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

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Aetrion, Oct 10, 2019.

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  1. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

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    A well balanced game sometimes has big changes like this.

    A prototype game stays the way it always was.

    This change, + the Strategy Tree specialization, moves us toward well balanced with more interesting choices.
     
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  2. Sway

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    At face value it makes sence. However i don't see why the change is necessary. Its true in the beginning most archers will raise their air attunment to gain more dex, and fighters with earth ect. But whats so bad about that. Gem up your gear and gain the attunment you need to raise your dex as desired and move on to the next thing. Moveing stat buffs into trees that archers/fighters already have just streamlines their skills even more then thay are.
    To be an effective mage you have to attune most if not all the magic trees. Having fighters/archers attuning in one to gain a large stat buff seems like a fair trade.
     
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  3. Aetrion

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    The fact that you can't stack attunement in anything else without nerfing your own character, thus eliminating build choices. Also the fact that the ubiquity of the air tree for the buff throws off all metrics about whether or not it's actually any good on its own.
     
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  4. Adam Crow

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    Well i still think this idea is just flat out too much work. I agree with dhanas here... we need to balance the stuff already in and concentrate on endgame content, raids, player made quests etc.

    Hate to say it but this is just not going to happen now. And if it did, it would set back so many of these important features its just not worth the effort at this point. If we were starting from scratch, i would be totally on board. But not now. There are much bigger fish to fry.
     
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  5. Sway

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    gaining attunment in one school of magic doesn't nerf other school unless your getting the resisting skill
     
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  6. Aetrion

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    You can't gear for multiple attunements though and you also can't put your spec anywhere else unless you want to miss out on a hefty crit bonus.

    This is an absolute non argument. You have no idea how much work it is or isn't, and "It's easier not to change anything" should never be an argument for leaving things in a state where they don't have a solid foundation to grow on.
     
  7. Vladamir Begemot

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    Oooof! Taking the combat system to a more polished state should never be considered too much work, unless you're redoing the whole thing.
     
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  8. Sway

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    that's the point. you have to gear and spec for what you want most. what is the crit on yours because it says its a small crit on the skill
    the generic low level person will probably go tac/air (if ranged) or ranges/tac, and as people advance I would think they would drop the air spec and just use attunment to get the dex. and then be creative for there second.
    my alt is Range/Moon fire flies you have to cast but work nicely for longer fights and I get meteor shower that hits good too
     
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  9. Sway

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    honestly if you take spec away it's completely reasonable to expect a ranged person to raise 10 air tree specs to 100 for a better airs embrace with embrace up to 110 or 120. and fighters loading up in earth for earth attunment.
    as a mage you are forced to have a fighting tree filled and other tidbits up to 100. going without isn't even an option.
     
  10. Barugon

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    I think that having to make hard choices about your character and not getting everything is actually good.
    Having some buff is always better than having no buff. Again, making those hard choices.
     
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  11. Sway

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    I think people are getting hung up on the idea that air spec is a must. but I don't think it is. in fact I don't even use tac for my mace fighter (I know crazy right) maybe don't listen to what the people say is the best and try stuff out. the key is to build your gear to best work with what your using.
     
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  12. Dhanas

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    My mage has always worked without sun spec, i boosted my sun attunement and my enligthment skill to get more int from it, i tryed also the sun spec on past and it was great mixed with life, but not the best for my playstyle, meanwhile it is great for many others playstyles. Sun spec is not mandatory for a mage, as it isn't air spec for an archer and earth spec for a melee, can work with certain specific builds but it is not mandatory (the air-tactic build was great for archers, but wasn't and isn't the best one or the only one available).

    At the moment combat needs lot of balances between the already existent trees, i don't think we need to add more complex mechanic and generate much more things to balance out. The argument is not "it's easier not to change anything" but we don't need to change anything but to balance what we have..
     
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  13. Dhanas

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    I would like to add also, if you move those 3 skills in focus/tactic/subterfuges trees, and add also a 3rd specialization on one of those, as you suggest in another thread, it will generate lot of disbalances, because certain classes will become op: think a water mage in pvp with life/ice and also sun buff with 12,5% spell crit, or an archer in PVE with tactic/bow spec and also gaining crit% from air embrance from subterfugees and so on. There is a reason if those 3 buffs are under those trees, and there is a reason also of why they are so powerfull, the reason is trade-offs ( that has always been a thing in this game) , you have to refuse to something to have something else, and imo this is pretty balanced right now-
     
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  14. Aetrion

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    Except it isn't a "hard choice", it's just a meta build almost everyone conforms to because it's simply better than everything else.

    We're not going to see good balance in the game as long as there are some trees that multiply effectiveness with specific other trees. You'll never be able to build a viable character that doesn't have those synergies, and as a result you'll never be able to compare two different skill lines independently.

    Making every skill line an equally valid choice is the foundation that good balance has to be built on. Before we have that it's just bandaids on top of bandaids on top of bandaids forever.
     
  15. Barugon

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    Right and very early on, the devs said that Air magic was designed to work well with archery.
     
  16. Aetrion

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    It will still work well with archery. Everything else will just also work well with archery.
     
  17. Adam Crow

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    The combat we have is a solid foundation. So that's just your opinion. And i totally respect that. Good luck with this endeavor, but i will fight against it because i don't think this change is needed.
     
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  18. Vladamir Begemot

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    Yes, a foundation. Continuing to make it better is a good plan though. To believe it is finished is probably to be proven wrong.
     
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  19. Dhanas

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    What is the problem with those trees? I already said they are not mandatory at all, it is just one of the multiple choices we have.
    This is totaly false, unless i am misunderstanding you.

    There are certain trees that don't work at all in PVP, and others that don't work at all in PVE, isn't it better to balance those trees to be competitive in both the cases instead to add more meat to the fire and messing up the things that already worked?
     
  20. Aetrion

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    These changes don't negatively impact any current builds, so if you're happy with the way things are nothing is going to change for you. So what exactly are you fighting against? The fact that people who think the current system can be improved might find it more enjoyable at no detriment to you?

    Come on, let's not pretend that there aren't a tiny number of meta builds completely dominating this game right now. If making the choice results in a second rate character it's not a real choice.

    I don't think any of that work is going to be lost, because nobody is getting nerfed. All existing characters will work just as they did before. The only thing that's going to change is that new combinations that are currently too weak to ever be used will start to become viable.

    Currently it's nearly impossible to balance something like a death archer vs. an air archer, because death skills don't buff archery skills, but air skills do, so if you made death strong enough to make up the difference the balance would be off when you compare the two without being an archer. If we move these buffs to a universal skill we no longer have that problem, death vs. air just needs to be balanced once and it's balanced for all characters regardless of what other skills they have.
     
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