Guide Ability Tree Questions Thread

Hello everyone!

I’m currently still the Interim Lead Ability Tree Balancer, and I’ve seen a lot of questions on the forums/discord/ingame that are asking about various mechanics or interactions between abilities. Some of these are because certain mechanics are difficult to use or understand, others are because of poorly worded descriptions, etc. I wanted to have a place where the community can easily ask questions about these things, so that I and others who contribute to balancing the ability trees can clear up any misconceptions and work towards making things more clear for everyone! After all, from our perspective it can be easy to miss when something is challenging to parse. This thread will also hopefully help us catch any unintended behaviour on the Ability Tree that has slipped past our testing, so if you think something is unintended, this is a great place to ask about it as well!

This thread isn’t designed for suggestions to change or rebalance the ability tree, however I imagine this topic will still come up a lot when it comes to discussing certain decisions or interactions, especially ones that the community is divided on.

When I answer your question, I will like your post. I'm using likes to keep track of what I've answered and what I need to go back to, so if you haven't gotten an answer yet, I promise I didn't skip you!

Basically, for the Ability Tree of any class, if you find anything confusing, this is the place to ask!

-Xavier

 

Please DO NOT announce to the server when you are going to lootrun. This has been a reoccurring issue, and I’m not sure why some people have such under-developed social skills that they think that a server full of mostly non endgame would need to know that. No one is going to be impressed and give you a high-five. I don’t want to add this to the rules, since it would be embarrassing for new wynncrafters to see that we have a problem with this, but it is going to be enforced as a rule from now on. If it occurs, you will be warned, then additional occurrences will be dealt with at the discretion of the modstaff. Thanks.

 

yes, hello hi, question, assassin sucks

 

Why 3 shots or bouncing bombs reset your focus even tho one of them alr hits its target earlier?

 

Why does riftwalker keep getting nerfed instead of buffing arcanist? Does mage really need to pay everything for being class with heals...

For acolyte, why does aura take away % of blood pool, and not fixed amount?

Is it possible Trapper and Sharpshooter change place entirely? Also why is fire mastery sharpshooter archetype?

And uhh... why are most ultimate abilities at the end of tree so bad and restricting.

 

Which one of you people decided to use "AT" as the abbreviation for ability tree it is so ass

 

The way that Focus currently functions is by being cancelled by any arrow that misses. This is why abilities like Arrow Rain and Escape Artist cancel Focus. Triple Shot and Bouncing Bombs cancel Focus when any of the arrows miss, because this detection is done on every arrow rather than once on the action as a whole. I believe anything that isn't an arrow won't cancel Focus unless it is hard-coded to when you miss (Phantom Ray), which is why abilities like Grappling Hook don't cancel Focus. Powder Special arrows are also hard-coded to not cancel Focus, and they didn't always work this way.

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I assume this is mainly a conversation about how we have handled balancing Breathless, since the rest of Riftwalker has received very minimal changes since the change from 15 -> 30 max winded. The issue with Breathless is because of how it currently interacts with Meteor, Thunderstorm, and Ophanim in identical ways, and it has been a challenge to try and get Ophanim + Breathless into a healthy state without unintentionally nerfing solo Riftwalker. In the last hotfix, my approach to this was to make Thunderstorm compensate for the damage nerf to each individual hit from Breathless, and by the numbers it was a net buff for Riftwalker, but only if every hit of Thunderstorm actually connected. This approach lead to Riftwalker being more reliable on Thunderstorm than before, and also made Thunderstorm less consistent to use.
We've come up with a much more robust solution to this issue for the next patch by decoupling Ophanim + Breathless from Meteor + Breathless, which will allow us to balance the two independently. This means Thunderstorm won't have to carry as much of the burden by hitting 6 times anymore. Getting this to work was a big challenge but I managed to get everything functioning without dev time!

As for Arcanist, we have buffs planned for the future for it. Developer resources are just spread between many different projects, and we want to buff Arcanist in ways that aren't simple number changes, but instead feel naturally incorporated into the unique aspects of the archetype's gameplay loop. Since these changes aren't confirmed, I won't be going into them much as to not give the community any false promises, and to avoid locking us into things that are still subject to change. Just know that we want to make Arcanist stronger and we don't want to just make Stronger Meteor even stronger to do it.

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So, this is definitely a case of "The description of this ability is obtuse and doesn't convey how it actually works to players very well."

Let me try and break it down. Since Sacrificial Shrine takes away a set percentage of your health, you can think of each point in your Blood Pool as also being a percentage of your health. For example, a max Blood Pool of 30 can contain up to 30% of your maximum health. Aura will then use 15% of your Blood Pool, as in, 15% of your maximum health that is now contained in the pool, and not 15% of the pool's max value. Since Blood Pool is used both as a percentage of your health that is taken, and a raw value that is spent when using Aura/Blood Sorrow/Twisted Tether... it's definitely confusing. I'll look into rewriting the description to make this kind of function more obvious!

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This far in, I don't think such a massive restructure of the tree is feasible.
As for why fire is sharpshooter... I don't think defense as a skill point is particularly fitting with Sharpshooter (or Boltslinger), but I also don't think Fire as an element is very fitting with either Boltslinger or Trapper. It had to go somewhere, and although this wasn't my decision, I think Fire makes the most sense being with Sharpshooter given the inclusion of Fire Creep and Scorched Earth within the archetype's skillset.

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The high restrictions are intentional, as these abilities are meant to be strong and exciting, and difficult to use outside of fully investing into a single archetype. Unfortunately, a lot of them don't succeed at this currently, but that's something we want to fix!

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I honestly couldn't tell you. Maybe Salted? Don't quote me on that, lmao.

 

Why is "better lightweaver description" so similair to "better ophanim" description?

 

Probably because both Ophanim and Lightweaver use the same orbs visually, and there's not much else to say in the descriptions otherwise. These upgrades are very basic, they simply raise the cap on total orbs for the ability in their name, and nothing else.

 

NOOOOOOOO YOU CAN'T ANNOUNCE TO THE FORUMS WHEN YOU ARE LOOT RUNNING

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I was going to ignore this when I realised this is how it looks:


Xav ought to rename the thread to "Ability Tree"

 

hey xavier can i remove all cooldowns yet question mark

 

no

 

pretty please??

 

What's the reasoning behind elemental masteries being an archetypal ability? No archetype should be tied to an element

 

Someday, will the atree get melee support? It's a little annoying for classes to have, approximately, one realistic path for melee builds that usually only supports one of fast or heavy melee. Archetypes let spell builds play in different ways, but by and large don't do this for melee.

 

I have a few, one related to wording and a few related to somethings that simply make no sense.
Wording:
Counter is worded in a way to indicate that Agility is what proccs it, however I've been told this isn't the case. Clearing this up with probably increase its use as most people think it's an agility ability.

Other:
Why does corrupted have a duration? Should it not be our choice to stay at 2% hp 24/7?

Why is Manachism raw mana based and not % based? (It makes 0 int gameplay strangely good)

Why are cost ability nodes so useless? Reducing base cost before int makes it so that even with no items that give -cost raw or % you still only get -2.5 effective cost from any given node.

Why is the Warrior tree so spread out in regards to which spell you specialize for damage? (Half of Bash is on Paladin while the other is on Fallen with one cameo at the very bottom of Battle Monk. War Scream and Uppercut is also unfairly spread across the tree which makes it very difficult to specialize in a single spell (bash focused or war scream focused specifically)

 

Why is triple totem sacrificial shrine a net health loss?

 

Why are lightbender, the class that trades in offensive capabilities for better healing & support capabilities, and archanist, the class that trades it’s healing & support for damage & spellspam, next to each other and riftwalker, basically just normal mage, on the side?
I think it’d make a lot more sense for riftwalker to be in the middle