Andor's Trail

fiernaq wrote:As others have mentioned, IF is not the only "non-choice" skill. Combat Speed is the other elephant in the room

It's not a non-choice in the same sense. CS is a very important skill, but if you choose to get it at levels 20 and 24, from that point on you have the same benefit as anyone else. IF is the only skill where you will always pay a price for getting it later.

When I saw your suggestion at first I liked it too, but I've gone off it since, for two reasons. First, it flips the HP problem on it's head. Currently nobody takes HP when leveling up, but your suggestion would force them to take HP when leveling up. AC, AD, and BC can all be increased by either taking them when leveling up, or by taking skills, or by relying on gear, or some combination. You can't get much in the way of HP from gear, and with no skill to give you HP the only option would be to get them leveling up. Second, it will still be a non-choice, because for the reasons given above you would have to take HP when leveling up, so if you don't take IF as soon as it's available you will always pay the price.

Just embrace it. Make late game mobs hit harder. People SHOULD have to take IF. The only thing that doesn't jive is late game crit immune hard hitting swarming ever attracting more mobs that hit 15-30....... I'm thinking 35-50 with crits in the 150-170 range. Let's have fun

But that would make it necessary to reach a higher lvl to walk through the game, forcing players to stay somewhere to level up for some time.
To fit different player opinions about game difficulty and emeny attack damage the idea of difficult increase as a game option would solve this problem.

My problem with the increased fortitude skill is that when people don't save up their point for one level and take it at level 8 people will cringe. The character that you were building just lost FOUR POTENTIAL MAX HP.

I say that the skill should be nerfed. Make a five point limit!

Still, as reader said in the late game the health doesn't matter as much because the mob can still hit you instead of not hitting you at all like with an all block chance character.

Flaming wrote:My problem with the increased fortitude skill is that when people don't save up their point for one level and take it at level 8 people will cringe. The character that you were building just lost FOUR POTENTIAL MAX HP.

The further you get into the game the less difference that makes. I made that mistake, so now I "only" have 180 HP instead of 184 HP

That's my point! All builds contain that level 5 IF skill and I don't like it. It's dominant strategy if you put a lot of points into it.

Hmm, kind of quiet here for the last 6.5 years... Is the discussion still relevant?
What if IF added a percentage of your total HP? You would then still have to occasionally take the HP increase on level up, without being penalized for taking IF later on. Could be capped depending on what percent is added to a maximum increase of, say 50%? 100%? Haven't done the math to see what would be realistic/feasible.
I can't see how it would really affect Regeneration, except by forcing an upgrade cap.
This would also allow those badasses to try Permadeath with only the starting 25 HP.

I still think we should nerf it by capping the number of levels. Then players would have to think about other skills.

I like the idea that IF only gives a % increase.
To discuss:
1) +x % on all hp points, and % increases with skill lvl
2) +x % only on base hp from lvl ups. Would also force some attributes away from ACC, block and dmg and give the hp stat more meaning.

Both will cause issues with existing characters when the update hits.

(1) would result in an exponential rise in HP, so either IF has almost no benefit to begin with (i.e. very low %), or it would be even more overpowered than it is now. It could never be too low though, because all calculations are rounded down to the nearest integer, so if you got 0.9HP, what you would actually get is 0HP, so the skill would have no benefit at all.

(2) We track base HP, but there is no tracking of HP from lvl ups vs IF, so this is not possible.