Just a thought: 2 way synergies

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Littlegator

Diabloii.Net Member
Just a thought: 2 way synergies

i.e. (using skills from D2)

You max out, say, Ice Bolt as a sorc. Generally, you would only use this as a synergy for Blizzard. Why not make Blizzard beef up ice bolt?

Or, a new idea altogether: Combining skills. Mix ice bolt and blizzard to either have ice bolts rain from the sky, or have the ice bolt explode into an AoE blizzard on contact.

Just a couple suggestions for the new system that could make early skills useful in the long run.
 
S

Swordslash

Banned
Re: Just a thought: 2 way synergies

Code: 
Ice Bolt Receives Bonuses From
Frost Nova: +15% Cold Damage Per Level
Ice Blast: +15% Cold Damage Per Level
Glacial Spike: +15% Cold Damage Per Level
Blizzard: +15% Cold Damage Per Level
Frozen Orb: +15% Cold Damage Per Level

Ice Blast Receives Bonuses From
Ice Bolt: +8% Cold Damage Per Level
Glacial Spike: +10% Freeze Length Per Level
Blizzard: +8% Cold Damage Per Level
Frozen Orb: +8% Cold Damage Per Level

Glacial Spike Receives Bonuses From
Ice Bolt: +5% Cold Damage Per Level
Ice Blast: +5% Cold Damage Per Level
Blizzard: +3% Freeze Length Per Level
Frozen Orb: +5% Cold Damage Per Level

Blizzard Receives Bonuses From
Ice Bolt: +5% Cold Damage Per Level
Ice Blast: +5% Cold Damage Per Level
Glacial Spike: +5% Cold Damage Per Level

Fire Bolt Receives Bonuses From
Fire Ball: +16% Fire Damage Per Level
Meteor: +16% Fire Damage Per Level

Fire Ball Receives Bonuses From
Fire Bolt: +14% Fire Damage Per Level
Meteor: +14% Fire Damage Per Level

Meteor Receives Bonuses From
Fire Bolt: +5% Fire Damage Per Level
Fire Ball: +5% Fire Damage Per Level
Inferno: +3% Average Fire Damage Per Second Per Level

Charged Bolt Receives Bonuses From
Lightning: +6% Lightning Damage Per Level

Lightning Receives Bonuses From
Charged Bolt: +8% Lightning Damage Per Level
Nova: +8% Lightning Damage Per Level
Chain Lightning: +8% Lightning Damage Per Level

Chain Lightning Receives Bonuses From
Charged Bolt: +4% Lightning Damage Per Level
Nova: +4% Lightning Damage Per Level
Lightning: +4% Lightning Damage Per Level
etc... Seems to already be the case?
 
hubb

hubb

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: Just a thought: 2 way synergies

@ OP: How did you play D2 and manage not to notice the 2-way synergies?

I don't know the new skill system in detail so here are some questions: How does the D3 skill system stop point hoarding early on, to put into higher level skils? It's crappy that you have to keep back skill points in order the have a stronger character later on. Have they given any details around how skill respec will work?
 
Risingred

Risingred

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: Just a thought: 2 way synergies

hubb said:
@ OP: How did you play D2 and manage not to notice the 2-way synergies?

I don't know the new skill system in detail so here are some questions: How does the D3 skill system stop point hoarding early on, to put into higher level skils? It's crappy that you have to keep back skill points in order the have a stronger character later on. Have they given any details around how skill respec will work?
Click to expand...
They stop it by making it unnecessary, just like synergies.

Synergies were a horrible solution to a much larger problem: useless skills.
Why put more than one point in firebold when you're going to get fireball in the next fifteen minutes? I asked this question during the beta for D2 and was flamed pretty bad but look how it ended up.

Instead of synergies, you have a lot more options and they all add to customization. Basically in Diablo III (for what it's worth so far) you have active skills within a tree, and the rest of the skills are passives that act to bolster or change the nature of an active skill. So your active skill isn't going to be pumped up just through putting points into it, but also putting points into the passives that support it.

It seems to me that there will be a rush of jack-of-all-trades when the game is released and then people will put more thought into a character's skill build, looking at the trees and deciding which active skills to bolster and which ones to skip altogether. But this time, it'll be a lot less convoluted and make a bit of sense.

Aside from skill points, there are also the runes that will do this as well.

If you want more of an overview on this, I would suggest checking out the wizard's skills in the diablo wiki on the site here. Particularly the arcane tree, which is a great example.

edit: duh forgot to mention the most obvious fix to point hoarding: each tier (so far) requires five points in any skill to unlock the next tier. So if you want a tier 2 skill, you must first spend five points in tier 1.
However, I'm sure these numbers will change along with the maximum rank for a skill if they plan on having 1 skill point per level, and 100 levels, or else you are going to have a LOT of skills.


 
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sorcererbob

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: Just a thought: 2 way synergies

The best way to create useless skills is to have every skill do one thing. And have the skills you get later do that one thing better.

A good way to solve this problem is to make every skill affect more than one thing, but in small ways. So say each point in Ice Bolt provides damage to blizzard, but also increases total mana by 2% or something. And Ice Blast may give you faster cast and damage to blizzard. And Glacial Spike may give you faster run/walk (I'm making it up as I go) and bliz damage. And here's the kicker, then you put in a limitation that stops people investing more than say 30 points into those 3 skills as a total - it forces players to have to choose what their character is good at which gives us more interesting and dynamic interactions.

A major frustration for me in D2 is that many characters are simply good at everything, and that just shouldn't be attainable. It ruins the balance.
 
L

lunarleif

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: Just a thought: 2 way synergies

The way to make point hoarding pointless is to make it so that it's really hard to beat enemies without points invested in skills. Can you imagine a level 5 sorceress against blood raven with no skills?
 
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