Synergies.

[WarBlade]

- Can you apply anti-synergies?  I.e., can a penalty to a skill be applied for pumping another skill?

It won't work. Some characters like multi tree Necro's would just shrug and dump point across all three trees while Amazons and Druids would scream about dumping redundant points in trees their build can't even use.

- What about an initial penalty that could be overcome with a 3-4 point investment in a given skill?

You don't play Smiters much do you? <_<

- Could pumping one skill actually add a skill level to another?&nbsp; Say at a 5:1 or even 10:1 exchange?&nbsp; Can't think of a good reason to do this, but it would be nice to know if you could.&nbsp;&nbsp; :blink:

Nice? How so? The Sorceress is already way overpowered because of + skill items on a similar score and you speculate on going further down the same road?

That's all that I can think of off the top of my head.

Really? That's terrible! :blink:

[Roland]

Don't mind me, I just got up (it's about 8 PM) after being out all last night and getting more drunk than I've ever been before in my life. So, if I seem a little off-kilter, that's why. Oh, and I got new glasses, so my vision's a little screwy on my monitor. I adjusted fine for regular viewing, but when I sat down to my comp, it got just a wee bit swimmy, so I think I'm still adjusting to up-close. :)

You know, I hadn't even thought of all that. You're right, you can now have more than 30 skills per class. And, with all that crap you mentioned, it just might work. I'm a little too out of it to figure it out for myself right now, but I bet you there is a way to do it. I hadn't even thought of that.

At any rate, I'm gonna jet I think. My head's getting all swimmy, and my vision is following suit. :P Methinks I need a bit more time to adjust to my glasses before I go sitting in front of the comp too much. Ah well.

Thanks for the tip on synergy workarounds. :D

[Vornzog]

'Lo WarBlade,

As you are a long term respected member of this community, I would have expected you to be in the habit of reading a post before hitting the reply button and ripping a post up one side and down the other. What you took as flame bait was actually intended in the spirit of an exploration of possible modding options relating to synergies. In the name of expanding knowledge.

I think you will find - if you would please re-read my original post - that I did not suggest that these should be implemented. I suggested we see how far we could push our knowledge. Seems to me that the LL has been the sort of place to try and expand the knowledge base concerning a game we all enjoy. If I am wrong in this please, please, let me know, and I will go away, so that you can continue to flame in peace.

Is this a personal attack? Yes - at least to some extent. Sorry, I know that these are not generally appreciated, but look at your own response. I find it a bit hard to respond to an unprovoked personal attack without some commentary on you.

- Could pumping one skill actually add a skill level to another?&nbsp; Say at a 5:1 or even 10:1 exchange?&nbsp; Can't think of a good reason to do this, but it would be nice to know if you could.&nbsp; blink.gif

Nice? How so? The Sorceress is already way overpowered because of + skill items on a similar score and you speculate on going further down the same road?

Did you even read the part you copied? I said I couldn't think of a good reason to do this. That includes the sorceress. I just wanted to know if it could be done.

That's all that I can think of off the top of my head.

Really? That's terrible! blink.gif

By this, I meant that it was well past my bed time, I was having trouble thinking clearly, and that I was having trouble continuing to look at the screen. I threw out a few ideas, which you failed to read. What is more terrible - that I only thought of a few crazy ideas and labeled them as such, or that you failed to contribute anything constructive, instead choosing to haul off and point out my shortcomings without actually considering the ideas I put forth?

-V-

[WarBlade]

Actually I did read your post. All of it. I tried to fathom where you were coming from and for the life of me I couldn't really see it.

My dissatisfaction with the kind of post that your is mostly that every third Tom, Dick and Nancy from the BattleNet or dii.net forums that turns up here plonks down some inane drivel labled "wishlist this" or "character fix that" with no real thought to the problem. Yours, while marginally different was still a speculative effort in the area of "what if we can do this?" citing dead end roads ad nausium that most here will take one look at, see the futility of and ignore, or in some cases point out that futility. Speculative posts of 'unplanned wishful thinking' are getting old ok? It's nothing personal, it's just that yours looks like something many here have grown sick of seeing a long time ago.

If I hadn't posted something like that, I assure you that someone else probably would have.

I suggested we see how far we could push our knowledge. Seems to me that the LL has been the sort of place to try and expand the knowledge base concerning a game we all enjoy. If I am wrong in this please, please, let me know, and I will go away

You're not wrong and there's no need for you to go away. There might be a need for you to understand there are some kinds of posts that are touchy subjects and and as a new member(?) I'd presume you might touch a raw nerve by accident. Give it time . . . B)

[Arutha]

I think it would be great if all skills in the game were under diminishing returns.

I don't.
Skills with sharp dimishing returns are akin to one point wonders, and those are broken to me.
What's the point of having 20 skill ranks if no one in their right mind is going to use them ?

Now, what could be tried is having skills get one full effect at slvl 5-10 for instance.
Zeal is such a skill.
At slvl 4 you get the full number of attacks.
Beyond that, you just improve those attacks.

Some skills could easily be made to follow that pattern. For instance, Taunt could be made to have a chance to affect the monster, peaking around slvl 5. Concentrate could be made to be 100% uninterruptible at slvl 5 instead of slvl 1. Decoy could reach max range at slvl 5. Etc...

But for a lot of other skills, it would be a lot harder.

Now, there's one place I'd favour sharp dimishing returns: past slvl 20.
I would actually prefer a hard cap at slvl 20 for all skills (no +skill items in the game, at all), but I could live with dimishing returns.


About paladins auras having both a passive and an active effect, yes, 100% agreement there.

[ergates]

Hi,

I can not say much regarding a "good GENERAL layout for skill / synergy matchup". But I surely would like to contribute one small idea:

I would love to see synergies saving the underpowered variants. With 1.10 many of them may become unusable due to the monsters' increased HPs, speed and regeneration. Perhaps synergies could make them viable?

Bye,
ergates

[Vornzog]

'Lo Warblade,

There might be a need for you to understand there are some kinds of posts that are touchy subjects and and as a new member(?) I'd presume you might touch a raw nerve by accident. Give it time . . .

Then I apologize. As a very new member, but a very, very, long time lurker, I thought I had a good feel for what was ok and what was not around here. Obviously, there is no substitute for actually posting.

Sorry,
-V-

[Tommi]

Roland,

I like your way of making synergies. :) But what if every skill gained synergies from all of its prerequisites. They are prerequirisites, something needed to master the skill. It is most logical that they help in the skill in question. And it would give a meaning to prerequisite chains. Now they are there just without a real reason.

Skills at the bottom of the tree (lvl 1 skills) would not gain any synergies, but they would give them to the majority of the skills in the tree. Skills at the end of the tree (lvl 30 skills) would not give any synergy bonuses but they would receive most of them, making them the most powerful skills - which they also should be, being hardest to master. :rolleyes:

Cheers,

Tommi

[WarBlade]

:huh:
That's already in place for the skills that it can actually work with . . . Necro Poison/Bone Tree, Sorceress Trees, two Amazon Trees etc. and in those instances it can demonstrably get a little too powerful. Some trees it just wouldn't work with, but those are trees that should not be carrying much in the way of synergies anyway.

Thinking of unblancing aspects: Frozen Orb (too powerful), Conviction (diminishing returns), Natural Resistance (one prerequisite/diminishing returns), Valkyrie (too powerful), Fury (too powerful). With one stroke you'd be wiping away everything that the synergy idea can be used to achieve. :(

One rule for all synergies is a game killer.
Out of control exponential returns for some skills is also a game killer.

[Bolty]

This is turning into a damn good thread, by the way.

The Sorceress is my bag, and has always been my favorite character class. A lot of the discussion in this thread has been on the Paladin, which I have so little experience on.

Skill synergies with the Sorceress were quite a challenge for Blizzard, as a character for which 100% of their offense comes from skills alone, how do you "balance" their synergies so as not to turn the Sorc into an uber-god? Their method was to take the uber-skills of previous versions and "nerf" their synergies (Nova, Frozen Orb, Thunderstorm, etc) so as to discourage their use.

I can't really think of any way to get synergies to work on this character class. The current method Blizzard uses in 1.10 heavily encourages players to stick to one tree and one tree only. People have been putting up big numbers, especially in the Fire Tree, to show off how stacked synergies can lead to devastating results. That's great, but now you have a one-trick pony. You can clean house - until you run into a fire immune. Then what?

Multiplayer changes everything - if you're in multiplayer, you just co-op with someone who can take out the fire immunes. But then, if you play singleplayer (as the majority of D2 players do), what then? Either you go the one-tree route and have no options against immune creatures, or you split out to more trees and have an underpowered character, because you NEED those synergies in order to effectively damage your targets. You are 100% skill dependent; there is no way to make up for your deficiencies with, say, a fantastic weapon. And because of the way synergies build up and stack, even if you had +15 to all skills with items, you still could have a rough time unless you've dumped your skill points into one tree.

Cross-tree synergies might work, except that once again you'd be forcing Sorceresses to use the more powerful level 24 and 30 skills all the time (dude, use orb).

This post isn't of much use; I'm not offering a fix for a correct method of handling synergies on a Sorceress. I'm just pointing out rather lamely that I can't think of a decent way to do it. How can you discourage one-tree Sorceresses in a way that makes sense? All I can come up with is this idea (one which Blizzard will never implement, but which I humbly offer as a "what if"):

What if we GOT RID of the masteries entirely, letting synergy be, in effect, the mastery? Bump up the synergy effects, and have fewer skills link together. In other words, don't have a skill where 4 others synergize and boost it. Maybe 2 max. So, in order to get the mega-most out of any one skill in one tree, you would use 60 points. This would free up enough points to build up a decent amount of power in another tree - not uber-power, but enough to "handle" those that are immune to your primary attack.

The problem right now is that with certain skills it can take 80 to 100 skill points to maximize their power - leaving nothing for another tree, and if you decide to build another tree your attack can't keep up with the other character classes.

-Bolty

[CelticHound]

(I had to re-read your horrid post to note that you mentioned that Fanaticism benefits the Paladin more than the rest of the party.) Yeah, I think it would be possible to have aura synergies just boost things for the Paladin and not the rest of the party. I'd have to take another peek at the files to get a better clue about this, though.

And on top of all that there is also a recurring trend to avoid placing synergies into skills I'd loosely describe as "passive upgrade types", see various Combat Masteries, Shadow Disaplines, Amazon Passive Magic etc. This is undoubtedly to keep some possible internal damage curves under control. ;)

Art is knowing when to break the rules. :)

Holy Shield has potential, as you say. I was toying with the idea of a synergy that would take the minimum of ResFire, ResCold, ResLight & Salvation as give it to Holy Shield as a boost to current & max resists (for the Paladin, only, of course). It would be like a poor man's natural resistance in a way - you'd need to remember to cast it - but it could add value to any Paladin who wasn't already wearing a combination of Iratha's set and a Guardian Angel.

Worst case would be dumping 80 points into the four resist skills and getting 95% max resists without any special gear.

Or maybe some synergy that would give the Paladin some physical resistance, since they are disadvantaged vs. the other melee classes in terms of +life skills and summonable meat shields.

The nice thing about these synergies is that I don't have to consider a damage curve at all. :P They just boost the paladin's ability to survive, if not kill. Perhaps you haven't noticed this, but I've found that the paladin has a problem with his amount of life in the beta. ;)

-- CH

[WarBlade]

I was toying with the idea of a synergy that would take the minimum of ResFire, ResCold, ResLight & Salvation as give it to Holy Shield as a boost to current & max resists (for the Paladin, only, of course).

Hmm, the basic principle behind the Holy Shield/Defiance relationship is the idea of defence and how the two things can reinforce in such a way that one can gain huge benefits from running Holy Shield and Defiance together.

As a synergy I don't see this as a senario to convince a Paladin to run any of the Resistance Auras. That's what I'd really like to see in this patch actually: A reason to actually turn those auras on, even if only situationally, that doesn't involve simply adding more unneeded resistance.

Perhaps you haven't noticed this, but I've found that the paladin has a problem with his amount of life in the beta.

HAH! You know I have. :P ;)
Unfortunately there don't seem to be many easy solutions. Duration enhancements for Conversion are yet another rough tangential possibility, but as for life directly, the best I could dream up was a max life bonus to Salvation - kind of like having an Oak Sage lite on top of the resistance bonus - granted as a synergy from Prayer. After all it's not like "Salvation" defines the aura purely as being elemental resistance (unlike the names of its earlier cousins). It would have to be a Paladin-only effect to keep it under control

Perhaps you haven't noticed this, but I've found that the paladin has a problem with his amount of life in the beta.

HAH! You know I have. :P ;)
Unfortunately there don't seem to be many easy solutions. Duration enhancements for Conversion are yet another rough tangential possibility, but as for life directly, the best I could dream up was a max life bonus to Salvation - kind of like having an Oak Sage lite on top of the resistance bonus - granted as a synergy from Prayer. After all it's not like "Salvation" defines the aura purely as being elemental resistance (unlike its earlier cousins). It would have to be a Paladin-only effect though. :unsure:

[CelticHound]

BTW, from a peek at skills.txt, it seems to me that a single aura could have 6 shared aura attributes and 5 personal passive attributes.

I'm looking at getting back to basics. (Ack! I'm a fundamentalist!) The character selection screen and much if not all of the D2 artwork show the Paladin as the only character wearing armor. While the Barbarian, for example, is typically shown wearing nothing but a leopard-skin loincloth that he took after killing the original owner with his teeth* - the Paladin invariably wears plate and a carries a shield. From that, I draw the image that while the Barbarian may be the master of attack, the Paladin should be the defensive king. Secure in his faith, he can stand firm in the face of almost any assault, physical or magical. (Though he may not be able to do any damage in return.)

Yeah, I'll admit that the D2 system kinda destroys this notion, since the only way to advance in the game is to beat up the monsters and take their lunch money. And even a perfect defense does not an offense make.

Hmm, the basic principle behind the Holy Shield/Defiance relationship is the idea of defence and how the two things can reinforce in such a way that one can gain huge benefits from running Holy Shield and Defiance together.

As a synergy I don't see this as a senario to convince a Paladin to run any of the Resistance Auras. That's what I'd really like to see in this patch actually: A reason to actually turn those auras on, even if only situationally, that doesn't involve simply adding more unneeded resistance.

Well, if it's one of the three resist auras, what can you do, other than add absorb for the Paladin only? Adding damage undercuts the HolyFCL auras. Hmm, unless it was a reflector - like an elemental thorns - but most bosses would be immune to the reflection unless it was turned into a different kind of damage.

I can understand wanting the see the auras in use, but the other two original combat classes - the Amazon and the Barbarian - each have trees that they don't actually use once they place the points. Given that, I have no problem turning some the auras into defacto passives.

And besides, I like resists - especially ways to increase the maximums. I'm also still hung up on the idea of physical resists. How about Holy Shield gives 1% damage reduction / level to Defiance (Paladin only)?

Since the Paladin doesn't have the life enhancing skills of the Barbarian or the Druid, or the variety of ranged attacks of the Amazon, I'd like to see something done, and extreme defiance of all attacks might have an interesting flavor.

-- CH

*Thank you Terry Pratchett (I'm rereading "The Colour of Magic")

[Dagni]

Cross-tree synergies might work, except that once again you'd be forcing Sorceresses to use the more powerful level 24 and 30 skills all the time (dude, use orb).

The biggest problem with cross-tree synergies is that it would force Sorceresses to use whatever skills happened to be chosen to give synergies to each other. That wouldn't necessarily be the level 24 and 30 skills, though.

Example, have Charged Bolt, Hydra, and Blizzard all give synergy bonuses to each other, with Chain Lightning, Meteor, and Frozen Orb comprising another synergy group. If a character that has Hydra and Blizzard decides to add a lightning damage skill to his arsenal, he is basically forced to use CB because it is the one he has synergy bonuses for. Whereas a Meteor/FO sorc would choose CL.

There are two ways I can think to give cross-tree synergies while avoiding that particular problem, at least. For one, have the masteries give synergy bonuses to each other. That allows the player to still choose which attack skill he wants from each tree, and at least cuts down a little on the sheer number of skill points needed to invest in all three trees. The other way, if it is even possible in a mod, is have ALL the cross-tree attack spells give each other (small) synergies. Again, this preserves the ability of the player to choose for himself which skill he wants in each tree. Of course, this is all assuming well-balanced skills, if orb is just plain better than any of the other cold spells then player choice becomes meaningless.

Really, the idea of giving a synergy bonus between any pair of cross-tree skills is just a modified implementation of - and probably inferior to - giving a clvl "synergy" bonus to every skill in the game. A mod that did something like that would be interesting, though I don't know if it'd turn out to be any good :).

- Dagni

[WarBlade]

BTW, from a peek at skills.txt, it seems to me that a single aura could have 6 shared aura attributes and 5 personal passive attributes.

Ahhh. That's excellent news. Now I wonder if this can be used to achieve generator-only synergy benefits, because that is something that can rescue the poor lad in some of his deficiencies.

While the Barbarian, for example, is typically shown wearing nothing but a leopard-skin loincloth that he took after killing the original owner with his teeth*

Or toothless gums as it were, at least for the very experienced. ;)

Well, if it's one of the three resist auras, what can you do, other than add absorb for the Paladin only?

- Maximum Resistance increases?
- F/C/L damage reduced by X (messing with MDR code)?

Adding damage undercuts the HolyFCL auras. Hmm, unless it was a reflector - like an elemental thorns -&nbsp; but most bosses would be immune to the reflection unless it was turned into a different kind of damage.

Funny you should mention that. I had speculated on the possiblity of using those auras for Thorns synergies allowing Thorns to achieve an elemental damage return. It was after I considered a Sanctuary synergy (magic damage reflection on Thorns versus Undead) that I started to realize the implications of teaming up with a summoner Necromancer and figured the potential might force it back to worthlessly low power returns for game balance.

How about Holy Shield gives 1% damage reduction / level to Defiance (Paladin only)?

*Ponders*
And virtually lock the Paladin into shield-only builds? At this point I'd recommend not using Holy Shield for any synergies that effect Auras or weapon-based combat skills for that reason. It strikes me that the idea to encourage diversity would suffer otherwise . . . think Lance Chargers and Ranger builds really being among those who would want an increased life AKA "damage reduction" as much as anyone. Besides, Holy Shield is not really a skill that needs to be made more desirable at this point.

I like the idea in principle though.

[WarBlade]

I can't really think of any way to get synergies to work on this character class.

Which is curious considering you almost spelled out a pretty good starting point in your preceeding paragraph . . .

Their method was to take the uber-skills of previous versions and "nerf" their synergies (Nova, Frozen Orb, Thunderstorm, etc) so as to discourage their use.

That's where I'd start and I might be tempted to sever all ties between the timered damage dealers and the 'snap shot' skills too, depending on how the rest of the tree works out. By the looks of things, not even putting limits on the number possible synergies available to each skill will do much to encourage diversity, since the Masteries are already the default synergies to most of the rest of each tree and will always draw a player back to thinking the auxiliary skill would pick up the damage boost from that. However capping the available synergies for each skill to the grand total of one, will keep people to investing a maximum 60 points to a given skill, which might have some measure of influence in that area.

Multi tree diversity, as you rightly point out comes more from monster Immunities

How can you discourage one-tree Sorceresses in a way that makes sense?

Ouch, there's a pickle. It took me hours to make sense of the Paladin for the many various reasons involved with him and I suspect it would take just as long to properly sus out the Sorceress. With the Fire Tree it boils down to, Damage over time over area at whatever Mana cost, for each spell, constantly compared with every other spell. Lightning? More of the same with some added speculation on the functionality of Static, Teleport and Energy Shield thrown in. Cold is another kettle of fish full of its own similarities and differences with the other trees.

At a guess, I'd probably start by looking at diminishing returns Masteries and a synergy limit of one. At the very least I'd be reducing the 80+ point investments to 50-60 points plus pre-requisites and Warmth.

[CelticHound]

Ahhh. That's excellent news. Now I wonder if this can be used to achieve generator-only synergy benefits, because that is something that can rescue the poor lad in some of his deficiencies.

A quick note on how synergies appear in the data files. For any given effect on a given skill, there is a formula. For example the formula for the the elemental damage boost of Vengeance (just grabbed a copy of skills.txt from the PhKeep, since I don't have the beta on this comp) is:

Code:

ln12+(skill('Resist Fire'.blvl)+skill('Resist Cold'.blvl)+skill('Resist Lightning'.blvl))*par8+skill('Salvation'.blvl)*par7

(par7==2, par8==5 and ln12 is skill-level based formula that I can't find the definition of. Ruvanal! Jarulf! Help!)

To change that to use full skill levels including adders, you'd just change the "blvl"s to "lvl"s, I think. Also Ruvanal recently gave some ideas on only allowing specific skill adders.

Anyway, to answer your question, the synergy benefits can be stuffed into the formulas for any of the aura (shared) or passive (personal) attributes.

Funny you should mention that. I had speculated on the possiblity of using those auras for Thorns synergies allowing Thorns to achieve an elemental damage return. It was after I considered a Sanctuary synergy (magic damage reflection on Thorns versus Undead) that I started to realize the implications of teaming up with a summoner Necromancer and figured the potential might force it back to worthlessly low power returns for game balance.

Not if the additional damage was personal to the Paladin and didn't get passed on, though. :)

And virtually lock the Paladin into shield-only builds?

No, that's the beauty of it. If Holy Shield gave Defiance a % damage reduction synergy, it would work whenever you were running that aura, not when HShield was up. This would give 2hd weapon Defiants a reason to pump HShield, though not to use it.

-- CH

[Roland]

No, that's the beauty of it. If Holy Shield gave Defiance a % damage reduction synergy, it would work whenever you were running that aura, not when HShield was up. This would give 2hd weapon Defiants a reason to pump HShield, though not to use it.

To which I ask (and have been asking since the beginning):
What is the point of pumping a skill you'll never use?

One of my biggest goals with synergies is to give them some viability, so that pumping them is worthwhile NOT just for the skills they boost, but also for themselves. And, by boosting the "main" skills, they in turn boost the lower pre-req / synergy skills, thus giving even more viability to the lower-end, or less-used, skills.

See where my ideas have come from?

[WarBlade]

No, that's the beauty of it.&nbsp; If Holy Shield gave Defiance a % damage reduction synergy, it would work whenever you were running that aura, not when HShield was up.&nbsp; This would give 2hd weapon Defiants a reason to pump HShield, though not to use it.

Dumping 20 points into a Paladin skill is to nominate that skill for frequent use. Paladin characters simply won't have the points to throw away on purely passive synergies.

Not if the additional damage was personal to the Paladin and didn't get passed on, though.&nbsp; :)

Yup. B) And that was one of the two key points that woke me up to the generator/recipient reason for not empowering cerain skills currently plaguing Paladin synergy options. You could apply the same or similar reasoning to Spirits and some Warcries, although Curses will always be lumbered with the effect (duration modifiers could still be valid).

[CelticHound]

What is the point of pumping a skill you'll never use?

Well, I've never used Skeleton Mastery, Warmth, Natural Resistance, or Critical Strike, but I've pumped all those skills at various times and gotten benefits. B)

One of my biggest goals with synergies is to give them some viability, so that pumping them is worthwhile NOT just for the skills they boost, but also for themselves. And, by boosting the "main" skills, they in turn boost the lower pre-req / synergy skills, thus giving even more viability to the lower-end, or less-used, skills.

If I understand you, you're saying that by making synergies that go up (and perhaps across) the skill trees, people may want to pump (and use) lower level skills a bit, as opposed to just putting in single pre-req points. But then it's likely that once you get the higher level skill you'll abandon the lower for it. For example, putting 5 points in Spirit Wolf, then 3 in Dire Wolf, then getting Grizzly.

Or are you talking about making synergies bi-directional so the lower level skill gets something that makes it preferable, at least occasionally, to the higher level skills? That sounds like a difficult task to me.

Dumping 20 points into a Paladin skill is to nominate that skill for frequent use. Paladin characters simply won't have the points to throw away on purely passive synergies.

This opens up a couple new lines of discussion.

First, why should Paladins have fewer points to spare for synergies than other classes?

Second, let's look Oak Sage. I think it's not that unusual for a Druid to max this skill. Yet, how much of the time are they acutally using it? I don't mean the time the spirit is running around handing out a life bonus, but the time spent when it's one of the two active skills. With the exceptions of it getting killed, it being used as a stopgap Decoy, or used as fireworks in town, it's nearly a passive skill. The equivalent for the Paladin might be a skill that gave something similar in life bonus or damage reduction whenever he was running any defensive aura.

-- CH