I quite enjoy the freedom that subclassing has brought. I would hate to see those of us who enjoy subclassing effectively penalized for using sublclassing. Yet, I understand there are many who want the ability to strengthen pure classing. Of all the ideas I have heard suggested, the only one I find palatable is the simple idea someone brought up to give a 5% weapon/spell power boost to those who use two of their class skill lines and 10% to those who use all three of their class skill lines. The precise percentages are not important but I like the simple elegance of the concept.

Dubhliam wrote: »

As the devs have stated they plan on refreshing Classes to bring pure-classed builds closer in line with subclassed builds, there is one thing that needs adressing.
Honestly I am baffled why this was overlooked on Subclass release.

So far, most subclessed DPS setups involve at least 2, sometimes even 3 skill lines that have crit damage bonuses in passives.
I think that stacking Crit damage passives has done the same, if not more damage to the game that the ultigain passives have done.
So treat it the same way ultigain was treated. (Ultigain passives share a cooldown now)

My proposal is to replace all class crit passives with a new, unique, 12% Crit damage buff that does not have Major or Minor variants and stacks with Major and Minor Force.

This way players will not feel forced into specific skill lines for doing good DPS.
It would serve as a good baseline to start balancing classes.

They're only doing it now because the devs didn't realise how much of a power curve it would create around the same three skill lines.
Then the devs didn't realise how unhappy the PvE and PvP community become at the mono builds.
I suspect that the devs only noticed when the login numbers hit record lows and stay low that this is a problem.

Vaqual wrote: »

That is the painfully obvious choice. Or a diminishing return, by letting the second passive only be half as effective, the third only 1/3, etc.
So you might hit 12, 18, 21 % instead of 30.
So many easy and fair solutions.
It boggles the mind.

while that is a good idea, it is horrible to implement, because of how old the legacy code is. And how it works.
Since almost everything is happening server side, the amount of checks the server has to perform per second are getting increased exponentially. Instead of one character stat, the system now has to check for potentially 7+ passives and whether they are active or not.

It's not an easy task. But I am glad that they are trying to tackle it.

Dubhliam wrote: »

As the devs have stated they plan on refreshing Classes to bring pure-classed builds closer in line with subclassed builds, there is one thing that needs adressing.
Honestly I am baffled why this was overlooked on Subclass release.

So far, most subclessed DPS setups involve at least 2, sometimes even 3 skill lines that have crit damage bonuses in passives.
I think that stacking Crit damage passives has done the same, if not more damage to the game that the ultigain passives have done.
So treat it the same way ultigain was treated. (Ultigain passives share a cooldown now)

My proposal is to replace all class crit passives with a new, unique, 12% Crit damage buff that does not have Major or Minor variants and stacks with Major and Minor Force.

This way players will not feel forced into specific skill lines for doing good DPS.
It would serve as a good baseline to start balancing classes.

This is not what needs to be done. Crit damage, ulti gen, tankiness, etc. are characteristics that were geared towards helping a class theme and playstyle before subclassing allowed us to stack these passives. What needs to happen is that a class's passives need to be innate to the character upon creation and not movable with the class skill lines. This would render subclassing nothing more than the ability to use a different classes abilities, but you could not stack all of the favorable passives that you desire on your character - those passives you are stuck with when you make the choice to make, say a Templar or a Sorcerer.

Doing this, alone, would definitely take down subclassed builds down several notches and bring them more in line with a pure-classed build without the need for a massive rework.

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Dubhliam wrote: »

As the devs have stated they plan on refreshing Classes to bring pure-classed builds closer in line with subclassed builds, there is one thing that needs adressing.
Honestly I am baffled why this was overlooked on Subclass release.

So far, most subclessed DPS setups involve at least 2, sometimes even 3 skill lines that have crit damage bonuses in passives.
I think that stacking Crit damage passives has done the same, if not more damage to the game that the ultigain passives have done.
So treat it the same way ultigain was treated. (Ultigain passives share a cooldown now)

My proposal is to replace all class crit passives with a new, unique, 12% Crit damage buff that does not have Major or Minor variants and stacks with Major and Minor Force.

This way players will not feel forced into specific skill lines for doing good DPS.
It would serve as a good baseline to start balancing classes.

They're only doing it now because the devs didn't realise how much of a power curve it would create around the same three skill lines.
Then the devs didn't realise how unhappy the PvE and PvP community become at the mono builds.
I suspect that the devs only noticed when the login numbers hit record lows and stay low that this is a problem.

There was nothing to realize, it was all stated outright the moment subclassing leaked... There is no excuse for not listening and lack of thinking forward.

SneaK wrote: »

That doesn’t at all enhance gameplay. This is my worst fear aside from them deleting PvP. Adding static bonuses is boring and only lends to min/maxing. They have to get more creative than this suggestion.

This is a logical implementation of subclassing.
Right now we are in a state of stale minmaxing builds...
...in a game with so many sets and subclass combinations.

The only thing that I can think of that will increase build diversity in PvE right now are Slayer Affix scripts.

But yeah, as someone already said... hibridisation and subclassing were a huge mistake.
I still remember the the feeling in my gut when they announced subclassing, and all my friends who announced they will leave the game.
And so most did.

Dubhliam wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

Dubhliam wrote: »

As the devs have stated they plan on refreshing Classes to bring pure-classed builds closer in line with subclassed builds, there is one thing that needs adressing.
Honestly I am baffled why this was overlooked on Subclass release.

So far, most subclessed DPS setups involve at least 2, sometimes even 3 skill lines that have crit damage bonuses in passives.
I think that stacking Crit damage passives has done the same, if not more damage to the game that the ultigain passives have done.
So treat it the same way ultigain was treated. (Ultigain passives share a cooldown now)

My proposal is to replace all class crit passives with a new, unique, 12% Crit damage buff that does not have Major or Minor variants and stacks with Major and Minor Force.

This way players will not feel forced into specific skill lines for doing good DPS.
It would serve as a good baseline to start balancing classes.

This is not what needs to be done. Crit damage, ulti gen, tankiness, etc. are characteristics that were geared towards helping a class theme and playstyle before subclassing allowed us to stack these passives. What needs to happen is that a class's passives need to be innate to the character upon creation and not movable with the class skill lines. This would render subclassing nothing more than the ability to use a different classes abilities, but you could not stack all of the favorable passives that you desire on your character - those passives you are stuck with when you make the choice to make, say a Templar or a Sorcerer.

Doing this, alone, would definitely take down subclassed builds down several notches and bring them more in line with a pure-classed build without the need for a massive rework.

There are so many passives that are 'coupled' with the skills in that skill line.
F.E. the Assassination passive Hemorrage (10% crit damage) only works while an Assassination skill is slotted on a bar.
Decoupling passives with their skills would nerf all subclassing variants.

While their idea is to buff subclassing, I don't think they would want to gut certain skill lines this way.

They don't want to BUFF subclassing - it is already strong.

Their idea is to bring UP pure-classes without nerfing subclasses too hard, but they can't buff pure classes without giving a corresponding buff to pure classes, so ultimately, subclassing is going to need a nerf.

Yes, the passive skill lines are supposed to give passive buffs to the abilities in that line, but stacking those passives is what is creating the massive power creep. By separating the passives and making them innate to a character on creation, they would definitely be curbing the power of subclasses, and they could buff pure classes via buffing their passives without granting any corresponding buff to subclasses. Seems like that would fit the bill.

Make no mistake that ultimately in order to balance subclasses vs. pure classes, there is going to have to be some kind of net nerf to subclassing.