There are a lot of people that agree on a little more guidance of when you get to choose a mastery. It’s definitely on the devs radar.
Doing side quests gives you passives and more experience - which also gives your more passive points.
Even gaining more than 20 passive points before you get your mastery you never lose those passive points. Respecing from those few you do get that you’d like to put in your mastery once you get it is very, very cheap.
In my opinion I’m not sure how that is ‘punishing’ at all. It’s barely even a tiny inconvenience considering that you’re still able to use all that gained power. Now if you couldn’t allocate passives AFTER 20 at all before you got your Mastery, yeah, that would be a bit punishing, but as it now stands,…
EDIT: replied to wrong poster. DAMMIT!!! (and yes, Llama you told me how to change it but I still can’t figure out how to do it.)
I would agree, that the discrepancy between reaching 20 points in the base class and unlocking your mastery is a bit odd, but that it probably a whole other discussion.
There is literally nothing holding you back from putting those few points into the base class, before unlocking the mastery. (The last 2 rows on base classes are usally VERY strong and desirble for many builds). And then either going from there or respeccing, which is not expensive at all. It literally costs the gold value of a few items picked up.
But yeah, the communication and transporting that information to the player, could use some polishing.
So yeah i can understand your initial feelings as a new player on it (especially because you probably just don’t have enough experience in the game)
Yes, I agree that after seeing feedback it would have been easy to respec, BUT I do not like to respec and similar games like PoE are much more punishing for respecs so I will always avoid especially as a brand new player who does not realize this (like you said).
My advice is take care of this for new players who have not yet explored all (or any of) the game mechanics. Give us time to get hooked by making the start of the game intuitive.
A hotfix would be the following on the passive tree description; Change “you will have the opportunity to choose a Mastery Class during your adventure” to “Your Mastery Class will unlock by progressing the main campaign.”
The phrasing of the first indicates that if you miss the wrong sidequest you could have missed the chance to unlock your mastery. Phrasing of the second is straightforward.
Something like what you suggested would be indeed helpful and at least some guidance.
I also thought about a “pop-up”, when you put your 20th point into your base class, that says something along the lines of:" Now you can either put more points into the base class, or wait until you unlock your mastery, once you unlocked it via playing the main story"
My wording probably could be improved, but i think you get what i mean.
I think this is a failure in game pacing personally. If the game tells you that you need level 20 to unlock your mastery, the game should have an exp curve that will get you to the appropriate section of the storyline as close to 20 as possible. As it stands, unless you go full on speedrun strats and avoid a lot of stuff during the first act, you will almost always overlevel the questline by at least 3 levels (by my experience).
These days, from the Courtyard onward, I only ever kill the statue and the Sanctum boss. I simply run past everything because those zones are entirely irrelevant (no quests of any kind) once you’re ready to unlock your Mastery.
As i already said in my previous post, the discrepancy between 20 points in the base class and unlocking mastery is indeed a bit odd.
But killing or clearing more stuff “than needed” is definitely a viable option. Killing mobs gives the majority of exp in LE.
So while i understand your playstyle, it’s a preference thing.
I usually clear almsot everymob on my way on each map, i just rarely deeply explore the corners, but that probably has something to do with me knowing the map already.
I usually tend to be like lvl 26 on some playthroughs when unlocking the mastery and i never felt that i “wasted my time”, because exp is still pretty good, evne if you are a few levle above the zones.
When they changed it they said it was to make unlocking your mastery more of a thing. I have asked a few times if they could put a tooltip or something saying that you unlock your mastery at the end of time.
@Heavy One other thing I just found out (but should have been made more obvious) is that certain passives are locked behind mastery while others are not. I thought mastery was just for the bonuses, not so. My suggested fix for this is a bright red boarder around passives locked by the mastery choice!
Good point! I also found that out while there was a question here in the forum about a certain mechanic that i wanted to test for him. While respeccing all my points from forge guard to paladin i realised that you can’t get higher than lvl 25 on a mastery you didn’t choose. The passive point i wanted to test is lvl 35 on paladin tree, no more chance to put points in there after selecting a different Mastery. Didn’t know this before aswell. Could be worth as an own topic to discuss?
I am actually surprised, that you didn’t know this, i mean this is the whole reason why there are more than one exclusive skills for each mastery(all skills above 25 points into the mastery)
While it is not 100% obvious, it’s still stated in the passive tree. That was one of the very first things i actually found out myself, when i started, even back then when masteries din’t had a quest to unlock.
This game just needs some more tutorials. When you finaly make it to the chambers you should have a scholar there with a quest… everybody clicks on quest NPC but this one is a trap and opens up a short, non skipable tutorial video that makes stuff clear like saving points if you want to because you need only 20 for the unlock andthe need to play the main story further to unlock masteries.
This besides crafting is one of the things I think needs a unskipable tutorial until someone saw it for at least one time.
Me big dumb caveman lol. Really it seems obvious in retrospect, and wasnt a terrible loss learning hard way but a nice red outline would be good for an even more casual player.
Question/Opinion: Swapping “blood burst” for “harvest” and speccing into 100% poison, Frailty (longer poison), increased area of effect, and the nodes that give ward on hit. Think that would be an improvement for single target since AoD & Ghosts will take care of the rest?
I assume you are talking about Rip Blood (when you talk about “Blood Burst”?)
Also “Frailty” is a seperate Ailment, which reduced the enemies damage by 6% up to 3 times, so 18% reduced damage from an enemy.
So generally going for Harvest instead of Rip Blood(if you mean that) can be of course an improvement, Harvest has insane Poison or Bleed nodes on top of great AoE and inherent Ward on Hit support.
It can be done for sure. Not sure what skills you use on top of AoD and Wandering Spirits, but also look into Death Seal(frequent death waves + more dmg per poison on enemy for death wave) and Reaper Form(MfD, poison support and “Vile Shroud”, one insane synergy with AoD’s “Fume Weaver” Node, if you took that)
Just some thoughts, that is the beauty of LE, there are so many things that work and are great. Not just one way to go.
If you want some more detailed talk feel free to hit me up, since i think it’s too off-topic (either here on the forums or discord)
I was actually surprised aswell No look, all my builds are currently between lvl 70-90. I didn’t want to go further because i really like testing out new builds and characters to learn more about this game, thats why i didnt fully upgrade my passive tree to maybe realize this situation. And i dont wanna fully focus on one build and character only in a beta to fully minmax him ( expect rogue and you know it ) Normally i also focus on the passive tree of the mastery that i chose and put a couple more points into the other 2 masteries which fit to my build (if necessary), like additional block chance, mana/life etc. I completely agree that it makes sense that when i go for forge guard, it should not be possible to get the exclusive skill like ‘Divine Intervention’ from paladin, which perfectly fits to the theme of a paladin.
Class identity is good! But as you know, i came from PoE and we both know the early days of PoE where you could basically do everything you want with each ascendancy.
You remember the days when we could play a Dark Pact Berserker? Man, that was one of my favorite build in PoE, but they made ascendancies more related to their themes, like champion getting buffs for impale, berserker insane amount of attack speed and only bonuses for melee attacks, occultist curses…you name it.
From the class identity point it completely makes sense to me, that a berserker ‘‘normally’’ runs around with axes and slaugthers monsters. But i liked the build diversity back then where you could basically do whatever you want with the ascendanies before they gave each one a specific theme.
Back to LE, when i realized it, i was not mad. I thought about it and it makes sense in a game like LE or D3 to keep class identity. But why for example is lvl 25 the cap? Why can’t my forge guard have some points into ‘Faith Armour’ from paladin to get some additional armour and crit avoidance. Are those two stats really the identity of a paladin only?
Thats why it would be interesting for me to read other opinions about that.
On one side you have “only” the passive tree. Most passives nodes are pure stat boost, with some handful of exception with really thematic nodes, like “Penance” for Paladin where you bleed yourself but get a buff for it.
Generally the strength/budget per passive point increases the higher you get in the passive tree. The Nodes that are mroe in the upper part of a passive tree are usually a little bit stronger.
The Node you took as an example “Faith Armour” does have CSA, which is a relatively rare secondary defense. While the stat itself is not super “unique”, it’s pretty unique or at least uncommon to have access to such a stat in the passive tree.
We could talk the whole day about particular nodes, some might be not 100% reasonable to be “mastery locked”, but my question remains: Where do you draw the line?
You even can put more points than 25 in a non-mastered mastery, you only do not get further up than 25 points “deep” into the passive tree of that mastery.
And then there is of course the most important thing for me: Exclusive active skills. Each mastery currently has like 2-3 of those. While the above point of exclusive passive points might be argueable for me.
I think exclusive active skills are very very important for class idtentiy. Those are not “the best” skills, but they are very thematic. Not mandatory, but if you choose to play with them, they give the class a even stronger idtentiy.
You made a good point about the exclusive active skills, which i completely overlooked because i was only giving examples for the passive nodes so i totally agree on that part. firm handshake
Exactly, and i didnt mention Faith Armour as an example only to say: ‘Hey thats unfair, my forge guard should also have the chance to spec into it.’ Those passive nodes will travel along the required mastery lvl during the beta phase and even after the full release to balance masteries. So i think now we should not debate about all the passive nodes if they are in the correct spot of the passive tree.
The question you asked where to draw the line is actually really interesting. If we raise the line for a couple more lvls, people have access to more interesting nodes to make different and unique builds or playstyles (More build variety, less build identity). If we lower the line for a couple more lvls, people have less access to different mastery points and will focus on points that clearly fit to the specific build (in this case all the points only in FG) that you are playing (More build identity, less build variety).
But yeah, then we have the problem about the exclusive active skills, when they should be available on which mastery lvl…
Coming straight from my 7 years of PoE experience, I think there should not be a line at all. I think the mastery itself should be a bonus specific to your class (for example the litch gets damage leech and increased damage at low life) and perhaps you also earn mastery skill points that could only be spent in that mastery class.
If you want to spend the vast majority of your points in another class though, you should be allowed to and it would certainly open up realms of build diversity. It feels less restrictive and overall more fun for creative builders and new players alike.
That’s fine, I don’t think it does work on edits…
) Normally i also focus on the passive tree of the mastery that i chose and put a couple more points into the other 2 masteries which fit to my build (if necessary), like additional block chance, mana/life etc. I completely agree that it makes sense that when i go for forge guard, it should not be possible to get the exclusive skill like ‘Divine Intervention’ from paladin, which perfectly fits to the theme of a paladin.