After browsing over the newfound screenshots from a Chinese website, I have a question regarding skills in D3. Hopefully someone who has played the game has some insight on this...
So I know that there will be a maximum of 7 hot-keyed skills available at any given moment. This is great, as 2 skills on the mouse was not enough (unless you had 12 fingers on your left hand to get all the F-keys) to make for diverse combat.
My question is, how many skills can a character acquire? Is a character limited to only taking 7 skills, or can you take as many as you want? There is this one screenshot in particular that seems to show an interface indicating that a character can select one tier 1 skill, one tier 2 skill, and so forth.
For example, I have just hit the level 3 with my Barbarian, and tier 2 skills have become available. I decide to take Ground Stomp because it's awesome. Soon after this, I hit level 4. Can I spend a point to take Ignore Pain, or will Ground Stomp be the only tier 2 skill that I will ever have?
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Bashiok - "How are the tests on feature XXX going?"
D3 Dev - "Well, our test chimpanzee was not able to understand feature XXX, but he is not a smart chimp."
Jay W - "WHAT?! Have it incinerated! Them simplify, no, REMOVE feature XXX!"
Players - "Wow that was close! I could not understand XXX feature, as I am legally retarded/in the Diablo 3 target audience!"
The character is able to select the skills irrespective of what tier they are on. The tiers are only a group of skills with the same level requirement.
However, despite this, you do not have all of the 7 skill slots available at level 1. They unlock as you gain in levels (exact level numbers are subject to change). Therefore while the tiers do not limit your selection, IIRC the skill slots unlocked at the same levels as tiers. So while you had 1 slot available at tier 1, the second slot opened at the same time as tier 2, but you could select a second skill from tier 1 if you wanted.
Additionally, the number of skills you can cap is also limited by the skill points. Exact details are still unknown, but if we assumed a level 60 would have 59 skill points and say, 6 extra from quests (DII style), you'd have 65 skills, to distribute into 7 skills. Max level of a skill is initially 5, but increases through some system later on.
Hope that clarified it to you.
So that means unlocking Tier 2 will give us the 2nd skill slot but we may choose either Tier 1 or 2 skills right?
How will skill points distribute per level? Would suxor if the skills you wanted is all on Tier 5 or higher meaning you will not allocate any skill points in the first 4 Tiers.
2. Yeah, it sucks that you're force into a little bit of a bottleneck between desirable skills, number of allowed skills, and when the skills/slots unlock. However, slots aside, that's pretty much how Diablo II worked. Particularly before synergies came about, you pretty much just saved your points and sucked it up until you could spend them. Most sorceress builds still involve that, as the lower tiered skills just aren't worth pumping on half the builds.
3. However, my 2. point is no longer really valid for Diablo III (Or, I suppose, Diablo II for that matter with the arrival of 1.13c), because we have the option to respec. That means that in all reality, the skills you need to take in your first ~20 levels are the ones that will help you get through the game and get to the skills that you really want. Once you've reached the highest level you need to unlock all the skills/slots, then you can go back, respec, and pick whatever you want. Though nothing is confirmed, it does seem that at least the first respec or two is pretty much designed to accomodate this, and so, with that and the fact that all classes seem to have some better skills in the lower tiers than in the past, I'm not overly concerned with this issue.
4. Skill point cap starts at 5. Bashiok was quoted as saying that a mechanic for increasing that cap COULD look something like this:
-Once you enter Nightmare, the cap goes to 10.
-Once you enter Hell, the cap goes to 15.
-Once you kill Diablo in Hell, the cap goes to 20.
-Once you enter Nightmare, the cap goes to 10.
-Once you enter Hell, the cap goes to 15.
-Once you kill Diablo in Hell, the cap goes to 20.
really hope not, ive stated my reasons before, mainly because it should be based on your level, not what difficulty you completed, and I still don't understand the 7 skills max thing, is it a balance thing? would you be completely overpowerd if you had 7 max skills, and a few points in another skill giving you 8 or 9?
and how does that work for certain skill requirements, yes they got rid of trees, but im still seeing a few skills that have a good 2-3 skill requirement, are you forced to use those? as part of your 7 skills if you want what those unlock?
and how does that work for certain skill requirements, yes they got rid of trees, but im still seeing a few skills that have a good 2-3 skill requirement, are you forced to use those? as part of your 7 skills if you want what those unlock?
I really hope that isn't the case, I was under the impression that we would be able to pick any random set of skills you wished. Requirements and synergies are what made Diablo 2 frustrating imo.
Thanks for the responses, although the systems looks to work as I feared. I was really hoping I could take like 10 skills, while only having 7 ACTIVE at a time. This really seems to create a rift between PvP and PvE builds/characters, which I am initially unsupportive of.
For instance, an interesting PvP build for a barb looks something like... Ground Stomp/Ignore Pain/Leap Attack/Sprint/Ancient Spear/Taunt/Ferocious Charge right off the top of my head.
You've got the Gap Closers in Leap, Sprint, Charge, Spear, and Ignore Pain to shrug off stuns and slows. Ground Stomp gives you AoE stun, and Taunt and Spear also give some CC effects, which we all know are good. We have no real numbers yet, but I imagine that like all arena games (DotA, LoL, WoW arenas) that movement spells/gap closers are at a premium, and CC is almost required to kill someone. The damage output seems sort of lite, as many of the spells don't deal damage, but let's just use this build as an example.
If I were to take this Barb into PvE... I would probably do terrible. Again, we don't have numbers, but I really cannot see how a build with 2 zero-damage move spells and single target chasing spells could hope to do as well against the endless hordes of Diablo as a build that were something like Whirlwind/Earthquake/Wrath of the Berserker/Seismic Slam/Rend/Cleave/Ground Stomp.
I would really much prefer having more diversity/customization in my characters. If I could take as many skills as a I want, and only have 7 at a time (maybe lock those 7 in during an arena battle), I could mix/max to my desires better. Maybe I only max Taunt/Ground Slam/Ignore Pain/Whirlwind, and put 1 point into Leap/Sprint/Spear/Charge/Earthquake/Seismic slam.
Once again I am sorely let down but the D3 dev team...
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Bashiok - "How are the tests on feature XXX going?"
D3 Dev - "Well, our test chimpanzee was not able to understand feature XXX, but he is not a smart chimp."
Jay W - "WHAT?! Have it incinerated! Them simplify, no, REMOVE feature XXX!"
Players - "Wow that was close! I could not understand XXX feature, as I am legally retarded/in the Diablo 3 target audience!"
what about the newfound screenshots from a Chinese website?
They change nothing. All of that information was known at Blizzcon 2010, because those pictures are from Blizzcon 2010. It's not new information, just new screenshots. Most of them contain outdated UI, stats, modifiers, and such, anyway.
Therefore 7 skills seems to already be quite much for a focused build.
Precisely. And, although the comparison fails in many other regards, I think it's useful to look at Diablo II here. How many skills were actually used in any given build, if we cut out the 1-pointers we need to get to those skills? We also have to cut out passive skills, since those are traits (which are leveled separately in Diablo III.) Meteor, Fireball. Ice Blast, Glacial Spike, Blizzard. Lightning, Chain Lightning. Smite, Zeal, and Fanaticism. Seven skills is a lot more than was ever actually used by the vast majority of players in previous games.
I was under the impression that we were limited to pick only one of the skills per "tier". The reason I came to this conclusion is because of this infamous screenshot where the user has selected only one skill per tier.
Are you saying we could just as well (in this example) choose Lashing Tail Kick, Long Reach, and Hands of Lightning? Where's the proof otherwise?
You are forgetting the fact that with around 60 skill points, you can only max 2 skills and then spend the other 20
Do we know that for certain?
we arent 100% sure skill caps, and that all skill caps will be the same, lets say some cap at 10, and some cap at 15
you could have 5 or so maxed skills
I still don't see the point of it though especially since they have taken the direction of giving you maximum freedom to make your character how you want to, but maybe jack of all trades won't survive ,so even if you did want to end up with 10 or so skills and none of them maxed, they didn't want you to end up with a busted character?
so in a way I guess that makes sense.
You are forgetting the fact that with around 60 skill points, you can only max 2 skills and then spend the other 20
Do we know that for certain?
we arent 100% sure skill caps, and that all skill caps will be the same, lets say some cap at 10, and some cap at 15
you could have 5 or so maxed skills
I still don't see the point of it though especially since they have taken the direction of giving you maximum freedom to make your character how you want to, but maybe jack of all trades won't survive ,so even if you did want to end up with 10 or so skills and none of them maxed, they didn't want you to end up with a busted character?
so in a way I guess that makes sense.
What you suggest is plausible. However, I generally trust Blizzard's sense of design when it comes to skill mechanics. There may need to be some tweaking here or there, but I trust that, whether or not there's a 20 skill point max for each skill, or if they're varied, or neither, that they have extensively tested all these aspects of skills, and that we'll end up with their most well-thought-out choices in that department.
Don't quote me on the skill tier and skill slot unlocking simultaneously. This is subject to change. But yes, in principle, you are correct.
Skill point distribution and such hasn't been touched all that often by Blizzard. Last time when they talked about it, the player gained one skill point per level.
For the problem you described (wanting to use only tier 5+ skills, as an example) there exists the ability to remove skill points. Then you can just train one skill from a lower tier until you are high enough level to put points in tier 5. All the tiers were supposed to unlock during normal difficulty when they talked about it.
Sounds good that there is a remove skill point function.
However, it is still be a shame that we can't unlearn a lower tier skill so we can get another higher tier skill once we unlock those tiers.
Still, something is better than nothing and I can't wait for beta!
Thanks for the info, Don!
I'm not sure if I understood, but you can unlearn any skills one at a time and later place them in any tiers. You can take all the skills from the top tiers if you wish (as I said, you can take even all skills from one tier if you wanted so).
You mean even if we've chosen one skill in Tier 1, when we unlock say Tier 5, I can unlearn my Tier 1 skill and take up Tier 5 skill?
That means we'll be able to respec right?
If so, that's great news!!
Im going to keep lower tier skills just because everyone and their mother will be maxing upper tier skills.
on top of that I will be playing a monk which most people hate, so I should have a pretty unique character on battlenet
I'm a little anxious about how many skills I'll be able to max by 60.
My nightmare is that I'll wake up with only 3 maxed skills and 4 empty spaces on my hotbar, walking through dungeon after dungeon doing nothing but spamming mouse 1 like I've seen in D2 gameplay Vids. >_<!
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So I know that there will be a maximum of 7 hot-keyed skills available at any given moment. This is great, as 2 skills on the mouse was not enough (unless you had 12 fingers on your left hand to get all the F-keys) to make for diverse combat.
My question is, how many skills can a character acquire? Is a character limited to only taking 7 skills, or can you take as many as you want? There is this one screenshot in particular that seems to show an interface indicating that a character can select one tier 1 skill, one tier 2 skill, and so forth.
Here's the Barbarian skills on the wiki http://www.diablowiki.com/Barbarian_(Diablo_III)#Skills
For example, I have just hit the level 3 with my Barbarian, and tier 2 skills have become available. I decide to take Ground Stomp because it's awesome. Soon after this, I hit level 4. Can I spend a point to take Ignore Pain, or will Ground Stomp be the only tier 2 skill that I will ever have?
D3 Dev - "Well, our test chimpanzee was not able to understand feature XXX, but he is not a smart chimp."
Jay W - "WHAT?! Have it incinerated! Them simplify, no, REMOVE feature XXX!"
Players - "Wow that was close! I could not understand XXX feature, as I am legally retarded/in the Diablo 3 target audience!"
So that means unlocking Tier 2 will give us the 2nd skill slot but we may choose either Tier 1 or 2 skills right?
How will skill points distribute per level? Would suxor if the skills you wanted is all on Tier 5 or higher meaning you will not allocate any skill points in the first 4 Tiers.
My 2 cents
2. Yeah, it sucks that you're force into a little bit of a bottleneck between desirable skills, number of allowed skills, and when the skills/slots unlock. However, slots aside, that's pretty much how Diablo II worked. Particularly before synergies came about, you pretty much just saved your points and sucked it up until you could spend them. Most sorceress builds still involve that, as the lower tiered skills just aren't worth pumping on half the builds.
3. However, my 2. point is no longer really valid for Diablo III (Or, I suppose, Diablo II for that matter with the arrival of 1.13c), because we have the option to respec. That means that in all reality, the skills you need to take in your first ~20 levels are the ones that will help you get through the game and get to the skills that you really want. Once you've reached the highest level you need to unlock all the skills/slots, then you can go back, respec, and pick whatever you want. Though nothing is confirmed, it does seem that at least the first respec or two is pretty much designed to accomodate this, and so, with that and the fact that all classes seem to have some better skills in the lower tiers than in the past, I'm not overly concerned with this issue.
4. Skill point cap starts at 5. Bashiok was quoted as saying that a mechanic for increasing that cap COULD look something like this:
-Once you enter Nightmare, the cap goes to 10.
-Once you enter Hell, the cap goes to 15.
-Once you kill Diablo in Hell, the cap goes to 20.
COULD, not will, but COULD.
really hope not, ive stated my reasons before, mainly because it should be based on your level, not what difficulty you completed, and I still don't understand the 7 skills max thing, is it a balance thing? would you be completely overpowerd if you had 7 max skills, and a few points in another skill giving you 8 or 9?
and how does that work for certain skill requirements, yes they got rid of trees, but im still seeing a few skills that have a good 2-3 skill requirement, are you forced to use those? as part of your 7 skills if you want what those unlock?
Fuck you, I'm a dragon.
For instance, an interesting PvP build for a barb looks something like... Ground Stomp/Ignore Pain/Leap Attack/Sprint/Ancient Spear/Taunt/Ferocious Charge right off the top of my head.
You've got the Gap Closers in Leap, Sprint, Charge, Spear, and Ignore Pain to shrug off stuns and slows. Ground Stomp gives you AoE stun, and Taunt and Spear also give some CC effects, which we all know are good. We have no real numbers yet, but I imagine that like all arena games (DotA, LoL, WoW arenas) that movement spells/gap closers are at a premium, and CC is almost required to kill someone. The damage output seems sort of lite, as many of the spells don't deal damage, but let's just use this build as an example.
If I were to take this Barb into PvE... I would probably do terrible. Again, we don't have numbers, but I really cannot see how a build with 2 zero-damage move spells and single target chasing spells could hope to do as well against the endless hordes of Diablo as a build that were something like Whirlwind/Earthquake/Wrath of the Berserker/Seismic Slam/Rend/Cleave/Ground Stomp.
I would really much prefer having more diversity/customization in my characters. If I could take as many skills as a I want, and only have 7 at a time (maybe lock those 7 in during an arena battle), I could mix/max to my desires better. Maybe I only max Taunt/Ground Slam/Ignore Pain/Whirlwind, and put 1 point into Leap/Sprint/Spear/Charge/Earthquake/Seismic slam.
Once again I am sorely let down but the D3 dev team...
D3 Dev - "Well, our test chimpanzee was not able to understand feature XXX, but he is not a smart chimp."
Jay W - "WHAT?! Have it incinerated! Them simplify, no, REMOVE feature XXX!"
Players - "Wow that was close! I could not understand XXX feature, as I am legally retarded/in the Diablo 3 target audience!"
They change nothing. All of that information was known at Blizzcon 2010, because those pictures are from Blizzcon 2010. It's not new information, just new screenshots. Most of them contain outdated UI, stats, modifiers, and such, anyway.
Precisely. And, although the comparison fails in many other regards, I think it's useful to look at Diablo II here. How many skills were actually used in any given build, if we cut out the 1-pointers we need to get to those skills? We also have to cut out passive skills, since those are traits (which are leveled separately in Diablo III.) Meteor, Fireball. Ice Blast, Glacial Spike, Blizzard. Lightning, Chain Lightning. Smite, Zeal, and Fanaticism. Seven skills is a lot more than was ever actually used by the vast majority of players in previous games.
Are you saying we could just as well (in this example) choose Lashing Tail Kick, Long Reach, and Hands of Lightning? Where's the proof otherwise?
Do we know that for certain?
we arent 100% sure skill caps, and that all skill caps will be the same, lets say some cap at 10, and some cap at 15
you could have 5 or so maxed skills
I still don't see the point of it though especially since they have taken the direction of giving you maximum freedom to make your character how you want to, but maybe jack of all trades won't survive ,so even if you did want to end up with 10 or so skills and none of them maxed, they didn't want you to end up with a busted character?
so in a way I guess that makes sense.
What you suggest is plausible. However, I generally trust Blizzard's sense of design when it comes to skill mechanics. There may need to be some tweaking here or there, but I trust that, whether or not there's a 20 skill point max for each skill, or if they're varied, or neither, that they have extensively tested all these aspects of skills, and that we'll end up with their most well-thought-out choices in that department.
Sounds good that there is a remove skill point function.
However, it is still be a shame that we can't unlearn a lower tier skill so we can get another higher tier skill once we unlock those tiers.
Still, something is better than nothing and I can't wait for beta!
Thanks for the info, Don!
You mean even if we've chosen one skill in Tier 1, when we unlock say Tier 5, I can unlearn my Tier 1 skill and take up Tier 5 skill?
That means we'll be able to respec right?
If so, that's great news!!
on top of that I will be playing a monk which most people hate, so I should have a pretty unique character on battlenet
1. You can only have 7 skills total.
2. You can only pick 1 skill from each Tier.
So 7 skills total, each must be from different tiers. Example Wizards can't have both Charged Bolt and Magic Missile, since both are Tier 1 skills.
I hope not!
That would severely limit the character creation & play-style!
You have a really bleak outlook on life don't you?
My nightmare is that I'll wake up with only 3 maxed skills and 4 empty spaces on my hotbar, walking through dungeon after dungeon doing nothing but spamming mouse 1 like I've seen in D2 gameplay Vids. >_<!