The penalties for switching masteries should be far more severe than that imo if allowed at all. Masteries are supposed to be the core structure of a character, something you actively build a character’s skills and gear around. If you are allowed to completely overhaul your character it kind of defeats the purpose of making that choice. I rather like that there’s things you cannot change as it makes that choice all the more important.
3 Likes
You can’t switch masteries once you unlocked them and need to start another toon to have another mastery.
I’m aware, the post I was replying to was suggesting that masteries should be respeccable and something achievable with a few hours of gameplay and a special item. My response is from that context, IF they were able to be respecced.
I’m satisfied with how active skills are respecced; quite like the system.
In general, passive respecs are fine. However, once you are further in the game, if you decide to move around your base passives, it’s very annoying. Perhaps I did something wrong, but since I had a mastery, I needed to keep at least 20 points in my base tree. Meaning that I would have to put a 21st point in, remove one skill point, go back to the tree to spend the one point, then talk to the respeccer again to take one skill point, spend the newly freed up point, respec one point again, etc. It makes you really think about whether you want to change your initial points much! I suppose I could have artificially taken a bunch of points from a mastery tree, put them into the base class tree how I want, then taken out that many points from what I didn’t want, spend them back into the mastery I want… Less punishing for convenience, a little more punishing for currency, unthought of at the time… 
I don’t think masteries should be respeccable. As others have said, there should be some limits and consequences for making decisions. If the devs decided to allow it though, at the very least it should be difficult. Particularly given the existence of ladders, they should somewhat reflect what the character has played as, put them in a category.
2 Likes
I am satisfied with the current system. I like that masteries are not respecable, what makes this decission meaningfull. But it would be also ok to make respecs possible with massive restrictions. Perhaps lock this option behind level, e.g. 90. Also make it a little quest so nobody could do it on the fly. And expensive.
With the skill system I am not 100% sure. Here you can actually respec on the fly only that you cannot reinvest the points instantly. This prevents switching all the time, but also doesn’t let you test builds and skill nodes in time.
Here’s my suggestion for this:
Make skills also respecable at an NPC. When a skill is lvl 20 let us collect up to 20 additional points global for your char. Everytime you respec a skill you can spend one of you points to reinvest instantly. You can just invest as many additional points as you have stored. With 20 points you could respec a complete skill or 5 points in 4 skills each, it’s your choice. You can earn these additional point over and over again but only if you have at least 1 skill at lvl 20 and they are capped at 20 points max per char.
About the actual system (in general concepts), i think it’s the best we can get with a multiplayer/endgame system.
My favourite system is the D2 but it would make no sense here.
Honestly if it’s a D3 system, i won’t play the game. The permanent switch offers “freedom” but it clearly reduce the implication to 0 (you absolutely don’t care of your choice because they don’t matter, you don’t build a character, you’re reduced to a pile of skills) and everyone will switch to to the “best combo” to perform in end game.
It may be a generation of players divergence too (yep, a grandpa-style sentence 
).
Nevertheless, when you’re at medium-high level, it’s really easy to respec fast all the points. And, to be honest, the possibilty of build doesn’t really matter at the beginning of the game (as you don’t have a lot of skills to begin with).
I’m worried for people who think the system is really punishing/annoying. It’s hard to craft an item that works really good with your actual build. So if you plan to often change your build, you won’t have a good gear to make it work. I think the system incite to have stability.
If i had to make an adjustement, i’d say :
If you already have spec’ in a skill : The next time you do it, the xp needed is slightly reduced (with a cap), depending of the number of points you used. It can be helpful in the long-term. It’s like a system of memory of the character that reminds a little of his previous learning.
4 Likes
I don’t see how this is any different now. It’s just that it takes a bit longer because you have to level the skill up again. It isn’t stopping people from copying meta builds. And if it’s as fast as you say it is to respect the points, then there’s even less of a reason to keep it.
1 Like
Of course, it won’t stop anyone to copy ( and everyone does what he wants) but it’s really easier with a switch combo because you don’t have to spend time on it. So if it calms it down a little bit, it’s fine for me.
And the re-skill isn’t done in 5 minutes but it’s not as long as it seems on low level (especially the first 10-15 points).
The main difference is that it’s cost you something (time or money), not too much or too few. It seems to be a very small change but it’s not that simple (imho).
I don’t like the idea of gating learning behind losing DPS/Utility/Surviability because you didn’t know what something was before clicking it, especially when in-game descriptions are limited and currently game-details aren’t highly detailed on a wiki. Not to mention no build planning tools available atm (as far as I know, anyway).
Respecs should always be 100% respec for some good amount of Gold, maybe around 50k, just to make it hurt a bit…but never be like PoE where you’re burning already uncommon and barely scalable currency because GGG thought not having gold in the game would stop botters.
I checked the wiki for equations on crit chance. Poorly explained. As werebear I don’t need certain nodes in swipe skill tree, but don’t know how much to invest in nodes to get to 100%.
So my methodology is to whack a dummy and observe before going more crit.
Unless the game communicates these things thoroughly the respec penalty should be lax.
3 Likes
Yes exactly.
@DxDark @EternalRage If you talk about a temporary solution (waiting for more details on skills and system), i’m ok with that. But not in general.
Couldn’t agree more with this.
It just feels so bad to try out a different skill path on an existing character/build right now and like you said, without really having any kind of tooltip/preview of the change of the path in the game (i.e. Node X + Y = 15% more dps for Fireball, etc) it’s just a huge source of disappointment and stifles creativity in build making.
3 Likes
Skills
Respecing early levels should be made very easy. It will allow players to try different skills, play styles before settling in on what feels good for them. Maybe set skill thresholds? Lvl 5, 10, 15. Once these thresholds are reached you cant drop below that skill level and you gain that amount of points to respect with. If you choose to replace the skill altogether it resets these thresholds.
You have given the player an amazing amount of choice on each skill, why make it hard for them to try this out early game?
Once you finish the storyline (hit the level cap that the devs want you to be) then remove this freedom. Not sure what this looks like but players should think about respecing. (I love D3 and played thousands of hours but it’s a joke when it comes to variety and flavour of character choice) Everyone is playing the meta builds set by bad Dev choices.
Masteries
Once chosen you should NOT be allowed to respec. Ever! Period! If you want to select another mastery than reroll a new char. I have played over 2000 hours in Grim Dawn simply because of this. It’s a fantastic feature and really forces you to think about what type of character you want this to be.
… or make this feature SUPER hard to achieve and a one-time feature. Being an ARPG, allow them to grind out a drop to forge something that resets your characters mastery. Make this super rare item have multiple uses as well. The whole point is to let player decide if they really want to respect their character or craft a BIS item.
You may be watching a stream or a youtube video of another player absolutely crushing the games content and think… hell yeah! I’m trying this build out! Don’t allow them to respect and grind an arena for a few hours to achieve this.
End thoughts
All this depends on how hard it is to get to end game builds and gear. If it only takes 5 hours to level a new character to put on the end game gear you farmed with your main then making things hard is pointless. Just re-roll. (D3)
however, if end game gear drops are very high levels and it takes weeks to level a new character to that point, then introduce another way for them to sink that time into. Give players choice and let them decide how they want to spend their time. (Grim Dawn/ D2)
1 Like
I really get where the OP is coming from, because infact i was like that myself as well, however since Grim Dawn my Stance over this Concept have changed completly. Grim Dawn have one of the best, most fair and open execution if it comes down to respeccing and it didn’t hurt the replaybility and longlivety in any sense. Heck it might be besides D2 my most played ARPG ever and i know i won’t stop playing GD soon either.
The thing about Grim Dawn is, it show’s when the Game itself is complex enough and have a lot of Build on, you focus naturally on fixing / get the best out of your Build Idea, instead of mindlessly swaping between Builds, because this isn’t like Diablo 3 where your Builds are basically what you put into your Skillslots and which Runes you equpipped. This is where alot of stuff besides Gears works interconnected like the attributes, two Skilltrees and the Devotions. So “IF” i didn’t completly f*** up my build idea, i never intend to do a entirely different Build either way, and in all honest, if i would get punished for that, it wouldn’t encourage me to create a new Character, but rather drive me away to something else, a new or even possible better Game. You shouldn’t punish People for trying to experiement which might end up in a failure but rather give them the option to fix them and encourage People to do many Characers after that so they try different Builds. And for people who didn’t play GD, it’s not like they give out respec options for complete free either… it still requires some sort of work, but it’s not as hard or punishing as some might expect but still rather fair and easy to achieve.
So from my Perspective nowdays i’d argue if a game needs to go back to a archiac Gamedesign of purposefully limiting and a punished Respec-System, it rather tells me that they don’t have enough trust into their complexity and engaging Build / Skillsystem and kinda shows what really is lacking. Because based on GD i’ve to say, if i’ve a working build i rather start over with a new character to try a new build, instead of killing of / wrecking with said working Build. But i guess it’s just my 2 Cents.
Though i’ve to agree with people above if it comes down to the Mastery-Choice. Similiar to a Class-Choice this should be something which should be final, and not respecced on the fly.
6 Likes
Keep in mind, Grim Dawn does not allow you to respec your specialization…like ever. In LE if would be similar to picking one subclass which you can never ever respec from.
Which I would be perfectly fine with.
3 Likes
To be picky, GD does as long as you’ve not put any points into it (and yes, even I think this is being overly pedantic).
I think the current system is fine, but id like to see a higher cost to do the respecing.
The lack of an ability to change mastery is somewhat punishing since it is hard to really know if you want 1 specialization over another until you are far too far down the line. Especially for new players.
My suggestion to handle this would be to allow it but require a rare drop like a “key to the future” or have it cost 5 or 10 character levels off of your character.
The other thing id like to see is a button or option to allow me to do a full tree respec for a large lump sum. Taking the points out one at a time is extremely tedious.
2 Likes
Why? It punishes experimentation especially, as you say, for newer players.
IMO, it’s having to confirm each point removed that’s the tedious. If they could put the confirmation at the end of the process it would make it a lot easier/quicker.
3 Likes
For a higher cost to respeccing, It is positive to have each choice have at least some weight. If you can respec too easily, Then your choices matter very little. Currently, I believe it is too easy and costs too little to respec. I got to end game with like 60 points or so and respecced my entire tree the moment i got there on my first character with no issues whatsoever and could have done it 2 more times.
There needs to be some weight to the choices made.
The skill system trees are a great example of this as you cannot just immediately get your points back. You need to carefully choose your points lest you need to relevel the skill entirely or get those levels back after removing the points.