Specializations don't feel Special...

No bonuses for passives, Trees like Pole arm missing specializations for a hefty number of skills, Skills like Purify not actually working with their specialization, insane xp requirement for very little benefit especially in Trees like Sun and no way to actually see if you're getting the benefit from the Enlightenment Crit chance, minute proc bonuses on certain skills even with high specialization and vague descriptions on skills like Knight's Grace and what it actually does and the list continues on and on.

With a name like specialization I was thinking more along the lines of Specialization really distinguishing your character from other players who don't have your specific specialization setup, but all we got was just really mediocre handful of little skill perks. Oh I can cast all my Death Spells in Bone Armor now, but too bad there is nothing about bone armor that lends itself towards Death Magic. Super I'm a Death Knight now with no bite and low effectiveness unless I equip 2 wands and then I'm just a confused Death mage in Bone armor.

I thought we we're supposed to be in finished polished product stage and gotten the 80% in the last 20% when SoTA went live, am I the only one who thought there would be more? Sadly, the only real bonus from specialization is not loosing a ton xp when you die now because most of your xp points are in a specialized tree.

 

I do agree they feel A bit toothless, its cool you only pay 25% decay on trees you have mastery in. Chris did say new skills will be coming hopfully they take better advantage of specilizations.

 

I agree most of the specializations need another pass.

I also agree that the passives should get some sort of benefit from the specs in order to help balance things (because the ratio of activated glyphs to passives varies from tree to tree)... even if it's a 1% effectiveness bonus per 10 levels of the spec skill or something (so GM in a spec skill would give all your passives in that tree a 10% bonus). That would be noteworthy enough to take a spec and not too OP that it would ruin anything.

That said, not all specs are worthless. The death penalty reduction for that school is nice to have for just about any tree... and for those skill/spell schools where there are a decent amount of activation skills... that 6th glyph is nice if there is a benefit to the individual skill from stacking it.

I think the whole concept of specialization is a decent start but definitely needs some fine tuning. Most of the imbalance is due to the number of "good" skills/spells in that particular tree where the 6th card actually makes a difference though. For instance, an extra card for any of the "shield" spells or skills like Defensive Stance doesn't really help you when stacking them to 2 doesn't even help you. So the extra glyph bonus varies in helpfulness across all trees and some trees (like Fire) really get a bigger advantage for this feature alone.

I'm not even mentioning the individual spec bonuses for each skill/spell. Some are good, some are not, and tweaking these a bit may help. But until/unless the "effective number of 6th glyphs" imbalance is fixed... it will be hard to make them all equally appealing IMO.

 

Tactics tree might have actually been worth taking if you could 6 stack a defensive stance. Melee really just got screwed over majorly with the one buff only change and no melee I know would be willing to sacrifice a specialization to pick up Air Magic they couldn't cast in Plate to grab the extra crit chance bonus on the Air's embrace and lose STR when they can't see anywhere on their paper doll that it actually affects their crit chance in any way without first going through some convoluted formula to equal out to be some measly .25% increase. Another failing of specialization is you can't actually see the % chance of getting the special proc's on things like the extra slash on double slash and see how much increasing your specialization actually improves it and that's lame along with everything else that's hidden beyond view for "immersion" purposes.

 

Hopefully those new skills will arrive before Elder Scrolls VI which I saw a video for today. Pretty excited about it. E3 this year is looking mighty promising can't wait for Nintendo's stream tomorrow.

 

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

 

I was bummed with learning it does nothing for Passives. I had specialized in Light Amor, thinking it might be worthwhile to see my base speed and base attack speed go up and then I read that it does no such thing...

SO, I specialize in Blades and I'm working towards specializing in Fire Magic. More Damage will negate the need to be faster with attacks, etc., etc. plus the fire atunement will help me take down that fire elemental, some day...

 

Taming Specialization is awesome. Turns a regular house pet into a raging high hp high strength monster who can survive a tier 6 beastie with no problems.

 

I'd like to see specialization allow some of the buffs which previously benefited from stacking have that ability restored. Maybe make the stacking a little less powerful than it was previously. But then the sixth glyph would be a lot more useful.

It'd be kinda cool if specialization also gave a chance for a glyph in an unlocked deck to pop up already double- or triple-stacked. Maybe something like the occasional two-stack at specialization 40, an occasional three-stack at 80 (or 100.)

 

Why is the Pet healing ability from taming not affected by the Taming specialisation?
I don't know.

 

Taming is great for low level to mid level players, at high level pets are a waste of focus. Even with this being true I do have high hopes for taming long term.

132 taming 118 summon 113 combat training and 90 specialzation.

All my pets are currently worthless and worthless, but the drake is coming

 

Your squirrel is a beast!! Its rabid bite can topple dragons!

Yeah would be nice if it was a bit more flexible on builds... may not be as painful on a pure caster build but on a melee build at high levels... ughh. That was the thing holding me back from thinking about taming, since i primarily focused STR/DEX in my melee builds. Even now I keep imbued focus potions at the ready and as much focus regen buffs as i can stack because i go through my focus pool so fast (I r stupidz).

 

Speaking of dragons, my puncture BLEED effect out dps my pet. But like I said if ur low to mid level pets are great. Once your skills are high the pet does not offer much except a focus sink.

Currently ^^^ im sure this will improve.

 

Ok. My experience is a bit different with my obs bear or ds corpion helping out a lot with the upper tears area. My pet can out DPS my fire damage with 80 spec in fire and 80s in every other fire skill.