Ever since I bought this game in early access the description of the Runemaster has read:
“A savant who tamed the power of raw arcane, weaving its chaos with the art of runes. The Runemaster infuses magic into offensive and protective wards that devastate those who trespass them, ensnaring his foes, raising walls and golems at his whim.”
This very clearly referenced the Rune Master as the pet class out of the Mage tree, and I was actually excited for that.
Seemed to make perfect sense, every class has at least one spec that allows you to make a minion build. Forge Guards exist which allow a minion build on a character who is a fighter baseline. Beastmasters and Necromancers were the summoning specialists for Primalists and Acolytes, who also have baseline summons. Falconers were going to be added eventually to add that capability to rogues, and Runemaster was going to play that role for the Mage.
Now Runemaster comes out and there are no golems. Mages don’t have any summons at all except for the teleport mirror images which can’t attack.
This is extremely disappointing. After literally years of waiting for the summoner class for mages to be added at the last second you just pull a bait and switch and add something completely different that seems to just be a slightly different, frankly less interesting, sorcerer.
Was really looking forward to playing this at release, now I feel like something that was spelled out in black and white for years that I really wanted got taken away for absolutely no reason.
While I can see people being disappointed about the 3 missing Masteries, once they come out, I think referencing to a text, that was very old and was actually removed at some point is unreasonable.
Plans change and while EHG might had an idea about Runemaster in the past, the current plan obviously changed.
Also one thing that I majorly disagree with is:
Thinks like this would be one step closer to homonegizing classes, which I personally don’t like at all.
I personally can feel your disappointment, when similar stuff in the past was not as expected or initially described.
But at the end of the day things like this will never hit the mark for everybody and I think that Runemaster turned out to be a big step forward in terms of how good and modern a new mastery feels. (Similar to when Rogue was released)
That’s still on their website right now. Sure, they will probably remove it now that they replaced a potentially interesting class with a second elemental blaster that does nothing but compete with Sorcerer for that meta.
I think that’s complete nonsense.
Does Spellblade homogenize the classes because it gives the mage a melee build option?
Does Forge Master homogenize the classes because if gives the sentinel a summon option?
If anything they have homogenized mage builds because instead of giving people a class that does something mages couldn’t do before all they did was create a second flavor of sorcerer which is now in direct competition with another subclass.
Interesting analogy, considering when the painters began painting our house, we noticed they were using the wrong color/finish paint, so we were able to stop them, and get it corrected before they wasted their time(and money) on painting the entire house wrong. But, I guess we shouldn’t have said anything until they were finished, and everything had dried. Or even just gone along with it, and pretended to not be upset, because “things change”?
In this case, it looks like EHG took a completely different path, than the one they had stated, without announcing, or discussing that change, with anyone in the community. So I can understand why someone looking forward to a Mage pet-class, summoning golems, and maybe placing various effect runes, might be disappointed. Honestly, I was expecting runes to be more like POE’s Brand skills. But, alas…
Bottom line is I was looking forward to playing a mage with arcane/elemental summons and they decided, no, we need another mobility skill, another AoE, another bolt, and a skill that is really 40 skills all of which are more of the same as well. The wall is cool I guess.
Runic Invocation is also one of those things that seem cool in theory, but in practice nobody is going to use all 40 effects. It makes it seem like you can get really good at it always weave the perfect spell together, but we all know how this will actually get used in real play: You will figure out the combination that gives you the most useful effect for what you’re doing and then always cast other elements in the exact rotation you need to get that effect. Nobody is going to do any crazy rune weaving, because there is no way the payoff to casting a slightly different shaped AoE will ever outweigh the benefit of running through a well practiced rotation without having to think about it.
Yeah"interesting" is certainly one word I’d use for it. And I totally get being disappointed in a decision I wasn’t high enough up the chain to be a privvy to. I also want to actually get my hands on it before I lament what we didn’t get. Everyone’s mileage will certainly vary though. If there’s one thing in life (and gaming communities) that’s certain, nothing pleases everyone all the time.
To me runemaster looks like what sorcerer should be.
From the looks of what runemaster is, its a elemental combo class, so whats sorc? the basic bitch elemental caster for people with tiny brains who dont wanna do whacky combos?
This is slightly off topic but this sorta exactly what I was fearing, the three new masteries are going to have “druid syndrome” druid was completely reworked from the ground up fairly recently and is leaps and bounds more cohesive and well designed. it has more interesting build choices and skill tech then the other primalists because its essentially made years apart.
Sorc has not seen substantial design shifts for years, now suddenly a new elemental caster is on the block with 10x the design mojo put into it.
I feel like the two have so much damn over lap, I expected something removed from “Elemental caster” I expected traps and sigils and whacky rune words. Not elemental beams and aoes…
That being said, ill try out invoker… I mean runemaster since its content
They can’t please everyone, but they could have not removed a thing that would have pleased some people for the benefit of people who were already pleased with something else.
This was kinda of my impression as well – that Runemaster just looks like a more complicated Sorcerer, but can just do everything better and in a more interesting way. I don’t see much difference in the masteries, at this limited level, to make me think that are wildly different in scope.
It is fine to be disappointed and voice what you think about the mastery and what you would have liked to see.
BUT
This shows that you don’t know enough about the 40 different Invocations to judge.
There are way more skills than some variations of Aoe.
There is singletarget, shotgun, chaining, buffs, utility, CC, casting other RM skills, projectiles etc.
I hope that you will give RM a fair try to at least discover it’s possibilities.
Doesn’t change the fact that all of these effects compete against each other for usage, especially since you need to hit a specific combo of abilities to set them up.
It’s inevitable that you will identify the most powerful one for your general purposes and then simply always combo into that one, because doing anything else is less effective.
A system like that is fun when you don’t know it, and you’re just pulling the lever on the slot machine and seeing what kind of crazy abilities pop out, but once you master the system you’ll know exactly what is most useful, and I guarantee you you’ll use one or two combos max because there just won’t be enough of a payoff to trying to match your cast with the exact situation unfolding on the screen to justify the added complexity over natural flow.
As long as they play different and use different skills and/or slightly different stats, it wouldn’t really be homogeneous. Just depends on what you’re doing. I’m always down for more pet classes, as long as they’re interesting.
And I can see people being disappointed. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it myself. However, yeah if you wanted a pet class that gets to use mage spells, that’s perfectly valid. It’d only be unreasonable to say the entire game is now valueless because it’s absent. That position I would find unreasonable.
I mean, the game is objectively worse than it could have been because it doesn’t have the option to play a minion mage. Is it completely ruined? No, of course not.
I am of the thought train that not every class “should” be a summoner. I think it’s odd, but ok that the Sentinel can summon minions with MA and FW, but I think it should be restricted to only one sub-class (such as FG). The fighter class has never been a summoner but more of an up-in-your-face slice-and-dice machine of sorts.
Do I run away from the game because it does things that doesn’t fit my pattern of what I think everything should be? No.
That doesn’t mean I think anyone here is saying they are leaving the game because of this, but strong opinions differ for pretty much everyone for one thing or another.
I enjoy the game and I think it’s getting better with time, in spite of the coding mistakes that have caused massive bugs with some patches.
I hope that you can overlook your concept and enjoy the game when the devs don’t seem to have the same concept for the classes.
Maybe yes, maybe no, you havent played any of the possible outcomes of the new class, all is in the imagination field. Maybe the minion mage would suck, maybe it wouldn’t have appeal too many people and they decide this new runemaster would be the smart and better decision.
I feel you, I hate when devs does not give attention to some things of my personal enjoyment (Arena, Im talking to you) but that does not take all the enjoyment we can have with all the other options of the game. And also that does not necessarily invalidate the devs decision, because they have to take into account a larger playerbase and not only personal interest of small groups (Im not saying this request is from a smal group, but could be…)
and you have just described how this game is played, could we say also the majority of ARPGs?
Nothing wrong with it. The tricky part you are ignoring is that different builds probably will discover different combos, and thats the strong part of this setup and maybe the intention, bring diversity and allow players to build differently of each other. If one particular build just use one or two combos, fine, maybe another build will have its strong point in a different combination of skills and runes.
I don’t see an issue with it in a game that wants to put mechanical customization front and center. Like, the inclusion of the Spellblade also gets away from the traditional role of a mage, but allows you to make a larger variety of interesting characters.
Primalists literally cover every single character archetype in fantasy games. It can be a summoner, a tank, a healer, melee, ranged and AoE DPS… It’s so versatile that one of the subclasses alone can turn into four different things by shapeshifting.
So how is there any argument that the mage shouldn’t have more options just because it’s a mage? If mage had a many options as Primalist it would need some healing abilities on top of summons.
The people who miss out on something they wanted to use actually have a worse experience playing the game.
The people who want others to miss out on something they personally never wanted to use are just assholes.
