Guide Ability Tree Questions Thread

Thanks for the reply Selvut.

I still a bit salty about it, that perk went really well with my Guardian build, but I guess it cant be helped.

Edit: Any plans to replace martyr?

 

Question: Do grape bombs bounce with bouncing bomb?

 

I'm alive!!

I'll admit, part of the reason it's taken a while for me to get back to this thread is that the next few questions were kinda intimidating to answer, but I don't want to skip any so let's give this a shot.

I see where you're coming from on this, but I disagree with Fallen getting access to Second Chance. I think having a second life would eliminate a lot of the risk that Fallen is built around having, as well as potentially allowing shenanigans where you intentionally die to fully charge corrupted and then get revived and have a full health bar + full corrupted for 2 minutes. Blood Pact on the other hand could be a neat ability to allow Paladin to access, though it would take some layout adjustments to pull it off. Blood Pact doesn't really feel great as a final red node for Fallen right now, and I have a couple ideas to improve that, but Paladin also being able to abuse its survivability to use some of its health for offense would be neat! I've seen some of the conversations about this swap, and while I definitely don't think actually switching them would be a good idea, having a way for Paladin to maybe interact with Blood Pact or another ability that involves health could be very interesting. Definitely just an idea though, this isn't something I've sat down and thought about the nuances of, yet.

Thematically, I think this kind of design makes the most sense for Shaman compared to the other classes, but as for why it was designed so extreme, I really don't have a great answer. I didn't design the trees initially, so you'd have to ask Salted about this one. I do want to give Acolyte and Shaman in general some more tools to feel a bit more consistent, though there is a level of risk that comes with the class inherently that needs to remain, and Acolyte just expands on an already volatile base class to become something really crazy. I like it a lot, but I see where the criticism for its design comes from. Sorry that this is a bit of a nothing answer, I don't have much insight here unfortunately.

If I had to guess, Battle Monk and Acrobat were conceived as concepts for archetypes based on theming and unique gameplay elements they could offer without much consideration to the limitations of enemies in the game. I think enemy design has to catch up to 2.0, rather than reducing the exciting movement of these archetypes.

Twisted Tether's blood pool cost is just to make it a resource the player has multiple ways to interact with, though it really is super negligible, both in cost and in effect, with its current design.
As for Blood Sorrow, this is something I've tried to adjust in the months since this was posted! I hope it feels a little bit better to use now compared to before, with the adjusted numbers and the fact that Overhealth actually works as advertised now!

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TrapinchO answered this very well already, and basically said everything I would have said.

Same with this, shacers answer is much like mine. I think Paladin is the only archetype where having a self-revive really makes sense. Definitely not utility I would want other archetypes or classes to have access to.

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And here we see the effects of me taking ages to go through this thread!
These are all great points, given:
-Vengeful Spirit now connects to Mask of the Fanatic, making it accessible to Ritualist.
-The Archer tree was completely rebuilt and Trapper got some brand new abilities.
-Smoke Bomb's visual was fixed to be much more consistent.
-Exploding Puppets was fixed.

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Another case where I think Shadestepper definitely needed more tuning when these posts were made, that it has since received, with the massive increase to Nightcloak Knife's duration making it actually worth setting up, and the reduction to Satsujin's archetype requirement making it easier to access. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this now that the archetype received these adjustments.

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This is something I've put a lot of thought into, but haven't quite reached a conclusion on yet. I've been flipping between two options:

1. Chaos Explosion no longer recasts teleport.
-No more annoying unintended movement
-Removes any potential utility from intentionally recasting Teleport (movement/blind with Eye Piercer)
-Removes any potential damage from recasting Teleport with Wind Slash/Exploding Entrance

2. Chaos Explosion recasts Teleport, but doesn't move the player (think how Teleport acts while Timelocked)
-Enables better use of damage and blind from Teleport's associated abilities
-Removes movement entirely
-Makes no sense if you have no Teleport upgrades unlocked (none of which are on the Arcanist side of the tree)

This is something I want to address at some point but I'm still trying to work out which approach would be better, or if there's a third option I haven't considered that's the best of both worlds?

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Lacerate blocks Echo for two reasons:
1. Lacerate can't overlap with itself when cast by Clones due to its hitbox (much like Multihit), and since it replaces Spin Attack, it would leave you with zero viable damage spells while Clones are active. (This can be seen by unlocking Mirror Image, Last Laugh, Lacerate, and then having a clone die.) A player with this combo of abilities would basically only be able to use Clones for defense, which you can already do without Echo. Echo would actively make Lacerate worse, and vice versa.
2. It actually doesn't work, and would require dev time to fix. Since it would be so unwieldly and unfunctional as an actual combat style with how Lacerate is currently designed, it's a really low priority thing to fix. This doesn't mean it won't happen someday, though!

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I think a Dancing Blade stacking cap would be really fun to implement, though it's another lower priority change compared to changes that would help empower and improve underperforming archetypes, or fix large issues. As for now, I believe the stacking was removed? This fix just kinda happened at one point and I only learned after the fact, so I imagine Dancing Blade was just changed to work more like Flyby Jab for consistency.

Teleport's vertical limit I believe is meant to prevent super easy vertical movement and flight with it, though I don't think it really does that in practice. I do think some amount of limit on the vertical height is important though, since Teleport doesn't cancel fall damage like other movement spells. I can see new players accidentally going way too high with diagonal teleports at a level where there isn't available mana sustain to save themselves.

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@HeyZeer0 answer for your sins (I like the name)

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Yes, and yes!

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I definitely need to spend more time with the Assassin tree making sure it feels as good to use as the other classes' trees, hybrids included. I've been slowly trying to improve this over time, it was just difficult to get right the first time given Assassin essentially only got to exist in 2.0 six months later than the other four classes. I've also been trying to tune the balance of the archetypes as best as I can!

The issue with Windy/Stormy Feet and Shadow Travel is known and on my list to get fixed once we have the time for it.

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I'm not 100% sure if it was initially a happy accident, since Salted originally designed all of the ability trees. When I was going through to make major changes to Assassin, however, I did intentionally make sure to not allow this combination. So, both?
Additionally, there has since been a change to Echo where it can no longer clone Black Hole's effect specifically, to combat the lag issue with it.

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nomythrilskin?'s answer is largely correct, the change was to allow the player to keep using Phantom Ray regardless of how much Focus they currently have. I think Grappling Hook specifically needs some more adjustments, though, because it is unfortunate that the combo ends up with this unintended downside.

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Heavy Impact does damage in an AoE around the player when they land after charging.
Flyby Jab does damage if you get close enough to the enemy while charging.
Flying Kick does damage if you get close enough to the enemy while charging, and knocks them back.
Collide does damage if an enemy is knocked into a wall from Flying Kick.

Besides Collide's interaction with Flying Kick, the abilities all act independently of each other, so you can hit all of them under certain circumstances:
Charge into an enemy very close to a wall, so Flying Kick doesn't send the enemy so far that Heavy Impact misses.
The initial hit will deal the damage of Flying Kick and Flyby Jab separately but simultaneously, the enemy hitting the wall with trigger Collide, and landing with trigger Heavy Impact!

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I'm honestly not sure, as this wasn't my decision. I do like the cone design though, now that the blind-spot on top of the player has been fixed. I think the unique hitbox is cool to play around, especially when trying to hit enemies diagonally away from me with Half-Moon Swipe.

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I'm hoping the changes to it in the months since this message have helped make it feel a lot better to use!

 

I’ve noticed that Acrobat flying is considerably slower than other classes, like barely even comparable, even though it probably takes the most skill. So I ask: is it possible that, someday in the future, Lacerate will be changed, maybe giving it more horizontal movement or a range increase?

 

In the warrior skill tree there are 3 skills that are basically the same (Heavy Impacy, Flying Jab and Flying Kick)

All of them add some damage after the charge spell, I would like to know if there are any plans to change things up, since it seems excessive to dedicate 3 slots to virtually the same skill.

 

I understand the Aesthetic of shade stepper being a “one shot hit and run” but it just simply doesn’t work that well in raids, or just a large chunk of endgame, and considering some of shade steppers best abilities are locked behind a kill. Are there any plans to move away from the one shot requirement

 

or make everything possible to one or two shot it with Shadestepper

 

Thanks for hearing me out, from what I’ve read it seems like most issues were in the factory being worked out.









Except blood sorrow.. its still a suicide ability even after the fixes :/

Anyway, my apologies if the questions did stress you out, I know that this ability tree thing is a brand new hellscape xP

 

Is it for balance reasons that cheaper arrow storm as locked away from boltslinger?

 

How do healing effectiveness and fluid healing interact?
Theres two cases i could imagine being the case
1. Multiplicative: base heal * 1+(heal effectiveness/0.01) * 1+(water damage*0.003)
2. Additive (= fluid healing effectively just adds healing effectiveness specifically for heal and aura): base heal * 1+(heal effectiveness/0.01)+(water damage*0.003)

 

Hey! I have some questions about Nightcloak Knife. I'm a fan of the ability and I'd love to know more about it! and uh heads up i'll be asking multiple questions in quick succession

- If you hit multiple enemies at once, how does the Knife pick its target? If you hit multiple enemies at once, it goes after each enemy one after another which takes a while. Does it follow a queue system? What happens if you hit more targets while it's attacking enemies?

- How does the Knife calculate its damage? Say you hit multiple enemies with Backstab. Does it repeat a portion of the damage you dealt to each individual target? or does it repeat a portion of the total damage you dealt to every target? If you perform more attacks while the Knife is slashing a target, how is its damage affected?

- How far can enemies be for their Marks to be taken? Is it Spin Attack's initial spin range? secondary spin range? Is it the 6 blocks it says in the description? or is 6 blocks the Knife's effective range? Is it both?

 

Would it be possible to make Sorcery not recast uproot when you use ritualist/have selected masks? (the only thing this would theoretically make worse is haunting memory spam with awakened but its genuinely just really annoying otherwise)

 

Is there a reason why trickster clones don’t cast sorcery/madness spells when you have echoes selected, or is it just a bug?

 

In beta sorcery would also be able to trigger from a clone casting the spell, with a 35% chance and up to 6 clones it would be a stacking loop of lag.
They never worked around this issue I guess.

 

Why is half of assassin's tree stupid gimmicks?

 

Such as?

 

What's the deal with aura healing? I've heard people say that aura heals even without sacrificial shrine. Wynnbuilder also says that aura has a heal amount even without sac shrine.
Does aura naturally heal without sac shrine?

 

No it doesn't

 

ok thanks

 

What happened to the promised increased transparency?