So I know the thread title sounds very provocative towards the devs.
I think devs will never try to deliberately make a skill popular or unpopular by design.
But to rephrase may question a little bit.
Is it ok, that the mastery exclusive skill unlock is not the most popular skill within a given mastery?
I wanted to create a similar thread a long time ago and the recent thread gave me some starting ground to begin with:
@SigmaQ said that Meteor is not one of the most popular sorcerer skills, despite it being the mastery exclsuive unlock.
But so are Erasing Strike, Forged Strike, Dancing Strikes, Summon Wraiths and Storm Totem. Just to name a few.
Now the next question is. Is this a bad thing? All these skills are very thematic.
But they are also very specific in most cases.
I think the design of this is really cool, because most masteries are not pigeoned holed into taking their skill, just for the sake of being exclusive.
But if you decide to use one of the mastery exclusive skills, usually they do have a strong impact on the playstyle and theme of your character, which most of the time is visually very apparant.
I think erasing strike just got love this patch. I havenāt played forge guard nor use summon wraith so no idea there. Summon wraith seems to be OP last patch though. Storm totem is definitely strong. Dancing strike is ehā¦it is not great
My opinion is they donāt have to be the strongest nor the most popular but as an exclusive skill, they should still be at least above average. Otherwise what is the point of locking them behind a specialization
I was thinking the same thing recently - you can probably follow the debris of my post history around questions with Dancing Strikes in particular.
In my book I really like (havenāt touched Primalist at all):
Reaper Form
Summon Wraith
Forge Strike
Erasing Strike
Holy Aura
Detonating Arrow
I donāt like
Meteor
Dancing Strikes
Whatever the Spellblade frost attack is I canāt remember it
For the ones I do like, even if Iām playing that class and not using the skill, they all feel aligned with the main idea of the class: itās a situational choice whether Iām using it or not. For Meteor, Dancing Strikes, and the Spellblade one, it feels like either Iām playing The Build That Uses It, or something so disconnected itās barely even the same class.
I like Forge Strike because it has a lot of different expressions between the minions, the constant spam, the big build up, etc. Even if Iām not using it I use other skills that play similarly.
Also, IDK if itās just me that thinks this, but I think that speccing into the mastery skill should be the brain dead It Just Works option for leveling. That is absolutely not the case for the latter three, whereas from my experience it totally is for the first six. So yeah, Iād like them to either be substantially buffed or moved off the specialty slot.
Actually I think each class has a couple of mastery-exclusive skills. The one you get when choosing the class is just a āfreeā one without putting any points into the mastery tree. There are a couple of skills in each mastery that the other mastery class could never get to use because they are mastery-point locked. (No other class can use Abomination for example)
So I think the first mastery skill unlocked isnāt as popular is fine with me; I would not want a mastery exclusive skill thatās too popular or OP and has to be picked every time you create a character of that mastery.
currently you cant actually do this. The little chain in the middle of the non mastered classes blocks you. You are never counted as having more then 22 points in a non mastered mastery even if you put more in.
This means anything needing 30 points, dreadshade, abom, etc. Are not able to be obtained.
on the topic at hand, I think specialized skills should have a big draw to them, be it passive power like holy aura, or explosive thematic power like storm totem.
Right now meteor feels really bland and does not have enough thematic interest, I think the idea is that its āspend big manaā cause that is what sorcs mastery does, but its really boring.
You got a very good point here that I had not thought of before. You are correct here, but the way EHG is presenting those skills does give the impression that those skills are the exclusive āspecialā skills.
Erasing Strike really didnāt changed that much, except the Time Loop Branch and giving it a baselien cooldown, it barely didnāt change.
Donāt get me wrong, Erasing Strike is one of my all tiem favorites (even before the patch), but it was never and still is not a popular skill, I donāt know why though.
Ideally every skill should be on par, but even if things are obejtively on par, there will always be more popualr skills or not.
It was coinsidence, that I just listed skills, that are the unlocks that come with choosing the mastery. There are way to many mastery exclusive skills to list them and I tried to list some of the more unpopular ones.
For me as a veteran player I actually never even thought about, that someone wouldnāt know the skills that unlock at the 25 points and above mark are not mastery exclusive.
This is one instance, where veteran players become blind to certain things >.>
? What? Erasing strike got a huge buff this patch. Its patch note is one of the longest in 0.83. There are new skills to synergize with it and new uniques. The scaling has also changed.
Ideally yes, realistically that is impossible as you say. Still, the devs should take a look at why some skills are underused and if it can be improved (also taking into account the priotity list).
If we are just talking about meteor in LE, it does not seem so special to sorcerer class. I found it quite similar to glacier. At most, meteor is more of a trope skill for sorcerer in an RPG. Tbh, I think black hole in LE feels the most unique amongst all the skills sorcerer have.
Erasing Strike did most certainly received no ābuffā. Itās base functionality shifted towards a burst skill with relative low cooldown and if you bring it back to the same spammy playstyle, that you could do before 083 it even got nerfed slightly.
Just because the patch notes are long, doesnāt mean it got buffed
Yes it did receive plenty of synergies and they are awesome if you wanna build around them.
But overall it didnāt made Erasing Strike āstrongerā only more versatile.
I donāt agree that Meteor is similar to glacier, but I agree that Meteor is one of the least flavourable mastery exclusive skills.
Black Hole is also mastery exclusive and yeah it does feel very sorcerer-y
Which skill is powerful really depends on the build. You can see that quite clearly in Diablo 3. The Monk for example had this holy chruch bell skill as final unlock. It took a complete item set dedicated to it to make it see actual play, because it was just too slow otherwise.
Now we all know D3 isnāt that well balanced, but at least itās not unheard of for a mastery skill to be unpopular in similar games.
Semantics. You know what I mean contextually when I say the skill got love/changed this patch. I would argue that 100% crit chance on combo is a buff, but that is small issue in the bigger context. Also, versatility is what I think is needed for some of the restrictive specialization skills including meteor so that they see more use. Of course at the right amount. Too versatile can ruin the specialness of the skill.
This is actually a big deal. I was thinking about something similar recently.
Things like Holy Aura are a draw skill. Meaning they are good enough to make me spec Paladin just to get that skill, even if I donāt spend many points in the tree.
On the same note but slightly different is Druid. The mastery skill is the reason to spec Druid. Druid has zero skills unlocked past the chain, which should probably change, and lacks exciting nodes in the tree. (Actually extremely disappointed Werebear isnāt available to Beastmaster). If anything, Spriggan Form should be the druid exclusive.
Then there are classes where the mastery skill seems lackluster. Both Mage classes fall into this category for me. Both the mastery skills and passive bonuses seem relatively weak or too niche.
Yea, same opinion here. If the skill is not versatile, at least give it power. Please make meteor emulate a bunch of Embermages and drop 6 meteors in one spot then we can talk about sending my mana to negative in 1-2 use. Uniques enabling that is welcome too. Otherwise, I have other better skills to spend 200+ mana on.
