Classes, Talent Trees, and Player Choice

[WeTitans3]

Recently Ive spoken with friends about something i feel strongly about, and I thought it best to share it here.

I feel that all of the classes need to be looked over, as most of them have something(s) useless, if not outright broken. Some of Bard’s Instruments and Talents, or the Rapidity Half of the Ranger Talent Tree, or even the Contamination half of the Runemage Talent Tree. These things and many more are either broken and do not work, or work so poorly its effectively useless.

I do not think it should be this way.

I feel that, even if in the end a Meta is established about what options are the best, all options should be useable. Do i like Rapid Ranger? No, not one bit. Do i think it should be nerfed into the ground to not be comparable to Precision (As far as im aware it was nerfed very very hard after having been the better choice in OG)? No, i dont. I think both options should be useable.

The same goes for Fireball Spam vs DOT mage. Both sides should be comparable. No equal even, just comparable enough that taking one or the other is not a statistically wrong choice. (Ive been told that the DOTs applied by the talent making fireball into a DOT doesnt do nearly the same dmg as just using a normal fireball, thus making said talent worse than taking nothing at all)

I cant say im the perfect player, most knowledgeable, or a veteran of the community; but as a player, i think it would be way cooler and interesting to have all classes work, be on par with one another in their own ways, and have both sides of the Talent Trees, and associated playstyles, be usable. It would bring variety into playstyle and build composition; and would stray from the idea that ‘if you play this class, you play it this way’. Thematically, something like DOT/Plague Mage could be very cool, as are similar themed magic users in other games.

These are just my opinions based on the knowledge ive gain and information ive been told, and I certainly enjoy hearing what the community has to say, as well as what the @Devs and @Mathieu_D have to say in regards to this, cause im sure these topics have been brought up many a time before.

[Rickness_Voidwalker]

The Dev Dudes re-did the talents for muskie a while back with one of the raid or shard releases, it would be nice if they will spend a bit of time after DLC release to fix up some of the other classes

@WeTitans3

Rapidity Half of the Ranger Talent Tree

Rapidity isn’t far behind Precision from what I remember (I may be wrong though, waiting for real numbers to be posted by Scott) the problem is it’s a lot harder to keep that damage up for long periods of time, there was only ever 2 rangers that were able to bring rapidity to it’s full potential and that’s because they had played it since pre-alpha, that’s Katmina and Shiki and they were good at the game

As for the other ranger talents I use a mix of both trees, however I think the Slow added to charge shot + 1 second to charge the charge shot talent should be changed to be a class skill by default and replace those talents, ranger already has one of the worst interrupts as we have to use the main damage of our rotation to do it so if it’s on a caster that is shielding we lose all that damage from a charged piercing shot, or it completely throws us of rotation and messes with our already terrible tilesets (add hitting weakpoints as a tile activation please) so yeah, this talent choice is no choice, you need that charge shot to be 1 second cooldown anyway so you’re forced into it

[WeTitans3]

I’m gald they did, and wholly agree they need to take a serious look at the rest. Ive heard that not only is the DOT side of the runemage tree awful, that both lv 30 talents arent as good as they may seem. Im not a runemage myself, but ive heard that past a certain spells/sec, triplicity actually lowers your damage due to times wasted casting the ritual. If true, then thats truly sad; and as i stated the poor implmentation of the DOT side of the tree is sad and a waste of potential in a perfectly good theme and potiental playstyle.

Overall my point is not the specifics of a couple classes or talents. Across the board theres things that need to be fixed or improved to improve the function and player-available options in the class. Some drastically so more than others, but across the board nonetheless

[Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeshka]

@WeTitans3

triplicity actually lowers your damage due to times wasted casting the ritual.

If you cast it mid rotation, you’re losing out on damage, yes. If you’ve got a boss with downtime, though (every boss but Sewer Rat and Minotaur), you’ll have the second or so to cast it before up phase with little to no dps loss

[Arkaic]

After being nerfed to dealing 1 damage if your hits are faster than 3 a second average, rapidity doesn’t do damage anywhere close to precision at this point. It’s very easy to hit that cap or go over, but even if you have the speed down you just dont deal the same damage per shot, let alone with charged piercings.
I played rapidity for a bit when I first started learning orbus, and when I changed to precision I immediately noticed a HUGE difference. I really would like to see rapidity either viable or replaced with another option

[NotScott]

I think a good description of rapidity vs precision would be:
imagine mage being rapidity and shaman precision. Then it takes a lot of effect to get good dps for the mage but relatively less for shaman. But here is the catch. The mage is capped to do always a little less dps than the shaman. Or your hits will do 1 dmg when casting too fast. So you got a hardworking option with a starting way lower dps and in the end no matter how hard you try bit worse dps. Or the other option xD

(I do want to note though before people explode that the precision ranger is 100% no shaman in difficulty. It is alot more trouble for the precisoon ranger)

[WeTitans3]

@Mathieu_D @devs Do yall have anything to add or comment on to acknowledge the community and its feelings on this matter?

[Rickness_Voidwalker]

I’m sure that it will be addressed when they do the class re-balancing, see this thread: Class rebalancing

[WeTitans3]

I wasnt aware they were doing class reblancing, and from how i read that, it didnt seem an answer past “we are following this thread” was given, which isnt very encouraging, to me at least. No time tables, no solid “yes we are considering this” or “we hear and understand your feelings and will be doing something about them, or determining if we feel a change needs making”

Just an acknowledgement that we are saying stuff and they are reading it

[Game_Master]

We definitely consider talents as part of class balancing - and all I can say right now is the same thing I wrote in the other post linked, that we read everything and do have plans to go through a balance pass in the future. I don’t have a date or scope (what exactly would be affected) yet.

[WeTitans3]

thank you for your response @Mathieu_D This is the kind of response i was looking for; something that acknowledge us community members and our concerns as real and something you take seriously.