Skill balancing (if thats what you call it)

[Mini]

well i was reading a thread and some guy was complaining that Zombie wall only had the possibility of putting in 5 skill points... yes thats true but here is what i think might be the case for this.

Im going to call this Skill Balancing..

Well imo, they are going to have it so that a level 19 PKer cant have 1 max skill that kills anything u to level 50 in 1 shot..

instead they are going to put on skill caps..

For example... Zombie wall can only be put up to 5/5 up until level 20.. along with every other skill.. So 1-20 the max skill you can have is 5.

AFTER level 20.. lvl 20-40 every skill can be put up to lvl 10.. so Zombie wall can now be 10/10..

40-60 every skill can be put up to 15/15..

60+ every skill can be maxed..

maybe smaller intervils or something but something along these lines would really help spread out skill usage and balancing..

Sorry if people think i laid this out wrong or its hard to understand..

Lets hear the peoples view

[Telzen]

Doesn't explain why some skills were capped at 5 and some capped at 10 or 20 in the video though.

[phool]

Median does this. So does HGL. It's inelegant and in Median's case rather ineffective (the game throws so many mass +skill items at you anyway, the self-synergies don't combat this. And in HGL +individual skills are a penny a dozen anyway). Could work but I think just scaling skill stats based on clvl would work better.

Second guessing this kind of detail based on the preview vid is futile.

[konfeta]

It also makes skill balancing a whole lot easier. It allows developers to make the point cost of skills a balancing factor.

What essentially boils down to a primary attack ability should not cost the same amount of points as a supporting, specialized, or gimmicky spell. Seriously, who the hell put 20 points in Leap? By making it a 5 point skill, they can scale it in a way that makes it rewarding to invest in without making putting points in it hurting to your character. You can either have a 1 point Leap to have minor mobility, or you can pump it up to 5 to make it a more prominent part of your arsenal. No of that nonsense where you need to put as many points in it as you would in a weapon mastery.

Granted, this is an example, but I think it gets my point across.

[Mini]

Originally Posted by Telzen

Doesn't explain why some skills were capped at 5 and some capped at 10 or 20 in the video though.

well i thought it through some more and its quite basic...

some of the skills are at 20 and some at 5 because of the level they were unlocked at.

For example, If one of the skills was unlocked at level 1.. then 20 levels from there it could be upgraded again.

however seen as Zombie Wall was only unlocked at lets say level 30.. It can only be upgraded 20 levels after that..

5/5 from level 30-50
10/10 50-70
15/15 70-90
20/20 90+

but this is probly just my opinion and am probly wrong with the level gaps and stuff..

[lichit]

@ Mini,

But that would mean that whirlwind is now a lvl 1 skill, which to me seems rather unlikely. Unless blizzard is going to argue that since this barbarian is the same as the DII one, he still knew whirlwind from back in the days he had to fight diablo.

[5zigen]

I'm just going to say talking about skill balancing so early is kind of tough. Considering we know very little about the skills.

They could gain power with skill points. They could gain effect with skill points (like aoe, duration etc). They could gain power with character levels. They could be powered entirely by items....

There's so much to consider.

And in general unfortunately I don't think balance is possible, well even balance of all the classes is possible in this game between all skills when so many skills and so many builds are possible (hopefully).