Incentive for single-classing (overleveling masteries)

[mothwentbad]

Hey, I had a bit of an idea, but I haven't yet tried to get my hands dirty with doing mods on my own. I just wanted to throw an idea out and see if you thought it sounded interesting.

I was thinking that there should be some kind of bonus to single-class characters. In particular, my idea was to increase the maximum mastery level to 64, and at certain benchmarks, increase all skill level maxima for that mastery's tree by one.

Maxed out masteries would look something like this:

64, +4 to all maximum skill levels in primary mastery
60/4, +3 to all maximum skill levels in primary mastery
48/16, +2 to all maximum skill levels in primary mastery
40/24, +1 to all maximum skill levels in primary mastery

The bonus would apply only after you level the primary mastery to a level at least that high. The idea is the total masteries cap is 64, rather than having one or two classes capped at 32 separately.

I'm not totally familiar with everything that this would affect. But since there are +skills charms in the game already, I figured it wouldn't be too unbalancing to allow people to swing their characters one way or the other. Some classes may find it more reasonable to clip top-tier skills than others, but I more or less get the feeling that everyone eventually maxes out both trees eventually the way the game is now, and that seems to water down the variation a little. Maybe someone who's played more would have a better idea of what the appropriate incentive would be to make "favored masteries" a more or less break-even venture.

Maybe after total masteries hits 64, one could purchase above the mastery level in the other tree, but at a cost of two skill points for something one tier up and three skill points for skills two or more tiers up. Or the penalty could be one additional point per mastery tier for learning new skills, and then one or two skill points spent per additional skill level beyond that.

Thoughts?

[ASYLUM101]

I'm not sure I understand, +4 to all maximum skill levels?

Do you mean, if the max for volcanic orb is 12 (i have no idea, I forgot), then the max becomes 16 (which is ultimate with +4 to all skills gear) and then ultimate becomes +4 of that (20) ?

If thats what you mean, it's impossible without a work around ( and the work around would be so messy and unbalanced its not funny.)

If what you mean is you get +4 to all skills, like a SBC would, then sure thats possible, but I dunno if that would really help much, cause then you immediately hit the skill cap for most skills... and that really wouldn't help the class much except to free up slots for more damage items instead of +skills...not sure it would really be such a great idea.

[mothwentbad]

Ah, I meant the bonus to maximum attainable level, as you guessed first. Maybe +1 max level could alternate with some other bonuses... I don't know. But if it's too hard to implement in any case, then it might not be worth the trouble. I can't really think of any other ideas for what should happen to reward people who overlevel one of the masteries.

What's SBC?

[ASYLUM101]

It's not too hard, it's impossible lol. The ONLY way to do it, would be to provide +8 unlockable levels beyond the maximum level, but that could be easily abused by characters who have two masteries and tons of + skills gear.

SBC is an example of +skills gear, acronym for stonebinders cuffs.

One thing I can suggest, is to have incremental additions to the mastery per every 6 levels or so after 32.

Eg: Earth would get +10% fire damage at 38, 20% at 46, 30% at 52, 40% at 58, and 50% at 64. THAT would provide a HUGE boost to a single mastery character and allow them to find gear for survivability instead of damage.

Or, you could continue the incremental changes per level beyond 32, allowing you to effectively get double stats from a single mastery. (instead of max 720 HP, 90 INT from earth at 32, at 64 you get 1440 HP and 180 INT.)

OR, you could include both of the above suggestions. (might be overpowered)

[mothwentbad]

Hmmm. It sounds like there's no way to prevent players from putting points in a second mastery, so maybe your idea of a damage or attack speed bonus would work best. Maybe make up a skill at level 40 whose effect is just like a mastery point + 1-2% attack speed/elemental damage/whatever is appropriate for that mastery, and/or (-.5)-(-1)% recharge time. (If recharge time reductions are additive, this could be easily abused)

Even if it could be balanced, it sounds like the main reason not to single-class would still be that it's too boring, and this doesn't really address the boringness of single-class builds. Even if I worked it out, it might be too dull to test it out.

Does anyone ever single-class other than as a special challenge?

[mothwentbad]

Hmmm. I'm thinking about it some more. I think a good way to keep this from being abused by balanced characters is to keep the best benefits locked away at a high investment level. So maybe "Grand Mastery" is learned at 40, and points in it act just like mastery points, or maybe a little weaker, but when Grand Mastery hits, say, 25, you get +1 skills for the mastery and some bonuses, and at 50, you get +2 skills for that mastery and some more extra bonuses. The +skills is just as if it were from an item, so it forces you to spend a lot in one place, but then the skillpoint burden is alleviated somewhat by getting +2 to, say, the 5 or so skills you wanted to put points into anyway - but only after you've comitted a large number of points already. Maybe attack speed/damage/pet damage boost at 25, and -15% or -20% recharge at 50... It's really a lot of recharge bonus, but the idea is that you're spending so much that you really rely mostly on half as many skills, so you need to use them often anyway. But it might be abuseable.

If you get items that boost some skills above the max later, you can always delevel those and spend them elsewhere.

Balanced characters could take a few points in Grand Mastery as a place to dump extra points, but it would function just like spending more mastery points. Even with this system, though, max-level characters could conceivably complete both Grand Masteries and use +skills items to fill in the gaps to get a lot of stats and some nice bonuses, while keeping skills at decent levels. But level 80 characters should be kind of epic, anyway, maybe?

[mothwentbad]

The point of making the cost very steep is that you have to be dedicated for it to work. It might be unbalanced at level 80 if you complete both Grand Masteries, but the cost might be prohibitive - it costs 90 skill points, or 30 dedicated levels for each. It has to be steep to take into account the +skills bonuses and the fact that people can reassign points at when they have enough levels.

So for 102 skill points - or 32 levels - you could have a level 33 character with 12 3rd-level skills, high stats, and a few nice bonuses. Or at level 40, you could have a couple maxed out primary skills on top of that, and at 50 you could have decent support from a second tree on top of that.

At level 80, you would need a lot of +skills items to get a couple of maxed (ultimate) skills, a bunch of mid-level skills in both masteries, a ton of stat points, and some very nice bonuses on top of that.

If anyone thinks this sounds kind of interesting, let me know. The more I look at the posts about custom masteries, the better idea I get of what is and isn't possible.

When I think I know exactly what I want to do, I might start a new post called Grand Masteries with a detailed breakdown in the original post.

[wangyin]

Even if it could possibly be balanced, it seems such as the principal provide going to not single-class would even now be that it's as well boring, and also this doesn't critically deal with the boringness of single-class builds. Even if I worked it out, it could be as well dull to check it out.