Inter-tactic tree benefits

[Hubris]

Disclaimer: I know we don’t know anything about how shadow warriors actually play, nor about their tactics. This is just speculation and foresight of a possible problem and solution.

Ok we all know that shadow warriors are going to have three stances, and likely three different tactic trees to upgrade stats and skills and learn new ones. I heard somewhere that a player will be able to make it to the end of two different trees by the time they’re max level, or at least they’ll be going heavy in one, and light in a second tree. For pvp people will be going heavy assault/light skirmish, heavy scout/light skirmish, or heavy skirmish/light either other tree.

The assault tree will focus on attacking while moving, and will likely have tactics that benefit both or either scout or assault attacks, but the assault and scout trees might only have tactics that boost melee or ranged only. This could be a large problem for the assault tree. The scout tree if primarily focused on boosting range, will also benefit skirmish abilities since both stances primarily attack with the bow. The player can then gear accordingly. But the assault specced shadow warrior will not have such overlapping benefits if there are none in the assault tactic tree, AND assault players will have vastly different gear than skirmish or scout SWs. Assault gear will highly focus on strength and weapon skill which will not benefit ranged attacks which rely on ballistic skill. So Assault and assault gear/spec will not benefit skirmish as much as scout gear/spec would benefit skirmish.

Now shadow warriors are supposed to be a very versatile class which has the ability and the necessity to switch stances and use different strategies for different situations. This will not be the case if one strategy is vastly superior to another strategy, causing a shadow warrior to just fight with melee, or just fight with range. And as a result it seems like and assault tactic spec will be gimped in pvp. There are two solutions to this. 1 is to make the tactics buffs so strong that they determine play style for characters. I suspect this is unrealistic as this is what makes talent specs different. If they do not vastly benefit play styles then there would be less diversity among players of a certain class.

The solution I’m proposing is place tactics in each tree that directly benefit another tree. For example, low in the assault tree put a talent that increases Ballistic skill by 20% of the SW’s Strength plus weapon skill. Or a tactic in either the assault or scout tree that increases attack speed with ALL weapons by X%. Skirmish will likely have talents that would benefit all stances anyways so that likely won’t have to be worried about.

But don’t do this just for shadow warriors, make overlapping benefits between trees for all classes so that there is a reduced amount of useless abilities/strategies as a result of tactics.

[Xyphos]

I haven't read your post yet, but when it's something that long please split it into seperate paragraphs... Walls of text aren't easy on the eyes.

Finished reading it!

What I can say is, where are you getting the info based on gear? How do you know Shadow Warrior gear will have to sacrifice Ballistic for Strength? If beta is any indication of how gear will work, gear will have several stats on it (I think I recall seeing an iron breaker with 4-6 stats per piece of gear). For that matter there are the reknown stat packs you can purchase, which will have less dependence on gear for stats.

Also, In the interview about Shadow Warriors they clearly stated even those specced assault will stil be using their bow a good chunk of the time, just in melee they'll have less to be nervous about then a full scout specced. Meaning if you spec assault, you're not suddenly an MPDS character... you're still RDPS.

I mean your solution seems all well and good, but it seems like a bit of a chicken little instance. You're worried about mechanics in the game that haven't been fully established yet, or at the very least haven't been told to us, the frothing masses.

[c_vadnais]

I share your concern, though mine is mainly for useless tactics. WoW had more than its fair share of completely useless talents (rogues improved distract anyone?), so hopefully they'll have learned from that and made the Masteries simply fewer and more disirable for everyone. I dont see why they wouldn't go with inter-tactic benefits like you talk about, it makes diversity more disirable then sticking to filling a tree and sticking the rest of your points somewhere else.

Edit: a smaller font would be nice lol

[Hubris]

I haven't read your post yet, but when it's something that long please split it into seperate paragraphs... Walls of text aren't easy on the eyes.

Finished reading it!

What I can say is, where are you getting the info based on gear? How do you know Shadow Warrior gear will have to sacrifice Ballistic for Strength? If beta is any indication of how gear will work, gear will have several stats on it (I think I recall seeing an iron breaker with 4-6 stats per piece of gear). For that matter there are the reknown stat packs you can purchase, which will have less dependence on gear for stats.

Also, In the interview about Shadow Warriors they clearly stated even those specced assault will stil be using their bow a good chunk of the time, just in melee they'll have less to be nervous about then a full scout specced. Meaning if you spec assault, you're not suddenly an MPDS character... you're still RDPS.

I mean your solution seems all well and good, but it seems like a bit of a chicken little instance. You're worried about mechanics in the game that haven't been fully established yet, or at the very least haven't been told to us, the frothing masses.

Xyphos, yeah when i originally typed it it was in separate paragraphs, sry. But in a later shadow warrior interview it's been said that melee and ranged damage capabilities will be about equal, allowing for viable assault tactic specs and play style. Not all the gear will be normalized for specific classes. Much gear that drops will likely be usable by multiple classes, and not specifically tailored for one. They're not going to have 12 types of gear in game. But yes, renoun gear will likely be tailored for classes. I say shadow warrior will have to sacrifice ballistic for strength because melee assault depends more on strength than ballisitc. And I know that assault specced SWs will be using their bow a lot, but if their assault tactics don't buff bow usage a litle, it's going to be gimped. But I'm willing to bet with the backstab ability, assault will create a viable melee class out of SWs, especially in raiding.

[Xyphos]

Xyphos, yeah when i originally typed it it was in separate paragraphs, sry. But in a later shadow warrior interview it's been said that melee and ranged damage capabilities will be about equal, allowing for viable assault tactic specs and play style. Not all the gear will be normalized for specific classes. Much gear that drops will likely be usable by multiple classes, and not specifically tailored for one. They're not going to have 12 types of gear in game. But yes, renoun gear will likely be tailored for classes. I say shadow warrior will have to sacrifice ballistic for strength because melee assault depends more on strength than ballisitc. And I know that assault specced SWs will be using their bow a lot, but if their assault tactics don't buff bow usage a litle, it's going to be gimped. But I'm willing to bet with the backstab ability, assault will create a viable melee class out of SWs, especially in raiding.

A lot of what you're saying is speculation and assumption based on very little information given to us. We don't know whether or not there will be 12 gear types, and I said renown stat packs (see link below), not renown gear although that simply helps prove my point further.

Also, I'm saying MY speculation is you won't have to sacrifice any stat for something else on your gear. If you want more strength get the strength stat pack (source - http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/behindTheScenes/developmentDiaries/RenownSystem.php ). I'm personally hoping there will in fact be 12 gear types per class, perhaps not at lower level, but the closer you get to end game the less you'll have to worry about wonky itemization.

I say again, your idea isn't bad, but it's a lot of speculation based on very little fact. It just seems to me like you're worried about something that may or may not be an issue; there is no way to know right now.

[Kaeldor]

Xyphos, yeah when i originally typed it it was in separate paragraphs, sry. But in a later shadow warrior interview it's been said that melee and ranged damage capabilities will be about equal, allowing for viable assault tactic specs and play style. Not all the gear will be normalized for specific classes. Much gear that drops will likely be usable by multiple classes, and not specifically tailored for one. They're not going to have 12 types of gear in game. But yes, renoun gear will likely be tailored for classes. I say shadow warrior will have to sacrifice ballistic for strength because melee assault depends more on strength than ballisitc. And I know that assault specced SWs will be using their bow a lot, but if their assault tactics don't buff bow usage a litle, it's going to be gimped. But I'm willing to bet with the backstab ability, assault will create a viable melee class out of SWs, especially in raiding.

All I can see even if it turns out like you say, the SW is a RDPS, and I wouldn't take the "melee and ranged will be about equal" statement too far. I'm not sure if the interviewer didn't overhype the melee a bit. It would be really strange, if you could specc assault and bamm be almost equal to a MDPS. One one things which might not make it possible is the sacrifice you have to do gearwise as a SW. If there is something like a sacrifice between ballistic and strength, I'd think it's deliberately done. Up until that interview every information we got on the SW was that he won't be that effective if you choose assault as your main strength, compared to bow specc SW. I doubt they have changed it that far (but of course that is just an assumption).

[c_vadnais]

well the class review from MMORPG.com said that an assault shadow warrior will be the most challenging to play because you're not using his strengths. I think its safe to assume that assault SW's wont be going into melee for too long before they get out and use their bow again.

[Hubris]

Xyphos, even with the stat pack you still have to sacrifice some stats for others. But I do agree and think there will be class specific itemization for a lot of the end game gear.

But to the last two posts, I can gurantee that Mythic will not make an assault tactics spec gimped in terms of effectiveness compared to scout or skirmish specs. The goal of Mythic is not to create tactics so that there is a cookie-cutter spec that is best for PvP, they would want to make all possible spec effective. So yes, an assault SW should have high melee effectiveness. It would not be as good as main melee dpsers, but that's because they should also have somewhat useful ranged abilities, and strategies that require ranged as well.

I agree that there has to be a deliberate sacrifice on stat choice between different specs, but my point is that it should not debilitate other styles in the process.

Here's the latest interview on the shadow warrior:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?LOADFEATURE=1770&GAMEID=239&PAGE=1&SETVIEW=features&bhcp=1

[Kstone498]

I understand what you mean and this is defenitly a concern. If a SW is specced to assault and has his strength gear on to do good in melee DPS hes going to stink at ranged DPS making whatever other tree he goes into pretty much useles, unless they somehow make the ballistic stat give bonus to melee damage