Release 11 staying open for testing longer duration

i'll keep grinding until i can't anymore, lol... but i'm doing melee so really it all goes into str and health regen at this point...

 

Yes, the added slugs make leveling up feel not very attractive. It's like, yay I get more hp's and more focus, but now I have 6 extra slugs I need to get rid of with skills I didn't want in the first place.

I'm sure they intend to balance this out, but it's an interesting dilemma they're putting you in.

 

How's that working for you... the health regen? Is it better than just putting it all into strength? I have some of that skill, but not a lot.

 

Right -- if they're useless skills they may as well be slugs, so save the points for innate skills. Perhaps after a certain level progression, you can unlock the ability to add more points to existing ones, beyond 5, with some cap above that. Or, add another skill to facilitate raising the per-skill cap?

 

There are too many damage skills and spells already. I wish we had more utility skills and spells.

 

i have 42 pts in Healthy which gives me +36 health, i'd like to get it up to +40. This is because i have a high chance of my healing spells fizzling, so fast health regen makes up for that a bit. Although looking at the stats list i dont see any change when i take off all my heavy armor except my chest piece -- Net and a bunch of guys at the Owl's Head Armorer suggested that this morning - sry guys i cant remember all your names
So i'm off to see if it makes any difference in actual fighting. And for this release having high str is key to killing stuff really fast - that and a good weapon! (Using Lich Axe, 7-22 dmg, 8 crit)



arg being drug off game for real life for a bit, bleh

 

Isaiah: This is exactly what happened to me. Once I got to 40 it was just crazy how much junk I had to add to my deck...I even started adding sword attacks since the air push back was causing me troubles when trying to use the fist attacks since they kept getting pushed out of my range...Granted my mage shouldn't be doing so much melee but that was working best haha...

I hope they don't force us to go beyond 20 different cards. I really prefer the random system to the locked system due to no cooldowns on my spells

 

Slugs are designed to prevent hoarding.


Clearly.

 

Chris: I had to go in 4 different magic trees plus Swords to find 30 skills to use. I think it should be more like 20 or less unless we are going to be allowed more than 5 copies. I don't like that much diversity in my spells

 

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! Thanks DS!

 

I feel there are two issues with the expanding deck size because the skill trees are incomplete. Most of the skill trees, both combat and magic, are missing other damage skills or useable skills. So when you reach a minimum deck size of 25 or 30, you have no choice but to fill in with junk or get slugs. If you have 2 other useable skills then you could get through 25 and 30 without having to go outside your chosen skill trees. The second issue is that as you add skills the chance of being dealing dealt the right glyph changes. But the number of slots in the deck and how quickly they are drawn lets you offset that somewhat. I found that I needed to expand my deck size beyond what I used in previous releases to get a better chance of skills I wanted to use when I wanted to use them. If I stayed at 6 slots, I wasn't getting the damage glyphs fast enough. But going to 7 slots made a big difference.

 

Sophi how are you changing health regen. There is the level 1 health/health regen skill. But putting points into that raises health but doesn't seem to change health regen, at least as viewed in the character sheet ('v' key).

 

The problem with the magic trees is that there aren't enough pure magic, ranged casting spells. I go into more detail in another post, but the gist is that the patterns found in magic trees aren't the same patterns you see in combat. The combat damage trees have 5 skills you can put points into if you want damage. The magic trees are hybrid trees, so the damage skills are mixed between those use by fighters/archers instead of mages. In a magic tree (fire, air, earth, water, and ) the first level skill is a close rage combat spell that weapon wielders would use. The vertical line represent spell damage skills typically has another weapon related spell. That's two out of five damage related spells gone. One is usually a summons, the level 5 spell. So you are down to two possible spells. One of those two is usually an aoe. So you have one usable single target damage spell. And in some magic trees you don't have any.

 

So true! I don't like doing melee with my mage, but those spells did better for me than the long range attacks. Plus my mage has no way to knock back mobs long enough to make effective use of distance spells. (My staff doesn't work!)...So I don't really like the fist way of fighting, but it's all there was, and it worked .

I would prefer to bomb enemies and have them killed before they get to me, but the mage doesn't do that kind of damage with ranged attacks...just enough to get them mad at you!

 

Ok my report on only wearing chest armor in pvm:

well there must be some benefit to full hvy armor that is not reflected in the stat list (maybe a bug?) because this is what happened:
chest armor only v. 3 elves, down to 1/2 health in seconds
full hvy armor v 6 elves, no reduction to health at all

so not sure what's up there... but i will keep full armor for pvm
maybe pvp is different....

 

If I wanted to fight in someone's face I'd be melee. I agree that the selection is limited and I hope it gets changed soon. Before long there won't be anytime I fear that there won't be anytime to change the overall design to make it feasible and I'll be playing a melee character come release because the mage is not even 'meh'.

My main point in the other post in a different thread was that when you compare the internal patterns of the vertical lines you have three main lines in the combat skill trees. There is damage, there is innate, and there is a bunch of other skills joined together that tend to influence damage skills. You don't have a similar pattern in the magic trees, mostly its a mish mash of spells thrown together. What could be considered damage is really a hybrid between weapon damage and casting damage. (Weapon damage in the sense that they are spell that swing at the mob as opposed to casting a spell. Plus you usually need to be in their face to use them.) The innate skills usually have one damage related skill and one resistance skill, while the combat trees have two directly related to damage. Fire is a good example that closely mirrors the combat tree with two damage related skills (damage and range to hit). And the summoned elementals and such require constant care and nursing for them to be anywhere usable.

 

There is strength/defense in the Earth tree which I maxed, there is some defense in the light armor tree. I think there was another defensive buff in the Water tree...but I forget...But yes, it's like everthing is disorganized. How about trees for defense?

I want to use Lightning again, but it wasn't doing well this time around plus it took a bunch of regents for a lesser effect...so there I was doing melee haha...Granted with all the passives I had chosen I was taking a pretty good beating in my broken cloth armor

 

I think the issue over deck size is that as you level it forces you to take a larger deck. Would it be better as you level to give you the option to take a larger deck?

Also I'm not quite sure about only spending half your points on passive/innate skills. Surely this would create more restriction? (edit will probably punish mages as well due to focus class)

I believe giving the deck size as an option and increasing skill/spell power based upon the points within the skill/spell would solve many of the issues. I don't really see the need in removing slugs on armer either to be honest, that just feels like another buff to the plate armer sets.

 

Please go into detail.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It seems like a good move because it will present more of a weakness to the platemail tanks. But doesn't that make those not in platemail that much more vulnerable? I guess I just don't see where this fits into the master plan.

Speaking of which, what's the master plan? I'd much rather hear more about that, cause I still don't really understand how combat is moving in a direction that might even approach reasonable balance. I'm not trying to be argumentative by saying this, I'm just completely baffled, and I don't consider myself to be the dumbest guy in the room. Maybe I should log into the game and have Nob explain it to me.

P.S. I just want a fair and competitive playing field for PVP. So my questions are entirely geared towards that end. I don't really know how else to ask these questions without sounding like I'm picking a fight. That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm just very passionate about getting this stuff right, and I honestly, sincerely think that in terms of combat we're really far off from getting there.