Guide Ability Tree Questions Thread

My take on Delirious Gas is that it's meant to be a much stronger but more risky version of Provoke, but it doesn't work as well because Trickster's main survivability tool is reliant on luck and has such a large cooldown. I personally think the idea behind it is solid, especially since you can get the aggro off of yourself at any time with Hoodwink (it still reduces the duration even if the enemies you hit are immune to Luring), but I want to play around with it more after Assassin as a whole gets the dev time it needs. I'm not against changing or removing the speed, I just think balancing it without the dev changes might not be worth the effort, assuming they happen sooner rather than later.

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This isn't intentional, and is fixed on our end for the next patch!

 

- what was the point of making arrow storm have recoil (getting pushed back when shooting)? it feels a bit out of place to me + it makes certain rooms in raids really annoying to play as archer (at least for me, so much so archer has gone from one of my favorite classes to one of my least favorites)
- why did the team decide to base the ability tree on an entirely new mana system instead of making it work with the old one?

 

Why does half moon swipe reduce damage? Warrior is powerful but nerfs like these don’t make sense. Also will manastorm be usable with riftwalker again without dropping cheaper Meteor?

 

I am wondering if abilities which rely on the player taking damage still activate if the damage is being fully nullified by elemental defence.

I only know that endurance does not.

 

Why not make the lure effect itself give 40% more damage then? Assasin is all about movement and it's hard to do that when you can't leave the smoke bomb range

 

I told you I'd come back to this one!
So, the main reason I wanted to come back to this question is because, at the time, I was working on rebalancing these abilities.
As they exist on the live servers, Double Totem and Triple Totem are additive. This makes them... basically impossible to balance properly, because you can never properly account for other abilities that increase the raw values of damage or healing to different totals, such as Shocking Aura, Stronger Totem, Storm Dance, and Fluid Healing.

Consider Aura. 180% total spell damage, split 150/30 between neutral and water damage. Double Totem on the live patch reduces the neutral damage from Aura by 60%, meaning the damage from Aura would now be 120%, 90/30. Assuming no buffs or other abilities, hitting both Auras would now do 220%, which is roughly a 1.22x increase in total damage from one cast.

Now, let's do the exact same calculation but add Storm Dance into the mix. Aura now does 210%, split 150/30/30, with the extra 30% being air damage. Double Totem doesn't care, and still just subtracts 60% neutral damage, so now our Aura is 90/30/30, which is 150% spell damage. Both Auras hit, and now we're hitting for 300% spell damage, which is nearly 1.43x higher than the initial Aura with Storm Dance!

As you compounded various buffs and raw damage increases, Double Totem and Triple Totem would begin to spiral out of control. Fluid Healing would also contribute to Sacrificial Shrine being a complicated factor as well. Sticking with an additive formula here meant that either the initial damage and healing values would be fine, but then get unbalancably strong as players upgraded them, or we would have to make the initial values so weak with these abilities that the only way they would be worth unlocking is by taking as many upgrades as were possible to reach. Neither of these outcomes were desirable, obviously.

It's been mentioned offhandedly a few times by myself and others on the team that we planned to change Double Totem and Triple Totem to be multiplicative, to account for all these factors. It took a while (4 hours, to be precise), but I am proud to say that I managed to get it to work!

So... yeah! Kind of long winded, but I hope that made some sense!

 

Will the Martyr ability for paladin be reworked?

Right now, the perk is fundamentally useless for 2 reasons:
First of all, any hypertank build that takes the entire paladin tree won't die often enough for it to be useful in any way.
Second, if you do end up dying, your entire party probably wiped before you. Even if they didn't die yet, 3 seconds probably won't change anything if you (a heavy tank build) just died.

Player should be rewarded for fully exploring an archetype. Getting this ability requires an investment into 13 paladin abilities, yet it's literally a piece of garbage. This damages your ability to specialize and therefore breaks the 'fantasies' that the whole ability system was designed around.

As it is, I feel it should either be removed/bundled into another skill (e.g. Second Chance). Then, replace it with something new or completely rework it. Any specialized tank ability should allow for a consistent playstyle + reward the player for building into their niche. This could be something like a mini-Guardian or Ignis ability that scales with your EHP.

Alternatively just replace it with another skill that fits what paladin already has. You could add another upgrade for Mantle/Manachism/Rejuvenating Skin/Radiance or another base resistance buff that brings fully specialized paladin players in line with old warrior.

 

Why does crep ray feel so weak? As an ultimate ability you would expect it to have higher dps than raw phantom, bomb cycle.

 

Crep ray conflicts with the fundamental premise of Sharpshooter by burning up Focus.

 

How does trap damage over time exactly work? I can't really tell based on the description.

 

Short answer is yes that'll either be reworked or (more likely) just flat replaced, though not in the super near future bc it'll require significant dev work. Xav and I floated an idea back and forth the other day that we both liked for that spot

 

Will Trapper get buffed or a rework?
The Trap system is too weak specifically in raid boss fight, cause boss dont fall in your trap if you dont get the aggro/put the traps right before boss walk to, that makes your dps really low.
But if I just spam spell on mobs, Trapper's ability dont give you such a huge spell damage like Boltslinger or Sharpshooter, makes this way useless.
Also the Trap system dont support you to spam spell especially Arrow Bomb, cause that just reset the trap.
And Patient Hunter is really good in concept but not in reality, since your trap usually exploded after setting up, and you dont even get such a 50% damage buff.
I recommend changes/adds some ability in Trapper, like something that can instantly put your trap without setting time so you dont need to predict the moving of mob, or a new mechanic of traps, new ways to buff traps' damage, etc.
I really want Trapper to become a Archetype that dont rely on other Archetype's ability like Focus/GA.

Edit: After I went back to play Trapper again, yep i still feel Trapper have something that makes gameplay experience getting worse, such as the self-dmg to player.
You need to shoot the arrow bomb on the ground, but sometimes the mob is closing to you and you can just deal dmg to you and the mob at the same time, this really makes experience worse cause you are sacrificing yourself slowly all the time, also the kb of it is annoying.

 

would we be able to have more than 45 ability points when fruma comes out?

 

Not sure if this has been asked yet but is there a possibility of there being some kind of buff for Ritualist in the future? As of now, Ritualist is really only used for Mask of Lunatic and the occasional Mask of Fanatic. It's heavily overpowered by both Summoner and Acolyte when you just look at the base archetypes, and gathering mana for the Mask of Awakened is rather a lengthy process that consists of mostly just spamming one specific spell rather than constantly swapping between Masks to spell cycle.

 

Hello there, fellow paladin user here,

I have a question, why the heck does paladin is the only archetype in the game to have a second chance ability. I enjoy this ability, but why don't other archetypes have this?

 

im not the owner of the thread but maybe because of variety/other archetypes need room for abilities that make more sense for them

 

Was talking in AIn discord just now, and the conversations sparked some stuff. What if Second Chance and Blood Pact were swapped? If you were to call them, say, Resurrection and Martyr, Fallen would have an interesting and generalized final red ability that is sometimes actually worth taking, while Paladin would get the offensive and utility option it's been lacking. Ideally the hp/mana thing would be some sort of mode change, though.

 

Not a question system wise, but why are there not any Archetype based quests?
I won't say the quests should be a req for the tree, but for example Fallen and Lightbender could have a interesting quest lore explanation due to where their powers originates, and especially for Fallen, why the main character can even use powers like that.

Or have a quest of Trickster and Trapper, for how their fighing technic was founded and grasped.

Is any kind of quest content like this planed/was planed?

 

This would severely limit the players, allowing them to do some quests only on certain classes and archetype. This would prohibit them from getting all the lore and xp (not to mention it would angry the completionists).

On the other hand, making a class/archetype based decisions is an interesting idea.

 

Why was acolyte, an archetype that makes health a roller coaster ride assigned to the glassiest class in the game

I know that acolytes damage is stupid.. but then again you’re mostly walking around with 7k ehp not factoring in agility, which is one-shot-wonder range for the majority of challenging mobs in the game.

The archetype’s design just seems a little bit too extreme.. so I’d propose a serious nerf to its damage but a serious buff to its survivability to make the archetype less perfect play and more comfortable for the majority of the playerbase.



Additionally... Why does battle monk and acrobat exist in a game where most mobs aren’t designed to attack on a vertical axis
and why does twisted tether cost blood pool and why does blood sorrow feel so underwhelming