Being able to swap skills instantly like in D3 is something EHG wants to prevent. You are supposed to put thought in your decisions and make it somehow meaningful.
The current implementation is the result of an iteration of steps done to make the system feel less punishing than back in the days where there was no min skill level and the catch up was way longer.
There will always be people that want the ultimate freedom. But EHGs vision is more into a direction to have meaningful decisions.
Because of this the current +skillpoint affixes work like they do. They donât remove the last point spent, because then you could alter the mechanic of a skill at any moment, just by removing and replacing an item (e.g. swap between Lightning Blast Convergence node to make it a boss killer or a trash killer).
The current system prevents swapping but doesnât prevent respeccing.
Imho early game respeccing could be a bit more forgiving. The devs could maybe accelerate the catch up time of respecced skills.
This sentence only shows your incapability of just accepting other opinions than yours could possibly be valid. Nothing anybody will post has the chance to be accepted by you.
You obviously think you are the smartest guy on these forums and think you need to proof it on whatever topic you enter.
I never played D3, but obviously, LE isnât D3. What would be the real effect of keeping EXP on skills you previously speccâd and leveled up?
Letâs find out.
Nova Boy
Main Skills: Elemental Nova, Lightning Blast, Flame Ward, Teleport, Focus
Potential swaps:
â Replace Lightning Blast with Static for mapping/general mobs
â Replace Elemental Nova for Arcane Ascendance for bossing (and put back Lightning Blast)
Effect: I mean, like, in all seriousness⌠none. Arcane Ascendance would help a little, but Nova Boy is already strong on bosses without it. And Static is negligible extra damage while mapping.
Werebear EQ:
Main Skills: Werebear Form, and others which disable on Werebear form
Potential swaps: none, not possible while in Werebear form
â This is true for any shapeshifting skill
Shadow Daggers:
Main skills: Smoke Bomb, Shift, Shurikens, Shadow Cascade, Synchronized Strike
Potential Swaps: none, if any skill fit better into the build, it would take a Main spot.
Now, I can do more, or if you like, you can do some. Iâd love to see you find something really exploitive or âbadâ for the game and prove me wrong. Seriously, do it.
You found some builds where itâs not viable to swap, because they are broken op? Great investigation.
I already gave you an example with Lightning blast. There are skills like Devouring Orb or Abyssal Echoes, that provide a good bunch of resistances. You could swap before bossfights where you need these particular resistances.
There are numerous skills that can either be build as a trash clear or single target skill.
Itâs more obvious if you think of multiplayer and skills that have interactions with allies. You would/could swap skill specs depending on your group setup or if you play solo. Your character would just be a placeholder for whatever build you just find handy. If you have the possibility to do this, the next logical step would be having loadouts where you can instant swap skills/specs/gear. Would be impossible to not do it if you go that route.
See, I know that there are people that say âyes, thatâs greatâ. But there are also many people that donât like the insignificance of build decisions that come with such a system. We like identity and commitment. We were hooked into LE because it exactly delivers that. And obviously this isnât D3 as you already found out. And we want LE to stay true to its core and keep that.
In contrast to you, I donât make jokes of people that think differently and I donât devalue other opinions.
I donât say my opinion is the only viable. The only thing I do is to proof that there are people playing LE that appreciate the importance of build decisions of the current system more than being able to play everything at any time. I donât say that I want the game to feel tedious. Why would I??
The current system provides something that D3 failed to provide: Build identity. If this comes with a downside like having to relevel skills after respeccing, thatâs ok for me. If there are better solutions for preventing instant swapping of skills, Iâd be thankful to know them, Iâm sure the devs are too.
So, none of the things you listed are impossible with the current system, you just need âa few echoesâ to relevel up your swapped skill.
So, does that mean your premise is invalid? I mean, if I can already swap skills for a hard 3rd Quest Echo boss, or swap skills if I am going to party up (when multi player comes), then what is this âBuild Decision Significanceâ youâre talking about? There isnât any in the current game (0.8.2i).
So, if skills kept their exp instead of losing it, what is the actual effect? It removes those 2-3 extra echoes to relevel. Thatâs literally all it does. i.e. removes tedium.
Since you said you donât want the game to feel tedious, why wonât you support this suggestion which has no effect on build identity and only removes the tedium of running a few echos to re-level a skill ?
Lightning Blast is probably the most obvious example of why being able to just hot swap skill points is not what the devs want. Youâd play through a zone without Convergence, then when you get to the boss just swap 1 point into Convergence for massive single target dps.
I donât get how having 1 point elsewhere (not in Convergence) is so critical that you canât leave the point in Convergence?
I mean, if thatâs the only example, I still donât see an issue with this idea. In fact, if you take 1 point off of your skill tree, maybe that does NOT qualify for this idea. i.e. removing 1 point DOES actually remove EXP. Its just the âDespecializeâ which doesnât remove EXP (i.e. replacing the skill with a whole other skill). That would solve the main idea of this thread, and also remove your example âissueâ.
Sorry, I didnât mean changing out individual skill points within the same skill, that should be done at the respec NPC i.m.o, same as passive points. I meant that we could have more than the 5 skills on our skill bar leveled, and be able to switch skills/builds at town maybe for a fee without xp loss. Preventing free skill switching in the field sounds fair if people donât want skill switching in between levels or bosses.
If thatâs the case, I think that would address all of peopleâs concerns. You go into an Echo (or Arena) with âAâ build. Period. If you want a different build, do it in town. And remove the tedium of those 2-3 echoes to relevel.
Itâs really hard to discuss with you as you seem to refuse to understand my point if view. I covered everything you bring up in my last posts and I donât want to waste my time repeating things.
So we are discussing the possibility to âabuseâ the skill trees with instant swapping. As you donât seem to know what we are talking about:
Convergence changes Lightning blast to not chain to additional targets, but to hit the initial target again. This makes LB with Convergence a single target DPS boss killer beast. As I already explained this makes it possible to swap between aoe multi target damage and single target DPS with just a single skillpoint.
Right, but that has nothing to do with this thread / suggestion, which has to do with clicking the âDespecializeâ button, not the âRemove 1 Pointâ button. So, its a problem that doesnât exist (currently) and wouldnât exist with this Suggestion either.
Right. Say you level Lightning Blast to level 20 .
Under the current suggestion, you would be able to have an Lightning Blast that AoE clears.
You clear a few Echoes in the Monolith of Fate.
Now you decide its time to do a Boss.
Now you Despecialize Lightning Blast.
Then you Respecialize in Lightning Blast, but this time, you change a single pointâs allocation (or even all of them) to maximize Single Target DPS.
The effect that this has on the game is
Which, the above quote is a direct contradiction to your follow up post later in the thread â
Then if we consider :
We have to ask, is it really removing tedium? Or is it now enforcing/encouraging people to play, as Bronco suggested âOptimally, at the expense of funâ? Which is of course tedium in and of itself, and its tedium that doesnât include playing the game, its tedium of clicking buttons and reallocating points over and over again, so that you can have the âbestâ skill point allocation for whatever youâre trying to do next.
Ahh, thatâs your problem. You donât understand the suggestion being proposed here. Let me spell it out for you.
You level Lightning Blast to 20 (max).
You click âDespecializeâ, and Lightning Blast rememberâs its EXP (and how it was spent) but acts as if it was level 0 while it is despecialized.
Later, you respec into Lightning Blast, and itâs exactly how you left it. Your points are still spent exactly as you spent them.
In other words, this entire thread is about allowing you to remove a skill from a Specialization slot, but not have it reset. It remembers where it was when you removed it, and comes back as you left it.
I guess that was you guysâ problem all this time - not understanding the suggestion. Problem solved.
OK, this part could be interesting. Unsure it is a good idea, but at least it sounds interesting to consider it.
I may be tired, but I did not understand this from all your previous posts.
This sounds condescending to me. Same, I may be tired, but itâs my feeling.
So you do the monos with Ele Nova then when you get to the boss swap it out for a single target Lightning Blast. There will always be a way to âabuseâ this kind of thing for the kind of gameplay efficiency that washa3 talked about.
And that makes all the difference. It prevents âSwap to X fully leveled skill(s) for this type of mono, swap to Y fully leveled skill(s) for that type of mono, swap to Z fully leveled skill(s) for a bossâ from becoming the optimal way to play. Requiring partial re-leveling of the skill to reach full power is a small but effective cost that discourages and prevents that gameplay behavior, because itâs bad for the health of the game. âItS jUsT tEdiUmâ isnât a rebuttal to that - itâs just caterwauling.
You need to stop pretending that you donât understand what the problem with that behavior is. I think itâs really clear that you do. You just donât care, which is a much less defensible position. What youâre doing in this thread is just playing bad faith Motte and Bailey games because you have zero counter-argument.
Give it a rest and stop wasting everyoneâs time.
Swapping Ele Nova to Lightning Blast at the boss is⌠perfectly fine? I donât see the abuse. I see a cool, advanced Skill system which allows a lot of flexibility and strategy. Plus, outside of Ele Nova/Lightning Blast, there arenât a ton of other skill swaps that are similar. Maybe Multishot vs Puncture, or Rive vs Vengeance, etc. I fail to see how those swaps are âabuseâ. They are additional goals for your character, and viable strategies for your build. What about that is, at all, abusive?
Now, add on the idea of only swapping in town, not mid-echo. Now, even that scenario isnât an issue anymore. I get that right now, you can respec mid-echo, but maybe not once this is implemented?
So what? Why is it âbadâ to swap to X for mono1, Y for mono2 and Z for 3rd Quest echo? You keep saying âits badâ over and over and over and over and over⌠and not once have you said why you think thatâs bad. Not once. Youâre just claiming its bad. No evidence, no supporting argument. Just âIts bad, stop pretending its not bad!1!â
And as I already challenged people to do, provide me with a build which demonstrates the âbadâ. So far, no one really has. The whole Nova vs Blast argument assumes mid-mono swapping is possible, and even then, I donât even see an issue with that. But if the EHG devs only allow swapping in town, then I canât see any issues at all.
