I’m writing here about the aspect of the game that bother me the most. Of course this is purely subjective but I thing there is some ground for discussion.
Even though some skill trees are really well balanced, enabling to build a skill in many different way, some skill trees suffers, in my opinion, of two different problems :
- Filler nodes. Nodes that are in the skill tree but are so useless that I don’t see any valid reason of there existence besides filling the tree.
- Complete one dimensionnal skill tree. Meaning only one part of the skill tree is valid and the rest is just garbage to the point that it is absolutey not interesting to try to build around it.
On an other note some of the skills tree of the sentinel are aboslutely minimalistic compared to other skills. For instance volatile reversal has only 18 nodes when rive has 30 nodes. Why such a discrepancy ? It impacts inevitabiliy the versatility of the skill and therefore the builds
I’ll give two examples of those problems above, both in the sentinel class, because it is for me the class that suffers the most of it.
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Idomitable node in rive tree. On paper when you see the descrption of the node and its position in the tree, you could think the building high AS and removing the third strike and using it could be cool addition to the skill. But in fact it is plain trash. The base damage is ridiculous, doesn’t scale, and therefore does ridiculous damage. The animation and hitbox is ridiculous too. It is so bad that you legitimately have to ask why is this existing as it is in the game if not to be a filler node ?
When I see a node like this I see a missed opportunity to make something that could bring a real variant to the skill. -
Iron clad nodes on vengeance. Here the problem is bigger as nearly half of the skill tree is purely useless. Everything about the iron clad nodes is just bad, even though the concept could be really fun. It is just not a thing, making the skill completely one dimensional. Thus the skill tree that fills your screen with nodes, is in reality way way smaller than this the rest being accidentaly here to give you an illusion of choice and diversity.
Again I think this problem is mainly present in the first classes, as they are for some part, relic of early development. But this will definitly need a lifting or even a removal to hold the comparison with the latest release of the game (rogue, and later subclasses that I’m sure will not suffer from this as they are the product of an very improved work compared to the beginning of the game).