The barb's skill tree seems to be crammed with:
- Defense, damage, speed boosters. There is an awful amount of redundancy there.
- Too many defensive skills. Nobody wants them all. People will just cherrypick the best ones.
- Too many time-limited skills you have to activate yourself. I tried that in Median (Rapture, Vanquish) and it didn't work because it meant you had to keep casting stuff instead of having fun attacking, or you just cast it at the start of each fight and it was like a passive except you wasted a second at each fight.
- Unnecessary defensive skills. Other classes don't have quite that many defensive skills, so clearly the game is still possible without any defensive skills. So why bother getting them? The only reason people picked up IS and NR in D2 was because it was only one point.
- Skills that could have been useful if only. The retaliation attack is very interesting, and if it wasn't 10% when struck but 100% it would be great. I have something exactly like that in Median as the paladin's main melee skill, and it is already pretty dangerous even with 100% and built-in knockstun. Leap Attack is still useless because its damage is based on strength instead of weapon damage which increases faster.
- Skills that do the exact same thing with minor variations. Nobody needs both HotA and Bash. People will just obviously pick the best one. This may get solved before release, though - everyone remembers D2 prerelease with two novas in the lightning tree, two blizzards in the cold tree and a third and fourth blizzard in the other two trees. Still sad to see the same blunder again.
- A general feeling that while there are cool skills, the tree is so big and full of boring or weak junk that it drowns out the good. Is the barb really meant to be a one build wonder again?|||Quote:
- Defense, damage, speed boosters. There is an awful amount of redundancy there.
That's not redundancy, that's customization options to allow customizing your build to some degree depending on your build preferences (which can be boosted even further by items).
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- Too many defensive skills. Nobody wants them all. People will just cherrypick the best ones.
You are assuming too much, for a tanking class like the Barb Defensive skills are a must, variety of skills is also a must to allow each build to have the defensive skills that fit with it.
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- Too many time-limited skills you have to activate yourself. I tried that in Median (Rapture, Vanquish) and it didn't work because it meant you had to keep casting stuff instead of having fun attacking, or you just cast it at the start of each fight and it was like a passive except you wasted a second at each fight.
Actually most of the skills you mention are passives that activate under certain conditions (with only one or two that you need to cast yourself).
Besides, D2 was already filled with such skills, for example many of the Barb warcries fit what you describe perfectly, all skills that gives buffs or debuffs enemies work the same way ... what exactly do you want .. i don't get it really .. you simply just want to spam spam spam one attack spell and thats it or what ?
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Unnecessary defensive skills. Other classes don't have quite that many defensive skills, so clearly the game is still possible without any defensive skills. So why bother getting them? The only reason people picked up IS and NR in D2 was because it was only one point.
They are necessary for the Barb, and of course the other classes don't have that many defensive skills cause they aren't identical to the barb (they aren't pure melee or power focused tanking classes).
Not to mention in D3 you won't be able to teleport back to town whenever you are about to die, you won't be able to spam potions mindlessly, and when you are at 10% or 5% of your health and approach a new powerful mob with no fury you MUST have very good assortment of defense passives/skills to survive that encounter and come out victorious .. this isn't D2.5 .. it's no longer just spam spam spam.
Also ... "so clearly the game is still possible without any defensive skills" .. what !!! .. by what merit .. playing some rigged demo or did you travel into the future and play the final game to come up with that weird conclusion, this isn't D2 so stop treating it like it is a D2 expansion, if anything every change that has been made to the game like i mentioned above strongly points that defensive skills are a must in the game specially in higher difficulties and on HC (for all classes not just the barb, like the Wizard time slowing bubble, the Monk impenetrable-def, but the barb needs them more than any other class).
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- Skills that could have been useful if only. The retaliation attack is very interesting, and if it wasn't 10% when struck but 100% it would be great. I have something exactly like that in Median as the paladin's main melee skill, and it is already pretty dangerous even with 100% and built-in knockstun. Leap Attack is still useless because its damage is based on strength instead of weapon damage which increases faster.
Most of those skills would have been completely OP if they activated automatically all the time .. overall limiting their activation chance allows the Devs to make the skills more powerful, pronounced and effective without becoming game breaking, go check Titan Quest it has many skills like that .. and guess what .. it works just fine.
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- Skills that do the exact same thing with minor variations. Nobody needs both HotA and Bash. People will just obviously pick the best one. This may get solved before release, though - everyone remembers D2 prerelease with two novas in the lightning tree, two blizzards in the cold tree and a third and fourth blizzard in the other two trees. Still sad to see the same blunder again.
They aren't minor variations, you just seem to be nitpicking.
HotA - Does critical damage + has considerable recovery period + does extra physical damage
Bash - Knocks back + has no recovery period
Those aren't minor differences at all, depending on your build and items setup you will pick the one that fits you more, NOT to forget that EVERY single active skill will be customixable with skill runes .. MEANING bash will be customizable and so will HotA which equals even more variety (+3 versions for HotA and +3 or more versions of Bash to pick from)
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- A general feeling that while there are cool skills, the tree is so big and full of boring or weak junk that it drowns out the good. Is the barb really meant to be a one build wonder again?
I don't get your point at all, this isn't making any sense, they offer a large variety of passives to allow for customization options for builds you complain about too many Defense, damage, speed boosters and redundancy there.
Then you come around and complain about the Bab becoming a one build wonder ... really !!!?|||If the current skill system stays the same then i completely agree. That is, that you can put skills into any tree just by investing enough points into each tier.
If they change it to needing a certain amount of points per tier then i think it could work. This way each build would offer its own defensive skills. However, with the current system it is too easy to just pick the best ones from whatever tree they are in.
Edit: i mean to say that if they change it to requiring points per tree in order to invest further down the tree.|||Quote:
If the current skill system stays the same then i completely agree. That is, that you can put skills into any tree just by investing enough points into each tier.
If they change it to needing a certain amount of points per tier then i think it could work. This way each build would offer its own defensive skills. However, with the current system it is too easy to just pick the best ones from whatever tree they are in.
Edit: i mean to say that if they change it to requiring points per tree in order to invest further down the tree.
I completely disagree, i had some free time and went back to look at their panel from Blizzcon 08 in which they discussed this matter in full detail.
I finally figured why they went this way, requiring players to invest in a certain tree in order to advance only results in severely limiting players choices regarding builds and forcing you to spend your points into skills you don't need for your build and for no good reason encourages and rewards people for specializing in a single tree.
Besides there is no guarantee they will put defensive skills in every tree, but that's not really the problem at all.
Let's compare advancing from tier 3 to 4 when it requires you to spend 25 points in all trees as opposed to having to spend points in all trees to get to tier 4 in each tree.
1-If you are free to choose whatever skills you want from all trees you will have more creative freedom and won't be forced to spend points in any skills you don't want to use in tiers 1,2 and 3 ... thus making your build exactly as you wish.
2-If you are forced to spend points into every tree to get tier 4 skills in each you will end up spending too many points in skills you don't want to spend points into or don't benefit your current build from tier 1,2,3 in every tree.
So if your Barb build focuses on Battle Master tree plus Tier 1 Juggernaut tree skills but needs a skill from tier 5 in Juggernaut tree you are forced to spend/waste points on Juggernaut tier 2,3 and 4 skills in order to get to that tier 5 skill .. which is bad design and extremely frustrating.
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They only argument here is "but there are some bad skills nobody is going to use if we have the freedom to select skills from any tree", that's actually irrelevant .. being forced to spend points into such skills is even far worse than just having them around, it is more sane and logical to design useful and well balanced skills rather than asking to limit player choices.
Besides it is too early and meaningless to assume such useless skills will exist at this stage, the game is far from balancing stage and is still at the early iteration process Blizz is famous for .. at this stage almost anything is subject to change.|||If you look at the fabled Diablo II Barbarian and his skills he has 5 that add damage pre-expansion and 7 in post-expansion.
5/30 or 7/30
Bash (+Damage and +Physical Damage Bonus)
Whirlwind (-Damage / +Damage AoE)
Leap Attack (+Damage)
Frenzy (+Damage / Attack and Walk Speed)
Berserk (+Magic Damage)
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Concentrate (+Damage, LoD only)
Double Swing (+Synergy Damage, LoD only)
Discounting the Masteries as they are 6 passive skills that increase damage for particular weapons, the rest of his skills are mostly defensive.
-Increased Stamina (More stamina means easier to escape, not so much defensive but hardly has battle qualifications)
-Increased Speed (Better movement and faster escape, again not so much defensive but doesn't really aid battle)
-Iron Skin (Increased defence, speaks for itself)
-Natural Resistance (Increase magical resistance, speaks for itself)
-Taunt (Lowers opponent damage, basically like a %damage absorption)
-Shout (Increases defence, speaks for itself)
-Howl (Causes opponents to run, useful if in over your head)
-Battle Orders (More Health and Mana keeps you alive longer)
-Battle Command (Can increase damage but the law of probability says that if 7/30 skills are damage, it's majority of increases goes to defensive skills)
-Battle Cry (Decreases opponent damage and defence, much more useful in defence than offence)
-War Cry (Does damage but lower damage than any other skill at this level, used for the AoE stun)
-Leap (Escape move)
-Stun (Speaks for itself)
-Double Throw (Increased chance to hit with throwing weapons so passive offence?)
-Find Potion (More potions restore more health, defensive at the heart or at least it keeps you alive while causing no damage)
-Find Item (No offensive or defensive bonuses, just item find)
-Grim Totem (Causes enemies to run at the sight of the totem, defensive aid skill)
So pre-expansion you have 4 usable attack skills that add real damage (Leap Attack is generally a bit more of a hit and miss job, plus high mana cost and low possible hit chance) AND at post-expansion you have 5 attack skils that add real damage (as Double Swing would be a benefit to Frenzy not a standalone skill).
The rest are either movement, defensive or skill passives or war cries.
So tell me again how this Barbarian has too many defensive skills?
I personally think the fact that most of his defensive skills are now passive %chance skills is better than active war cries, you can focus on battle and killing and use that window of opportunity when you enter a Berserker State to unleash a huge damaging combo of skills and attacks.|||Quote:
Besides, D2 was already filled with such skills, for example many of the Barb warcries fit what you describe perfectly, all skills that gives buffs or debuffs enemies work the same way
There's a significant difference. In d2, the warcries with short durations were targeted at the enemies, and the buff warcries had a long duration.
Here in D3, the buff warcries have a short duration|||Quote:
I completely disagree, i had some free time and went back to look at their panel from Blizzcon 08 in which they discussed this matter in full detail.
I finally figured why they went this way, requiring players to invest in a certain tree in order to advance only results in severely limiting players choices regarding builds and forcing you to spend your points into skills you don't need for your build and for no good reason encourages and rewards people for specializing in a single tree.
Besides there is no guarantee they will put defensive skills in every tree, but that's not really the problem at all.
Let's compare advancing from tier 3 to 4 when it requires you to spend 25 points in all trees as opposed to having to spend points in all trees to get to tier 4 in each tree.
1-If you are free to choose whatever skills you want from all trees you will have more creative freedom and won't be forced to spend points in any skills you don't want to use in tiers 1,2 and 3 ... thus making your build exactly as you wish.
2-If you are forced to spend points into every tree to get tier 4 skills in each you will end up spending too many points in skills you don't want to spend points into or don't benefit your current build from tier 1,2,3 in every tree.
This doesn't make sense to me. The skills in each tree should compliment each other, since they are passives for active skills in that tree.
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So if your Barb build focuses on Battle Master tree plus Tier 1 Juggernaut tree skills but needs a skill from tier 5 in Juggernaut tree you are forced to spend/waste points on Juggernaut tier 2,3 and 4 skills in order to get to that tier 5 skill .. which is bad design and extremely frustrating.
This is a terribly bad design. Why in the hell would they make a tier 5 skill in one tree perfectly compliment a tier 5 from another tree? It would be like putting Fire mastery in a lightning tree... it doesn't make sense. If you need a tier 5 in one tree to make a tier 5 in another work, then they should have put them in the same tree.
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They only argument here is "but there are some bad skills nobody is going to use if we have the freedom to select skills from any tree", that's actually irrelevant .. being forced to spend points into such skills is even far worse than just having them around, it is more sane and logical to design useful and well balanced skills rather than asking to limit player choices.
Besides it is too early and meaningless to assume such useless skills will exist at this stage, the game is far from balancing stage and is still at the early iteration process Blizz is famous for .. at this stage almost anything is subject to change.
I don't see how this is irrelevant. Sure in a perfect game all the skills will be equal in use, but lets get serious.... Some skills are going to be stronger than others. It cannot be avoided. So instead of making a player choose between which OP skills they get, blizzard just says "hey you can have them all!"
I really see this leading to many more one trick ponies. Sure any barb can have WW now, and why wouldn't they? Do we really want all barbs to be able to have the exact same skills? What would stop any player from picking the strongest skills from each tree.
If not one trick ponies, then for sure a simple cookie cutter build with all the strongest skills.|||Quote:
That's not redundancy, that's customization options to allow customizing your build to some degree depending on your build preferences (which can be boosted even further by items).
Besides, D2 was already filled with such skills, for example many of the Barb warcries fit what you describe perfectly, all skills that gives buffs or debuffs enemies work the same way ... what exactly do you want .. i don't get it really .. you simply just want to spam spam spam one attack spell and thats it or what ?
Also ... "so clearly the game is still possible without any defensive skills" .. what !!! .. by what merit .. playing some rigged demo or did you travel into the future and play the final game to come up with that weird conclusion, this isn't D2 so stop treating it like it is a D2 expansion, if anything every change that has been made to the game like i mentioned above strongly points that defensive skills are a must in the game specially in higher difficulties and on HC (for all classes not just the barb, like the Wizard time slowing bubble, the Monk impenetrable-def, but the barb needs them more than any other class).
I don't get your point at all, this isn't making any sense, they offer a large variety of passives to allow for customization options for builds you complain about too many Defense, damage, speed boosters and redundancy there.
Then you come around and complain about the Barb becoming a one build wonder ... really !!!?
I think his issue with redundancy is we will end up with 4 skills that are fairly similar, and 95% of the barb players will ignore three of them becuase they are mathematically better off. Thus we end up with the one trick pony builds like in d2.
D2 was indeed filled with buffs and debuffs like you said, but I think many, many of them were ignored. Players went with bo, ingored all other warcries, and for passives they went with natural resistances, increased speed and their weapon mastery. Everything else got ignored by most of the players.
He doesn't have to go into the future to realize such problems; he likely has some feedback about players' general behavior in Median. Some of d3 is shaping up to be using the d2 blueprint, so comparisons can be made. Imo, maybe we're all better off having potential disasters brought up instead of getting surprised by them whaen the game comes out.
The part where I disagree with Laz is on too many skills. Imo, we need loads and loads of them. It may sound hard, but making many skills different and as less redundant as possible is not so hard that it can't be done. If Blizzard is lacking in the imagination department to the point where they can't come up with ideas that will work, then we have big problem. More skills will give us more to try out and increase the lifeline of the game provided they are not useless and get ignored.
What is there, 35 skills down from 70 some? Come on, d2 chrs had 30. D3 should have way the hell more skills, and Blizzard should be smart enough by now to make them viable and worthy of use.
In the new skill trees I only counted 10 active attacks skills that you can use as your main attack. There are other actives, but they have timers or a condition like beserk state must be in place to use them, so those are not reliable enough to make a core build out of them. Skills that only require having enough fury ARE reliable enough to use as your main. These are the conditions I used to make a count of how many barb builds there would be with the current trees. So there will be about 10 barb builds. The WW barb, the bash barb, the cleave barb, and so on.
And of those 10, some are ground thumping skills like HotA which you would not expect to be usable all the time. My guess is HotA is out. That will likely be a once in a while thing, not a core build name. Another of the 10 actives is throw weapon, but how many barbs are going to use that as their main when they could use a ranged class instead? Another of the 10 actives is leap attack, but it does not sound like much fun having to wait for a Super Mario Bros jump to end just to hurt stuff when you could be hitting stuff all the time without a big jump. So that takes us down to 7 core barb builds.
7, is that it? In just a couple of years we will have all of these build names committed to memory. PvP situation: Oh, you're a cleave barb? kk. Sec. Ok, rdy, go.
The d3 situation I had in mind was: Player A-wut kind of barb r u? Player B-cleave and WW as main, but it's complex. I use different passives and sometimes jump alot too, and for bosses I maxed out bash, and....
But what I think we will get is: Player A-wut kind of barb r u? Player B- Cleave. Palyer A- kk.
After all, there are only 7 builds. It won't be long until "Cleave" means you max out X, Y and Z or else you are doing it wrong. Now if there were 70 skills, this process would at least take 6 years to figgure out instead of 2.
Actually, what is with all the ground thumping? HotA, Seismic Slam, Earthquake and leap all have to do with thumping the ground. Shouldn't we be hitting the bad guys? Come on, 4 skills where you whack the ground. Imagine playing a build where most of what you do is hit the ground, then tap the enemies a bit to build up enough fury so you can gracefully hit the ground again.
There are other problems in the trees too, like how some passives should be actives by all measures of sense, but I'll take a breather here.|||How dare you shun the best class Diablo 2 has ever known?|||Quote:
There's a significant difference. In d2, the warcries with short durations were targeted at the enemies, and the buff warcries had a long duration.
Here in D3, the buff warcries have a short duration[/QUOTE]
And what if they have shorter duration, in D2 you still had to stop fighting for a sec to cast them which is what Brother Laz was complaining about.
More importantly there are tons more pure passives in D3 than in D2 that improve your character, and you really don't have to re-cast every single active buff you have for every freaking weakling fallen you want to kill .. the boost they give is there for when you feel it is needed.
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This doesn't make sense to me. The skills in each tree should compliment each other, since they are passives for active skills in that tree.
We are talking about defensive passive skills and stat boosting passives not the syringe type passives that improve other skills .. they are different from each other and don't have to be in every tree.
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This is a terribly bad design. Why in the hell would they make a tier 5 skill in one tree perfectly compliment a tier 5 from another tree? It would be like putting Fire mastery in a lightning tree... it doesn't make sense. If you need a tier 5 in one tree to make a tier 5 in another work, then they should have put them in the same tree.
I should be able to make the build i want regardless of what you might think of it, there is nothing bad or terrible about it !!!!, if i want to have WW with other skills from another tree i should be able to, it has nothing to do with tree boundaries, it is just an artificial barrier.
And News flash ... the game now basically does have ONE unified tree, the current tree classification is just there for grouping similar or dependent skills together (there is still skill dependency in the game by the way, like you need skill X to get to skill Y but not needlessly over-done like in D2 .. only when skills really depend on each other)
In D2 many skills that really had nothing to do with each other or didn't make sense to be dependent wasted many points for people when they wanted to get past them.
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I don't see how this is irrelevant. Sure in a perfect game all the skills will be equal in use, but lets get serious.... Some skills are going to be stronger than others. It cannot be avoided. So instead of making a player choose between which OP skills they get, blizzard just says "hey you can have them all!"
It isn't about skill strength anymore ... you don't seem to be synchronized with the mentality of D3 yet, let's say you found that Arcane Orb is powerful then decided to have lv-15 Arcane Orb and tried to attack a Desert Dervish with it .. surprise !!! .. it gets reflected back in your face ... so even if Arcane orb was more powerful than many other skills you still need some other skill that isn't projectile to attack with .. like Chain lightning or some skill that freezes the Dervish up before being able to attack him ... still don't get it .. one trick ponies won't work as they did in D2 anymore.
Also just becasue some skills are more powerful than other it doesn't mean they will be useful against all enemies or in all situations, open up your mind a little bit will you.
Limiting people's choices won't prevent one trick ponies at all, it never did in D2, designing good coherent skills and good monster design will prevent or at the very best reduce it ... that simply how it is IMO.
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I really see this leading to many more one trick ponies. Sure any barb can have WW now, and why wouldn't they? Do we really want all barbs to be able to have the exact same skills? What would stop any player from picking the strongest skills from each tree.
Why wouldn't i want WW you say, well .... because i want to invest in other passives and skills that fit my designated build and boost it... if Seismic slam fits with my build and works well then IT IS stupid to invest/waste any points in WW even if i can .. if anything i'd rather spend those points on passives that boost seismic slam ... but if someone is stupid enough to do it so be it .. let him do it for the heck of it .. it won't kill him any way.
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If not one trick ponies, then for sure a simple cookie cutter build with all the strongest skills.
You are just jumping to some wild conclusions out of nowhere, if anything what you say describes D2 perfectly ... it was full of one trick ponies and cookie cutter builds even while having separated skill trees.
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He doesn't have to go into the future to realize such problems; he likely has some feedback about players' general behavior in Median. Some of d3 is shaping up to be using the d2 blueprint, so comparisons can be made. Imo, maybe we're all better off having potential disasters brought up instead of getting surprised by them whaen the game comes out.
Stillman, i did read all your post and all i have to say is similar to what i said to Deckard Cain, you are just jumping to some wild conclusions out of nowhere (also like Brother Laz did before) ... but since you want to go in detail i will give you my reasons why i think so.
**** First of all ... "maybe we're all better off having potential disasters brought up instead of getting surprised by them whaen the game comes out" .. hmmm .. that's really one very far fetched and almost worry-holic approach .. the game is still far from balance stage not to mention even farther from Beta or even release ... so what are you talking about !!! .. we can wake up to find many of those skill changed overnight (or at least in the next news update whenever it is) .. it is 100% irrelevant to go into so much detail or try to pessimistically butcher up things based on false assumptions that this is exactly how the final game will be like.
**** Second .. they way you view builds is very different from how i view them, even to Barbs who use WW don't need to be identical in every other aspect, that's really some strange assumption, i can have two Barbs that use WW but each has a diiferernt set of passives and actives to support a differernt gameplay approach .. not to mention different items setup ... you are limiting yourself too much really.
Also don't tell me one of them will do damage more than the other mathematically ... that's no longer enough to make the less damaging build obsolete in D3 as it might have been the situation in D2, in D3 things work differently .. with lack of potion spam and TPs defense is more important, monsters are well designed (check the Dervish example i mentioned to Deckard Cain) ... overall pure damage output isn't anymore the only way to determine how good a build is.
**** As for the number of skill, i do agree with you, i'm disappointed that they cut so many skills from the Barb .... but hey .. maybe they thought about cutting some Barb skills and redesigning them before reintroducing them .. or they are revamping the whole tree system, someone needs to go to official forums and ask Bashiok about this skill reduction cause that's the only way we can know for sure why they did it.
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Actually, what is with all the ground thumping? HotA, Seismic Slam, Earthquake and leap all have to do with thumping the ground. Shouldn't we be hitting the bad guys?
If you haven't noticed yet, many skills in D3 are AoE skills or do have an AoE effect besides their main damage, it is much better since most of the time we are dealing with large mobs, as for HotA the ground thumping is just there to make it feel powerful and fit with the image of the skill (a giant crushing hammer)
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