Sollution to Repetitivity - Skill Interaction through Notable/Keystone Passives

Despite all the great concepts in Path of Exile, alot of the potential variety of builds seems to ultimately get crushed by the superior effectiveness of spamming a single, heavily-supported skill over and over again, leading to repetivity, wich may negatively impact retention rate.

Perhaps GGG's attempt at fixing that was adding monsters with very specific immunities, but it only ends up making players swap a gem and spam the "counter" skill.

So, what I believe could help encourage players to use a variety of skills during combat, would be procs and/or stacks that alter the effectiveness of your skills in a way that discourages spamming.

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This might be done by changing Monsters, Skills or adding Keystones/Notables.

Changing monsters - extremely limited.
Hypotetically, you could give monsters a "passive" mechanic that changes their resistances dynamically over the course of combat, as if you had Elemental Equilibrium, but not just for damage types - skill types as well (projectile vs melee vs aoe).

This is limited, as in order to properly bring dynamic to all kinds of builds, you would end up with 1 or 2 such monster mechanics, and it wouldn't change PvP.

Changing Skills - risky
A single skill may belong to different builds and be used differently by different builds.
As such, it's unwise to try and make changes to skills directly for this purpose.

Adding Keystones/Notables - seems the most viable
Changing passives effectively affects your build in particular.
The added passives could have anything from general to extremely specific bonuses, but all of them would be intended at encouraging players to use more than 1 skill against any single opponent.

Hypotetical Examples:
1 - Increases damage dealt by melee skills while wielding a sword or dagger by X%, but each skill can only benefit from this bonus once every 3 skill uses. When you bypass a skill's cooldown by spending a charge, it also resets this count.
Auto-attack isn't acknowledged as a skill.
The 3 skill uses of Multistrike count as a single skill.
Examples:
4x Flicker Strike (no multistrike)
1st skill, 1st Flicker Strike - benefits
2nd skill, 2nd Flicker Strike - doesn't
3rd skill, 3rd Flicker Strike - doesn't
(reset) 1st skill, 1st Flicker Strike - benefits
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4x Flicker Strike (no multistrike), spending Frenzy Charges to bypass the cooldown on 2nd and 3rd uses
1st skill, 1st Flicker Strike - benefits
(reset) 1st skill, 1st Flicker Strike - benefits
(reset) 1st skill, 1st Flicker Strike - benefits
2nd skill, 2nd Flicker Strike - doesn't
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Flicker Strike - Whirling Blades - Frenzy - Flicker Strike
1st skill, 1st Flicker Strike - benefits
2nd skill, 1st Whirling Blades - benefits
3rd skill, 1st Frenzy - benefits
(reset) 1st skill, 1st Flicker Strike - benefits
This means you shouldn't use the same skill more than once every 3 skills unless you spend charges to bypass its cooldown.

2 - When you deal Lightning damage, you gain a X% bonus to Cold damage for 5 seconds and vice-versa.
Example:
You can use Freezing Pulse (gain lightning bonus for 5 seconds), then spam Spark for 4 seconds (gaining lightning bonus for 5 seconds every use), then Freezing Pulse again before the lightning bonus 5 seconds are up, then go back to using Spark.
You can also simply do Freezing Pulse (gain lightning bonus), Spark for 4 seconds (gain cold bonus), Freezing Pulse for 4 seconds (refreshing Lightning bonus), etc.
This means as long as you use a skill of each element at least once every 5 seconds, you maintain its respective bonus.


3 - Physical damage is increased by X% against Frozen enemies.

4 - When you use an AoE skill, you gain Y% bonus to single target skill damage for 1 second per enemy hit.

No offence, I'm not a frequent user of this forum, but I don't think your opinion will be taken seriously when you start off your post like that.

Just come across as condescending and a know-it-all. Kind of like a fat kid penning a letter to Sir Alex Ferguson, telling him how to manage a football team.
But that's just my opinion.

I was focused on sharing the idea, and not really on the opening of my post, but you have a good point.
I'll edit the post.

Anything to say on topic, though?

Bump.

yeha, I don't get it.

No matter what you do, the game will still be about clicking and clicking and clicking clicking and clicking and clicking clicking and clicking and clicking clicking and clicking and clicking clicking and clicking and clicking clicking and clicking and clicking

the left\right mouse button 100 times per minute.

whether its a red fireball or blue iceball is not relevant.

trying to devise some elaborate way that 99% of the unintelligent population wont understand so that some clicks be blue and others red is ....

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helicalius wrote:

yeha, I don't get it.

No matter what you do, the game will still be about clicking and clicking and clicking clicking and clicking and clicking clicking and clicking and clicking clicking and clicking and clicking clicking and clicking and clicking clicking and clicking and clicking

the left\right mouse button 100 times per minute.

whether its a red fireball or blue iceball is not relevant.

trying to devise some elaborate way that 99% of the unintelligent population wont understand so that some clicks be blue and others red is ....

It's okay to be part of the unintelligent population - you can always not take the suggested keystones/passives.

I'm just trying to promote a more dynamic combat.

I don't think that would improve much. Instead of spamming the same skill over and over, you cycle three skills over and over.

If the game is to become less repetitive, I want it trough enemy groups. That is, different tactics are called for different encounters. I don't see PoE heading that way though.

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Crystalgate wrote:

I don't think that would improve much. Instead of spamming the same skill over and over, you cycle three skills over and over.

If the game is to become less repetitive, I want it trough enemy groups. That is, different tactics are called for different encounters. I don't see PoE heading that way though.

I only gave hypotetical examples.

I am not suggesting only 1 such keystone or notable to be in the skill tree.
There should be plenty.
The bonuses should be good enough that you would consider building a strategy around it, thus diversifying your skill usage.

The point is not encouraging a rotation.
The point is discouraging spamming.

There are a few builds that use more than 2 skills, but most don't.

Most are: auras up, spam 1-2 skills.

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Nurvus wrote:

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Crystalgate wrote:

I don't think that would improve much. Instead of spamming the same skill over and over, you cycle three skills over and over.

If the game is to become less repetitive, I want it trough enemy groups. That is, different tactics are called for different encounters. I don't see PoE heading that way though.

I only gave hypotetical examples.

I am not suggesting only 1 such keystone or notable to be in the skill tree.
There should be plenty.
The bonuses should be good enough that you would consider building a strategy around it, thus diversifying your skill usage.

The point is not encouraging a rotation.
The point is discouraging spamming.

There are a few builds that use more than 2 skills, but most don't.

Most are: auras up, spam 1-2 skills.

You're effectively adding in combo systems.

Not fully against it, but it'll do nothing to help spamming. When I plan a combo based game like Elsword or RaiderZ,instead of spamming 1 key, I just spam the combo. XXDX. 1XX3X2XX5X1X6. Then repeat.

Games with combo systems that were interesting did it the same way as non combo games did it: putting you in situations where your 'normal' actions won't do. AI can do that, such as Vaal. Just having a particular situation can do it. A pack of blue monsters tends to leave me changing up my plans, at least in Normal.

Again, nothing against the idea. I like the idea of Elemental Equilibrium and wouldn't mind more of that. However, it'll change WHAT we spam, not IF we spam.

Yes, but changes the way you build and think.

My first idea, only forces you to "not" use the same skill more often than once every 3 skill uses.

It does not tell you what to use for the other 2 skills.
Depending on the situation, you may find yourself swapping the order of skills, specially with its charge-reset-cooldown mechanic.

Imagine you have my first 2 suggestions, affecting spells and lightning<->cold:
If you don't want to spam the same skill more than once every 3 times AND you gain bonus to lightning for 5 sec when you use cold, and vice-versa, you could...

...chain lightning & cold spells by default.
When you have Power Charges, you can spam Cold Snap as long as you don't forget to use a Lightning spell to keep up the bonus.
When you don't have Power Charges (or don't want to spend them), you can use Cold Snap, and another cold spell during its cooldown, such as Ice Spear or Freezing Pulse, depending on enemy proximity, and a Lightning Spell.

If odd situations cause some builds - unfortunately not all - to change their tactics in the current PoE, they would do so even better with my suggestion.

Note, that the bonuses from the suggested Passives would need to be strong enough to compensate the fact that players would be using more active gems (and thus less support gems).
While currently you often find 1 active + 5 support, with these passives you'd more likely find 2 active + 4 support, or even 3+3.