@Heavy loves Erasing Strike (though he’s probably wrong) so he might be able to help you with that.
Regarding damage conversion, each skill has a base damage (usually single digit for melee skills & a bit higher for spells), added melee damage generally doesn’t get converted unless it’s a Rogue skill with damage conversion, hopefully the other melee skills will get that as well in the future. For the moment you’ll just need to scale the base phys of the weapon & any other flat damage you have added.
For spells, the majority of the damage is adaptive spell damage which automatically converts based on the tags of the spell.
You actually don’t need to convert all base dmg to make it a good skill already.
The flat physical dmg of your weapon still benefits from Es 300% dmg effectiveness and scales with stuff like melee dmg and attributes.
But a flat melee void dmg Prefix is definitely the best affix, if you. Wanna do full void erasing strike.
Erasing strike also has a base void dmg node on the left side. And another 4 different more multiplier nodes.
Also there are 2 more slow/expensive skills for sentinel.
Forged Strike and Smelters Wrath.
Smelters Wrath is probably the slowest but strongest single hit skill in the entire game.
If you want more specific ideas for a 2H ES VK feel free to DM me here or in discord (Heavy#0351)
While I think the skill levels are fine where they are, I think this topic gets at something deeper about the game. The drop off of real character progress in the late game. Getting to level 100 has no real reward in terms of power. Getting skills those last few levels doesn’t really matter much and getting them to 20 happens pretty early anyway. People can beat the game pretty easily and then move on to empowered timelines, which are just the same things but harder. The only real progression is gated behind RNG with blessings and gear.
I don’t have any ideas for a solution to this. I’m sure opinions will also vary wildly on the issue as well.
I think adding more nodes with mechanical changes that may or may not be beneficial to your specific build, and making some of the travel routes slightly more complex with more ways to reach certain places, would add a lot of depth.
And a total of 30 points to spend doesn’t feel like an overwhelming amount either, at least if the trees are reworked a tad.
Some of the skill trees are just way too straight forward. The biggest offender that I’ve seen is probably Sentinel’s Shield Charge.
The void laser setup is really neat, but either you pick all those passives, or you pick the “bigger, stronger, better” passives.
Another thing with inspiration from Grim Dawn’s constellation system could be mini talent trees for each blessing (which would vary depending on the blessing itself, not which monolith it’s from).
The progression could be that each time you finish a monolith, you’re given a point which can be put in any blessing’s tree, and if you’ve filled one out, there will be a substantial, “final form” boost. The total number of points would be limited, and filling out all of your blessings would not be possible.
Yea, I have had ideas for how to work tiered trees but it wasn’t specifically for this game. I’ll try to make an example.
Imagine a fake Christmas tree. You have to put the “trunk” of the tree together because it is segmented. Think of a “skill” tree like that. The first section (the base) has a small number of branches (a small tech tree). You can then attach the next tier of trunk. To relate to that, you would have to select the node to continue the tech tree. That tier 2, would then also have a small tech tree. This continues up to tier 4.
Now take that system and say you can only have 1 tier 4, 2 tier 3, 3 tier 2, and 4 tier 1. Note that the tree that goes all the way to tier 4 would take up one from each tier to get there. (basically, you can have a 4 tier tree, a 3 tier tree, a 2 tier tree, and a 1 tier tree at once)
The points you can spend in each tier and how to get them have yet to be thought out.
You want to progress to the end on character level 100? You want more variety in all aspects?
My suggestion would be this:
With each level-up you get the matching number of points (whether the new points should be called skill points or whatever - I call them here once “special points”).
→ So from character level 1 → 2 you get 2 of these special points, with character level 2 → 3 you get 3 of these special points… at the end you get more and more with time…with character level 99 on 100 you get 100 of these special points.
These special points can be spent, as you like, in the passive skill tree, for unlocking more skill specialization slots or for skill specializations, where everything possible is differently expensive (balancing thing).
Example Sentinel (just to make it clearer):
Putting once in Overwhelm costs maybe only one special point each, while each point put in Armour Clad costs 2 or 3 special points.
You would still have to set a yet to be determined amount of these new special points in the Sentinel Tree to be allowed to set anything in the championships later on.
Setting once on “Vengeance->Executioner” might cost 3 special points, while setting once on “Vengeance-> Blade Assault” costs only 1 special point and setting once on “Vengeance->Bolster” costs 7 special points.
And so on…
EDIT:
Thinking again: In skill trees “cap” (cut?) the maximum special points to be awarded just at the respective character level, then it fits approximately.
I’m not able to fully visualize this system of yours.
Am I imagining it right as something along the lines of this? https://i.imgur.com/5BhU7Qa.png
Amount of passives and paths is simplified, but they should generally be a smaller amount in the range of ~5, no?
I think it could be neat, and each block would be represented by a different blessing. The first monolith would only offer tier 1’s, the trees of increased gold gain and increased exp gain etc. would all have their own layout with different passives.
Points could be gained every time you finish a monolith.
Right now each individual passive is meant to (in an ideal world where a game can be balanced 100%) offer equal value per point spent, with slight value per point increase as you reach a higher “tier” or row (I assume, though this is often not the case).
Your version of “this passive is stronger than the others, so it costs more” is in the end no different from the current “this passive is stronger than the others, we need to nerf this or buff the others”.
And also, people would probably unlock every single passive for the value of going from 0 > 1.
In the end, you can ballpark it so that it comes out to about the same, right.
→ It was and is more about the combination of “similar as it is now” and “the last character level-ups don’t bring enough/give you the good feeling of progression”.
Who can skill up approximately how often and where (whether in one of the passive trees or in the skill trees) would come in the end - as now indicated several times - to very similar values.
EDIT:
If each skill point costs some (different amount) and the total limit within the skill trees is limited (character level dependent), you wouldn’t waste your points - still - somewhere, I think.
→ The same then applies within the championships.
Each “skill” has it’s own tree with up to 4 tiers. You can only take one skill all the way through tier 4. You could get a second skill up to tier 3. And so on. The trees wouldn’t cross over with each other, but there would be a cost. If you take tier 4 on “skill 1”, you can’t get tier 4 on any other skill.
Interesting idea. Wouldn’t you pretty much always just max out your main attack skill? Feels a bit like a false choice (like how a mobility skill is supposedly optional).
Overall i like where the skill trees are ignoring those that definitely need an update (mostly primalist).
I want that to happen and i see it happening in the future. I remember Jerle ask how LE will keep a fresh feeling of old skills the same way POE can revamp old skill with support gems. The response from Sarno was they would more likely add new nodes to the skill trees.
Since your goal is to have people distribute more points, the passives would need to have a higher max point cap but where each increase has a smaller effect, in order to reach a total effect similar to the current passives.
Most passives will either be maxed out or have a single point put into them, due to the way the majority of passives are specialized to suit certain builds.
Your want to make it feel more rewarding when leveling up during the lategame, but an issue with that is that at a low level, a single passive point doesn’t amount to much change, but at a high level a single passive point can have a huge effect due to the compounding of other passives and gear.
So a passive point at lvl 90 is already much more valuable than one at lvl 10, what you’re proposing is amplifying that discrepancy even further, making it feel like you’re not rewarded at all when lvling up at low levels, and giving huge bursts of power every time you level up in the endgame.
It’s kinda off topic. The trees aren’t meant as an idea for the current LE skills. It was just an idea I had for a tech tree system.
It isn’t really that innovative. There are other games that do similar but they just let you specialize more and more with classes. It would be like Sentinel > Void Knight > Dark Lancer > Death Dragoon. Each class upgrade would have its own subsequent tech tree. Almost like a class tree. Ragnarok Online does something like that.
In the end, I feel that if adding a new way of character progression, it’s better to do so in a more generalized way (i.e “mini passive trees”) rather than making specialized skills even more specialized. In that case I’d rather see those skill improvements be added to the base skill tree and maybe increase the max skill level.
Essentially everything is correct, only the following still needs, I think, a supplement:
In the low levels, everything builds up first anyway, and level ups in this area usually happen very quickly. It goes basically blow on blow ahead, there it does not make much, if one first only quite few points per level up gets, that balances itself out then already fast enough.
→ With lvl 50, for example, you can already do a lot of things.
You could also set a possible limit within individual skill trees and the passive trees; and that could also be based on the respective character level. There would be a whole range of possibilities to not let the whole skill system grow out of proportion.
Yes that’s a fair point, but excuse my unwillingness/inability to do the math, but if we’re using a point system as the one you proposed, wouldn’t the player relative to the current system be receiving less power per levelup all the way to lvl 50, and only then start to decrease?
That’s pretty much the whole campaign. Even if that is not the core of the game, it’s meant to draw new players in and want to actually experience what comes after it.
I still feel like this system wouldn’t truly address the core of the issue, it just ends up as a psychological trick.
Sure you’ll get a whole 90(!) points when you reach level 90, but in reality those 90 points will only be worth maybe ~2 of the current passive points.
How do you come to that?
→ How much 90 special points are worth in your example would be - as indicated several times - to determine more precisely (balancing as EHG considers correct).
I think and hope you meant increase here.
→ And again, lvl 50 was an example.
Plus in my first post it was (hopefully) obvious that a point in a skill tree could also cost only a few LITTLE special points.
Again in sum:
As it is:
1-> Today you get one passive point per level up to distribute.
(More HP and the like I leave out at this point).
2-> Each time you click/raise in these passive skill trees costs 1 such passive point.
3-> You need at least 20 points in one of the class archetypes to be allowed to put in the class specializations.
4-> The active skills level themselves up to max lvl 20 (without items).
5-> Skillslots are automatically unlocked at certain character levels. (max 5)
How it would be:
1-> You would get special points per character level, exactly as many as the character level you have reached.
2-> These special points can be spent in the passive skill trees, whereby the individual passive skills would still have to be weighted in their costs. (balancing).
3-> You need at least ??? special points (balanced by EHG) in one of the class archetypes to be allowed to put in the class specializations.
4-> These special points can be spent in the active skill trees, whereby the individual active skills would still have to be weighted in their costs. (balancing). The maximum special points that one may “invest” in this way in such an active skill tree, depend again on the own character level or are identical with this.
5-> Skillslots are basically also unlocked with special points. How expensive this will be is again a balancing question. How many of them you are allowed to have in the end is also a balancing question. (I would suggest more than 5 at this point. First, these skill slot unlocks in such a system coocur with other, more combat-relevant things, secondly, some would like to - and quite a few potential purposes come to mind - simply use many more such skill slots at the same time).
EDIT:
Just to point 4 I would like to say something more.
→ In such a system (the new one), the user basically has the choice between several “supposedly” weaker and therefore cheaper skill boosts, or just a few less of the better ones. (or mixed of course)
In today’s system, almost everyone takes the supposedly stronger points, since they are all of equal value/equal cost.
I thought you meant to have them only work as passive mastery points.
In which cause you’d use 50 as the base value and make it equivalent to what is currently 1 point, since it’s just -1 and +1 before/after.
But anyway, if we’re talking universal points that can be used for nearly all character progression besides gear and blessings, it’s definitely different enough that things would get shaken up. For good or bad.
