Sollution to Repetitivity - Skill Interaction through Notable/Keystone Passives

The problem there is minmaxing.

Note the gem system. The purpose of that system is to have multiple skills all swappable. You can have fire, ice, and lightning spells all attached, and switch lightning with Raise skeletons on the fly if the map is strong to lightning. Bah, you can switch from melee to magic as often as you want.

It did nothing to spamming. What happens is that people find out that lightning strike is better than infernal blow. Thus, even though you could use both, you just use lightning strike and that's it.


If a combo system was added, eventually someone is going to calculate the 'best combo'. For example, say that Flicker strike reduces elemental resistances, and lightning strike reduces armor. Someone calculates and finds out that you can do the most damage with a Flicker strike/Lightning Strike/Cleave combination. Eventually, FLC builds will form. Sure you COULD do flicker strike/infernal blow/double strike, but FLC will do more damage so it's best just to use that.

Again, it'll grant interesting effects. I like it and support it, especially since GGG is planning to remake all of the skills in the game it seems.

But 'Lightnign Strike Marauder' will just be replaced with 'FLC Marauder'.

Honestly, the main way that you'll stop spamming is when we as a playerbase stop minmaxing. Flicker Strike becomes VERY neat once you stop caring whether it does more or less damage than Spark.


But again, LOVE the idea. Very much.

Min-maxing is the cause of the current spam, for the reasons you pointed out.

By encouraging different skill usage, you are reducing the impact of min-maxing, because swapping 1 skill in a 2 or 3 skill combo won't have such an impact as swapping 1 skill in a 1 skill spam.

Imagine char A uses fire, char B uses fire-lightning.

A gets kinda screwed in areas strong against fire, because he has to swap to a whole different damage type.
B doesn't get as screwed, since he just needs to either stick to lightning, or swap fire with something else - perhaps even physical (ethereal knives).

So it does alleviate the downsides of versatility.
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A little off-topic, but further encouraging versatility, damage boosting nodes might have dual-type.

Just like you have generic types like Projectile, wich affects bow, wand and projectile spells, you could have dual or tri-types like daggers & swords, or dagger & bow, or axe and mace, etc.

This would make it a less brutal impact on your effectiveness to swap to a different skill or weapon type.

Lightning Strike users don't switch out LS for another skill even against lightning resist. As such, a LS/FS user won't switch when against lightning resist. If lightning resist was strong enough to ruin LS, then the minmaxer will abandon LS completely and use, says, EK. They aren't switching.. they'll ONLY use EK. The same will be true of the double skill user.

Again, I've seen systems like this. This is EXACTLY what happens in them. What causes a minmaxer to change is their opponent. Even though, it's minimum. That's what makes a minmaxer a minmaxer: they eliminate anything interesting just to find the shortest route to the goal.


Personally, I'm tempted to say to just let them spam. The true minmaxers enjoy doing the research and tests to isolate the game to its route. It's their fun. The ones complaining about how 'everything is 1 skill' are the copycats following the minmaxer's footsteps. Let the mindless copycats rot, if you don't mind the bluntness.


Our true goal should be:

1. Making sure there's many options that are 'viable'. NOT the best, but 'doable'.

2. Make sure there's many 'fun' builds, even if they aren't viable. Some of my favorite Diablo x builds weren't made to go past Normal difficulty.

3. Profit!


So R()#$ the minmaxer. Let's talk about this idea for those that count.


I can see two ways of pulling this off.

1: Standard gem bonuses.

Lightning Strike works as normal on 1-4% quality. After 5% it gains it's first 'combo' feature (i.e. 10% damage boost to Flicker Strike).

The point where it gets it's combo depends on the skill.

Advantage: Easier to balance. You can decide just what sort of combo you'll want to have happen and balance everything for it.

2: Random gem bonuses.

the 'combos' act like affixes in that they are random with a few set 'rules' similar to how you can't get Movement Speed on a bow (so, for example, you won't see a bonus to lightning strike show up on lightning strike). Otherwise, it's random. A gem gets it's first combo item on 5% quality, and a second one at 15% quality.

Advantage: Makes getting multiple gems of the same type more interesting as they'll end up with different combos. If that Leap Slam has an effect that Cleave attack at a wider angle you might decide to start using Cleave if you haven't planned on it before.

So basically, more keystones like Elemental Equilibrium?

To achieve variety, characters need to have a suite of skills with different purposes, facing different situations calling for different combinations of skills. POE is lacking in the first step- the skills don't have any particularly different purposes. The suggestion in this thread is trying to solve the second step of making situations call for different combinations, which is not really the problem.

I don't agree entirely, PolarisOrbit.

Even if you have a build with various skills, and a variety of enemies that makes each and every skill you have useful in certain circumstances, it still does nothing to stop the fact that against a particular enemy, you will spam a particular skill.

My suggestion is to give players bonuses that make you want to use more than one skill against the same enemy.

This can also be done by changing the enemy, indeed, but it is very limited that way.
If I had to make a proper parallel to your "first step", it would be, for example, an enemy that has Elemental Equilibrium on himself - making him more resistant to the last element that hit him, but weaker against the the other 2 - forcing you to alternate elements.

Making each enemy have something that affects ALL builds simultaneously, doesn't give as much room to the Developers, as making multiple unique passives in the skill tree with this purpose.

Because each of those unique passives in the skill tree can be tailored to specific builds, whereas anything they give to a monster with the same intention would probably need to be very generalistic.

Below is not a reply to you, more of a reinforcement:
My suggestion doesn't force a fixed rotation upon you.
If you hit the aforementioned target with lightning, now he's vulnerable to fire and cold.
If he's too close to you, hitting with Cold may be the best idea, to slow or even freeze him in his tracks.
If you're safe, hitting with Fire will be the most effective, as it holds the highest damage potential.

So it does not create a "rotational" mentality, unless it is poorly implemented.

What I mean is POE has essentially just 2 skills:
Group 1) Kill stuff
Group 2) Buffs & Curses

Compare to Diablo, 3 for example, where each class had skills for the following purposes:
Group 1) Generate resource ("mana")
Group 2) Spend resource (kill stuff)
Group 3) Defense & Movement
Group 4) Ulimates (long cooldown skills)
Group 5) Passives (buffs)

See the difference? POE can't get too dynamic because all the skills are too tightly clusted in narrow categories. There are no movement skills. No bi-directional interactions with mana. No "panic button" skills. The game can't force players to do different things because there are only 2 things that players can do, and in every situation you always do both.

I don't see the same differences, and think you may have overlooked some similarities.
Group 1) Generate resource - Mana Leech, Frenzy ("charges")
Group 2) Spend resource - Flicker Strike (frenzy), Cold Snap (power), Discharge (all)
Group 3) Defense & Movement - AArmor, MShell, TShield & WBlades, FlickerS, LeapS
Group 4) Ulimates (long cooldown skills) - I dislike long cooldowns, and I'm glad PoE doesn't have them. I have suggested Ultimates in a different thread, but they function according to a Resource that fills according to your Actions, rather than being based on Time.
Group 5) Passives (buffs) - Auras, Totems, Buffs.

Plus, PoE has Elemental Equilibrium, wich you already acknowledged is somewhat similar to what I'm suggesting - that makes it strange to read, as it pretty much invalidates, everything else you wrote in your post - in particular when you say that PoE can't get "too" dynamic - it already has that potential in Elemental Equilibrium.

Elemental Equilibrium might not be used in the exact way I would like it to due to the way spell passives are so element-specific, causing Elemental Equilibrium to be mostly used/viable for builds that focus on physical attacks with added/converted elemental damage.

I am suggesting passives that cause the best ability against an enemy to change over the course of a fight - just like Elemental Equilibrium can.


This thread doesn't suggest anything that can't be "somewhat" easily coded into the game.

I mean, right?

Shameless bump.

Bumpower.