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I guess we might not get synergies this time. I look forward to seeing the completed skill trees

This is gay. Joking Magistrate, just trying to help your score. =]

But seriously, I hated synergies, I hated the feeling of being forced to get abilities I wouldn't use so that the ones I did use were effective past normal mode, and hated the fact that you had to invest all of your points into these builds in order to get one decent move. So, yeah, I love that they're gone, I wanna be able to use a wide array of abilities, without having to worry about the fact that I'll be weak as shit down the road.

I can see both points of view honestly. I mean synergies did give a reason to spend points in otherwise useless skills and give a little boost. Also though, I felt like it was more an afterthought and kind of a quick fix to balance issues. I think that getting rid of them will actually help span out customization and build possibilities by giving us skills that are useful throughout the tree.

In my opinion; I would be much happier to see a system that doesn't have those problems to begin with; where we can select skills because we like them and want to build around them, rather than picking them because they are the "best skills" or as a buffer to the better skills.

You can already see how they plan to work this: low level skills will be kind of sucky, but a passive skill later on will upgrade it. Such as those skills that add more projectiles to Magic Missile, and Charged Bolt, multiplying their damage an order of magnitude.

In essence, there won't be skills that strictly supersede an earlier one; in this system there wouldn't be a Firebolt and Fireball, simply a Firebolt that would upgrade to have an explosion added to it.

The Amazon's lazy elemental arrow attacks come straight to mind to how little variety we truly had, and how much better things could be.

Also you can kind of wonder if they're going to overhaul Diablo II something like this in the next patch. Hrm.

Quote from "Magistrate" »

Comments? Ideas? Trolling that I can delete to raise my moderation score?

I knew it!!!

...

Regardless, I ask, what the hell -is- wrong with cookie cutter builds, Diablo 3 team?

I mean, doesnt every game that has a character that fills certain rolls accept cookie cutter builds? I mean, my priest in WoW isnt going to be shadow if he wants to heal. He'd get the cookie cutter build for the best holy priest talent set.

I feel like Cookie Cutter is just a lame excuse for "optimum character build for what play style you want with this character."

EDIT: Maybe not in all games, though... Just Blizzard ones. Some games Cookie cutter is actually -horrible- I think...

Yay!!! No more cookie cutter builds time to use the imagination a powerful tool!!

Quote from "DesmondTiny" »

Yay!!! No more cookie cutter builds time to use the imagination a powerful tool!!

You really think there wont be cookie cutter builds? Every game with a skill system has that..and with the amount of people that are going to be playing D3 you can be sure they will find the best builds possible quickly

Quote from "LordRayken" »

Regardless, I ask, what the hell -is- wrong with cookie cutter builds, Diablo 3 team?

That it takes them work to make all these skills so they might as well try to get them all used? It'd be a travesty if no Wizards made use of Acid Cloud.

Besides, Diablo II right now is more a straight jacket than a cookie oven. Playing a sorceress really sucks sometimes; you have a passive mastery skill, an active skill, and usually a booster or two to that skill, so it's often outright impossible to max damage on two skills from two separate trees.

And as a Diablo game, yeah AoE skills will be by far the best outside of boss fights. But it looks like every skill tree so far will have at least one, and sure one of them will always be the best in any given patch by some amount, but the variety of theme and looks is there and and and

.....it'll be another two years until this comes out, won't it? God I'm too old.

Well as far as I can gather they are trying to make it all less cookie cutter. As BryanM mentioned; I think the cookie cutter builds in DII came out of meer necessity; some builds are simply impossible to play up to a certain point in the game.

I think what the DIII team seems like they are shooting for is increasing the amount of feasible builds at our disposal. Sure there will be builds that are considered the best, but I think that runes have the potential to really open up the possibilities. Plus, there are systems that we don't know about yet; so throw those into the mix and things might really expand.

I suppose if I had to choose... I would say no synergies. Whichever way is easier to balance

Quote from "dunhac82" »

I think what the DIII team seems like they are shooting for is increasing the amount of feasible builds at our disposal.

Exactly... even if they still eat cookies. There needs to be more cookie flavors
I think the main hindrance for the amount of feasible builds in Diablo 2 was full immunities in Hell mode

In terms of that they fixed more than they broke, I don't think that's what Bashiok was saying. He's saying that the problems that they were fixed are not there, thus there's no need for a makeshift solution. Makes sense. Synergies weren't supposed to be there in the first place.

Heh, I actually thought the synergies were cool because it meant I could upgrade the lower skills more and be able to use them for longer, ie. Charged Bolt. But I guess a better solution would be to just make the skill stronger as you put more points into it directly. Or something? I have no idea.

The only thing I won't like so much about getting passive skills later on to boost the old skills is that it won't feel like I'm getting a new skill. I like the feeling of new skills with new animations. But I haven't played it yet so it will probably turn out fine.

Quote from "BryanM" »

You can already see how they plan to work this: low level skills will be kind of sucky, but a passive skill later on will upgrade it. Such as those skills that add more projectiles to Magic Missile, and Charged Bolt, multiplying their damage an order of magnitude.

In essence, there won't be skills that strictly supersede an earlier one; in this system there wouldn't be a Firebolt and Fireball, simply a Firebolt that would upgrade to have an explosion added to it.

The Amazon's lazy elemental arrow attacks come straight to mind to how little variety we truly had, and how much better things could be.

Also you can kind of wonder if they're going to overhaul Diablo II something like this in the next patch. Hrm.

I couldn't agree with you more, especially on that last part. The same thing came to mind when I finished reading what Magistrate posted. To be quite honest I never had so much fun as in 1.08-1.09 versions of Diablo II, and going back to them would be just awesome :). Get rid of those synergies and all these runewords keep it simple! simple is good!

I surely enjoy the idea of no synergies... Actually, for the most part I prefer how WoW talents synergize, indirectly. Indirect synergies would be entirely welcomed, not so much in the same way they are in WoW, but having abilities that help many other abilities, such as "(Instert Weapon Here) Mastery". Indirect synergies would be a blessing, it makes you really think about where your points go to make them work good together, but the direct synergies we know from D2 just got plain our redundant. I feel this would be the same in D3 if the respec system is shotty.

Quote from "Lestater" »

This is gay. Joking Magistrate, just trying to help your score. =]

But seriously, I hated synergies, I hated the feeling of being forced to get abilities I wouldn't use so that the ones I did use were effective past normal mode, and hated the fact that you had to invest all of your points into these builds in order to get one decent move. So, yeah, I love that they're gone, I wanna be able to use a wide array of abilities, without having to worry about the fact that I'll be weak as shit down the road.

TOTALLY agree.. synergies sucks. No reason to try to fix the flawed D2 skill system with even worse ones.

Anyways D3 doesn't need synergies, they will create the game from scratch so the skill trees will be nice I think!.

Probably we will get to use many abilities and boost them with other skills. (at least what we've seen so far from the skill trees)

My biggest issue with synergies was that they raped skills that didn't have synergies--IE- WW. Putting one point into bash and then receiving the synergies from its skills and getting 6 bonus skill levels does more damage then WW. Tell me how that makes any kind of sense at all whatsoever?

Course, WW has been raped sense LOD came out.

the only synergy group i ever completely use is a beserk barb. beserk has synergies: howl and shout. shout i used for obvious reasons, the same for howl. granted i was a chaos barb, so howl really did have a greatly effective use. that being said I certainly didnt need a lvl 37 howl hahaha.

yay for no synergies!


i always wondered how they landed on blessed aim for blessed hammers synergy. aside from the similar names these skills are opposites, designed to affect two entirely different builds drastically.

Quote from "Daemaro" »

I think synergies made sense in a way. I liked them in theory, but in practice it was boring and forced you to put into useless skills to get more benefit from the one you used.

Exactly my thought about them. It is interesting to use the skill tree, and synergies. My problem is that the skill tree limits you a lot; and synergies limit you even more..

My main issue with synergies was that, while leveling you were putting points into a useless skill that only helped way after you got your main skill and atleast with re-specs, you're able to put your skills into a leveling build rather then shooting for the long haul, then re-spec to whatever spec you'd like after you hit a certain level.