Polishing the Tree

General Polish Notes - I just feel like nitpicking, but maybe these points are agreeable to everyone else.



Player's Rationale: I want to build an elemental bow Shadow. He seems to be constructed to support this kind of build.

Path A) All right! There's a direct passage from the start node to the lightning weapon damage I want!

...Oh but spell power's in the way, gah.

Path B) All right! There's a direct passage from the start node to the lightning weapon damage I want!

...Oh but dual wielding and one-handed passives block the way, gah.

You can of course, /go around/ as I illustrated in path B, but this "feels" awful and unintuitive.

Suggestion :: The reason why I don't want spell power is because I won't be using spells. Add more trap-related passives to the Shadow start and I won't feel bad about taking spell power.

Just add another cluster nearby:
+20% trap duration
+10% trap elemental damage
+40% trap critical strike chance

And suddenly, spell power seems really cool for a bow user, since you can compliment your attacks with spell-traps.

Alternative Suggestion :: Add a third avenue for path B:

+6% projectile damage
+20% accuracy of ranged attacks
+6% projectile damage

---------------------



Player Rationale :: I'm going for a stun build!

Problem: This small cluster just /feels/ really bad. You have to take an extra attribute point purchase if you want both stun duration and stun threshold improvements. And when you get these four passives, you aren't really "anywhere" - there's no locomotion here. That's fine usually on the passive tree, because of notable nodes. Notable nodes make purchases like these "feel" good.

Suggestion :: Please add a notable node to this cluster. Something like...

"Your attacks have 20% increased stun duration and 10% reduced stun threshold against foes who are on low life."

Basically a "feel good" passive of some kind that's interesting, would be all this cluster needs.

------------------------



Spell Damage and Melee Damage :: Are there ANY people who take these? I don't understand why projectile damage can be 5%, 5%, 5%, 8% but spell damage goes 4%, 4%, 4%, 10%.

This is another instance of "feels". Just bump the passives up to 5%. Bring down +10% spell damage/melee damage to 8% and make them all like projectile damage. It's only a net gain of +1% increased spell damage/melee damage, but these passives "feel" better when they're on par with everything else on the tree. It doesn't "feel" like a reward to spend 3 points at 4% to get access to 1 10% node.

But in general, I think we will find that speccing offensively isn't rewarded significantly enough by the passive tree. I don't know if this is a popular idea yet, but I believe that the passive tree offers some very powerful defensive specialization, but aside from crit multiplier passives, pain attunement, and some certain passive skills (like weapon elemental damage), it feels like the passive tree is too hard on offensive nodes. You should consider just bumping these up to 5% and keeping the 10% nodes at 10%.

---------------------------------



Concentration is one of those passives that seems really interesting but just makes you scratch your head and go, "Oh yeah, that's great. Too bad I'll never get it."

This part of the tree is very sparse and laid out in such a way that only a Templar who's dual wielding or using shields/EE would ever come this way. And such Templars doubtlessly don't care too much for spell casting interruption protection.

This is a case of "lack of specialization". There's nothing here to really draw you to "avoid cast interruption" - I think it should be a notable node in a large spell-casting cluster.

This node seems to be perfect for a melee-range battle mage type character. Would you consider this cluster of nodes?

1. +10% block and stun recovery, -10% energy shield cooldown
2. -15% burn duration on you
3. -15% shock duration on you
4. -15% chilled and freeze duration on you
5. <Avoid Casting Interruption>

The basic idea here is to mirror the crystal skin cluster, but for the Templar.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to introduce a cluster above it, reinforcing the idea of a "battle mage".

1. +5% elemental damage
2. +5% elemental damage
3. +2% cast and attack speed
4. +2% cast and attack speed
5. +10% increased elemental resistance penetration

---------------------------------



This one is REALLY nit-picky. He needs friends. He's all alone! It's visually horrifying.

---------------------------------



These +armor% nodes are kind of in a vaccuum. Maybe it's because armor isn't especially powerful right now, but the Marauder has the least easy access to armor increases. The Templar and Duelist can stack armor far more easily than the Marauder. This feels like an oversight, as there's no way to even give up a lot of stats to get really high in armor as the Marauder, unless you delve into the Templar/Duelist trees, you can't really get much increased armor.

The 30% here is way out of the way of most builds, and when you do go out of your way to get these increases - that's all you're getting, 30%. Could you add a notable node here that gives +15-20% armor? Bumping the cluster up to 45-50%?

-------------------------------------

The following is added after the latest 0.9.13 patch notes and is in regards to recent Marauder nerfs.

I don't disagree that the Marauder is strong, but I can't help but feel these changes were reactionary, rather than proactive and with a deeper meaning. Reducing the Marauder's starting life node to 13% and attacking RT/Ground Slam are reasonable ways to address the "Marauder problem" - but I don't think what's been done so far is a long-term solution.



Currently, there are two major paths Marauders take. Path A and Path B. It matters not if a given Marauder build slightly deviates from these two paths, but a majority of Marauders are deliberately getting Blood Magic and Resolute Technique and this is the primary highway they take.

Can you blame them? Look at the other sections of the Marauder tree.

Exhibit A)



This is pretty much a giant deadzone for the Marauder. You have a few staff clusters (basically an inferior mace, from the average Marauder's view). You have Totem clusters (which while cool, don't add much depth to the average Marauder build). You have reduced mana cost (big deal, Marauder skills cost nothing with blood magic anyway). You have critical chance and buff duration (the latter only significant if you want to do an immortal cry build or something).

Exhibit B)



Pink and Green road take you to where you want to go - Blood Magic. At the same time, each road fails to take you someplace different. It isn't much of a big choice between either of these roads, there isn't a whole lot going on that's really "build defining" - and you're being thrust into Blood Magic either way. You're also on the main highway, when you take BM, to get to the center of the tree, which offers some nice life regen/max life nodes to grab.

The lime green path takes you out of your way from Blood Magic and offers you a paltry armor bonus (compared to other armor clusters or even IR) - and that's it. You're not even saving many points going this way, it still consumes a lot of points traversing lime green if you want to use it as a shortcut towards the middle. You might as well get Blood Magic because you're already there anyway.

Exhibit C)



The Witch is probably the best designed area of the passive skill tree right now. There's a ton of choice going on. You have a lot of keystones vying for control of your attention. Notice how each pink path is one you have to choose to be on. You can ride the top path to get life/pain attunement/CI/dexterity and dagger, you can ride the middle pink path to get mind-drinker and mana leech, you can ride the bottom most pink path for quicker access to the Shadow starting nodes. Each path you take has a convincing choice and really causes some build diversity. Some builds take the top road, the others middle and some bottom. And the end result is always something pretty different.

In the Marauder's case, you take pink, green or lime green and where are you at? On the same highway towards the middle of the tree.

I think "Exhibit A" and "Exhibit B" need some restructuring. The current forces determining your Marauder's build are governed by the Keystones at work, so adding more keystones in interesting areas (putting one smack dab in the middle of Exhibit A wouldn't be a bad idea) would pull Marauders to gravitate there. But at the same time, you need some lesser, but still notable nodes - clusters with unique stats on them - to cause Marauder builds to diverge.

Right now, there's just a smattering of accuracy, attack speed, physical damage and stun duration/threshold passives, so the Marauder can get all of that jazz no matter how he builds, but it's just as easy to get them all with Blood Magic, Life Regeneration, and Resolute Technique.

If you add some more unique stats, that could deepen Marauder building, then suddenly, the equation isn't as easy to solve and we may see less Ground Slammin'. Or better yet, we'll see smarter Slammin'.

Just think about some of the things "pros" have used in the past. Like Kripp, with his "bone wall Vaal to death" strategy (buff duration is great and all for this, but how about some Marauder passives that really make you into a "bonewall-like" character, controlling space with skills more effectively due to your passive purchases). Many Marauders use Phase Run, what about passives to enhance that skill? How about some passive skills that would potentially invite the use specfic auras? I'm envisioning a keystone that turns all auras into "shouts" - or more powerful, but temporary versions of auras (the enduring cry animation is already available).

My main point is that I don't necessarily disagree with the Marauder nerfs, but I always like to advocate for buffs with nerfs, because many game developers choose to nerf things because they're chasing that 'flavor of month tail' - and they think they can balance their game by always going after the thing that people perceive to be powerful.

The solution to polishing this tree as a whole, is by making each area subtly more inviting and unique, so that you're pulled in many different direction.

Reason of attack based passives not being so popular is because there are plenty of support skillgems capable to give enough damage (like incresed critical damage gives 96% critical damage increase without any drawbacks) but no defensive options what so ever but auras. (major ones tempest shield, molten shell and discipline, other defensive auras to specific, enduring cry, enfeeble). It would be great if we had some ways to improve defensive stats not only by items and passives. I can't see either taking passive bonuses at cost of support gems increases, forsome special effects on support gems cause it would take like 6-10 levels to achieve same with passives on skill tree.

That's absolutely true. I find support gems are far far more effective at giving damage increases over the passive tree.

For instance, when you run a full-life melee build, you can run both more melee damage supports, giving you on that alone, equivalent to 69% increased physical damage. That's really, really tough to beat even as a Marauder. That's almost 10 points worth of 8% melee damage for rank 1 support gems.

A few patches ago it WAS possible to create an elemental bow Shadow, and that's exactly the build I had. Keep in mind my description refers to the older skill tree, but I had increased elemental weapon damage, lots of movement speed increase, and improved traps.

I would run around dumping traps, kiting enemies and casting lightning arrow for lots of AOE spell damage.

The shadow skill tree in my opinion doesn't allow for much customization, especially now that they moved traps way out in the boonies for whatever reason.

"

Dethicos wrote:

The shadow skill tree in my opinion doesn't allow for much customization, especially now that they moved traps way out in the boonies for whatever reason.

I never found a reason to invest in trap nodes personally.
1 more trap ? 3 is plenty, they reload fast enough.
15% laying speed ? If it takes 1 second to lay a trap, that node would lower the time to 0.87 second. Worth it ? Meh. But really, I've never felt like traps were slow to deploy.
Trap radius is kinda useful, but still low value and kinda applies only to fire trap....

What I would pay points for, is for my traps to be ready when I enter a zone!