Keyboard Skills: Key-binding as an alt option to current control format?

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BurnThrew wrote:

Blizzard and meteor was pretty much avoided because their cool down made them a less then optimal choice

[chokes on his food]
Are you serious? Blizzard and Meteor are among the most powerful skills in the entire game. Blizzard+fireball sorcs is pretty much the most powerful sorc build that can play without any starter gear very well. Both Meteor and Blizzard are not exactyl noob-friendly, especially meteor which requires plenty of skill and timing, and cooldowns in this situations act as light tactical enhancements making players place their AoE spells more carefully and use spam-skills in-between casts.

And in the latter patches, D2 had cooldowns for all major non-spammable skills, by the way.

First off, this not being an RTS doesn't mean that it doesn't require tactical depth. PoE has amazing potential for depth because of all the support gems that allow you to really fine-tune every single skill. If the skillbase itself will be large enough, the support gems and passives will make the game incredibly deep. Hard to balance, too -- but hey, who the hell needs balance in PvP? And in PvE, I'm sure that there'll be many viable builds.
Anyways, what I'm saying is, properly implemented tactical depth WILL NOT distance casual players away from the game. If they don't really apply effort, then they won't even SEE the tactical depth beyond what their comfort zone. Just like Starcraft - a simple enough game for a noob, but extremely difficult and deep whenever you play against seasoned players.
Easy to learn, f***ng hard to master. That should be the philosophy behind all this.

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atrokkus wrote:

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BurnThrew wrote:

Blizzard and meteor was pretty much avoided because their cool down made them a less then optimal choice

[chokes on his food]
Are you serious? Blizzard and Meteor are among the most powerful skills in the entire game. Blizzard+fireball sorcs is pretty much the most powerful sorc build that can play without any starter gear very well. Both Meteor and Blizzard are not exactyl noob-friendly, especially meteor which requires plenty of skill and timing, and cooldowns in this situations act as light tactical enhancements making players place their AoE spells more carefully and use spam-skills in-between casts.

Cast for cast there's no denying meteor and blizzard were among the strongest of the skills however I can't recall the last time I was hit by one of them because you can see them before any damage is done and therefore avoid them relatively easy

Comparing say fireball to meteor you're far more likely to hit your target with fireball if you miss your target you're able to quickly cast another one

Most blizzard sorcs I saw ended up spamming ice blast because blizzard is too easily dodged (only exception to this is if the sorc was dueling a necro)

Most popular builds for sorceresses is fireball or lightning(and lightning is really only picked on expansion)

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atrokkus wrote:

And in the latter patches, D2 had cooldowns for all major non-spammable skills, by the way.

last patch I played was 1.12 and off the top of my head the only skills I can think of with an real sort of cool down on it is blizzard meteor and orb

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atrokkus wrote:

First off, this not being an RTS doesn't mean that it doesn't require tactical depth. PoE has amazing potential for depth because of all the support gems that allow you to really fine-tune every single skill. If the skillbase itself will be large enough, the support gems and passives will make the game incredibly deep. Hard to balance, too -- but hey, who the hell needs balance in PvP? And in PvE, I'm sure that there'll be many viable builds.
Anyways, what I'm saying is, properly implemented tactical depth WILL NOT distance casual players away from the game. If they don't really apply effort, then they won't even SEE the tactical depth beyond what their comfort zone. Just like Starcraft - a simple enough game for a noob, but extremely difficult and deep whenever you play against seasoned players.
Easy to learn, f***ng hard to master. That should be the philosophy behind all this.

I never said RTS are the only thing that have tactical depth I merely stated that adding cool down to skills in an ARPG (or an MMO for that matter) Doesn't add tactical depth it just slows down the pace of the game

If skills are properly implemented and balanced cool downs aren't required and you still have to use tactics to win

If skills are improperly balanced then cool downs are rampant and people mistake it for tactical depth

Random information: Mediocre and casual are completely different even tho a lot of people fit into both categorys

Well, first off, I wasn't talking about PvP specifically because PvP is SECONDARY in both Diablo2 and Path of Exile. In fact, Blizzard made NO effort to balance out PvP, and explicitly stated that they are not interested in that.
So regarding Meteor and Blizzard I was talking about PvM.

Now, I think we can agree that PoE will definitely have enough tactical depth as it is, and cooldowns will not really factor in any negative way. In fact, they would fit pretty well into the whole support gem gameplay because you can have a gem that decreases cooldown.

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BurnThrew wrote:

Random information: Mediocre and casual are completely different even tho a lot of people fit into both categorys

Doesn't matter. The reason Diablo and Starcraft rocked was that they were easy to learn for casual players (ANYONE could play pretty good against a CPU in Starcraft, for instance), but in order to beat D2 on hell/hardcore, or play against serious players in Starcraft, you have to hone your skills. And I believe that PoE will be able to rise to the occasion.

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atrokkus wrote:

Well, first off, I wasn't talking about PvP specifically because PvP is SECONDARY in both Diablo2 and Path of Exile. In fact, Blizzard made NO effort to balance out PvP, and explicitly stated that they are not interested in that.
So regarding Meteor and Blizzard I was talking about PvM.

If you were talking about pvm then meteor and blizzard was still bad because you'd use chain lightning/orb and static field

Anyways on to path of exile
While pvp may come second GGG unlike blizzard isn't foolish enough to think it won't be a major part of the game and as such is doing their best to make sure it's fairly balanced http://www.pathofexile.com/news/dev-diary/#pvp and I could argue that PvP is very much part of their main focus as it's even mentioned in their press release about beta http://www.pathofexile.com/press/release

I could probably find much more things to suggest pvp is a pretty big deal to GGG but I don't feel like taking the time

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atrokkus wrote:

Now, I think we can agree that PoE will definitely have enough tactical depth as it is, and cooldowns will not really factor in any negative way. In fact, they would fit pretty well into the whole support gem gameplay because you can have a gem that decreases cooldown.

Cool downs can only factor in a negative way.

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atrokkus wrote:

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BurnThrew wrote:

Random information: Mediocre and casual are completely different even tho a lot of people fit into both categorys

Doesn't matter. The reason Diablo and Starcraft rocked was that they were easy to learn for casual players (ANYONE could play pretty good against a CPU in Starcraft, for instance), but in order to beat D2 on hell/hardcore, or play against serious players in Starcraft, you have to hone your skills. And I believe that PoE will be able to rise to the occasion.

Ya know ya kinda proved my point here when ya mentioned diablo2 in your learning curve because diablo2's best bet was avoiding cooldown

Edit: We should probably make a thread to talk about cooldowns cause this thread has been knocked off track big time

I definitely would like to see a Diablo 2 style control scheme.

Personally I find it quite hard to aim properly while mashing skills on the keyboard, having everything accessible on the mouse would be a lot easier.


BurnThrew, CL/Orb builds are only viable for seriously twinked characters. A Blizzard sorc was always one of the best options for running Mephisto at the start of a ladder.

I always thought the D2 way of pre-loading skills into the LMB or RMB slots was a bit clunky. Always pressing two buttons to perform one ability.

However, I see no harm in offering an option to others that prefer that system. The more options that game has the wider audience that game will attract.

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iamacyborg wrote:

I definitely would like to see a Diablo 2 style control scheme.

Personally I find it quite hard to aim properly while mashing skills on the keyboard, having everything accessible on the mouse would be a lot easier.


BurnThrew, CL/Orb builds are only viable for seriously twinked characters. A Blizzard sorc was always one of the best options for running Mephisto at the start of a ladder.

I can hell meph run on a level 60 sorceress with no gear

If anything blizzard requires more of a twink because orb only needs 3 things maxed to have maximum power and that leaves a bunch of free points

I can't comment too much on chain lightning sorcs because by the time synergies were added I had no need to do magic find runs anymore and orb sorceresses were my go to magic find character

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Willowimp wrote:

I see no harm in offering an option to others that prefer that system. The more options that game has the wider audience that game will attract.

That's all that really needed to be said from the nay sayers

I would just like to have the spell/attack happen when I press the hotkey. I hate when I have a monster highlighted and I attack, then it dies and I stop attacking and have to click another monster. It's easy for ranged attackers but for melee its a pain.
Make option in user interface to turn selecting monsters or let us keep attacking after monster is dead.

Offtopic again:

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BurnThrew wrote:

If you were talking about pvm then meteor and blizzard was still bad because you'd use chain lightning/orb and static field

I honestly don't know why you think this way. Blizzard is de-facto one of the best skills in the game, especially for pure cold sorcs (fully synergized blizzard is much more powerful than orb). Both orb and blizzard display great skill requirement as both require utmost precision in casting (orb's damage varies greatly depending on where the icebolt explosion occurs, and blizzard's shards fall in a certain geometry that requires casting at certain angles in relation to the target).
And meteorb and blizzball combos can easily solo 8ppl hell. Not saying that orb/lightning is any worse, but it's just unfair and factually incorrect to argue that blizzard/meteor are poor investments. And both extremely fun to play with (due to challenge).

The reason I continue this offtopic is that I want to see such tricky spell physics in PoE -- something that's not obvious. Like, for a noob, Frozen Orb in d2 is a godsend "win button" -- up to a certain level. Because the noob doesn't realize that in order to realize full potential of the spell you have to aim it very precisely (as explained above). Same with Blizzard shards that hit in a certain geometry that can be learned and used to your advantage.