With mastery respec is there gonna be build/ gear templates for quick switch?

General
51

I totally agree with this. They did cave a bit with autotransfer.
But it is kinda baffling how such a polarizing issue like mastery respec, where EHG has taken such a strong stance in the past regarding the character identity aspect of it, is suddenly pivoted like this, whereas a topic that is almost universally agreed upon by all players like autopickup for materials is still a hill they want to die on.

As a sidenote, EHG has said in the past, very explicitly, that the reason they didn’t want mastery respec is because your mastery is your class, not a subclass/ascendancy type of thing.
So I guess class respec is coming soon(ish)? :laughing:

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52

It’s not, they hate it. PoE 2 has a lot of players, but if you had taken a look at the Path of Exile 1 reddit, they were whining incessantly about PoE 2 (until talk about the sequel became forbidden there). IMO, PoE 2 has not been made for the PoE 1 community - the slower pace of the game is making the PoE 1 community furious.

53

Look at the influencers and their communities and you don’t have that.

Reddit is and always was a cesspool of a mess. You don’t get proper community consensus from there, it’s a decent way to at least see a direction but much like any other medium it needs to be taken with a salt of grain as negativity is the primary leading force of why people engage with those mediums. Exceptions obviously apply, but are not the majority norm.

And a game which is different then they game they got to love is obviously against many people’s enjoyment. It was designed to not be like PoE 1 despite being obviously PoE still in style. But the grand majority of the community is either neutral towards the game or positive. You just fell into the ‘the loudest ones aren’t the majority’ trap there.

54

Well, kinda. Ziz, Ghazzy and Rax, for example, have said repeatedly in their streams (and in their videos) that many PoE1 players in their community don’t like PoE2.
Is that a relevant enough number? We have no idea. But there is a sizable portion of PoE1 players that don’t like it. It’s not universally liked by that community.

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55

OK, then make it limited so you get to change your Mastery as often as you’d like until you hit lv 75 (good place to have experienced all a Mastery has to offer) and then lock it. Or go the D2 route and completing a quest gives you a single Respec and you get three of them across the character.

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56

I just left you a massive reply on discord (at almost the same time as you put this here) but I’ll reply here too.

Why? Those are options that are on the table. I’m not opposed to some limiting factor like that at all. What’s the benefit to it though? What does it do for the gameplay experience? Can those things be done another way?

57

Yep! I saw it! Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

To answer the question: having some sense of character permanence adds to the replayability. Why would I make a second Rogue when I can just make one that can swap between masteries depending on my mood? I’ll never need more than 5 characters. I was ready and willing to make 15 characters, I’ve already gotten 6 done actually, but now I have no reason to have more than 5.

On top of the replayability, it also prevents situations like swapping masteries for specific tasks. We don’t see this much now because within a Mastery you’re better off building for a “general purpose” build since respeccing skills requires re-leveling them. But with Mastery Respec, I can make a build entirely focused on farming monoliths with some single target for bossing, then swap to a Mastery that’s got a much stronger bossing build for Abberoth (or future ubers) spend 15 minutes releveling my skills and I can now more easily farm Abby than I would have been able to with the original Mastery. I predict that meta builds based around the ability to swap masteries will become far more prevalent. I could be wrong but you see it a lot in games with free Respecs look at Diablo 3/4 for easy examples since swapping builds only requires swapping gear/skills.

Lastly, people will complain about how tedious it is to swap builds and since it seems like there was caving done on the fact that they couldn’t swap masteries I’m not convinced you won’t cave and provide skill loadouts and remove the skill Respec cost (another major complaint I’ve seen alongside the lack Mastery Respecs).

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58

I think the big “why” is being answered by the main reason you guys at EHG decided to have the mastery be locked in the first place: It is a very meaningful and imapctful choice, which elevates your character in a way that can’t be undone, that makes it exciting for many people.

And while I can see and understand reasons to have a mastery respecced I really think that being able to change the mastery simply negates a lot of the impact and how “special” it is to master a specific class.

The benefit is, if you would implement some kind of limitation or stipulation that it will bring back a little bit of the “special thing”, which it wouldn’t have at all when its easily reverted or changed.

While I obviously would love to let the mastery stay permanent, if you really decided to change your mindset and philosophy on this one I at least would hope for some kind of stipulation/limitation.

I really just don’t wanna see a game where people change mastery left and right based on the flavour of the week.

We already have a couple of options on the table, which is good, I just really hope some of them get implemented in some way or another.

  • Make it once per character with some sort of quest
  • Make it so the quest to unlock empowered timelines entails a short quest that “imprints” the future of your character so you no longer can change your mastery from that point onwards.
  • Give us a “training room area” where you can test all masteries includign all skills, this would negate some of the “wrong decisions” some new players made because they thought skill X Y or Z looks good, but they find otu they dislike it

I really think that the “new players” that this change is aimed to be for, would be severle less impacted, because it either negates or dimishes the “wrong choice”, so it solves the problem of these palyers for the most part. If a new player tests outs the mastery they think fits the mbest and finds out it doesn’t, they can change that. I really don’t think a new player would change the mastery back and forth or multipel times, unelss they really want to test out all 3 first, before permanently deciding for one.
So with any of these abovie mentioned points that should be dealt with, while still having some sort of limitation for veterans and seasoned players. Even though there will still be exploitable scenarios where the meta will invovle some kind of changing masteries midway through your progression. And while I dont love that, that might be the pill I have to swallow here.

We really have no permanent chocies or consequences in LE, when this change comes and I truely think overall this is a net negative for the game as a whole, even though some people will enjoy it.
I also think there are a lot of people who will not like it, but because the option is there they will use it, because they would hamstring themselves in not utilizing all the tools they have.

Wheather or not how it will be implemented exactly and if it will change in future patches I will refuse to use this feature.

4 Likes
59

What does it do for the gameplay experience?

First it creates a sense of connection to your class and your fellow class enjoyers. I love paladin, I play a lot of paladin, paladin is considered decent in the early game and mid game, with mid level end game performance. other sentinels do better during the end game. So to me when you click the paladin mastery, you are accepting and theorizing around how to utilize that strength. Maybe you farm 300c early with no need for gear and you just cap out there. it allows you early access to the market and better able to position yourself. Or maybe you prefer a forge guard that needs specific gear to push higher, but eventually can hit 700c. And when you select forge guard you understand that you will be slower at progression but with a better top end.

Without mastery lock, why would I discuss the nuance of a build that is able to easy and quickly hit a good farm pace without a strong end game? instead thats just a given, your progression is paladin for campaign/early monos and then swap to your prefered end game build.

In an mmo I played I played a very bad character, a character who had an entirely different control scheme to the rest of the cast, I had to learn and discover my characters strengths. If I could just change class on the fly, I would have never bothered to learn how to play, id just simply swap to whatever was best for the given situation as thats the most logical course of action.

The benefit is exactly the same as the current restriction on why skills need to relevel. To prevent people from hotswapping left and right, ill just say right now, a gold cost is not enough of a cost, for MG players, they will have plenty of ways to get gold, and after a point for many CoF players gold is an after thought. So they wont mind spending 1m gold on swapping classes to blow up a boss.

I guess my questions is, why is swapping mastery for a small cost a non factor, but hot swapping + skill levels was made obtuse to stop hot swapping. its okay to spend 5 minutes + X amount of gold to completely trivialize a boss you were struggling with, but its not okay to do the same with a simple gear swap?

The logic does not add up.

I think if you limit the class swapping to characters under level 65, then you can easily open up some power leveling strats for those that want them(start paladin, swap to FG at monos etc) and allow new players to freely try everything.

I see 0 value or reason for why a level 100 character suddenly needs to become another class other then laziness/power gaming stand points.

You claim the choice was made for new players, new players have plenty of time to try everything out by level 65, ill even accept 75. Around 75~ you can be done with normal monos. if you “made a mistake” it should have been corrected by then. Hell TL:I lets you respec passives for free till level 90, even that is a decent starting point of “you can try everything, but dont get free reign forever”

This is akin to eating your entire hamburger then saying “well sorry i asked for no cheese, make me another”

Thats just my 2c on the matter, I much prefer games where you cant change class, as it means you as the player must learn and play your class to really understand it. its not a hill id die on either.

4 Likes
60

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but this whole thing seems to be a “if it’s in the game, I’m going to use it because not using it would be sub-optimal”.

But isn’t that exactly what having to level another character up to change masteries is? Like if I wanted to play a shaman, and I don’t like my beastmaster, do I just abandon my beastmaster and reroll and relevel the same character until I can pick my new mastery?

I’m confused about people saying that there is no meaningful choice anymore. You don’t HAVE to use the mastery respec. You can totally leave your characters locked in stone and roll up another character for a different mastery. Is it sub-optimal? Sure, but you have that choice. If you chose to go down a more optimal route and respec instead, aren’t you just proving that the devs were right to put it into the game?

61

Maybe it shouldn’t be linked to character level… I’d say it would be fine if the mastery wasn’t locked up until you unlocked Empowered… That’s when the game really begins, after all.

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62

Well, besides all the things that were already discussed already, I can give you a downside to it for a portion of the playerbase:
Let’s suppose Season 3 comes with a new mastery, for example for Primalist. Players in legacy will log in to their level 100 Primalist, respec to the new mastery, try it out for a few hours with a few different builds (because they’re already level 100; so it doesn’t take too long) and be done with the new content in a day.

Whereas if you had a limit to it like in D2 (or a level cap like someone suggested), this is much less likely to happen.

I guess it’s fine if you don’t care about legacy players, though.

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63

I think I’m the one who started the level requirement suggestion lol. But I agree I think a handful (three would be perfect) quests that give a token of some sort that allows you to Respec. Let’s say you get the first from the quest where you pick the Mastery. The second from killing Majasa, and the final from finishing normal monoliths. I’d say those are reasonable times to give you a chance to experience the class.

You can Respec once at any time between unlocking the class and finishing the campaign. Once again between finishing the campaign and finishing normal mono’s (these could be done in either order) then you’d have one left for use during empowered mono’s if you still weren’t sure if you wanted that class.

I also realized halfway through writing this that I used “class” instead of Mastery every time. Is that telling? I think that’s telling.

Edit: I said Lagon, but my brain totally forgot Majasa lol

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64

Just the option for a mastery respec existing already dimishes the impact a this mastery choice has on you as a player and it strongly defines how the game is played and how it feels. Wheather you use the option or not.

Right now the mastery is part of the identify of that one particular character, it is not only a part of your build, your mastery is your character. And with how many choices within one given mastery exist there are a plethora of buidls you can go for even within that one mastery.

Now with mastery being able to change it is not part of your character anymore, it is part of your build, which can be changed and thus makes the whole character building a lot less impactful.

Also jsut because somethign is added that the majority of players will use, doesn’t make it a “good feature” or a net positive for the game.

Also the argument of:"If you don’t like it don’t use it " holds no weight for me.

I really like commitment in any kind of RPG and/or loot driven games. Character building and progression gives me a lot of fun and enjoyment.Just merely the option existing of changing it anytime severly downgrades this for me, evne though I am not using the feature.

No it is not, absolutely not. Having to rebuild a new character and “grow into it” is an entirely different experience.

If you change from a Level 75 Beastmaster to a Level 75 Shaman without ever having played that Shaman through the story of early monoliths is a very different experience.

This contradicts itself. A meaningful choice is one, that you cannot undo. Just because you decide not to change it, doesn’t make it meaningful. The game putting some, argueable arbitrary restrictions onto the player can convoke this.

I want to reemphasize, I can see the benefit of having a changeable mastery, but I do think it is a net negative for the game and it does not outweight the benefits of having some form of mroe permanent and meaningful choices.

3 Likes
65

I’ll also address this and expand with a different example:
Many people complain that the campaign is too easy and boring to run. However, you have the option to run it naked and make it hard.
You can even just assign random points to your passive tree and randomly choose your skills and skill points.

Now the campaign is suddenly very hard and unpredictable. Does that mean that LE’s campaign is fine and doesn’t need changes? After all, you don’t HAVE to play the game the way it tells you to.

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66

Then you should be in favor of removing any respec ability at all. If choosing a mastery is a meaningful choice, then shouldn’t picking each and every skill point be a meaningful choice? Shouldn’t choosing which skills to specialize in be a meaningful choice?

We can see that EHG wants you to be able to play around and experiment to find what works for you. I see mastery respec as an extension of that philosophy. That being said, I don’t think it should be cheap or easy, and they might need to make you level up your skill points again if you do this, something like you lose all the skill points after your mastery tree and you need to re-earn them.

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I am feeling like we are in politics now, its either extreme right or extreme left, no middle ground. If you are agaisnt something you need to be on the opposite spectrum… ehm no the world is not pure black & white.
You know there is a healthy dose of anything? I don’t want every single thing to be a meanignful choice. But I want some meaningful chocies and as of now there really is only the mastery, everything else is always very changeable. Also a meaningfull chocies doesn’t always have to come with a permanent stipulation, but a small penalty or stipulation is ok as well, like skill respeccing.

Back in 0.7.X they changed skill respec to be much much mroe forgiving, which was a change that I didn’t advocate for, I like it how it was before. (They implemented Minimum Respec Level and faster catchup mechanics for low level skills).
So it doesn’t mean I want permanent chocies with my skills, because I myself like to experiment with different setups and test out things.

But with how much freedom a single mastery gives you already, I think that commiting to one and then experiment within that mastery is more than enough.

You could see it that way and I wouldn’t disagree, but the issue here that I personally have and I heard soem other people saying this as well.

What makes this change so not with their philosophy is that it now all of the sudden changed from 0 to 100, at least this is how it was depicted in the very short segment of the trailer. (They always had a very clear stance of no plans for it and now all of the sudden they implement it)

So I am aiming all of my feedback and concerns very openly here in the forum in the hopes that EHG at least reconsiders how they implement it, since I doubt they will completely do a 180° on this and revoke this upcoming change.

I really don’t think this is necessary as long as there is some limitation or otehr stipulation involved. What you describe is just a arbitrary inconnvience to desincentivice switching mastery, but switching a mastery is such a large thing that whyever you decide to do it you will do it anyway, unless they implement this kind of thing to prevent switchign back and forth continously, which I hope will not be possible at all, because at that point it doesn’t have to do anything with “reconsidering your mastery”, but purely for the flavor of the week.

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68

BTW will class resets rest the monolith as well? Or don’t you mind if someone cleared all monos into the bosstages and then swaps into another mastery that is doing more single target dmg.
So a handbreake for the minmaxers and balsters so to speak. Many people already seem to have nightmares because other people they’ll never meet will do stuff they can’t ^^.

69

I don’t expect that will happen. After all, mastery respec doesn’t change this. You can already do it within the same mastery by changing builds for the same reason. Mastery respec just increases your options, nothing more.

70

I know this is just a preemptive post so we get an answer on this before that topic finds it’s way here. Met to much crybabys the past days.

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