Suggestions for Itemization & Skill Trees

PC General Discussion
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I’ve gathered my thoughts about my experience and I will explain my concerns.
I want to firstly get something out the way, the game looks AMAZING; I love the grittiness and the art-style. The story seems good so far and it was an enjoyable experience, however I’m starting to think it’s not going to be what many people were hoping for; me included.

If you look at the game past the initial charm and if you actually want an interesting game that isn’t just spam button walk-simulator. You should be able to see the flaws are already showing.

CLASSES SKILL TREE
The classes feel good mechanically, however the skill tree is barely a skill tree at all, there is very little to no build expression. You can choose from 3 archetypes for each class and other than that you’re going to find very little variety. It’s most apparent with the sorcerer class, you pick an element and you basically pick a slight variation of it.

Suggestion
I think it’s the most difficult part to fix but I believe the skill trees need some re-designing. A system where an ability can be completely changed by it’s passives where the interaction with the other abilities can have a very different effect.
For example Hydra: you can cast hydra which is your normal hydra spell, however it can go on different directions according to the passive you pick. So you can have a set of nodes where hydra element is changed to ice or lightning and have another set of nodes where Hydra has a single charge and is 1 single big model that shoots 1 big ball of insert element here and explodes in an AOE or instead have 2 extra charges of hydras giving you a total of 4 and then yet another node that instead of casting a charge of hydra, you summon hydras coming out from the player’s back following him and shooting around him.
This way the spells have more variation and there’s more player expression, as well as different effects that work in synergy with other spells that you would otherwise not have as an obvious pick.
I know its a lot of work but it would make the game incredible!

ITEMIZATION
The itemization is what I’m most concerned with, because this is where the players could find their strategies and synergies yet all the items simply give slight %'s of defence or offensive affixes. The only interesting idea is the “lucky hit” stat. But quickly you will find that when comparing gear you simply want the higher number no matter what. The small affixes add so little to the decision making that frankly its quite bland. “wohoo I can add many +% crit chance on each gear” Cool?
The legendries add more to the skill variety, although we don’t have full access to all of them I feel like they are slightly underwhelming, not to mention they will probably be more rare on full release.
The rare gear drops also seem to be always worse than rare or legendary; it was mentioned on a dev log that they wanted rares to also be useful for certain niche builds or for a particular reason. I see none of that so far…
In conclusion the itemization if kept as is, will get boring FAST, it boils down to micro decisions of small numbers that becomes extremely uninteresting. Sure these little numbers add up and all but that only means you either deal more damage or take less damage, that’s mostly it, with some small exceptions like the “Lucky hit” stat.

Suggestion
The itemization is very lacking in my opinion at the moment because it’s not changing how you play your class at all. Even with the legendary effects considered, it doesn’t do enough. I have a few suggestions based on the rarity of the item.

-General in items: As normal, the items should have more affixes the rarer they are, however they should have a Slot affix (boots, chest, etc…)Primary affix, a secondary affix and special affix. The slot system should stay the same.
The Slot affix is already there, it’s the one where it gives you something based on the type of gear it is. (for example boots change the evade skill)
The primary affix always gives you a stat increase (Strength, Dexterity, etc…)
The secondary affix gives you an increase in the secondary stats, such as Crit %, Cold resistance, etc…
The special affix slot adds something to your abilities, or a special effect that can change how you engage with enemies such as Heal on Kill or Potions give you “X” amount of resource (energy, mana, etc…) or

  • Magic: Magic items give you a Primary affixes and 2 secondary affixes but sometimes it gives you a Special affix instead of a 2nd secondary affix.
  • Rare: Rare items give you a Primary affix and 3 secondary affixes but no special affixes.
  • Legendary: The effects need to be a lot more impactful, to the point where it changes how you use your skills. For example an affix that turns firewall into an icewall, or Rend shoots slashes of blood that bleed enemies in an arc. Effects that really change your playstyle, as if playing one of these new popular roguelike bullet hell like vampire survivors. I understand this is a lot more work production-wise but come on it’s blizzard, you have all the resources and talent I could only wish to have. There might already be similar effects in the full release but the ones I’ve seen so far seem very tame.

I think this way there will be more value to the items to make more interesting decisions, especially with Magic items and Legendary items.
In the dev logs, the developers did say that Legendaries should feel like items you build your character around, but as it is now it feels like they are simply a small addition to your build. They also mentioned that they wanted magic items to be more niche builds, but so far I’ve seen null of that so I feel slightly lied to. Maybe that has something to do with the drop rate from the BETA, however after reading all the legendary affixes, there’s nothing that felt too significant to want to lean unto the effect heavily. (and that’s what we want)

Anyhow, I’ve gone long enough and if you’ve read all this rant I want to thank you and I apologize for the long essay.

3 Likes
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I agree that the skill tree needs more variation to skill modifiers. 2 choices is extremely limiting and basically forces us into fewer and fewer choices in later clusters because of the power of synergy. The require to use x>1 skill point to unlock other skills is also insanely bad for build diversity.

I disagree on the itemization we saw. I geared for crit chance on my barb because of one of his legendary affixes and it payed off big time. 4% here, 3% there added up to a massive attack speed buff that was up frequently, combined with and chance of gaining 20 fury when dealing direct damage with Rend, gave me unlimited Rend with lucky procs - not if i got unlucky though. I took the 3rd stronghold boss from 90%-0 health in 10 seconds because I geared for crit chance on my bracers and rings and some passives on the tree. These are low numbers because we are low level. If i had 60% crit and 50% lucky chance I’d be completely unstoppable. The fact that I was able to almost 1 shot the 3rd stronghold boss with these low numbers (maybe 25% crit) on my build was pretty crazy and I think validates the itemization and skill synergies available at this stage. It’s going to take a long time to get a set of modifiers on a rare item that increases the power of your build. I got incredibly lucky to find Crit, attack speed, Damage over time bracers with high rolls. If my build needed vulnerable damage, core skill damage, damage to slowed enemies for example, I shouldn’t expect to find that in a weekend.

As far as “legendries need to be a lot more impactful” I think you’re thinking of Unique items which aren’t available yet. The legendary affixes are really powerful and we can transfer them to rare gear. If they were called “ultra-rare” that might be more palatable, but the legendary items in D4 are essentially crafting material UNLESS you get really lucky with the regular modifiers, which is cool. I like how legendries work, and I’m excited for Unique items, which is what I think a lot of people expected Legendary items to be.

2 Likes
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The most obvious problem about itemisation is a result of lack of impact of the primary stats IMO

Think they should scale the numbers down and then add some impact from primary stats overall

Like simply tripple-down everything regarding the resource (fury, energy, mana) and then have that impacted by the primary stats more… Same with Crit and probably Overpower with Dex and Str

If Barb instead of 50 (or 60 was it ?) fury by default had like 20, and having Intel increased Max fury THAT could feel impactful (same with Mana and Energy for the other 2)

On the other hand I get it, they don’t want to end up in a territory where people have 2000 mana or whatever… BUT not having primary stats impact the player (even early on in game) enough is kinda “filler” and therefore a bummer

The other thing I think should be considered is add another type of damage (let’s call it Sacred/Unavoidable whatever) and have it there thrown along with other possible rolls (this type of damage is unaffected by armor or resistances, basically GUARANTEED damage per hit/cast minimal), and then do more diverse scaling of armor and resistances on Mobs, THAT could/should work IMO…

I mean it’s kinda obvious that having everything scale up in Armor/HP is too “gradient” based, have some “asymmetry” could diversify impact a bit more :slight_smile:

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Its too late to change anything loke that. Took them this long to get the balance as it stands. People think they can do this. They can add stuff like lfg feature qol stuff

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I see what you’re saying about the itemization and I even mentioned it, I get it that you can add all this small % to have an impact on your build. However I still think its not interesting enough, like we should have some of that yes with my proposal of secondary affixes, but it doesn’t take away how rares and magic items are just crafting materials sometimes. I want to find a magic item that has a niche stat that makes me play my build a little differently. Like I miss out on some of those stats but hey now I find “X” or “Y” more valuable.
About the legendaries, it’s possible that a simple name change could make it more palpable though. Legendary items I think should be really rare and have a much bigger impact.

Anyhow thank you for your answer.

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Item affixes aren’t supposed to be interesting though, they’re just there to support your build by stacking the offensive or defensive stats you want. The interesting part of itemization are things like aspects you get from legendaries and your codex, unique items?, and sets? if they are part of the Dev’s plan.

Build changing and build defining itemization is there, it’s just on legendaries, or your codex. Magic and Rare items have an a set affix pool that seems boring until you stack 200% vulnerable damage on your vuln build and you’re crushing bosses in a few hits.

It would be more boring if every magic and rare had codex rolls that changed skills.

I think the low level cap of the beta and therefore, low rumbers on the regular affixes are what is driving the criticism some people have. They felt that basically green number means better, when in fact it didn’t, they just didn’t look closely enough at their build to know they need to be stacking vuln damage for example, or we are so low level that stacking damage didn’t really help that much because all the gear we saw had prettly low roll potential. When we start seeing 90% vuln damage appear on gear or 7% crit chance instead of 3 or 4, people are going to get a lot more excited about their items, and stop complaining about how boring it is to get 18% damage rolls and just go with the green number.

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Yeah, I agree that the base stats are bland, I wish they were important like in D2. You could run a high int barbarian or strength battle sorcerer and stuff like that. I think all these things make the game more interesting. However Im starting to realize that blizzard is not catering to the audience that likes in-depth RPG’s but rather going for that MMO/Mobile gaming casual (mostly asian) audience because it’s more lucrative.

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Absolutely like the idea to convert elements and change the mechanic of the skill with skill tree. Also would be cool if there were nodes for skills that change AoE%, Projectile speed etc. Interaction between skills is also must have, i have seen some interesting interactions for cold sorc but lightning and fire feels a bit luckluster

Definitely it would be a great improvement

Yes, I found some cool interactions between skills and lucky hit affix. Liked it and want to see more affixes that synergize with skills this way

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See, the idea that “Legendaries should feel like items you build your character around” flies in the oposite direction of what they say here (https://youtu.be/n6IGAh51vTk?t=576 at 9:36 to 9:53) where it would cost more (in time-to-gold) to respec to use those legendary afixes than it would be to make an entirely new character to level and pull them from your stash, which is just plain stupid.

You can either have legendaries be what you build your character around, and be able to have your skills fluxuate to match the legendaries, or you can have your skills be what you build around in hunting for legendaries, and have a lot of the legendaries be trash, because they don’t fit your build.

Either we are gtting doublespeak from the company (typical), there is a lack of communication between the developers (possible), or someone is trolling (maybe?).

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Absolutely, I have the feeling of being lied to from the developper interviews and what I experienced in the BETA. The magic items were useless, when they specifically said they have a plan to make them interesting. The legendary powers are very tame and not really interesting often. They don’t define your build at all, they just add small things to it. I think it would be the most interesting if you could respec with a fair somewhat low amount of gold but have legendary items be more rare but way more impactful and build defining. That would also ensure that magic items automatically become more interesting and valuable just due to legendaries are more rare to find. (Also more exciting when you find one). Honestly I question the ability of the designers sometimes, it’s like they don’t understand that their design choices have implications. You cant have 2 opposite design choices that conflict eachother. Maybe im just being harsh but like come on…

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Thanks for giving actual feedback on these forums. This is what we need to see more of which is more explaining of how people think certain systems could improve or change to make the play experience better. With that out of the way, I would like to dive into your feedback.

Itemization: I think you are looking at this at a very surface level. As you level up, most of the affixes won’t matter as much as you try to reach mid game. However if you look closer at the item affixes that roll such as +1 rank to skills, Resistances, damage reduction, elite damage reduction, lucky hit chance, elemental damage, melee damage, damage to close enemies, barrier generation, resource generation, +1 rank to all catagory skills, etc are all interesting endgame affixes that will keep players hunting to for a perfect roll late game. Resistances may seem like a snore but they will matter a lot more in endgame according to the Blizzard devs.

As far as Legendaries being far superior to Rares, I don’t think Blizzard want to go down the D3 route anymore. Rares can be actually better than legendaries as far as rolled stats and I think that was intentional. It feeds into the Legendary Aspect system. If you find a better rolled Rare item than your currently equipped Legendary, you can equip the rare and transfer the Legendary power on to the new item. This can only be done once with found Legendaries. After that, you will need to hunt for that specific Legendary power again. Rares and Legendaries compliment each other and have you always trying to chase the better item.

That being said, I have seen some bland Legendaries but I have also seen a few transformative Legendaries. The blander Legendary powers are meant to be support items for the build you are trying to pull off and believe me there are some pretty strong combos in the “bland” catagory of Legendary powers. Not every Legendary you get is meant to be useful to you or your build. I’ve seen powers meant for other Barbarian builds besides my own. I haven’t seen however Legendaries drop for other classes which tells me that there is some small loot protection baked into the system.

Magic items can be good in rare circumstances over Rares if they roll with really good stats. Right now they roll with less affixes but those affixes are higher than what can roll on a Rare item. At some point though, Magic items are meant to be left behind in favor of Rares and Legendaries.

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I get what you’re saying, but i have to disagree. I totally understand the assumption that Im looking at it very surface level, but promise you that Im also thinking down the line, adding the numbers up and of course keeping my mind open to what’s coming down the line.
I have to say that just because some stats are important, such as resistances doesn’t make them fun or interesting. In fact taking resistances as an example, that stat is so important especially late game and higher difficulties that it’s pretty much a necessity with further reduces the decision making an options. This is what my primary concern is, the game is lacking on interesting decision making in both skill twig (sorry tree) and the itemization. Im not saying they don’t work, im saying that they are a bit bland and uninteresting. Could be better!

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How do you feel about the affixes “potions do X”, “+1 charge to evade”, or “attacks reduce evade CD by X”?

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I do agree that the skill tree is pretty bland but I don’t think that it was intentionally made to be overly complex. The complexity would come from min/maxing the stats on items and the paragon tree (which we can’t test at this time but after beta the devs will be doing a deep dive on it).

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I think the evade one is great, it has implications on playstyle, especially if theres other ability that use evade. You see that way it becomes more dynamic etc…
It would be cool to see more effects on potions like drinking a potion also pushes enemies around you for and stuns them for 0.5 seconds or something.
For the cooldown stuff im not sure, I would have to think about it more.
Anyway, thank you for your question!

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WOAH, what?!?!

I changed my build 3 times in 1 day because of the items I picked up. I just skim read your lengthy post up til there but stopped there. If you don’t add caveats on controversial statements you just seem wrong and not worth reading. Not saying that items can’t use work, but these statements are true and people don’t have time to sift through these posts to find diamonds among the rough

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Unfortunately I think the skill tree being so linear is to cater to the console players, it is designed for simplicity due to that. Which is unfortunate because even though that probably would help the console players, it does mean that it is required, but it does mean that it limits the player’s self expression when it comes to builds. Again its not necessarily a bad thing, I certainly don’t want a PoE skill tree scenario, but i don’t think theres enough variety of options and they are very much telegraphed. I feel like they are holding my hand a little bit.

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No problem. I suggested those as those are some of the more interesting affixes I’ve seen on the gear drops. The Potion one where it gives me % of my resource back is extremely good for my Fury starved Barbarian. Evade is the spacebar dash thing.

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Woa[quote=“Las-2373, post:16, topic:5304, full:true”]

WOAH, what?!?!

I changed my build 3 times in 1 day because of the items I picked up. I just skim read your lengthy post up til there but stopped there. If you don’t add caveats on controversial statements you just seem wrong and not worth reading. Not saying that items can’t use work, but these statements are true and people don’t have time to sift through these posts to find diamonds among the rough
[/quote]

Woah is right. Sorry but I don’t agree with your comment at all. I changed my build plenty of times just to see what was possible and yeah the legendaries certainly steerer my decision-making a bit especially because im learning the game. But that doesn’t take away from what im saying.
Additionally I don’t care about being controversial; it brings me nothing really. I make these statements to see what people think and learn from eachother but also teach and share. Just like I’ve been doing with other people here.

Maybe before you say anything, read the actual post first instead of skimming through before commenting, maybe then there would be something of worth in you comment.

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The thing is that this is the sort of thing that Blizzard likes to do with their games. Easy to enter into the game and hard to master. The skill tree and legendary power combos are meant to be the starter point and easy to understand. The complexity, like I stated, is going to be coming from the itemization and paragon tree. Have you seen that tree? It has massive customization for your character. Some of the choices are runes granting an AoE buff effect to surrounding nodes and being able to pick and rotate additional plates when you reach gate nodes. The Runes also come in different tiers and offer different buffs to surrounding nodes on top of various radius sizes.

1 Like