Enlightenment, Air's Embrace and Strength of Earth should be in Focus, Subterfuge and Tactics

The stat buff skills are considered to be an essential part of every character in this game, to the point where people usually count their stats with their chosen buff applied rather than their base stats. Since these buffs are tied to specific magic schools however a significant portion of their power comes from attunement to that school. Archers are basically tied down to the Air school, including specialization, because so much of their dexterity comes from that one single spell.

The strategy trees specifically exist to be a container for universal skills that can go with every build, stat buffs are as universal of a skill as they come. There is no character in Shroud that performs their best without one of these buffs applied, so they really shouldn't be tied down to magic schools that require a specific attunement for these buffs to work.

These skills should be moved to their respective tactics trees and given appropriate names for them. The magic trees should receive a new skill that allows them to stand on their own better and not simply be an auxiliary to other builds.

 

Enlightenment in focus tree makes sense -
Air's Embrace/Strength of Earth - how would you refashion these into subterfuge and tactics?



edit:
I like this idea, but I also understand that the integrity of the current skilltree might be just fine, and adjusting a thing here or there could cause a sort of runaway train of rebalancing and adjusting that might make more of a mess than a solution to anything. In fact, the skill tree could be totally badass and there might be some other system somewhere that isn't fulfilling the structure of the established skills.

Dexterity buff in subterfuge tree seems logical, but what if you're a noble fighter, a swordsman? What if you disdain subterfuge as such? Etc. There is more encompassing logic to the skilltree organization than it might seem.

 

While I can't fault your logic, I don't know if I agree
Moving enlightenment for example would make the sun tree entirely useless. And having extremely high attunement in earth, to get a high strength buff,is a choice that weapon users could elect to make. Same thing with dex and air.
Would we expect people to then specialize in focus, tactics, subterfuge to get the secondary bonuses from the stat skills? Tactics spec is already pretty powerful, adding a super strength buff to it would make it almost a required choice. - but focus spec and subterfuge spec don't offer a lot - there's not enough 'active' skills to really have any benefit from either of them. If they kept their secondary bonuses (spellcrit, crit, encumberance) WITHOUT specialiazing in strategy, I'd be ok with them moving, provided the magic trees got something equally appealing in return.
I'm just not sure its really necessary, as the strategy trees already have the passive skills. Air and Earth would probably still be okay if they got another cool buff instead, but Sun tree would be totally worthless if it were not for the int buff, so it would need something really, really good to fill the gap.

 

Add an alternative to each tree. Don't remove existing stuff. Strength in tactics, intel in focus and dex in subterfuge. The more options the better...

 

They would be renamed of course. This is just a small step to lay the foundation of untangling unintentional interdependencies between trees that stunt the number of viable build options in the game.

A character that is highly dexterous would inevitably be good at subterfuge, whether or not you want to employ subterfuge. You gain your passive dexterity from the subterfuge tree after all. That doesn't mess with build options, since you don't have to equip any special gear to boost subterfuge. Having to be an air mage to be highly dexterous on the other hand is severely limiting.

I don't think that's a good argument. The sun tree needs improvements, yes, it shouldn't rely on a universal skill that was shoved into the sun tree as a crutch. It needs real substantial improvements that make it stand on its own merits. I'd give it a replacement skill and other improvements, like allowing the light spell to toggle the daytime condition on your character, so that having light active elimiates the whole nonsense of getting a damage penalty half the time with no way to control if that falls smack into your playtime. It should be a great skill tree for people who want to genuinely be a sun mage, not just the place you get your bonus int.

I want air archer or earth warrior to be a real choice that people make because they want to actually combine those skills, not something pretty much everyone has to pick for raw stats.

You raise a really good point here. You're seeing the bigger picture this needs to fit into. This is part of an overall larger set of ideas I'm writing up to encourage more build variety and fewer unintentional interdependencies between skills. One of the big pieces of that will be a third specialization you can pick out of the Strategy trees so that you don't need to use one of your two specializations just to lay that groundwork for your character. Everyone simply has a strategy specialization so that you don't need to give up dual specialization just to boost a single thing to its full potential. That's sort of the whole point of this. Characters should genuinely be dual spec, not single spec + whatever gives the best boost to that spec.

That would be a possibility as long as all of those buffs are still mutually exclusive, but I think it would be better to fill the respective spell schools with spells that create a genuine thematic playstyle, and aren't just universal skills that hang out there for no reason.

 

You make too much sense @Aetrion

 

Love the ideas here. Definitely some good stuff. But why is it really needed to change stuff like this? I mean its a classless setup where we can all essentially train everything. Seems like a lot of work with little reward. Your essentialy just moving things around.

 

It's not just moving stuff around, there is a greater plan here that will create a better foundation to let people make a larger variety of builds.

It frees up vital buffs from needing a specific attunement to be at their most powerful, so people will be free to stack attunement for other spell schools without penalty. That means you might see Fire Archers, or Moon Archers, or even Earth Archers instead of just an endless sea of Air Archers.

It also will work together with another idea I posted about a third spec: (https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ird-specialization-in-a-strategy-tree.159447/)

This will be a buff to everyone, you're going to get an extra spec, you're going to see your stat buffs freed up from attunement and go to a simple +0.5 per skillpoint. For the vast majority of people that buff will go up, and they won't have to train 10 whole skills anymore to really dump points into it. It's a win for everyone. Smoother character building, more choices, more power without being tied down to counterintuitive spec and gear choices.

 

This seems so obvious now that you point it out. You can't have single, game defining skills in only three magic trees or it makes one of those required per serious player, and relegates everyone using the other trees to doing so despite the handicap, probably for RP purposes.

This may be 80% of the reason everyone has started to feel the same to me.

Problem and solution identified, now to get it to the important parties.

We can try by first tagging @Chris, but he's up to his ears in SotACon. After that it's powerpoint, an infographic or two with the trees showing the skills in their appropriate places, and getting the question through livestreams.

 

You could and should say the same about melee (earth) and mages (sun)... and yet plenty of mages and melees dont spec in those trees.

Its built that way because of the amount of magic trees.

Magic trees are different than the physical damage trees (bludgeon,swords,archery,polearms) because of the attunement and their synergy.

If you moved them to tactics, everyone will be spec tactics and guess what.... most people are already.

Honestly @Aetrion , you post a lot of ideas on how you want the skills to be and they are always horrible. I'm beginning to think you just want to post crap just to ruin the game.... your ideas suck and I'm fed up of reading them.

The thing about magic trees is that everyone should level the mains ones regardless, its meant to be that way. Just look at some of the passives. If you want to be melee and roleplay and anti-earth character.... guess what, that makes no sense because earth is the basis of the 'concept' of durability/strength. Just like Sun if the basis of intelligence (no idea why sun, i would of put that one in water, but thats just my opinion) and air makes sense to be dex. Its like a birth sign kind of thing, the 12 zodiacs....

 

Its already like that to some degree, an alternative would unbalance everything, how do you account for the strenght of the spell without attunement? That would negate the strongest caster casting the buffs. There would be NO benefit to multiclass groups.

 

Melee doesn't spec earth because earth spec doesn't give you a crit buff to Strength of Earth, it gives you a carry weight buff, which is worthless in a fight and there are artifacts for hauling.

Plenty of mages do go sun spec purely because of the better Enlightenment, but sure, you don't need the spec. You still need the attunement though.


Moving stat buffs to universal trees is perfectly reasonable. It increases build options, it frees people up from having to stack specific attunements to get high base stats, and combined with my other idea about a bonus strategy spec and improvements to the trees these abilities are moved out of this would be an improvement for basically every single character in the game.

I don't think there is any reasonable counter argument that doesn't just boil down to "It's less work to just not change things" or "Change is scary and I don't like it".

People getting to actually play what they want, having fun, and staying in the game seems pretty beneficial to me. There are much more interesting group dynamics such as tanking and healing in play than making a specific person cast long term buffs before the fight.

 

Would be interested to see what you come up with here.
Of course, if everyone got a free strategy specialization, it just means nearly everyone chooses tactics and moves on. In order to make that an actual choice, the focus and subterfuge trees need SIGNIFICANT boosts to be on the same level.

As for the rest of it, I agree with your motives and logic as I said, but whether its right or wrong, the elemental trees you are proposing to remove the stat buffs from will be significantly hampered by their removal and attunement bonuses to those stats. I'm not saying that its a bad direction, but the three magic trees that are being neutered would need a lot of love. I have sun specialist as my secondary, without the stat buffs I'd drop sun in the blink of an eye. The buff is literally the only reason to take the spec. The tree doesn't offer anything else for specialization and the new solar flare skill hasn't really changed that...its laughably bad. Kinda why I'm dubious about what would be put in to replace what's being taken out.

 

Earth spec gets avoidance on shield of crystal which is good for melee

 

Good points!

 

The main reasons why you don't see fire/earth archers and so on, is cause there is not a proc related to attunement on bow, so making archers hybrid with mage is not a great deal unless you choose air or life. At the same time, melee weap + magic is doable and ppl do it a lot, for example Now i am playing death + life+ spear without having str of earth( cause i use earth warding skills so my earth attunement is shitty). I refused to str of earth so i do less dmg with pole but i buff int so i do more dmg with magic: this game is all tradeoff, it is better to accept this and try to understand how to mix builds and so on, instead to change the game.
I like the combat as it is, i prefer devs focus on balancing the actual combat system than working on a new ome

 

Lol , so having ice best cc, best dmg single target and best heal over time, why would you add to ice spec enlightment too?

 

no no, obviously a lot would have to change, i just meant it in a "conceptual" kind of way like the zodiacs. I would never put it there unless you changed a lot of things. Then again, sun does seem like the right place when I think about that a bit more.

 

That may be true, polishing up underperforming trees has to be part of the long term strategy, this is just laying the foundation for better balance by eliminating some of the bigger structural issues with the system that don't let people choose their trees freely.