I have collected some ideas on how to improve certain skills, to make them more useful.
As a disclaimer: I am primarly someone who plays LoD builds, so a part of these suggests are directed towards improving the usefullness of these skills for LoD & LoN builds, but others are also beneficial for Set-META builds.
I do not demand that these suggestions make it into the game, but if the devs think that there are some good ideas in there it sure would be nice.
Suggestion for these skills are included in this post:
° Leap
° Rend
° Elemental Arrow
° Caltrops
° Vault
° Exploding Palm
° Land of the Dead
° Locust Swarm
° Blizzard
° Arcane Orb
° Hydra
° Disintegrate
° the Wizards Conjuration Skills
° Galvanizing Ward (passive)
and also:
° Energy Shields
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Barbarian
Leap
This one here might be a bit controversial, but I would like that the Barbarian skill Leap has 2 charges by default instead of a cooldown. The idea/fantasy is that you can leap into a group of enemies, but that you also could eventually use the second charge of Leap as a means to escape.
Currently you can only use Leap either as a tool for engagement or as a defensive tool for escaping (I am talking about the base skill here, not the version with Lut Socks and the MotE Barbarian), but a second charge would give the base skill a bit more flexibility, which would make the skill more appealing because it would give additional utility and maneuverability, while still not making it OP.
Eventually the Launch rune or the Toppling Impact rune could be redesigned to give a 3rd charge since they are not too useful in the endgame.
This tweak wouldn’t change much for MotE Barbarians since the gameplay would stay the same, because you still could Leap 3 times in a row and get the charges back quickly by spending Fury via Seismic Slam, but Leap would become more attractive during leveling and eventually for some endgame builds as well if it would have 2 or 3 charges by default or via runes.
To elaborate a bit further on why giving Leap a second charge would be a good thing, although the Lut Socks already provide a similar feature.
The difference is that Lut Socks only allow a 2 second window in which you can leap into a group of enemies and then eventually retreat to a save area when the situation becomes too dangerous, while with having 2 charges of Leap (or even 3 with a rune), the window between leaping into a group of enemies and an eventual retreat is much much larger which allows for more flexibility.
Rend
IMO Rend would be more interesting for non-Wrath of the Waste builds, if it would incorporate the effect of the Mutilate rune into the base effect of this skill, which is that enemies take xx% more damage from all sources while they are under the effect of Rend. A 10% or a 15% damage increase from all sources sounds good imo.
That would give other builds more of an incentive to also use Rend as a secondary damage dealing skill in addition to their main damage dealing skill, because skills like Hammer of the Ancients, Whirlwind, Seismic Slam etc would also (indirectly) get buffed by it.
The Mutilate rune then can keep its current effect, but simply increases the amount of additional damage enemies take while under the effect of Rend further, so this wouldn’t require much tweaking.
If more stuff is required to make Rend more appealing to players, its base duration can be increased from 5 seconds to somewhere around 7-8 seconds while still keeping the same damage per second.
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Demon Hunter
Elemental Arrow
The Demon Hunter skill Elemental Arrow could use higher and/or more damage multipliers on legendaries (Kridershot and Augustine’s Panacea) and could be added to the UE set to be more competitive with other skills.
And while on the topic of Elemental Arrow, there is indeed something that I always wanted to do that is not possible anymore: I always wanted to make a DH that uses the skill Molten Arrow that you showed while D3 was still in development, but you removed that skill for some reason. I was pretty excited about it.
There still is footage from Molten Arrow:
There also was a skill in Diablo 2 for the Amazon called ‘Lightning Fury’, which one of the most popular and fun builds in D2 revolved around, and I was always wondering why you did not bring it back in D3 as a rune for Elemental Arrow. It would really fit.
Lightning Fury in action:
Caltrops
Caltrops is another skill that could use some adjustments, especially since it is probably the Demon Hunters worst skill, even when legendary and set powers are not factored in.
The thing that hinders Caltrops the most from being useful is that you can only lay it beneath your feat and not place or throw it over a distance. If Caltrops could be placed at the location of your mouse cursor, the main problem in its functionality would be solved.
But it would need more adjustments after that. The base skill either needs to have its radius increased from 12 yards to somewhere between 15-20 yards OR the slowing effect needs to cling on enemies for like 2 or 3 seconds after they stepped out of the Caltrops area. The latter effect still would be in line with its fantasy.
The ‘Bait the Trap’ rune could keep the effect of the Caltops being placed beneath your feet, but that rune should also have the radius of the caltrops drastically increased, maybe between 20-25 yards, so that enemies cast reach you too easily and as a compensation for the loss of not being able to place the Caltrops over a distance.
The ‘Hooked Spines’, ‘Torturous Ground’ and ‘Carved Stakes’ are fine for what they are, the main problem is the base mechanic of the skill itself. But the ‘Jagged Spikes’ rune (the one that adds damage to the skill) is completely useless, because no one will ever use Caltrops for this minor amount of damage, so my suggestion would be that it instead could either increase the radius of the skill further or increase the time the slow effect clings on enemies.
Vault
In PoE there is a skill called Dash, which has a nice feature that also could be applied to this Demon Hunters skill Vault:
when you use that skill while you are holding the “Stand Still / Don’t Move”-Button, you dash into the opposite direction of your mouse cursor instead of at its location.
I think that would be a cool feature for Vault as well, like a Backflip.
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Monk
Exploding Palm
A fantasy that was not completely fulfilled was the fantasy of a Monk that causes enemies that he kills with Exploding Palm to detonate, not just because of the mechanic of the skill, but also because of its visuals.
The main problem with Exploding Palm is imo that there is only one viable rune that vastly outshines all others: “Impending Doom”.
Impending Doom removes the damage over times effect of EP but more than doubles the damage of the explosion, which makes it by far the most effective rune in combination with the Uliana’s set, since it causes Seven Sided Strike to immediately explode EP on an enemy.
So maybe to make the other runes more viable, Impending Doom could be removed or redesigned to no longer work the way it currently does, and in return the damage bonus on the Uliana set for EP could be increased to make up for that (or another EP related legendary).
This would leave more room for the other runes to shine a bit more.
My idea for a replacement for Impending Doom would be a rune that either applies Exploding Palm on up to X enemies that were hit by the EP explosion, or simply increases the area of effect of the detonation. Or maybe someone else comes up with something different.
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To further improve Exploding Palm, I would like that the base unruned version and therefore all runes of Exploding Palm apply the DoT to 2 or 3 targets within 15 yards, not just the Socking Grasp rune.
Shocking Grasp then could increase the amount of targets that the EP DoT gets applied to by an additional +X eventually.
Alternatively or additionally whenever you use Exploding Palm on an enemy that already has EP applied on them, the DoT then would be instead appled to another enemy within 15 yards that currently does not already have the DoT effect applied on them.
I hope that made sense. All of this would make more runes useful and the base version would get some nice QoL improvements.
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The visuals of Exploding Palm could eventually get an update as well, however, this would require more work I assume, so that would probably not be high on the list.
When the skill was shown first at a Blizzcon before D3 was released, Exploding Palms explosion used the animation of a bloody explosion that is now only used when a yellow rare elite dies:
The current visuals for EP’s explosion look very different and they don’t really fulfill the idea of a Monk causing the inner organs of his enemies to explode.
You can even use the same animation for all runes, but that bloods detonation animation would just look much better and closer to the fantasy than the current one.
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Necromancer
Land of the Dead
Another thing that needs to be addressed imo is the skill Land of the Dead and the playstyles that result from it, aka running around for a minute, doing nothing and then having a 10 second window in which you nuke everything, which is not a too fun way to play Necro.
Since this skill also leads to balancing issues, I think it might be a good idea to redesign it, if you already intent to work on some things.
I don’t really know what you could do in order to fix this skill (except completely removing it), but an idea might be to replace it with a similar skill that has a lower cooldown, but that only spawns a limited amount of corpses, for example something like a Rain of Corpses skill, which would cause xx corpses to rain down that you then can use, which would have something like 20 or 30 second cooldown. Or something similar.
Additionally, primary and secondary skills could have a chance to cause enemies to drop a “Corpse Fragment” when you hit them, which would work exactly like corpses, except that they drop when you hit an enemy, rather than killing them.
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Witch Doctor
Locust Swarm
Just like Rend, it could use something like that enemies take ~10-15% more damage from your skills while under the influence of Locust Swarm an effect on the base skill.
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Wizard
Elemental Specialist Wizard
One fantasy that is really lacking in the game is the fantasy of a Wizard who specializes in one element – aka an Elemental Specialist. The only set that revolves around this fantasy is Firebird and when we are honest, the Firebird set does not really lead to the most pleasant playstyle.
I doubt that you want to create completely new sets for each element, but what about redesigning one of the current sets to be a set that gives you offensive and defensive bonuses for every skill of the same element that is on your skill-bar?
For example:
For each lightning skill you have on your skill-bar, you gain x.xxx% increased lightning damage. For each frost skill on your skill-bar you gain x.xxx% increased frost damage. Same for fire and arcane.
When you have at least 4 skills of the same element on you skill-bar, you gain xx% damage reduction… or something like that.
Blizzard
The Wizards skill Blizzard is probably the Wizards weakest skill.
I often do playthroughs of the game by leveling chars from 1 to 70 without getting powerleveled and without any of the legendaries that give huge multipliers, just for the fun of it, and even under these circumstances Blizzard is just useless.
I understand that the damage-over-time to resource cost ratio needs to be somewhat in line, but the skill just doesn’t feel impactful at all. Even just 2 or 3 seconds of casting Disintegrate has significantly more effect than a single Blizzard over its whole 6 second duration.
A possible fix to this issue could be to reduce the duration of Blizzard from 6 seconds to 3 or 4 seconds, but let it deal the same amount of damage over its duration and furthermore, a cooldown could be added to the skill (I am thinking about something between 10 to 15 seconds) which therefore would allow the damage to be drastically increased, which would make the skill feel a lot more impactful when it is used.
A 10-15 second cooldown Blizzard could maybe deal like ~3000% damage over 3 seconds in an area and that would feel a lot more satisfying.
If that still doesn’t make it more useful/impactful, its cooldown could be increased further to 20 - 30 seconds and its damage increased further as well, which would turn this skill into a small nuke that you would use against heavy enemies and elites, but personally I think that this role would fit better on the Meteors Molten Impact rune (another rune that isn’t seen often in the lategame, the one that gives the skill a 15 second cooldown, but also increases its damage), so that rune might be in need of some tweaking as well.
Arcane Orb
In general, all the runes for Arcane Orb except Frozen Orb need a damage increase to be able to compete with Frozen Orb. But a few more things came to my mind in regards to Arcane Orb to improve its fantasy and graphics, however, they would require more work than just simple number changes.
I don’t expect that these should or will be implemented, but it still might be a good read.
1 A rune for Arcane Orb that improves the base version of the skill, instead of completely altering it.
A rune for Arcane Orb that is just an improved version of the base skill and not a rune that completely alters how the skill works. I really like the base version of the skill, both in regards to its mechanic and in regards to the visuals.
The mechanic for the unruned version of Arcane Orbs is like a Fireball: you throw out a missile that detonates on impact in a big AoE, but sadly that fantasy is only reflected in the base skill and the Obliteration rune, but the latter doesn’t feel and look as good as the base skill and also drastically reduces the detonation radius.
So I would like to have a rune for Arcane Orb, that enhances the base skill by either increasing the detonation radius or by simply increasing its damage or by doing both, while also keeping the visuals of the base version, which just look fantastic imo (I often use the unruned version of AO, just because it looks so good).
2 The fantasy of a Fireball – Arcane Orb rune
Then there also is the fantasy of a real Fireball that is not really fulfilled. Yes, there is the Scorch rune for Arcane Orb which also explodes, but the whole thing doesn’t really fit imo because you are throwing a gigantic boulder that for some reason pierces through enemies and then it detonates almost off-screen by default.
So to make this rune fulfill the fantasy of a Fireball, you could change its visual from a giant boulder to a smaller, but still intense flaming missile or ball that detonates on impact with he first enemy and deals instant damage (in the same radius as the base rune for AO) and then also leaves a pool of fire on the ground for ~2 seconds that deals additional damage when enemies stand in it.
A similar effect is already on the rune Immolation Arrow for the Demon Hunters Elemental Arrow skill and it would just make sense imo to swap the mechanics of Scorch and Immolation Arrow, especially since there already was a skill called Molten Arrow for the DH during the development of Diablo 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvDPzs14Xmo
3 The aesthetics of the Spark, Scorch and Frozen Orb runes
I was a bit disappointed when I first saw the visuals of the new Arcane Orb runes when RoS came out, aka Spark, Scorch and Frozen Orb, because the orbs are just giant black/white balls. Giant black balls work fine for Black Hole, but not for Arcane Orb and its runes and that makes these runes a lot less satisfying to use, at least for me, because it doesn’t really fit their fantasy.
So what you could do is to reduce the size of the orbs from these three runes to better match the size of the unruned version. Scorch would look better if it would get a more Fireball-ly look as mentioned above and the fantasy of Spark would be fulfilled better in my opinion if it would look more like the Lightning Bolt/Lightning Charge that gets released by the Storm Chaser Rune of Energy Twister instead of a ball of darkness surrounded by some lightnings. The orb for Frozen Orb looks okay, except that it is too big.
4 A new mechanic for Spark
The following is not a common fantasy, but rather something that I personally would like to see, so I don’t know what other people think of it, but I just find it interesting.
Instead of being a ball of electricity that gets thrown in an arc above enemies heads, I like the idea/fantasy of a of Lightning Ball that travels in a line and shoots several bouncing Chain Lightnings per second at nearby enemies while it travels forward, like a travelling Conduit Pylon just with Chain Lightnings or like the BFG 9000 from Doom. I think that is just cool.
Hydra
I think that being able to have 3 Hydras would be fine as a baseline for the skill.
Maybe you can get +1 additional maximum Hydra from the Serpent Sparker Wand, but not more.
I also like the idea of a legendary that increases the damage of all your skills for each Hydra you have active.
Disintegrate
Disintegrate could need a rune that deals lightning damage.
The perfect rune for that would be Chaos Nexus, which is rune that causes you to discharge energy at nearby enemies while channelling. These energy discharges already look like small lasers and changing them to lightnings would perfectly fit imo.
And while we are on the topic of Disintegrate, plz add Disintegrate to the DMO set.
Wizard Conjuration Skills
The Wizard’s Conjuration Skills (Ice Armor, Storm Armor, Energy Armor, Familiar and Magic Weapon) are just cast-and-forget skills. They could need an active component, because otherwise you just have them on your skill bar and only have to use them once all 10 minutes.
The most simple fix would be to make their current effects passive while they are on your skillbar, give them an active component that simply doubles or triples their passive effect for x seconds and give the active effects a cooldown. That is something that the Crusaders Laws already do.
That would make these skills more engaging to use.
Galvanizing Ward
Aside from that the Wizard’s Energy Shields (and all kinds of other energy shields from items that are usable by other classes as well), could need a visual overlay on top of the health globe to show how much energy shield a char has, there is one particular Wizard passive skill that could kinda use a redesign to be more in line with the fantasy of an Energy Shield: Galvanizing Ward.
Currently, Galvanizing Ward immediately gives you an energy shield that absorbs damage based on 60% of your max life, but first after you have not taken damage for 5 seconds. But the fantasy of an energy shield is more like that it recharges over a few seconds after you have not taken damage, but not that it instantly comes back to 100% of its power.
So instead of being at 100% power after not having taken damage for 5 seconds, the shield could start to recharge after ~2 seconds of not having taken damage and replenish over the next 3 seconds. That means that if you have not taken damage for 2 seconds, every 0.5 seconds after that, the shield would recharge to give you 10% of your maximum life as Energy Shield, which means that after 3 seconds of recharge, it would have reached its maximum capacity of 60% of your like as Energy Shield again.
No much would change, except that your shield would start to recharge faster and it would be more fluid to use and play around with during combat.
Edit: you also get the Energy Shield from the Molten Wildebeest’s Gizzard legendary gem after 4 seconds, while you gain the Energy Shield from Galvanizing Ward after 5 seconds.
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Some General Stuff
Energy Shields
A visual Energy Shield Indicator above the Health Orb
Similar to Path of Exile, this would be a visual overlayer above the health orb, which would show how much Energy Shield (from f.e. the Wizard passives, St. Archus Gage gloves, Molten Gizzards Wildebeest etc) is remaining.
https://imgur.com/mLGC851
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Thanks for reading!