Hello everyone! This thread is for Diablo / ARPG fans, curious players who want to share ideas and of course for David Kim and the Blizzard design team. I had some ideas in mind and I just wanted to share them with you. Some of you will not like the idea, in which case I invite you to leave constructive comments that can improve the design and give your own ideas. Those who like that system, write down your ideas to improve and refine this concept.
Skills talent tree (STT)
Each Skills would have its own Skills talent tree. (If there are 25 skills per class and 5 classes, there would be 125 STT.) Every Skills talent tree include:
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Major talent: Each of these talents has the potential to create a new build on its own. They add effects and special features to the basic Skill. Similar to Legendary affix in D3.
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Minor talent: They serve mainly as filler to reach and limit the number of Major talent that one can choose. But when combine, they can give significant passive bonus. They include passive bonus that increases the Skill itself or boost the character. (Ex: +1% attack speed, +2% Frozen Orb dmg, +1% Frost dmg, +10 mana, etc …)
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Skills points: This is the maximum points that can be invested in Skills (Cap at 15 ranks.) You earn X points on each level. These 15 pts should allow me to reach up to 2 Major talents.
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Bonus / Temporary skills points: These are the points you earn with the items. (Ex: +1 to sorceress skills, +1 to frost skills, +2 to Frozen Orb, etc …). If the sum of my bonuses received from items is +4 for Frozen Orb, then I will be able to place 19 points (15 bases + 4 from items). These points are lost when I withdraw the items. These new skills points may allow me to reach a 3rd Major talent.
Here is an example of what a Skill talent tree might look like for the Skill Frozen Orb. The numbers, the shape of the tree, the number of Major / Minor talents and the effects are completely arbitrary and serve only as an example. The most important is the Concept and how it could work. How the Skills itself can be modified according to the player’s choices simply by investing Skills points into the skills and then choosing Minor and Major talents.
Frozen Orb Talent Tree Exemple
https://imgur.com/a/9GCyppFIt is very important to balance the numbers so that all the choices are relatively equivalent and that the different builds are viable and competitive.
Let’s try some possibilities together for fun:
AOE Immobile Frozen Orb build
A player might want to try an AOE build around a stationary Frozen Orb. He chooses that Major talent and with his other skills points he goes for the "Triple the size and AOE of Frozen orb ". Then, he invests the rest of these skill points in Minor talents who boost AOE size, AOE dmg, frost dmg , etc… Finally, the player completes his build with Legendary items / Others Skills that "pull" the enemies, to be able to keep them in the range of his immobile Frozen Orb.
Passive Frozen Orb Playstyle
An another player might be attracted to the idea of ​​having a permanent passive damage around him and this frees him to choose another mana spender ability. He chooses "Passive Frozen Orb" which turns passively a Frozen Orb around him all the time. Then he can choose "Cast an additional Frozen Orb" and "Icing path Frozen Orb, that create a path of frost". Finally, imagine if there is a Legendary item that gives " Your projectile separate into 3, but only deal 50% dmg ". You now have a Skill that creates 6 minor Frozen Orb that revolves around the player and makes damage and chill.
If there is 12 Major Talents and one player can choose up to 3 with Bonus talent skill from items, this creates 220 different possibilities! Not to mention the Legendary items and their special effects! That’s diversity!
During the panel, Luis Barriga said that each player has his own vision of a frost sorceress and the gameplay associated with it. He did not want to impose his own choices, but wanted to allow players to create their own build! I’ll tell you what kind of pure frost sorc build I’d like to play with this kind of system:
For the example, I will use the skills we saw during the demo at Blizzcon (although I know very well that it is a pre-alpha and that many things will change) I would choose 6 frost skills (1-Frost bolt 2- Frozen orb 3- Ice armor 4- Blizzard 5- Frost nova 6- Deep freeze .) Then, in each of the Skills talent tree, I would look for all the Minor talent that gives + X% dmg to Frost spell. All these little buffs would stack up and have a synergy between them. I would look for items that boost my frost dmg, my spells and especially + X ranks to all skill and + X ranks to frost spells. These items would boost all my skills and give me the possibility to go further in my 6 skills talent tree.
Let’s now study what Rallying cry (Barb) and Wolf companion (Druid) could look like:
Barbarian
Rallying Cry (Shout) - Bellow rallying cry, granting allies Unstoppable, increased movement speed, and reduced damage taken for 6 seconds.
It’s probably harder to find Major talents that will change the skill, but there are several possible paths! Some Major talents could give extra bonuses and effects to Rallying Cry (Ex: Rallying cry now adds + X% attack speed) There could be a more defensive and an offensive path. But more interesting would also add a Major talent that would transform it into damage dealer / rage spender (Ex: Rallying cry now cost 30 fury and deals X-Y physical dmg. Also fear enemies hit). This would create a Warcry Barb who leap into mobs and scream like a crazy berserk to kill the enemies. It would be nice to be able to transform Defensives / Buff skills into Offensive skills and vice versa.
Druid
Wolves (Companion that deals Physical damage) - this ability has a passive and active component.
Passive: Summon 2 wolf companions.
Active: Direct the wolves to focus an enemy. The wolves have an increased chance to critically strike the enemy.
It is very easy to find a multitude of different options! Some Major / Minor talent could increase the number of wolves, their power and give them special effects for pure summoner builds . Add to that a Legendary item / talent that combines 3 wolves to create an Alpha wolf (5x stronger then a basic wolf). Then, a portion of the Major talents could boost and influence the "Active effect " of the skill . And finally, the rest of the Major talents would give passive bonuses to the Druid himself to support other builds such as caster and feral druid (Ex: Increase movement speed by X% per wolf active, Increase physical resistance by X% per active wolf, Transfer X% of damage taken to your wolves, Whenever a wolf deal dmg, heal yourself by X, etc…)
I loved what I saw of the druid during the demo at Blizzcon! I really liked the transformations and I found very interesting the builds that encourage alternating between werewolf and werebear (Thunderspire : Lightning strikes a nearby enemy dealing X dmg whenever you shapeshift ). Great idea, I like it! On the other hand… I hope there will be many other options such as pure summoner, pure caster, pure werewolf, pure werebear, half summoner / caster, half summoner / feral, half feral / caster, pure wind caster, pure earth caster, pure storm caster etc … And all these options must be viable and competitive for the End game content. So players won’t feel like they are stuck into a predetermine build.
Pure werewolf build
Let’s reuse my example of the Frost Sorc, but with a full werewolf. I choose all the skills that transform my druid into werewolf. Then I choose Minor talent that gives + X% attack speed while in werewolf or + X% physical dmg while in werewolf (So ​​the bonuses stack up). There could be a Major talent who gives " Whenever you stay in werewolf for 3 sec, you gain a frenzy charge. (Stackable 5 times.) Frenzy charge gives + X% attack speed, movement speed and physical dmg. These talents would encourage a full werewolf build, but there would be plenty of different variations!
The more rich, varied and complex the skills talent tree, the more players will feel that they have choices and can experiment and own their build. In addition, I would add rare affixes on the Legendary Item / Rare item that would give +1 rank to a specific Major talent. (Ex: +1 rank to Double Frozen Orb). These will enrich the builds of Sorc, BUT can also be used by other classes! If an Amazon uses an item that gives Chance on hit: 5% chance to cast a Frozen Orb and his gloves has affix (+1 rank to Double Frozen Orb). So every time the attack of the Amazon create a Frozen Orb, it will create 2 Frozen Orbs! That will add an infinity of builds !
I have one last topic that I want to address here and I would love to hear your feedback. I only rely on what I heard and saw during the Blizzcon. I am fully aware that many things will change by the time the game is released.
1- Currently, I have some concerns about the concept David Kim and the Blizzard team are aiming for: Hundreds and more legendary items that change skills and define builds. When I heard this news during the Blizzcon D4 Panel, I was super excited! Hundreds of items and a multitude of custom builds. Awesome! But, is it true? I will take the example of the Panel about a build for teleport sorceress. They used four legendary items that changed teleport to make it a resource spender / damage dealer skill. That’s great! But how many Legendaries will affect Teleport? 4? 6? or 15+? Because if there is only 6 items that affect teleport, then in this case there is not really any diversity and possibility. I absolutely have to use the 6 items to play the teleport build. This is exactly like the Diablo 3 set items. In addition, if there are about 5 legendaries per skill (5 X 25 Skills = 125 Skills), there could be more than 500+ legendary items. So how long can it take to gather the items to just start to play the build? With so much legendary, will Blizzard increase the drop rate as in Diablo 3? Will we see the legendary items raining from the sky again?
2- Set Items for Diablo 3 forces us to play some very specific and predetermined build to be competitive. On the other hand, a system purely based on legendary items forces us to find every specific items to PLAY the build we have in mind. Imagine that I see my favorite streamer playing a Teleport Sorcs build. I tell myself “Wow! I want to try this, it seems really fun to play”. So I create a level 1 sorceress and I start to level my character. I will be forced to play alternative and temporary builds until I find ALL the necessary items before I can start playing the build, whereas the only thing I wanted to do at the start was to play a teleport sorc… Some people will tell me that farming/grinding is the goal of the game and I totally agree with that! On the other hand, with a system where most (not all) builds are within the Skills, we avoid this problem. The only restrictions are to reach the level required to have enough skill talent point. However, this is only the beginning! I can play the build, but it will be weak. I’ll need to improve it. Maybe I’ll be able to use teleport only 4-5 times before being empty in mana. So I’ll farm gear to try to reach a certain threshold of +X% Reduces resource cost and +Y% mana regeneration. Now I can spam Teleport at will, niiiiiice! But the damage is too low for me to perform well and compete for challenging and difficult Endgame content. So, I farm rare items that gives +X% damage to AOE, +Y% magical dmg , as well as some hard to find specific legendary item that give "Legendary boots: Your movement skill ( Teleport , Leap , Jump , Dash , Charge, etc …) now deals an additional X-Y damage based on the distance traveled. Great! This item helps a lot my AOE dmg and my speed farming, but against bosses I’m still struggling. I’ll need to find the "Legendary chest: Whenever you deal AOE dmg, if you hit 3 or less enemies, increase the damage of your next AOE by 100% ". The huge advantage of a system like this is that I can PLAY my build even if it is weak and FARM with this build and work to improve it! I will not have to play an alternate build for weeks / months until I find the 6 very specific items designed by the Blizzard team to allow me to play this build.
I am fully aware that everything I write is hypothetical and theoretical and that the game will be released in a very long time… Moreover, the blizzard team may have already thought about these problems and will find solutions. They could surprise us with a completely new concept! I still have 2 tips if they stay purely in the direction of a "Legendaries define build system"
The majority of Basic Legendaries that define some builds (Core Legendary affix: Teleport now cost 20 mana, has no cooldown and deal X-Y dmg) should be easily available. (Craftable or Buyable) There could be several NPCs on the map that would sell these basic Legendaries. They should be exchanged with different resources such as gold, rune, gem, crafting mats, other items, other legendaries, etc… As this, players could quickly start playing their own build. On the other hand, the strongest Legendaries that make the build Competitive should be much harder to find and would require farming Keystone, Bosses, World bosses, Endgame content etc…
Blizzard must create a lot of non-specific unique! As many as they can. Instead of Your Fireball split into 3 and deal 50% less dmg , it should rather be Your Projectile split into 3… Instead of Your Fireball cost 20% less mana, it should rather be Your fire spell cost 20% less resource. This would create a multitude of build with ALL classes. Of course, there may be very specific Item, but not all of them. (Noxious made a really great video explaining that.)
Voilà ! I’ve been a fan of Blizzard games for almost 20 years and I just want D4 to be a huge success! For those who liked the idea of a Skill talent tree, I encourage you to write your ideas and create your own design Skill talent tree. Choose your favored Ability in D1, D2, D3 and / or D4 and create a list of how this ability could be modified by a Major / Legendary Power talent. It might inspire D4 designer team.
P.S. Don’t forget to Like the post and comment if we want Blizz to see this thread. Merci guys!