If you can’t understand how 600 and 5000 both are lower than 15 000, you have the problem.
…
You don’t have to touch skill progression for skill levels 1-20.
If the buff comes from synergies.
Nothing stops them from giving better synergies from a level 30 skill.
Thus low level duels, for instance, is untouched and still as boring as ever with only a handful viable builds, because changes don’t start before level 30.
And synergies can be top-heavy.
If synergy level 16-20 adds better bonuses than level 1-15, you don’t get the buff before level 45-50 at the earliest.
You can only have 15 points in a level 30 skill at level 44.
Then, split the synergies between two skills. One adds raw damage, one adds percent increase. Both top heavy.
Now you need a 52 point investment to start getting the buffed skill bonuses:
20 into the skill itself, 16 into each synergy before each of them start scaling better.
…math isn’t hard, no matter how hard you try to make it.
A skill can also have a skewed normal skill progression, with higher returns past skill level 20, and thus be made almost useless for normal untwinked play, and become only marginally useful, but still worse than other skills, when you get +20 to all skills with heavily twinkled endgame gear that taps into the higher skill progression at levels 37-40.
…you can even make the final push skill level 47-53-54 (paladin, +3 skill tree magic shield or +4 HoZ) / 53 (sorceress with ormus robes) / 55 (necromancer with +3/+3 shrunken head), requiring pretty damn niche gear, like a +3 skill tree + 3 actual skill caster weapon, +3 skill tree circlet, +3 skill tree amulet, two stone of Jordan, arachnid mesh, Spirit shield, shrunken head or magic paladin shield, +2 skill armor or Ormus Robes +3, 9 skill charms and torch + anni.
I don’t understand the need for bad skills that can never be useful, nor the defense for said skills being useless.
They’re a part of the game. There is no reason to have them in the useless tier, when they can remain mostly unused in a slightly higher tier.
A skill that is bad no matter how much you invest into it is still not competing with the best skills if you improve it somewhat.
Fire Bolt exists. It is never better than fireball.
It can be made to be less horrible, without making the game worse.
In fact, the game becomes better the more non-useless skills there’s in it.
Because there’s degrees, tiers.
Utterly useless: Ice Bolt, Psychic Hammer, Inferno
Useless: Bash, Stun, Arctic Blast
Horrible: Feral Rage, Fissure, Glacial Spike
Bad: Raise Skeletal Mage
Mediocre: Hydra, Concentrate
Fair: Multishot, Bone Spear, Ice Blast
Decent: Strafe, Whirlwind
Good: Fireball, Corpse Explosion, Poison Nova
Great: Blizzard, Zeal, Smite, Fanaticism, Lightning Fury
Godly: Hammers
…
Moving a skill from Utterly Useless to mediocre literally doesn’t force any if you lot to change your lifestyles or pay more taxes.
If the change comes from improved scaling, low-level duels don’t become more versatile either.
The only difference, with conservative buffs, is that a dedicated player can use the skill without losing interest in the game and burning out.
Say, if Ice Bolt gets a synergy overhaul: Synergies are the level 24 cold armor and Frozen Orb, only, and one adds base damage and the other percent damage increase, and odds of penetrating after 10 points of synergies.
They can improve it from Utterly Useless to any tier.
Bad, fair, mediocre.
The only difference is that it comes from useless, to a potential challenging build that still can’t hope to compete with blizzard or frozen orb, or ice blast, but CAN be played, without causing excessive frustration.
Moving all skills up to mediocre would not change anything for the established higher tier skills.
And so many people proclaim their love for useless skills, for whatever reason, the devs should consider adding a Gimp checkbox that let you lot play a character where ALL the skills are bad.
[_] Ladder
[_] Hardcore
[_] Gimp
…in Gimp mode, you play on the normal realm with an otherwise normal character, but all the skills all scale horribly, and fit squarly in the Horrible tier. The neat thing is, if the worst skills are buffed – they only have to cut damage back by 90% to make all skills horrible.
Like, Blessed Hammer in Gimp Mode reaches a peak of 1000 damage at max level with godly gear.
Then there’s no reason to complain: People who want to play gimped characters can.
You can play a character where Ice Bolt is useless, and where you ALSO can play with a useless Blizzard and Fireball.
As many useless skills as you could possibly ever want.
Win / win.