Active vs. Passive skills

[CCCenturion]

This topic is about balance and skills, and is applicable to all D3 classes. I probably should have titled the thread "Types of Passive Skills," but that might have been a little confusing to people who haven't thought of this before.

For anyone interested in developing a fan class, this should still interest you. One of these days I plan to overhaul my Mentalist class from a few weeks ago, and I'll definitely take this stuff into account. (It seems like the "Characters and Skills" forum has turned into the "Fan Class" forum in recent weeks, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it is a bit ironic that I'm putting up a post about characters and skills in general and it almost feels out of place in the Characters and Skills forum.)

I've been looking over the D3 skills we know about so far with the intent of predicting which builds will turn out to be the cookie-cutters that are most popular (because, of course, they'll be the most successful). I noticed an interesting distinction between a lot of the Passive skills. Some passives impact one or two active skills in a skill tree. I'll refer to these as Synergies. Some of them impact all of the skills within a skill tree, or a specific playing style. I'll refer to these as Masteries. Some passives have a universal application, rather than affecting particular skills or a particular tree. I'll call these Mods.

(I'm not totally satisfied with the "Mods" nickname; I'm referring to mods that you would normally get from your gear, and in that respect the name makes sense, but it just doesn't seem to fit well with Synergies and Masteries. Or maybe it does. What do you guys think?)

Also, among the Active skills, some of them would count as Attacks, and others would count as Buffs. For example, Barbarians have Whirlwind (attack) and Battle Rage (buff), while Wizards have Disintegrate (attack) and Slow Time (buff). Maybe "Buffs" is also an inappropriate name, but hopefully you get my point.

To illustrate what I'm talking about, see the next post in this thread, where I've categorized all of the skills on the Barbarian's Berserker tree into Attacks, Buffs, Synergies, Masteries, and Mods.

I think, though, that what we're going to see a lot of, once Diablo 3 is finally released (in about ten years), is that when players build a character they're going to pick their main attack skills based on what Mods are available in the higher Tiers of that skill tree. Remember, to get any Tier 3 skills, you have to have spent 10 points in the tree; 15 points to unlock Tier 4 skills.

I think that each tree is going to have comparably powerful high end attacks, so that will be a toss-up. The Synergies and Masteries are really only going to have an impact on Active skills within the same tree, so again, those won't really be a deciding factor. But in order to get the high-level Mods, you're going to have to invest more points into that tree, and so you'll have to spend a lot of points into a tree you don't plan to focus on if that tree has a Tier 3 or higher Mod that is considered a necessity.

For example, take the Barbarian skills. As I've classified the Passive skills, the Tier 3 and higher Mods are, for each tree:

Battlemaster: Deliberate Defense, Death Proof, Natural Resistance
Berserker: Savage, Slashing Strike, Destroy Armor
Juggernaut: Invigorated, Iron Will

All of these could be argued to be more or less useful than the others, but I think every Barb player is going to end up wanting points in Death Proof. That could possibly require a bigger investment in the Battlemaster tree than most pure Berserkers and Juggernauts would want to spend. So assuming everyone wants to get Death Proof, it'll be less costly to them if they focus on the Battlemaster tree than on the other trees.

So basically, to sum things up:

1. I'm predicting that character balancing issues are mainly going to come down to which Mods are available at higher Tiers.

2. For those of you planning to build your own fan classes, try to get a feel for the differences in the types of Passive and Active skills Blizzard is coming up with.

[CCCenturion]

for example:

Berserker skills:

Attacks:
Frenzy, Leap Attack, Whirlwind

Buffs:
Terrifying Shout, Onslaught, Enrage

Synergies:
Berserker State, Increase Speed, Relentless Attacks

Masteries:
Power of the Berserker, Double Strike, Dual Wield Specialization

Mods:
Bad Temper, Heightened Senses, Strong Constitution, Savage, Slashing Strike, Destroy Armor

[LaZeR]

Well, most of your post is based on the idea that you have to spend 5/10/15 points in a certain Tree to unlock a higher tier skills in that Tree.

That is no longer true. As Bashiok said, now you have to spend 5/10/15 in ANY Tree to unlock ALL skills of all Trees in higher tiers.
So that statement "That could possibly require a bigger investment in the Battlemaster tree than most pure Berserkers and Juggernauts would want to spend"

is no longer true.

Other than that I must say I don't understand where you're going with this =S
Catagorizing the skills is good, I did it myself when I tried to figure out a pattren in skills arragment, but for what purpose?

[CCCenturion]

Bashiok really said that eh? I had no idea. Somebody should update the Wiki then. Of course, it may well change again before the game is released. It does kind of defeat the purpose of having separate skill trees if there are no prerequisites within trees.


Other than that I must say I don't understand where you're going with this =S


Well, other than that I'm really not going anywhere with this. The main point of my post was based on the assumption that you need to spend points in a tree in order to unlock skills in the higher tiers.

Still, if you want to design a fan class, it's good to understand the different types of Passive skills that have been included so far, since they have a big impact on the balance of a character. But this would be better point to mention in your other thread, now that the pre-req issue is off the table.

[theeliminator]

Well, most of your post is based on the idea that you have to spend 5/10/15 points in a certain Tree to unlock a higher tier skills in that Tree.

That is no longer true. As Bashiok said, now you have to spend 5/10/15 in ANY Tree to unlock ALL skills of all Trees in higher tiers.
So that statement "That could possibly require a bigger investment in the Battlemaster tree than most pure Berserkers and Juggernauts would want to spend"


That's not really what he said. What Bashiok said was, you will have to spend 5 skill points in a tier to advance to the next tier.

So in other words, if you spend 2 points in tier one Berserker 2 points in tier 1 Juggernaut, and 1 point in tier one Battlemaster you will have access to all tier 2 skills in any tree.

This system is almost identical to D2 system. Where was in D2 it was lvl based, now you have to spend the points and not horde them like you could do in D2.

[Technomancer]

I see the point in classifying the skills like that. I tried to do something like that on a very basic level with some of my skill layouts, but I didn't follow it very close because a lot of ideas just kinda "happen". These breakdowns are interesting, are the other trees as evenly divided? I think there are some additional categories could used like defense masteries or debuffs.

[CCCenturion]

The Barbarian trees are fairly evenly divided, with the exception being that the active skills on the Juggernaut tree are predominantly attacks, with one De-buff skill. It breaks down like this:

Battlemaster:
2 Attacks, 3 Buffs, 4 Synergies, 2 Masteries, 6 Mods

Berserker:
3 Attacks, 3 Buffs, 3 Synergies, 3 Masteries, 6 Mods

Juggernaut:

5 Attacks, 1 De-buff, 2 Synergies, 3 Masteries, 7 Mods


Keep in mind that the Battlemaster tree is missing a Tier 4 attack.

So the mix is roughly consistent across the Barbarian trees. I have not yet sorted through all the skills on the Wizard trees, but from reading through them quickly it seems that the pattern holds there as well.

As for other categories, you could make some distinctions, but then I think you may end up with so few skills per category that it might not be worth it. The "Mods" category could be broken up, but for my purposes it wasn't seem necessary. Here's the approach I took when breaking the categories down:

Attacks: active skills that are used to directly damage and kill enemies. A character will in general want to only specialize heavily in one attack, to be able to kill as efficiently as possible.

Buffs / De-buffs: active skills that temporarily strengthen the character or weaken enemies. Any character will benefit from being able to use all of the Buffs in his class's tree.

Synergies: passive skills that directly affect one or two active skills. The only characters who will want to focus on a particular synergy will be those who specialize in the corresponding skill.

Masteries: passive skills that affect a particular tree or style of fighting. These are broader than Synergies, but not as universally applicable as Mods. Every character will want to max out a couple of Masteries, although lots of them are mutually exclusive.

Mods: passive skills that are universally beneficial, providing a bonus that does not apply to a particular attack or build. Every character will want at least one point in each Mod his class offers.


As a matter of fact, once I broke down the skills like this, it became very clear to me exactly how people are going to end up planning a character build in Diablo 3 (under the current system; certainly there will be changes that may or may not invalidate the character-planning strategy I figured out). This is going to take some time for me to type up, so I'll put it in my next post.

[CCCenturion]

HOW TO BUILD A BARBARIAN IN DIABLO 3

(according to the skills as currently described in the Wiki - 7/13/09)

First off, here is a list of all the "Mod" skills that every Barbarian is going to want at least one point in:

Iron Skin, Scavenge, Critical Attacks, Deliberate Defense, Death Proof, Natural Resistance, Bad Temper, Heightened Senses, Strong Constitution, Savage, Slashing Strike, Destroy Armor, Inspiration, (unnamed Juggernaut skill), Focused Strength, Stubborn, Recovery, Invigorated, Iron Will.

All of these skills will be useful to any Barbarian, regardless of the other skills he chooses to focus in.

Next, here is a list of all the Buffs / De-Buffs that will complement the play style of any Barbarian. Put at least one point in each of these:

Battle Rage, Battle Cry, Ignore Pain, Terrifying Shout, Onslaught, Enrage, Taunt

These skills will be useful to any Barbarian in battle. Keep in mind, they are active skills that will need to be refreshed during play.


Now we get to the interesting part of the build (although I'm sure fine-tuning the right balance among the Mods and Buffs will also be interesting), here we need to start making some choices.

Here is the part where we choose our Barbarian's attacks. Some attacks seem to be utilities, that any Barbarian will want to use:

Furious Charge, Leap Attack, Ground Stomp, Revenge

Some attacks, though, will define a character's play style, and will be the ones that define the inevitable cookie cutter builds:

Hammer of the Ancients, Frenzy, Whirlwind, Seismic Slam

(I left out Bash and Cleave, since frankly, I think HotA is going to be way cooler than Bash, and WW will do everything Cleave does and more. But hopefully I'm wrong.)

Each of these signature attacks has a Synergy that goes along with it:

HotA: Mighty Hammer
Frenzy: Relentless Attacks, Berserker State, Increase Speed
WW: Relentless Attacks
SS: Seismic Effect

It's a little strange that Frenzy has 3 synergies while the others only have one, but that could very well change.

Notice that when you choose your character's signature attack, you're also going to want to choose a synergy to max out. With WW, your synergy also works for Frenzy, so that gives you a natural backup skill. Seismic Effect also synergizes Revenge, so that gives the Slammers a backup skill. HotA's synergy doesn't affect a second skill, but there's still an attack missing from the Battlemaster tree, and I wouldn't be surprised if it shares the synergy with HotA. (Blessed Hammer for Barbs??? :wink:)

So, your first choice when planning a character is to pick the skill to build your play style around, and next you're going to want to max out the appropriate synergy. On to Masteries and then Specializations.


Your first choice of mastery will be obvious: you'll want to choose the Mastery that benefits your primary and secondary skill. So a Barbarian will want to choose one of the following: Power of the Battlemaster, Power of the Berserker, or Power of the Juggernaut. Note that these masteries work like synergies for an entire skill tree, so this choice will boost some tertiary skills for you. Also, Slammers will want to invest heavily in Stunning Blows, which is an extra mastery for the Juggernaut tree. The Battlemaster and Berserker trees, in their current state, have no comparable masteries.

You'll also want to choose a mastery for the type of weapons you plan to use. Here you can choose from Shield Specialization, Dual Wielding Specialization, or Two-Handed Weapon Specialization. These are in the Battlemaster, Berserker, and Juggernaut skill trees, respectively, but they can be used with any attack from any of the three trees.

Note that if you specialize in Dual Wielding, you'll probably also want to max out Double Strike, which gives you a chance of hitting with both weapons at once. That means that you probably don't want to become a Slammer, since you'll have two more masteries to pump up in the Juggernaut tree. Bye bye, skill points. So dual-wielding Barbs will probably focus on WW or HotA.

Also note that if you choose Shield Specialization, you aren't getting any damage bonuses to your weapon. I'm predicting that if that doesn't change, we'll see a lot of Barbs specializing in Shields and then becoming Slammers, since the Juggernaut tree has two masteries, as I mentioned above. Two-hander barbs will be the most flexible, since they'll be doing plenty of damage and only maxing one Specialization, so they can choose any tree they want.


So now we want to look at all of our choices together, and see what builds are going to work. Every build is going to want to get all of the Mods and Buffs. Then you will need to pick your Attacks and Specializations. Your attack will decide which Synergies and Masteries you will want to invest in, but your Specialization will play a part in determining what attacks are feasible for a given choice of weapon.

If you want your main attack to be HotA or WW, you'll have to max one Attack skill, one Synergy, and one Mastery. If you want your main attack to be SS, you'll have one Synergy and two Masteries. If you want to be a Frenzy barb, you have three Synergies and one Mastery. So your main attack is going to require you to maximize anywhere from three to five skills to perfect it. On top of that, you'll have one or two skills to max for your weapon specializations.

So when it comes to choosing your main attack and your favored weapons, basically you're choosing if you want to maximize 4 to 7 skills. Keep in mind that in D3, the current plan is for skills to have varying point limits, so maximizing three synergies for Frenzy might not be all that bad; we'll just have to wait and see.