The Paragon Board is currently, even for Seasoned Diablo players and Theory crafters, about the Glyphs and the Rare and Legendary nodes. The Magic nodes also play a role but to a much lesser degree. The normal nodes hardly play any role. They are mostly used to connect to the nodes that are important.
Do we really need the normal nodes?
Now this opinion might not be popular with all players, but it's quite cumbersome to plan your route and optimize your route across these normal nodes. Resetting the Paragon Board and clicking all nodes again until you fully fill the board also takes some effort.
Simplified form
A simplification, partly due to Loot Reborn, is possible for the Paragon Board.
The current Paragon Boards do look cool from a distance with their distinct layouts, but in my honest opinion they would function just as well when they are simplified to sizes of 5x5 or 3x3, because the essence is retained.
Examples:
c
r m r
c m l m c
r m r
c
c
r m r
c m g m c
r m r
c
c = connection node
r = rare node
m = magic node
g = glyph node
l = legendary node
Normal nodes to reach Rare Paragon Node thresholds
Currently normal Paragon nodes can be used to reach certain thresholds for Rare Paragon nodes. With Loot Reborn your loot will drop with your primary stat affix and/or to all stats affix. This means in the current Paragon Boards you might have to go overboard with normal nodes to reach a threshold. But these Paragon points are then often better used elsewhere for magic or rare Paragon nodes.
Future of the Skill Tree
Thoughts on the current Skill Tree
The current connected sub nodes for each skill in the Skill Tree could just as well be a Legendary Power. The connections and level requirements between the Basic, Core, and other skill categories in the skill tree, except for the key passive and perhaps the Ultimate Skill, feel like an artificial restriction mostly for helping beginners.
Skill tree per skill
An alternative idea is to create a skill tree per skill. Each node in the skill should be either a passive node that applies only to that skill or an active node that actually changes the way how you use the skill, i.e. it either has an effect on your gameplay when using this specific skill or makes it useful in more situations. The rest of the passive nodes can be put in their own passive skill tree. For example a 20% extra damage doesn't change your gameplay when using a skill but changing Kick to a Roundhouse Kick that hits all enemies around you does or a Forward Jump Kick where you jump kick forward through your enemies. When you chose both the Roundhouse Kick node and the Forward Jump Kick it combines and you get both effects i.e. a Tornado kick.
Change regular skill modifiers into Aspects
Any skill modifier that for example add damage, attack speed, critical hit chance/damage or extra health either flat damage or percentage or multiplicative can be moved to an aspect or merged with an existing aspect.
Edit: Strike through skill tree idea, because it wasn’t good enough.
This is super popular but to be frank my opinion is that the skill-first approach has it’s downsides (maybe even overrated, but we’ll see)
Sure, something can (and probably should) be done with the skill trees, however wish they add an advanced socketing system first and see how that works (runes, runewords, or even skill-specific sockets in “skill orbs” maybe)
Would much rather experiment (and try out) something like that than play LE 2.0 in D4
I agree. In Diablo III they kind of had a skill tree per skill with five runes which can be interpreted as five nodes but most runes didn’t make the skill really that different. Sometimes it was pretty much just a change in damage type.
Creating a skill tree per skill might actually be really hard to do right for Diablo IV when you want to have more than a handful nodes to chose from. And we want that otherwise it isn’t a skill tree, but a skill twig.
So it sounds nice on paper, but it might not be great in practice. But still happy to bring in some ideas.
No it won’t be hard, many other games have done it (LE, GD, D2 maybe even a bit), the problem is it would overlap with Aspects (and that’s something I’m not a fan)
If they add like 3x Aspects for all the Core skills - I think we’ll be perfectly fine (instead of putting those modifications on the Skill Tree)
The reason why I think Advanced Socketing system would be more beneficial is wouldn’t overlap with existing systems (or at least tend to think)
Trying to find some examples (from posts I’ve done before) as examples to show so you can take a look at it
EDIT: ahah, found the complete post: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d4/t/different-player-types-in-d4-and-horizontal-progression/159576/29
And here is the idea (examples) for the Skill sockets (i.e. Orbs) only:
Target skill gains 500% WD in addition to it’s damage but gains additional 3 sec. CD
Target skill activates unstoppable for 1.5 sec but it’s CD is increased by 6 sec
Target skill gains 10% CDR for every Basic skill equipped
Target skill has 35% chance to cast twice (multicast)
Target skill has it’s LH chance increased by 10% (baseline)
(Legendary) Target AoE skill becomes Ultimate. Gains additional 1200% WD on cast and double the Area. You’re also able to equip one additional skill Orb inside this one but the equipped skill gains 30 sec CD
(Legendary) Target skill becomes Basic skill. It has no cost and no cast delay, however it’s AoE is not greater than 1/4 of it’s initial size and WD% is reduced to 150%. You can equip another Basic-skill altering Skill Orb inside this one
Soo yeah, think this kind of a system (and alterations) won’t affect (and overlap) as much as would expanding on the Skill Trees
-1 on paragon system. Your idea is much too small. Like literally too small. With the graphic you give ppl could get 40 paragon boards or something like that.
+1 on a skill tree per skill. Maybe it levels as you use it. Make it interesting and fun but not op.
This sure is an interesting idea. It has some overlap with the new Tempering system. I’d prefer them to fix/improve systems that are in the game first and then add new systems, as has been done with Loot Reborn. But perhaps both can be looked at.
Sure, you would have to change more than just the Paragon Boards. You could for example change the Legendary, Rare and Magic nodes so that you can invest your points.
Better balancing glyphs is the key to addressing most of the OP concerns. The system is designed to push and pull between fewer boards, but stronger rare nodes and more boards with therefore more glyphs.
At the moment the meta seems to strongly encourage about 6 boards, but at 4 boards it becomes tough to meet attribute thresholds. This is mostly working as intended, but because of how impactful glyphs are, and how weak the additive damage of most rare nodes are, the 4 and even 5 board builds lag behind.
I’m ok with the number of skills as is, but I do feel like more interesting and utility-oriented augmenting effects can be added so there are more combos and skill interactions.
Take Druid for example.
Make tornado able to merge into bigger and more powerful ones.
Allow tornado to actually slowly pull enemies in
Spawn random earth spikes on enemies near tornados
For necro:
blood lance stacks and every xth stack triggers a mini blood nova around the target
blood lance can be charged as a projectile anf pierces with higher damage
“Conversion” systems already exist in game (or maybe some of those could even go on temper manual, we’ll see)
What we lack is “skill flexibility” i.e. use on CD, or use on Resource, use with HP even at times, e.t.c., that’s why I think I came up with the Socket/Orb system the way I did
What I think would be cool for paragon boards is that they become drops with random nodes pre purchased for you.
Normal and magic: Removed from game no longer drop
Rare Paragon Board - 1 Random Free node. Have to connect to it to function.
Legendary Paragon Board - 2 Random Free nodes. Have to connect to it to function.
Mythic Paragon Board - 3 Random Free nodes. Have to connect to it to function.
Uber Paragon Board - 4 Random Free nodes. Have to connect to it to function.
Boards are items and can be traded. Your storage gains a 1 Paragon chest.
Boards can be salvaged into paragon keys. Paragon keys open rare paragon chests found through the world. Paragon chests only drop paragon boards.
Your build cannot use two of the same board.
To use a board drag it from inventory to an active gate.
Boards would be suffix named according to what nodes are selected as a number.
Example:
Mythic Enchantment Master - 501
The nodes Ruinous, 1.5% resist next to Erudite, and 5 INT next to gate are all already selected. Connecting to them selects these nodes free.
I think it could be broken down in to 2 separate things.
As much as I like the idea of being able to apply skill based paragons, it would leave you high and dry for things like health, life on hit, resource on kill, etc…
So I would think smaller paragon boards that have paragon point values in assignments would be good.
So a board that has all of the +Health nodes (on hit, on kill, regeneration, maximum etc…).
Another board for Resources, another for overpower etc…
They would only have the magic, rare, and legendaries as you have described, but they would scale in point requirements.
Magic node = 1 paragon
Rare node = 2 paragon
Legendary node = 4 paragon
Something like this could be interesting, and then “separately” you could apply points to Strength, Willpower, Intelligence, Dexterity as you see fit based on the remaining unused paragon points.
The secondary bonuses of Rare nodes could be based on how many nodes on that board are taken instead of base attributes.
Socketed Glyphs would be in the middle of boards that have no associated legendary power, how you have it.
I also like your ideas that further iterate on the original idea.
Or, the bonus you get from a magic, rare and legendary node starts with a low value and gets higher for each point you put into the node up to a certain maximum.
This way you are more flexible, where you for example invest only a little in one legendary node and more in another legendary node.
Something to keep in mind that glyph paragon boards are really powerful so that needs some balancing.
If the paragon boards are well designed then they are the superior choice compared to investing in strength, willpower, intelligence or dexterity.
