Talent synergies must be reduced

General Discussion
1

I find the synergies basically ok, but per skill there are simply too many in part and ultimately hardly allow reasonable builds.

A good example is the sorceress.
Here you can say that everything that has more than one synergy is simply unsuitable as a build partner.

This is mainly due to the fact that there is still the mastery in the trees, which is finally co-skilled except for Frost.
Thus, the skill is ultimately reduced to a few talents.
In Classic Diablo 2 there was no such thing. Here many spell combinations were possible.

And then there is the RPG aspect. Frost is a solid choice with Frostsphere, but if you take that with Fire Branch, it’s kind of contradictory and doesn’t make much sense from an RPG standpoint.
A lightning/fire mage comes off much better here and works more like a black mage. Even better works Frost/Lightning, as a weather witch. But you don’t get that far, because the synergies don’t allow it.
You have to spend 100 points on Glacier Needle if you want to have all synergies. Who thinks up such nonsense?
Even 2 synergies would only work in Glacier Needle because you only need 1 point in Frost Mastery. Otherwise, with only 2 synergies, it would be 80 points again, way too much…

And that’s just not really nice with most classes, the sorceress was just an example.

Furthermore, some abilities are also too weak from the ground up.
Poison explosion on necromancer is just not a solid ability.
You should at least add an instant explosion damage of good AE range that does poison damage, and even then the spell is not easy to handle due to its restriction with corpses. In addition, it is not full-screen, but strongly positional. This makes it very difficult to attack enemies that are mages and ranged fighters.
Poison Explosion is therefore a skill that would have to be massively adapted and, due to its many disadvantages, would then at least have to be extremely strong.
So it is basically useless, but the idea behind it is cool.

Convert this skill so that it turns the enemy into a poison bomb while the enemy is still alive. So it ticks down a dot and when the enemy dies, it explodes as a poison mist, deals instant poison damage + poison damage over time to all the enemies around and has a small chance to also poison blast them.
Disadvantage here would be that Cadavers Explosion can’t be used anymore, since the corpses have already been consumed by Poison Explosion.

Druid Elemental is still a construction site.
Firestorm is too small, it needs more power through more skill points. Longer range, more beams.

Rockfire has already gotten better, but except for act bosses and few other in-between bosses like Izual for example, it needs to steadily push away all other enemies and not explode immediately. In addition, when rolling left and right every 0.75 seconds, it should also drop small rocks that also take damage at the distance of the explosion perimeter, so you just hit a larger area.
Rock fire, for example, has a much bigger disadvantage in terms of obstacles, in contrast to frost sphere.
Where other area spells just go over everything, rock fire is blocked everywhere.
Makes the spell simply better.

Crack could be improved a bit visually, so that you can see the scope and the effect better. Otherwise it is solid.

Volcano is a complicated spell, but a pretty good boss killer. I would significantly boost the physical damage here so that the tree has an alternate damage source within it.

Armageddon is burdensome.
Permanently having that noise and the whole screen drop a few fireballs… that’s just not fit.
Rebuild the spell so that it can be more targeted to a smaller area, the fireballs fall down faster and do blast damage as well as fire.
If you want to leave Armageddon as it is, it should work better like Thunderstorm on the Sorc.
As the spell is now, it’s just not really enjoyable.

But address the overuse of synergies first and foremost.
This affects all classes. Ultimately, more different builds should be able to be achieved.
It’s just completely overkill as it is now. You could have very nice combinations, but no, I’m permanently cut down by an excess of points for certain talents.

Synergies are a good thing, but wisely and with consideration, not just to subtract points somewhere…

2

I can agree in one thing. Max 2-3 synergies for skills are enough. Pump up the synergy values and the base line dmg, of the skill that you want to buff. No more 80-90 point investment, for one skill to be good enough.

Poison Explosion needs a spread like Rabies, and deal the same dmg over a shorter period of time, increasing it’s dmg this way.

Other skills you metiond you just need to know the purpose of them. Like Molten Boulder. It’s knock back is good on small enemies because it deals it’s physical dmg more times. But it is annoyeing that small obsticales can stop it, i’ll give you that.

3

Jeez that’s a wall of text to point out two examples. Most of the skill trees make sense, and the synergies flow realistically from one to another, meaning early choices aren’t wasted later on.

I think Armageddon needs some serious buffage as well. I like the idea of it being like thunderstorm; every second an enemy on the screen is targeted with the meteor would be nice and really make its damage more impactful and less likely to just miss all the time. Firestorm is meant only as a synergy, to absorb the first couple of skill points until you get boulder. Same with poison explosion, its there to act as a corpse consumer; I could see its requirement of corpse explosion being removed. Kind of like how they removed Hurricane requirement for Armageddon.

As for sorceress, I think you’re massively missing the mark. Each element has a way of pairing with another; frozen orb for cold, nova for lightning, and firewall for fire. This way those trees only take 40 points - freeing up the other 40-60 for your other element.

4

Especially the sorceress, but not only her, are massively limited by these many synergies.

In D2 Classic you could combine countless skills. Meteor, Blizzard e.g. Chain Lightning + Thunderstorm + Nova + Fire or Frost skills.
Today, you’re in such a straitjacket that many skills end up not being played at all, simply because all the synergies either make it impossible, or it just doesn’t make sense anymore and doesn’t work properly.

But this massive synergy problem affects almost all classes. You just overdid it with the synergies back then.
Even now, Nova, for example, is still missing a synergy. But the points are not enough to upgrade the Nova itself via the synergy.

And so you simply have far too few options for many classes. You are nailed down to very specific rules that have been introduced within the system.
This is not fundamentally wrong, since restrictions and specialization are very important and good for RPGs. But here it’s just too overdosed and that’s only because the original system didn’t provide for that.

You can go such ways in skill systems and you should for a good RPG. But such a skill tree must also be prepared accordingly and this can then be transferred very well to the game world, for example, in the form of selectable specializations that are then coupled with suitable tasks and story elements, as well as a split in the gameplay. For example, I become a shapeshifter with the druid, I leave the grove and join the pack that lives in a werewolf canyon, etc…
This has good effects on the whole game.

In D2 you have simply tied synergies and this with some classes / skills as said too tightly.

5

So, you’re telling me you can’t invest points into whatever ability you want? Oh, right, you can but… its not meta. This thread is just the same as all those ones wishing Enigma didn’t have teleport.

1 Like
6

Well, it is about RPG depth and of course also in the possibility to use his talents according to the difficulty of the world.

Yes, I can invest points in all talents, but then in practice I am no longer capable of mastering the world.

The synergy system has also increased the difficulty of the enemies.
Finally, they have been given immunities, so that you stand somewhere totally blank with only one type of damage.
As a further solution, however, immunity breakers are added again.
So you cancel one mechanic with another one and that’s mostly done with items that are very hard to get.
That’s pretty stupid. The world should not be built that way.
In the end, the Sorceress’ Frost talent tree is only a good tool because it requires exactly one point in mastery.
Imagine if Frost also needed 20 skill points in the ice mastery? The Sorc would basically be totally damaged.
Just as it’s very humbling to make a Fire/Lightning Sorc now, it would then be unspeakably humbling everywhere, with all the ridiculous amounts of synergy.

With the Sorc, it just always strikes me the most that the many synergies are just completely lousy and block a lot of good combos on spells to still be functional with it.

But it also affects other classes. Again and again, the amount of synergies is just too massive.

Here one should simply redefine a reasonable measure. The game was never designed for syngeries. That was just patched over at some point and didn’t work well everywhere and still doesn’t today.

But Blizz has shown that you can go good ways, for example, with the summoner druid.
The branch is still not perfect, but now has a much better game basis. Some skills are still nonsensical, like the tendrils, those are dead skills that should be completely redesigned and then there is the question, do you even have the skill points for that when all the main skills are interlocked and basically all the skill points are out skill?

Too many synergies are just dumb and just bog us down here with class mechanics that used to exist.

7

2-3? 1-2 sounds much better

Poor necro

1 Like
8

Ok I am open to negotiate. Make it 1-2 but replace the power loss by base values increased.

2 Likes
9

Actually Firestorm is probably the best skill fire druids get…

Which to be fair isn’t saying much.

10

Trying to understand here…
Synergies were added to boost the power of particular skills.
Now we want less synergies?
So, we want weaker skills?

11

The builds are designed to perfection. You have a choice to put it all into one source and have maximum potential damage or not have max damage and put into other sources or survivability or defensive. Perfectly designed to be complete at high level.

It is working perfectly well.

So you must be reduced from this forum

12

Then what? Youre gonna be a hammerdin a smiter a zealer all in one? What are you gonna do with the points lol!

Let’s just have it like diablo 3 , i wanna be lightning - chose lightning instantly, oh wait i am also cold - pulls out that blizz! Oh wait but no one plays that garbage

1 Like
13

Not true, they were added because people would save all their points and only invest in the skills at the very end of the skill trees, ignoring all the early skills that are pointless by late game.

Synergies are fine as long as you don’t go and add a ridiculous number of synergies to a skill because that forces the player to dump all their skill points into one skill and its synergies or run a weak build.

Some skills can have their number of synergies reduced but the bonus from the remaining synergies increased to compenate - allowing people to branch out to use multiple unrelated skills which are not connected by a synergy

1 Like
14

You all want what? There are people who kept playing this game for 20 years while you forgot it existed, probably playing fortnite or some other casual A.D.D. lgbtq game. These people were hoping D3 would be an improvement but D3 took a direction which is straight to recycle bin! So they kept playing this game in pixelated graphics wishing that one day they will remaster it. Now it’s here it is big. And you casual people who are just not cut out for this type of a game, you want to completely destroy the harmony. Would some things be better if they change them sure you would think so! But you got that in d3 , they solved all the d2 “problems” , where is it ? At the bottom of twitch.tv browse!

15

I hope than you don’t play D2R now, because of the 2.4 changes. lol. Get a life. Also Fortnite is :poop:, i’m no genZ, but you’re shure an unintelligent boomer.
And what does twich streaming has to so whit popularity you pleb? :laughing:

16

No, there has always been prerequisites, there was never a “work around”… yes, people would bank skill points unit they were unlocked at lvl-X, but that did not change the prerequisites requirement… and for skills that did not require prerequisites, yes, you’d hold out on skill points until you reached a lvl you could unlock.
You can still choose to do that and ignore the synergies.

That’s your choice.
Run a super duper 1 skill wonder, and get locked up in parts of the game, or build a character that can handle everything… albeit, with less speed.

No.
You’re asking for all the current power, without the current investment… there would be no challenge to the game at that point. Why would you even play?

17

Talent synergies must be reduced . you mean remove :slight_smile:

and put level 75 or 80 some grand charm + 2 skill for a skill page

18

Not true, there’s a difference between putting 1 point into something and putting 20 as a synergy

People just run infinity and then don’t need to care about resists, losing no speed at all.

Why would people play if they are not stuck putting all their points into one skill and its synergies? You realize people played the game before synergies - right?

You can’t use 2 skills at the same time - if you’re using one, you’re not using the other. It’s not like you can cast meteor, blizzard and chain lightning all simultaneously

People would still need +skills to increase the damage of individual skills, +skills doesn’t apply to synergies anyway

It just gives players more diversity instead of making Diablo a game of spamming one skill over and over like a robot, with an infinity merc in the background

What value is added to the game by giving vengeance 4 synergies - a total of 100 skill points if you specialize in it? ridiculous waste of points and bad design

19

All this does though is bloat player power even more.

The games already kind of easy…

2 Likes
20

exactly.
20characters