Skills pass

[Castruccio]

Originally Posted by Shadow

Doesn't the new damage bonuses on items help with this?

How does the damage bonus on items affect skills? Does skill damage (say, for Wizard spells) benefit from item damage bonuses?

[Tuidjy]

There are staves with bonuses to both magic spells and magic damage, both of which should theoretically increase the damage of, lets say, Arcane Swarm.

I have had such items on a mage. Her arcane swarm was devastating. So was the hammer of some random Mercenary who stunned her, and killed her on the next hit. She was the single character I have lost to an identifiable cause of death.

[Throwback]

I haven't played as much as some others but I'll give my perspective.

Meteor Swarm on paper seems too strong - aoe and single target in the same skill.

The skills that have 3 'types' (eg the skill in the beserker tree, the skill in the shaman tree) take up too much space in the skill bar. Make each variant of the skill switch to the next when you activate it - eg fire resist switches to lightining which switches to cold.

The stalker polymorph in the ranger tree is incredibly boring with no skill use (other then barkskin/strength buffs when stalker is off cd). If you could switch out to use other skills it could be fun - I can imagine a stalker/traps build. If you do build a viable stalker it is going to be 40% (from memory) faster than all other characters....that's insane.

I have more but out of time right now.

[Throwback]

Originally Posted by Oblivion

2)Insidious Poison, the damage it deals is so very low(At rank 5 its 2.8 dps for 10 seconds which is 28 damage) and it only applies on hits with skills so using a faster weapon and use left click attacks aren't even a viable strategy.

Viper Venom, same as above really, its damage isn't too great.

I did some rough math and if Insiduous starts at 0.1 DPS and incrementally increases DPS by 0.1 more each level (0.2 DPS at level 2, 0.4 DPS at level 3, 0.7 DPS at level 4 etc), by level 20 it will be doing a (not so) whopping 19.1 DPS....

On that note, it would be great if the skills and their formula for increase was available publicly.

[DanSota]

Originally Posted by Throwback

I did some rough math and if Insiduous starts at 0.1 DPS and incrementally increases DPS by 0.1 more each level (0.2 DPS at level 2, 0.4 DPS at level 3, 0.7 DPS at level 4 etc), by level 20 it will be doing a (not so) whopping 19.1 DPS....

On that note, it would be great if the skills and their formula for increase was available publicly.

It sort of is publicly available, you just have to go through the assets files and find the skills file. It'll open with any standard text editor like Notepad.

[FluorescentBlack]

Hello Soldak people. First post here. I am not even level 20 and about the same in Dins as I am new to both, In Drox I have had a few ships in the 60 to high 80 range before I accidentally did not back up my save games at a point. I had some nice builds though.

Originally Posted by DanSota

Skills like Fireball only gain power with a base number rather than a multiplier, giving them a shelf life. If you don't keep constantly putting into them, they become useless.

Items can give raw % bonuses to make them better and elemental bonuses seem to be more common that physical type ones.

[norari1977]

it is very difficult to discuss about ' balancing'. sometimes it is also a fun part that we discover the crazy over powered build and some player may prefer the challenge with ' weakest and weird ' class combination too. it is good to adjust the balance almost equal if this game is Multi player focused game though. i personally hope the future skill adjustment plan aren't too much focus on nerf.

[DanSota]

Originally Posted by norari1977

it is very difficult to discuss about ' balancing'. sometimes it is also a fun part that we discover the crazy over powered build and some player may prefer the challenge with ' weakest and weird ' class combination too. it is good to adjust the balance almost equal if this game is Multi player focused game though. i personally hope the future skill adjustment plan aren't too much focus on nerf.

If anything, the changes will make some skills better, some toned back, and the rest untouched. I think the only idea in mind is balancing how the default classes utilize these skills, so there should still be good hybrids and bad hybrids.

[Shadow]

In general I don't have a problem with nerfing skills that are way overpowered, but that's really not what I'm looking for right now. I'm looking to make more skills/builds viable.

[Throwback]

I'm having huge problems getting a riposte build to work.

In theory at some point riposte will be very powerful, but I can't get there - DoT maps ruin me.

Shield bash is necessary for this build otherwise I can't touch frost nova or equivalent boss mobs (I can't out-DPS them).

I'm forced to take zombie resist gear because I'm melee, meaning my other resists are low.

Acid destroys me. Sometimes I can't dodge it for example if it's behind a pillar and I can't see it, or there is a fire thrower nearby next to acid.

Quake Strike drops rocks on me in dungeons and reduces my mobility. It knocks mobs an incredibly long way away which I'm sure will be great at level 30+ when I have used multistrike to put gut on everything, but is pure torture at 11 when I have to chase mobs down and excite even more fire throwers/acid towers/liches - not to mention the awful, awful damage. This skill is ok in theory but melee characters don't have trouble with melee mobs - it's ranged mobs that are the issue. If this was a 'vacuum strike' that sucked enemies *towards* you it would be way better.

Fire throwers are ridiculous. If I'm too far away, I'm going to get hit and take masses of damage from my low fire resist. I'm fine with fire throwers in isolation, but as soon as there is more than one, ouch. I can't even run to the 2nd one because then I will run out of stamina...