Advanced Mastery Endgame System

TriKster · April 12, 2020, 7:05pm

Hi all,

so i was playing my Tornado/Maelstrom Shaman lately and i realised that the mastery bonus of shaman basically only improves my playstyle due to the +10 Attunement, because i’m not really specializing in totems. Well i am kinda forced to take storm totem with me to benefit both from the reduced totem mana cost and the double elemental protection.
While lookin at the shaman tree i realised there are actually cool themes around the mastery class: Earth, Storm and Totems.
My idea for an even more advanced mastery class system is to get maybe another specialization level once you reach level 50 with your shaman mastery class.

Your character can hear a voice, far from his present whispering to him that you are ready for another level… a time rift opens and brings you again to the end of time, a level/map full of challenges testing your character/playstyle and skill. Once you finish this time rift, you reach an altar (similar to the mastery selection close to level 20 at the end of the first chapter) seeing 3 legendary Shaman npc’s offering you another specializing for your build:

Master A (The Master of Earth):

Earthquake causes an Avalanche, double physical protection and x% increased block chance, physical and fire spells deal x% increased dmg

Master B (The Master of Storms):

You cast Maelstrom when casting Tornado, x% increased damage over time, Storm Barrier (New skill giving you double Cold & Lightning protection)

Master C (The Master of Totems):

1 additional max Totem, your totems deal x% increased dmg, Wendigo Totem (New Skill that heals nearby allies)

These are of course only examples but i think you get my point what basically every Mastery class can offer you for another specialization. I mean, Sorcerer is pretty easy to guess ( Fire, Cold and Lightning Masters )

I know the game is still in the beginning and far away from the release, we don’t even have the whole Rogue class or Warlock, Runemaster Mastery. But the Labyrinth and Mastery class system in PoE kinda inspired me to give LE even more build diversity and room for customisation when it comes to endgame and build creation. Maybe i’m just crazy with my thoughts, maybe i am such in love with this game, idk What’s your opinion?

Edit: More ideas (also in comment section)

Primalist
Shaman: (my idea as i mentioned on top)

Master of Earth (Physical/Fire/Armour)
Master of Totems (Totem/Totem/Totem)
Master of Storm (Cold/Lightning/DoT)

Beastmaster: (Idea that i saw at PoE 2 announcement)

The Lion (Buffs tank related beasts giving them more health and armour/ taunt ability)
The Tiger (Buffs DPS related beasts giving them more Attackspeed, flat dmg)
The Panther (Mix of DPS and support beasts giving global speed to allies/heal/leech)

Druid:

Aspect of the Bear (more physical/melee/tank related buffs)
Aspect of the Spriggan (more casting/range/mana related buffs)
Aspect of the Wolf (more dodge/speed/leech related buffs)

Sentinel
Forge Guard:

Master of Armour (Juggernaut related like in PoE/Tank)
Master of Blades (fire melee skills/buffing 1or2handed weapons related to blades)
Master of Craft (Buffs certain types of weapons; axes, swords, scepters)

Void Knight:

Master of Time (Warp skills, ‘Slow’ as main cc ability)
Master of Chaos (Void buffs, maybe a Void DoT dmg type, ‘Blind’ as main cc ability)
Master of Destruction (Skills that we have never seen before, ‘Fear’ as main cc ability)

Paladin:

Master of Justice (Pure offensive Paladin buffing skills like Hammer- and Shield Throw)
Master of Wisdom (Guardian support class, healing allies, buffs allies)
Master of Faith (Auradin, self buffs, allie buffs all around auras)

Mage
Sorcerer:

Master of Fire
Master of Ice
Master of Lightning

Spellblade:

The Archmage (buffing skills with attributes and ward mechanics)
The Battlemage (alternating elemental attacks, uses and combines all elementals)
The Dark Mage (converting elemental dmg into void dmg)

Runemaster: (no clue yet what this Mastery is all about)

Acolyte
Necromancer:

Master of the Army (helps to create a huge army of skeletons)
Master of Sacrifice (buffs skills related to corpse explosions and suicide skelis)
Master of Horror (all around curses, weakening monsters or buffing own skeletons)

Lich: (Using the idea of @Heavy which i really like, see above)

The Harvester
The Leecher
Phylactery Lich / or The Reaper

Warlock:

Occultist?
Witch?
Ritualist?

Rogue
Marksman:

The Executioner (buff for each monster you have killed recently, good and fast mapper)
The Sniper (buffs single arrow abilities, crit, high dmg, pierce, good for single target)
The Artillery (using alot of projectiles, AoE buffs to Rain of Arrow type of skills)

Bladedancer: (some ideas from PoE)

Master of Assassination (all around crits, stealth, speed)
Master of Trickery (poison, dual wield abilites, dodge-ward combination)
Master of Sabotage (debuffing monsters, leech, DoT Kiting class)

Falconer:

The Pathfinder (not related to PoE, more related to the falcon as companion)
The Hawkeye
?

Heavy · April 12, 2020, 9:53pm

I generally like the idea of even more advance specialications in some form. Especially with so many skills available to all base classes + some skills coming from mastery classes and the very limited Slots for active skills that you can take at a time.

As you already mentioned, sometimes you just wanna play build and don’t even take the mastery skill or you don’t benefit from the passive mastery buff compared to other builds.
And i gues you can never make bonuses where every builds benefits from them and especially the extra active skill that mastery classes gain shouldn’t be a “must pick”

Too have another way to make your build even more specialized is a good thing.

But if they do something like that it needs to be interesting and not just plain X% more dmg from type Y.

Since i played Lich the most i had some ideas regarding advanced lich bonuses:

A: The Harvester: Hitting your own minions with Harvest Counts a if the skill hits an enemy(procs on hit effects and heal on hit etc.)

B: The leecher: All forms of lifeleech and life on hit are increased by X% but are healed over a Y second time window

C: Phylactery Lich: ----> (there could be alot of applicatiosn for this but my main idea is some sort of “second life” or failsafe cooldown) Most simple one would be a very long cooldown that revives you after a few seconds when you died.

Another more engaging mechanic would be somehting where you gain an extra ressource bar which fills up when you are in combat an do dmg/leeches life and when the bar is at least X amount filled you die, you turn into a wraith can move freely and gets revives after a few secodns with a fracture of you maximum life(scales with how filled up the phylactery was)

I guess this would be very very very strong for hardcore characters, not sure if that would be even op for hardcore.

Sorry if that is to much for a simpel idea , but i guess you see where i am going. I just don’t want something that is plain statboosts, which is very boring. I know ist really hard to balance and implement

TriKster · April 12, 2020, 11:48pm

Yes i definitly know what you mean and i like your ideas for the Lich. I was not really creative with my examples i just tried to make sure what those advanced specializations should do or focus on Only increasing dmg numbers is of course boring. I think you could really play around with those Masteries and even give them more power and ideas to create interesting builds.

Dagde · April 13, 2020, 1:31pm

Il like the idea. Nevertheless, a downside by advanced mastery could be more interesting. When you push a skill (IRL i mean), you don’t have enough time to handle every other aspect of your life. I think this is a good mechanism and, in LE, focusing on good things like defense always costs you something (attacks possibility, affix on gear etc…). The advanced mastery should follow this path imho.

TriKster · April 13, 2020, 2:13pm

Basically what this advanced mastery system can also provide you is replayability, which in my opinion is the most oldschool and best attribute of an arpg game. Look back at d2, you could only respec 1 or 2 times with your character and then it was basically locked and you had to play around this certain build. The problem i have with Wolcen character system is, that you basically only need to create one char during your entire time playing this game…once a skill is getting buffed in one patch, you just simply switch your gear and skillsetup to make it work. But you never see the leveling part again, the campaign, nothing…I like new leagues, i like starting over again with a new fresh build, that makes every aspect of the game great again, even the campaign.
Going back to the mastery system: I would even go further to give the player an option of 3 exclusive skills for one mastery (ex. Storm totem, Maelstrom, Earthquake, if we focus again to the themes i mentioned with earth, storm and totem) where the player can only select 1 of them and the otherones will be locked forever for this character=replayability. After choosing earthquake you can never get access to storm totem or maelstrom for example, and you have to combine this exclusive skill with the normal skills you get access to after reaching certain mastery levels like in the current system (on the right side of the passive tree). This also provides LE with more skills to implement and more build freedom because you can choose more. I also really hope that each 5 levels you get another skill with any mastery class out there. Currently you only get maelstrom, earthquake and avalanche for shaman. I want to see more, it would even be cool to get 2 skills for example at level 5 or 10 and not only one.

Dagde · April 13, 2020, 3:33pm

As a huge fan of D2, i totally understand the main goal (and why easy-switch games have many issues). Moreover, i’d love to see a tree view with lock pathes as you suggest but :
Even if we put the balance difficulty aside, the D2-replayability by locking elements don’t fit the new multi endgame modes and a lot of players (new or not) love to go back if they want.

If it was a single player only it will be different but, well, it’s not.

So i love the idea, i’d love to play like this, but i think it’s unlikely we see this type of development (with this exact formula)

TriKster · April 13, 2020, 5:45pm

@Dagde I totally agree with you when it’s about new players. Arpg’s can get really difficult if you lock too many things and can even demotivate once they realize that they made a mistake. I mean even i hated it back then not being able to reset attribute points for example. Because once you find a certain unique or new item it’s better to easily change some points in either attribute system or passive tree.

Dagde · April 13, 2020, 7:11pm

Yes but as i mentioned in another topic, finish the game (the main goal) was challenging and make your characters unique despite his default (i like my paper RPG character like this ). Moreover, i like the possibility of success despite a non mini-max approach, hence more viability (there is a topic about it : Global hedge against OP broken builds and Nerf Hammers?)

But let’s see what the dev have prepared for us (it’s still really early).

TriKster · April 14, 2020, 12:13pm

Very interesting topic indeed! Thx for sharing.

Yes, first they definitly need to focus on finishing all the Masteries. This topic is probably more for an idea in later dlc’s in the future if the game hopefully stays successful

Moxjet200 · April 19, 2020, 5:16am

Cool idea. Definitely see the merits I’ll bring this thread up in a design meeting

Heavy · April 19, 2020, 6:34am

I have to say that i really admire you and the rest of the dev Team, you guys just acknowledge stuff that the community brings up and you are all very present in the forum.
Big thanks and keep being so interactive with your community.

(Even if ideas don’t make it into the game, just some confirmation that devs see suggestions etc just gives you a “good feeling” and i am always ready to give more ideas and thoughts, because i know you guys are listening)

TriKster · April 19, 2020, 10:41am

Awesome! Thx @Mox

Dinosaur · April 19, 2020, 10:07pm

I’m an advocate for adding a second sub-class sub-mastery at around 50 or 60, but would like to suggest something else related to continual end game progression.

I’m assuming first of all that ladders and such are limited to seasonal characters. Thus, having some kind of continual progress/improvement for old characters would be nice for those who don’t like starting fresh every season and can still reap pretty fun, powerful rewards.

What I had in mind was being able to reset your level to 1 but you keep your masteries and maybe get anywhere from 1 - 5 bonus passive points to spread right from the start. Also, you keep your idol slots and maybe even have no gear restrictions to make leveling up again easier since I imagine you would still have access to monolith and arena.

Once you hit lvl 20 again, you can either level up your current mastery and make that passive stronger or take a point in one of the other masteries. The same would be done for a sub-mastery if it existed as well. After 3 playthroughs with the same alt, you could unlock every class and just go nuts with it. Since none of this would impact the ladders for competitive play, it would be for pure personal enjoyment.

This would only be available after the season the alt was created in is over. Multiplayer would only be possible between non-seasonal Alts. That includes PvP. This could open up the potential for arena runs reaching unheard of levels and make great YouTube content and different kinds of records. It could also ramp up the difficulty gradually, increasing magic find and exp gain similar to monolith in the regular world as well. Could it reach a level in some theoretical future with having every passive node unlocked that the enemies eventually become so powerful that its nearly impossible to not get one shot? Lol. I can’t even imagine how many times you would have to play through 1 - 100 to ever achieve that kind of goal with one character.

On a side note, an end game idea that’s a lot simpler to implement would be to have random time rifts pop up with special content while exploring the world outside of monolith and arena. This encourages a change of scenery and chances for unique gear to drop in certain rifts with random challenges and uber bosses suitable for lvl 100 characters.

If you’re exploring certain eras, you will probably find content more relatable to the type of element in that zone. You could still get chances for other zones, but if you’re in an ice cave hunting for a certain piece of gear, you are a lot more likely to find it. Increasing zone difficulty to scale with end game would also be necessary so you can still get decent drops searching for rifts.

mirolino · April 20, 2020, 6:43pm

+1 Really, really good idea, loved it.

Macknum · April 20, 2020, 6:48pm

The whole “Second class mastery” is something I would happiely throw money at as a DLC if it’s made good. Like in some mmos when you get an max level increase, just without increasing the max level and have some new points to chase after. In LE a it would be fun to have like two different master classes to choose from, each changing up the playstyle a bit again, like one is offensive and the other defensive or one is for fire and the other for freeze, just to make some random examples.

To be fair I would add something like this after launch when a good junk of people is 100 or pushing for it.

darkdeal · April 20, 2020, 7:31pm

It could be cool to open up a mini skill tree for the passive bonus granted by the specialization class at a certain level.

TriKster · April 20, 2020, 9:29pm

thx @mirolino

TriKster · April 20, 2020, 9:30pm

Yes i also agree with you that this idea is something for the future, now we have to see how the finished game looks like with all the Masteries, i’m glad you like it though!

Shrukn · April 21, 2020, 5:35am

Need to be able to choose 2-3 different. They are too restricting or in some aspects not even helpful

TriKster · April 21, 2020, 12:28pm

So thanks again for all the positive feedback from you guys and @Mox for bringing this thread up at a design meeting.
I thought we can collect some ideas for the devs how this mastery system can look like at the end for every main mastery.
I start with some more ideas: