[Nature] Briar Ward tree

[Mewcatus]

@Mewcatus: I'm not sure if I have it stickied around somewhere, because I can't find it myself anymore. I'll make one soon.

Anyway, what it should be about; one of the main goals of the balance patch is to make the game more challenging. As we feel that the player has too big an advantage over the monsters, we aim to nerf the overpowered skills and increase the monsters difficulty. While this does not directly apply to the arguments your making, you propose to make an already strong mastery even tougher.. your suggestions will surely outbalance a lot, if not all nature builds, to the players advantage.

While I agree with you that Overgrowth, for example, isn't worth points, turning Nature into a INT tank is not the spirit behind the balance patch.

Another main goal of the balance patch is to make skills work properly as meant by the developers. While this may not be possible to do with all skills, your propositions seem to be quite a big deviation from the devs intention.

At any rate, I feel I must apologize for not having this information in a sticky - at least not in an easy-to-find place.

i don't disagree with you on the deviation of what the skill intends, but I must point up. Even at the present moment. Say you leave Briar Wood as it is, and instead ups the HP for it. What would be the magic number for it ?

Lets say that u scale exactly as how it scales for the summons. Say the wolves which have 470 HP at normal, but 8000 at legendary, thats almost a 18 fold increase.

Given that Briar Wood has 200 HP , assume u scale it the same, should it have 470 X 18 HP then ?

Question is, what is the magic number then. Finally, from my point of view, every ability should have some shining use to it within the game. Else, what is the point of having that ability even exist within the tree. We might as well just remove it completedly, as there is not even a critical one.

Its a matter of one ability in the skill tree which is particularly shiny compared to the rest. If the ability created is just another dull stone. No one would give a 2nd thought about even bothering to put the points into the ability. In this case, it totally defeats the purpose of a balance patch. Some abilities just greatly shine in comparision.

Can u safely say that just by boosting the numbers, could u find the point whereby players would be tempted to even select a dull stone over a shiny diamond ability to put in ?

Finally, what I suggested for overgrowth, if u do find it too OP, its once again, simply a numbers game. Cutting the numbers down to only a mere 0.1 sec stun with 0.1 m radius with a mere 100 shield block at max. Would that be OPed ? If anything, I wouldn't even be bothered to put any more points into the ability, as personally, the shield does squat.

In any case, the game is too HEAVILY centered around builds which concentrate on str/dex items and/or their respective attributes, with DAs holding utmost importance. Would anyone even bother putting points into increasing MP reserves attributes ? No one does. Why ? Because simply put, THERE are close to ZERO abilities which synergies or justify having a larger MP banks, which leads back to the infinite MP pots mechanism thing.

The same can be said of the HP max increase attribute. Why would anyone bother putting into increasing HP max, when its so much more worth it dumping it into either Str/Agi ?

Here are the order of importance of specific attributes.

Traits
Most ipt to least
Str/Agi
Int
HP/MP base increase

If anything, there is far TOO great and emphasis on Str/Agi such that these 2 attributes are shining diamonds, while Int is an uncut diamond and HP/MP are just worthless stones. The balance problem goes this far back. Damage reduction via armour and DA are the only viable options at the harder difficulties, not to mention the xmas and uber mods.

Would you justify this as fair then ?

[Kuaera]

This set of explanations, while still not totally valid, does not indicate why Nature needs to be an INT tank as opposed to any other casting class. You're beating a dead horse, and you've not yet argued a valid alternative besides saying "it's a numbers game".

Please take into account the things Yerkyerk and I have added, as well as other 'absolute' changes which are being proposed for the balance patch.

[Mewcatus]

This set of explanations, while still not totally valid, does not indicate why Nature needs to be an INT tank as opposed to any other casting class. You're beating a dead horse, and you've not yet argued a valid alternative besides saying "it's a numbers game".

Please take into account the things Yerkyerk and I have added, as well as other 'absolute' changes which are being proposed for the balance patch.

1. I was just throwing a suggestion.
2. I did not say that mine was the best solution. I was just modeling concepts, thats all, but giving ideas with concrete values so that it is much easier to envision. In short, I was just being creative about what it could do.
3. I did read through the thread before posting. In fact, yerkyerk did asked for people to throw out suggestions.
4. I dont see how my explanation as not being valid.

For one, I seriously think that alot of these so called useless abilities which are being evaluated for change, might as well be made useful, with some other statistics, rather then being hugely beneficial to just str/agi builds. The changes I proposed, takes into account, how it should benefit build types.

If anything, we might as well start introducing skills which do benefit adding to MP bank attribute. The concept of a shield growing with respect to this attribute might isn't that far fetched as it should sound.

If anything, like I mentioned, making it such that MP bank attribute affects it, suddenly opens a whole new dimension of play. Suddenly, they rather then just an all out str/agi build as the perfectly valid method, an int/MP bank attribute becomes another good alternative.

And I started with Nature tree in particular, as this was the 1st tree I chose, so its mostly out of nostalgia. I am more then willing to throw out concepts and help out other more useless skills that are being suggested here.

But, I need to go in depth and play the other trees alot more, before I dare suggest on what is really wrong as it would be shallow of me to do otherwise.

Finally a balance patch should not just be about skills, it should be about how the game is like. I like everyone to answer honestly, from the grand over view of the entire game, these questions in your heart ?

1. Do you honestly think that there is fair enough weightages given throughout all the tweakable attributes ?

2. When was the last time, for any given build, have you bothered to add stats to the MP bank reserves, rather then agi/str or even int ?

For me, after playing 6 to 8 builds all revolving around int type skill trees, it was a big flat zero.

Finally, my suggestions were just that, a suggestion. But rather then being just a vauge concept and idea, I was throwing out more concrete values so that people can envision what it could look like. It is not a must, it was just a creative concept.

To sum it up, lets say you do actually take up my idea with making my overgrowth mechanics go live. How many players would actually bolster the MP bank reserve stats just to make it more useful ?

Balancing basically is indeed all a numbers game. Take the % recharge cap for instance, why did it go from 100 to of all numbers specifically 80 ? Why not 60 ? Why not 50 even ?

[yerkyerk]

Your ideas and concepts of the game are of a more general nature rather than just these specific skills. I suggest making a new thread and discuss it in the appropriate place. This thread is for discussion of the Briar Ward specifically. You did indeed discuss it, but I suggest keeping the different topics you discuss seperate.

If you think something's wrong with energy (and many people do), there are other threads in the game mechanics section to discuss that.
If you have a problem with attributes, make a thread about that in the game mechanics section.

But I ask you to stop throwing your statements in various threads that do not really cover that subject. We'd get nowhere if everyone started doing that.

Another thing; Your English isn't perfect, but it's good enough to comprehend. However, when you use vague terms it starts becoming a problem, at least for me.
I don't understand MP banks. Mana is called energy in this game. Everyone knows that with mana you mean energy, though MP is vague. What is it, Mana Power? And with banks, do you mean reserves?
I would ask you to use the game's terms as to avoid confusion and increase the comprehensiveness of your writing.

[Kuaera]

This conversation does not belong here, and your Overgrowth with the player's Max MP in the formula cannot be done. If you have a complaint about INT being more important than STR or DEX, or that energy pools have no reason to get larger, start another thread.

For the record, I upped my energy pool today on my Brigand.

[Mewcatus]

This conversation does not belong here, and your Overgrowth with the player's Max MP in the formula cannot be done. If you have a complaint about INT being more important than STR or DEX, or that energy pools have no reason to get larger, start another thread.

For the record, I upped my energy pool today on my Brigand.

If i can't be done, I apologise for it. We will just leave my suggestions as just that, simply suggestions.

[Mewcatus]

Your ideas and concepts of the game are of a more general nature rather than just these specific skills. I suggest making a new thread and discuss it in the appropriate place. This thread is for discussion of the Briar Ward specifically. You did indeed discuss it, but I suggest keeping the different topics you discuss seperate.

If you think something's wrong with energy (and many people do), there are other threads in the game mechanics section to discuss that.
If you have a problem with attributes, make a thread about that in the game mechanics section.

But I ask you to stop throwing your statements in various threads that do not really cover that subject. We'd get nowhere if everyone started doing that.

Another thing; Your English isn't perfect, but it's good enough to comprehend. However, when you use vague terms it starts becoming a problem, at least for me.
I don't understand MP banks. Mana is called energy in this game. Everyone knows that with mana you mean energy, though MP is vague. What is it, Mana Power? And with banks, do you mean reserves?
I would ask you to use the game's terms as to avoid confusion and increase the comprehensiveness of your writing.

I apologize with you on being too vague with terms. I just like to take a look at the grand scheme of things 1st. That being said. If it can't be done, then just leave it as it is. Everything i suggested so far is just that, a suggestion.

Yes, MP banks is indeed energy.

Lets get back onto topic for the Briar Ward then. Assuming that the ability stays as it is, and we are only talking about putting skill points into only the Briar Ward itself.

What would be its utility in Act 4 legendary ? What is keeping people from bothering to put further points into this skill ? Or even bothering to max it out ?

I propose giving this tree a static amount of HP, but every level put into it, gives it a %damage reduction to itself per level.

Hopefully, at maxed along with Sanctuary, it is able to at least survive a few hits to risk it just being a 1 point wonder skill.

[yerkyerk]

As for the Briar Ward, it will be receiving pet bonuses in Epic and Legendary with the next fanpatch. This should make it sturdy enough; the reason why Briar Ward is not used at all is because it's down with a single hit from a legendary mob. If it is turned into a pet, it'll get petboosts - and receive aura's (Heart of the Oak and Sanctuary, for example).

So, I think this will increase its usefulness - and we'll have to await the test results with that. I think adding a small slow aura to each shrub would make further investment more attractive.

Stinging Nettle is pretty uselss and something needs to happen with it. An aura with %damage returned, high poison and piercing damage.. something. (Though a problem may be that it doesn't yield xp points if it kills something, not sure, it might. There's still a few bugs in the game that we can't fix.)

Sanctuary in itself is a good enough skill - though I would like to see it also added as an aura to the shrubs, so its lifetime is increased and it disappears with the shrub. It'd be more logical.

[Tyr]

I've been playing around with vanilla/Immortal Throne TQ and the reason why Briar Ward sucks in TQ:IT is because its outdated - back in vanilla you could spam Briar Ward thanks to the old Refresh and some -recharge stacking. It needs to be rebalanced for IT and the fact that Refresh is nowhere near as powerful as it used to be.
Stinging Nettle's poison damage stacks and anything that hits a briar to get to you is going to get 78 (level 8) poison damage times number of attacks. It was mildly useful (think dangerous melee monsters having to hit a forest of briars just to reach you) before IT.