New Skill Development - Part 1

awesome my static strike char was looking for something to fill a 4l

Enough with the CwDT crying. If the skill is good enough to level up past 10, it won't be used that way.

I think there is design space for some Warcry powers that Marauders and duelists would use.

Thanks for sharing Rory! Very interesting to read the thought process behind what's coming up.

Here are my thoughts:

- I like the idea of Inspiring Cry. It adds variety and more choices for the gem slots which is always a good thing. Life and mana regen sounds like a prime candidate for CWDT + Blood Rage + Inspiring Cry

- Warcries, as a style-of-play mechanic, doesn't fill an empty space. We have currently curses, self cast ECs/ICs, etc. Not that it's not nice to have, it just isn't a major change from what we've seen.

- There's a reason why CWDT is so popular. Casting buffs and debuffs as a style-of-play mechanic isn't exciting

- As a player, I'd be more incentivised to sacrifice my 0.5 seconds of gameplay time to cast a buff/debuff if it has a visceral impact to the screen state (eg: temporal chains / blood rage / cold snap) as opposed to one that just deals with numbers (eg: reduce resistances / enfeeble). It's just more fun, even if it is not necessarily more effective

- The current mechanic of warcries benefiting more from having more monsters around actually lessens its effectiveness as a melee boost. Melee characters have the most trouble with big bosses and these bosses may not always have monsters around to boost cries from. This probably is intended, but think it would be a better melee boost if their effectiveness were not based on monster availability. Otherwise, melee would need other ways to handle big bosses

One solution they could consider is shifting the tag of all non-INT based utility abilities from spell/cast to something else that scales with either attack speed, or preferably its own stat with new nodes. Yeah, this would remove CwDT/EC/IC functionality, and yes, that's good for the game. Both IC and EC are still used legitimately; a de facto 3/4L setup that every single build benefits from is a sign of poor balance.

Also, please be careful with the party buffs. The introduction of heralds was good because it created more competition with auras. If you add too many utility skills like this that also affect allies, you're just giving up any progress you've made on the solo vs. party front.

And melee needs more survivability options, not more damage options. Bring back phase run as a superior aggro-remover.

What about ranged characters that dive into a pack, warcry and kite out? Unless it only boost melee physical damage.

^Last I checked, wiki doesnt have that info. incomplete as usual.

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Rory wrote:

A Warcry is a spell that doesn't deal direct damage but instead checks the number of enemies in a radius around the player when used, and provides an effect that is enhanced by that number.

Singer dream:

crushed

seems like an awesome idea =) , give more incentives to level it up aswell so it wont just be a lowlevel cwdt buff =). and are people still using enduring cry on cwdt , isnt vengeance - endurance charge on meele stun and enduring cry on selfcast the normal thing nowadays o.O

inb4 low lvl cwdt warcry just to annoy pt :3

although im hoping for some Str gems with "spell tags & temporary buff",
this gem is not very useful and inattractive imo @.@

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Inspiring Cry
Warcry, Spell, AoE
Taunts enemies, and increases the damage and flat mana regeneration (like Clarity) of you and nearby allies. Increased effect for each nearby enemy.

if the flat mana regen and duration are any decent (or maybe just link to a inc dur) would going BM benefit from this? i.e. life regen.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

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mucker wrote:

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

I'll be interested in seeing if the taunt actually and noticeably works. Right now, Enduring Cry's taunt is only slightly more effective than 'chance to flee', or as I call it, 'chance to saunter away for a bit, look stupid, then rush back to a delayed demise'.

I wouldn't be entirely gutted if you made a Devil May skill in this line.

Finally, and most importantly, since you mentioned these would be level 34 skills and positioned as act 4 rewards, can we expect a skill reward/quest reward rejiggering with 1.4? Because right now it's a bloody mess. It really is. You're offering useless gems as far as Merciless (when most people have all the active gems they need, but not enough support options), curious double-ups and strangely bad choices early on (where a basic build, following the class' strengths, has to choose between two integral active gems). As far as I can tell, the Duelist is never offered Reduced Mana, and as you add more skills, they're often only offered with one quest, while plenty of older skills just keep damn turning up.

Pretty sure duelist gets rm for cruel medicine chest. There was a patch at some point where they added rm at least once for all classes. 1.2 maybe?

You're right. I must have buggered up my wiki search.

I think my core point stands.

edit: the complete list of quest rewards on the wiki fails to list Reduced Mana as a duelist reward for Mercy Mission, Cruel. Tsk. (it also doesn't have the counterattacks yet -- not that it matters, because they only appear once.)

Oh I definitely agree with your core point. I wrote and deleted a several paragraphs agreeing and expanding on it but found I don't have a good constructive idea for how they should be reworked because I clearly don't understand the thinking behind how they were currently distributed. I assume there are goals for limiting choice for new players to keep things simple, race balance concerns, maybe encouraging players to trade?

I was leveling a marauder through merciless today. Awesome support gem rewards (reduced mana, life leech, increased duration, blood magic), stuff that is great to have and I was having a tough time picking. Then I kill brutus and notice one of the rewards is double strike. I mean... that gem at that point in the game?