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Ranloth -> Incentive to invest in skills (2/26/2013 12:40:22)
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It's been brought up recently, and even in the past, that some skills are too effective very early on and you don't have to train them to adequate level (around Lvl 5) to have the needed advantage but having it at Lvl 2-3 is already good enough. Prime examples include Defence Matrix, Energy Shield, or one of the passives which is Deadly Aim.
Do you think there should be some sort if incentive to invest more in skills rather than keep them low and still make them superior to other skills? For example, Lvl 1 Energy Shield/Defence Matrix with moderate Support & Lvl 6 Blood Shield. One lasts for 3 turns, gives quite a good defence boost and low EP cost whilst the other has HP cost, gives lower defence to the player but for 5 turns thus averaging out to ~same - obviously with one having the advantage over the other; short and long battles. But is that fair for Lvl 1 skill to be as good as Lvl 6 skill?
What I'm getting at is should defensive skills such as Energy Shield and Defence Matrix be nerfed early on and give them steady progression as you level it up? Therefore, if you wanted even better defence then you gotta invest more skill points. Likewise with DA, it scales very fast early on and grants a big boost to Guns and it's usually not upgraded past Lvl 7-8 because it gives no advantage, not even that, it's already powerful even at Lvl 4-6 because of the scaling. I suggested once to change it so let me use my suggestion for new progression to illustrate what I mean: http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/6027/47506945.png
Slower progression early on and gradually rising balances the skill out and you don't get big advantage at Lvl 1-3. If you want it, you do have to invest more skill points rather than leave it at around Lvl 3-5 and get a big boost, whilst Lvl 10 offers very little difference for __ skill points wasted into it.
If this happened, do you reckon that it'd be a bad change? Higher level of a skill means you gotta pay more Energy. Energy is scarce for classes that cannot regenerate it with exception of one skill core but being forced to use it to have Energy is also not good. Do you think that if such change happened, skills such as Matrix or Energy Shield could go down a little in terms of EP cost to balance it out? Would this be good incentive to invest in the skill and not be penalised in form of (very) high EP cost?
Lastly, I'd like to mention stat-boosting skills such as Reflex Matrix and Technician. These are inferior to E-Shield and D-Matrix in terms of Res/Def granted but they give bonuses to skills and effects that respectable stats give. But they are still vastly inferior due to how big the gap is in terms of Def/Res gained and bonuses granted by Tech/Dex do not make up for it. This would allow it to balance it out between these skills and give players incentive to invest in skills for more than 2-4 skill points.
Yes I do realise there's abuse going on, no I do NOT want to nerf defence to give them even easier wins, but this is for overall balance. Strength abuse was sufficiently dealt with when progression was slowed down, Support will likely be nerfed soon (probably progression at higher level), then they can deal with individuals such as Casters and such. This will NOT happen anytime soon (if ever really..) so assumptions such as "Abusers are everywhere, you wanna nerf defence?! U mad bro?" or "HP was nerfed, defence is crap, why still nerf it?" do not belong here. Purely because stat progression can be adjusted to weaken the offence, defence in terms of stats can be boosted and Rage will be revised sometime soon. Criticals are an issue since they cut through 50% of the defence but the formula for these can also be adjusted, whether it's the rate of them or defence ignored.
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