable abilities in WoW or DDO or LotRO and the like.

 

I think maybe it's easier for a heavy armour wearer, like me, than if you're a mage /light or medium armour. I get so much fizzle for so many options it simplifies my choices.

 

I prefer a minimum number of skills. I usually keep up to three skill slots unlocked which requires 16? glyphs. I try not to go over that number to make the deck more predictable.

 

Ooo please do Steevodeevo

 

I'd wondered if that was a big part of not seeing quite eye to eye on if there are enough slots to fit everything in. I'm a light armor melee fan through and through with a tactics/subterfuge bent. It seems to me there are an especially high number of situational catalyst+counter glyphs in this build that require being locked to fit on the bar.

 

Well perhaps some mages can comment then. I would like more slots for our non combat bar to allow for potions, emotes, songs, etc but to me our combat bar is great. It makes me get creative and think about the situation and to me it is easy to switch decks in this game. If you have an alternate and an equipped deck then the icon will show on the right hand of the screen bottom area of it that is. I lock about 5 slots with heals and rezzes because I play a support character most of the time and the other part is 2 handed axes bludgeons.

For a long time I did not make other decks. One thing that forced my hand was going to a mine and there were these elementals shooting at me and they were healing like crazy and killing me. I am a warrior/paladin type and running after them hitting them when I could it was not helping and getting me extremely frustrated .

This is when I made another deck called elementals. In this game to live you have got to train most trees to some degree to get the resistances, that is just a fact. You need fire-proof and resistances from most trees. I'm not talking about death builds of course since I have a healing build to heal for groups I'm not going in that one. I am talking about other than that to get those resistances built.

This makes it so you may have skills you don't normally use as a warrior type but for me I did take these fire arrows, ice arrows, obsidian arrows and put them in my elemental deck. I also put my body slam locked and whatever else I could think of to get me to those creatures. Then and only then did lots of frustration go down. It opened up a whole new world to kill those things. Some players don't want to adjust their thinking to an uncapped system or build desire but for me I embraced it and made that special deck. I have an undead deck, a healing deck, a buff deck, an elementals deck, and many decks to show off my various outfits.

 

Hotbar space, or rather the Deck system that, while optional, leaves you with so little room as to either force you to try it or miss out on the majority of the tree you are focusing on, is the large reason I have went from playing this game hard core for the first week or so, to only logging in occasionally for the login bonus. It seems like an illusion of choice. Either have access to multiple skills (but not really since it boils down to RNG) or be severely limited in what you can train with/improve. I don't expect to have every skill I know on the bar, but only 10 slots? And add to that I am locked out of the bottom (peace) bar, so if I want to use my potions or scrolls, tough luck. It's not worth the bother. I wish there was an actual choice to make (i.e. being able to do one, or the other) but it is obvious the intention is to use the Deck system.

 

While you are locked out of certain abilities you put on your utility bar when in combat (eg. Sprint), keep in mind that you do retain access to potions, poisons, and salt in combat.

I do share your sentiment that 10 slots feels too limited even within a themed tree/build. Of course slots should be limited to some degree so someone can't learn tons of skills and use them all any time they wish.

I think even 1 or 2 more slots would allow me to incorporate that ability or two that there just isn't room for (and that I feel is significantly diminished by having to play odds and wait for it to appear as a drawn card by settling for the glyph on an unlocked slot). *These hypothetical extra 1-2 slots could even be restricted to short-term buff glyphs and help immensely.

 

I made a thread on Heavy Armor & Fizzle chance. Experimented on armor choices and decided to use Chain Chest and Gloves the rest plate. I think that is a solid way to combat fizzle while maintaining vast majority of benefits of HA
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...avy-armor-which-armor-setup-is-better.126147/

@CodeDaddy
While not a combat deck building guide, I just posted my current 4 combat deck set ups. I am not looking to have the best setup, I am looking to have an effective setup which is easy to use, competitive and fun. Trying to make the "BEST" setup as others are eluding to require a buff deck, multiple changes to non-combat bar depending upon zone and mob type etc... I believe in Keep It Simple Stupid "KISS" method of design, which means in the heat of combat I cant get confused or think I am playing one deck when I am actually playing another. A few things I do are, keep my unlocked glyph's that are cycling to as close to the minimum number as possible (just enough so no slugs), make sure the location of your abilities and spells are in the same spot from deck to deck so you do not have to search for them. If you find you can win battles without a particular ability being used, even if its cool, why is it in your deck? And remember can have only two Damage Avoidance or Damage Resistance buffs at a time with One Shield, however some shields have Damage Avoidance like Ice Shield and it will conflict with the 2 other DA sources.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/yipp’s-combat-decks-melee-healer.126920/

 

As Baratan said, anyone that feels that the current deck system is limited for combat really don't understand how exponentially flexible and dyamic it is. Reading some of the many card building deck posts in the forums may help.

That said, I am all for what Majoria is suggesting. NON-COMBAT bars for potions (pre combat prep), emotes, clothing swaps, etc would be nice simply to minimize the paper doll juggling for certain tasks (changing into party or performance gear)
The current deck builder has the blueprint for it. Detach "skill decks" from the "inventory slots", but give players the option to say link "Primary Combat Card Deck #1" with item/costume row 1, etc.
Keep Deck slots limited as it is now. One Primary, One Alternate, but detach the linked equipment bar and make that in of itself a hot-keyable quick sqwap option.

 

I would suggest that many do recognize the deck's potential to create a lot of dynamic, but aren't enthusiastic with some core factors: 1. wrestling with squirrely randomness, and 2. the need to watch and interact with the deck so heavily in the middle of combats - the alternative being you can go with a locked deck so you can just keybind everything and monitor the action instead of the deck. This is where the 10 slot limitation is most felt. Going with a locked deck means you are disqualified from combos and locked abilities cost more focus. That severely handicaps it as an option unless you have a build that really doesn't rely on many glyphs.

I agree that some of the deck build guides in the forums have been helpful and look forward to seeing more and more appear as the game continues.

 

Majority of my decks use locked glyph's because I want to participate in the battle, heal my teammates and generally not have to be staring at my combat bar wondering which glyph has appeared. The flexibility of the glyph system, is its own Achilles heal, over complicating the entire combat system unnecessarily

 

Where one sees over complication, others see incredible freedom and flexibility. IMHO don't think it is terribly complicated at all but is unbound and allows one to create some truly dynamic decks to make things exciting.