About Zeus Project and skill balance in general

[erotushd 5]

Hi. I'd like to discuss and make people discuss the Zeus Project and skill balance in general since the dev team is busying with new content and bug fixing. I would say that it's not necessary to be a hurdle since if you guys want a huge balancing development, it needs to be careful. Several skill-balancing patches have been installed for years in this server and people are still complaining, right? BTW I'm not counting on the dumbs who haven't played a specified character and yelled about it (oops). 

About the Zeus Project, I can see that people tried to suggest changing EVERY SINGLE SKILL in every tier. Ok, let me remind this. From level 10 til 160, we can only max out 7 skills from tier 1-3, and 5 more points for another skill. Luckily we can max out all the skills in tier 4 and 5 btw. This means that we aren't able to invest in every single skill from tier1 to tier3 fully. And also another important point is that the higher level you reach, the slower of the leveling progress you have. This leads to the fact that you may need to do either one of this from tier 1 to tier 3: 

-OP1: focus on the most important and/or usual skills as people always use. If the number of them is smaller than the number of possible maxed-out skills, then you may invest in other skills. If it is on the contrary, then you may consider changing the delay level of active skills following their statistics to save more skill points (for example, with the skill CL of Pike, from 70% damage boosting at lvl 10 and none delay, you may change it into 70% damage boosting at lvl 5 and delay at lvl6). 

 

-OP2: bump in other skills IN ORDER TO create a variety of builds for each character (this way takes tons of ideas and tests, and may not be even possible due to the nature of the skills)

 

I would make an example of Mage since I'm playing one exclusively. 

-with OP1: from tier 1 to tier3, the truly usual and important skills that many Mage users (at the moment) use are: Zenith, Mental Mastery, Death Ray, Dias, Energy Shield, Spirit Elemental, Dancing Sword - 7 skills. You can max out these at lvl 150.

 

I would explain further the importance of these skills atm: ES for 30% damage reduction, SE for damage boosting, Dias for pretty AOE range, low-costing of mana and stamina, consistent dps comparing to Stone Spike (which now depends on AR and the damage against mobs depend on the distance towards the player), DS is a pretty boost in 1vs1 with %-based damage now, DR for 1vs1, MM for mana capacity since MG have the involving problem with ES, duh, and Zenith for ice, poison & stun resisting. 

So, here are the only skills which are needed to be considered from tier 1 to tier 3. Not like, fixing every single skill and make them sound cool! Another skill for lvl higher than 150 is optional. One solution for this which have come to my mind is changing Enchanted Weapon into a real damage-boosting skill like God Bless or Force of Nature, so it would be even more important than Zenith or Mental Mastery. So the skill which is needed to add after lvl 150 would be Zenith or Mental Mastery. Another solution is if the skill Stone Spike is fixed properly so that MG users can use it without considering to change to Dias, then Dias wouldn't be necessary anymore. 

-with OP2: I think the OP2 is impossible for MG. OP1 is enough. 

P/s: I may write more about my thoughts on other characters which I have experienced later but I would wait for the replies from you guys. And I think the most important thing when you consider balancing the skills is systemizing the roles of every character in this game. And I want people to remember that Wartale is always a party-based game, and the party is the most exciting thing about it in my opinion. So, well-rounded or Superman-based characters would ruin it. 

Edited May 29, 2018 by erotushd