Coming Soon to Arcane Legends: Skill Mastery!

[Probationer]

These are intended for PvP more than PvE, as mana recovery is not available outside of skills. It certainly has its uses in PvE, but the benefits are far greater in PvE

- Carapace

You mean far greater in pvp...*sigh*

[Jazzi]

Thanks for the great feedback guys, and for keeping it constructive. A lot of concerns about power improvement level appear to be coming from a solo experience point of view, which is understandable. We do, however, have to design around the expectation that all of these could be used in tandem with a group of 4 of the same class, as well as mixed classes. Thanks to the great analysis of how effective the Time Clock can be at higher levels, now multiply that effect by 4 sorcerers. Same with the Taunts from Axe throw, or the Frost Bolt freeze effect. When combined with other players the scalar potential climbs pretty high.

A couple of insights on the masteries being brought up a lot thus far:

Frostbolt Freeze: 0.4% per attack may not seem like a lot, but at skill rank 10, with 4 Sorcerers, that's a 16% chance per collective cast to freeze a boss or Player for 2s. This is fairly powerful, on a small cooldown. We want it to feel like a boon when it goes off, but not overpowered to be game breaking.

Juggernaut Cooldown: This is 0.5 seconds per point, not 0.25 seconds for a total reduction of 5 seconds.

Lifegiver Sapling: Just to clarify, the chance for a sapling to spawn raises to 25% at level 10, the amount healed is always 4%. In a party of four that is always going to provide a sapling statistically, possibly more. They can overlap resulting in 1% per sapling if you're standing in the correct area.

Damage Passive: Previously the % Damage bonus was rendered useless by basically having any pet out with a % Damage multiplier as these did not stack. The 10% from your pet would be considered larger and those 5 points would be wasted. With the new change the damage will always be added, but can scale by those % benefits from primary stats and pets/elixirs. The bottom line is that players wil see more damage than they did previously based on how the system works.

Critical Reduction: This was done in conjunction with the damage change to balance out the damage output as well as provide more headroom for itemization moving forward. the 2% can be made up with Lightning Jewels or different gear combinations as a player sees fit, and we like the idea of choices and options in Arcane Legends.

Abilities with Mana Cost Reduction: These are intended for PvP more than PvE, as mana recovery is not available outside of skills. It certainly has its uses in PvE, but the benefits are far greater in PvE

Keep in mind as a part of this system coming out we intend to do more expansions and level caps in the future. The idea is to provide choices and options moving forward beyond the currently coming expansion, as until now we have hit a ceiling with skill points. The points being made about Curse punishments for extended DoT times and the like is an interesting angle, but we believe strategy of play is also important in terms of PvE vs PvP. We will obviously keep an eye on these masteries as players get there hands on them to play and test.

Keep the feedback coming, we're looking forward to everyone playing with these and experiencing them in play and not on paper!

- Carapace

Great explanation , but imho the reasoning behind it is a bit far fetched and could never happen in reality. 4 mages in pve never happens unless it is a map like wt4 and there this freeze will never really contribute to anything.

Nerfing passive crit makes little sense imho . What you are saying is that we need 2.3 noble lighting jewels (jewels deemed really bad by everyone) in order to have the same stats as before. Thus losing same amount of damage by replacing same quality main stat jewels + hp loss. This would practically negate the usefulness of said damage passive change and we will still have the HP loss. So in reality it is a nerf across the board.

It is great to have choices, but most of the masteries have practically 0 impact from a pve perspective even in the highly unlikely scenario of having 4 of the same class in a hard map.

Still no answer about if the currently glitched/bugged skills are being fixed prior to release.

[thekragle]

"When everyone is special, nobody is."
When I first started playing this game, what drove me to spend hours on farming and plat purchases was that there were always very specific items and skills that were hard to obtain. When you got to that high level or got that unique item it was amazing, I felt all powerful and unique. I wish this masteries upgrade brought back some of that nostalgia where you had to work hard to get a certain level of mastery or get real lucky. This is a relatively good option to add to the game to help the skill points issue but I wish there was a way you could leverage it to help players feel more unique and powerful, a cut above the rest so to say. Thats what gets players excited in rpg games, please dont forget that. The littlest things go a long way to make a player feel like they are 1 of the few best players in the game. Even if its just a silly ground or body effect on our character. Vanities are good and all but it just feels like everyone is the same these days. Players will pop more of those crates and buy more of that plat but not if everything becomes samey-samey.

[kickazzrogue]

So your gonna tweak passives to match up with mastery skills. My questions how is this gonna affect players under lvl 20

[Gouiwaa9000]

As a mage , i see 2 useful Mastery's : life giver one ( not bad for PvP in clash , some extra heal is always good ) and I have a question : can we stack those saplings to gain more HP per second? Would be awesome , and 2nd one is shield - extra 1.5% basorbtion is awesome , but shield can use some damage reflection! 1% damage reflection per point could be handy

[Anyona]

From a mage's perspective, the only useful masteries are the Gale Force and Arcane Shield.

A 4% chance to freeze for two seconds is not worth it, vs against rogues lasts about 10-20 seconds at endgame.

The Lifegiver mastery is completely useless, a 4% hp return is appalling this is about 200hp return for one sapling if you're hp is at 5.8-6k.

Curse could be useful if rogues are dumb enough to go with the Noxious Bolt mastery but the curse mastery basically nullifies one aimed shot critical buff.


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[Sky_is_epicgear]

Sigh.... So this season sorcerer's frostbolt will have a Max of 4% to freeze in PvP while legend pets can already freeze at higher rates. Seems legit.

Also maybe lifegiver's mastery could be: affected players receive 1% dmg reduction for 0.5s per point?

And fireball's mastery is useless please think of something new. Thanks.

However I think gale force's mastery is quite neat.

As I recall veil does not stack with elixirs (not sure if it stacked with pet buffs). Will mastery eliminate this problem?

One thing that really concerns me is whether or not sts will decide to put this into the test server before the official release. We all know by now that after many relatively large updates you get those "nerf this" and "buff that" players creating threads which then leads to patch updates. So PLEASE sts test this and save yourselves the hassle of having to patch, it looks unprofessional.

P.s. Devs, we're all dying to know if traps are supposed to stack bleed....

[Niixed]

A lot of concerns about power improvement level appear to be coming from a solo experience point of view, which is understandable. We do, however, have to design around the expectation that all of these could be used in tandem with a group of 4 of the same class, as well as mixed classes.

...

Keep in mind as a part of this system coming out we intend to do more expansions and level caps in the future. The idea is to provide choices and options moving forward beyond the currently coming expansion, as until now we have hit a ceiling with skill points.

Thanks for chiming in.

I understand that devs must plan for all situations. I think you're saying that when you created these skill specializations, you had to plan for the possibility that they'd be used in a party of four of the same class, a party of three of different classes using them in an OP way, etc. It makes sense that the specializations simply cannot be too OP in those situations or it would break the game.

Is this it for skill mastery? Theoretically, adding 80 not-really-skill-mastery skill slots pushes the ceiling up to level 126. After this, will there be another upgrade to skills before we hit level 126?

[Carapace]

Thanks for chiming in.

I understand that devs must plan for all situations. I think you're saying that when you created these skill specializations, you had to plan for the possibility that they'd be used in a party of four of the same class, a party of three of different classes using them in an OP way, etc. It makes sense that the specializations simply cannot be too OP in those situations or it would break the game.

Is this it for skill mastery? Theoretically, adding 80 not-really-skill-mastery skill slots pushes the ceiling up to level 126. After this, will there be another upgrade to skills before we hit level 126?

That is to be determined in the future, but it's certainly possible that we may increase the number, add new ones, new passives, new modifiers at miletone ranks (like 10/10), it's hard to say or speculate but those are potential ideas of course. And no, you can't quote me on any of these becoming reality Just want to be open about the fact that there are certainly places we can go in the future with such a system.

[Carapace]

So your gonna tweak passives to match up with mastery skills. My questions how is this gonna affect players under lvl 20

You will see damage increases, but remember that Passives have their own level requirements per point. The damage increase comes from the point discussed above where you get raw values to be scaled by elixirs and pet damage bonuses, instead of small 1% amounts that were trumped by such things.

[Zylx]

I posted on the announcement thread a suggestion to add effects to maxed out skills. Because atm, these are pretty miniscule upgrades. 4% chance on a 10/10 ice to freeze an enemy? That's kinda disappointing to waste 9 points just to upgrade in increments of 0.4% and have it only proc statistically once per 2+ runs.

I was kind of hoping for more of a class-mastery system or something like that. Like for a mage, you can specialize as a Fire, Ice, or Lightning mage. Rogues can be Assassin, Ranger, or Magic Archer. Warriors can be Barbarians, Knights, or Paladins. And then each subclass has its own skills that can be upgraded to more potent stages. A fire mage can shoot a lv1 fireball and it has a small explosion, and then when the fireball range progressively grows with each level, and starts adding other effects like firecrackers every 3 levels.

AL's skill system has always been a plain bagel. It's right there, nothing to discover, nothing to really expand on, and this skill-mastery system is the cream cheese. It gives the skill system more flavor, but it doesnt change the generic system itself.

[Zeus]

Honestly, I like it how it is. The way they are currently designed, they're helpful without changing the dynamics of the game.

In my opinion, you will have to pick which skill you want to master. With the current upcoming level to be L56, that means you essentially get 1 skill to master and keep everything else the same. So, there only needs to be 1 or 2 that truly need to be useful. The others are just icing on the cake and gimmicks for when you level.

[csyui]

I cant give any feedback without playing with the new mastery page.

However, based on what I learnt from other games, skill mastery usually gives players different kinds of playing styles. The mastery page revealed now seems doesn't give players much diversity. All classes will still use the same skills as before, nothing with significant changes.

I was expecting some bonus effect of skills like the one glintstone set grants. For example, I didnt use axe throw at all before, but right now with the upgrade from glintstone set, I use axe throw quite a lot in both PvP and PvE.

[Zaizor]

Honestly, I like it how it is. The way they are currently designed, they're helpful without changing the dynamics of the game.

In my opinion, you will have to pick which skill you want to master. With the current upcoming level to be L56, that means you essentially get 1 skill to master and keep everything else the same. So, there only needs to be 1 or 2 that truly need to be useful. The others are just icing on the cake and gimmicks for when you level.

Exactly how I saw it. You get to Master, or balance a couple skills if you want. You can't have it all, but you can pick which one will help your build the best. As a warrior, I saw three I'd love to try, but essentially know, I'm only going to get one, maybe two depending on how I spend the points.

Frankly, I love the thought of an extra boost beyond skills and passives. I can't wait to try it, especially if we get a few free respecs to test it.

[thekragle]

I would also like to suggest something to go along with the mastery update. What if your first 10 points did what you already have planed but have it then go up an additional 5 points for even stronger effects. The player would then have to sacrifice other areas of their character to get the huge boost in specs on their mastery skill. Just a thought for those that think the upgrades are too small or not worth 10 points.

[kydrian]

Y

Why go for this type of system instead adding new skills which add diversity in the game and allow the players on being what they want to be?

Warrior: Tanking skill or DPs skills.

Rogue: Close Range DPs or Long Range DPs.

Mage: long Range DPs with gun Or Short Range for Staff.

Why this way?

Explanation Rogues:
Most rogues are into the Range class with Bows because of the advantage of dealing large amounts of damage at range instead of using Daggers that do damage but you receive damage as well.

Solution Rogue Daggers: Add skills (working ones) specifically for the daggers, and make the daggers worth getting. Make the Dodge on the Stats of the daggers High where rogues can get in the action of clashes and survive without dying so quickly "dodging attacks" and creating havoc in clashes. I see rogues with the Arcane daggers still using skills that should be for the Bow ex: Nox.

Solution Rogues Bow: create specific skills where using the Bow makes the skills more efficient and allows the rogues to choose from many skills for the bow.

Explanation Warriors: Allow a war to choose from being a Tank that can take hits and be a great supporter in clash or a Tank/Dps (Same thing like a DPs class just not efficient as one, half tank half DPs) that can go in close range and demolish the enemies and take a few hits.

Solution Warrior 2h swords: Allow warriors to choose a number of different skills that support the 2h sword and have damage/debuff skills.


Solution warriors shield+short sword: Create Skills for tanking that support the team and allows warriors to be acceptable in Elites without being a drag.

Explanation Mages: Some Mages might be in favor of Staffs or Ranged Guns. Wouldn't it bring joy to the the Mage class if they could choose which one they prefer the most and what skills come with it that make the weapon even more Efficient and breathtaking.

Solutions Mages Staff:
Create a large amount of skills for the staff that have AoE damage and Support. The Skill that gives a sapling each time it heals is wonderful but it gives such a small amount it would work great if it was added as another healing skill that is good for vs (1v1) only works more efficient with staff.

Solution Mages gun: add some skills/tweaks for the mages gun specifically that'll allow the gun to be a choice for those who have the liking of range.


Edit: this will also fix solutions in one class not being the king but the person with the most skill. right now everyone is being dependant on Weapon Proc and Pet AA which ruins the game thus leading to drama such as threads stating "this weapon/pet is to Op please Nerf" this game should be where it only takes skill not where you need this item/pet to be the best.
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[Crowsfoot]

In blunt reply to all the requests for a new skill; that doesn't make any sense when they aren't expanding how many skills you can map at a time. I currently have 7/8 skills unlocked on my min account. With +10 new skill points I would probably max movement speed passive and unlock and EIGHTH skill if all they did was add new ones.

A lot of these skill masteries are very useful when you consider how often they are used in battle and how over powered some of them could be if the chance to occur was higher.

I like that this really limits the number of skills you unlock so that you can have several specialized builds instead of the cluster skill specs people are using now where everyone is pretty much exactly the same.

The fact that AL doesn't have a tree system and the skill system is made for wide variation was one of the original pull factors that made me start playing. I am very happy to see a similar system survive in what I consider a clever way.

[Froxanthar]

Maybe this a good idea?

Warrior

Skyward Smash Mastery: When equip 2H weapon Increase the Impact Radius of Skyward Smash by 0. 25m per point
Vengeful Blood Mastery: When equip 2H weapon Vengeful Blood cool down is reduced by 0.5sec per point
Windmill Mastery: When equip Sword-shield Increase Critical chance by 0.25% per point, and increase the maximum number of targets by 1 for every 2 points
Rallying Cry Mastery: When equip Sword-shield Add 0.125 STR per point, per level while Rallying Cry is active
Juggernaut Mastery: When equip Sword-shield Juggernaut cooldown reduced by 0.5 sec per point
Horn of Renew Mastery: When equip Sword-shield Horn of Renew now adds 0.4 armor per point, per caster level, while the heal over time effect is active
Chest Splitter Mastery: When equip 2H weapon Chest Splitter Mana cost reduced by 2% per point
Axe Throw Mastery: When equip 2H weapon Axe Throw applies a DoT that lasts 5 seconds, each tick deals damage and has a 10% chance per point to taunt the afflicted enemy. Ticks every 0.5 seconds.

Rogue

Shadow Storm Mastery: When equip Bow Increase the effective AOE range of Shadow Storm by 0.25m per point, and increase the maximum number of targets by 1 for every 2 points.
Shadow Veil Mastery: When equip Dagger Buffs allies inside Shadow Veil an additional 0.25 Damage per point
Shadow Piercer Mastery: When equip Dagger Shadow Piercer now heals for an additional 0.5% of players max health per point. This effect stacks with the Shadow Absorption Upgrade.
Razor Shield Mastery: When equip Dagger Reduces damage taken with Razor Shield active by 1.0% per point
Noxious Bolt Mastery: When equip Bow Increase DoT length 0.4 seconds per point, and DoT tick damage by 1.0% per point
Entangling Trap Mastery: When equip Bow Reduces Cooldown of Entangling Trap by 0.25 sec per point
Combat Medic Mastery: When equip Dagger Medic packs now also replenish 0.33 Mana per point, per character level
Aimed Shot Mastery: When equip Bow Reduce Mana cost of Aim Shot by 2% per point.

Sorcerer

Arcane Shield Mastery: When equip Staff Increase the amount Arcane Shield can absorb by 1.5% per point
Curse Mastery: When equip Rifle Curse now reduces target's chance to Crit by 1.0% per point.
Fireball Mastery: When equip Staff Reduce Mana Cost of fireball by 2% per point
Frost Bolt Mastery: When equip Staff Frost Bolt has a 0.4% chance per point to freeze an enemy, boss, or player for 2 seconds
Gale Force Mastery: When equip Rifle Casting Gale Force adds a buff that lasts 0.4 seconds per point, and ticks every 0.4 seconds. Each tick removes any negative effects on the Sorcerer. (Bleed, slow, freeze, stun, etc)
Lifegiver Mastery: When equip Staff Lifegiver Sapling - there is a 2.5% chance per point to spawn a sapling at a healed group members location. Saplings remain stationary, and heal any allies within a 4m radius for 1% health per tick at a rate of one tick per seconds for 4 seconds. If a player remains in that location they will heal for 4% of their max life over 4 seconds.
Lightning Mastery: When equip Rifle Increases Lightning Damage by 1% per point
Time Shift Mastery: When equip Rifle Time Shift has a 0.35% chance per tick to freeze weaker enemies in between time and space indefinitely, stunning them permanently. Weaker enemies do not include players or bosses.

[Kingofninjas]

The thing that disturbs me most is the crit nerf. It's basically a mage nerf. Since Nekro takes away our biggest advantage (stun), we are forced to depend on crit to kill anything. Nerfing the crit by 2% ( 5/5 passive) seems like a small thing it will really hurt us, especially with noble lightning jewels not matching up to eye gems.

Based off the arcane staffs mechanics, I am seeing a trend where mages are being pushed into the role of a support class, even though that role was broken long ago. Please give us a choice.

[Energizeric]

Here are my thoughts below:

Sorcerer

Arcane Shield Mastery: Increase the amount Arcane Shield can absorb by 1.5% per point
Curse Mastery: Curse now reduces target's chance to Crit by 1.0% per point.
Fireball Mastery: Reduce Mana Cost of fireball by 2% per point
Frost Bolt Mastery: Frost Bolt has a 0.4% chance per point to freeze an enemy, boss, or player for 2 seconds
Gale Force Mastery: Casting Gale Force adds a buff that lasts 0.4 seconds per point, and ticks every 0.4 seconds. Each tick removes any negative effects on the Sorcerer. (Bleed, slow, freeze, stun, etc)
Lifegiver Mastery: Lifegiver Sapling - there is a 2.5% chance per point to spawn a sapling at a healed group members location. Saplings remain stationary, and heal any allies within a 4m radius for 1% health per tick at a rate of one tick per seconds for 4 seconds. If a player remains in that location they will heal for 4% of their max life over 4 seconds.
Lightning Mastery: Increases Lightning Damage by 1% per point
Time Shift Mastery: Time Shift has a 0.35% chance per tick to freeze weaker enemies in between time and space indefinitely, stunning them permanently. Weaker enemies do not include players or bosses.

Arcane Shield: seems good

Curse: As Rogues now have crit values over 50%, I can't imagine this being worth the skill points. In fact, nobody even uses Curse at end game anymore as it has become too weak. Perhaps an armor reduction here instead would make it a viable skill once again. Or maybe an increase in the reflected damage.

Fireball: I can't speak for all mages, but I don't really care about mana cost as I never run out of mana, so I would find this useless. How about something like posted above for Nox -- an increase in the DoT would be useful here.

Frost: Does this mastery freeze override stun immunity? If not, then this is useless at end game with most of the players now running around with Nekro. If it does override stun immunity, then perhaps it is good, although 0.4% per point seems a bit low. I think that should be increased somewhat. Also, if you have the AoE upgrade for Frost, will this apply the chance to freeze over the entire AoE, or just to the main target?

Gale Force: TBH, this seems a little OP and further duplicates what Arcane Shield provides. Unless the idea here is to encourage some sorcerers to spec without Arcane Shield and instead use Gale with the armor upgrade. That could be interesting. I would love to try that, except we still need a better way to control the speed upgrade for Gale. Right now either you have both he dash and the armor upgrade (charged) or you have neither (uncharged). It would be 100 times more useful to have the armor upgrade applied whether charged or not, and only have the dash applied when charged. The dash, while very useful when you need a speed burst and for flagging, means death when in an elite dungeon.

Lifegiver: Total waste. With the recent upgrades to Lifegiver, it now can heal all players in the party to 100%. So I don't see how adding another 4% (while using 10 skill points) would help. How about if instead it provided an armor boost, or a damage reduction. That would be useful.

Lightning: Seems good. I assume this is stacked on top of the existing skill upgrade that increases Lightning damage?

Time Shift: I assume you mean "0.35% chance per point?? So if you had all 10 mastery points, then it would be 3.5%? Is that the chance for each cast of Time Shift, or is that the chance per tick? If the former, then I'd say it sounds too low to be worth the skill points. If it's the later, then it sounds good.

Other Skill System Changes

Along with skill mastery, we'll be tweaking some of the passive skills to balance them with Skill Mastery and our ongoing itemization plan. These changes include:

+ Damage: Points placed into the Damage passive skill will increase your DMG stat by .5 points, instead of the current 1% increase. This will eliminate the issue players faced where elixirs or pet buffs would wash out the points from this passive.

Is the 0.5 points added to your base damage (before being multiplied by your bonus damage multiplier)?