Skill Feats

[banjo174]

You need TOUGHNESS!

Uhm.. What good is toughness going to do exactly? Rogues have decent dodge, acrobats have decent mobility, and decent defensives. Then of course they do have a form of CC, granted it isnt the best CC but it is there. They can bluff things off of them onto other party members. Rogues shouldnt be getting hit, they should be doing the hitting.

[Xgya]

Now you're suggesting that anyone/everyone should get the better ST's, and without a feat, "just because"? Sorry, no thanks.

To be fair, that's how it works in 4th edition, the totally-most-beloved D&D edition of them all.

4e, despite all its flaws, was very well-balanced because of this - it removed part of the weakness of MAD classes (Multiple Ability Dependent) by making each stat more versatile by default, but then balanced everything else with the perception that everyone was min-maxed because everyone easily could be.

[janave]

In an ideal world most skills were active, much like intimidate, diplomacy and bluff, the skill feats also granting a bonus -15 or -20% cooldown would be great then. It keeps them authentic while they are also adapted for the DDO gameplay.

Animated skills like Tumble and Jump could receive some speed boosts i guess.

Easy ones?:
- Heal/Repair, already works as an active just needs to be updated to DDO 2.0/+ values. Skill feat could speed up animation.
- Spell craft could be used every 5 minutes cooldown to conjure up a little bit of spell casting materials, success and amount depends on skill eg: 50 skill, 50% chance to create 10 spell casting components. (The omni dust version, bound to character ). Could be limited per shrines too i guess. Skill feat: reduce cooldown to 3 minutes.

Hard cases:

- Haggle could be fairly powerful if we had actually useful vendors, that uhm sell great loot , ofc it would first need to be solved that the plat economy is not a disaster. Fix the plat economy then the skill is halfway fixed too.
- Listen skill: this is pretty much content dependent now. I would not mind if it was turned into some sort of action boost, like every 90 seconds activate to gain 20s "lesser evasion" success depends on the skill score. Skill feat: drop it to 60s cd.
- Balance, 90s cd, short action boost to ignore slippery surfaces, grant skill to % deflection to knockdown and knockback ? Skill feat: drop it to 60 seconds cd.

[FranOhmsford]

- Spell craft could be used every 5 minutes cooldown to conjure up a little bit of spell casting materials, success and amount depends on skill eg: 50 skill, 50% chance to create 10 spell casting components. (The omni dust version, bound to character ). Could be limited per shrines too i guess. Skill feat: reduce cooldown to 3 minutes.

Sounds pointless - If you need components that badly then a 50% chance of creating 10 of them is a drop in the bucket!

Spellcraft in 2nd Ed. PnP was a way to tell what the enemy was casting at you - I'd like to see Spellcraft give an Exceptional bonus to Spell Saves equal to 1/2 your rank in the skill for 6 seconds with a 20 second cooldown

Hard cases:

- Haggle could be fairly powerful if we had actually useful vendors, that uhm sell great loot , ofc it would first need to be solved that the plat economy is not a disaster. Fix the plat economy then the skill is halfway fixed too.

Haggle should be merged with Diplo - They're never gonna "Fix" the plat economy now they've added Astral Shards!

Diplo is a weak skill as is and merging it with Haggle would help.

- Listen skill: this is pretty much content dependent now. I would not mind if it was turned into some sort of action boost, like every 90 seconds activate to gain 20s "lesser evasion" success depends on the skill score. Skill feat: drop it to 60s cd.

Listen should give a passive Blind Fighting bonus with each rank equalling 1% chance to bypass Ghostly/Blur/Invis etc.

If the Devs won't allow Listen to do what it should do then just merge it with Spot already!

- Balance, 90s cd, short action boost to ignore slippery surfaces, grant skill to % deflection to knockdown and knockback ? Skill feat: drop it to 60 seconds cd.

I was playing a just hit Lvl 20 First Life Dwarf Barbarian yesterday and doing some favour farming.

Lailat and Sinvala both constantly knocked me over! {these are Lvl 12 and 13 quests}

The above is a GREAT idea!
BUT I don't like the "short" bit versus that cooldown - What do you mean by "short"? 20 seconds? OK, 6 seconds? NO CHANCE, Not with that cooldown!
How about 12 seconds with a 60 second cooldown, skill feat drops it to 30 seconds cooldown?

[C-Dog]

In an ideal world most skills were active, much like intimidate, diplomacy and bluff,..

That could be the root of the problem right there, or part of it - that many players, being accustomed to tabletop play, find it frustrating (consciously or no) that they cannot use a skill to their advantage when they want to.

In tabletop, if you have a skill that you've invested in, you can try to roleplay into a situation where that skill can be used to your advantage - e.g. moving to the stairway to fight so your Balance gives you good footing, while your opponent sucks on a penalty, etc.. In an MMO, that sort of choice only happens if the instance is coded to allow an Active skill use of that particular skill, and always at a particular moment and in a particular way.

Giving all skills a Passive angle would mean that any build with X skill enjoys those benefits anytime and anywhere that they are approp, and a player w/ that skill would seek those out.

DDO is (currently) not set up to do that easily - but maybe it's something to consider?

[Igognito]

A lot of blah blah follows... Skip to suggestion

Many things in ddo are numerically off... Skill focus is one of these things...

Even in P&P skill focus was something you would avoid to use. There are better/cheaper compromises than wasting a feat for a +3 Or The +2 in two skills.

In p&p with my groups we would allow you to make a skill as a class skill with the feat (instead of giving you a bonus)
That in the long term was much better and some players that wanted to use a skill with their characters would actually take the feat.

In DDO what I think would make sense would be a +1/character level. That would practically equal with an item bonus. Still I would think twice before taking the feat but it could help a first lifer trappers or umd users.
And yes I don't see the feat to be used on any other skill.

Even first lifers can have enough intimidate for crowd control.
Only trappers need a bare minimum of 2 to 7 high end skills!

Search/disable device/spot/open locks/umd/hide/move silently
That is a lot of items, a lot of abilities. This a feat might actually come in handy.

And yes hide and move silently are convenient and some times needed for trappers. (Doing traps in the middle of a fight for example)

Now allowing a +1/level on umd might be a bit OP so let's exclude umd from skill focus.

Together with this improvement also the +2 for two skills feats should be improved and I would easily say let's make them +4 for the two skills. Here the magical aptitude feat with a +4 umd would become interesting as it will now be one of the few ways to increase umd.

Finally combat casting is an anecdote, so just make it do something unique. For example: you always take a 20 on concentration rolls in combat! That would be interesting.

My suggestion for DDO skill feats

Skill focus (available for all skills except UMD) +1/character level.
Skill Pairs increase to +4 for each skill for heroic levels and +8 for epic levels +12 for legendary levels :-D
Combat Concentration you always roll a 20 in combat Concentration checks