By now everyone has seen the talent tree. Many of us have initially criticized it for the high proportion of passive skills. I would like to devote this thread to critical analysis of the skill tree and balance issues it may or may not have. Please do not talk about other more general issues relating to the Wizard on this thread, we already have a thread for that.
Total skills: 32
No. of attack skills: 18
No. of non-attack skills: 10
No. of passive skills with no visual effect (attribute buff only): 4
No. of attack skills viable in late-game: 8
Number of skill points required to max out tree: 640
Now for the Wizard: Total skills: 55
No. of attack skills: 14*
No. of non-attack skills: 7*
No. of passive skills with no visual effect (attribute buff only): 34
No. of attack skills viable in late-game: It looks as though all of the attack skills are designed to be viable in late game, so 14.
Number of skill points required to max out tree: 531
Things to note here:
* The Wizard has less attack spells (14 vs 18) compared to D2.
* The Wizard probably has more attack spells viable in the late game (14 vs 8) compared to D2. What this means is that you dont have to think as much when assigning skills because you cant make the mistake of putting points into something that has no endgame value. Personally I dont like that.
* The Wizard also has less non-attack spells than D2 (7 vs 10)
* Active spells in D2 had a progression from 0-20, in D1 they can only have 1 point put into them. All your skill points will go into the passive buffs, but these only go up to 15. So even though there are more skills+talents in D3, the total number of points it takes to max everything out is actually LESS. This means you have less ability to customize and make your class different, since everyone is going to fill out a higher percentage of the skill tree.
* In D2, in order to reach a high level skill you might have to burn 2 or 3 points into prerequisite skills. In D3, it is done based on tiers. However, it looks like most of the good skills are actually lower tier. Looking at the skill tree, a lot of the top level skills dont actually look worthwhile in investing any points into. Particularly in the Conjuring and Arcane trees.
Conjure: Hydra - If D1 and D2 are any clue, this isnt going to be a great choice because it doesnt focus damage on the right targets. Magic Weapon- Adds some magic damage to your weapon. Only viable for Wizard that focuses on melee damage which is rare. Magical Impact - Another Fighter/Mage skill only Slowing Strikes - Slows people hit by spectral blade. If you're using that its probably good. Armor Piercing - Probably has less DPS increase than Weapon Mastery or Improved Spectral Blade
Arcane: Temporal Armor - Sounds cool, but can only stop 1 attack every 6 seconds...so it cant be used as a general purpose source of protection. Teleport - Good to have. Greater Mana - Why bother with this when you have skills like Static Charge and Mana Recovery that are clearly better? Mana Burst- Clearly a waste of points Runic Might - Probably very good Storm: Blizzard - Probably good Storm Power - Probably good Epic Storms - Probably good Shattering Ice - Probably not that good
I thank you for the time you took to write this up. At first glance, I believed that this concept wouldn't be as appealing as D2 until I took the time to study it closer. I think that you too, were one of the people criticizing it for a while, and not just the contents, but also the conecpt.
It is true that I initially criticized the skill tree. Just looking at it, it looks very stale and boring because at each skill tier there is only 1 or 2 actual skills, and sometimes both of them are "passive" in that they are defensive or non-combat related. It is still not clear which skills may be viable end game and which ones aren't. I think someone still needs to go through and try to figure, as best they can, ok...if I were going to be a Blizzard, vs ChargedBolt, vs MagicMissile sorc, how much DPS could I do? One of the variables that needs to b taken into account is castign speed which could be measured from gameplay videos but I havent done this yet. At first glance it looks like a Storm or Magic Missile wizard is best, although the lack of details on Tornado makes it hard to guess.
Personally, I am attracted to the Wizard more than I was to the D2 sorc for several reasons:
1) I will be able to put on full plate armor without sacrificing anything
2) There are 2 very powerful looking spells that can be used to mass-slow all enemies AND their projectiles. That seems pretty friggin useful. I mean, you could just dodge every bullet kind of matrix style. Combine the ability to dodge with a spell that stops 100% of damage from an attack every 6 seconds and this may work pretty well as a survival strategy.
3) I am curious just how many magic missiles I can get to fire per cast. It looks to me that if you put on multistrike run, + advanced magic missile maxed + Runic Might maxed it could be pretty sweet.
The Wizard Skill Tree looks easy to comprehend, but in fact the sheer amount options make it very different. It will be easier to pick players skills for their own playstyle and customize them further by stating other skills. In addition, the tree offers more spells that could be used with effect later in the game, even stuff available early on.
Perhaps. IT remains to be seen. The fact does remain that within each tier, there is only 1 or 2 real skills. However the interesting thing is it looks like you can actually SKIP tiers if you want. ie, you could have all your skills in Tier1 and Tier4 if you wanted, without having to touch Tiers 2 and 3, if you wanted. Thats cool.
Edit: The skills in D2 did indeed go up to 20, but it was rare to see multiple skills not maxed on a Sorc.
Ok, but with the same number of skill points, you can have more skills maxed in D3 than you could in D2. Thats not good, IMO.
Total skills: 32
No. of attack skills: 18
No. of non-attack skills: 10
No. of passive skills with no visual effect (attribute buff only): 4
No. of attack skills viable in late-game: 8
Number of skill points required to max out tree: 640
32?
Maybe it's just me but I've always thought that every class in DII got 30 skills, 10 for each tree.
I think every skill in D3 will be useful throughout the game depending on circumstance, and THANK god for that. Why waste time on animating awesome looking skills if they won't be used later?
I think no matter what, there WILL be useless skills.
It seems impossible to have a use for all of them especially if there are so many...
Half of D2 skills were designed to only have enough DPS to be effective at low levels. This is mainly what causes the need for respeccing. In D3 it looks like all of the attack skills can be brought to a level where they are still viable in the late game. Im sure some of them will be better than others, but unlike D2, they should all be capable of killing things at high levels. Thats a good thing.
No. of skills a high level soc use: 2~3. (mindless skill spam gameplay)
No. of skills a high level wiz use: 5~6 (strategic skill spam gameplay - i hope).
So the D3 gameplay is much more complex then D2 (in theory). This new system allows the player to have multiple good spells at once, then you have many different ways to kill the same monster, then the chalenge is to think about what way is better. A much more fun way to think then have to make choices of what skills are good and what are not good (wich is a boring way to think once 30 minutes in a FAQ gimme all the answer i can ever need).
Instead of standing and healing with potions we'll have to make our spells count and kill monsters to get health orbs.
Also things like the skeletons with shields add a little more strategy, you have to get behind the shields. (maybe not on a sorc but...)
He was talking about the number of skills that a given player would use in their frequent arsenal.
Looking at the Wizard Skill tree, if they don't change anything, my first build would probably be someething like Temporal Armor + Slow Time for defense, and Arcane Orb for mobs, and possibly Magic Missile for bosses. But I don't see a any reason to think that Wizards in D3 will be more general spellcasters who using many different spells, because you still have to focus on making a few skills work powerfully. So I don't think that will be any different.
Now if they switched to a D&D spell model, where each spell simply has a set effect, then they could get a lot more diversification. But they haven't opted to do that.
He was talking about the number of skills that a given player would use in their frequent arsenal.
I know I was too. FREQUENT for a wizard, hard to tell. Wizards are almost always, at least in modern games, high damage and low hp and defense.
I know a few things that MAY be useful though.
Critical frost hit freeze:
Ray of frost is 6 damage per second and any crit freezes the target. That's a lot of chance to freeze to help get away, or to just acquire a health orb, whatever you need it for.
Critical electric hits stun:
Charged bolt seems like it would have a good chance to stun something with all of those bolts.
Critical arcane hits silence:
Disintegrate seems like it could rack up some good silence later on with 10 damage per second.
Teleport of course will help you get away like always.
Conjure skills:
Mirror image seems like it could be useful in some situations where you need something else to take some damage for you.
Slowing strikes slows the movement speed of an enemy you attack with melee, Spectral Blade, or Magic Weapon by 30% and attack speed by 20% for 4 seconds. That may not seem like a long time but that's less damage you'll have to take if you make a melee Wizard.
Now what does all that mean? Well it could mean nothing, but my guess is that they plan on making this a little more tactical in D2. There may be some fights and bosses you need to use silence or stun on. There may be times where freezing something means the difference in reaching that health orb you need.
I think they're trying to incorporate more tactics into the game without FORCING it. I'm sure every class will have some sort of crowd control skill. We already know the Witch Doctors have the horrify skill and Barbarians have the ground stomp that stuns.
It should make for very fun and interesting game play if they do it right, which so far it seems like they're on the right track.
He was talking about the number of skills that a given player would use in their frequent arsenal.
Looking at the Wizard Skill tree, if they don't change anything, my first build would probably be someething like Temporal Armor + Slow Time for defense, and Arcane Orb for mobs, and possibly Magic Missile for bosses. But I don't see a any reason to think that Wizards in D3 will be more general spellcasters who using many different spells, because you still have to focus on making a few skills work powerfully. So I don't think that will be any different.
Now if they switched to a D&D spell model, where each spell simply has a set effect, then they could get a lot more diversification. But they haven't opted to do that.
The own fact of use more skills at once make the gameplay much more complex.
In D2 the reason we used only 2~3 skills is because we have a stronger skill, so the others don't worth to use. Here the same build will have diferent attack skills.
So you must use the better for the situation.
As you said you would use temporal armor, slow time, orb and missile.
I guess you forgot the teleport. And the repulse. (in a pure arcane build)
You allready got 5 active skills, and every skill of this build are good in a diferent situation.
Thats allready alot more complex then D2.
I don't know mate. I'm not so sure about this skill tree. It just doesn't seem to contain very powerful spells, or diverse spells for that matter.
I'm sure that a high lvl char deals a ton of damage, but does it have to appear to be so weak?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
What is normal? Normal is a concept that everyone or a majority of people are the same or similar. However, we know that everyone is unique. If everyone is unique, then everyone is different. If everyone is different, then everyone is weird. If everyone is weird, then everyone is normal.
I think having more end game skills will make the game more addicting, I wont have to use the same skills over and over again. I actually get to use my skills in a tactical way. That's one of the thing I felt was lacking in d2. We havn't even seen most of the runes and jay even said that there are major mechanics that have not been revealed! Mahamoti, have you really lost interest in d3?^_^
Mana Burst being useless? Haha, I don't think so. If the MCR is anything like D2, a 25% more damage at level 1/15 is a big boost.
Sure...let's say it goes up to 300% more damage...but even so, if 95% of your spells are cast without being at full mana, this only comes out to an average increase of 15% total DPS, which is easily surpassed by more reliable DPS buffs.
They said the damage skills were just 1/1 for the demo, they haven't decided on how to do them yet. Obviously they won't stay at a static damage. Either they'll add more levels of damage spells or they will make the damage scale with level.
The "Diablo 3 Lore and Art Panel".
about 39 minutes in.
Quote from name="Art and Lore Q&A »
We're still exploring some of those things because, the skill system as it is right now in the demo you guys were playing, [COLOR=DeepSkyBlue]you can only put one point into your active skills[/COLOR] and like [COLOR=Red]that is changing[/COLOR'].
Do not forget that, despite the "at-first-glance" numbers that show less customization, the rune system is designed to add even more detail and customization to each and every skill, thus creating an exponentially larger number of possible creations and builds comparable to the more limited D2.
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------------------------------------------- Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.
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The tree can be viewed here:
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1020
For comparison, we should also look at the D2 sorceress skill tree:
Ice Bolt [1], Frozen Armor [1], Frost Nova [6], Ice Blast [6], Shiver Armor [12], Glacial Spike [18], Blizzard [24], Chilling Armor [24], Frozen Orb [30], Cold Mastery [30]
Charged Bolt [1], Telekinesis [6], Static Field [6], Lightning [12], Nova [12], Chain Lightning [18], Teleport [18], Thunder Storm [24], Energy Shield [24], Lightning Mastery [30]
Fire Bolt [1], Warmth [1], Inferno [6], Blaze [12], Fireball [12], Fire Wall [18], Enchant [18], Meteor [24], Fire Mastery [30], Hydra [30]
Total skills: 32
No. of attack skills: 18
No. of non-attack skills: 10
No. of passive skills with no visual effect (attribute buff only): 4
No. of attack skills viable in late-game: 8
Number of skill points required to max out tree: 640
Now for the Wizard:
Total skills: 55
No. of attack skills: 14*
No. of non-attack skills: 7*
No. of passive skills with no visual effect (attribute buff only): 34
No. of attack skills viable in late-game: It looks as though all of the attack skills are designed to be viable in late game, so 14.
Number of skill points required to max out tree: 531
Things to note here:
* The Wizard has less attack spells (14 vs 18) compared to D2.
* The Wizard probably has more attack spells viable in the late game (14 vs 8) compared to D2. What this means is that you dont have to think as much when assigning skills because you cant make the mistake of putting points into something that has no endgame value. Personally I dont like that.
* The Wizard also has less non-attack spells than D2 (7 vs 10)
* Active spells in D2 had a progression from 0-20, in D1 they can only have 1 point put into them. All your skill points will go into the passive buffs, but these only go up to 15. So even though there are more skills+talents in D3, the total number of points it takes to max everything out is actually LESS. This means you have less ability to customize and make your class different, since everyone is going to fill out a higher percentage of the skill tree.
* In D2, in order to reach a high level skill you might have to burn 2 or 3 points into prerequisite skills. In D3, it is done based on tiers. However, it looks like most of the good skills are actually lower tier. Looking at the skill tree, a lot of the top level skills dont actually look worthwhile in investing any points into. Particularly in the Conjuring and Arcane trees.
Conjure:
Hydra - If D1 and D2 are any clue, this isnt going to be a great choice because it doesnt focus damage on the right targets.
Magic Weapon - Adds some magic damage to your weapon. Only viable for Wizard that focuses on melee damage which is rare.
Magical Impact - Another Fighter/Mage skill only
Slowing Strikes - Slows people hit by spectral blade. If you're using that its probably good.
Armor Piercing - Probably has less DPS increase than Weapon Mastery or Improved Spectral Blade
Arcane:
Temporal Armor - Sounds cool, but can only stop 1 attack every 6 seconds...so it cant be used as a general purpose source of protection.
Teleport - Good to have.
Greater Mana - Why bother with this when you have skills like Static Charge and Mana Recovery that are clearly better?
Mana Burst - Clearly a waste of points
Runic Might - Probably very good
Storm:
Blizzard - Probably good
Storm Power - Probably good
Epic Storms - Probably good
Shattering Ice - Probably not that good
Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions
It is true that I initially criticized the skill tree. Just looking at it, it looks very stale and boring because at each skill tier there is only 1 or 2 actual skills, and sometimes both of them are "passive" in that they are defensive or non-combat related. It is still not clear which skills may be viable end game and which ones aren't. I think someone still needs to go through and try to figure, as best they can, ok...if I were going to be a Blizzard, vs ChargedBolt, vs MagicMissile sorc, how much DPS could I do? One of the variables that needs to b taken into account is castign speed which could be measured from gameplay videos but I havent done this yet. At first glance it looks like a Storm or Magic Missile wizard is best, although the lack of details on Tornado makes it hard to guess.
Personally, I am attracted to the Wizard more than I was to the D2 sorc for several reasons:
1) I will be able to put on full plate armor without sacrificing anything
2) There are 2 very powerful looking spells that can be used to mass-slow all enemies AND their projectiles. That seems pretty friggin useful. I mean, you could just dodge every bullet kind of matrix style. Combine the ability to dodge with a spell that stops 100% of damage from an attack every 6 seconds and this may work pretty well as a survival strategy.
3) I am curious just how many magic missiles I can get to fire per cast. It looks to me that if you put on multistrike run, + advanced magic missile maxed + Runic Might maxed it could be pretty sweet.
Perhaps. IT remains to be seen. The fact does remain that within each tier, there is only 1 or 2 real skills. However the interesting thing is it looks like you can actually SKIP tiers if you want. ie, you could have all your skills in Tier1 and Tier4 if you wanted, without having to touch Tiers 2 and 3, if you wanted. Thats cool.
Ok, but with the same number of skill points, you can have more skills maxed in D3 than you could in D2. Thats not good, IMO.
Maybe it's just me but I've always thought that every class in DII got 30 skills, 10 for each tree.
Half of D2 skills were designed to only have enough DPS to be effective at low levels. This is mainly what causes the need for respeccing. In D3 it looks like all of the attack skills can be brought to a level where they are still viable in the late game. Im sure some of them will be better than others, but unlike D2, they should all be capable of killing things at high levels. Thats a good thing.
No. of skills a high level soc use: 2~3. (mindless skill spam gameplay)
No. of skills a high level wiz use: 5~6 (strategic skill spam gameplay - i hope).
So the D3 gameplay is much more complex then D2 (in theory). This new system allows the player to have multiple good spells at once, then you have many different ways to kill the same monster, then the chalenge is to think about what way is better. A much more fun way to think then have to make choices of what skills are good and what are not good (wich is a boring way to think once 30 minutes in a FAQ gimme all the answer i can ever need).
Why do you think D3 will be any different in that respect?
Instead of standing and healing with potions we'll have to make our spells count and kill monsters to get health orbs.
Also things like the skeletons with shields add a little more strategy, you have to get behind the shields. (maybe not on a sorc but...)
He was talking about the number of skills that a given player would use in their frequent arsenal.
Looking at the Wizard Skill tree, if they don't change anything, my first build would probably be someething like Temporal Armor + Slow Time for defense, and Arcane Orb for mobs, and possibly Magic Missile for bosses. But I don't see a any reason to think that Wizards in D3 will be more general spellcasters who using many different spells, because you still have to focus on making a few skills work powerfully. So I don't think that will be any different.
Now if they switched to a D&D spell model, where each spell simply has a set effect, then they could get a lot more diversification. But they haven't opted to do that.
I know I was too. FREQUENT for a wizard, hard to tell. Wizards are almost always, at least in modern games, high damage and low hp and defense.
I know a few things that MAY be useful though.
Critical frost hit freeze:
I think they're trying to incorporate more tactics into the game without FORCING it. I'm sure every class will have some sort of crowd control skill. We already know the Witch Doctors have the horrify skill and Barbarians have the ground stomp that stuns.
It should make for very fun and interesting game play if they do it right, which so far it seems like they're on the right track.
The own fact of use more skills at once make the gameplay much more complex.
In D2 the reason we used only 2~3 skills is because we have a stronger skill, so the others don't worth to use. Here the same build will have diferent attack skills.
So you must use the better for the situation.
As you said you would use temporal armor, slow time, orb and missile.
I guess you forgot the teleport. And the repulse. (in a pure arcane build)
You allready got 5 active skills, and every skill of this build are good in a diferent situation.
Thats allready alot more complex then D2.
I'm sure that a high lvl char deals a ton of damage, but does it have to appear to be so weak?
--Steel :cool:
Fuck you, I'm a dragon.
Sure...let's say it goes up to 300% more damage...but even so, if 95% of your spells are cast without being at full mana, this only comes out to an average increase of 15% total DPS, which is easily surpassed by more reliable DPS buffs.
They said the damage skills were just 1/1 for the demo, they haven't decided on how to do them yet. Obviously they won't stay at a static damage. Either they'll add more levels of damage spells or they will make the damage scale with level.
I'll keep trying to find it.
Found it:
http://wcradio.com/archives.php?selectShow=126
The "Diablo 3 Lore and Art Panel".
about 39 minutes in.
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Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.
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Yeah a Arcane Missile may appear weak for you, but i'm sure it appears a very deadly thing when you got a runa that makes you shoot 5 of then at once.