Join up the Scion starting nodes please!

This issue is mainly a shadow only issue. The nodes don't need to be joined, they just need to rework the shadow area. Very few classes have this problem with very few builds. Marauder/duelist will almost always surpass scion in melee, ranger will almost always surpass scion in ranged. Templar will almost always surpass scion in AoE spellcasting, and witch almost always surpasses scion in summoning. This is ignoring builds that are clearly suited to the scion such as anything Eldritch/AA, getting all the aura nodes, and other builds that need to cross the entire tree.

Also if you go through the scion start, at that point you are already better off starting as a scion so I don't see the point of this.

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Fruz wrote:

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tehosiris wrote:

tldr
time to rename game to path of standardvalesco
gl with thread, nice guy :-)

You seem to be a really nice person arguing/talking with ...

=/

He is like the average attention whore who doesn't like others getting in the spot.

+ nothing good to say.

wtb forum ignore.

And again. I don't really like the solution. Problem is a bit larger. those 3 lines won't fix much.

Friendly advice to Invalesco. Don't start internet debates (wars).

Fixing the tree ATM is not on the TODO list of GGG, yet. They need to shake up the tree as a whole. And that won;t happen until 1.1+

+1. When doing the 7 to 65 challenge, shadow was awful compared to the rest. Unless you are going CI, it's incredibly difficult compared to any other class. (Though the witch is a close second for the same reasons.)

ranger is pretty bad with her life nodes as well. them 4% nodes are painful to look at.


part of my thinks though , that this could be avoidable if early game es was a workable concept rather than what it is right now.

I love this idea, I hope it will get tested and I trust GGG will make a good decision. I haven't fiddled with enough builds or paid enough attention to the numbers to notice the Scion with an advantage, but it looks like it adds up.

well the main advantages of scions over any one class are:

the easy access to the 120% mana regen
the best access to the majority of the aura nodes
the exceptional resist nodes.
and the flexibility of build choices ( though not always the most efficient).

that flexibility is born entirely from how difficult it is to go through the center of the tree for other classes. you often have to take 5 - 6 terrible nodes to do it.

the proposed change seems reasonable .


But if we remember why ggg originally changed the center then the choice seems less reasonable.

GGG wanted to discourage going through the center of the tree because it destroyed class diversity.

in that light , the better option is probably to significantly buff the starting nodes of the witch shadow and maybe ranger.

I highly doubt buffing other classes will change anything tbh. All it'll do is buff scion indirectly because she can still access them.

No, the other alternative to joining the nodes is to call for the dreaded nerf hammer which I don't like. There's no other way to make the center less attractive than the nerf all the scion starting nodes and notables by half.

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Invalesco wrote:

I highly doubt buffing other classes will change anything tbh. All it'll do is buff scion indirectly because she can still access them.

No, the other alternative to joining the nodes is to call for the dreaded nerf hammer which I don't like. There's no other way to make the center less attractive than the nerf all the scion starting nodes and notables by half.

Add more nodes and lower the values for the 3 starting cluster of the Scion = more points needed to get out of the Scion's starting area ( even more for bi/tri-specs ), and no change for other classes. That would be an improvement already imho.

Another point:

If you look at the original 6 classes, as mentioned by a certain troll who has inadvertently helped my case, they are each meant to have certain nodes which define them and these nodes were originally only accessible by adjacent classes, which resulted in more class/build heterogeneity. After all, Templars could only easily access witch/mara perks; Shadows could not access mara/templar perks but could access witch/ranger perks, etc. This balance held true in CB and OB until the introduction of Scion. Now, because scion is adjacent to every single class, it can access perks from every class.

Now, that in itself is not a problem if the scion did not have any perk whatsoever. However, to add insult into the injury, the scion has 6 very nice perks:

- Harrier
- Path of the Savant
- Shaper
- Path of the Warrior
- Sentinel
- Path of the Hunter

Now, we have a situation in which Scion, as a caster for instance, can access 2 of it's very nice perks on top of the Ranger/Templar, Witch and Shadow perks easily - total of 5 perks. Any other class can only access 1 of scion's, 1 of theirs and 1 from adjacent classes - total of 4. That would still have been alright if Scion had rubbish starting nodes. However, she doesn't. At first glance they may seem numerically inferior, however once you start planning a build, you'll realise that they aren't inferior in the overall scheme of things.



TLDR; other than joining the starting nodes to make things fairer for other classes, I see no way around this aside from nerfing (i hate this word) the Scion starting area to make it less attractive to head towards - that means reducing all the bonuses from the starting nodes, notables and circle of life by 50%. Another alternative as Fruz mentioned is to make it harder for the scion to exit the starting area, and my calculations would indicate that that would mean an extra 2 attribute nodes at least to get to the notables - which would hurt their racing ability. Joining the starting area seems like the best solution to me at least for the short term until there is time for a more drastic overhaul of the skill tree.

Core complaint: Scion > Shadow
Proposed solution: Improve Scion area
*facepalm*