While I agree, that is not a mastery problem, but a UI problem.
Are you sure? I though the display of main hand and off hand damage was to show how much those skills would do with each hand as the skill window can’t be sure which one will proc it.
I didn’t mean to imply that classes in TQ were rigid or set in stone. Just that the basic RPG play style were much more obvious (to me at least). The most fun I had with a melee diviner. Neither Dream nor Spirit had melee written on them, yet this diver had almost the same clearing speed as a conqueror (and a leech on the side).
And yet, the absence of a fire, cold or lightning casters still feels awkward.
You didn’t have enough skill points to grab everything you wanted in TQ. In GD you get a much more limited selection. I know it’s supposed to be meaningful, but it just makes all builds seem unfinished to me. I suspect in subsequent expansions we’ll get more points, that’s why the selection is so limited right now (though, again, the TQ had a much more elegant solution for this).
No argument about each mastery being useful, but I think this wasn’t a problem in TQ either. This may sound a little weird, but I don’t have a problem with a little imbalance, either. If everything is perfectly balanced, then your choices don’t matter any more, because everything works anyway. I like the old school RPG way: get a brawler for your first playthrough, move on to a ranger or druid, and when you really want a challenge, go wizard. (Obviously this doesn’t really apply to ARPGs, but I think you get my drift - some things can be more challenging than others and the fun can still be there).
You can make fire, cold, and lighting casters.
Fire casters throw bombs instead of plain fireballs. Cold and lightning casters fire spells through guns. Just because they don’t look like a stereotypical mage and don’t stick purely to one damage type doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
(there are also component/item skills if you really want to stick closer to the mage archetype)
I tested it myself with dummy…
So, yes, I AM SURE!
Actually, they are there, you just cant see them.
Demolisher class specializes in fire damage. A lot of his spells do fire damage, so he can make a great fire caster.
Demolisher also has lightning spell (Stun Jacks). Can be used for lighning caster. Add Shaman there, and you have a perfect lightning caster. Arcanist also has a spell that deals lightning+cold damage. Pure cold spells are somewhat lacking, indeed.
Masteries in TQ werent element-exclusive either. Earth mastery used fire, burn and physical damage, while Storm used cold, frostburn and lightning.
This. You can make any caster build you want in GD, you just have to be a little creative. I even made a fire caster with no spammable fire cast at all, just spamming grasping vines to proc meteor shower and tons of item procs(and using meteor and apocalypse as nukes), and it works really good 
My favourite lightning caster is a stun jacks build, and for cold you could use i.e. sky shard and the ice spike skill from the component.
Though I have to say characters that fire guns are not casters imo 
As I originally pointed out, once you wrap your head around the “most weapons work well for all masteries” part, GD masteries have GD-specific strengths/weaknesses that don’t really fall into conventional archetypes. Besides the obvious example of the Demolitionist, for example, another possible fire/x caster is the Occultist. The mastery has a ton of fire damage and fire damage support skills.
Conventional thinking-wise, that’s pretty odd - “forbidden magic” classes are usually designed to be very distinct from the “classic mage” archetype, but there’s no reason why you can play an Occultist build that specializes in fire damage as a straight up classic mage.
I suppose in some ways GD isn’t as intuitive for new players, and yeah an interface/tooltip upgrade should help with that.
Umm, and that’s so much fun with the “I can shoot at you, but you can’t shoot back at me” mechanic in place. Granted, that hasn’t got anything to do with masteries, but with game mechanics (or maybe some engine limitation, though I don’t recall TQ acting the same way).
Still, there’s no fire/cold/lightning spell you can use. It’s just fire/cold/lightning (w/ AoE variants) attached to your pretty boring attacks or some random stiff from the devotion constellations (again, linked to the said plain attacks).
Anyway, I think I got my answer: people like things the way they are. It’s just me being a newcomer that haven’t “adapted” just yet.
Trojan’s Sky Shard, Olexa’s Flash Freeze, Storm Totem are all “spells”. As are Panetti’s Replicating Missle and Albrecht’s Aether Ray (TQ’s Flame Surge and Ice Shard). Blackwater Cocktail isn’t a spell as such I guess, but still makes a nice big fire.
This seem to be something that comes up for many newcomers as frustrating or unintuitive, because its different from most other games (I’m pretty sure you’re talking about projectiles hitting each other). But really a small change in play-style (ie. strafing around mobs firing at you) is all you need to learn to overcome it.
This mechanic encourages you to be more active when playing a ranged character (and I think that makes the game more fun).
Edit: Really you should be moving anyway, to dodge projectiles, so it should be pretty natural to pick up.
Overall I like GD’s masteries as they are, and the masteries in this game are what kept me playing for a long time. Unfortunately, later in development many skills underwent seemingly random, wishy-washy balance changes that kind of left some masteries feeling messy and fickle. :undecided:
yes different from other games, its a nice change.
Not really. I’m talking about the bug where I’m standing across from an enemy and they can shoot at me and I can’t shoot back at them if the projectile trajectory is close enough to an obstacle. Basically, when there are obstacles close by, they can block the trajectory from point A to point B, but not from point B to point A (even though, obviously, we’re talking about the same straight line).
I barely noticed this when playing as a warder (being melee), but it became really frustrating once I started a pyromancer.
And speaking of pyromancer, I’m not sure I should have used gun before epic, even with fire strike, it seems melee weapons do more damage anyway (which is another wth? moment).
Well, yes, being more complicated means more stuff to do with the masteries. I was just wondering if this doesn’t translate also to a steep learning curve for newcomers. Because I’m not a newcomer to ARPGs and when I look at grimcalc, I still can’t tell whether I’m doing the right thing or not.
Also, I’m not advocating changing the masteries in any way. I was just trying to see whether people would like to see even more complexity in the expansions or whether there’s a place for something more “traditional” instead.
Sorry for assuming incorrectly 
. But thank you for explaining more fully what the issue is. I know what you are talking about but unfortunately there is no way to get rid of it. The only semi solution I know of is to move around more, then you will notice it less (so what I said before works just not for same reasons).
I think this discussion has a lot of good feedback on how people view the masteries so I hope the Devs are reading it.
That is usually because you aren’t firing in the same line as the target. The reason you are not, is because you’ll be firing from where you wield your weapon, which can be on your right, middle or left side depending on the weapon and hand it is in, and you fire right at the middle of your target. The same applies to the target when he attacks you. It’s not a bug, it’s just annoying.
Melee attacks can also find their way past some obstacles due animations, but that is another issue.
The game is not going to be perfect with regards to this stuff, but it’s pretty good though. The fact that they actually calculate projectiles from the muzzle of the weapons, and not from the center of your body, like so many other ARPG’s, is progress.
That’s something you’d expect in a FPS, where you can actually look along the rifle’s barrel. But in an ARPG? It doesn’t make any sense. I haven’t gone dual-pistols yet, but when I do, I’ll check whether only one of the shots makes it past the obstacle.
And circling back to the original issue of having “spells” tied to gun shots, having your “spell” blocked because you’re holding the gun in your right hand certainly feels awkward.
Why wouldn’t you expect ARPG’s to not fire from the location of your weapon? Just because previous games never did, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t fire from the weapon location (or an approximation).
As far as your test goes, I run into it a lot with my Firestrike dual wield pistol Sorcerer. One weapon can sometimes hit a target the other weapon can’t.
of course it makes sense because that is the path the projectile takes, from your gun’s barrel to its target. You do not shoot it out of your belly button and carry the gun for show only
With your logic, the projectile would sometimes clear an obstacle it clearly visibly hit in game and at other times it would hit an obstacle it should clearly have missed, all because you suck at calculating its proper path - unless you actually start the projectile path from your char’s center, which would be weird in itself as the gun is elsewhere and therefore the projectile should also
Because you can’t control it, the controls aren’t that sensitive. In a fps/real situation, you have to move only a few inches. In GD you have to move at least one step. And that usually invites more trouble.