From left to right.
The Surges
Surge of Restoration
There's health injectors. Usable since it's a prerequisite for something better.
Surge of Wrath
Increases damage output, hooray.
Surge of Speed
Eh.
Surge Mastery
The increased surge duration should be a bit higher - being able to hold charges for a full minute would be very very good. Further, increasing duration alone does not nearly justify points being put into this thing. It needs something "more" added to it. I think it would be outstanding for it to add to the base damage of your surges, so they're truly "special attacks."
The surges, as they've been presented, are awful skills. The Blademaster has a number of enhanced attacks to mow things down with - while to use a Surge, means you're stopping to do a weenie little normal attack.
Which means Surges are completely worthless, unless you want to take the time to whittle down monsters, then slowly finish them, repeating a Surge attack several times. Or you're killing monsters in two hits anyway, in which case Surge of Speed would be the only truly helpful one.
Their usefulness on bosses matters how many minions and little spawns a particular boss has. Still, rather be using my time throwing my stronger attack against the boss itself.
The vastly insulting part of this is they cost power to use - they should be close to free as they are now.
Suggestions to improve their worth have been made - make them toggles like the auras are, and let them activate off your Whirlwinds and such. Or let them act like charge-up skills and activate when they hit. The on-death condition is too limiting, especially when in a party.
Call of the Chosen, Angelic Orator
Eh. Guns. Health injectors. These skills don't really seem to go anywhere. I think their main purpose is to add a beard to the skill screen?
Ranged Sword Attacks
Heaven's Arc
I have no idea if this is a teleport attack or what. The idea of an ability only working in one extremely narrow condition (in this case flying dudes) means it's completely fubar'ed. Why not have skills that only work on undead while we're at it? Thankfully it's not required for anything, so it can be allowed to rot on the vine.
Crosscutter
Seems okay on first point, despite there being guns in the game already. This is where things start to get really transparent - they really don't want skills to get "better" with additional points in them. "Better" in this case means more damage to the enemy, whether through damage or debuff. And all this thing gets from points is a faster cooldown timer. I don't think that will last for long, not if they really want to encourage people to spread out a little.
Sword Master
Oh wait here is the damage I was talking about. Ha. Ha. Very incomprehensible why this is a separate skill.
Sword Typhon
Who knows, man. Who knows.
Melee tree #1
Sword of Reckoning
Wow, increases damage with points. Is goodish.
Sword of Authority
Kind of a bizarre skill. What it's clearly intended to be is a "boost" kind of attack, where you cause a sudden high amount of damage then wait for the timer to finish, while you spam your main attack. But added points once again reduce the timer, and not the damage. What you get at level 10 is something about twice as damaging as Sword of Reckoning on a 1 second timer. With only the added energy cost as a limiter. That kind of conflicts with the point of this skill, honestly.
Hamper
Looks good. Only problem I have with this and a lot of other debuffs is the duration seems too short by a few seconds, usually.
Charge
Charge is a very good skill, it teleports you to your target and you attack. Decent for lazy people, but obviously something to consider in PvP. But yet again, a skill that only receives a shorter timer with points.
Onslaught
OH HELLO SWORD MASTER ALL OVER AGAIN. Something else that belongs in another skill. The skill this effect should go into is "Charge."
Path of Righteousness
I. Have. No. Clue. Has a nice name. In my imagination the Blademaster moves at almost teleportation speed about 6 meters ahead of him and everything nearby gets hit by a normal attack (read: a wet noodle). Maybe this is the opposite of Charge, the Oh Noes I Have to Get Outta Here skill? The world will never know.
Melee tree #2
Sword of Justice
This is comparable to Sword of Reckoning, a good spam skill. Seems faster than Reckoning.
Sweeping Strike
Hit all kinds of stuff next to you. Yet another only good for reducing the timer skill. The Guardian's Shield Turn seems superior than this skill for a number of reasons. One of them is that the Guardian is better built to stand in a swarm of guys currently.
Whirlwind
Possibly the most interest-rousing skill on the tree, and the potential to be a large let down. More points means more speed. Does more speed mean more hits? Very likely not. Very likely not useful to invest in for PvE, unless you're mowing down massive waves of weenies? This ironically could also have been improved by.... getting that timer down with points. 20 seconds, man. 16 downtime. Ouch.
Matched Blades
Hey hey, get a second sword and become extra squishy. Word is that when dual-wielding, the swordsman only gets 75% off each sword, or in other words their total damage is +50%, not doubled. This is reasonable - Diablo 2's double damage for giving up a shield was excessive. This needs a little more than decreased Wisdom Feed - but it isn't added damage, or swing speed. Added chance to critical would be over the top, but +10 to +20 to critical damage per point wouldn't be bad. (Besides blending it into the Marksman's Hollow Points skill.)
Thorns
Thorns hurts things that whack you in melee. Thorns goes up in damage as you gain levels and put points into it. Thorns has to kind of suck. Thorns might be happier if it was a prerequisite someday later in its life.
Aura of Power
People love this skill, and its easy to see why. More power allows you to be more offensive more often and get on with your life that much quicker. There are "mana potions" and all that in these kind of games, but the Energy bar tends to bottom out a hell of a lot more often than the life one. A large inconvenience, what with the potion cooldowns.
Aura of the Elements
Increases all of your state infliction chances. To get the full benefit out of this, your weapons apparently have to deal physical, fire, electric, spectral, and poison damage. Would be kind of nice if it added some +damage of those types to your weapons at higher skill levels, so it'd do a little more (MOAR) stuff, and wouldn't be such an equipment nazi.
Aura of Zeal
Probably perfect. Multiply your chance to do a critical by your critical bonus damage and that's the "true" percent of what you're adding to your output. 250% more damage 10% of the time is 2.5 * .10 = 25% added damage, for example. The critical percent is probably added to your attack +% as Diablo 2 did - I think it's highly unlikely they have the potential for Sword of Authority to crit for +1500% damage and more. Weapon Damage * (Strength + Critical + Skill) it most likely is.
Anti Projectile Auras
Eh. : (
The Blademaster in conclusion
I think this guy has a better tree than most; with some refinement it can be very decent. Score: B.
The issues that I think lead to the general feeling of the skill trees sucking
Oh man. I can start off with the same stuff everyone else talks about:
Weapons are awesome so the skills that interact with them have to be generic, and look less awesome in comparison.
This I think speaks to the quality of the game - if the weapons aren't cool when the game ships, they won't ever be cool. The skills on the other hand can easily be refined, should they be willing to do so.
On the whole, I disagree with the mentality that because this game is more gear-centric than Diablo 2, that skills have to take a diminished role in your build. It would be terrible, terrible if every character in the same class felt exactly the same as one another.
What I think is lacking is an incentive to specialize.
Added points into a skill don't really give you your point's worth, so you kind of grab up lots of different skills, becoming a jack of all trades.
The Blademaster's skills that never gained more damage to them is an example here. When all you get is a quicker cool down, you live with longest cool down you can tolerate. When you can put a point into something and then cover that timer with a +skill piece of gear......
Your character never ends up as a walking battleship
In World of Warcraft, at the end levels your guy has an entire armament of skills, all on their own little timers and with their own unique utility. It makes you feel like you really are driving something mighty and huge. Maybe we're spoiled. Maybe 27 skills just doesn't cut the cheese anymore.
OMG shared skills!!
This one is pretty bad looking. At least they're not overused. The absolute worst examples of this are the call-downs (which I'm not a fan of) the Engineer+Marksman get, and the stuff the Summoner+Evoker share. The Templar seem markedly better in this regard.
Skills never seem to reach a crescendo.
This is what I feel is the main point to stress. You're gaining levels and going deeper and deeper into your tree.... for what? Many level 1 skills are useful throughout the game. They're not gimped and worthless like the might ICE BOLT was, they're virile and dangerous. I guess?
So in Diablo 2, at every skill threshold you had 5 skills across the 3 trees to consider. And within each tree, almost every skill led to something (mostly bigger and better) even if it didn't make logical sense:
Pheonix Strike is sitting down there, all smug, saying "LOOK AT ME I AM AWEEEESOME.... probably." And Dragon Flight is all like ": ( When you grow up and become a Blademaster, you'll get me at level five."
But here we don't have that so much - stuff doesn't get made obsolete. Look at how none of the skills in the current tress have more than one prerequisite; instead of forcing us to drop a point in a couple crappy skills we don't really want, they instead require more than one point into one crappy skill we don't want. On the plus side, at least they make an effort to make that skill non-crappy.
Stuff that's on a timer has to be more powerful than its non-timered equivalent, so you have incentive to invest in both. We see that in some places on some trees (such as the Summoner's Reaper) But that's not nearly enough innovation to stretch far.
It's a complicated problem, that can be fixed in the immediate with improving things that suck. Like Surges. Linear trees that dead end into a sampling of options. And the Marksman having only two active attacks - Rapid Fire at level 1, and Multishot at level 30.
There aren't many skill combos and that sucks
And ironically, Surges are an example of how to have skills that combo with one another. They're a very good concept, once they get there.|||Just a note on the Surges - that they suck due to only being activated if they cause a death has been pointed out since Alpha and, as far as I can recall, the only change they ever received was a boost in power. That's it.
I wouldn't hold my breath for them to change in any meaningful fashion any time soon...
Matched Blades was suggested it needs something more at least in Beta, possibly Alpha. Again, nothing doing. I'd like to see some kind of parry added to it personally, since that would give the BM a bit more survivability. At least this is a skill that can only be improved.
Heaven's Arc is useful as long as you leave it as a "shift-skill" activated attack. Any time you're in range of a flier it'll be the activate attack if you hit shift and you'll immediately leap into the air and swat the flier out of the sky.
It's mostly useful so you don't have to keep changing to guns to kill the various flying critters that you can't reach with a regular jump attack.
It's worth one point, or worth keeping a sword that has it as a bonus skill. It's not, as far as I can tell, worth more than that one point though.
BM's are fun but they still need a lot of love. Good write up.
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BM's are fun but they still need a lot of love. Good write up.
id say a lot of the skills in the game need a lot of love. many are like this, with the very diminished returns for more than 1 skill point.|||BryanM, what you have missed the point of is that a lot of the skills already naturally increase damage as you level. So a level one skill that does 10 damage automatically scales to do 30 damage as you get to level 10, say. It is a good design for them because you don't have to upgrade a skill to 10 points in order for a skill to be viable end game. This is a VERY VERY good philosophy. Otherwise you ended up like diablo where you are limited to a narrow range of skills as without any skill maxed ended up not being useful at all.
For surges, the skill works if you use it to as a last strike to kill and refresh the surge timer and you can still use the rest of your strikes the rest of the time with minimal impact on dps. This encourages you to use different skills at different time instead of spaming your strongest one.
Heaven's arc is more a skill of style. Some people like to use guns, others grapling guns to kill flyers. Others prefer this skill. It cost only one point to be effective. What's so bad about that?
What's wrong with onslaught? Not following you.
Path of righteousness does strike the mobs on the way with a normal attack but you assume a normal attack is weak. Why? Normal attack seems pretty strong. In any case even if it is a it weaker on the mobs on the way, it is an AoE attack. If you want all the mobs on the way to be hit by a powerful attack, then you may have an overpowered skill. Instant kill AoE?
Sword of justice is good against many mobs while sword of reckoning is good against single target, like a boss. I don't think you get the point of the skill.
Sweeping strike naturally scales as it ups the damage by 50%. Your normal attack gets more powerful it gets more powerful. Problem?
Etc. etc.
Your main complaint is that skill should scale with damage without realising they already do without further investment in points. I sorry to say I am very disappointed in this critique. The blademaster skills have a lot of subtleties, the right skill for the right moment design. Your quest for bigger damage and looking for that uber skill totally miss the point.
Thumbs up to Flagship, thumbs down to you.|||Just as a general comment, and without trying to say anything about specific Blademaster or other class skills, I believe that the design of skills, stats, characters, items etc. in HG:L isn't done the way one might naively expect, and how they'll all interact may be even less obvious. So maybe in the long run it'll turn out that the skills really do suck, but I think it's premature to reach that conclusion without figuring out how the game as a whole works, and I think that'll take a while.|||Quote:
BryanM, what you have missed the point of is that a lot of the skills already naturally increase damage as you level. So a level one skill that does 10 damage automatically scales to do 30 damage as you get to level 10, say. It is a good design for them because you don't have to upgrade a skill to 10 points in order for a skill to be viable end game. This is a VERY VERY good philosophy. Otherwise you ended up like diablo where you are limited to a narrow range of skills as without any skill maxed ended up not being useful at all.
For surges, the skill works if you use it to as a last strike to kill and refresh the surge timer and you can still use the rest of your strikes the rest of the time with minimal impact on dps. This encourages you to use different skills at different time instead of spaming your strongest one.
Heaven's arc is more a skill of style. Some people like to use guns, others grapling guns to kill flyers. Others prefer this skill. It cost only one point to be effective. What's so bad about that?
What's wrong with onslaught? Not following you.
Path of righteousness does strike the mobs on the way with a normal attack but you assume a normal attack is weak. Why? Normal attack seems pretty strong. In any case even if it is a it weaker on the mobs on the way, it is an AoE attack. If you want all the mobs on the way to be hit by a powerful attack, then you may have an overpowered skill. Instant kill AoE?
Sword of justice is good against many mobs while sword of reckoning is good against single target, like a boss. I don't think you get the point of the skill.
Sweeping strike naturally scales as it ups the damage by 50%. Your normal attack gets more powerful it gets more powerful. Problem?
Etc. etc.
Your main complaint is that skill should scale with damage without realising they already do without further investment in points. I sorry to say I am very disappointed in this critique. The blademaster skills have a lot of subtleties, the right skill for the right moment design. Your quest for bigger damage and looking for that uber skill totally miss the point.
Thumbs up to Flagship, thumbs down to you.
i say thumbs down to you because what diablo did offer was specialization. Right now, the only specialization there will be is someone who has a lower cooldown on some skills someone else has, or someone who can poison, phase, or ignite something a little more often. Everyone is going to put 1 skill point in all the skills (at least the ones that are useful enough). IMO every class is going to have just about the same build, thus play the same way everytime. Obviously there are exceptions to this, but i do not see how there will be that many different types of evokers/blademasters/guardians/marksmen(sniper would be a diff build i suppose. Never played a summoner or engineer but i hear they're kind of the same, maybe 2 or 3 different types of builds possible.
To me HGL skills cater to the player who doesnt care/know to do research on what path to take their character. Instead randomly putting a point in everything does just fine. Kind of a dumbed down skill system. Not much intelligence involved in putting points into it.
Now if you think that making builds that have a higher chance of poisoning/phasing/igniting something play totally different then this is the system for you. If you think a build that has a skill that has lower cooldowns plays totally different then this is the system for you. If having a build that pumps a skill with 10 points so that skill is just a little bit better than someone who put 1 in it, while you have access to much less skills and the person who put just 1 in it has access to all skills, then this is the system for you.
thumbs down on the dumbed down skill system.|||Just another note: You can't only put one point in all the skills because you need more than one as a pre-req for virtually every skill that has a pre-req.
|||Quote:thumbs down on the dumbed down skill system.
I guess we will know in a month or two after release. IMO, this is better than Diablo when you need to pump many points or even max it to be useful at the end game (or hell or nightmare). This is definitely a design choice as stated in an interview. Of course that doesn't mean the choice is the correct one. We shall see if this promote cookie cutter or discourage it as that surely is the ultimate aim.|||Sorry, BryanM, I don't want HGL to be another clone of Diablo II.
Diablo II's biggest failing is the skill system, or the "10-levels-per-skill" system and the damage and AR per level up thingy. The Sorceress and Nerco could never keep up with their weapon-wielding counterparts who get damage boost from their equipment plus skills The only way for them to go is to...specialise.
I love the skills for the Blademaster is that they can be one-point wonder or specialised. BTW, you kept on mentioning guns - but you need Accuracy and Accuracy Feed for them, so I am not getting how you can have guns on a blademaster effectively (not a beta player, forgive my ignorance and please tell me how! I want to do a Warhammer 40K Force Commander Blademaster in HGL!)
The Surges
Annoying that you need to activate a kill - I just map them to right and keep using them; I notice that you don't consume Power unless you activate the surge, so if a surge is essential to my build I may even put it on my left or right mouse click forever. I just wish they let the Surge stacks so I don't have to micro-manage (so, a Surge of Speed has a % chance of activating Surge of Restoration and etc.)
High Damage Path
I see those as one point wonder, but super-effective if you do specialise in them. After all, you have 49 skill points (minus quest rewards) - it's good that those can be one point wonder; I played with the calculator and notice that past level 6 or 7 the cooldown is tolerable enough (you can spam them like every 2s or 3s), and that makes a big difference when fighting bosses or tough mobs.
Charge
Onslaught does something to shielded creatures, Path of Righteousness sounds cool. I believe Charge/Path use separate cooldown (correct me if I am wrong, not in beta I am), so you can use Path to wade in and Charge to retreat. Again one point wonder if you want them to be this way, or a flickering speed demon who is everywhere at once every 2s or 3s.
Path is great as it allows you to multi-hit mobs and get out from their striking range. A tactical skill - and a great one point wonder for who uses it tactically.
Mutli-hit path
Whirlwind was a nightmare in Diablo II - how many time have they tried to fix it but it is still the uberleet skill? For multi-hits skill, remember that weapon mods, like poison, phase, ignite, all have a chance to be activated. Even normal blades, like Molten, Corrupt and Reaver, all have a basic chance to inflict those status - a causal player who don't go item twinking or item running still can those effects.
Auras
Aura of the Elements: Most basic swords inflict elemental status. Slap this on, dual wield a Reaver plus Molten, and use Whirlwind - I see this a pretty useful build (in foresight, not a beta player I am)
Anti projectile aura: A large percentage to deflect projectiles with only 4 levels to max. One point wonder or a monster - plus it's only 4 points out of your 49 - and remember, you probably could get skill mods too.
Thrown Swords
Swordmaster is a mod for Crosscutter which boosts the damage; original crosscutter boosts by 50% - level 5 will give you a x2 effect to your thrown mainhand sword - if you go dual blade, you still got your left blade, or gun, or whatever. I wonder if it willbe like in Jedi Knight when you can move about as to guide the return path of your sword...
Sword Typhoon's Power Cost stays the same throughout its 7 levels, cooldown never changes, and you can send up to 24 shards. Tactical usage, though not sure if you still can use Crosscutter after Sword Typhoon.
Anyway, playing with the skill calculator, a nearly maxed out thrown sword branch (http://hellgate.ingame.de/skilltree/...00050000007000)
implies the following:
1) Crosscutter can be use every 2.5 seconds; nice for softening up the mobs
2) Sword Master boosts your sword's damage by 55%, so you are doing x2 sword attack
3) Typhoon splits your sword into 24 shards at 105 power
Still have 29 points left...One or two in matched blade (so you have a blade remaining to fight with after throwing a sword?), one or two in Aura of Elements (so crosscutter and typhoon will activate their elemental states more often?), one or two in Sword of Justice (handling nearby mobs). The mentioned 'meh' Aura of Power suddenly looks very attractive as you can recoup the Power loss from Typhoon and Crosscutter.
And you still have now, 10+ skill points left
This is why I like the Blademaster. I have other builds in mind to try - Whirlwind with Matched Blades with Aura of Elements - phasing and setting enemies on fire at the same time, or the charge + sword of justice + sword of reckoning (does reckoning has a small splash? I think it does, but cannot confirm in the demo)
The Voices Skill
Taunt in D2 is one of the greatest one point wonder in D2 - I think it is powerful for the Blademaster too, especially since their skill combines taunt plus the fear shout from D2. Crowd management is essential for the blademaster. A single opponent is easier to use Sword of Reckoning, then Sword of Authority on, and when they converge after the fear, you can use Crosscutter or Typhoon on them. Oh yeah,my favourite aura should be the Aura of Elements, that is if all those skills have a chance to activate elements.
What I think it's cool is that I can have so many skill combo without investing massively in them. For example, the above combo works if I have just one point or two points in Orator, Crosscutter, Sword of Reckoning, Swordmaster and Aura of Elements. That is about at most 10 points; and since skills scale with my level, I do not have to max them out. But if I do, that will be my Blademaster's style, and I think it's ultra cool.
That's my take on the blademaster|||Oh man, the price of writing long ass stuff is having to read long ass stuff. I deserve all the pain I receive.
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BryanM, what you have missed the point of is that a lot of the skills already naturally increase damage as you level.
NO WAY GET OUTTA TOWN.
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For surges, the skill works if you use it to as a last strike to kill and refresh the surge timer and you can still use the rest of your strikes the rest of the time with minimal impact on dps.
And like I said in the OP, this is what makes them useless in party play. More people you have, less likely you are to land the last blow. And when solo, this still requires you to plink at the guy a few times to finish it off.
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It cost only one point to be effective. What's so bad about that?
It allows more than one point into it. If they wanted a system where you buy a skill and are unable to improve that skill, then they very very very obviously should have just done that. It would have required them to have much larger skill maps (around 100 skills per class) if they also wanted diversification in such a system.
Currently they're in between the two styles; skills worth pumping, and then everything else.
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What's wrong with onslaught? Not following you.
It has no reason to exist besides delaying your ability to improve a skill, and padding out the skill tree. It is the same thing as Sword Master. Heightened Senses is not like these two, on the basis that the skill it improves already improves itself.
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Sword of justice is good against many mobs while sword of reckoning is good against single target, like a boss.
Sword of Justice is good against single targets as well.
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Sweeping strike naturally scales as it ups the damage by 50%. Your normal attack gets more powerful it gets more powerful. Problem?
Well, what I don't think you get is that 50% goes down in value as you level. Strength + Critical damage can only go up, while it stays the same.
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Your main complaint is that skill should scale with damage without realising they already do without further investment in points.
That's the Blademaster as it stands; lowered power costs and cooldowns are not explicitly always better in every situation. And you're overestimating the value of +5 to +10% weapon damage; it's hardly "uber."
The skills that need added damage with points the most (the basic spam attacks) already have them.
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Thumbs up to Flagship, thumbs down to you.
This is what you're putting your thumb into:
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Diablo II's biggest failing is the skill system, or the "10-levels-per-skill" system and the damage and AR per level up thingy. The Sorceress and Nerco could never keep up with their weapon-wielding counterparts who get damage boost from their equipment plus skills The only way for them to go is to...specialise.
I would say Diablo 2's biggest failure character-wise was the massive emphasis on area attacks, and the gimping of melee classes to the point they required excessively good equipment to be viable versus ranged guys.
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For multi-hits skill, remember that weapon mods, like poison, phase, ignite, all have a chance to be activated.
The chances of state inducement are being normalized, possibly for patch 0. Weapons with higher speed are being adjusted to have a lower chance of inflicting them on any given hit, so slowwww stuff isn't gimped. No idea if that'll be applied to skills.
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Just another note: You can't only put one point in all the skills because you need more than one as a pre-req for virtually every skill that has a pre-req.
Haha.
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