Synergies.

[WarBlade]

My biggest beef with you, or more specifically, your criticisms to my ideas, is that you take all my ideas with one idea in your mind: imbalanced skills. You rant on about imbalancing the game by messing with synergies, yet you do so by assuming that the base skills themselves are still imbalanced. Now, granted, in 1.10's CURRENT form this is of course true, but you make it sound as though someone can't compensate for that. What I mean is, you completely discredit ANY idea on the basis of imbalance without considering the idea that any imbalances can be worked out with the idea. OTOH, since for MY purposes balance is a number one concern, I would of course balance the base skills BEFORE any work on Synergies, just like I did with my last mod. So that point (the point of imbalance) is moot. ;)

And yet without any mention of how you have balanced or intend to balance the underlying skills themselves, you pose a question regarding synergies. Also many of my points about imbalancing factors with synergies can be largely taken care of after reading the information on caster/generator-only aspects available to skills, so see why you are bringing them back up.

But, then, there's one big difference between our thoughts on the issue:
You take your ideas and beliefs based on what Blizzard has handed you, i.e. that Synergies are now a NECESSITY.

Errr . . . what?
"Necessity"? :huh:

Wait a minute. You asked about synergies. People debated them in the belief that you intended to explore their use. Whether Blizzard thinks of them as necessary or not is not the issue here. You asked. I gave some answers.

I, myself, do not want that, in any way. I do NOT feel Synergies should EVER be a necessity, at least for top-end skills, because then you are ultimately forcing the character into one path or another, with no way out of that. By FORCING reliance on synergies, you force reliance on whatever skills those synergies are linked to, thereby enforcing cookie-cutter builds, which is exactly (ironically) what you and I do NOT want. ;) Not trying to label you a hypocrite, or anything, but merely pointing out a few key flaws, or what have you, in your arguments. :)

Namely that I have no idea where all this "necessity" stuff is coming from in the first place. :huh: If you don't want synergies to be a necessity, then leave them out entirely and don't ask people for improved synergies. It's that simple.

Hope I didn't step on your toes too much.

No you just confused the hell of me with with a suggestion of a completely seperate issue being a key factor in my assessment of synergies.

I am quite curious on your stance on that issue, however - the issue of whether synergies should be a bonus, or a necessity.

I'm inclined to say "Nah, get rid of them," but I'm still too tempted by them, pretty much on the strength of those freaking Sorceress Masteries which strike me as being one of the major destabilizing reasons for their existence in the first place. And Auras. Ideally, I'd say go back to the drawing board and rebuild an entirely new skill set from scratch so as to make skill levels go from 1 to 50 with no inter-skill multiplicative effects anywhere.

I think, at least in part, that is why you have been so adamantly against all of my proposed ideas, and perhaps that of others. It would certainly explain it, at least to me.

Actually I doubt it would, because the question of necessity is one that came directly from you in the first place when you asked how people thought synergies should work. If anything it was your question that defined them as necessary.

My criticisms, which are another matter entirely, stem from having looked at the way skills interact with eachother and determining that two combined skills with an additive combination compared with two skills that multiply are never going to be balanced. Looking at what Blizzard put in 1.10, I see other people have reached the same conclusion and taken a little more care in certain areas. Reading this thread I see most people here have not reached the same conclusion and continue to put things together based purely on aesthetic value, with little exploration into potential imbalance hazards.

So, what do you think? Bonus, or necessity? What does everyone else think, for that matter? Should synergies be a necessity, considering how some classes / builds already have too many skill points, while others are stretched so thin that one misplacement cripples them, or should they be solely a bonus?

No, I think the real question is take them out or leave them in. The moment they are in they become a necessity. "Bonus" is too easily another word for "exploit".

Just some more questions, and my thoughts on the issue. I would like to hear some more of your suggestions, WarBlade, as you are quick to criticize but very slow to provide any real solutions. Not trying to flame you, but at least others are trying, which was the point of me starting this topic. While I understand your frustration with the direction of some ideas, I think, personally, you are a wee bit too critical at times. But, mayhap I am mistaken. Not trying to rag on you or offend you in any way; just a minor observation. Do as you will, as the old saying goes.

Yes I am critical, because most of the suggestions I've read so far look like some of my earliest ideas, before I started exploring how they work out under various conditions and realized they weren't going to work and retain balance. Then I noticed some of the ideas I saw failures in were the same ones that Blizzard had also avoided like the plague.

Surprise, surprise.

And then to my horror, I read posts that describe embracing the same game-wrecking concepts I'd already discarded. :blink: Is it any surprise then that my responses to those posts come off as critical??? ;)