Most synergies are BROKEN. They either end up in 1 of 2 categories:
- Pump all of your points into one tree to maximize damage for 1 skill.
- Examples:
- Ice Bolt literally requires all 110 skill points(120 actually, 20 points each in Frost Nova, Ice Blast, Glacial Spike, Blizzard, and Frozen Orb) to max its synergies and still no Cold Mastery (140 with Cold mastery as well!). With 110 points invested, Ice bolt does a total of 551-717 damage with 32.6 seconds cold length and is still unusable in Hell. Even with such a large investment of skills, Ice Bolt is still a worthless skill.
- Ice Blast, with 101 points invested (leaves a whole 9 points for Cold Mastery), does 1467-1545 damage with 6.8 second freeze.
- Frozen Armor, Shiver Armor, and Chilling Armor all require point dumps into the other 2 armor skills to get maximum benefit from the skill. Can someone explain the logic in dumping 60 points to gain a single defensive skill?
- Phoenix Strike synergizes with Fists of Fury, Claws of Thunder, and Blades of Ice. A total of 80 points for full synergies and these are all charge up skills that won’t be used in conjunction with Phoenix Strike. There are ZERO synergies between charge up skills and finishing moves.
- Fire Blast synergies with Shock Web, Charged Bolt Sentry, Wake of Fire, Lightning Sentry, and Wake of Inferno. That is 5 additional skills that would require a total of 120 points and you only have 110 points total at 99.
- Power Strike, Lightning Bolt, Charged Strike, Lightning Strike, and Lightning Fury all have synergies with one another. 100 points to max Lightning Fury and Lightning Bolt whereas it’s now 80 points for Power Strike, Charged Strike, and Lightning Strike as Lightning Fury synergy was removed.
- A Fury Amazon will literally have 1 point in every passive and Magic skill tree and then max out every lightning skill with one of the other 4 skills ending at 17 points only at 99.
- Pump points into other random skills in other trees that provide no utility for the current skill
- Examples:
- Blessed hammer doesn’t require Attack Rating as it is a magic spell but the synergy is in Blessed Aim which provides only Attack Rating as a buff.
- Vigor is a useful utility aura that for use before Enigma. The Blessed Hammer Build uses Concentration Aura, Blessed Hammer, and Holy Shield as the three main skills. None of these 3 skills have synergies with one another.
- Frenzy, because it didn’t have enough synergies already(between weapon mastery, taunt, double swing, and berserk), adds Stamina to the mix to increase duration. Because this worthless skill has absolutely no business being a prerequisite for Increased Speed and this squishy melee build didn’t already struggle with finding enough points for defensive skills while min/maxing for Frenzy damage.
- This build is already a melee glass canyon. Maybe rework Stamina to work like Assassin’s weapon block to make dual wield and dual handed builds more viable for barbs?
There should be no more than 60 points required for any one skill if you truly want diversity in playstyles (this includes masteries for sorceress, barbarians, etc) . Lower level skills should have synergies with either level 24 or 30 skills to boost their damage to make these skills viable in end game. Level 1 and level 6 skills should also benefit from soft point synergies (like druid summons)
Lets take Ice Bolt as an example:
The 2 synergies for the skill should be Cold mastery and Orb. Where orb would increase the damage of the skill and also increase the number of shards fired. Cold mastery is required for every ice build (just like fire and lightening mastery for their specific builds) 60 points total to maximize 1 skill. This leaves 46 points(4 points for prerequisites) at 99 for other skills to increase build diversity.
Frenzy example:
Weapon mastery (is a necessary requirement for any melee barb build) frenzy and a synergy with 1 other skill which increases both damage and duration.
14 Likes
This is why I liked 1.09 so much.
You picked 5 skills, any skills, and maxed them and that was your build. That was fun.
Post 1.10, you feel forced to max out 3-4 useless skills just so one skill is viable. Not fun.
14 Likes
As much as I would love to go back to 1.09, that isn’t an option. Best we can do now is address the massive skills dumps in current system to allow for a little more diversity of builds.
1 Like
I agree with you. I was using 1.09 as an example.
This does need to be addressed. Personally I make builds to lvl 85, I have been getting the feeling the Devs are assuming builds should be made to lvl 99. It may seem like just 14 levels, but it’s 14 levels that most people don’t reach.
3 Likes
Weapon mastery is not a synergy
“Hell Viable” is the what Developers keep saying is what they are aiming for. What that means is anyones guess.
I have always played Hardcore, I am sure they don’t have my playstyle in mind when they rebalance skills.
As for your point of 85, they did include level 85 templates for the PTR. The gear on them is absurd for what supposed to be a 4 month ladder…
they could mash ice bolt synergy down to less skills…anyway…even powered up all the way its still less dmg than the other skills
Frost Nova//Frozen Orb as its only synergies would do
from 15% from 5 synergy to 2 synergies giving 40% each(should be 38 but meh…little power up wont do no harm to a skill that will be irrelevant still XD
Not in the traditional sense but it is a required skill investment to make any melee skill viable.
Just like cold mastery is a required skill for any cold sorc build. Just like fire mastery or Lightning Mastery required for any fire/lightening skills as they provides the most damage per point compared “synergies”.
Yeah, I agree. There are too many 100+ point skills.
2 Likes
The irony is that all levels 1 or 6 skills are still useless after 80 to 110 points are dumped into maxing the skill…
I agree on some skills having too many synergies. And many time useless synergies.
As example: Whilrwind 0 synergies and everyone s using it.
Frenzy is just disaster of a skill. Frenzy should give like 15%/level dmg, 0,4sec increase/level. And just one %dmg synergy like Battle cry.
Synergy give more meaning for casters. So your leveling up gives you more damage over synergies. I can imagine hammerdin without synergies. Even BiS items won’t help him.
For physical hitters it doesnt make much sense, since getting stronger and stronger weapon is your scaling.
2 Likes
I’ll praise the Blizzard if they remove the synergy. Synergy kills creative builds and force players into one or two skill build.
5 Likes
Unpopular opinion, decrease cap for skills from 20 to 10.
You don’t need synergies. Synergies was originally introduced to add value to lower level skills as you worked up to your actual build in a world of no skills reset.
The developers have shown that they can modify damage scaling on an individual level basis with the Ravens “fix”.
This means every skill point can individually be scaled, especially for soft points above 20.
List of offensive skills that have ZERO synergies:
Amazon:
- Jab
- Impale
- Fend
- Inner Sight
- Magic Arrow
- Multishot
- Guided Arrow
- Strafe
- Valkyrie
Assassin:
- Tiger Strike
- Cobra Strike
- Dragon Talon
- Dragon Tail
- Dragon Flight
- Psychic Hammer
- Cloak of Shadows
- Mind Blast
- Shadow Warrior
- Shadow Master
- Venom
Barbarian:
- All Weapon Masteries
- Howl
- Taunt
- Battle Cry
- Leap
- Whirlwind
Druid:
- Werewolf
- Feral Rage
- Fury
- Werebear
- Maul
- Hunger
- Heart of the Wolverine
- Spirit of Barbs
Necromancer:
- All 1 point wonder Curses (the entire Curses tree)
- Raise skeletons
- Skeleton Mastery
- Raise Skeleton Mages
- Golem Mastery
- Summon Resistance
- Revive
- Corpse Explosion (this is arguably the most powerful skill in the game)
Paladin:
- Smite (The UBERs skill of choice)
- Conversion
- Might
- Blessed Aim
- Concentration
- Fanaticism
Sorceress:
- Telekinesis
- Static Field
- Fire/Lightening/Cold Masteries
This list is just as long for defensive skills, buffs, and auras.
Synergies basically was a means for developers decided what skills they wanted utilized in end game.
1 Like
Yeah thats a long list and many of those skills are great and used. Many not.
Some synergies make sense, some don’t. Just let them fix those that don’t.
And better before they do synergies like Increased stamina and Find potion, “so people can utilize those skills more…” think deeply about why people dont use them more and rework them.
There is absolutely no reason why anyone should have to dump more than 60 points to max out a single skill.
For most classes, this means 1 synergy per skill as sorceresses need to dump 20 points already into their elemental mastery, melee barbs into weapons masteries, pallies into an offensive aura, even melee assassins need claw mastery.
2 Likes
But there should be some heavy synergy scenarios, mostly for casters.
A scenario:
If you are a caster like sorc: got 20 cold mastery, 20 blizzard, then 60 points elsewhere cos blizzard have no synergy.
Your damage would be pathetic in hell without synergies. Scaling damage to be efficient endgame would be nightmare for devs, imo.
So there is my point for casters rellying on their spell damage. But melees mostly scale by grabbing stronger weapon. So there should be just like 1 synergy, max 2., not 4 like frenzy.
Casters with all their points dumped in 1 type of elemental damage is the most atrocious thing about this game and is a biproduct of Synergies and Immunities introduction through patches when the original developers left Blizzard and the new team started believing they knew best how the players should play.
Either keep the current meta where 100+ points in a single tree is required to maximize damage but remove all immune types for regular and minion class monsters OR allow for hybrid builds that actually are viable.
Are you advocating that immunes should be ignored until you get yourself an Infinity? The entire end game revolves around runewords and that needs to change.
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imo this is relevant now because enemy health was buffed so high in the the same patch synergies were introduced.
1 Like