Changing Skills and Valor Stacks
#1
The nature of the game has changed a bit since release, and I think this is one concept that needs to change along with it.

Currently, when you change skills, all your Valor stacks are removed.

The concept behind this is sound. They want you to create a reliable build and stick with it against general enemies. They didn't want you to change skills a certain way to handle certain bosses better and engage in repetitious boss farming like in Diablo 2. Bosses are predictable and thus can be planned for by exploiting this.

Ideally, you'd experiment with many possible builds until you found one that works all around. There are many runes and skills leading to many possibilities.

However, as the game has been patched, gameplay has changed and in practice this mechanic causes many people to never experiment with skills. Well, they could, but at a rather large expense of 75 MF and GF. I could think of a new and brilliant way to take down that tough elite pack or I could just stick to a cookie cutter build and get more rewards. Personally, I don't even know how inner sanctuary looks like, much less works.

The result is that the valor penalty encourages cookie cutter builds, making a lot of the designed versatility go to waste.

In addition, you lose your valor in between acts, and thus only need to adjust your skillset for a single act. If we didn't, then more people would venture into act 4 or even attempt true full clears of the game.

Furthermore, bosses are no longer an issue in the item hunt. Their drops are inferior to elite packs, and by the time inferno sets in, they're also easier than elite packs. Since Nephalem Valor is inherently an endgame mechanic, the concept of arbitrarily changing your skills to exploit bosses no longer matters. The main point of NV is to find elite packs to fight and there's no way to prepare against certain combos. Even if you did retreat to town to change your skills, there's already some time used up already.

As I don't expect anyone to permanently get rid of this idea and perhaps there needs to be a disincentive to go willy nilly with the skills, I would suggest a consumable item sold by inferno vendors. It would cost around 10k gold and and protect your NV from skill and act changes for one hour. 10k is very little to a level 60, and a minor gold sink would help other matters.
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#2
I would support a consumeable that felt more like pay per every use, placed at an affordable cost. So maybe 5-10 minutes of skill changes. I'd prefer players still have to think a bit before changing their skills rather than getting total freedom for a minor sink. Particularly if people figure out that skill swapping, like MF swapping, is the most efficient way to play.

Losing NV on act changes was important because every act is its own difficulty. They don't want you bum rushing end of A1 just to pick up 5 stacks before starting an A2 full clear for example. With monster power setting every act to the same level this is less relevant, but there is still MP0 to consider right now. If nothing else I would argue for an exception with act 4 though, which is supposedly "the same" difficulty as act 3.
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#3
I get the points that you're trying to make, but I don't buy them. NV stacks aren't a disincentive to experimentation, because you start a game with no NV stacks. If you want to experiment with a different build, start the game with the new build and see how it goes. If you change your mind and want to shift things around after you've killed an elite pack or two, that's fine, go ahead and do it. You had planned from the beginning to change things around after all. A small investment in experimenting with builds will pay off in later farming runs when you settle on a build you like.

Similarly, I don't buy the argument that it forces players into "cookie cutter" builds. Players tend to play in "cookie cutter" no matter what, because they find the build to be the best overall or at least for their own play-style. That has nothing to do with NV stacks. If you get rid of NV stacks, you'd simply shift to the situation to one where people play cookie cutter builds that are designed for specific encounters rather than general purpose cookie cutter builds.

I do agree, however, that NV stacks should carry over from Act to Act. This is especially true when going from Act III to Act IV, since it would make Act IV more useful. However, I don't see a problem with building up Neph stacks in Act I and proceeding to Act II or building stacks in Act II and proceeding to Act III, either.

One key reason for NV stacks that you didn't mention is the fact that it encourages players to stay in a game and kill a wide variety of monsters. Without NV stacks, players would most likely figure out which base monster elites are easiest to kill in an Act and keep rerolling games after killing the same boss/elite pack over and over. Welcome to Dialbo III's version of Pindle runs. No thank-you.
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#4
I like the idea of keeping NV stacks between 3 and 4. Also if they could implement this for 1.05, where if monster power is greater than zero, you should keep stacks between all acts.

I've tried Inner Sanctuary but I've never been able to get it to work well. Seems to be a poorly-designed skill.
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#5
(10-09-2012, 09:32 PM)FoxBat Wrote: I would support a consumeable that felt more like pay per every use, placed at an affordable cost. So maybe 5-10 minutes of skill changes. I'd prefer players still have to think a bit before changing their skills rather than getting total freedom for a minor sink. Particularly if people figure out that skill swapping, like MF swapping, is the most efficient way to play.

Well, I just arbitrarily picked an hour since I don't like busy work, but this is fine too.

(10-10-2012, 06:22 AM)MongoJerry Wrote: I get the points that you're trying to make, but I don't buy them. NV stacks aren't a disincentive to experimentation, because you start a game with no NV stacks. If you want to experiment with a different build, start the game with the new build and see how it goes. If you change your mind and want to shift things around after you've killed an elite pack or two, that's fine, go ahead and do it. You had planned from the beginning to change things around after all. A small investment in experimenting with builds will pay off in later farming runs when you settle on a build you like.

But that's the thing. If I pick the build pre-game, it's going to be a general build and not a specific build. Even if I tailored a build to a certain area, I'd have to restart the game... and poof to the valor stacks. I'm not really being a strategist specifically in these cases.

In the end, I end up experimenting with new builds for one game occasionally and then don't bother with it again.

Quote:Similarly, I don't buy the argument that it forces players into "cookie cutter" builds. Players tend to play in "cookie cutter" no matter what, because they find the build to be the best overall or at least for their own play-style. That has nothing to do with NV stacks. If you get rid of NV stacks, you'd simply shift to the situation to one where people play cookie cutter builds that are designed for specific encounters rather than general purpose cookie cutter builds.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if people did shift to cookie cutter for specific situations. That's more involved and at least has some variety. At least some skills would see more use.

You're never forced into a cookie cutter build, but not penalizing people for wanting to trying a little different thing for just a elite pack encounter or two helps encourage more thinking out of the box. The gameplay feels pretty restrictive atm.

Quote:One key reason for NV stacks that you didn't mention is the fact that it encourages players to stay in a game and kill a wide variety of monsters. Without NV stacks, players would most likely figure out which base monster elites are easiest to kill in an Act and keep rerolling games after killing the same boss/elite pack over and over. Welcome to Dialbo III's version of Pindle runs. No thank-you.

If they reroll games, then they have to build the stacks back up and that's a fine enough disincentive IMO. And honestly, the acts are long enough that you can deliberately ignore annoying areas. A lot of people already stick to crater/keep/fortified bunker in act 3 and avoid the areas where phase beasts, heralds of pestilence, and harpies can spawn so this kind of stuff already happens.

Besides, "pindle runs" already exist in Diablo 3. It's called Warrior's Rest.
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