I’ve been thinking the past few days about itemization mechanics that would serve for “making it more difficult to just look up the right answer online”. What I wrote in the past in-line with that was:
While the above quote relates to creating more fun situations by totally shifting the balance and is not intended to serve as a competition mechanic, a more minor version of it could be used for that too as a Seasonal-only feature.
So, here is the idea:
After the first week of each Season passes, particular skills of the level 40 characters would be able to receive ascension after the player completes certain events.
The pool of skills which would be able to ascend would depend on the current meta game involved during the week that passed. Skills that are part of that meta game won’t be able to receive an ascension.
Simply said - ascension involves delivering bonuses to underused skills during the Season.
When a skill ascends it receives a bonus that will be used when the skill is present at the player’s skill bar.
A few notes:
- An already ascended skill can not ascend again
- The skill ascension is permanent until the Season’s end
- Each character can receive a fixed number of skill ascensions
- Ascension bonuses are granted randomly from a predefined pool
Ascension bonuses would be granted in the following format:
Stat(s) X gained from item slot(s) Y receive(s) buff(s) Z
Example: Resistances gained from boots are tripled. Related to the above item this would mean that if we decide to use the ascended skill on our skill bar and we equip the above boots, the gained Cold Resistance from them would be 75% instead of 25%.
Skill ascension as a mechanic has the following goals:
- Make the itemization game more complex
- Serve for more interesting item hunt
- Provoke the player to change his build
- Shake up the currently established meta
- Motivate players to level more characters
Share what you think and add your ascension bonus to the pool!