Balancing Innate Skills

I think you MIGHT just have missed the bridge there.

 

things overlooked by OP are simple. I wear a 2 swords, I lose a certain amount to cast + heavy armor also basically denying my casting rate, plus regs, also denying my casting rate, but arguably an extra 10% or something, plus 10% in the tree in focus. Basically without earth abilities, i wouldn't even play melee since really and honestly without them you are too squishy. So where you would come back up with that +5 def would be pole arms, which kind of by design and default has a lower dps then swords, yet allows for offhand attack spam yet, which is great, but even still why looking at the earth innate passives as a negative, is somewhat silly since really and genuinely it should be observed that the other trees clearly lack any level of higher implement. for example bruce lee said flow like water, yet besides a +dex (i think) there is little to no use for dex (conjecture) but, just saying have other means and implements of niche and flavor to the mix and you could have like +4 magic schools with +4 benefits to melee combat. that said, it really comes down to what is effective for me.

nerf one thing, i'll hunt for the next flavor of the month anyway.

not really a problem with mindset, so much as any ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and i won't run a half-assed build if i can prevent it.

That said, most of my skill choices, and gearing choices are reflective of the times. If there were extra abilities in heavy armor that were purposed for heavy armor, case and point an extra +5 defense and +10 str (say the earth ele talents moved over) I'd still get them. Over-all though, i mostly just use heavy armor for whats there, and maybe in the future will suggest the ability absorbing impacts, but as of just this moment --- i can't justify it to myself, since really those earth talents give me a higher level of defense innately, and there and in that, i would say is that without the +earth talents, this alpha for warriors would have a much grittier(in a shitty way) feel, since we're already pretty much out-matched by mages in 1vs1 scenarios regardless of the +earth talents

 

I didn't try out the Earth innates until I was 40. I had no problem in melee and I'm a light armor user. So.. saying you can't get buy without the Earth innates is firstly not a great argument and secondly, demonstrates an imbalance that needs to be fixed. 3rdly.. you're missing the whole point of the OP and also judging what you expect the future will be like based on the current, pre-alpha state.

Once everything is balanced you shouldn't NEED any particular skill just to keep up with everyone else. That is the point.

 

LB and Portalarium PROMISED us a game like no other before it, which would follow in the spiritual succession of the original Ultimas and forge new ground for games. This sounded great, I'm all for it.

What is being pointed out, bowen, is not flaws that happen to have cropped up in a "pre-alpha" (now open to the public and playable), they are flaws that are endemic in the games that already flood the market. Your response to the Earth innate talents, while well meaning, is a mirror statement to comments I have seen on game forums everywhere I've played. "X is too strong, everyone takes it, it should be fixed!" I don't think you'll actually find someone on these forums who doesn't want the ability trees to be balanced and equally desirable. What you are hearing is "There's rocks over there!" "Shoals to starbord!" "Mind the kraken, they'll get in your pants and you'll never get em out!" "Why is all the rum gone!?", and all manner of other mostly well intentioned warnings on WHICH WAY THIS BOAT IS TO BE SAILED. It's not that your response IS a call to arms against useful passives, it's that it has served as such in the past, and those of us who lived through flavor of the month serial nerf/buffs, and constant changes to skill trees to fix that thing that we broke when we fixed that other thing that we meant to fix in the last patch but it just didn't work so then we had to patch it again harder but when we did it broke this other thing here that we are gonna patch next week, we don't want to see that start with SotA. So we are attempting to influence the solution in a more permanent and stable direction.

One of the deep dives said that they wanted to keep introducing new ability trees periodically, so that we the players, even the hardcore always on "do you even sleep?" players couldn't master everything. If that's to happen, a strong tradition of ability tree balance needs to be implemented. I see a future in which each content patch day for SotA is also respec day, when you refund the crap out of your build and incorporate the newer, more effective trees, and then gradually grow back into your old spec for familiarity's sake. I don't want that. I want the current trees to be strong, foundational even. I want any new trees to be fluffy add-ons that make us go 'huh'. Maybe good, maybe not, not worth a total respec, but it gives me somewhere new to grow...

 

Please don't get me started on respecs..

 

What if some innate skills worked counter to others, so folks would actually have to choose, instead of just having to wait for skill points to use?