Current Specialization Popularity

In a tweet Chris pulled a list of the top Specialization's that are currently the top in popularity:

Last stream someone asked Mastery popularity. Just pulled the list. In order from most to least popular. Not too much shocking here:

Ranged
Taming
Blade
Fire
Tactics
Life
Air
Polearm
Bludgeon
HeavyArmor
Sun
Earth
LightArmor
Bard
Death
Focus
Subterfuge
Lunar
Water
Chaos
Shield

I only included Specs that had 1 million XP's or more in them. So not quite high level but should exclude most newer players.

https://twitter.com/catnipgames/status/1374663147559256073

And yeah, while this wasn't in any way a bit surprising, it was at least interesting to know. And I'll assume when he said "Mastery" he actually was speaking about "Specialization". Just some FYI.

 

TAMING is in #2 spot!

 

I was surprised to see Blades as #3 given how much I was told early on I was gimping myself by going blades. Then I was told to pair that with Tactics and my life changed.

 

People spec in Ranged??? Really, what am I missing here?

 

At a guess, people hear archers are OP without knowing what makes them strong, so they spec in Ranged.

 

lol I like that Cora

 

I really wish that ranged specialization was the correct choice.

 

Admittedly I don't do a lot of adventuring but I spec'd ranged as strangely enough that's where my skills are, if specialization from another tree is more useful than the one I've skilled up in then we need to use a different word.

 

Indeed. FWIW, I wasn't defending it. I agree with Barugon, I'd like the best way to play ranged to be specializing in Ranged. Though, I'd also bet if that ever happened, it was because Air/Tactics was finally nerfed hard enough that it was actually worse.

 

wonder how many good players out there push disinformation to help protect their build setup. I have seen a few do that to others

ps. not me, I share a lot of information on builds that I am aware of.

 

If they made the critical damage bonus from Berserker's Stance only apply to melee weapons then everyone would switch.

 

I would even switch if Ranged spec had a similar (but less powerful) crit damage bonus.

Though, if I had the ability to change everything, I'd go back and not give Tactics/Subterfuge/Focus specs at all. I think those should have been sort of basic abilities everyone could/would use as needed. Specs should have been for combat/spell trees only. (Of course, If I really had that power, I'd also make the spec bonuses perks for GMing a skill instead of something you unlock with a spec skill.)

 

Archer has a good critical damage, air spec increase critical chance and tactis critical damage...its so obvious

 

I find this very odd in may ways, like many others I can only imagine that people would spec in ranged if they don't explore the tactics and air trees.

I actually made this as a conversation starter over this topic.




But if I got by the grouping of players, the tier list looks more like this?

 

It should also probably be noted that barding is 100% xp return, so many people may have recently dropped barding spec when they realized that they were gonna need an instrument to pull off the nonsense they currently do.

 

I'm genuinely surprised by your water spec ranking, and by how low lunar spec is in both cases! Water is weak in PvE, although it has a good healing over time and it's shield pairs well with heavy armor, meanwhile moon magic is super strong against mobs, Meteor shower is super strong, and shooting star hits hard even against pve mages (heck it is my only way to kill Satyr Mages in Tartarus as a water mage).

I hope these rankings will help buff up those lower schools though.


As for those wondering about ranged spec, the archers who do a lot of control points might be picking it up for multistage, which becomes insanely powerful with spec (as it matches the aoe dps of many AoE builds). Also, the last focus nerfs might have pushed some archers to use it more, and some people might prefer it's more consistent damage than tactics peak damage or airs crit chance buff, you never know what people come up with that works!

 

If you have water specialization at 80, it doubles the healing that the water elemental does. I assume that goes up if your specialization is higher.

 

Just to be clear though, the devs intended air magic to compliment archery just like earth magic is intended to compliment melee.

 

to be fair, its mainly Melee and ranged that are doing ''Nonsense'' With barding

 

I wasn't rating each tree of magic, or the strength of a single skill within each school, but in how I feel the spec priority is for those schools.

Air, Sun or Earth I always assumed as a given for just about anyone. The bonuses to Enlightenment and Air's Embrace, especially since you can bestow a specced buff onto another person or your tame/summon, not to mention the increased attunement beyond the regular 10-skill limitations, really makes those specs stand out to me. Then you have spells like Solar Flair, Gust, chain lightning, Air Shield, Stone Arrow, and Earthquake really really make a high attunement and relative skill (int, dex & str) increase for a playstyle all the more worth it.


I was Lunar spec for a while, and I dropped it for the following reasons:

• Shard of Night is a good artifact, but significantly discourages the use of the enlightenment skill or sun spec due to the attunement debuff. It also isn;t nearly as good as a dagger as a unicorn horn, so already the build is being chipped away at with decisions of value.
• Meteor Shower is awesome, and I love that skill, but shooting start and meteor shower together is not as powerful as ring of fire + ignite weapon + fire arrow spec or no spec.
• Night step is a dangerous dice role for a dex based player, which moon seems to encourage, but the amount of times I completely whiffed with the charged dagger attack after using night-step due to being out of range, and the fact that I never once mezzed a player in PVP with night step, despite having GMed both nigh step and spec - just discouraged me away from it completely.
  • If there was a combo of Night Step + Sneak Attack, Sap, or Thrust - that was guaranteed to not miss due to range of deposit after night step - I could be made to reconsider (the gods know I have the artifacts for a moon mage).

Honestly, all I ever wanted was to be a sneaky/stabby stealth based player with a dagger. There should be a lot more synergy between moon and subterfuge since moon artifacts debuff the main intelligence increase skill. Otherwise, maybe the devs might consider a Saber of Light or some other sun blade artifact as a counter balance to the Shard of Night.