Skill Level cap is simply too low

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Title. Point blank.

The skill level cap is too low. Take elemental nova, one of the starting skills. If the current cap for this skill is twenty, and I want to make the most out of my tree to play a specific way, I’m going to spend half my points (most likely more) just trying to get the skill to work in said way.

Say I want to channel it and to not cast on myself. That’s 5 points minimum to get the channel effect. I also have to spend 5 points minimum to get it to cast on a target area instead of myself. There is half my skill level. Now since this skill is channeled, it also has a high mana cost. (35 mana per cast) At my current level which is just over 35 or so, I have 209 mana. This means I can cast it 5 (6 if I go negative) times. To get the mana to be manageable I spend another 4 points placing me at level 14 skill. I now have 6 points left. If I want to cap out the elemental penetration on it, I need another 3 points (mandatory for a specific element build or you will be shafted every time you meet an enemy with the “resists x” affix). This leaves me with 3 points. This means there is no point in getting crit as I won’t be able to max my crit effectiveness for this build. There is no point in really stacking ignite as 75% ignite chance would be laughable at best.

Skills cost too much to get the effect changes. If you want skills to change the way they work, you have to spend an extremely large amount of points to get to said effects. This leaves you with no points to make the skill stronger. From what I can tell on the passive tree for characters, there isn’t all the much that will affect skill output. If I wanted a poison Primalist, I have to go beastmaster and get well into max level just to make it to the poison points.

It just feels terrible to have to spend at a minimum half my points on a skill to get it to change the way it works.

If I compare this to Diablo games, you get the change effect pretty much immediately so you can see how it works, and then you bolster the skill’s damage with other stats or points.

If we compare to PoE you get the change immediately and leveling the skills gains the damage with the passive tree being mostly for defensive stats or augmenting the way the effects deal their damage or the amount therein.

It seems that in this game, I’ll spend most of my time just trying to make the skill work the way I want it and once I have that I can’t do anything else because I’m out of points. It just feels god awful. I’m ok with having the skills gated by their level. I just don’t like that I have to spend so many points to do it when they are such a precious resource.

To add to that respec’ing points is a pain in the butt. All I have to say on that as everyone can agree that this feels bad. You guys know the community is frustrated with it and there are several posts on the subject already.

TL;DR: Why the heck does it take half my freaking skill points just to make the skill work the way I want? Damage should be the thing that’s gated, not effect changes. My main character is only level 35 and even I can see the issue with the current skill level point cap.

Edit: A solution I would like to make that doesn’t increase the cap is to add items or rolls for items that say, “X skill gets the effect of level # skill_node_name” With the skill level being rolled based on tier of the affix. The affix shard would be a one shard fits all type thing that is based on character class. You would get a shard that adds or increases the tier of mage/primalist/witch/knight skill. It would only drop as one of those and when you add it to the item it would role a random skill. This would mean it would be the first thing added to an item so you can get an item with the correct skill. All skills should have equal weight to roll.

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The devs are clear that they want people to make real choices in their builds. You can’t have everything, nor should you be able to. If not 20, then where draw the line? You’ll always want more.

Edit: Vis-a-vis the skill respeccing thing, you’ll find that only new players feel that its’ restrictive. By the time you’ve gotten towards end game it doesn’t take long to fully respect a skill from 1 to 20. Even if you switch something out mid-campaign, it doesn’t take terribly long to get it caught up. The (recently impleneted) scaling xp on them has helped a lot in this regards.

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I am making a choice. My current choice is damage or effect. I’m not saying that I should be able to completely fill out a skill’s tree. I’m saying that I should be able to get to the main skill effect changes easier than I should be able to get the the mandatory damage nodes. Damage should be the gate as that is the most important thing in late game with any game like this one.

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I disagree, I think it’s more entertaining to slowly add more effects to your abilities until you get to the “final form” in terms of effects. Having damge nodes easier to get to makes it easier for any combination of effects to still add damage without having to invest further into effects you don’t need to get to them.

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If you want to slowly get more, then you can just spread the skill experience gain across character levels more. That really doesn’t have much to do with the actual cap or the number of points it takes to get to a node.

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20 is fine. The whole skill system were balanced around it. If they feel they need to buff/nerf a skill, they can change the placement in the tree or reduce/increase the requirement to reach a specific node.

For the Ele Nova case, you can take Luminaire to make it channeled and then use The Ashen Crown to make it cast at your cursor. Using uniques/idols/affixes is also a way to balance the skills. I can’t see them changing the skill level cap because they will need to rework and rebalance the entire game.

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I literally just explained this.

You didn’t bother to read my post did you?

I did take those nodes. Just getting to those nodes alone and taking the buffer skills to make them work takes half my skill points. Then to make the skill worth using you have to take penetration on the skill. By the time you’ve done that you have no points left really for any real damage modifiers.

The setup they have now is why poison builds are so strong. You don’t need damage to increase poison you just take poison. Any effects that help you apply poison just make it better. The same can be said for ignite, but not to the extent of poison because ignite, at least to me, seems harder to come by.

These things that get flat damage and scale so hard based on the number of stacks are always going to be multiple times stronger than building around spell damage itself if they don’t make getting the cool effects that make the skills actually fun to use easier to get and damage harder.

Why would I play a build that requires me to use half my skills to be fun when I won’t have damage after doing so? And if I’m going for damage focus, why would I play anything other than the best thing in the game (currently poison) which with the current system, is going to be poison.

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With respect, I don’t think you can be making claims about end game until you get a character to end game.

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Fair I guess, but when I make this exact same post at end game because I’ve been playing this types of games for years and can already see the issue at level 30, I don’t wanna see people making that argument.

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While I don’t mind the skill capped at 20. I wouldn’t mind seeing a way to go over this cap with items or crafting.

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I don’t think you even read my post. I said they can balance it around by moving node positions and reduce the requirements to reach specific node. Or probably just increase damage per node.

You also completely disregarded the fact that I mentioned Ashen Crown as an example unique to solve that problem. No, it’s not a node. The only node that I mentioned was Luminaire.

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To add to the conversation:

We already had a very large post about the exact opposite behaviour: You get the skill/gamechanging nodes before level cap around skill level 10-15 and so the last 5-10 points don’t add anything mechanically, only stat wise. So the climax is at around 50-75% leveling thr skill, making maxing out that skill boring.

By following the route you suggest we would have the game changing nodes right away and only increasing stats. This would make skill leveling boring for 95% of the time.
You don’t get all skills, all cool passives and all the nice item from the start. You progress towards them, lvl up and earn your power. That’s playing an RPG.

That’s right. Terrible concept in D3. I’m glad LE goes the exact opposite route and makes skill building special and meaningful.

Since I am playing LE I see people complain about the skilltrees having to many nodes and that you can’t take all that look cool. This is called tradeoff. The fact that there are trees where “more damage” modifiers are spread out so you can’t skill all of them, is called balance. Its intended to not get them all. You say its terrible, I say its clever skill design.

So you’re not the only ARPG veteran in this community. And the attitude “I am an experienced player, I don’t need to test things. I already know what it’s like by just looking at it.” is very questionable to me.

This is not a topic about right or wrong. This is flavour and opinion.

See, they differ.

The fact is that many new people start playing that are used to D3 skill system. LE does the exact opposite. For a reason.

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Posts between this one and my following post were moved here from Choice permanence.

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I just want to say up front that I am really enjoying the game as it is, and this is my opinion after having reached the current end game on 2 characters of different classes and seeing the same frustrations between each of them.

So I keep seeing the term “choice permanence” or “developers want it that way” pop up when people are suggesting changing how things like mastery, skill point caps, the leveling curve with regards to point gain and such works. These discussions come up quite often and people say the developers want it that way, then most discussion stops.

Can I just say that verbally vomiting to people that “devs said they want choices to be impactful or have a sense of weight” to someone suggesting a change is a really poor argument?

What the developers want isn’t important. Period. We as players are the consumer so what we want matters, within reason. If you as a player don’t like the way the system works, then make a post and are told devs want it this way or that, then what are you going to do? You’ll stop playing because what you want in a game isn’t what the devs want and it makes the game less fun for you.

Developers keep pushing the idea of choices having weight. I like the idea that choices should have weight, but choices having weight needs to be reworked. Choices are much more impactful when they have drawbacks. “This skill gains X% more area, but Cooldown is increases by Y%” is a great and impactful choice. I am giving up cooldown for more area. I want to cover my screen with my cast, but I won’t be able to do it as often. This is an impactful choice.

Not having enough points to make the skill work a specific way is not an impactful choice. Skills being labeled with specific damage types to keep them underwhelming (looking at you disintegrate) is not impactful. Passive trees that shoe horn you into a specific play style is not impactful.

Many of the mastery skills are lackluster. These skills come off as though they should feel like an ultimate skill that you really would benefit from working into your build. Right now they feel like an added skill that may or may not be useful if you just so happen to be building around that type of damage or spec. Let’s take meteor for example. I tried it a bit and read through all the passives and knew it was useless for my build. I think something that comes with a class mastery should have more options to it than anything else available aside from the passive tree itself. If I am going lightning sorcerer, what do I get from my mastery skill? Nothing. I feel like the mastery skills should come with very diverse trees that can emphasize all the different play styles the class has available. I think an example is that meteor gets a node that changes it’s damage type to lightning, and instead of calling meteors, it calls a large lightning strike that deals about the same damage. All fire damage on the tree is converted to lightning. I could see the same for a cold version with a glacier that comes up out of the ground.

I see people saying that they (devs) want choices to have weight, but the execution behind “choices should have weight” feels bad. Currently my choices are “do I make the skill work the way I want and give up damage,” “do I get damage and only get half the effect of the skill I wanted,” or “do I even have enough points to make the skill work how I want it to?” The last option isn’t even a choice.

I love the idea of how the skill trees work. It’s on the right track, but I think the execution is lacking. Skill trees should change the way a skill works. Damage should come from the passive trees and gear. I believe that this distinction would make it not only easier for players to build around, but also easier to balance. I agree that things like buffing modifiers within 4 seconds or knockback should be on the skill tree, but I don’t think defining effects such as casts on target instead of on self or more projectiles, should be locked so deeply behind other nodes like penetration or things that largely won’t change a build like spark charge.

These skill defining nodes are what make these skills fun for people. People want to modify their build to work a specific way and then need to find damage from other sources. This is how games like this work. You find the build you want, then you find the damage and such from other sources like gear or passive trees.

Passive tress feel to me like I don’t actually have nearly as many options as it seems on first look. I see all these nodes, but when I really sit down and say, ‘okay which nodes should I take to make my build actually do damage’ I find that I don’t really have all that many options… Flat damage here, penetration there and base stats of course. I originally wanted to run an ignite build. I quickly found that I really will not have damage if I run that. If I want damage over time, bleed has much more options and poison has an absurd amount of damage in comparison. I figured when I picked sorcerer I’d get enough elemental damage and such to really make an ignite build shine. Instead I found that I can proc it only very slightly easier, and only barely make it last longer (from 4 seconds to 5.38). It only lasts long enough to get 1 extra proc of damage. Ignite in comparison to poison is laughable. Bleed is good because the options to get more bleed damage are plentiful.

There are a lot of issues with the game, but that’s why this is the beta. We get an option to try out things and bring up the questions and points or issues that we see while playing or after reaching the end of current content. The problem is that saying, “devs want it this way” doesn’t do anyone any favors, devs or players. I don’t give a flying ____ what the developers want. I am sure their investors don’t either. What I care about is what is fun and what keeps me coming back for more. What doesn’t keep me coming back for more is other players removing potential discussion about the pros and cons of each topic by telling people, ‘no the devs want it that way.’ Okay, I’ll take my play and money elsewhere in that case.

TL;DR: “The devs want it that way” is not a good argument and doesn’t lead to constructive discussion on feedback. Stop using it.

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I read it all, I swear :smiley: I just use this TLDR part as point of discussion.

I honestly don’t care what devs want. I am glad they are making this game but what they want will never stop me telling my opinion. However this is where I share opinion with them. I also want some sort of permanence inside the game. There is already enough wiggle room, we don’t really need more.

I know there are many people who see things differently, but be sure, we are not against easy respec because they told us they don’t want easy respec in the game, we are saying it because we don’t want easy respec in the game.

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I certainly agree that you can state your opinion and I have no problems with someone saying what THEY like and don’t like, but to the points above, I feel the need to address something.

  1. I think the ‘devs want it this way’ is often stated AFTER the same points keep getting raised (often by the same people) in newly created threads when there have been threads already created and much more easily collected by the devs to check ideas and such if people bothered reading the forums or, god forbid, doing a simple search to find one of the ad nauseam topics on this discussion.

  2. I emphatically disagree with your second paragraph. It IS, the developers game. No ‘ands’, ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’ about it. It’s their creation. They can damn well do whatever they want with it. YOUR choice as a consumer is to buy it or not. You can also certainly express what you like and dislike about it and vote by spending, or not spending, money on the game. As a filmmaker, I, for one, really wish we’d see a return to the creators sticking to their visions (falling flat or soaring high). Because that vision is going to be unique. Too much these days is created ‘by committee’ and while it certainly might appeal more to the general masses to cough up the all might dollar, it almost always lacks any substance or unique vision to it.

All that said, I’ve leveled about 10 characters to end game. And when I first started I had the same feeling about the penalty to experience, but once I played through many characters I realized it slows the game down, just a tad, and makes me really look at how something works. I think THAT is good. So I no longer have a problem with it.

As to having more skill points to build it the way you want it, all I can say is the intent by the game developers on how the game is supposed to feel, flow and play might not fit whatever you may want in this regard. They may not want certain things to happen. One bigger things I’ve noticed, except for a few outliers, the game isn’t supposed to be ‘fast.’ The combat isn’t supposed to be step in and 2 seconds later everything is dead and you move on. Yes, of course there are outliers that some of the higher end gamers are discovering, and it’s usually those very same outliers that get the hardest nerfs. That should tell you something about how the devs intend the game to feel. So perhaps, when you structure your critiques it might be best to also keep this in mind.

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I like that there is currently a choice where I can choose between damage, CC, QoL like runspeed, or defense.

If you upgrade your skill to have more area of effect, it may not feel like there is a drawback but there is an opportunity cost. You could have chosen more damage or something else.

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But you are not arguing with developers here. We are all customers that already paid money. We are the base. It’s not that you opinion is more valuable than others - or vice versa. People here like the design of the game as it is for reasons they mentioned. And they share their opinion here.

There are numerous examples where EHG has changed their opinion because of the player base. So its defenitely not that they refuse to adapt to their customers.

I am a customer and I disagree with you on the topic of general skill system being bad. What now?

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This is a really weak argument for “choice” honestly. CC, QoL, and such I’m fine with, damage doesn’t really have much place on the skill trees unless it is a conversion node. The vast majority of damage will come from gear/passives so why not double down on this and make the trees more diverse in their effects and how they change the skills rather than placing random damage nodes in there that largely won’t have an affect aside from making me waste 3 points more than necessary to reach the effect I am trying to get? The opportunity cost can still be there, it would just be between this change or that change to the skill rather than this change and negligible damage or that change.

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They have to be careful not to streamline passive tree too much. I know having more cool choices inside the skill tree itself would be cool, because +5% damage is not very interesting, but you don’t want this to happen to character passive tree. You could argue that passive tree is more generic, but still, you want have some cool choices in passive tree too.

Also sometimes it’s not about NOT wanting to put more cool options into skill trees but development resource management is real. Yes, it could be cool if there would be 10 different mechanics for tornado skill for example, but they may not have manpower to create 10 different art and mechanics for tornado, so they flesh out 3 cool ideas and rest of the tree is filled by “filler” skills.

Balance is the key, I think it’s great that both passive tree and skill tree offer fair amount of interesting choices and “boring” nodes. Both these types have their place in both systems.