I think I might have reached a fork in the road when it comes to build concepts, due to a lot of interaction with the forum’s members. So far, I’ve usually adopted a single strategy for this - choose the main gear, then shape the skills and the rest of the gear around that. This approach often results in a lot of secondary skills being added to the build, because I for one feel that all the extra bonuses from gear shouldn’t be wasted. But not wanting to waste extra bonuses also means that you’re stuck with a lot of secondary skills that you’re forced to use and might not bring anything extra to the table. So, I started to create for myself a set of rules for taking secondary skills, in order to optimize my existing and future build concepts. I want to know if there’s anyone else who also believes that these are the correct guidelines.
You have a main spammable skill, so you should do your best to improve that with priority.
1.1. Take another secondary skill if it provides a buff to your other skills and max only its useful and relevant parts. For example, max Deadly momentum, but ignore the previous Cadence nodes for a build that doesn’t use Cadence as the main skill.
1.2. Take another secondary skill if it provides a (new or stackable) debuff to enemies, maxing only that part of the skill. For example, take Judgment, but max only Crushing Verdict.
1.3. Take another secondary skill if it provides parallel damage in relation to your main spammable skill. This means that your secondary skill should be autonomous after it’s cast and won’t hinder your main spammable skill’s continuity. This category includes skills like Mortar trap, Storm totem, Siphon souls, Heart of wrath and even any skill that applies DoT on enemies. For a secondary skill that is used only for its DoT contribution, only the parts of the skill that improve the DoT should be maxed.
1.4. Take another secondary skill if it provides practical utility to combat situations. This category includes Blitz or Vire’s might, if you want to have extra movement skills for repositioning.
You don’t have a main spammable skill or use one that’s granted by gear and isn’t very powerful. This case includes all the previous points, but also has a few extra.
2.1. You should do your best to take one or more secondary skills with high direct damage and improve them with priority, which means increasing their direct damage and even reducing their cooldown. The number of secondary skills used for direct damage should be chosen based on the cooldowns of your secondary skills, so you won’t delay the skill with the smallest cooldown from being constantly used. For example, if you have a secondary skill with just 1 second of cooldown, you probably shouldn’t take too many secondary skills because casting all of them constantly might delay the fastest one.
Is all this a good strategy and did I miss anything when it comes to skills?
The game is super versitile and so are the possibilities…
but to me, making a build I focus on simple premises and rules:
I pickmy main spammy skill (etc. Forcewave with two-hander), then I grab all the passives and support skills (which I don’t hardcap unlike Forcewave itself (etc. Blitz).
Blitz acts as two in one in this case, as DA debuff and movement, but u can practially get that from medal augments if you don’t need it. Another example similar would be Flashbang (from demo) or Judgement (from oathkeeper).
Final rule for me is (with rare exceptions) reverse-spam versions of skills simply don’t work for me. You probably want to ask why. It’s because it’s hard to hit all those enemies properly in deep shards such as 30ish, where if you miss your skill cast or attack you need to re-wait and so-on. Not a big fan of that, so most of my builds have this spammy likelness.
And for the rest… just have fun with your build, don’t copy it 1:1 from others unless you are simply bored and look for inspiration, have fun with your experiments, even if they fail and honestly, it’s not rocket science which you want to make it out to be. Thelonger you play, the better you become obviously. Worst thing can happen is build fails and doesn’t meet your expectations BUT there have been many cases of mine where on paper it looks solid or even insane… and then I play them and then i hate myself, but that’s for another topic or smth.
From what I understand, I suppose we’re thinking about the same thing.
To give a more precise example, I used to take Grenado and Canister bomb and max them entirely, just because the gear buffed them, even though in that case I also had a powerful and fully-upgraded spammable skill (like Blade arc or a DAR). This is the mistake that I should stop doing and use the extra points for more relevant investments (like I described in the first post), in the right order of priorities. OR at least max only the DoT parts of skills like Grenado and Canister bomb, so the bonuses from gear won’t be wasted. Another example is fully upgrading Righteous fervor, but also taking Forcewave and Aegis of Menhir and only maxing their DoT components, because you want their damage to be applied in parallel with Righteous fervor.
I completely agree about your mention of “wasted” skill modifiers on equipment.
I dont farm and i dont do builds. But i will do run-thrus with different characters to see how they develop based on how the game unfolds (the gear they find, the course they take they take thru the map, the tasks they finish first, etc), and occasionally i’ll start the game with a preconception about the character (lets try it with crossbow, or lets see if this character can do any good as an arcanist, etc).
But even using GDStash, i got a bunch of stuff that has skill mods that i just cant use even tho the gear has other great mods.
So i came up with an idea for Relative Skill mods, which appear differently based on the character class youve chosen, which i’ll be posting soon as a mod suggestion. I have a couple of implementation problems i want to brainstorm first, but you’ll see that later in its own thread.
That would answer the dilemma about wasted skill mods.
Slightly off topic here. But those unused ‘secondary skills’ give me ideas for different class combos and builds. I’m one of those people that will have a ton of alts before I even think about starting end game content. So, I keep a list handy when I get my current character to level 100, then I consult the list and theory craft that character… if I can. I do use established builds, but I tweak them to my specifications and playstyle as I progress/level up the character.
On topic, I did that with my current character, a 2-handed ranged Vindicator. I noticed a ton of cold skills and bonuses to cold damage, but I didn’t have any base cold damage to utilize those skills or bonus damage. So, I tweaked my skills/devotions a bit and got some base cold damage and skill procs. I ran that until I replaced my old gear and noticed nothing ‘cold’ was brought to the table. So, I went back to my skills/devotions and focused primarily on lightning damage.
It was fun and gave me a chance to learn a little bit more about the game.
I pretty much do the same thing. I pick a primary DPS skill, this time Savagery, and then I pick a good companion skill that I can pretty much spam at will, I chose Inquisitor’s Seal. I have Word of Renewal because it’s a second potion and a nice 1 minute buff. I have 3 WP skills that proc like crazy. My devotions seem to proc fairly often too. So, I am having a blast shooting anything that even thinks about moving.
As I get into the upper 80’s, I am thinking about a DW range Vindicator (Puifier? Mage Hunter?), maybe focusing on elemental damage to take advantage of cold and fire damage as well as lightning. I want to set up appropriate devotions to each damage too, just for some RP fun. Magi for Bursting Round, Amatok for Chilling Rounds, and Tempest for Storm Spread. Rhowen’s Crown could be attached to my primary damage output.
These last days I’ve noticed that you also need to keep the number of secondary skills low, because the more you have, the more difficult it becomes to use them all constantly and it cripples the continuity of your main skill as well. So, even though I could’ve added a few more secondary skills with DoT and even extra debuffs, I had to keep only the most powerful ones. More secondary skills with extra DoT look good in theory, but bad in practice. I had 6 secondary skills and I ended up keeping only 2 of them, which were the core of the DoT anyway (having over 75% of the total). Now, if I wouldn’t have had a main spammable skill or if I had a weaker one (like Greater fireblast), then I would’ve seen no problem to have 6 secondary skills with cooldowns, so they can fill more of the combat time.
Examples of secondary skills that I would always take for their debuffs and DoT are Blitz and Judgment (max only the relevant parts of the skills).
Actually, Diablo 2 had a somewhat similar idea for skills. There were passive bonuses from some skills to others. It was one of the best features there.
Well, GD has a limited use of passive alternate-skill-dependent bonuses, and i agree how cool that was, but im talking about something else.
When you pick up a weapon that has, say, Soldier skill mods (like +1 to Forcewave), but your character is an Arcanist, those Soldier benefits go wasted for this character; it might as well not be listed at all. You found a great little weapon, but outside of the attribute mods, its kinda useless to your Arcanist.
With a Relative Skill aspect, the skill mods would be fitting to your Arcanist, like +1 to PRM. Every item you picked up would have mods only for your current character.
And if you stored the item in the Shared Stash, and then did the game as an Occultist, the same item would list the item’s skill mod as, for example, +1 to DEE. An item’s skill mod would never be wasted again because it only uses modifiers to the current character’s skill set.
Thats one of the things im working on, but like i said before, if it cant be scripted, it may require a code change to use lookup tables. If it can be scripted, this is a Mod Suggestion. If it requires a hardcoded change, it’s a Feature Request.
I think it’s too much of a fuss to implement this, when the easiest and most common solution is to just look for another piece of gear that’s more fit for your setup. And you already have gear that adds just that (especially sets). They provide bonuses to 3 classes at the same time, so it allows you the flexibility of having more class combinations that benefit from it.
Ok Debbie Downers. Youre right. Silly me, thinking i could improve the game. How dare i think outside of the box. I wont even try. And i might as well stop all work with my mod. What was i thinking?
I’ll come back when adults are in this forum. I’d rather be ignored.
doesn’t that just make loot more boring?
you reduce the item pool by shaving it down to “1” item that all your chars and builds universally use, “just share in stash always the perfect fitting item, no need to go drop more”
I would also sorta distract or clash with thematic stuff, "corruption of dreeg"set dagger, wait why does this support my Maiven arcanist?(/dmg type?) @_@ - and the lore text dont’ even make sense now
I am telling you that dynamic item modification as you’re suggesting cannot be done.
Can you take item A and change it into an entirely different item B via a mod’s script? Sure. Grimarillion is already doing this (I think?) to convert vanilla items into items with support for modded masteries.
But stats are set in stone on a specific item. The idea of item X behaving one way for one character and another way for a different character is infeasible.
Don’t be upset, I was also turned down plenty of times whenever I made sugestions. And some of them are even crucial for the game’s basic functionality, like correcting Cadence to behave like any other DAR. We can just propose and the people in charge of the game might consider. That’s all we can do.
That’s actually a great alternative solution to this. Make “mirrored” items that are called “corrupted”, to have different skill bonuses and maybe even damage types. Like Dagallon’s pistols. Or just new items/sets altogether.
Silly me, thinking i could improve the game. How dare i think outside of the box. I wont even try. And i might as well stop all work with my mod. What was i thinking?
I’d rather be ignored.
