Full Wizard Skill Trees

[Flux]

Posted, at last.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/full-wizard-skill-trees/

There are only 30 skills now listed, down from 57 at last year's blizzcon. Yes, 57 (http://www.diablowiki.net/Wizard_skills). I counted. I was surprised that there were only 30 now, since I hardly scratched the surface of testing with the one wizard I played, while I felt like I'd done everything available with the barb and wd. the wiz just has so many active spells at a low level (not to mention higher up) that there seem like more. I didn't even get to try at least 4 or 5 I would have liked to.

And that doesn't include the uber chobo tier 4 spells that I could maybe have tried 1 of. (Had to get to level 15, which was just possible if you cleared out about 90% of the entire huge demo area.) hydra, disintegrate, slow time, and ray of frost sitting on that row. I'd have gone with hydra, but ray of frost = me curious too. would that I'd had another 3 hours of play time, to get 2 wizards to level 15! *sigh*


If anyone gets all curious and wants to compile a listing of the skills from last year vs. this year, and isolates the 27+ missing, it would be an interesting list. In my quick glance I noticed that meteor storm was gone. I'm assuming at least 8 or 10 were basically made redundant when they combined the 3 trees into 1 and eliminated skills that did the same thing in 2 diff trees. But there must be a good dozen that sounded like viable, real skills, that are now gone, or at least not listed?

[ancalagon]

Fantastic job, Flux. Just wanted to point out Conjuring tree says Storm tree.

Also, Arcane Torrent IS the new Meteor when I try to make sense of it. I just hope its not purple meteors though ...

As for old skills, here is what I think of them:

Improved Magic Missile --> +X% magic missile damage and 1 extra missile per point
Arcane Power --> +X% damage to arcane spells
Empowered Magic --> +X% effect of willpower on damage.

Damage from spells will be increased through other ways? From item affixes, runes, and perhaps a stronger base bonus from willpower itself? All guesses at this point in time. Runes will probably also effect other parts of a spell, such as number of missiles, speed, critical damage etc

Lightning Speed, Spell Speed --> Basically faster cast rate.

I guess there is a lot of items granting that ability (back to FCR / FHR / FBR / IAS / FRW breakpoints from D2, I hope not, the game seems to be going back to D2 a lot in some areas!) Also I'm guessing and hoping even Agility (the new Dexterity) grants this in small increments.

Power Armor --> Increased storm armor damage

I guess that is now handled by more points into skill itself + runes

Static Charge --> % damage taken to mana
Efficient Magics --> -X% mana cost

Other alternative skills for mana recovery exist now

Static Residue --> Targets discharge X lightning damage / sec to nearby enemies, for X seconds

Could be once again a rune effect on Charged Bolt or Electrocute.

Improved Charged Bolt --> +1 Charged Bolt per point

Runes ...

Epic Storms --> Increase size of Blizzard + number of energy twisters

Once again, I strongly believe more of a skill rune effect. Interesting though, how much bigger should a Blizzard get, is it not that powerful? Or is it that small to begin with?

Thunderstruck --> +X% critical hit chance with lightning spells
Deep Freeze --> +5% critical chance (or was it damage?) with cold spells

Same effect for individual damage types. Now unified under Mighty Impact in Tier 5 of Conjuring tree --> Increases critical hit damage by 10%. I assume it effects all skills and damage types.

Deep Freeze seems to be replaced by Bonechilling Cold now, similar name 'style' (both mean frozen to the core, isn't that cool, but it should have stayed Deep Freeze!) and only slightly different execution (frozen targets take extra damage, in effect a kind of critical)

Penetrating Spells

Passive enemy resist piercing. Maybe we can now get it from item affixes or new socketables? We might not need a lot of this, for all we know the damage from spells will be competent enough and immunes or high resist enemies might not be so 'impossible' to handle this time around. I dont think this will be like in D2 LOD, where if you focus on one element you are doomed in most places and if you focus on two elements then you must make sure both those elements have a high rate of damage, or else both are useless. We will have to wait and see, however wizard seems to be competent with ice, lightning, arcane, tornadoes (physical?) and even melee, to a point!! Before she even had poison with Acid Cloud. WOW!

Arcane Armor

This gave an overall bonus in X% to armor rating when using the other Armor spells. I saw it kind of useless in that it might force some wizards to invest too heavily in something that might ultimately still not be that useful, endgame wise. Wizards are not about tanking, after all.

Or perhaps, they had various useful melee wizard builds in mind? They also seem to have removed Weapon mastery, Damage Resistance, Magical Impact, all related to melee weaponry or combat. It would have been interesting to see what direction that idea was taking ...

EDIT: Seems it has been renamed to Empowered Armor

Empowered Armor
Active Skill
Rank::
Requires: 1 point(s) in Ice Armor
Description:: Increases your armor by 5%.

Its an active skill now, not a passive skill which works on other active Armor skills. Will the armor / defense increase be worth spending points here>?

Arcane Speed

Reduce cooldown by 5% (level 1). Maybe the devs felt cooldown was necessary, and reductions this skill would have brought would have been imbalancing towards gameplay. And how would have skill runes affected this?

Arcane distortion --> Passive chance of slowing damaged enemies by 35% for 3 sec

Kind of useless as makes the chilling and freezing effects of cold damage seem useless and 'not unique'. The devs probably asked themselves, Why SHOULD arcane damage slow enemies? Cold damage and its criticals are enough. Lets find a way to increase cold critical chances and damage instead...

Runic Might --> Increase effects of all runes

Always though it would have been removed. Increase what effect exactly? And how, percentage or integer or length? By how much?

Mana Burst --> +25% spel damage cast from full mana

A very interesting concept which has been removed. Maybe D3 is really that more fast paced as its being toted to be by the devs themselves, and the wizard will be constantly spamming spells and thus wasting mana, and that chance to cast from full mana will only happen once every so often in the beginning of a fresh battle. On top of that, is that extra 25% really worthed, furthermore when used so sparingly? I think the devs said No, and Scratch That!

Mana Recovery --> Increase chance to drop mana globes returning 25% of max mana

No more mana globes!

Greater Mana --> Passive +X% to max mana

Renamed to Expanded Mind

Acid Cloud

Belongs to the Witchdoctor, now, which makes sense. It was very out of place on the Wizard.

Weapon Mastery --> +15 physical damage done by weapons

Never made sense of this. Did Blizzard really want to expand on melee sorcs from D2 so much? Either way, it was useful in conjunction with a high damage weapon and points in Magical Impact. But not for melee, and would my Wizard wear a Thunder Maul just to get that extra spell damage from this skill + its Magical Impact synergy, when I could get that elsewhere??

Magical Impact --> Increase all spell damage by 15% of weapon damage

Interesting mastery, see above.

Slowing Strikes

-X% to attack and movement speed of enemies hit by melee attacks, spectral blade, and magic weapon. More melee based ideas and passives to make them more useful. All scratched.

Armor Piercing

Conjured + physical damage decreases enemy armor. More melee oriented passive effects.

Damage Resistance

+% resists and +% armor. As far as resists go, both this skill and Barbarian's natural resistance have been removed. It is back to item bonuses for resistances, or maybe small increments from Vitality, who knows? As far as armor is concerned, the majority of melee oriented skills for the wizard have been removed.

Temporal Armor

Stops all damage from an attack every 6 seconds, lasts for 12 attacks. Why every 6 seconds, and do you really mean ONE attack, not all attacks hitting you at that point? Still seems like a useless and trivial skill.

Conjured Armor --> Magical armor giving 2% block?

Again, why should a Wizard be in the heat of combat worrying about block and defense?

Conjured Power --> +1% spell damage for every 10 points of vitality

Interesting, I wonder why it has been removed. Could be the low percentage, 10% for 100 points, and staves can give 20% easily. Or could be Wizard wont be so Vitality heavy from auo stats. Or there are other better ways to improve spell damage which give greater % bonuses.

Conjured health, conjured duration, duplicate conjuring

All Increase health or number or duration of conjured mirror images and hydras. Conjured duration also gave an extra second to Stone Skin and Acid Cloud.
All of these effects can be granted easily through skill runes, IMO.

Improved Spectral Blade

+14% spectral blade damage.

This could mean that Spectral Blade will have high enough damage? We dont know if Spectral Blade's physical damage is enhanced by strength or the base weapon, or other bonuses. Its base damage from the description of the skill trees seems very weak, though. I for one love the skill and its animation and would hate for it to be one of those skills which are completely useless in Hell difficulty. Now that the skills have been narrowed down to 30+ and the devs promised us that wont be the case, I am assuming this passive bonus is not necessary anymore, and Spectral Blade can be a powerful viable skill in many other ways.

[WizardFan]

YES! Awesome, thanks for posting this man.

Ok, so to get this right, you're saying that there are 27 missing skills? I can deal with that, but they better put up some of the old ones in there.

Is there any info on whether they just didn't list the skills, or they made them completely redundant? If that's the case that's really too bad, especially if spells like meteor storm are missing...that was one cool spell.

[WizardFan]

Ok, I get it now, the skills were made redundant. No matter though, there were 30 skills in DII, so having 30 in DIII certainly won't decrease gameplay experience.

[NotaBot]

ancalagon good post there thanks. When you check the history so to speak you can really see the development going on - pruning away the unnecessary . I suspect a lot of those passives are actually transforming into rune concepts with will then be spread around for example a rune that lowers cool-down

[Flux]

Great comparison. we'll have to get some kind of wiki article to organize and formalize the changes and comparisons.

Note that there are like 35 skills for the WD and Barb at this point, and only 30 for the Wiz. It's just that the wiz has very few passives or defensive skills, so there seem like more since so many of them have to be actively used to see their effect.

I'm fairly confident that we'll see more wizard passives added in, whether they have to lower the damage of the actives, or they increase monster resistances, or something. As it is the wizard defies their "6-8 active skills on the hotkeys" design concept, since I had that many at level 12. True, nothing had more than 1 or 2 points in it, and I was experimenting widely, but the other chars seem to be built so that at least half your skills are passives, allowing you to use 10 or 12 at a high level, while only 5 or 6 of those are on the hotkeys for constant use.

[ancalagon]

Great comparison. we'll have to get some kind of wiki article to organize and formalize the changes and comparisons.

Note that there are like 35 skills for the WD and Barb at this point, and only 30 for the Wiz. It's just that the wiz has very few passives or defensive skills, so there seem like more since so many of them have to be actively used to see their effect.

I'm fairly confident that we'll see more wizard passives added in, whether they have to lower the damage of the actives, or they increase monster resistances, or something. As it is the wizard defies their "6-8 active skills on the hotkeys" design concept, since I had that many at level 12. True, nothing had more than 1 or 2 points in it, and I was experimenting widely, but the other chars seem to be built so that at least half your skills are passives, allowing you to use 10 or 12 at a high level, while only 5 or 6 of those are on the hotkeys for constant use.

Yeah I noticed that too! Way too many actives for the Wiz. Also I recall some skill tree not listing tier 6? Yeah the conjuring tree :)

PS: You got my PM flux? I can organize it much better, maybe add some more detail or make it more concise, whichever you prefer.

[Telzen]

Ok, I get it now, the skills were made redundant. No matter though, there were 30 skills in DII, so having 30 in DIII certainly won't decrease gameplay experience.

But only 23 of them are active. I really am hoping there will be more but since there hasn't been any actives added since last year(Explosive Blast is probably the skill showed off in the wizard videos that we never had a name for) it isn't looking good. And I don't intend to make one but a lot of those dropped passives were great for melee wizard builds.

[ancalagon]

But only 23 of them are active. I really am hoping there will be more but since there hasn't been any actives added since last year(Explosive Blast is probably the skill showed off in the wizard videos that we never had a name for) it isn't looking good. And I don't intend to make one but a lot of those dropped passives were great for melee wizard builds.

You are hoping there will be more actives, passives, or overall skills?

They can only increase an extra of 5 skills to be in line with the Barb or WD. Unless they plan to add a few to those, I doubt it though, the skill tree seems solid this year for all builds.

As for a melee wizard build you are right, they dropped a lot of those passive ideas for it, but maybe the devs felt that there was no way they could make a melee wizard build really viable. I could stand to be corrected though, we still have Magic Weapon and Spectral Blade.

[Telzen]

You are hoping there will be more actives, passives, or overall skills?

They can only increase an extra of 5 skills to be in line with the Barb or WD. Unless they plan to add a few to those, I doubt it though, the skill tree seems solid this year for all builds.

As for a melee wizard build you are right, they dropped a lot of those passive ideas for it, but maybe the devs felt that there was no way they could make a melee wizard build really viable. I could stand to be corrected though, we still have Magic Weapon and Spectral Blade.

Both, I think all the classes need some more actives. Especially the Barb, that guy is going to be boring to play if he doesn't get a few more. And then the wizard needs more passives too. I'm thinking 40 skills for each class, or 42 to divide equally among the 3 trees.

I thought last years trees were great(not counting WD of course, and after getting rid of improved mm/cb/sp anyway) except they needed about 3-4 more active skills per class, disappointed there weren't a few new ones this year. The trees also just look so empty right now.

[ancalagon]

Both, I think all the classes need some more actives. Especially the Barb, that guy is going to be boring to play if he doesn't get a few more. And then the wizard needs more passives too. I'm thinking 40 skills for each class, or 42 to divide equally among the 3 trees.

I thought last years trees were great(not counting WD of course, and after getting rid of improved mm/cb/sp anyway) except they needed about 3-4 more active skills per class, disappointed there weren't a few new ones this year. The trees also just look so empty right now.

I see, your opinion is interesting. I actually tend to see it the other way around, its now a very well balanced tree of 30 to 35 skills of focused, useful ideas. Of course Wizard needs some passive love, for sure :)

Personally, I felt like there were too many useless or repetitive skills last year ... useless for Wizard and too repetitive for Barbarian. Barbarian had a lot of just straight up damage or critical damage passives, or even damage passives to specific skills (Mighty Hammer, Seismic Effect, Relentless Attacks), while Wizard had many similar skills or sort of useless (in a way) skills, which if you read my comparison above and the notes with it you will see why. Some of them were very interesting though, like Mana Burst and the melee oriented passives.

Wouldnt mind an extra 7 skills to make it 42 :) Or back to 54 haha! That will actually use up the whole skill tree, 6 tiers x 3 skills x 3 = 54. But too many skills = epic confusion, and Blizzard keep stressing simplicity in this game, and this is one example where I agree. So 42 sounds OK, in a way, any more could be crazy.

[Flux]

They can only increase an extra of 5 skills to be in line with the Barb or WD. Unless they plan to add a few to those, I doubt it though, the skill tree seems solid this year for all builds.

Strongly disagree. Wiz is viable now, with such a huge array of actives, but the math doesn't work. Level 70 wizard would have max 5 points in what, like 12 skills? There are only 8 hotkeys (1-5, LMB, RMB, Tab), and the game design is to have chars using 6-8 main skills regularly. And the Wiz is the most complete!

Barb is very limited on actives until level 20ish, and right now every lvl 50+ Barb would have the same 4 or 5 actives, albeit with some variety in passives.

WD is harder to predict, with half the lvl 15+ skills NYI and never before seen, but early on there was a shortage of active skills, and the only viable build was Mongrels to tank with some mix and match selection of the 4 or 5 actives.

I expect most of the current Barb and WD skills to remain in the game, but I sincerely hope they add a lot more, actives especially. That's needed for variety in builds.

I also think/hope they'll stretch out and extend the skill trees. If skills max out with just 5 points (or so) then why have the highest level at 30? That made sense in D2 with 20 points to max, and usually 2 or 3 from lvl 24 and 30 to fill out. But 5 points to max in D3 = final game build by level 40, and then just adding passives and support from there on out?

[ancalagon]

Strongly disagree. Wiz is viable now, with such a huge array of actives, but the math doesn't work. Level 70 wizard would have max 5 points in what, like 12 skills? There are only 8 hotkeys (1-5, LMB, RMB, Tab), and the game design is to have chars using 6-8 main skills regularly. And the Wiz is the most complete!

Barb is very limited on actives until level 20ish, and right now every lvl 50+ Barb would have the same 4 or 5 actives, albeit with some variety in passives.

WD is harder to predict, with half the lvl 15+ skills NYI and never before seen, but early on there was a shortage of active skills, and the only viable build was Mongrels to tank with some mix and match selection of the 4 or 5 actives.

I expect most of the current Barb and WD skills to remain in the game, but I sincerely hope they add a lot more, actives especially. That's needed for variety in builds.

I also think/hope they'll stretch out and extend the skill trees. If skills max out with just 5 points (or so) then why have the highest level at 30? That made sense in D2 with 20 points to max, and usually 2 or 3 from lvl 24 and 30 to fill out. But 5 points to max in D3 = final game build by level 40, and then just adding passives and support from there on out?

All true. But I just dont see them narrowing the list down from 50+ skills down to 30+ skills, and then taking it back up to 40+ next year.

I dont think the final game build will be reached by level 40 just by putting 5 points into all lvl 30 or active skills by then. Runes and the extra skill caps from items (up to level 15 I believe) are gonna play a huge part in skill customisation, and the high end runes and items with those affixes may have level requirements of 60 and beyond.

[WizardFan]

As for a melee wizard build you are right, they dropped a lot of those passive ideas for it, but maybe the devs felt that there was no way they could make a melee wizard build really viable. I could stand to be corrected though, we still have Magic Weapon and Spectral Blade.

You know, one thing is, that stat distributiin is not made by players anymore. You don't get 5 points per level to distribute among your stats as you see fit. Stats now automatically increase upon reaching a new level, and that's that.

We can expect the wizard to have quite low "natural" HP, with gear boosting it somewhat. If we want a melee wizard it's gonna be hard because melee chars need very high HP, and the wizard's naturally low HP will be an issue there.

In DII, it wasn't that much of an issue because you could distribute stat points and have a high vitality if you wanted. This is not the case with DIII, and thus I believe that making a melee wizard will pose more of a difficulty in DIII than DII.

I also think/hope they'll stretch out and extend the skill trees. If skills max out with just 5 points (or so) then why have the highest level at 30? That made sense in D2 with 20 points to max, and usually 2 or 3 from lvl 24 and 30 to fill out. But 5 points to max in D3 = final game build by level 40, and then just adding passives and support from there on out?

Yep, pretty much this. They need more actives for variety, like you said, plus, it would be quite sad and boring if you could reach you final build by level 40.

Either that, or increase the skill cap to 15 points in each skill, so that way the problem would be solved. Perhaps even a 10 point cap, because like they said, they want us to have more actives in order to be able to deal with immunities better than we were capable of in DII. A 10 point skill cap, I believe, would be ideal, if we assume that the latest wizard skill tree is the final one, or at least that the final version of the skill tree will be similar to this.

Strongly disagree. Wiz is viable now, with such a huge array of actives, but the math doesn't work. Level 70 wizard would have max 5 points in what, like 12 skills? There are only 8 hotkeys (1-5, LMB, RMB, Tab), and the game design is to have chars using 6-8 main skills regularly. And the Wiz is the most complete!

I hope they add more hotbuttons. If you can only have a max of 8 hotbuttons, I don't know, that doesn't sounds like a lot to me. I'm not saying it's a small amount, but I believe we should have more than 8. And I also believe more than 8 may be a necessity. Having 6-8 active skills at any one time is good, but I believe that especially the wizard class may end up using more than that.

We already know that even on low levels, wizards have a large amount of actives. What happens on higher levels, there could be much more. And they said themselves they wanna give us more actives to effectively deal with immunities. Somehow I have the feeling that we'll need more than 8 hotkeys, if not for the active skills, then maybe for potions or other useful items we will want quick access to.

[Keighvin]

As ancalagon said, there will be some way to increase skill caps (either singly or as a sweeping change) to 10 and then up to 15. Bashiok and the devs have not explained the mechanics, but this has been mentioned before.

[WizardFan]

Well, in that case, it's all good.

[lumpor]

****! They removed the melee skills from the conjuring tree. I was really looking forward to those skills. I thought the melee sorcs were kinda fun in D2, and now that there would be official melee wizards recognized by the developers...

Wish they would've kept them

[Flux]

I thought Moonfrost's comment, from the main page thread (http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/full-wizard-skill-trees/P10/), did an excellent job summing up what's wrong with the wizard's skill tree at this point.

The wizard has far too many active (attack) skills and not enough of everything else. The player is not only overwhelmed by all the choices; many of them overlap in functionality as well, making some redundant. The way the current trees look, I’m getting the impression the developers were more or less trying to see how much cool damage spells they could fit in time for Blizzcon, rather than making balanced skill trees.

The wizard needs some skill type diversity. She needs some conditional active skills similar to those of the barbarian (“when X occurs, you have Y seconds to cast spell Z for a bonus effect”) to break up the monotony of constantly using active skills that are always available. She needs some conditional passive skills that provide a temporary change in playstyle (“when hit, there’s a X% chance player run/walk/cast speed will be increased by Y%”). She needs some skills that alter the way in which the damage is delivered rather than just increasing the damage (skills that give certain spells a chance to pierce, skills that increase casting speed). There are many ways to improve the current skill tries and give them what they need the most - variety.

[WizardFan]

****! They removed the melee skills from the conjuring tree. I was really looking forward to those skills. I thought the melee sorcs were kinda fun in D2, and now that there would be official melee wizards recognized by the developers...

Wish they would've kept them

Hey don't fret, the sorceress in DII only had 1 single melee skill, and melee sorceresses could deal some of the highest damage in the game by using enchant, elemental damage and elemental masteries.

[Psyco]

Hey don't fret, the sorceress in DII only had 1 single melee skill, and melee sorceresses could deal some of the highest damage in the game by using enchant, elemental damage and elemental masteries.

didint the sorc have like 5 skill for melee sorc? 3 of these maxed?

and i kind of agree with Flux some class look really dull now and pretty much lack diversity compared to the old way....im not a big fan of noobing a game so more retarded people that just dont have the devotion or that dont even have the guts to actually make an effort to actually accomplish something in their game...but this simplicity of some build is just rediculous and other like the said Wiz tree is really full of ability and that make me really sad since the barb actually looked 100x better then D2 barb and actually looked fun to play....now if they all end up with the same cookie cutter build it remove alots of fun and tons of diversity

you know there will always be that powerfull cookie cutter build but you also have these FUN build that are really awesome and even some challenging to play and some other that require certain gear to actually be viable...now this just remove alots of these element....but i really doubt they will leave it like that since its pretty crappy for a char building system imo it offer poor replayability and tons of other dissadvantage...well i hope it change :crazyeyes:

[ancalagon]

I thought Moonfrost's comment, from the main page thread (http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/full-wizard-skill-trees/P10/), did an excellent job summing up what's wrong with the wizard's skill tree at this point.


The wizard needs some skill type diversity. She needs some conditional active skills similar to those of the barbarian (“when X occurs, you have Y seconds to cast spell Z for a bonus effect”) to break up the monotony of constantly using active skills that are always available. She needs some conditional passive skills that provide a temporary change in playstyle (“when hit, there’s a X% chance player run/walk/cast speed will be increased by Y%”). She needs some skills that alter the way in which the damage is delivered rather than just increasing the damage (skills that give certain spells a chance to pierce, skills that increase casting speed). There are many ways to improve the current skill tries and give them what they need the most - variety.

Yes, runes will cover some of those problems but runes shouldn’t be there to fix problems, they should be there to provide customization. Additions to viable skills rather than band-aids.

My take on this:

Conditional active and passive skills fit the Barbarian much more, the Wizard is not a tank and needs to have full support from her skills all the time. I wouldnt want to see a lot of these on the Wizard, if anything just one really cool and useful conditional skill, but not more.

I agree however that we are missing faster cast rate, piercing skills which were there last year and got removed (Penetrating Spells, Arcane Weakness, Spell Speed, Arcane Speed, Lightning Speed). However, runes and item affixes will play a huge part in this, as will many other things, Im sure. Why cram a skill tree with 50 skills just for the sake of so called diversity, we can get elsewhere? Blizzard stress simplicity in *certain areas* of the game. I saw last years skill tree as confusing myself.

I dont see runes as bandaids, they will add both customisation and all other necessary effects to spells/skills.

There are 5 types of runes, and a lot and a lot of combinations and effects, for each skill. Runes in just one skill could add all the passives we ever need, FCR, piercing, and cooldown decreases. What else would you need that isnt listed in present passives?

I still think we wont reach endgame build by level 40. Blizzard's aim is pretty far away from that, and we know all this very well. There is a very good reason for the current skill tree being this way, I have nothing but faith in a company like Blizzard. There are so many different game mechanics and game systems (socketables, scrolls, shrines, quest rewards, amongst many things) and item specifics we dont know about yet, that are in D3, that all we can or should say is 'it seems like this and this', rather than 'it is like this and this, and therefore it needs this and this'.

[ancalagon]

and i kind of agree with Flux some class look really dull now and pretty much lack diversity compared to the old way....im not a big fan of noobing a game so more retarded people that just dont have the devotion or that dont even have the guts to actually make an effort to actually accomplish something in their game...but this simplicity of some build is just rediculous and other like the said Wiz tree is really full of ability and that make me really sad since the barb actually looked 100x better then D2 barb and actually looked fun to play....now if they all end up with the same cookie cutter build it remove alots of fun and tons of diversity

you know there will always be that powerfull cookie cutter build but you also have these FUN build that are really awesome and even some challenging to play and some other that require certain gear to actually be viable...now this just remove alots of these element....but i really doubt they will leave it like that since its pretty crappy for a char building system imo it offer poor replayability and tons of other dissadvantage...well i hope it change :crazyeyes:

im not a big fan of noobing a game so more retarded people that just dont have the devotion or that dont even have the guts to actually make an effort to actually accomplish something in their game ---> What are they noobing exactly? Who is a retard? Some people dont like a huge skill tree or over complexity, doesnt mean they dont make the effort or arent dedicated to the game, quite the opposite. What has a huge diverse skill tree gotta with effort or game devotion? You can do that with a small skill tree and add diversity in a million other aspects of the game. That was a pretty ignorant statement, in my opinion :P

Diablo 3 will offer a lot of fun builds and keep the cookie cutter to a minimum .... I can see it happening. A cookie cutter is based on many things, not just skills. There is stats and equipment too, and I dont need to remind you what changes have been made in this department. Having said that however, cookie cutters will always exist anyway, there are flaws in every game system and in our case it includes finding a cookie cutter build no matter the game restrictions .... but when compared to the other possible varied and fun builds I think and hope this game will offer, cookie cutters will be and should be to a minimum.

[WizardFan]

didint the sorc have like 5 skill for melee sorc? 3 of these maxed?

Well, the only "actual" melee skill the sorc had was enchant. Now you also had fire mastery and warmth, both of which were maxed out for extra damage with enchant. But these skills aren't actual melee skills so I didn't mention them. Enchant is the main skill, and it just gets boosted by fire mastery and warmth, but the last two skills don't offer any direct benefits to a melee sorc, but rather indirect benefits by boosting the damage of your enchant skill.

Other skills a melee sorc could find useful were energy shield and the 3 frost armor type skills. Energy shield uses the sorc's mana to absorb damage which is useful to a melee sorc, and the frost armor skills offer extra melee protection.

So yes, a melee sorc does have access to another 4 skills that are useful in melee, 3 of which are mostly maxed (enchant, warmth, fire mastery), and 2 of which are optional (frost armors, energy shield). I just didn't mention them because I was thinking straight offensive melee skills.


I still think we wont reach endgame build by level 40. Blizzard's aim is pretty far away from that, and we know all this very well. There is a very good reason for the current skill tree being this way, I have nothing but faith in a company like Blizzard. There are so many different game mechanics and game systems (socketables, scrolls, shrines, quest rewards, amongst many things) and item specifics we dont know about yet, that are in D3, that all we can or should say is 'it seems like this and this', rather than 'it is like this and this, and therefore it needs this and this'.

Pretty much what he said, and I agree. There are simply so many things that could change everything about our current views, that we can only guess. But we have nothing concrete, still.

I also believe blizzard will make an amazing game. They did it so far, and they'll do it again.

[lumpor]

Something very unique with D2 was the customization. The skill system with big skill point caps and diminishing returns, as well as so many item effects on every item, made you able to think of hundreds of builds. The riftadin, the Wf zon, the kingslayer sorc etc... You could base builds on items, which was one thing I definitely liked about D2. And the skills had such wide non-straightforward effects (like the sorcs masteries boosting elemental weapon damage).

This D3 lacks, but I have to be realistic. The customization in D2 also lead it to be a very messy game (it really was). It's kinda impossible to copy, and I'm quite satisfied with what blizz have done with D3. It will be very different form D2, it's a bit more mainstream now, but it's necessary

[ancalagon]

Something very unique with D2 was the customization. The skill system with big skill point caps and diminishing returns, as well as so many item effects on every item, made you able to think of hundreds of builds. The riftadin, the Wf zon, the kingslayer sorc etc... You could base builds on items, which was one thing I definitely liked about D2. And the skills had such wide non-straightforward effects (like the sorcs masteries boosting elemental weapon damage).

This D3 lacks, but I have to be realistic. The customization in D2 also lead it to be a very messy game (it really was). It's kinda impossible to copy, and I'm quite satisfied with what blizz have done with D3. It will be very different form D2, it's a bit more mainstream now, but it's necessary

I dont know what you mean *exactly* by mainstream, but I agree with everything else,
except .... what does this D3 lack? Customisation? Blizzard have said they more than will make up for the lack of manual statting and low skill caps and other reasons that seem to be crippling custom builds with various other ways (better ways to quote them) and we havent seen / dont know what these are yet. So how can you say it lacks at this point?

If anything, we are lacking in a lot of info!

[konfeta]

lumpor, hand over your time machine.

Because otherwise, really, you are complaining about lack of item based builds without having even the smallest hint of what items actually will look like at high levels in D3.

There is almost no difference between your statement and the statement "Diablo 3 will miss out on those vibrant and diverse environments that Diablo 2 had because it only has 2 acts."

[lumpor]

It wasn't even a complaint:doh:

[WizardFan]

Well, guys, we may assume a lot of things, but for now we lack major amounts of info on DIII, so we can only assume. But we don't know anything for sure.

I am actually 100% sure that blizzard will definitely make up for the lack of free stat distribution. Let's not assume that the game will have less customization just because they changed it in some ways from the previous Diablo. Besides, I know blizzard, and I am confident that they will give us major customization options through other means.

[konfeta]

It wasn't even a complaint

If you prefer, I can call it a statement with nonexistent basis in reality that demonstrated that you liked something in D2 and believe that it will no longer be in D3.

[stillman]

If they would increase the very tiny skill cap of 5 to a more reasonable one of 10, that would fix everything imo. They could add as many actives as they want. 5 is so close to 1 that skills are almost like 1 point wonders because they're so easy to max. Imo, each skill should start with at least 10 skill cap which can later be increased to 15 or w/e.

Player A: "What kind of wiz are you?"
Player B: "magic missile, hydra, meteor, electricute, blizzard, tornado, stone skin, all relavant passives maxed."
Player A: "Why did you max meteor? You already got hydra for fire damage."

Player B: "Nothing else to spend the points on, really."

[ancalagon]

Player A: "What kind of wiz are you?"
Player B: "magic missile, hydra, meteor, electricute, blizzard, tornado, stone skin, all relavant passives maxed."
Player A: "Why did you max meteor? You already got hydra for fire damage."

Player B: "Because meteor storm is now in Arcane tree and renamed Arcane Torrent, probably purple arcane damage meteors fall instead."

Fixed :P :P

Also wouldnt hurt to have both hydra and meteor assuming its still fire based, wouldnt hurt nobody

[stillman]

But don't you think it's a bit silly to be a master of so many things? I think it does hurt, because anyone who wants to be the best at meteor (or any skill for that matter) is going to be in a world where everyone else is a master of meteor too.

[ancalagon]

But don't you think it's a bit silly to be a master of so many things? I think it does hurt, because anyone who wants to be the best at meteor (or any skill for that matter) is going to be in a world where everyone else is a master of meteor too.

I think for PvM being a master of so many things is a necessity and is the main reason why they have done it, they said themselves, is they want each character to have multiple elements vs monsters with high res and immunes.

As for PvP, you bring a good point, I am quite answer-void on that one, however I should mention that Bashiok and Jay Wilson have over and over again stated that skill runes will help immensely in that regard, as well as various other 'unmentionables and other systems' they keep mentioning (the irony, they keep mentioning unmentionables :P)

I should remention skill runes :)

There are 5 kinds of runes, with different grades, and we dont know how much you can socket, if order or combinations make huge differences, etc.

So you could technically both be masters of meteor, but each player's meteor will have a different 'feel' or effect to it.

Plus, who knows how strongly items and new affixes will effect character customisation this time around?

Blizzard have learned from D2 Im sure, and if anything they want to progress, not regress. So I have faith that all this autostatting and respeccing and 5 max skills (actually its 15 with + skills they said, kinda close to pre 1.07 classic D2, after 20 you wouldnt reach the 30s or 40s++ you see in LoD) are there for a reason and will be offset with other nice incentives :)

I could be wrong, but I hope Im right!!! Time will tell.

[WizardFan]

I wish blizzard would at least partly reveal what awaits us in regards to runes and even gear, so we know at least a little about the options we'll have in regards to customization. Of course, even so, I trust blizzard to make a great game.

[ancalagon]

I iush blizzard would at least partly reveal what awaits us in regards to runes and even gear, so we know at least a little about the options we'll have in regards to customization. Of course, even so, I trust blizzard to make a great game.

Me too.

I am in the same spot with Barbarians as Wizard fans are with their ... well ... Wizards :)

I am really curious as to how substantial physical damage numbers are going to be racked up, as so far the skill descriptions dont include much %ed. Last year's tree was full of damage passives and damage modifiers, all gone now. Also how critical damage works, as it doesnt seem to be a constant +100%. I'm sure affixes and runes will play a huge part in this, and will have to wait and see. But I wouldn't mind Blizzard revealing some of these mechanics, not leave them up to game release.

[lumpor]

If you prefer, I can call it a statement with nonexistent basis in reality that demonstrated that you liked something in D2 and believe that it will no longer be in D3.

No. I merely demonstrated the differences between the two games. I do not wish that they change D3. D2 has a charm in which a player deep in the game (like me) thinks is fun. But D2 is horrendous for casual and new players. And even so, even for me it's good that it changed. There was so much variation in D2, but in a way it was "unclean". It was a big mess.

The mess is my favorite thing about D2, but it won't fit in with modern games anymore. It's like some people may love and have great memories of 2d games and the fun that 2d gives, but thinks that new games should be in 3d.

It's hard to explain, but anyway, I'm satisfied with what blizz have done up until now (except that they took away diminishing returns, which I think kinda sucks since now all skills are "all or nothing" more or less).:thumbsup:

[WizardFan]

Me too.

I am in the same spot with Barbarians as Wizard fans are with their ... well ... Wizards :)

I am really curious as to how substantial physical damage numbers are going to be racked up, as so far the skill descriptions dont include much %ed. Last year's tree was full of damage passives and damage modifiers, all gone now. Also how critical damage works, as it doesnt seem to be a constant +100%. I'm sure affixes and runes will play a huge part in this, and will have to wait and see. But I wouldn't mind Blizzard revealing some of these mechanics, not leave them up to game release.

Yeah, as I was looking at the wizard's skills, I noticed that the damage of some of her offensive skills was rather small. I didn't seemany % modifirers that would greatly increase this so I am wondering, how will we able to rack up the damage?

I'm guessing that the "spell power" stat may be one of the main things to rack up wizard damage with, as well as the willpower stat. I guess it's supposed to be a kind of a replacement for synergies and such, and I also believe it's going to give not just wizards, but other classes, very broad customization options when it comes to the power of thir skills. As far as the barb goes, he will probably be deriving a good deal of his damage from strength and such.

It appears to me that damage of a char's skills may greatly vary due to all the elements that increase it.

[zero]

orb items might modifier spell power