Analysis and critique of the intellect passive setup.

Please excuse my stutter, it gets fucking annoying, I know I live with myself. I did this at nearly 5 am, so i kind of ramble in parts but some good points are made.

Please don't respond with "We know shock nova is OP." I'm not talking about shock nova specifically it's the int passive tree I'm talking about.

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So the basic point is that the passive tree is setup to favor lightning regardless of nova, due to it being closer to the power orbs, which are mandatory. Can't really disagree with that.

I personally don't mind 'filler' talents that much, as long as they do something useful, even if it's not as good as other talents. Because in a lot of places in the tree, it's setup that some of the really good passives require you to work a bit to get at them, and you have to do that math and calculate whether it's worth taking those two subpar talents to get that awesome 10% dmg talent.

You're definitely right. The current passive tree has a lot of balance issues like this.

They said they are completely revamping the tree already.

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IZombie wrote:

They said they are completely revamping the tree already.

And this feedback might help them do that :)

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IZombie wrote:

They said they are completely revamping the tree already.

hopefully they won't put filler talents and make the tree evenly spaced from one another if they do.

Outstanding video. I've often wondered why a skill deals the same damage no matter how many targets it hit. Shouldn't it take a damage cut based on the number of monsters you strike (talking about magic/int skills)..?

Anyway, really waiting on new tree at the moment.

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Nate_Prawdzik wrote:

Shouldn't it take a damage cut based on the number of monsters you strike (talking about magic/int skills)..?

Then you should ask the same thing about split arrow, sweep, cleave etc .... its called an AOE.

If they lower the damage by dividing over the number of mobs then you gonna have the same complaints "I cant kill as fast now" followed by request for balance and buffs to damage again.

and shock does not deal the same damage over all of its radius.

You have enough points right now to spec into both power charges and any of the elemental tree you like (fire, cold, light). And you would still have points to spare and get other things.

Also I think power charges were by design meant to synergize the most with lightning because of passive like "power charges when killing a shocked mob", or add "lightning damage of 1-6 per charge".

Mainly it reinforces the main force/intention of the lightning tree which is speed and fast killing ie "kill quick before you get killed". Crits in lightning accelerates the killing but the mob is still coming at you so you need to kill it quick.

Fire is about killing with fear and panic from burning, running and spreading it around. Crits with fire put fear and makes mobs run in panic. They are not coming at you anymore.

Cold is about control and slowing everything down. crits with cold freezes and stop mobs from coming at you. There is less of a need to kill quickly as the speed of everything slows down and you have more time to kill.

Power charges helps with the crits in all trees.

And since for each tree the critting have different noticeable consequences, power charges ultimately helps to reinforce the differences between the gameplay experience for each tree.

I like the differences put into each spec. Even accentuating the differences between the witch specs in terms of gameplay would be fun to see and would give people incentives to make 1 witch for each spec.


As for the fillers, in all of the tree, you have what I call central highways that take you faster to any of the "neighbouhood" of skills that you like. If you zoom it out its a lot built like a city transport system ... big lanes with small numbers of useful for every spec passive ( like +mana, +cast speed, +ias or +life + melee dmg).

I dont mind the tree revamped with different starting points. It would be nice that GGG keep that kind of big highways philosophy. It makes going from one neighbourhood to the other very easy.

Well that i do not understand. If it works like you describe it and lightning enables you to kill mobs fast enough to be some sort of safe from them, then why would you bother at all with cold or fire. You do not need abilitys like panic and freeze to be safe.

Lightning taking greater risks and dealing more damage is fine but the price you have to pay is not beeing forced to kill faster. That's an advantage.
Lightning is about movement, about the ability to battle randomness.