The D4 skill tree is just an illusion to make it look and feel more complex. At the end of the day, your options are very limited. You saying that each skill has 3 different options is disingenuous on it’s face because the first upgrade is simply automatic, and thus an extension of the skill itself. No, you really do just have 2 options with each skill, and they’re not really that interesting either. “10% more damage per enemy hit” doesn’t really change the way you play with the skill.
As for the passive choices, it’s usually really obvious which ones apply to your build and which one’s don’t. For sorc, if you’re running skills that use cold, you take the coldpassives. It’s not much more complex than that.
In D3 the five different runes usually completely changed the way you used the skill altogether (changing the element it used, changing from melee to ranged, switching it from aoe to single target or vice versa, etc.) If D4 has anything like that I haven’t seen it, and I definitely perused the skill trees a fair amount.
The paragon board is another illusion. It almost appears complex, but it’s really just a bunch of “+5 mainstat,” while runes are things like “+vulnerable damage.” At the end of the day it’s not that interesting or exciting.
I’m baffled you think it’s more complex than Last Epoch. It’s definitely not. The LE passive trees have more depth than the entire D4 paragon board. Every passive does diverse things for the build in particular - no two are the same. The paragon board is all the same, and only a small step up from D3 paragon quite frankly.
If you want to like D4, that’s one thing, but don’t say it’s more involved than LE because it certainly is not.
To be honest, I dislike LE’s passive tree. It’s too… meh. It’s boring. Unoriginal. Games have done skill trees like this for 2 decades now.
I want the grid system back
Diablo 4’s skill tree is interesting, it’s new. It may not be that complex, but you do have to make some tough decisions on where to put points.
Basically the same thing for the paragon board. The glyphs are a little more than just “+vulnerable damage,” but they’re not too complex. And there are issues with some glyphs.
Like there’s one glyph that increases cold damage of nodes in range, as well as DR, but I couldn’t find a cold damage node in the cold boards. I couldn’t find flat DR either. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough…
At least they’re trying new things. Like EHG did with LE’s skill trees.
To each their own, but I think the tree is shit. It just D3s in a different format, with less options. Paragon Board is the only interesting aspect, even it is sorta meh.
And 80% of LE’s skill tree nodes are +dmg or +effect or reduced cost. Neither are ground breaking. I never said D4 was akin to rocket surgery, I was simply saying that calling it simplistic, compared to D3 is disingenuous. That doesn’t even count the many Legendary powers that modify how skills work/interact/synergize…whereas D3 was more, or less, driven by set bonuses.
You act like one game (that you like) requires a PHD in 15 different mathematical and problem solving disciplines, while the one you don’t like is mastered by braindead lab rats, overloaded with valium.
Also, I never once said D4 was more complex than LE, so please keep your words out of my keyboard. Besides, LE isn’t even that complex. If you play a void build, you take +void dmg. If you’re a spell caster, you take +spell dmg. derp de derp. If you need defense, you take dmg reduction. See, how we both can play the reductionist game?
Are you going to move the goalposts again, and accuse me of saying D4 is more complex than POE? Because I can go ahead and prepare my “I never said that”, response right now.
Yeah, those +stat or +res sure are in-depth and differ from build to build. I never know what that +spell dmg node will do with my build either. Sometimes I take them, just to be surprised!
It’s not even like LE’s was ground breaking; It’s the same as every other stepping-stone skill tree, just with a web layout.
I was responding to the following statement you made:
I think LE’s overall approach to skills and passives is more interesting. Skill trees do more than +%damage, just look at the lightning blast tree. There’s a lot going on there, a lot of different playstyles for one skill depending on the direction you take with it. The passive tree is just a traditional RPG skill tree, but that’s fine, and even then there are choices that have to be made outside of +5 mainstat.
D4 is okay, I might even play it a bit more this weekend, but I feel like it could be more. Maybe they’ll improve over the next couple of patches.
I hit 97 last night and doing tier 47 Nightmare dungeons
Playing Landslide Druid and using Trample to proc more Landslides, in regards to builds theres a few but they could add plenty to change playstyles
Every Druid and I mean every single one apart from me is playing Werebear currently which is understandable and ive seen many of them
ironic thing they give you tools to respec easily but because the Paragon board has over 200 points to reallocate…I cant be bothered respecing by taking screenshots of my board incase I want to go back, its actually worse than PoE to respec and will take 30 mins in town to do it but PoE gives you tools to save builds etc
Anyways I think the complexity is just for the novelty, once you get everything pinned down, the game is quite simple.
The paragon just enhances your existing build, maybe you can compliment a bit, so is just 6 skills with two options, 90% of them actually a option is better than the other once you understand the game a bit (vulnerability related? almost auto-pick). Everything is increased unless has a [x ] behind, that is always legendaries and class passives. In legendaries there’s little variation between builds, and once you filter out non-class effects, there’s no so much to choose from, at least if you go for efficiency, I think there are a lot off cool minor effects and small synergies, but 30% multiplicative will always win over that.
Do you mean 3rd party tools like PoB, LEtools and grimtools or do you mean actual ingame? I haven’t played PoE in a couple of years but pretty sure it never had anything like that ingame tho ingame skill tree planner was one of the things they said they’ll do but never did iirc.
Haven’t played D4 myself but thats a common problem in games like Death seal for Liches in LE, Inquisitor seal for Inquis in GD, etc.
It’s a line where you put certain amounts of points in (kinda like TQ & GD) to “unlock” higher skills, except unlike TQ/GD there’s no main stat bar you can put the points in, it has to be skills.
True, D4’s skills are limited to affecting more basic functionality of the skills themselves – dmg, duration, cooldown, etc, and modifications of the skill functionality/synergy is reserved to Legendary items and/or glyph effects (possibly coming later like D3 gems did)
I think D4 is more involved, because there’s more to take into consideration with the paragon board. You have to consider your glyphs and the power modifications due to the surrounding stats, and the radius effect, based on the glyph level. Whereas with LE, for me at least, I’m really just looking how I can get X points in passive trees to unlock the level/skill I want. What I’m taking is not anymore complicated than how you described Diablo – +dmg if I want dmg… defenses if I need defenses. Or, more likely, the “most useful” passive to add up to X to unlock the row/skill I want.
It’s exactly the same as PoE just with rrotating tiles. Go the mathematicly best way at best in a third party tool that calculates everything for you. Depending on the class you choose you are in some troubble :D. Making the Paragon boards for Barb = NP. Paragon board for Sorc get a bit tricky. Making Paragon boards and keep all interactions with the druid in mind… oh boy I stare at the board for hours while tipping in the calculator and using several google docs to get all the nodes i want and the attribute breakepoints I need ^^.
D4 is complex enough if you want to get the last drop of minmaxing out of it.
You are some hours behind the actual meta there. I always played Werewolf and while the bears are tank af I laugh at their lil wiener dmg while beeing decently tanky myself.
Werebear has the neatest clear with Pulverize, not sure what Werewolf build you are playing but ive been playing Landslide/Trample since around level 41 on day 2 and I can actually kill Nightmare T50 bosses in 3 seconds at level 98 currently, should be 99 in about 2 hours - not sure about behind the meta because theres now builds popping up called Trampleslide which is just the shit ive been doing for days
Landslide itself has awful clear but Trample fixes that as it procs your Landslide and using the aspect giving Landslide double casts at 22%ish more damage it just blows up packs
Been mainly doing a lot of testing on defence mechanics namely armor and the best setups, I got my armor from 4.3k > 5.8k and theres an big difference
edit: quick showing of the map I just did and the average kill, any target that cannot be knocked back ie bosses and structures take immense damage and I have very high crit chance/multi now
Trampleslide is awesome but I like my hurricane or doubble basic attack wolf far more. it’s faster and smoother then the trample bear . CD dependend defence is an issue for the wolf but proccing 5 lightning attacksthat refund the CD of said CD makes it pretty short while being kind of semi ranged.
I wait for a vid of a content creator who jumped on the build and link it here when he minmaxed it and makes an actual video about it. I still can’t bring myself to make videos :D.
. CD dependend defence is an issue for the wolf but proccing 5 lightning attacksthat refund the CD of said CD makes it pretty short while being kind of semi ranged.