TRANSCRIPT: Twitter Dev Chat August 21, 2013 - Class Changes

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Originally Posted by RockX

So, the "20 skills" issue is something I'd like to address.

First, it is referring to skills which actively impact gameplay. Things such as teleports, pets, stances, and fluff skills (and probably another category which I'm not thinking of off the top of my head) will not count against that amount.

Second, the "20 skills" is not a hard and fast number, but more of a general guideline. You may end up with more or less, depending on your specialization.

Third, each class has a pool of general skills (skills we feel are important to all three specialization lines) and more specific skills. How you choose to invest your traits will have an impact on what skills are available to you. I'll use the Burglar as an example. Please bear in mind some of the specific skills I'm mentioning are new, and we'll discuss their impact at a later time.

Some general skills every single Burglar will eventually have access to include (but are not limited to): Riddle, Subtle Stab, Double-edged Strike, Reveal Weakness and Hide in Plain Sight. Now, if I choose to specialize as a Gambler, I'll immediately gain access to Lucky Strike and Hedge Your Bet. From here, I could completely fill in the Gambler tree, picking up skills such as Gambler's Advantage, Trip and All In. Or, I could choose to not invest all of my points in Gambler to pick up Stun Dust from the Quiet Knife line and Trick: Dust in the Eyes from the Mischief-maker line.

The exact number of skills you have will vary, based on how you choose to specialize your character and spend your trait points.

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Hey Rock, thanks for this clarification and example. Really helps in starting to get an understanding on how the tree system will work. Please keep coming back with more gems of information, and encourage your Dev friends to do the same.

The skill trees still bother me even with these questions answered. It seems like making a build where you are a hybrid is going to be thrown out the window which pigeonholes people into playing the game not their way. I detest skill trees in other games like WoW and SWTOR for the sheer fact that you have to put points into skills you may not even bother using but because you need a certain amount of points to open up the next level of skills you get shafted. I'm hoping that there is more clarification on this because I do play a minstrel and honestly I don't like being stuck always as a healer. I play most of the game on my own and it seems like if I'm going to have to choose being just being a glass canon or standing there and healing myself while I occasionally auto attack something, fear it or whatever.

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Originally Posted by Rhuvor

Hey Rock, thanks for this clarification and example. Really helps in starting to get an understanding on how the tree system will work. Please keep coming back with more gems of information, and encourage your Dev friends to do the same.

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That would depend on the number of cookys you have to offer. :D

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Originally Posted by RockX

So, the "20 skills" issue is something I'd like to address.

First, it is referring to skills which actively impact gameplay. Things such as teleports, pets, stances, and fluff skills (and probably another category which I'm not thinking of off the top of my head) will not count against that amount.

Second, the "20 skills" is not a hard and fast number, but more of a general guideline. You may end up with more or less, depending on your specialization.

Third, each class has a pool of general skills (skills we feel are important to all three specialization lines) and more specific skills. How you choose to invest your traits will have an impact on what skills are available to you. I'll use the Burglar as an example. Please bear in mind some of the specific skills I'm mentioning are new, and we'll discuss their impact at a later time.

Some general skills every single Burglar will eventually have access to include (but are not limited to): Riddle, Subtle Stab, Double-edged Strike, Reveal Weakness and Hide in Plain Sight. Now, if I choose to specialize as a Gambler, I'll immediately gain access to Lucky Strike and Hedge Your Bet. From here, I could completely fill in the Gambler tree, picking up skills such as Gambler's Advantage, Trip and All In. Or, I could choose to not invest all of my points in Gambler to pick up Stun Dust from the Quiet Knife line and Trick: Dust in the Eyes from the Mischief-maker line.

The exact number of skills you have will vary, based on how you choose to specialize your character and spend your trait points.

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Thanks for this clarification and example RockX!

One question I have with the '20 Skills' is if our skill bars are totally 'redrawn' each time we retrait just as Mounted Combat currently does when we change our current trait spec? That is when you swap from 1 to 2 suddenly the entire skill list is redrawn and placed into our skill bars that we then have to resort to being in the layout that we each personally like best for playing. Or will we be able to slot every skill the way we currently can for our characters and then have skill grey out when our traiting doesn't support the use of that skill. This is one of the things I've found frustrating with changing horse specs in Mounted Combat even though its not more than about 9 skills you are moving around.

*shrug*

I've read the thread and really what I take out of it is that Twitter is a really awkward way to do chats.

*bows*

Thanks you.

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Originally Posted by Tallon617

The skill trees still bother me even with these questions answered. It seems like making a build where you are a hybrid is going to be thrown out the window which pigeonholes people into playing the game not their way. I detest skill trees in other games like WoW and SWTOR for the sheer fact that you have to put points into skills you may not even bother using but because you need a certain amount of points to open up the next level of skills you get shafted. I'm hoping that there is more clarification on this because I do play a minstrel and honestly I don't like being stuck always as a healer. I play most of the game on my own and it seems like if I'm going to have to choose being just being a glass canon or standing there and healing myself while I occasionally auto attack something, fear it or whatever.

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You misunderstood, I think. We will still have a red line and war speech, I suppose.

That aside, what REALLY worries me as a minstrel is the 'hybrid' potential that I have. I always trait 4 yellow (for max anthem duration, min anthem cooldown) and 3 blue for +crit heals, +healing on crit heals and no induction Raise the Spirit.

Now, say one of the blues that I like to trait is the last one on the tree, therefore requiring me to spend many points to unlock it, taking from my ability to trait other yellows.

Furthermore, let's assume I traited red to go DPS in the moors, but suddenly things get ugly and I need to drop War Speech and heal, for what I understand, I will not have all of my healing skills available and vice versa. This is bad.

My Lore Master is my next 'main', and I worry about being limited to some skills depending on how I trait.

I don't really understand what motivated them to fix something that isn't broken.

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Originally Posted by PKCrichton

Thanks for this clarification and example RockX!

One question I have with the '20 Skills' is if our skill bars are totally 'redrawn' each time we retrait just as Mounted Combat currently does when we change our current trait spec? That is when you swap from 1 to 2 suddenly the entire skill list is redrawn and placed into our skill bars that we then have to resort to being in the layout that we each personally like best for playing. Or will we be able to slot every skill the way we currently can for our characters and then have skill grey out when our traiting doesn't support the use of that skill. This is one of the things I've found frustrating with changing horse specs in Mounted Combat even though its not more than about 9 skills you are moving around.

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While skills you no longer have access to on changing specs are removed from your toolbar, they are returned to the same locations when you switch back into the spec. I'd think you shouldn't have to re-arrange your toolbars too much, if at all.

At least, that's how it's functioning as of 5 seconds ago on my internal build. I needed to double-check.

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Originally Posted by thefamilyosc

with the reduction to ~20 skills you can bet that each spec will have a good number of skills specific to it.

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I *think* you misheard. it'll be ~20 skills max counting the spec skills. so many ~13 skills that all lines have, ~7 in each spec. but ofc, traits could make skills change in viability or what they actually do depending on what line you choose. ~10 rotational skills + ~10 cooldown ish skills sounds about right imo. I'm sure that ~20 doesn't account for stances too. so you could still be filling up 2 skills bars on most classes, and more with fluffy stuff.

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The thought of getting all the skills in their proper places for my shortcuts/macros/oh-%$&# flailing mouse click every time I respec is annoying at best, potentially daunting if it is a role I play only rarely.

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surprised they didn't answer anything like this. but I wouldn't be surprised if they just make it so each line has it's own bar now (like MC has it's own) so as you switch, you switch to that bar that you set up before hand. ofc, lots more pain than before where you had all 20+ skill as normal, but I'm sure after making save slots and the tool bar, you could switch without needing to change icons around.

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Originally Posted by spelunker

Now that the background questions are done, how about some more concrete info about what this all actually means?

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sounds like you just want a screenshot tbh.

... can we have a screen shot soon :3

example of a 95 with all deeds done and a "hybrid" build :P

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Originally Posted by Granlif

Fire oil and Light oil have always been available from the Hunter Trainer. I always keep a full stack of 50 each!
It might not last as long as the crafted oils, but they work fine. :)

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Yeah, but they are very basic ones that only last 5-10 minutes IIRC.

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Originally Posted by RockX

So, the "20 skills" issue is something I'd like to address.

First, it is referring to skills which actively impact gameplay. Things such as teleports, pets, stances, and fluff skills (and probably another category which I'm not thinking of off the top of my head) will not count against that amount.

Second, the "20 skills" is not a hard and fast number, but more of a general guideline. You may end up with more or less, depending on your specialization.

Third, each class has a pool of general skills (skills we feel are important to all three specialization lines) and more specific skills. How you choose to invest your traits will have an impact on what skills are available to you. I'll use the Burglar as an example. Please bear in mind some of the specific skills I'm mentioning are new, and we'll discuss their impact at a later time.

Some general skills every single Burglar will eventually have access to include (but are not limited to): Riddle, Subtle Stab, Double-edged Strike, Reveal Weakness and Hide in Plain Sight. Now, if I choose to specialize as a Gambler, I'll immediately gain access to Lucky Strike and Hedge Your Bet. From here, I could completely fill in the Gambler tree, picking up skills such as Gambler's Advantage, Trip and All In. Or, I could choose to not invest all of my points in Gambler to pick up Stun Dust from the Quiet Knife line and Trick: Dust in the Eyes from the Mischief-maker line.

The exact number of skills you have will vary, based on how you choose to specialize your character and spend your trait points.

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Thank you for the clarification. This is what I was envisioning upon reading the transcript of today's Q&A.

Now I am convinced. We did need a dev diary.

What would have made all of this MUCH better, would have been a plainly laid-out plan for each role each class would have.

I use the word "role", but what I really mean is, "what will each trait tree play like in a nutshell per class?"

The post about Huntsman vs Bowmaster is a perfect example - had you given a short and simple outline of the "core" of each line per class, our questions would have been much more meaningful and to the point, there would be less worry and confusion, and you would still be able to avoid unanswerable-due-to-incompletion-of-skills/naming questions simply by sharing your intention for the way the classes will play, the intention, and how you expect it to fit into normal everyday gameplay.

The question that underlies this whole "Dev Chat - Class Changes" is: What is going to happen to me?

Starting out with a simple "If you are this class, then you will be able to build like this, that, or that." would have been more informative than the entire 41 answers that you have given, and it would have given us the opportunity to ask much more meaningful questions that could have provided appropriately meaningful answers.

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Originally Posted by Sapience

This is an example of people trying way too hard to read things into comments.

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Not really. When asked about the future plans for a new PvP zone, it was answered with "We have no plans now nor anytime into the future to add a new PvP zone". (not an exact quote, but it was along these lines)

So, saying there are no new classes planned specifically for Helm's Deep does leave it a bit open-ended for speculation, especially for those that have been asking for a new class.

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Originally Posted by narainadun

there will be a "best build" for each of the specific roles, and that will be maxed out corresponding trees, but other than that, there is no best build. That is the travesty of this. it will be just like any other tree system out there, so Kudos for that, but i still hate this system.

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Fixed. Well the skill tree concept looks markedly similar to ones I've seen in WoW, Diablo and most MMO's. As for it's impact, color me worried that it's going to further dumb down Wardens. Warden gambits are fun as is, there's a high skill ceiling to maximising DPS, and balancing threat/survivability by thinking 15 seconds in advance to plan out an optimal rotation for individual fights.

Will going fully down a tree(s) yield more or fewer gambits overall? Will we be able to switch trait specs in combat to go from tank to DPS or is my Tank warden going to be stuck in Determination Stance without any spear bleed gambits once the the first boss is down? At that point you might as well have a Champion tank with higher DPS on the first boss.

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Originally Posted by RockX

...Hedge Your Bet...

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Originally Posted by RockX

All In...

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Originally Posted by RockX

Stun Dust!!!

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I think many burglars are now sat straight on there chair, eyes open, hair feet hairy, drooling at information ^_^

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Originally Posted by bohbashum

I think many burglars are now sat straight on there chair, eyes open, hair feet hairy, drooling at information ^_^

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I kind of figured that might happen with whatever one I mentioned as an example. It happened to be the class I was fixing a bug with at the time of writing the post.

Questions:

When you complete a deed you get some amount of TPs. Some of the deeds are class deeds, the onse that unblock the class traits, but now these are going to be replaced by the skill trees.

So is legit to assume that there will be no TPs from class deeds any longer?

And if that's so, do you plan to finish the virtues systems and deeds/TPs that are associated with them, in a near future, decreasing the amount of TPs that one character can earn in game?

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Originally Posted by Ithrien

Now I am convinced. We did need a dev diary.

What would have made all of this MUCH better, would have been a plainly laid-out plan for each role each class would have.

I use the word "role", but what I really mean is, "what will each trait tree play like in a nutshell per class?"

The post about Huntsman vs Bowmaster is a perfect example - had you given a short and simple outline of the "core" of each line per class, our questions would have been much more meaningful and to the point, there would be less worry and confusion, and you would still be able to avoid unanswerable-due-to-incompletion-of-skills/naming questions simply by sharing your intention for the way the classes will play, the intention, and how you expect it to fit into normal everyday gameplay.

The question that underlies this whole "Dev Chat - Class Changes" is: What is going to happen to me?

Starting out with a simple "If you are this class, then you will be able to build like this, that, or that." would have been more informative than the entire 41 answers that you have given, and it would have given us the opportunity to ask much more meaningful questions that could have provided appropriately meaningful answers.

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+ /rep for this :)

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Originally Posted by pakelf

Questions:

When you complete a deed you get some amount of TPs. Some of the deeds are class deeds, the ones that unblock the class traits, but now these are going to be replaced by the skill trees.

So is legit to assume that there will be no TPs from class deeds any longer?

And if that's so, do you plan to finish the virtues systems and deeds/TPs that are associated with them, in a near future, decreasing the amount of TPs that one character can earn in game?

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This is my concern also: how do these class changes/trait trees impact earning TP from deeds?

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Originally Posted by Elemiire

You misunderstood, I think. We will still have a red line and war speech, I suppose.

That aside, what REALLY worries me as a minstrel is the 'hybrid' potential that I have. I always trait 4 yellow (for max anthem duration, min anthem cooldown) and 3 blue for +crit heals, +healing on crit heals and no induction Raise the Spirit.

Now, say one of the blues that I like to trait is the last one on the tree, therefore requiring me to spend many points to unlock it, taking from my ability to trait other yellows.

Furthermore, let's assume I traited red to go DPS in the moors, but suddenly things get ugly and I need to drop War Speech and heal, for what I understand, I will not have all of my healing skills available and vice versa. This is bad.

My Lore Master is my next 'main', and I worry about being limited to some skills depending on how I trait.

I don't really understand what motivated them to fix something that isn't broken.

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I imagine, since you said you don't currently use the capstone legendary traits, you will have enough skill points to keep the same hybrid build. The benefits and drawbacks of choosing a specification line will probably the biggest obstacle in determining which skills you have access to.

At any rate, all classes have something unique regardless of whether they're red, blue or yellow. A minstrel will always be able to heal. If you are currently traited red, your heals will not be as effective. Under the new system, I imagine if you choose a DPS tree you will not have access to the powerful healing skills, but you will still have some way to heal yourself at least. Because you're a minstrel.

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Originally Posted by RockX

While skills you no longer have access to on changing specs are removed from your toolbar, they are returned to the same locations when you switch back into the spec. I'd think you shouldn't have to re-arrange your toolbars too much, if at all.

At least, that's how it's functioning as of 5 seconds ago on my internal build. I needed to double-check.

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This is interesting to learn and different from either option I expected.

So I'm beating the same bush here and trying to fully understand how this will work. So as you've stated we will have our generic skills that are common to all trait trees that will then always be present on our bars. Then as you trait deeper we'll get access to the other skill to place on our bars. If we then change to a different trait setup those skills won't grey out but will vanish entirely so we won't even know that we had a skill in those slots. Now we have new skills that we can slot and have to guess which locations we haven't already utilized by our now nonvisble untraited skills. We do this a total of 3 times to get all our skills slotted on our bars and then we can go and do whatever traiting we want at a given time and hope that we haven't overslotted our other skills..... I see this as being a bit of an irritation for the first few times you swap out your traits as you will undoubtedly accidentally overwrite the skill slot of your skills once in a while as you're doing this. This is from a level 85 perspective without leveling to obtain new skills.

I would like to suggest that this nonvisible be changed to the current greyed out method that we have on live as it will be simpler for people to figure out their skill locations and not be constantly checking the skills and traits for the first few times.

I also see this being a major bother for new leveling characters who won't have access to to all the skills that those of us already at 85 will so instead of how they currently refine the locations of their skills on their bars now they have to remember the locations of their nonvisible skills to work around as they level and gain access to new skills. I see that as a major headache for altaholics and new players.

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Originally Posted by RockX

...cookys...

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Now I know why we end up with so many spelling mistakes in the quest dialogues. :)

Honestly, while I've had concerns about various hunter traits and skills over the years, I really don't want to learn a whole new game. This doesn't sound fun to me, and especially the whole short-range/long-range deal is not something I'm interested in. May be time to take up a new hobby.

Forgive me if this has been asked before; I'm not reading through the multitudes of posts. xD

I'm wondering if the tanking classes are going to be moving in more of an "active mitigation" style of play, a la the champion (or The Other Game's modern tanks). Basically, moving up to a mitigation event, and then employing it when the time is right?

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Originally Posted by Macroscian

And whoa, short range? Hunter is NOT a wannabe champ. Bad, bad idea, sorry.

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I'm fairly certain this is something similar to a BA's skirmisher stance, which has been asked for by many hunters ever since BA's got the stance. If it is, it'll be like 20 or 25m as opposed to the 40m we currently have, not melee range.

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Originally Posted by PKCrichton

One question I have with the '20 Skills' is if our skill bars are totally 'redrawn' each time we retrait just as Mounted Combat currently does when we change our current trait spec?

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I thought they fixed that issue with U10 or U11? Skills are supposed to go back to wherever they were before you lost them due to a retrait.

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Originally Posted by Elderban

Yeah, but they are very basic ones that only last 5-10 minutes IIRC.

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True, but again, usable in combat so the time they last doesn't make too much of a difference unless you're trying to save on inventory room.

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Originally Posted by pakelf

Questions:

When you complete a deed you get some amount of TPs. Some of the deeds are class deeds, the onse that unblock the class traits, but now these are going to be replaced by the skill trees.

So is legit to assume that there will be no TPs from class deeds any longer?

And if that's so, do you plan to finish the virtues systems and deeds/TPs that are associated with them, in a near future, decreasing the amount of TPs that one character can earn in game?

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I know they stated it in the interview, but those deeds still exist. They'll give you points to spend in your tree vs giving you the actual traits. I'd assume that since the deeds still exist, the TP attached to them will still exist as well.

Will people be able to inspect people and see what trait trees they have put points into? If not, it would be a nightmare for PUG's with the raid leader not knowing if the captain can heal or if the LM can mez, etc.