Hi everyone.
I know this is not a thing the majority of the playerbase might not care about, but it is a Quality of Life thing that would just make the skills so much easier to navigate.
(If you dislike reading, there is a TLDR at the bottom.)
The skill node icons are lazy and sloppy, and I don’t expect you to take my word for it, so I will show you and hopefully open some eyes to it. (or just get told no one cares and then everyone moves on lmao)
The easiest example to show is the Mana cost reduction related nodes for skills.
Examples of Mana Nodes with the Focus Icon
This is the Skill Icon for the mage skill Focus. It is based on Mana regen, so it makes sense to use it for Mana cost reduction/generation related nodes. This is easy to understand and easy to spot within Skill Trees.
Fireball uses this icon for its flat Mana Cost Reduction node, however they for some reason decided to rotate it about 120° (who knows why).
Mana Strike uses it for Mana Generation.
Glacier uses it for Mana Generation.
Desintegrate uses it for Mana Cost Reduction by removing Channel Cost.
Volcanic Orb uses it for Mana Efficiency.
Meteor uses it for Mana Efficiency.
Enchant Weapon uses it to remove the Mana Cost of your next Melee Elemental Attack.
So what’s the problem with this? Inconsistency.
For some reason, they also decided to use the Focus Skill Icon for Node Icons that have nothing to do with Mana:
Examples of Inconsistency
Static Orb
Arcane Ascendance
Black Hole
The Focus Skill Icon is used as the “Spend Less Mana” Node Icon 17 times. (Yes, I looked through every skill in the game across all classes)
While it is used as the Icon for Nodes that have nothing to do with Mana 6 times in total, across all Skills and Classes.
The Primalist Skill Tornado uses the Focus Icon TWICE, one for a Mana related Node, and one for a Non-Mana related Node.
Over the 23 uses, the Icon was only changed once when it was rotated about 120°.
It makes sense for them to use the Focus Skill Icon for Mana since the Skill is based around Mana Regen… until you realize they already have a Mana Icon.
It would make too much sense to have this icon represent health
and this icon represent Mana
It would make so much sense that they actually do use them for that… sometimes.
They even have an icon of each for when it does additional things on top of the Healthiness/Mana cost.
I am not asking EHG to make another 300 Icons so they can have a special Icon for each Skill Node. It just makes no sense to not use the icons they already have, but where it makes sense.
When you hover a Node (as shown below) it will show an Icon symbolizing the effect given by the node:
So they have shown that there is an Icon that symbolizes the buff given, which is amazing, but the inconsistency of the Node Icons is horrible.
TLDR;
Please use Node Icons that make sense so it’s easier to understand a Skill Tree by looking at it without having to use the Search Nodes bar which resets whenever you go into a Skill.
Thanks for coming to my TedTalk