My opinion on descent

The overall concept of descent is a good one, but I have some issues and suggestions that I think might make it a bit more balanced.

Right now descent is very much a Duelist's race. Cleave is simply too good and never actually gets bad either. In addition, duelist has about 75% increased damage, increased melee range, and about 40% life as well as 2.5% health regen in the first 15 nodes. By comparison the marauder has much more survivability, but if he goes for it then he gives up damage almost entirely unless he wants to split his points into two separate paths. Also the marauder doesn't start with cleave. Unlike in the later difficulties of the main game where survivability is king, there is something to be said in descent for killing before you can be killed, and duelist is in the best position to achieve that.

I really think that putting all the different classes on the same descent map is plainly unfair. In my opinion there should be a separate map for each class, geared to give the same kind of advantage to the respective class as the duelist gets in the current descent setup. These maps could load based on the class you pick for the descent race, or a given descent race could be for a particular class i.e. Duelist descent or Ranger Descent.

I also feel there should be some inherent bonus for never missing a unique boss in a level. No matter how far you get, you get a point if you killed all the bosses in the levels you entered. Perhaps we could modify that to require you get to at least level 10. Some of these bosses are really quite dangerous and I feel a point reward is not out of line for killing all the ones you see, especially considering descent races already have less ways to earn points than other race types, despite being just as hard if not harder than any other one hour event.

My next issue is with the chests. I've seen that thread where everyone is mapping out the drops from the end of the level chests. I personally don't want descent to be that predictable. I think its already a shame that the level type and sequence doesn't change. To have predictable rewards is also lame. IMO GGG should create 3-5 possible drop groups for each chest on each level (with the exception of the very first level) so that even if a player has a list of the things that can possibly drop he still wont be able to know for sure what he will get.

To me, descent gets more interesting the more rogue-like it becomes. Decisions with consequences. You can select that chest, but you have to live with the unpredictable drops. You can skip that boss, but you will have to give up boss kill reward points. Just my two cents on descent. A great race type, but it could be even better.

This is probably the first forum post here I have utterly and completely agreed with.

+1,000,000

Very well written OP.

Not sure I agree with most of your suggested solutions but I agree the race type needs work to level out the challenge across classes and make it interesting from the get go.

Considering GGG has spent 7 years working on the mainline story progression, it's no wonder their first attempt at giving us a new starting area has some problems. It's a very ambitious project.

Hi

Nice accurate assessment of descent.
Descent totally needs more randomness and killing even one boss with such limited resources ,least to me, seemed quite the achievement and then getting that lame alluring chest choice(GET PHASE RUN OFF THE ''FORGE'' WITH ONLY INCREASED MVNT PLEASE JUST REMOVE THE ADDED DAM FEATURE, THESE QUICKSILVERS ARE LAME AS MY ONLY CHOICE(sorry about that lol, that is a completely different matter)...
Also the duelist part I completely agree on yet for me:1. I tend to always play duelist, 2. as soon as I found 2 wands I just kited with them and didn't even use my skills, seemed to survive longer:)
Congrats though GGG on a rad mini game idea, perhaps just combine the Maelstrom of chaos with a universal starting area for lots of randomness...

Cheers

Valid points!

The only things I dissagree on are,

1) Different map layouts for each class...

-This would unavoidably give some classes HUGE advantages or disadvantages over the others...

2) Makign chests random

-They specifically made them consistant to help eliminate RNG in races

I very much agree that descent needs some balance between the classes and what you suggest goes in the right direction except maybe for the chests.

I like that what is inside the chests is totally predictable as it makes it easier to plan for your descent by picking only specific drops and upgrading them as you progress.

Anyway it is the first time GGG runs this kind of event and I am sure that as always they will take our suggestions into account :)