Dev Blog: Talents System Preview -- Warrior and Ranger

We’ve got the first of a two-part series up on the blog today, previewing the upcoming new Talents system that will be rolling out March 19th.

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Sounds great so far. I don’t play warrior much but the “raise your sword high” sounds like an epic pose :smiley:

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Omgomgomgomgomg I love the warrior talents! :slight_smile:

These look phenomenal. They’re really going to change how people look at the classes and open the game up a lot. Great work, folks!

The Snipe Shot Tree doesn’t seem good at all.

Globe Master: If you are firing at long range, you are going to be at 5 orbs all the time anyways.
Improved Charge: Basically obsolete at level 20 content.
Arrow Sight: Cosmetic
Percision: This is a great talent

Globe Keeper: I don’t quite understand what this is trying to say.
Rapid Charge: Dps increase
Multishot: Dps increase
Rapidity: Dps increase

My 2 cents while at work.

Edit: Didn’t mean to reply to you IscariotDE, I always confuse the reply buttons

That’s funny, I was excited for Globe Master AND Improved Charge myself. And, while arrow sight doesn’t sound like my thing, I’d probably give it a go anyway, to see how it felt. Could be nice having the game do my aiming for me sometimes.

In general, I’m more than happy to take feedback on all of this, obviously, and as I said in the blog post:

We’re doing a lot of experimenting right now with these talents to determine how fun they are to play, and to balance them. They’re not official and they are subject to change still. Even after we put them out, we will likely continue modifying them based on feedback from the community and balance them according to how we see players using them in practice.

So if it turns out that Improved Charge is “obsolete” then we will look at changing it up.

That said, I think it’s probably worth waiting to give it a try and see how it works out in practice. For example, I think Improved Charge is going to be an excellent grinding talent.

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Although, I will say, as great as the whole package is, the third tier of Ranger is my least favorite. As long as we’re talking feedback, suggestions for improvements/alternatives (all individual ideas):

  • Tier 3 sniper: gain another slot for a special arrow.
  • Tier 3 rapid: arrows recover 25% faster.
  • Tier 3 rapid (or sniper, depending on how you look at it): special arrows that miss recover 50% faster.
  • Tier 3 sniper: same, but for any special arrow, without the draw time. It’s still primarily a benefit at long ranges.

I would of also like to see something like:

Increase globe count to 6 on 1 Tree.
Decrease globe count to 2 or 3 but you don’t lose globes at close range on the other Tree.

But then I guess how does that work if you spec into both.

Warrior talents look cool and I see some mix-n-match potential but overall it looks like “tank” and “leveling”. We’ll have to test the berserker damage to see if it’s group dps capable.

for improved charge shot i think the reason most thing it would be obsolete is because of the slow only being 2 seconds, and that it doesnt add any extra dps

Just to make sure it was clear in the blog post, for each pair of choices, you make one choice. So for example you can’t take both Improved Charge and Rapid Charge, just one or the other. But you can take for example Improved Charge and Multishot if you want.

I like the warrior talents. The improved charge is indeed handy for grinding. I do think the damage talent are a bit frontloaded tho. U get the biggest dmg it seems when u charge and instantly shieldstun. For grinding and trashmobs this might be okay but for abberations/most of the bosses it doesnt add that much sustained dps in the end as it is right now. U could make the final talent a solo buff and last a bit longer so it will increase the dmg for the warrior Itself.

The defense tree of the warrior i do like a lot.

Also another note on this in general, as with every other system in the game and our game design philosophy in general, this is the first pass at this type of system. I’m interested to see how much variation there is in what people choose for each class, how much work it is for us to balance all of these against each other and the existing content, etc. We may eventually expand this to offer more tiers of choices, or more available paths for each class, but we wanted to start with something we knew we could get out the door and see what happens with it before we proceed further.

One of the things that I’m also thinking about as I do this is, how much time does it take to add something like this versus adding a whole new class? Is it better overall and/or more fun to keep adding additional tiers and choices to the existing classes, or add new entire classes that play totally differently?

So anyway, just some other general thoughts on how this process has unfolded for us internally.

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I would be ecstatic to see more sub-classes, but you also have so much design space for new classes. I hope you guys find a good balance.

1 - Can’t wait to see the runemage(main) and musk changes… these look neat so far
2 - Any beta branch to test this or is it just a release to everyone on the 19th?
3 - Are the right side options just meant for leveling, or should they be relevant for end game too? I can see main tank (left) and dps warr (right), and long range dps solo and group, but the right side of ranger seems solo only. Why would you be firing your first shots at long range then trying to move to the tank to spam rapid shots later? I’d expect the first tier quick shot talent to be based on shot speed not range.

Hmm… as a mage main, I’m not sure I like encouraging dps wars… that’s just more bodies blocking my shots.

I think with warrior you are on the right path, the only thing that’s left is to make sure the classes are in balance :slight_smile: Also I have to disagree with Logan, if these are going to stay the talents, I’m sure I’ll mix the two paths. The only thing I’m missing is a talent for warriors to get cooldown reduction on skills, or higher damage (so horn, charge and shield bash could be used more often)

I’m very disappointed about the ranger’s talents. When i read “Snipe Shot” i was happy, i’ve been looking forward to a sniper talent since the talent system was announced, but after reading the talents they don’t seem to have much of “snipe”, it’s just slow/rhythm shot vs quick shot. They both play around the globe range, which is spam range, not snipe.

  • Globe Master: You just need 2 shots when engaging instead of 3-5 (which only takes less than 2 seconds anyways) to fill the globes and then useless for the rest of the fight.
  • Improved charge: Seems good for solo players to deal more damage before the enemy get close, but useless on the endgame content.
  • Arrow Sight: I really hate this one, the reason why i was looking forward for sniper talents is because i like aiming from really far away and this takes away that fun. Also since you need to shoot once per second to max your damage, this is only good for engage.
  • Precision: Instead of maxing the damage on one shot per second no matter the range, i think scaling the damage based on the range would be more consistent with his name.

The quickshot talents seem good, they don’t do anything special other than increase your DPS but they’re all consistent with the “quickshot” name, the only useless talent in party is Globe Keeper, but it could be a bit useful for solo.

Edit: This post started as its own thread and was moved in here by a moderator. I originally had it as its own post due to the length.

OK I’m not really sure how else to put this: As I look at how the game is actually played (the meta I guess you could call it), I’m really concerned that the talent system that the devs proposed today might not be doing what they want. I’m pretty critical of the proposed changes, so I’m going to do my best to explain why as clearly as possible. I’ll keep it civil of course and I ask that others do the same.

I’d like to start with Warrior. This is the one I’m a lot more confidant on because I’m a 20 warrior with over 100 hours, and a 1 ranger with 0 hours.

I’ll start by saying I think the core idea here was sound, and I really agree with it. It seems like the goal here was to really neatly separate warrior into two sub classes - one where it functions as a DPS class on the same level as the other classes, and another where it functions as a tank. I really like this. I personally really enjoy damage warrior and I’m glad to see the buffs here are so strong. They seem to be a bit stronger than the ranger buffs, at least on paper, so it will be cool to see damage warriors work as a viable DPS pick for this reason. I know a lot of people want to be able to play a melee DPS class.

The added safety/damage to tank seems sound as well. Tank is doing fine and isn’t in need of a massive buff, but I expect these talent trees will buff every class so the extra perks on tank warrior seem fair.

The BIG issue with these changes in my opinion are the fact that they don’t improve how warrior is played in any meaningful way. These are just stat rewards you get for spamming your usual wound/provoke into shield bash rotation anyway. There are a few abilities in here that shake things up a small amount, such as the “raise your sword above your head” ability, but this is just a damage increase anyway. It’s not triggered just by doing your usual combo, so that’s nice, but it isn’t enough on it’s own to spice up the class the way I think a lot of people were hoping for.

At the moment, playing a hybrid DPS/Tank warrior is viable, complicated, and fun in my opinion. I don’t think this should be the case though. I definitely agree with having a hard split that brings warrior into two different sub classes, but both of those sub-classes need to be at least as interesting as hybrid warrior is now. I know a lot of people on here don’t necessarily agree with that opinion, but I think that even hard tank players would agree that they were hoping for a bit more complexity out of this update. - Things like a threat meter and new skills to make tanking more engaging, not just stat rewards for doing the sorts of things you do already.

Finally, why do I now have to pay dram to switch playstyles? This seems like less of a nerf and more like it would be an insult to my time. Up until now, warriors could use any playstyle they wanted simply by switching shields, but now they’re gimped unless they go to highsteppe and pay some dude on top of that? I don’t understand the rationale behind this. If the devs wanted class switching to be hard, why did they tie classes to inventory items? And if they want it to be easy, why implement this? Why is it easy for us to change our class but not our builds within that class? That seems like it would be extremely frustrating if implemented. Please do not do this.

Next, Ranger.

OK I’m not a ranger, so I’m more willing to admit I may be wrong with my evaluation here, but something seems smelly about these changes.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the main issue with ranger right now is that the optimal viable way to do damage is by spamming arrows, correct? And the main complaint is that very few people like doing this because it’s unrealistic and unimmersive.

I’m looking at these numbers and I’m not seeing how this would bring a slower paced archer past or even approaching the damage of an arrow spammer. The numbers here seem like an even buff on both sides. My guess is that if this went live, nobody would change playstyles.

Even if the numbers were adjusted here and the dps was completely even for both playstyles, can I honestly ask if there’s anyone who enjoys arrow spamming over regular archery? Are these people out there? Because it seems like an unimmersive RSI risk to everyone I’ve talked to about it. Maybe people will come out of the woodwork and reply in favor of this style, but if not, it might be worth rethinking ranger as a whole beyond just fire rate.

All in all, I’ll be honest, classes are tricky. They’re the entire foundation for all the combat in the game. It will take a while to get them right I’m sure. I hope these builds aren’t too set in stone, and that they adapt over a few iterations. Thanks again for having the balls to post these builds devs, and sorry the feedback on my end had to be so critical.

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They’re just going to come out for everyone on the 19th, as they require server-side changes as well and we don’t currently have like a public way to do that.

That said, that’s why we are trying to give some time between these coming out and the Shard Dungeons coming out, so that we have time to take feedback into account and tweak and make changes.

I prefer to keep all feedback on this in the same thread, we don’t really need 10 different threads going for each person’s thoughts. I appreciate the feedback though.