I’ve spoken on this a number of times across many an orbus related platforms, and as my previous thread has fallen to the side, ill reiterate said feelings, opinions, and suggestions here to the best of my ability. This was the original post of mine; Classes, Talent Trees, and Player Choice
It is my strong feeling, and I am not the only one who feels this way, that all the classes need to be looked over. Some more than others, the bard needs something, ANYTHING to be fixed first and foremost, but all classes need to be looked over tweaked and reworked in at least some way. In every one of the classes, there’s at least one talent that is an auto-pick, with the other being no comparison. In most cases, it’s more than one if not a whole talent tree. These ‘options’ are not actually options and offer no actual choice to the player.
Some examples are the Warrior Lv5 Talent “Righteousness: Your Provoke Combo heals you for a small amount.” This Talent has no comparison to the other ‘option’, it is mandatory to take this to be able to even call yourself a warrior. the access to self-heal is a necessary and non-negotiable part of the Warrior’s kit. I’d even argue that Warrior, as a tank class, should not even have a Damage based talent tree as it is essentially useless 95% of the time.
Another Example is the Ranger Lv10 Talent “Rapid Charge: Your Charged Shot charges in 1 second instead of 2 seconds.” Without it, Ranger’s only real interrupt takes 2 second to charge, which is much too long to accomplish anything and said Charged shot is Ranger’s main source of damage, so much so that this is another auto-include in Ranger build’s because of its importance to a healthy DPS and performance as a Ranger. The other ‘option’ is “Improved Charge: Your Charged Shot applies a 2-second, 35% Slow effect to the target in addition to your Hunter’s Mark.” Which, while decent in my opinion does not compare to the previously mentioned talent. I’d even go as far as to argue that Rapid Charge, like Righteousness, should be an integral part of the Ranger’s base mechanics. Improved Charge is good in concept and could be part of the base kit as well, but I would take Rapid Charge being integrated any day of the week. It could just be replaced with an equal but different talent to counterpart the Slow’s addition to your Hunter’s Mark.
Along with this, the ‘Rapidity’ side of Ranger has been nerfed into the point of near uselessness after its reign as top dog for more of Preborn. It should either be balanced, talents included, to be on the same playing field as Precision, or be replaced entirely. By what, I couldn’t say, but either make it an actually option, or remove it, because at current there is no option.
To give a 3rd example, I’ll point to the DOT side of Runemage. I’ve been told it was, like Rapidity, once the top-dog, being nerfed into submission. I cannot speak on this as i was around for neither event, but my point is all the same. If a Talent is so weak or broken that it is not actually an option, than it should not exist and should be changed. Thematically, the idea of a ‘Rune Mage of Plague and disease’ is very much a cool one, and if they numbers and mechanics didn’t decrease your damage by choosing them, it could make for a fun style of mage to play. At current tho, I’ve been told that turning your fireball into a DOT actually reduces the total output of each spell, which is a very sad fact.
The point I’m trying to make here is that across the board, there is something missing, broken, or wrong with each class. If you give a player ‘options’ but there is no actual choice in them, then it becomes a waste of space, words, and overall potential for the class. You could easily ‘double’ the number of effective classes in the game by purely making good, working, and appropriate changes to the talent tree, to the point, that when talking about one’s class you would no longer say what class you play, but what -kind- of that class you play.
In the end, if you build this beautiful world for the player to enjoy, but give them broken toys to play within this world, then what is the point of the world you built at all. At current nearly half, at least, of the talents that exist are functionally not a choice one can make, if they even work at all in the case of Bard. As they continue to go on being useless, you’ve handed you player a box of tools to play the game with, half of which don’t even work.
