Bad skill tree! Bad! [Archive] - Diablo 3 & Diablo 2 Forums

Brother Laz

30-08-2009, 12:10

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?

Knight_Wolf

30-08-2009, 16:29

- 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).

- 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.

- 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 ?

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).

- 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.

- 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)

- 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 !!!?

Deckard Cain

30-08-2009, 19:10

Knight_Wolf

30-08-2009, 20:21

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.

Ethereal Mog

30-08-2009, 20:27

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)
=====
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.

lumpor

30-08-2009, 21:42

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

Deckard Cain

30-08-2009, 22:39

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.

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.

stillman

30-08-2009, 22:46

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.

professordiablo

30-08-2009, 23:04

How dare you shun the best class Diablo 2 has ever known?

Knight_Wolf

31-08-2009, 01:21

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

Funkopotamus

31-08-2009, 04:13

Forewarning, I'm not reading anyone's post because... I don't really care what you say. I'm just replying to the original one.

I have a feeling D3 is being developed to kind of make paths for specialized builds. So like instead of picking shout and iron skin and using concentration and a shield to make an iron barb, or... people whatever weird stuff you do to make a melee sorc, like in D2, they're saying "Here, these skills are for you guys. I'm giving you these tools so you can take this path if you want."

In most cases, no, I don't think anyone's going to want all the passives, they'll just take the ones they want. But if you want to go for pure damage or speed or pure defense, you have your stuff.

In a way, I think this does kind of promote variety but it does kind of suck that it's all right there. Also it seems like there's a shift from being item based to skill based. It may be for the better but I kind of liked barbs being item based. Even though it did suck getting yourself up to a workable level.

Deckard Cain

31-08-2009, 04:39

Knight wolf, i am with the program. I understand the passive system and i think it is LOADS better than previous system. What i am thinking is that Beserker skills should have stats that benefit beserker skills etc.

Lets hypothetically say that the beserker passives boost fury generation and move speed, juggernut passives boost damage, and battlemaster passives boost defense. I know i know... its not actually like this. The point is each tree is sort of themed, so they should be similar and compliment each other.

Battlemaster passives should go well with other battlemaster play style. Sure if you want to go half and half or something like that it should work. But i see no reason for having a large benefit from most skills in one tree, and maybe 5 or so in 2 others.

Maybe im just being picky, but it doesn't make any sense to me. I don't see why a full juggernaut barb should be able to use a move called "wrath of the berserker" unless he has enough points invested in the berserker tree.

Typoko

31-08-2009, 05:52

Hi!

Here are tier VI skills for barb:

Berserk:
* Wrath of the Berserker
o Active skill that increases numerous Barbarian combat stats.
* Onslaught (requires Berserker State)
o Active skill that increases crit and dodge chance.

Battlemaster:
* Cripple
o Passive skill that slows enemy movement and attack rate.

Juggernaut:
* Earthquake
o Active skill that creates a huge wave of damage.
* Strong Constitution (requires Bloodthirst)
o Passive skill that automatically regenerates health.

So 2 of the 5 skills have prequisites wich means 3 can be taken by anyone who wants to have them after they have reached certain level and have put 25 points in skills. In addition to this i'd go out and say if bloodthirst stay as it is, it sounds like it's REALLY good for any build that wants to keep the pace fast as you can get nice healing from doing damage.

2 of tier VI skills are pure passives. Strong constitution and Cripple, wich both are defensive skills. So these ones will most likely be good that wants a bit extra defence for themselves. Tho i think Cripple will be better for tanking few monsters as you most likely can't hit the debuff with aoe skills and Strong Constitution keeps giving HP back all the time. I'd say that Strong Constitution won't save you from a boss necessarely but Cripple will help alot as it gives a huge decreace to damageoutput.

3 of the skills are active skills. Atm it's unknow if Earthquake will scale with weapon damage (i think atleast?) but if it will it's most certainly better for 2h barbs than dual weilders. Wrath of Berserker is a real fury dispenser. If this one is taken by a player he will most likely want to focus on passives or anything that doesen't take fury to be used. Wrath doesen't necessarely work better with 1 or 2 weapons but it's really fury consuming so the build needs to take that in to account. Last one is Onslaught. Can't really say who it fits the best but it's offensive and defensive at the same time. If there aren't any x times per minute counters then this one will be better for dualweilders as berserker state requires alot of hits to be on alot.

All in all i think that barbs won't be picking every T VI skills just because they are in the end of the bracket. These skills are quite different and support different playstyles, wich is good. If the one big tree is made correctly it gives freedom of choise. IMHO atleast the ends of the trees are made well to support certain kind of builds and with the current system you can patch up those builds from 3 trees and not be limited by one tree.

Brother Laz

31-08-2009, 11:14

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).

When there are 4 skills that do more or less the same thing, who is not going to pick the best one?

It almost looks like they're using the level 5 skill cap as an excuse to split each offensive or defensive skill four ways with minor variations that add up to the same thing: More Damage 1, More Damage 2, ..., More Defense 1, ...

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.

In which case, as I said, you need exactly as many defensive skills as necessary. This probably means (due to no leech and limited potions) that you need just enough defensive skills to survive from each health orb to the next. As you get stronger, you need fewer defensive skills, so you respec out of them.

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).

That's one or two too many. Skills with a 10% chance to be usable when you take damage, or a buff that can only be cast when another buff is active, are such a hassle that people may not want to use them if not necessary. Warcries only need to be cast during downtime once a minute.

As I've said in the Median forum a few times concerning Black Sleep and other crowd control skills: The problem is, why bother when you can just kill the monsters instead.

i don't get it really .. you simply just want to spam spam spam one attack spell and thats it or what ?

No, but active skill variety (huge AoE sweep vs. small AoE main attack vs. single target boss takedown skill) has nothing to do with the topic.

Passives are boring to use, but they contribute to the character development metagame and ideally change the way you use your active skills. So far the only ones we've ever seen are Warmth and Pierce; everything else is just a point sink.

Also ... "so clearly the game is still possible without any defensive skills" .. what !!! .. by what merit ..

D2 players have a skewed sense of what is 'possible'. On the Median forum, it seems there is a consensus that some bosses are only 'possible' with certain builds because, uh... they can kill the boss faster. (eg. poison sorc and Lorenado, which some consider the only character that 'can' do Vizjun) It all seems rather black and white.

Of course everything is possible with every build if you take your time, but some builds are easier and faster than others. This being an item hunt game, the fastest builds are considered the most (some may say 'only') viable builds.

So as soon as someone figures out how to survive with no defensive skills and crank all points into more damage and higher speed, this will become the new mainstream build.

go check Titan Quest it has many skills like that .. and guess what .. it works just fine.

It probably does, but TQ isn't a strategy game either. All I heard about it is that you just spam the same thing in combat and that playing skill doesn't matter.

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

They are, because the two skills fulfill the identical same role so you pick the one that is best at it. Come on, name one situation where you want to use one of these but where the other would be useless.

And don't say 'knockback crowd control'... we have AoE stun for that.

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.

Exactly: I want something else besides 20 skills that fulfill the same role in the game. Whether you pick Plus Damage Passive 1 or Plus Damage Passive 2 seems to make little difference.

Idea: how about a passive that causes some sort of minion to pop up when you kill enemies? A few more that build on this and you have a summoner barb.

Idea: how about a passive that causes a long distance knockback to the direct target of your attack - causing damage to enemies in the way?

Idea: how about a passive that simply adds poison damage to your attacks? It is 'just extra damage', but of a variety that requires a specific build and a very different gameplay style. There is a Snake Tribe after all.

ancalagon

31-08-2009, 14:21

Game is more dangerous now, we need defense and DR in heaps! And good attack speed + high damage to kill faster! Reasons:

(1) No town portals

(2) No spammable potions, health globes drop and you have to actually get to them in the midst of combat heat.

(3) No spammable mana either, in this case fury, and it drains while not in use!!!!

Something related to Fury: Enrage is a very interesting skill, if you are a high life/defense/DR barb, you can take extra damage and generate insane fury amounts. A good tradeoff and a cool 'danger' skill where you can gamble some attributes for others. Creates more of a challenge and invites more strategy. Coupled with Threatening Shout or Ignore Pain, you are essentially balancing out the damage you are taking with Enrage as if you werent using it. Not to mention couple this with Second Wind and speed passives, that tradeoff is really worth taking!

Recap: Enrage + Second WInd + Threatening shout / Ignore Pain + Cripple + Inspiration + Invigorated + Bad Temper --> just an example of the awesome passive effect combos.

You have to really analyse how all these passives interact with each other, IMO the Barb's skill tree is the best designed so far, and I have over analysed the Wizard's and WD's to no end too ....

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

(4) There is never going to be a system with a set of 30+ skills where they are all useful to you, in ANY Diablo game, IMO. Do you want 2 combat skills and 33 passives, then?

(5) Bash and Hammer are quite different actually. Bash has a really huge damage bonus but also knocks back. It has a delay BEFORE attacking, and is relatively slow. HOTA doesnt knock back, adds a damage modifier %, and extra base damage +X on top, and increases critical chance. Its a huge damage skill, and its a fast attack, but puts you into a slight recovery time AFTERWARDS. However, I would say Hammer is overall faster. They both have their uses.

(6) The passives and %chance to use skills, coupled with runes, are going to be awesome IMO. Frenzy, Double Strike, Slashing Strike, Cripple are all passive which is great, and they give normal melee attacks a much needed boost. I am assuming you cannot use these with Cleave, Bash etc. Would be especially needed in the beginning of combat with low Fury or when you run out of Fury completely. When was the last time you used your normal attack button in D2? HINT: NEVER!

(7) I agree however when it comes to these 2 skills:

Ignore Pain and Threatening Shout. They are essentially the same, both give -50% damage reduction at skill level 1, but Ignore Pain lasts for half the time, has 15 second cooldown, and suspends fury gain!!! Whats the catch, why would I use Ignore Pain over TS? Ignore Pain costs 1 Fury Orb, TS probably the same (not listed)

(8) Why Hammer of the Ancients and not something else? Maul of the Ancients, Wrath of the Ancients, Anger of the Ancients? I dont EVER want to see the word HAMMER in any skill description AGAIN.

ancalagon

31-08-2009, 16:21

And don't say 'knockback crowd control'... we have AoE stun for that.

Exactly: I want something else besides 20 skills that fulfill the same role in the game. Whether you pick Plus Damage Passive 1 or Plus Damage Passive 2 seems to make little difference.

(1) Ground Stomp comes with huge cooldown

(2) There are no 2 passives that have the same role, and straight up % damage passives were all removed. There were at least 5 of them in last years build, not this years.

(3) I wish I could compare to Median and comment, but never bothered to play that mod or ESun, or any mod for that matter. I dont like unofficial stuff and in videos, Median looked like an insane light show, 10 times more colors flying around than the monk gameplay video. Plus didnt they borrow those crappy animated monsters from Baldurs Gate, or was that another mod?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOxz4sq23VI&feature=PlayList&p=C92EE1DC485E59BA&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=21
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=capJ8StBKGo ---> What the heck is that? Those arent even Barbarian melee skills to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alHLZfWD2e0&feature=related --> Unholy Paladin (!!).

Dont get me wrong, I do not have anything against median per se, but you seem to be quoting it a lot and you cant use it to relate to D3 discussions, IMO. It has too many 'over the top' mostly designed to awe with color and coolness factor, kind of skills from what I see. Cant see most of those skills fitting into a new Diablo game.

Idea: how about a passive that causes some sort of minion to pop up when you kill enemies? A few more that build on this and you have a summoner barb.

Idea: how about a passive that causes a long distance knockback to the direct target of your attack - causing damage to enemies in the way?

Idea: how about a passive that simply adds poison damage to your attacks? It is 'just extra damage', but of a variety that requires a specific build and a very different gameplay style. There is a Snake Tribe after all.

(1) A summoner barb seems way too much 'out of the box', and doesnt fit the Barb's design philosophy well. He doesnt need a helping hand, he has 2 pairs of 80 inch biceps hands to dish out the pain himself!!!

(2) Bash has knockback and Furious Charge does something very similar, if not identical

(3) I would leave that to weapon enhancements or maybe it will be present in the skill runes, who knows! If anything, you would have to include a mastery dealing ALL kinds of damage to the main attack so as not to upset any fans (why only poison?), but then again he would be too OP like that! Why focus so much on adding elemental attacks to a Barb? Yes we know immunes are going to be back as stated in a certain skill, but they will have good ways of going around them. At least I hope so, they should have learned the lesson!

(4) Im not sure if you or it was someone else who mentioned we need cooler active skills ... but my response is YOU CANT BE SERIOUS!!!!

Seismic Slam, HOTA, Whirlwind, Furious Charge, Cleave (imagine cleave working with double and slashing strikes + Frenzy!!!!), the all new improved and mighty leap attack, and Earthquake sounds killer too, Im dying to see it.

Typoko

31-08-2009, 16:45

Hi!

When there are 4 skills that do more or less the same thing, who is not going to pick the best one?

It almost looks like they're using the level 5 skill cap as an excuse to split each offensive or defensive skill four ways with minor variations that add up to the same thing: More Damage 1, More Damage 2, ..., More Defense 1, ...
...

That's one or two too many. Skills with a 10% chance to be usable when you take damage, or a buff that can only be cast when another buff is active, are such a hassle that people may not want to use them if not necessary. Warcries only need to be cast during downtime once a minute.

Meh.

First of all, the level cap for skills is presumably 15 as you have ways to increase it as it has been stated in many threads.

Secondly, it has 10% of proc AT THE FIRST LEVEL. If It increases 5% by skill level like it's put on diablowiki it's alot more usefull. http://diablowiki.net/Revenge
(these are assumed values, not confirmed ones i guess)

Also saying that skills are pretty much same and people will pick the best one is pretty far fetched. Can you link those dozens of skills that are the same? Eaven bash and the HotA are alot different from eachother when you actually take the time to look what the skills do.

Bash:
Tier I
* Bash the enemy for 200% of weapon damage. Causes Knockback.
* Fury Cost: 1 Fury Orb

HotA
Tier III
* A massive attack that deals 175% weapon damage plus an additional 12 physical damage, and has a 25% increased chance to critically hit.
* Fury Cost: 1 Fury Orb

Already the damage stats are different. Other one has knockback and other one has alot higher crit chance. What i think is the most notable difference is that Bash is Tier I. You can pick it from the start and for HotA you have to wait for 10 levels. Also now you must pick skills from lower tiers so if you don't want anything else you can pick the Bash and skip HotA to get a basic special attack or you can fill the tier 3 with HotA. Also if you want to have a knockback and you aren't taking Earthquake, Bash will be a valid choise. In the other hand if you use crit build most likely you want to pick up the HotA as it already has huge passive bonus to crit. Also there is difference in the damage when used with 1 or 2 handed weapons. Bash scales only with wep damage but HotA has passive damage bonus so it can be better with 1h weapons.

Surely there are skills that do pretty much the same thing. In many cases it won't matter if you use bash or HotA but there still are huge differences between the skills. The small things bring flavour to the game. In the end it looks like there is diversity what you can pick and still get the job done.

ancalagon

31-08-2009, 17:17

The barb's skill tree seems to be crammed with:

- Defense, damage, speed boosters. There is an awful amount of redundancy there.

Sure you looking at new skill tree with only 35 skills? Because that is simply not true!

Defense:

Battle Cry, Threatening SHout, Ignore Pain, Second Wind .... dont see anything else.

Damage related passives:

Invigorated, Inspiration, Retaliation.

Speed:

Since when is speed redundant? Yes, the Berserker tree's passives are all about speed and multiple attacks and fast fury generation, but thats what I love about it, Im dying to make a Berserker Barb for one!!! Juggernaut seems to be all about damage and tanking on the other hand, forgoing speed and being able to take some extra damage so less focuse on defense / block / shields. Barbs in D2 wanted both all the time, now you have to choose and implement some strategy to make up for the one sacrificed ... SWEET!

- Too many defensive skills. Nobody wants them all. People will just cherrypick the best ones.

There are very little, in fact, like I already said.

- 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.

This is not Median, this is D3 from the devs who have way more experience. And I'm sure it will work out much better than the Median skills, even though I dont know the specifics on them.

Too many time limited skills? They are all passives, so you wont have to cast anything. And with enough good points in Berserker skills, your Barb will be very speed oriented, attacking faster and thus procing more and more of those passives over time, meaning they will always be on! Frenzy last for 6 seconds (and thats at skill level 1 and no skill runes in it!!), but within those 6 seconds a super fast barb will stack up multiple frenzies, just like you keep casting CB's or OW's in D2, even tho OW only lasts for 8 seconds, its still always on with your fast attacking smiter, for example.

Dont worry about the percentage chance of some skills either, they will go up fast, do you think Blizzard will let us stick to a 6% chance of Berserker State for the whole game? I doubt it!!!! Lets say it goes up 30% chance, and your Barb does at least 3 attacks per second, you will cast it in 2 seconds for sure, and it last for 4 seconds, to begin with. Its duration will go up. Against huge mobs you will be running about and constantly entering Berserker States like crazY!

- 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..

Unneccesary please!!!! Come ON! No spammable pots, no town portals, fury which drains while not in use ... this is a more dangerous game, mind you. There is also no more IS and NR now. There are not that many defensive skills, stop saying that. Monk is about extreme speed and crippling enemies, and WD and wizard are never going to be in the middle or forefront of combat, they take a hit and run approach or stand behind my meatshield approach.

- 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...

You are once again comparing to Median, and you say skills are pretty dangerous there, but Blizzard wants this game not to have so many Uber skills, so to speak. And it seems this is what you are only looking for IMO which is quite sad. I enjoy a good challenge, not mowing down hordes while chewing bubble gum and hardly breaking a sweat.

You are asking too much for a 100% retaliation, that is not practical and takes away its value. You might be able to get 100% critical hit chance and +100% critical damage in the game, so the extra damage from retaliation being ON all the time will be too much / too OP, and I know retaliation has low damage figures, but thats only as a STARTER skill, remember that ...

We dont know how much damage Leap Attack will deal, and cant assume it will be low / useless because it doesnt work with weapon damage. Smite and DTalon dont work with weapon damage either .... Too early to just assume something like that.

- 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?

NOOOOO! HARDLY. I see no boring or weak junk. Last year there were 57 skills and most of them were useless / did the same stuff / had too much damage or defense bonuses. But not this year, they have really fixed it well.

And if you are asking for more or think they are weak, I have 2 words for you: SKILL RUNES!

Blooddrunk

01-09-2009, 04:57

I would like to see a balance. Maybe they added more Defensive skills for dueling? maybe they were focusing on a tank build? but im agreeing with 1 dominate build being a problem in Diablo 2

Kiroptus

01-09-2009, 07:40

No offense Brother Laz but you have to realise that your goal with your mod and Blizzard's goal with Median are very different.

In your mod you couldnt take too many bold moves because if you started doing too many changes that end up going against the "metagame" and line of thinking of the diablo 2 community, noone would want to play your mod because the mod wouldnt be in synch with what the community that you are aiming at wants.

Blizzard doesnt have to worry about that, they can make as many bold changes to the core gameplay (and they already did), things that were never once needed in Diablo or ARPGs in general (potion-spamming has always been a staple for example). They can experiment, change, rework, add and remove concepts far more than you could because their audience and resources are far more powerful.

Its true that noone really bothered with defensive skills in D2 but this is another game, a complete new take on a decade old game, not a mod of said game.

redrach

01-09-2009, 08:45

You are once again comparing to Median, and you say skills are pretty dangerous there, but Blizzard wants this game not to have so many Uber skills, so to speak. And it seems this is what you are only looking for IMO which is quite sad. I enjoy a good challenge, not mowing down hordes while chewing bubble gum and hardly breaking a sweat.

He's saying that the monsters in Median are so threatening and dangerous that you need 100% Retaliation to survive. D3 will have them weaker, so that 10% Retaliate will be enough.
Actually I disagree with BrotherLaz on this point. Retaliate in MXL is generally regarded as the strongest melee attack in the game. Assured AoE KB is very strong.
And we know nothing of the hit mechanics in Diablo 3. It's possible the characters will be hit 5x as much as in D2, with each hit doing comparatively less damage. In that case a 10%-35% chance to Retaliate would be enough.

Brother Laz

06-09-2009, 17:42

Berserk:
* Wrath of the Berserker
o Active skill that increases numerous Barbarian combat stats.
* Onslaught (requires Berserker State)
o Active skill that increases crit and dodge chance.

Same thing.

Battlemaster:
* Cripple
o Passive skill that slows enemy movement and attack rate.

Ok, this one is unique.

Juggernaut:
* Earthquake
o Active skill that creates a huge wave of damage.

At best this is a melee version of SSlam or Ground Stomp. At worst it is a carbon copy with different graphics.

Wrath of Berserker is a real fury dispenser. If this one is taken by a player he will most likely want to focus on passives or anything that doesen't take fury to be used. Wrath doesen't necessarely work better with 1 or 2 weapons but it's really fury consuming so the build needs to take that in to account. Last one is Onslaught. Can't really say who it fits the best but it's offensive and defensive at the same time. If there aren't any x times per minute counters then this one will be better for dualweilders as berserker state requires alot of hits to be on alot.

Melee builds with different passive skills aren't different builds, it's the same build that does the same thing but has different stats.

Dual wield and 2h users are the same, they just use different items and maybe one swings faster and the other does more damage...

......

Lol @ picking obviously old and outdated videos.

What the heck is that? Those arent even Barbarian melee skills to me.

Heh, this explains very much your problem with my issue. This is a throwing axe trap. How do you catch a bear? You make a trap with a bent branch with something sharp on it so the bear gets impaled when he trips it. I'd guess that is how barbarians hunt, too.

But hell, it says 'barbarian' so it must be 50000 variations of melee. You (and a lot of other people here) are convinced that barbs are only melee characters and that there is enough variety to be found in melee attacking 'with the focus on defense' and melee attacking 'with the focus on offense' and that those two builds are really very different, honestly!

(1) A summoner barb seems way too much 'out of the box', and doesnt fit the Barb's design philosophy well. He doesnt need a helping hand, he has 2 pairs of 80 inch biceps hands to dish out the pain himself!!!

Yeah, well, Median has ancient spirit summons. That fits, right? And if you stand near them (ie. fight at their side), you get damage and defense bonuses, while you share your own power with them. Of course I'm not saying he should summon zombies.

But hey, it's out of the box so it sucks! Barbarians are really supposed to be ten million variations of melee, melee some more, melee with splash, melee with knockback and thankfully the occasional whirlwind (and a carbon copy with faster speed and less AoE: Furious Charge), AoE shockwave (of which we get two, one with a leap attached and one without) and ranged slam attack (of which we also get two, by the way: SSlam and Earthquake).

It's all the same thing, of course. You run up to an enemy and click on it, and it takes damage, and maybe your stats go up and other enemies take damage too. Thankfully you get three attacks that do something different - actually six, but they come in pairs.

If that's variety, then firebolt and icebolt are different, too.

(3) I would leave that to weapon enhancements or maybe it will be present in the skill runes, who knows!

Skill runes aren't the miracle fix for everything. That's like all the people saying you shouldn't worry about macro being removed in Starcraft 2 because 'they'll find something'. They haven't found anything yet and beta's gonna start in a few months.

If anything, you would have to include a mastery dealing ALL kinds of damage to the main attack so as not to upset any fans (why only poison?)

What kind of reasoning is that? Then D2 sorcs should be upsetting fans left and right because they can't do poison or magic damage.

but then again he would be too OP like that!

Stupid reasoning; numbers can always be adjusted. Also, why would it be overpowered to not be completely stuck at immunes anyway?

Yes we know immunes are going to be back as stated in a certain skill, but they will have good ways of going around them. At least I hope so, they should have learned the lesson!

Yes: so far one skill, making this skill of course mandatory. (Remember Berserk)

......

Blizzard doesnt have to worry about that, they can make as many bold changes to the core gameplay (and they already did), things that were never once needed in Diablo or ARPGs in general (potion-spamming has always been a staple for example).

They can't even change the colours for chrissakes without mass crying.

Orbs are a very minor change (admittedly a change that will have some impact on gameplay). The only reason why potion spam is standard in every ARPG is because they're all soulless copies of D2 including its flaws, much like every FPS is a copy of each other including flaws like save spamming (or the alternative: autosaves that trigger when you're at 18% life with 2 bullets left).

ancalagon

06-09-2009, 18:17

But hell, it says 'barbarian' so it must be 50000 variations of melee. You (and a lot of other people here) are convinced that barbs are only melee characters and that there is enough variety to be found in melee attacking 'with the focus on defense' and melee attacking 'with the focus on offense' and that those two builds are really very different, honestly!).

Yes, barbarian is all about pure BRUTAL RAW PHYSICAL MELEE. He's called Barbarian for Christs sake. There is enough variety indeed ... Plus you havent seen anything the runes or other game systems to be put in place can do, like I already said. You are already dispelling the Barb like crazy, we are still around 2 years away from game release.

Yeah, well, Median has ancient spirit summons. That fits, right? And if you stand near them (ie. fight at their side), you get damage and defense bonuses, while you share your own power with them. Of course I'm not saying he should summon zombies.

Barbarian with ancient spirit summons ... Nah.

But hey, it's out of the box so it sucks! Barbarians are really supposed to be ten million variations of melee, melee some more, melee with splash, melee with knockback and thankfully the occasional whirlwind (and a carbon copy with faster speed and less AoE: Furious Charge), AoE shockwave (of which we get two, one with a leap attached and one without) and ranged slam attack (of which we also get two, by the way: SSlam and Earthquake).

It doesnt suck cuz its out of the box, but it sucks cuz it doesnt fit in with the Barbarian, at all.

Lol @ comparing WW and Furious Charge.

SSlam and Earthqauke might be very different ... we havent seen Earthquake and cant assume anything from its very vague description, yes huge wave of damage .... dealt how?

Skill runes aren't the miracle fix for everything. That's like all the people saying you shouldn't worry about macro being removed in Starcraft 2 because 'they'll find something'. They haven't found anything yet and beta's gonna start in a few months.

We are not in need of any miracle fix, to be honest. There is nothing to fix IMO, I'm just saying your idea of a passive poison damage skill is weak and if you want variety / originality / whatever, come up with something better.

What kind of reasoning is that? Then D2 sorcs should be upsetting fans left and right because they can't do poison or magic damage..

Sorcs are the least of fan worries lol. They have hydras, blizzards, electrocute, arcane damage, spectral blade, and tornadoes. 6 elements. But you are right, what I really meant to say is why poison only?

Stupid reasoning; numbers can always be adjusted. Also, why would it be overpowered to not be completely stuck at immunes anyway?.

Being stuck and challenged by immunes is one thing, not being fazed by them at all is another. Stupid reasoning ... no its not. In your case numbers would have to be adjusted for the Barb, specifically for one class.

Yes: so far one skill, making this skill of course mandatory. (Remember Berserk).

They stated they want players to be able to handle immunities through other ways besides just the skills given to them .... they stated multiple times, both Bash and Wilson. Have some faith dude. May I repeat the game is still 2 years off.

They can't even change the colours for chrissakes without mass crying.

Not me :P :P

Orbs are a very minor change (admittedly a change that will have some impact on gameplay). The only reason why potion spam is standard in every ARPG is because they're all soulless copies of D2 including its flaws, much like every FPS is a copy of each other including flaws like save spamming (or the alternative: autosaves that trigger when you're at 18% life with 2 bullets left).

I love the shift to Orbs personally.

Dual wield and 2h users are the same, they just use different items and maybe one swings faster and the other does more damage....

Not the same at all, there are different builds in their to be found. Dual wielders and 2 handers are in essentiality a different build from the start. Your idea of a different build is moving away from the melee aspect of a Barbarian, which is crazy IMO. Paladins in D2 maybe, they had auras and FoH and Hammers .... but they were not Barbarians. Barbarians have no ties to magic or anything besides melee, as their lore clearly states. Maybe the enchanted Hammer of the Ancients at best, still a melee attack. But nothing like the stuff I see in Median videos. A Barbarian running away from cows while all kinds of crazy novas get triggered or retriggered over time, and he is essentially killing them by doing nothing actively. That is NOT a barbarian. He hits them 5 times at max throughout the whole video, just to stun them with an AOE attack (which we have in D3 anyway) which retriggers all kind of crazy novas and elemental effects for the next minute or so. In the meantime he is just running, running, running. Seriously, if that is what you are after, stick to Median please, no offense. D3 is not a fan mod anyway, they cannot just do what they like with it just cuz they think its cool, because they have a gigantic fan base to appeal to.

Lol @ picking obviously old and outdated videos.

Whats your point? Still demonstrates what Median is all about. Come up with a reasonable argument instead perhaps?

Knight_Wolf

06-09-2009, 20:12

Melee builds with different passive skills aren't different builds, it's the same build that does the same thing but has different stats.

No they aren't the same thing at all, having different stats changes the way you play and also the items you benefit from most, in short they are differernt builds even if they use the same active skills because the differernt stats and items will make them use those same skills differently (and add differernt skill runes to them).

The way builds are defined in D3 is very different from how it was in D2 .... defining a build in D3 by a single skill is a big joke really.

Dual wield and 2h users are the same, they just use different items and maybe one swings faster and the other does more damage

There are many more differences between 2 Handers and Dual wielders, enough that Dual wielders get access to way more weapon affixes and combinations of modifiers that users of 2 handed weapons can't get on a single weapon, also is room to make them even more different by making passive and active skills that modify how each style works (i.e Passives giving higher critical chance for 2h users, others giving speed boost to Dual wielders)

Skill runes aren't the miracle fix for everything. That's like all the people saying you shouldn't worry about macro being removed in Starcraft 2 because 'they'll find something'. They haven't found anything yet and beta's gonna start in a few months.

As for skill runes, they change how the skill works to a great degree, add to that all the possible combinations of skills with skill runes and you get tons of possible combinations that could fit with many builds and playstyles .. not to mention the system is now being revamped and updated to make it even better.

As for SC2 ... they did what they promised ... i don't know what cave you have been in but the Macro thing has been done a long time ago, maybe you were too focused on D3 that you missed the fact they already added many new Macro options to all three races (Terran choice between Mules/Scanning/Supply Depot Capacity increase - Zerg Queen laying extra Larva/Eggs for quick deployment / Protoss using Obelisk for recharging shields or speed buffing Probes) and all the fans found them satisfactory.

But hell, it says 'barbarian' so it must be 50000 variations of melee. You (and a lot of other people here) are convinced that barbs are only melee characters and that there is enough variety to be found in melee attacking 'with the focus on defense' and melee attacking 'with the focus on offense' and that those two builds are really very different, honestly!).

Yes Barb are Melee and 75% of their builds will be melee focused .. that's a given because that's how the class was meant to be ... a melee juggernaut, and the builds in D3 like i said focus on themes rather than a single skill like WW, so we can have:-

-TankBarb (uses skills that lower enemy damage, taunt them and use passives that increase healing and defense and uses HP increasing Gear)

-CritBarb (more focus on achieving critical hits through passives and item modifiers, works great with enchanted weapons)

-SpeedBarb (More mobility focused skills like Sprint, F.Charge and Leap and works better with D.wielding)

-Offensive Barb (focuses on dealing biggest damage on many enemies, uses skills like Cleave, and passives like Double strike and slashing strike, along with STR increasing gear and passives)

-SingerBarb (focuses on active buffing and debuffing warcries, Battle Cry, Enrage, Battle Rage and Threatening Shout), ... etc etc .. and each and every one of them can have a couple of variations as well (different skill combinations and differernt gear) ... but making a build in D3 and calling it WWBarb doesn't make much sense anymore.

Not to mention Blizz can add some skills to make Shield wielding barbs and ranged barbs viable options .. this will open up even more variety.

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They stated they want players to be able to handle immunities through other ways besides just the skills given to them .... they stated multiple times, both Bash and Wilson. Have some faith dude. May I repeat the game is still 2 years off.

But what i know there will be no 100% immunities at all, high resistance maybe .. but full immunities are a big No No in D3.

Arkardo

06-09-2009, 20:51

I haven't read everything in this thread, but I'll state what I think:

First of all, the game is FAR from completion. If Blizzard doesn't like the way something is looking, they'll fix it, or even start over.

About the one-trick ponies: I think different attacks will have pro's and cons in different situations. For example, if you're up against skeletons that put up their shields (I know those quake-type attacks already solve this, but it's just an example), quick but light attacks like Whirlwind would do next to nothing. However, heavy attacks will do significant damage.
Slower attacks like Bash could be evaded (altogether, not due to defense) by quick monsters, but quicker attacks like Slash (just to name anything) don't have this problem. The knockback on Bash could help evade attacks that trigger on death (like from D2's Stygian Dolls).
See? I'm just making this up on the spot, but I think this shows that there can be done a lot to prevent one-trick ponies in D3. We've already seen that the Monk will have combo's, so I don't see why things like this wouldn't work. Diablo is a hack 'n slash RPG after all.
This all, of course, DOES require that the monsters actually get some skills like this. Things like skeletons putting up their shields is a simple but very good example of good monster skills.

About the immunity problems: there will be lots of damage types in D3, so I was thinking physical damage could be divided in cutting, piercing and bashing. Of course, this would impose the problem of having to switch your weapons, but, again, it's just something I thought of on the spot.

This is not D2, people. I'm not saying this to look like a smart***, but to hopefully convince you to think outside the box named D2.

Kit

15-09-2009, 04:39

Seems to me some people are kind of missing the point of getting access to active abilities throughout the 3 trees. As far as I can tell, there is no active ability that will be the game wining ability that everyone just spams. Each ability has a specific purpose in mind to be used in a given situation the help you survive.

Now you may say, 'whats the point of different specs if everyone can pick up all the skills?' Well, for these skills to deal effective damage one must invest heavily in the various passives that synergies with that skill (looks like d2's 1.10 synergies were an early practice run). So while everyone may be able to grab a lot of the various skills throughout all the trees they will still be limited in effectiveness by the passives that they pick and choose.

'Why get access to all those skills if they are just going to suck?' you may ask. Well, as it has been stated before, a lot of these active abilities have utility purposes, making them extremely useful or almost necessary to make it through the game. This allows for a variety of builds to grab all the necessary goodies without being forced into spending heavily into a particular tree.

'Why do the shouts have such a short duration?' Blizzard has clearly made an effort to insure these abilities are true active skills, not passives that you have to refresh every 7 minutes. They have created a clear separation between passive skills and active skills. Why? Active skills are fun and engaging, forcing the gamer to make real time decisions; passives that need to be refreshed (like BO, shout, holy shield, etc) are boring, require no decision making, and more importantly are a chore.

sunkenfaith

15-09-2009, 18:02

Galtrovan

15-09-2009, 18:32

Maybe im just being picky, but it doesn't make any sense to me. I don't see why a full juggernaut barb should be able to use a move called "wrath of the berserker" unless he has enough points invested in the berserker tree.

I agree. I'm also concerned with skill caps and how we will be allowed to increase them. Worse than what you just pointed out would be being able to increase "wrath of the berserker"'s skill cap from 5 to 10, or even higher when you have focused most (near all) of your skill points into juggernaut skills, completely ignoring most berserker skills.

Why should we be allowed to ignore an entire tree's lower tier skills and then choose and use the tree's iconic top tier abilities... and place points into them beyond the initial skill cap.

To me, if X points into lower tier skills from any tree unlocks the next tier of skills from all of the trees, at the very least, you should only be able to boost skills caps on skills in the trees in which you have focused your skill points.

In other words, I believe only someone focused on Berserker skills should be able to increase skill caps on Berserker skills to their highest levels. I do not want to see people focused on Juggernaut skills, ignoring all lower tier Berserker skills, running around using an iconic, top tier berserker skill at skill level 15 or 20, the same as someone who focused on Berserker skills.

Knight_Wolf

15-09-2009, 21:07

I agree. I'm also concerned with skill caps and how we will be allowed to increase them. Worse than what you just pointed out would be being able to increase "wrath of the berserker"'s skill cap from 5 to 10, or even higher when you have focused most (near all) of your skill points into juggernaut skills, completely ignoring most berserker skills.

Why should we be allowed to ignore an entire tree's lower tier skills and then choose and use the tree's iconic top tier abilities... and place points into them beyond the initial skill cap.

Why not, you haven't provided any realistic reason as to why it is bad .. like i said before this approach is very limiting and forces players to put points in skills they don't plan to use or doesn't have any significant benefit for their build.

i tired to make few theoretical builds and in almost 50% of them i found myself picking skills from mid or high tier of other trees because they fit with my build approach ... i'm glad they removed such limitations otherwise if i tried to make those builds i would have to waste points on skills don't need which is by default bad and limiting design.

Want an example .. here is goes.

1-Summoner Witch Doctor
-------------------------------
1-Summon Zombie Dog - Summon a pet Zombie Dog (formerly known as Mongrel).

2-Sacrifice - Detonate a nearby Zombie Dog in an explosion, dealing damage X% of the Zombie Dog's health to monsters nearby.

3-Zombie Charger - Summon a reckless, enraged zombie from the ground to assault your enemies.

4-Gargantuan - Summons a large zombie follower to fight for you.

5-Parasite - Launch a parasite at an enemy dealing 3 damage per second. If the target dies while under the effects of the Parasite a Zombie Dog emerges from the slain body.

6-Horrify - Don a spectral mask that horrifies enemies, causing them to run away from you.

7-Fetish Army - Summon an army of Fetishes to fight by your side.

--------------------------------------

-Mind and Body - A passive skill; regenerates mana and health.

-Unrelenting Assault - Enables one of your Zombie Dogs to instantaneously resurrect itself upon its death.

-Ferocity - Increases the health and damage of your Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan by 8%.

-Spirit Sense - Increase damage against targets with low health by X% percentage.

Note that this build is quite crude and of course far from perfect, but the most clear problem i faces is that Fetish Army (which is a summon skill at Voodoo tree) was at the highest tier in its tree, why the heck am i supposed to invest in like 6-8 Fire, Poison skills in order to be able to use Fetish Army when i'm making a Summoner WD .. makes no sense to me.

What you are simply promoting is limiting builds by trees and encouraging players to just dump points in one or at max 2 trees which is IMO a very bad approach .. Blizz themselves had tons of skills that promoted that approach in their previous build (passives that enhanced certain skill or a whole tree) but they realized it is very limiting and removed them all (also because of skill runes covering the role of skill enhancing passives)

Deckard Cain

16-09-2009, 02:39

I'm with galv on this one. I really like the idea of only being able to raise skill caps to a certain point if you haven't invested enough in a specific tree. It sounds limiting but it could bring up many more builds. Maybe some decide to go full jugg with max skill capped jugg skills and lower berserker skills. Maybe some go half and half with all skill caps half way maxed.

Idk, but i really don't like the idea of being able to jump around skill trees like that. It would be like a sorceress mastering in fire that uses orb, but can't even cast frostbolt. Just doesn't make any sense as far as character progression goes.

I don't think they need to necessarily cripple the player with extremely demanding requirements, but i think this much freedom is not necessarily a good thing.

Deckard Cain

23-09-2009, 20:39

I know this thread has basically died.... but i was reading some blue posts and came across something interesting.

http://www.blizzblues.com/us/skilltrees-blizzcast8-vs-blizzcon2009-19820640991.html

Bashiok says "It kind of seems like a ton of different options would be good, I know, but more options doesn't actually mean more customization. Sometimes it can mean less."

Which is what i was trying to say... however the fact that they are fully aware of this makes me feel much more comfortable about the new system. Also, not a bad read as far as the info on the barb skill tree, and changes they have made.

Valdoartus

28-09-2009, 15:00

- Defense, damage, speed boosters. There is an awful amount of redundancy there.

No different to having 6 type of masteries and picking 1 to max

- Too many defensive skills. Nobody wants them all. People will just cherrypick the best ones.

So you're telling me you have 20 points in defense and resistance on your barb in D2???

- 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.

So what? Don't use them if you don't want to. Isn't this just like Battle Cries??? If you think a few buffs from time to time is hard work, try playing a dirge in eq2...

- 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.

Barbarians are supposed to be the rock of diablo. In d2, paladins outweighed them with defense and crap. Amazons outweighed them with avoid (if an amazon was to even bother putting points in that tree)...

- Skills that could have been useful if only. ...

If only there were places you couldn't get to without leap in diablo 2... there's tonnes of useless skills on each class and the way to become a master of a class is by reviewing them and working out the best combination of skills.

- Skills that do the exact same thing with minor variations. ...

Easily solved with synergies (if there's such thing in D3), and if not just don't get both. Let the noobs pick the noob one and the people who know their class pick the better one.

- 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?

Be that wonder then and don't complain! If it's always been a one build wonder (which it hasn't actually been, as I see pole-arm barbs, axe barbs, BO barbs, sword barbs etc all over the place), then where's the difference? go waste all your points on a d2 barb on all 6 masteries if you wanna complain that they're a 1 build wonder.... Inevitably sword barbs > all barbs in d2 but that's only because the best weap for barbs in game are swords... if they suddenly braught out super beasty axes that they could DW then there would be stiff competition.

I <3 barbs btw, so they better not screw this class over :P:P:P

Halfsoul

15-11-2009, 20:41

"brother lass"..i think, that maybe you are assuming too much about the barbarian´s skills, because to fully understand them you need to try them out in praxis(pvp&pvm) and understand the synergy between the skills, moreover you will need to see what the runes do and how you can use that specialized skill in i.e. a syngery with another skill on the battlefield.

When you i.e. say that he has too many defensive skills you also need to keep in mind, that some of the defensive skills might become offensive. think of the hydra rune with the wizard´s teleport, which makes a defensive skill into an offensive.

In any case i am probably rolling a barb as my first character...he looks totally awesome.

Doctrinaire

17-11-2009, 18:10

Orbs are a very minor change (admittedly a change that will have some impact on gameplay).

I had to do a double take on this. Health orbs are absolutely a game changer and, considering every public demonstration of D3 has been with a massively overpowered character, it's hard to know exactly what they'll mean for gameplay. In D2 health is an infinite recourse. You are always a button press away from a full health bar and 2-3 button presses away from the safety of town. Not so in D3. That's major, especially for Hardcore characters and high level content.

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.

You'd be right normally, but not in this case. The fury recourse makes short term offensive buffs work, and it's not a coincidence that the Barbarian is the only class to be given them. Using Bad Temper or Sprint is something the player does instead of using a damage skill or enemy debuff.

From a Diii.net report by Flux..
"Fury is the new mana, but only (so far) for Barbarians. Fury replaces mana, but unlike the old blue bulb, it does not fill up when not in use. Barbarians have zero Fury to start with, and only build it up during combat, when they land successful strikes to their enemies. As soon as the Barb is not fighting, the Fury starts to drain away, and it seeps out quite quickly. I frequently filled my Fury bulb completely during a fight, paused to pick up an item or two, then ran to find more monsters, and arrived just as my Fury went down to nothing...

The only big Fury expenditure available in the BlizzCon build was Battle Rage, a war cry that boosted the Barbarian’s damage by 100%, increased critical damage by 30%, and lasted for 15 seconds (with one point in it, which was all the BlizzCon build allowed to active skills). That was half, or more, of my total [fury], but I never minded spending it. The combat improvements were substantial, and since Fury faded away so quickly, I had a constant feeling of "use it or lose it." Whenever I finished a battle with a full Fury bulb, I tried to remember to cast this war cry, since the precious juice would all be gone by the time I got to the next battle anyway."

It seems evident to me that the Barbarian is going to be a very well designed class. My only real problem with the tree it is that it seems like putting a single point in every single skill would be a viable strategy. The value of successive points beyond the first is usually far too small (Bash goes from 200% to 215% weapon damage, for example).

evilnemesis

17-11-2009, 20:07

I'm going to laugh when people will pvp with a defensive barb, it will take an hour to kill one.

cacophony

17-11-2009, 21:41

I'm going to laugh when people will pvp with a defensive barb, it will take an hour to kill one.

That's what I was thinking. WoW made prot warriors, the classical PvE tank class for raids, a better PvP character than a PvE main tank. If you stick in enough def stats, you can't stun, snare, or kite the barb around, meaning he'll mash up the squishies (wizards and witch doctors) pretty badly. Obviously, balance isn't being worked on quite yet.

Halfsoul

19-11-2009, 06:04

The skill system doesn’t seem very rational, however I wouldn’t complain about it, moreover the system was maybe created to make the characters more diverse and more unique. Like they can be to a certain extend with runes applied to skills, because you now have fixed attributes each level as I understand, which will most likely make characters even less unique. I do remember, that one of the greatest things in d2 was de facto, that you could spend points wherever you liked thus making really fun, creative and interesting characters.

However, if you were to make reason of it, then an analogy of it would be something like this: The specialist wizard is a major in conjuration, but has a minor in i.e. in storm skill three. Now, if you weren’t able to spend some points in other skill threes, it would most likely hurt your character. If I were to make a battlemage/melee wizard, I would want to focus on the following skills among others:

spectral blade,
mirror image,
hydra,
stone skin,
mighty impact,
magic weapon.

Now, if he didn’t have access to the storm three, or if he had to spend a certain amount of points into the a skill three,(i.e. storm three to get ice armour and empowered armour) in order to get to them, then, it would most likely hurt the character and make people less willing to choose other skills than from their majoring skill three, which would result in players making less creative characters.

I am an optimist, and the skill system looks great so far, but I am a lot more worried about the attribute system. The fact, that you can´t spend your attributes where you want really suck ***, ****, dick et cetera :d