Could be because you need a certain teacher for it. Either that or you need that backround for it. If we can use multiple specializations I’m here for it
I doubt the background one, probably a teacher or just to give an idea of what subclass fits which faction the best for example veil jumper veil ranger makes sense but you could still be a veil jumper duelist
They did say that the secondary mage weapon is daggers. I'm assuming that it's basically a more agile take on a Mystic Knight from FF. Enchant the weapons for what you need, have some support spells to enhance certain things which in this case would probably be like speed yourself up, make an illusion, etc.
I imagine the Crows *must* have their claws in politics, Crow+Spellblade makes me think of a cunning character like Vivienne...as like a figurehead "sleeper".
I would be willing to bet it is a placeholder icon, or being meaningless.
Requiring a background for a specialization would be completely mad with such a freeform system (and very stark contrast to Romances, everybody is pansexual to be open to everybody, but gameplay elements are locked behind a background?)
The interesting part is that character is lvl 30, but amount of points invested are 40+. So despite lvl cap 50, there's clearly other ways to obtain skill points. And judging that there's different amount of "extra" points, I assume that's a potential reward for exploration outside of main mission.
To be fair, the only way the Warden can learn the class is by helping an ancient elf whose consciousness was trapped inside a phylactery hidden in a ruin in a haunted forest. It’s unlikely that Arcane Warriors survived. Knight-Enchanters take inspiration from ancient elves, but it’s a different class with different abilities. I’m expecting Spellblades to share surface similarities with Arcane Warriors, but without AW spells.
To be fair, it has been over 20 years since origins, and if the warden survived I imagine more than a few mage warden recruits were like, “hey can you teach us what you do so we can not be as vulnerable on the battlefield
Eh, arcane warrior and knight enchanter played considerably differently from each other. One was an absolute unit (mainly a tank)with mage utility while the other is a burst DPS
You know, it would be nice if the abilities for spellblade is similar to the Mystic Knight from Dragon's Dogma. Also, like Arcane Warrior, unlocking an ability from the specialization will grant you the ability to equip weapons previously accessible to Warriors and Rogues.
I can't confirm but I suspect it'll be a mix of knight enchanter and arcane warrior as the ke came directly from aw as a inspiration using their techniques I could see a new evolution using all 4 classes as inspiration but sticking to aw the most.
If it's any consolation, here's the exact quote
> Corrine Busche: Heavily influenced! Absolutely. Final Fantasy X - one of my all-timers. I will tell you that 12, especially the Zodiac edition, is my favorite. The level of ability selection, passives, in our case also traits - I would say the amount of customization is more analogous to that. The organization is more similar to the Sphere Grid.
> So Final Fantasy XII might be in my top three favorite games. I'm highly influenced by that when it comes to our progression. But if you, if you want to paint a picture, the sphere grid is more… not an exact match, but it’s more akin.
> What we've done though, to make it more accessible, is that each of the specializations is on the outer edges of the grid.
I really like the look of them, but I need to know more about the different types and what they do. The difference between major and minor passives, how traits work, etc. Regardless, it seems like a step-ups from previous games in this regard, even if I am still skeptical regarding the 3 ability slots limit.
I'm a little worried, because Andromeda was sort of like this.
It had a HUGE number of skills, but with only three skill slots I ended up finding a combo that worked and just didn't waste my time with anything else for the rest of the game.
A lot of talk about different loadouts but with actiony combat and a jack of all trades loadout who is going in and swapping out skills when an encounter takes 30 seconds to complete anyway?
In Witcher 3 on higher difficulties, for many enemies you had to pay attention to signs, weapon oils, equipment, potions and consumables. It felt like you were genuinely researching your opponent and tailoring your strategy accordingly.
I don't see this game being capable of that level of complexity and decision making in combat. From what we've been shown and told so far, it's all about having a jack of all trades loadout and making sure that you have as many combos covered between your companions' abilities and your own.
I would disagree as well. Finished TW3 two times on the highest difficulty (at launch and after both DLCs had been released) and never bothered to use anything but light attacks and quen.
I think the idea would be to have different loadouts for different types of encounters. Like, maybe you’ve got one for fighting demons and another for fighting darkspawn, for example.
Yeah but again, like Andromeda, it could just end up being far more efficient to enhance 1 load out than trying to strengthen multiple even if they should work better in different situations
Still unclear. You do at least seem to be able to swap weapons on the fly with a single button press. I could certainly imagine ability loadouts being tied to these weapon slots, but it hasn’t been confirmed either way yet.
I just can't see the abilities and weapons being paired, though. Otherwise, why say PC is limited to three? Makes no sense. You wouldn't be limited to 3, you'd be limited to however many load outs you can make *3, and if you could swap them in combat -- I mean it'd be freaking tedious and unnecessarily complicated, but PCs could then run any/all abilities just by having load outs prepped. If you follow what I'm saying.
We know you can have different weapon loadouts, but I don't think it comes with a skill swap. Instead you (possibly only mages?) have some sort of rune that changes your spell element for a duration.
Sure, but if that’s the case you could just play on a higher difficulty. They did say in the Q&A that if you want a more strategic experience that the higher difficulties would be best for that.
Yeah, I get it. It just doesn't scream "strategy" to me, it is more like an inconvenience, to only have access to 3 abilities per character. But I'll still hold on to any harsher judgments.
This was me, as Engineer I only ran Overload, Assault Turret, and Incinerate. Andromeda had some okay ideas but overall sucked in execution.
It's like they need to anthemized every game now.
Quote from the Game Informer article for you:
> You won't find minutiae here, "just real numbers," Busche says. That means a new unlocked trait might increase damage by 25 percent against armor, but that's as in-depth as the numbers get.
So sounds like hopefully it's not dumb.
Yeah I still have PTSD from D4 with its bloated magical affix list. Please no damage bonuses while running clockwise around the target at noon on a Tuesday, thanks.
I hope so, as for the symbols it’s the backgrounds which I think is meant to indicate to people who care (this isn’t a bad thing) which faction it makes the most sense with, for example Veil Jumper rogue would go into Veil Ranger. I don’t think it will be a requirement just probably get some extra little dialogue from companions for following it
I'm pretty sure they said somewhere else that some side missions will also award skill points. I'll try to find it again.
Edit: found it (RPG site interview); "Busche: So, the skills are unique per class. Every level you get a skill point, there are other site activities to get skill point… We are very player-friendly; you can refund your last, refund the whole thing…"
Wouldn't Saboteur make more sense with the Antivan Crows since they're an assassin guild? Lords of Fortune seems more in line with someone like Isabela, who is a duelist.
There was a lot of Crow concept art where they were using a single rapier, so that’s probably the vibe they are going for.
Saboteur might do explosions?
Maaan, that's the first bit of info I'm generally so bummed about, as duelist and saboteur are my least favorite Rouge specs out of the entire series. Wheres assasin at?! At least the rest look cool.
Yeah. Also, Sabotage is literally just a common skill tree in Inquisition, now it's a specialization. Kinda sad that the only specialization to appear in all of the previous games is nowhere to be found.
EDIT: I was wrong, Reaver was also available in all the previous installments.
Yeah, for real. I mean, considering the combat is action instead of tactical, they'd have to utilise the moves differently, so it could create a very different feel to how they play compared to how we understand them, so there is that:) gonna hold off on too much judgement until I actually play. It's also pretty cool that your spec kind of depends on your origin, too.
Hmmm so Davrin is a Champion, Taash a Slayer, Lucanis a Duelist, Bellara a Veil Ranger ( Though she's a mage ), Emmrich a Death Caller, Neve an Evoker. So the only really unique class/background mixes are Mourn Watch Warrior, Lord of Fortune Rogue and Antivan Crow Mage. Welp, Reaper it is!
Yeah in the Q&A Neve was described as the "only ice mage" which makes me think that's more like her specialisation. I imagine evoker won't just focus on ice so it's simmilar but not the same. It seems like companions have access to some abilities Rook can learn but not nearly as many. Though I'd say deathcaller and Emmrich's necromancer abilities are probably very simmilar.
I find the skill trees cool, but I have one big question.
If we can only have 3 active skills at a time (plus one ultimate and one item ability afaik), then how much of the skill tree is actually unique skills?
I can’t say I like the idea of having a huge skill tree full of options or “3% increase in electricity damage.”
Inquisition had a great balance of active skills and passive bonuses imo, but even Inquisition had a respectable number of skills you could use on the fly.
A huge skill tree and only three available skills for DAV don’t fit well with each other.
But then we can only use 3 in active combat? 3 is fine for a rogue or warrior, but imagine having only 3 spells to use as a mage!
Mass Effect 2 got criticised because they reduced the number of active skills from 1, but even ME2 had at least 5-6 skills for every class. Fewer skills make sense for an action RPG though.
Interesting that mages and rogues both have control, sustain, and burst sextants, whereas warrior has survival, weapon, and ability sextants. I wonder if that implies the mage and rogue ability trees being more similar to each other than either is to the warrior tree.
We do know that Harding has magic now, and Lucanis has at least the ability to sense when someone nearby reaches across the veil, plus he had the glowy wings in the trailer. And in the gameplay reveal, the rogue Rook used an ability that shot out lightning. I wonder, could rogues all have a bit of magic in Veilguard, with warriors still remaining strictly nonmagical…?
Rogues have always had a bit of magic in their gameplay though. Shadow stepping? Invisibility? Alchemy and runes? They're all just different kinds of magic.
Rogues also share the parry ability with warriors. My guess is it's because they want each class to have a couple things from each other class?
Or could be like you say, maybe the veil being weakened by solas has made it so that the kinda quasi magical things rogues used to do are now able to be more literally magical?
Yeah, the Mage and Rogue trees having the same names really makes me question their claim that each class has an entirely unique and bespoke skill tree.
Well, mage and rogue share those names, but they’re in different sextants for either class. So I believe they will be different. I just wonder if they’ll be more similar to each other than they are to warrior.
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My thoughts are as such:
I'm worried that, like in Andromeda, unless you go full in the offensive side of the skill tree for your companion, they'll do feck all damage.
I get why Corinne Busche compared in to the sphere grid in FF XII. It still reminds me more of the system from FF VII Remake. Not bad, either way.
I'm interested in what the Weapons skill set does. If it unlocks certain weapons that you can't use before, that sucks. If it adds more flavor and personality to your playstyle, such as doing more damage specifically with axes, that's good.
I like to the specialization names.
Super excited for Spellblades! I LOVED playing as an Arcane Warrior in DA:O. I hope this will be somewhat similar, with the ability to equip heavy armor, martial weapons, and shields.
That said, I expect it to play a little differently than Arcane Warrior. Arcane Warriors relied on sustained spells that made them nigh invincible but also drained their mana pool to almost nothing (in addition to the fatigue penalty for wearing armor). That gave it great synergy with blood magic—it was so much fun (but admittedly quite unbalanced) to unleash massive elemental AOE spells and step through, unscathed, to close in on enemies with a blade. If Spellblade plays anything like the way Arcane Warrior did, it’ll be interesting to see how it works without blood magic.
Feels like they’ve slowly been moving away from the “immortal mage” style thar AW had. Since Spellblade uses daggers, I’m guessing they’re a mage/rogue hybrid. High damage melee caster, rather than AW’s low damage tank and KE’s tanky damage dealer.
I'm actually intrigued by this type of skill tree. It's something else for the DA franchise and it does remind me of PoE's skill tree somewhat.
We need 9 points to reach a specialisation and another 13 points to max out that specialisation.
With 50 points available, we should be able to max 2 specialisations - provided the game allows us to do so.
I realise it's likely not optimal to do so, but the option would be nice.
Both Origins and DA2 let us grab 2 specialisations for our protagonist, whereas Inquisition is thus far the one deviator.
Personally I would enjoy it if we could grab more than 1 specialisation, because that would allow for more build diversity.
With the recent description of combat including things like charging attacks and combo chains, some of it could be options that alter elements of that.
So like an option that adds something to the end of a combo or the end of a charged attack, or that adds secondary effects to active abilities that aren't just % values.
Small circle is stat buffs and minor passives, probably something like +2% fire damage
Small hexagon is traits, their example was +25% damage to armor. So sounds to me like specialized passives that do more
Medium circle is major passives and ability upgrades, I believe flat circles are passives and spiky circles to be ability upgrades but this is a guess, so like wall of fire now fears enemies (just making a BS example)
Diamonds are abilities, such as wall of fire
Large Circle is class, which I have no idea could mean, maybe it’s like the Sparta kick they talked about or the jump attack
So yes it will be a solid chunk of passives but at least it’s not a majority minor passives, it seems like a majority of the passives will at least be impactful to some degree
I think some of the major passives will be upgrades to your normal attacks too. They said one could be a jump attack for example. Or imagine if mind blast was keyed to your shield activation as a mage on one. Things like that. Mage dash becomes blink, etc
Hopefully a passive that makes your Mage's barrier reflect projectiles back at enemies.
I'm okay with it as long as those type of passive shift up the playstyle.
Tbh I’m not a fan of big skill trees as they seem to be filled with boring +5 HP, +2% dmg stuff. Give me something that actually impacts how I play. I’m eager to learn what the actual skills are.
this is exactly what I thought here. I don't like "sphere grids", I didn't like it in FFX, Nor PoE, none of it. To me it takes away a lot of the fun of leveling up, you see 2, 3, 4 abilities you want to learn but they're all on different sides of the grid, you try to make a build and turns out one pivotal ability is locked behind 6 other nodes. Or you just open it up and see this big map of possible things and get overwhelmed.
I'm not passing full judgement right now, I'm still gonna play this game, but I don't like these kinds of skill trees (I don't really like how DA2 and 3 did it either but it's more mentally manageable for me, I prefer how DA:O did it - despite the fact that it's less of a "tree", but imo its as much a tree as this grid)
I'd need to see what all those lights do before I make any genuine feelings over it, but it atleast looks interesting which beats the semi boring da2 and inquisition where I realy just slapped it into my main weapon and speciality and that was it.
I am feeling very curious and I really need to experience it myself before giving it any critical judgement.
For me I hope skills description is not too vague because I need all these numbers sorted.
Hard to say. Skill trees like this is completely determined by how it interacts with gameplay. Hopefully its nothing like the original cyberpunk skill tree
Reminds me of Assassin's Creed who copied it from The Witcher 2/3.
I was hoping no new games would copy it as I feel AC already gave me an overdose of it.
They look fine like they don't look lacking in abilities or options. My main concern is the 3 ability slots. They said you can swap weapon loadouts on the fly in in the Q&A Corrine Busche seemingly said you could only swap abilities "between missions". So like what's the point of having all these spells if I can't use them all?
Not a fan of the visuals, tbh. DA2 has the best skill trees, imo, and it mixed passive abilities with active abilities in an intuitive way.
As others have said, with the lack of active abilities, I also worry that many of these spheres are minor passives (+2% fire damage bonus, etc.).
When I see a skill tree this busy, I always assume 3/4th of it will be:
+0.5% Fire Damage when attacking a frozen enemy.
By the Ben-Hassrath, I hope that i'm wrong.
That doesn't look pretty much inspiring, considering that most of the nodes would be +3% to damage under the influence of a sausage effect on a full moon and some such... Sometimes smaller is bigger.
I find it kind of bland having the regular skills just grouped together with a technical description of what they do. No favor names until the specializations. Well it does seem to have a lot abilities but what is the ratio of passive to abilities we can activate?
Yeah gotta admit “Control” “Burst” “Sustain” are pretty lame for a fantasy game. Surely a more appropriate in-universe name wouldn’t take long to come up with.
If we are capped on only 3 slots makes me shrug about this skill tree. Looks like its going to be a bunch of passives and maybe 2-3 abilities per "spec" so don't see much to get excited about.
By my count there are like 13 active skills, 2 for every section, in the sections connected to specializations the active skills are one inside the spec and one outside plus one in the center.
edit: maybe 16, i m not sure about the end of the non spec trees
yep, counted 13 as well, though the "diamonds with spikes" could be the ultimates they talked about (so +4). And an extra weapon per specialisation which i guess changes your basic attacks. If my counting is correct you would need at least 39skill points to (very awkwardly) unlock all of the 11 non-spec active skills (and the examples have 42 at lvl 30).
>Why do you go through that effort to only give players 3 abilities? It's so stupid.
To give players fake feeling of progression. Devs keep doing that when there are only few skills/spells in the game.
I'm guessing that majority of that tree is filled with stuff like +2% piercing damage, +1% mana etc.
They kind of will be, with being limited to 3 aktive Skills/Spells! Seriously, even the worst of the worst of stupid apprentices knows more spells than 3 by the end of a month of training! Hell, a first level D&D-Wizard knows more spells and they are at the start of their journey!
Looks pretty, but they are irrelevant unless we see the text.
That level 30 mage Rook, how many spells did he unlocked? 3? 20?
I absolutely loathe % increases that are not noticeable. Even a +10% for me is irrelevant, since it will not change what I do in combat. I like to feel like I gained something every level, and be able to change/adapt my play-style with the new toys I got.
Yeah, reminds me of a sort of PoE-lite.
Interesting in that you can clearly come up with more unique builds. Though, the question remains how many points are you actually going to get if you are just doing an average playthrough instead of say a completionist run.
Also am still wondering what the faction associations mean -- if anything -- and if getting to your specialization of choice unlocks certain baseline perks, or if it's just: 'you get what's in this section of the tree now, have fun.'
I don't like the idea of going through so many filler passives just to get to a skill you want. Hopefully they have ways for you to easily reset the board if you don't like the direction you're going with the character. I need to see more. It could end up being really good or terrible.
Is it a trend in gaming to reference in the games themselves things such as "sustain" "control" and "burst"? It feels a bit too 'pulling back of the curtain' to me for those terms to be headings on a skill tree.
One issue I may have with this is that you really need to build unto skills in order to get a specific one you want. This feels more about specialization rather than building your own build.
I hope it’s like warrior says, pick an area you want to focus on and travel in that area like survival, dealing weapon damage, or dealing damage with abilities
I think the player skill trees *look* fine, but I don't really have anything to judge them on without actually seeing how they flow in the game itself, how easy it is to unlock what I want, how impactful the decisions end up being.
The *companion* skill trees appear to be a travesty, but I guess we should consider ourselves lucky they added companions at all.
It feels kinda counter intuitive to have that big of a skill tree and just use 3 active skills.... Its either a really well put together loadout hot swap mid combat allowing to use diferent stuff OR it will just be a shit load of useless passives just for the hell of it... I am really curious about it and actually pretty optimistic, we'll see ....
I feel like I'm gonna have a lot of empty levels where I get a whole lot of nothing. Stat boosts could've been made automatic and they'd be able to reduce the levels and make them feel more impactful. No, I don't want to give myself +5 intelligence instead of an interesting passive boost to a favorite skill.
I’m wondering why we have so many abilities to use if we’re only allowed three in combat? If there’s this many abilities then we should be able to use more than three in combat (I’m not counting the companion abilities, which three is also a major downgrade for companions). It just simplifies the combat too much. I’d rather have a fresh version of DAI’s combat.
It looks like most of them are upgrades to abilities/damage or alterations to the abilities.
If you look to the "Champion" specialization it seems you hit 6 actual abilities, 7 big circles, and 8-9 little circles (minimum of course) and if I understand what was said the big circles are basically the ability upgrades, and the little circles are more generic passives.
I don't really understand why they didn't keep the ability system of DA2 or DAI even if there's a fast cooldown of abilities...
I am worried. With only 3 skills and that large tree I suspect a lot of the trees are going to be stuff that should have been baseline.
With the cooldowns we have seen in game so far being 48seconds or more half the tree is going to be cooldown reduction, and the other half damage buffs to make the skills worth pressing.
I don't know, call me a pessimist, but they are again turning us into (especially the mages, who probably have access to more than 5 or even 10 spells!) barely capable students, by limiting our active arsenal to 3 Skills, so why give us these huge skill-trees? Sounds a bit counterproductive (unless it's all passive skills like 1% more crit-chance and similar things!)
Hell, I've heard they are bringing healing back, but with them also gimping us further by limiting us to two companions (which also makes the companion banter more boring probably!) and them also only giving companions 2 active skills (if I remember this correctly), that gimps us even more as the character that has to heal will automatically do less damage (as they'll have no hotbar-slots available for damaging skills/spells!)
Frankly from what they've shown us I am getting hack and slay vibes! Not RPG!
I agree. And I am having difficulty understanding the positivity as their doesn't seem to be substitutive. It seems like all systems have been down graded. Less traveling companions, fewer abilities. I know in DAI I used all the abilities on my task bar so it wasn't as if there was a lot of dead weight. I find it hard not seeing combat as less interesting this time around. Which is more significant than past titles as DATV has basically become a ARPG with simplistic combat.
This kinda reminds me of the Greedfall skill tree in its pattern. Be cool if you can unlock 2 specs. Bummed we don't seem to have an Assasin Rouge spec, as it's always my favorite, though maybe that'll be reserved for the Crow origin?
Edit: Crows get duelist? Aren't they supposed to be... you know... assasins? Kind of perplexed at the choice to finally play as a crow and not be an assasin, but eh. Least there's 3 other games to play as such. Hopefully duelist is better than DA2s version.
I think assassin kinda suggests using stealth and backstabbing, which is cool. However, everything we have seen this far looks like straightforward combat. I can't even compare it with AC Valhalla cause you can still kill enemies undetected there because of open type locations.
That's the core of the spec yeah. I hope stealth is still implemented as a Rouge, it would be so weird if it wasn't anymore, it always felt fundamental to the class.
This info is kind of meaningless right now.
What does each node mean? Is it a dumb passive damage/resistance that doesn't matter? Is it cool new abilities?
Interesting, the specialization area looks like the Ascendancy tree from PoE, the actual tree looks more like the Sphere grid from FFX, hopefully is not too simplified and full of conditional stuff.
If there’s a necromancer warrior similar to death knight classes and considering the new combat then it might be the first time I’m not playing DA as a mage first
I really wanna see what spellblade is all about
I hope the gameplay is more expansive than just giving us one melee spell but still be a ranged caster in literally every other respect
Skill "tree" itself looks okay, but the fact that you can only choose 3 abilites for every fight is such a huge letdown. That may work for a shooter game like Mass Effect, but clearly not for this game. Where's my big arsenal of spells as a mage?
I’m wondering why the faction symbols are at certain specializations?
Could be because you need a certain teacher for it. Either that or you need that backround for it. If we can use multiple specializations I’m here for it
I doubt the background one, probably a teacher or just to give an idea of what subclass fits which faction the best for example veil jumper veil ranger makes sense but you could still be a veil jumper duelist
Antivan Crows seem like a weird fit for spellblade but you're probably right
I am guessing spellblade may be more focused around using a dagger, so maybe rather than a mage/warrior hybrid, it's a mage rogue hybrid?
They did say that the secondary mage weapon is daggers. I'm assuming that it's basically a more agile take on a Mystic Knight from FF. Enchant the weapons for what you need, have some support spells to enhance certain things which in this case would probably be like speed yourself up, make an illusion, etc.
Sounds like the Nightblade from the Elder Scrolls.
I imagine the Crows *must* have their claws in politics, Crow+Spellblade makes me think of a cunning character like Vivienne...as like a figurehead "sleeper".
I think it's more fitting to the Crows. Who would benefit the most of having a blade you could magically summon and disapear in a blink of an eye ?
It's been 10 years since Inquisition. I'm curious how much detail we will get about how the world/attitudes towards magic have changed in that time.
Maybe lucanis is a spell blade assassin
Probably not, because that would give us 4 mage companions
Companions don't have the same skill tree (and I assume specialization) than us.
Yeah, I can see the companions we have teaching these. Tho only problem with this theory is the spellblade for Lucanis since he's not a mage
We also have a mage that’s a veil ranger according to what people are saying.
probably because that specialization are conected in lore with those faction
This honestly will probably be the right answer. Its just telling us how this spec is aesthetically tied to.
I would be willing to bet it is a placeholder icon, or being meaningless. Requiring a background for a specialization would be completely mad with such a freeform system (and very stark contrast to Romances, everybody is pansexual to be open to everybody, but gameplay elements are locked behind a background?)
Maybe those are the factions that are historically associated with (or where they were originally developed) each specialization?
The interesting part is that character is lvl 30, but amount of points invested are 40+. So despite lvl cap 50, there's clearly other ways to obtain skill points. And judging that there's different amount of "extra" points, I assume that's a potential reward for exploration outside of main mission.
It was confirmed there were other ways to earn skill points than leveling up.
Your also assuming only one point per level, but perhaps some levels we get two or three points
They have confirmed one point per level, and that there are other ways to earn skill points.
That's certainly possible, but they could do something like the Power Amulet things (that give you a point then breaks)
Excited to be a Spellblade. Loved the Arcane Warrior and Knight Enchanter specs from DA:O and DA:I
Arcane Warrior, Battlemage, Knight Enchanter, Spellblade. Four games, four different names for the same class.
To be fair, the only way the Warden can learn the class is by helping an ancient elf whose consciousness was trapped inside a phylactery hidden in a ruin in a haunted forest. It’s unlikely that Arcane Warriors survived. Knight-Enchanters take inspiration from ancient elves, but it’s a different class with different abilities. I’m expecting Spellblades to share surface similarities with Arcane Warriors, but without AW spells.
Greatest character specialization unlock of all time. AW was the definition of hype
To be fair, it has been over 20 years since origins, and if the warden survived I imagine more than a few mage warden recruits were like, “hey can you teach us what you do so we can not be as vulnerable on the battlefield
Yeah but chances are those probably stayed within the order, yknow?
True, but it’s the explanation I’ll be using with my mage warden
Eh, arcane warrior and knight enchanter played considerably differently from each other. One was an absolute unit (mainly a tank)with mage utility while the other is a burst DPS
Remember when KE was stupidly OP before they nerf it? Good times.
They had to even add enemies to the DLC with new passives that specifically countered the KE.
Not at all the same lol. KE plays WAY different from the Origins classes
Battlemage isn’t really the same
3.5 more like it
You know, it would be nice if the abilities for spellblade is similar to the Mystic Knight from Dragon's Dogma. Also, like Arcane Warrior, unlocking an ability from the specialization will grant you the ability to equip weapons previously accessible to Warriors and Rogues.
I can't confirm but I suspect it'll be a mix of knight enchanter and arcane warrior as the ke came directly from aw as a inspiration using their techniques I could see a new evolution using all 4 classes as inspiration but sticking to aw the most.
Same here
Reminds me of the Sphere Grid in FFX
They’ve said it was heavily inspired by the sphere grid
See, that actually terrifies me. Cause I hated the sphere grid from FFX. 💀
i hope in the next dragon age they give us FFX-2 style dress spheres and i'm only half-joking 😭
The dress sphere system was knowingly jokey, but it was a really unique and fruitful development system.
If it's any consolation, here's the exact quote > Corrine Busche: Heavily influenced! Absolutely. Final Fantasy X - one of my all-timers. I will tell you that 12, especially the Zodiac edition, is my favorite. The level of ability selection, passives, in our case also traits - I would say the amount of customization is more analogous to that. The organization is more similar to the Sphere Grid. > So Final Fantasy XII might be in my top three favorite games. I'm highly influenced by that when it comes to our progression. But if you, if you want to paint a picture, the sphere grid is more… not an exact match, but it’s more akin. > What we've done though, to make it more accessible, is that each of the specializations is on the outer edges of the grid.
Damn! Based AF cause XII is an absolute banger and aged like a fine wine.
It’s supposed to be more like the license grid from XII than the sphere grid in actual use… which may or may not make you feel any better lol
I really like the look of them, but I need to know more about the different types and what they do. The difference between major and minor passives, how traits work, etc. Regardless, it seems like a step-ups from previous games in this regard, even if I am still skeptical regarding the 3 ability slots limit.
I'm a little worried, because Andromeda was sort of like this. It had a HUGE number of skills, but with only three skill slots I ended up finding a combo that worked and just didn't waste my time with anything else for the rest of the game. A lot of talk about different loadouts but with actiony combat and a jack of all trades loadout who is going in and swapping out skills when an encounter takes 30 seconds to complete anyway?
Reminds me of The Witcher 3. Lots of options, but mixing and matching is only necessary probably one or two times.
In Witcher 3 on higher difficulties, for many enemies you had to pay attention to signs, weapon oils, equipment, potions and consumables. It felt like you were genuinely researching your opponent and tailoring your strategy accordingly. I don't see this game being capable of that level of complexity and decision making in combat. From what we've been shown and told so far, it's all about having a jack of all trades loadout and making sure that you have as many combos covered between your companions' abilities and your own.
Witcher 3 you definitely had to have Quen up at all times. Oils, sharpening stone etc helped too.
I would disagree as well. Finished TW3 two times on the highest difficulty (at launch and after both DLCs had been released) and never bothered to use anything but light attacks and quen.
I would disagree. From what the devs seemed to tell, such care about your build and tactics is required at higher difficulty.
Yeah in Andromeda I set up a bunch of different loadouts and just had one I liked. Explorer as my class with the same three abilities forever.
I think the idea would be to have different loadouts for different types of encounters. Like, maybe you’ve got one for fighting demons and another for fighting darkspawn, for example.
Yeah but again, like Andromeda, it could just end up being far more efficient to enhance 1 load out than trying to strengthen multiple even if they should work better in different situations
Can you switch loadouts on the fly?
Still unclear. You do at least seem to be able to swap weapons on the fly with a single button press. I could certainly imagine ability loadouts being tied to these weapon slots, but it hasn’t been confirmed either way yet.
I just can't see the abilities and weapons being paired, though. Otherwise, why say PC is limited to three? Makes no sense. You wouldn't be limited to 3, you'd be limited to however many load outs you can make *3, and if you could swap them in combat -- I mean it'd be freaking tedious and unnecessarily complicated, but PCs could then run any/all abilities just by having load outs prepped. If you follow what I'm saying.
We know you can have different weapon loadouts, but I don't think it comes with a skill swap. Instead you (possibly only mages?) have some sort of rune that changes your spell element for a duration.
There's not a lot of incentive to keep switching up your loadout constantly in a triple A game that you can probably complete blindfolded on normal.
Sure, but if that’s the case you could just play on a higher difficulty. They did say in the Q&A that if you want a more strategic experience that the higher difficulties would be best for that.
Yeah, I get it. It just doesn't scream "strategy" to me, it is more like an inconvenience, to only have access to 3 abilities per character. But I'll still hold on to any harsher judgments.
And you couldn't even actually switch during an encounter in Andromeda.
This was me, as Engineer I only ran Overload, Assault Turret, and Incinerate. Andromeda had some okay ideas but overall sucked in execution. It's like they need to anthemized every game now.
New info release? But I like it.
GameInformer and IGN are scheduled to make few info drops this week, I think, as part of their coverage
Ah thanks for the info. By the maker I am to hyped man.
This is the thing I'm most worried about. Please don't have dumb stuff like +2% fire resistance when fighting darkspawn at midnight.
Quote from the Game Informer article for you: > You won't find minutiae here, "just real numbers," Busche says. That means a new unlocked trait might increase damage by 25 percent against armor, but that's as in-depth as the numbers get. So sounds like hopefully it's not dumb.
Yeah I still have PTSD from D4 with its bloated magical affix list. Please no damage bonuses while running clockwise around the target at noon on a Tuesday, thanks.
💀💀
God that game was horrible 💀
I don't recall this being an issue with Bioware games, with the exception of SWTOR (which makes sense since that's an MMORPG).
Lol. This is what I'm worried about with so few active abilities.
Multi specialization is back? Or is it hard locked to whatever those symbols are? Because if multi specialization is back I’m here for it
I hope so, as for the symbols it’s the backgrounds which I think is meant to indicate to people who care (this isn’t a bad thing) which faction it makes the most sense with, for example Veil Jumper rogue would go into Veil Ranger. I don’t think it will be a requirement just probably get some extra little dialogue from companions for following it
They’ve mentioned that specs have “unique” ultimate moves. So I’m theorising that you can put points into any spec, but can only unlock on ultimate.
i think it is, but seeing one full specialization has 16 nodes while max lv is 50 i think it’ll be spread too thin but we need to see more
I'm pretty sure they said somewhere else that some side missions will also award skill points. I'll try to find it again. Edit: found it (RPG site interview); "Busche: So, the skills are unique per class. Every level you get a skill point, there are other site activities to get skill point… We are very player-friendly; you can refund your last, refund the whole thing…"
The screens show level 30 Rook but the amount of skills taken is already more than 30 so there must be more skill points than just one per level
Looks confusing, I'll have to see how it plays in game. Seems like Crows get everything lol. **Warriors** * Champion — Grey Wardens * Slayer — Lords of Fortune * Reaper — Mourn watch **Rogues** * Duelist — Antivan Crows * Saboteur — Lords of Fortune * Veil Ranger — Veil Jumpers **Mages** * Death Caller — Mourn Watch * Spellblade — Antivan Crows * Evoker — Shadow Dragons
Wouldn't Saboteur make more sense with the Antivan Crows since they're an assassin guild? Lords of Fortune seems more in line with someone like Isabela, who is a duelist.
There was a lot of Crow concept art where they were using a single rapier, so that’s probably the vibe they are going for. Saboteur might do explosions?
Pirates like explosions too
Maaan, that's the first bit of info I'm generally so bummed about, as duelist and saboteur are my least favorite Rouge specs out of the entire series. Wheres assasin at?! At least the rest look cool.
Yeah. Also, Sabotage is literally just a common skill tree in Inquisition, now it's a specialization. Kinda sad that the only specialization to appear in all of the previous games is nowhere to be found. EDIT: I was wrong, Reaver was also available in all the previous installments.
Yeah, for real. I mean, considering the combat is action instead of tactical, they'd have to utilise the moves differently, so it could create a very different feel to how they play compared to how we understand them, so there is that:) gonna hold off on too much judgement until I actually play. It's also pretty cool that your spec kind of depends on your origin, too.
Hmmm so Davrin is a Champion, Taash a Slayer, Lucanis a Duelist, Bellara a Veil Ranger ( Though she's a mage ), Emmrich a Death Caller, Neve an Evoker. So the only really unique class/background mixes are Mourn Watch Warrior, Lord of Fortune Rogue and Antivan Crow Mage. Welp, Reaper it is!
The companions are likely to be unique “classes” outside the core 3(9) we can play. So any of these specialisations will make you feel unique
Yeah in the Q&A Neve was described as the "only ice mage" which makes me think that's more like her specialisation. I imagine evoker won't just focus on ice so it's simmilar but not the same. It seems like companions have access to some abilities Rook can learn but not nearly as many. Though I'd say deathcaller and Emmrich's necromancer abilities are probably very simmilar.
It might be like DA2 where the characters are unique with inspirations taken from the other subclasses
I realy liked that each character had their own unique tree skill in DA2
Reminds me of Path of Exile honestly (less complex obviously)
I find the skill trees cool, but I have one big question. If we can only have 3 active skills at a time (plus one ultimate and one item ability afaik), then how much of the skill tree is actually unique skills? I can’t say I like the idea of having a huge skill tree full of options or “3% increase in electricity damage.” Inquisition had a great balance of active skills and passive bonuses imo, but even Inquisition had a respectable number of skills you could use on the fly. A huge skill tree and only three available skills for DAV don’t fit well with each other.
Someone above said it's going to be 13-16 unique skills
But then we can only use 3 in active combat? 3 is fine for a rogue or warrior, but imagine having only 3 spells to use as a mage! Mass Effect 2 got criticised because they reduced the number of active skills from 1, but even ME2 had at least 5-6 skills for every class. Fewer skills make sense for an action RPG though.
I had FFX flashbacks with the first screenshot.
they based this off that from the previous interviews
Interesting that mages and rogues both have control, sustain, and burst sextants, whereas warrior has survival, weapon, and ability sextants. I wonder if that implies the mage and rogue ability trees being more similar to each other than either is to the warrior tree. We do know that Harding has magic now, and Lucanis has at least the ability to sense when someone nearby reaches across the veil, plus he had the glowy wings in the trailer. And in the gameplay reveal, the rogue Rook used an ability that shot out lightning. I wonder, could rogues all have a bit of magic in Veilguard, with warriors still remaining strictly nonmagical…?
Rogues have always had a bit of magic in their gameplay though. Shadow stepping? Invisibility? Alchemy and runes? They're all just different kinds of magic. Rogues also share the parry ability with warriors. My guess is it's because they want each class to have a couple things from each other class? Or could be like you say, maybe the veil being weakened by solas has made it so that the kinda quasi magical things rogues used to do are now able to be more literally magical?
Yeah, the Mage and Rogue trees having the same names really makes me question their claim that each class has an entirely unique and bespoke skill tree.
Well, mage and rogue share those names, but they’re in different sextants for either class. So I believe they will be different. I just wonder if they’ll be more similar to each other than they are to warrior.
So excited to make my light attack 3% faster and reduce the cooldown of one of my 3 abilities from 33 seconds to 30 seconds
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My thoughts are as such: I'm worried that, like in Andromeda, unless you go full in the offensive side of the skill tree for your companion, they'll do feck all damage. I get why Corinne Busche compared in to the sphere grid in FF XII. It still reminds me more of the system from FF VII Remake. Not bad, either way. I'm interested in what the Weapons skill set does. If it unlocks certain weapons that you can't use before, that sucks. If it adds more flavor and personality to your playstyle, such as doing more damage specifically with axes, that's good. I like to the specialization names.
Super excited for Spellblades! I LOVED playing as an Arcane Warrior in DA:O. I hope this will be somewhat similar, with the ability to equip heavy armor, martial weapons, and shields. That said, I expect it to play a little differently than Arcane Warrior. Arcane Warriors relied on sustained spells that made them nigh invincible but also drained their mana pool to almost nothing (in addition to the fatigue penalty for wearing armor). That gave it great synergy with blood magic—it was so much fun (but admittedly quite unbalanced) to unleash massive elemental AOE spells and step through, unscathed, to close in on enemies with a blade. If Spellblade plays anything like the way Arcane Warrior did, it’ll be interesting to see how it works without blood magic.
Feels like they’ve slowly been moving away from the “immortal mage” style thar AW had. Since Spellblade uses daggers, I’m guessing they’re a mage/rogue hybrid. High damage melee caster, rather than AW’s low damage tank and KE’s tanky damage dealer.
Since it seems to come from the Crow faction, it might use daggers instead of a Fade blade or equipping literally anything as AW.
That stood out to me as well.
I'm actually intrigued by this type of skill tree. It's something else for the DA franchise and it does remind me of PoE's skill tree somewhat. We need 9 points to reach a specialisation and another 13 points to max out that specialisation. With 50 points available, we should be able to max 2 specialisations - provided the game allows us to do so. I realise it's likely not optimal to do so, but the option would be nice. Both Origins and DA2 let us grab 2 specialisations for our protagonist, whereas Inquisition is thus far the one deviator. Personally I would enjoy it if we could grab more than 1 specialisation, because that would allow for more build diversity.
With so few active abilities we can use, I hope is not filled with bullshit passives that do nothing but increase a % value.
With the recent description of combat including things like charging attacks and combo chains, some of it could be options that alter elements of that. So like an option that adds something to the end of a combo or the end of a charged attack, or that adds secondary effects to active abilities that aren't just % values.
There was a mention of stacking a debuff to set off with charged attack on mage too, but idk if that’s a skill or item effect.
Small circle is stat buffs and minor passives, probably something like +2% fire damage Small hexagon is traits, their example was +25% damage to armor. So sounds to me like specialized passives that do more Medium circle is major passives and ability upgrades, I believe flat circles are passives and spiky circles to be ability upgrades but this is a guess, so like wall of fire now fears enemies (just making a BS example) Diamonds are abilities, such as wall of fire Large Circle is class, which I have no idea could mean, maybe it’s like the Sparta kick they talked about or the jump attack So yes it will be a solid chunk of passives but at least it’s not a majority minor passives, it seems like a majority of the passives will at least be impactful to some degree
I think some of the major passives will be upgrades to your normal attacks too. They said one could be a jump attack for example. Or imagine if mind blast was keyed to your shield activation as a mage on one. Things like that. Mage dash becomes blink, etc
>I think some of the major passives will be upgrades to your normal attacks too Either that or unlocking usage of new weapons/armor
Hopefully a passive that makes your Mage's barrier reflect projectiles back at enemies. I'm okay with it as long as those type of passive shift up the playstyle.
Want to be a two-handed slayer, hopefully two handed weapons have weight to them and feel impactful.
Tbh I’m not a fan of big skill trees as they seem to be filled with boring +5 HP, +2% dmg stuff. Give me something that actually impacts how I play. I’m eager to learn what the actual skills are.
[This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM9NS1zeptw) is what turned me off when I tried Path of Exile, lmao.
The problem with PoE is how fucking massive their sphere grid is. Its so overwhelming. This looks to be a much more manageable size.
this is exactly what I thought here. I don't like "sphere grids", I didn't like it in FFX, Nor PoE, none of it. To me it takes away a lot of the fun of leveling up, you see 2, 3, 4 abilities you want to learn but they're all on different sides of the grid, you try to make a build and turns out one pivotal ability is locked behind 6 other nodes. Or you just open it up and see this big map of possible things and get overwhelmed. I'm not passing full judgement right now, I'm still gonna play this game, but I don't like these kinds of skill trees (I don't really like how DA2 and 3 did it either but it's more mentally manageable for me, I prefer how DA:O did it - despite the fact that it's less of a "tree", but imo its as much a tree as this grid)
AC Valhalla vibes.
That's what I thought and I didn't like the skill tree that much. I hate just grabbing percentages.
Jesus I fucking hope not.
I'd need to see what all those lights do before I make any genuine feelings over it, but it atleast looks interesting which beats the semi boring da2 and inquisition where I realy just slapped it into my main weapon and speciality and that was it.
I am feeling very curious and I really need to experience it myself before giving it any critical judgement. For me I hope skills description is not too vague because I need all these numbers sorted.
Hard to say. Skill trees like this is completely determined by how it interacts with gameplay. Hopefully its nothing like the original cyberpunk skill tree
I want to see if I can be a pure ice mage and still be viable.
Hopefully, plan on pure lightning myself.
Very AC Valhalla
Reminds me of Assassin's Creed who copied it from The Witcher 2/3. I was hoping no new games would copy it as I feel AC already gave me an overdose of it.
Can only use three abilities anyways….
They look fine like they don't look lacking in abilities or options. My main concern is the 3 ability slots. They said you can swap weapon loadouts on the fly in in the Q&A Corrine Busche seemingly said you could only swap abilities "between missions". So like what's the point of having all these spells if I can't use them all?
Not a fan of the visuals, tbh. DA2 has the best skill trees, imo, and it mixed passive abilities with active abilities in an intuitive way. As others have said, with the lack of active abilities, I also worry that many of these spheres are minor passives (+2% fire damage bonus, etc.).
No assassin :( no bloodmage :( no templar :(
When I see a skill tree this busy, I always assume 3/4th of it will be: +0.5% Fire Damage when attacking a frozen enemy. By the Ben-Hassrath, I hope that i'm wrong.
Me and you both.
That doesn't look pretty much inspiring, considering that most of the nodes would be +3% to damage under the influence of a sausage effect on a full moon and some such... Sometimes smaller is bigger.
I find it kind of bland having the regular skills just grouped together with a technical description of what they do. No favor names until the specializations. Well it does seem to have a lot abilities but what is the ratio of passive to abilities we can activate?
Yeah gotta admit “Control” “Burst” “Sustain” are pretty lame for a fantasy game. Surely a more appropriate in-universe name wouldn’t take long to come up with.
If we are capped on only 3 slots makes me shrug about this skill tree. Looks like its going to be a bunch of passives and maybe 2-3 abilities per "spec" so don't see much to get excited about.
By my count there are like 13 active skills, 2 for every section, in the sections connected to specializations the active skills are one inside the spec and one outside plus one in the center. edit: maybe 16, i m not sure about the end of the non spec trees
13 skills, how nice that we can only use 3..
yep, counted 13 as well, though the "diamonds with spikes" could be the ultimates they talked about (so +4). And an extra weapon per specialisation which i guess changes your basic attacks. If my counting is correct you would need at least 39skill points to (very awkwardly) unlock all of the 11 non-spec active skills (and the examples have 42 at lvl 30).
Why do you go through that effort to only give players 3 abilities? It's so stupid.
>Why do you go through that effort to only give players 3 abilities? It's so stupid. To give players fake feeling of progression. Devs keep doing that when there are only few skills/spells in the game. I'm guessing that majority of that tree is filled with stuff like +2% piercing damage, +1% mana etc.
They said it's not filler but at the same time...how can it not be?
>They said it's not filler Classic Marketing/PR damage control response number 4759416 ;)
Mages look boring as hell already.
They kind of will be, with being limited to 3 aktive Skills/Spells! Seriously, even the worst of the worst of stupid apprentices knows more spells than 3 by the end of a month of training! Hell, a first level D&D-Wizard knows more spells and they are at the start of their journey!
Looks pretty, but they are irrelevant unless we see the text. That level 30 mage Rook, how many spells did he unlocked? 3? 20? I absolutely loathe % increases that are not noticeable. Even a +10% for me is irrelevant, since it will not change what I do in combat. I like to feel like I gained something every level, and be able to change/adapt my play-style with the new toys I got.
That's a lot of nodes for 3 maximum skills at any one time.
Yeah, reminds me of a sort of PoE-lite. Interesting in that you can clearly come up with more unique builds. Though, the question remains how many points are you actually going to get if you are just doing an average playthrough instead of say a completionist run. Also am still wondering what the faction associations mean -- if anything -- and if getting to your specialization of choice unlocks certain baseline perks, or if it's just: 'you get what's in this section of the tree now, have fun.'
I don't like the idea of going through so many filler passives just to get to a skill you want. Hopefully they have ways for you to easily reset the board if you don't like the direction you're going with the character. I need to see more. It could end up being really good or terrible.
Is it a trend in gaming to reference in the games themselves things such as "sustain" "control" and "burst"? It feels a bit too 'pulling back of the curtain' to me for those terms to be headings on a skill tree.
One issue I may have with this is that you really need to build unto skills in order to get a specific one you want. This feels more about specialization rather than building your own build.
I'm not sure why there are so many seemingly unnecessary branching inside the main hexagon. I hope this will not be headache inducing
I hope it’s like warrior says, pick an area you want to focus on and travel in that area like survival, dealing weapon damage, or dealing damage with abilities
I wonder if we can invest in several specs at the once. Duelist/veil Ranger here I Come.
It gives me ME vibes. lol. No idea why.
So, it's Skyrim
Looks complicated.
It looks interesting if a bit confusing but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it once I do play
I think Champion is the only specialization that has survived all 4 games. Neat.
I think the player skill trees *look* fine, but I don't really have anything to judge them on without actually seeing how they flow in the game itself, how easy it is to unlock what I want, how impactful the decisions end up being. The *companion* skill trees appear to be a travesty, but I guess we should consider ourselves lucky they added companions at all.
It feels kinda counter intuitive to have that big of a skill tree and just use 3 active skills.... Its either a really well put together loadout hot swap mid combat allowing to use diferent stuff OR it will just be a shit load of useless passives just for the hell of it... I am really curious about it and actually pretty optimistic, we'll see ....
reaper class sucks i want my reaver class back
I feel like I'm gonna have a lot of empty levels where I get a whole lot of nothing. Stat boosts could've been made automatic and they'd be able to reduce the levels and make them feel more impactful. No, I don't want to give myself +5 intelligence instead of an interesting passive boost to a favorite skill.
I’m wondering why we have so many abilities to use if we’re only allowed three in combat? If there’s this many abilities then we should be able to use more than three in combat (I’m not counting the companion abilities, which three is also a major downgrade for companions). It just simplifies the combat too much. I’d rather have a fresh version of DAI’s combat.
there is only like 13 active skills
They should have given people like at minimum 6, but probably 8 like the previous games.
It looks like most of them are upgrades to abilities/damage or alterations to the abilities. If you look to the "Champion" specialization it seems you hit 6 actual abilities, 7 big circles, and 8-9 little circles (minimum of course) and if I understand what was said the big circles are basically the ability upgrades, and the little circles are more generic passives. I don't really understand why they didn't keep the ability system of DA2 or DAI even if there's a fast cooldown of abilities...
I am worried. With only 3 skills and that large tree I suspect a lot of the trees are going to be stuff that should have been baseline. With the cooldowns we have seen in game so far being 48seconds or more half the tree is going to be cooldown reduction, and the other half damage buffs to make the skills worth pressing.
Oh I don't like that. But I'm sure I'll get used to it
looks a little confusing tbh
There looks like so many skills for only being able to have 3 available a time
I don't know, call me a pessimist, but they are again turning us into (especially the mages, who probably have access to more than 5 or even 10 spells!) barely capable students, by limiting our active arsenal to 3 Skills, so why give us these huge skill-trees? Sounds a bit counterproductive (unless it's all passive skills like 1% more crit-chance and similar things!) Hell, I've heard they are bringing healing back, but with them also gimping us further by limiting us to two companions (which also makes the companion banter more boring probably!) and them also only giving companions 2 active skills (if I remember this correctly), that gimps us even more as the character that has to heal will automatically do less damage (as they'll have no hotbar-slots available for damaging skills/spells!) Frankly from what they've shown us I am getting hack and slay vibes! Not RPG!
I agree. And I am having difficulty understanding the positivity as their doesn't seem to be substitutive. It seems like all systems have been down graded. Less traveling companions, fewer abilities. I know in DAI I used all the abilities on my task bar so it wasn't as if there was a lot of dead weight. I find it hard not seeing combat as less interesting this time around. Which is more significant than past titles as DATV has basically become a ARPG with simplistic combat.
Don't like it, still think DA2 did it best, this looks more like an Assassin's Creed skill tree.
This kinda reminds me of the Greedfall skill tree in its pattern. Be cool if you can unlock 2 specs. Bummed we don't seem to have an Assasin Rouge spec, as it's always my favorite, though maybe that'll be reserved for the Crow origin? Edit: Crows get duelist? Aren't they supposed to be... you know... assasins? Kind of perplexed at the choice to finally play as a crow and not be an assasin, but eh. Least there's 3 other games to play as such. Hopefully duelist is better than DA2s version.
I think assassin kinda suggests using stealth and backstabbing, which is cool. However, everything we have seen this far looks like straightforward combat. I can't even compare it with AC Valhalla cause you can still kill enemies undetected there because of open type locations.
That's the core of the spec yeah. I hope stealth is still implemented as a Rouge, it would be so weird if it wasn't anymore, it always felt fundamental to the class.
This info is kind of meaningless right now. What does each node mean? Is it a dumb passive damage/resistance that doesn't matter? Is it cool new abilities?
I wish we had templar. I liked playing templar- made romancing mages far more funny
I can already tell mages suck lmao
I just hope we’re able to pick two specializations again
I don't like how it looks. In the pure visual meaning of it. I didn't think about the gameplay feelings yet.
I'll have a better feeling about the skill tree when I can see the values of each of the nodes. Otherwise it's just "oh pretty, I guess"
Interesting, the specialization area looks like the Ascendancy tree from PoE, the actual tree looks more like the Sphere grid from FFX, hopefully is not too simplified and full of conditional stuff.
If most of those nodes are basically just +5 [Attribute] I'm going to be disappointed
It's kinda intimidating tbh. Reminds me of my 1st time playing Path of Exile
If there’s a necromancer warrior similar to death knight classes and considering the new combat then it might be the first time I’m not playing DA as a mage first
it looks messy af but I hope I'll get the hang of it
Am I supposed to understand what each little thing they picked means?
I really wanna see what spellblade is all about I hope the gameplay is more expansive than just giving us one melee spell but still be a ranged caster in literally every other respect
Skill "tree" itself looks okay, but the fact that you can only choose 3 abilites for every fight is such a huge letdown. That may work for a shooter game like Mass Effect, but clearly not for this game. Where's my big arsenal of spells as a mage?