Thoughts on ED Change

[GoldyGopher]

TL/DR version: I hope the development team goes back to the drawing board and reconsiders several aspects to their design and implementation.

Preamble: I am a fan of the current Epic Destiny system using spheres. I think it was one of the more interesting game systems out there. It was different, unique and had many positive effects on game play. I don't think it was perfect and it had several issues or warts if you prefer. Years ago a former member of the Development Team laid out the entire vision for Epic Levels and Epic Destinies and in my opinion it sounded like a much more perfect union of leveling and Epic Prestige Classes. The Dev added that its level of complexity was dependent upon proposed changes to the heroic systems (including Enhancements) that in the end never occurred. I do not know how far this proposed system got in to development, was it this dev's pipedream, did it fail because the complexity of changes for enhancements and prestige classes never occurred with the launch of Shadowfell Conspiracy. Yes, I just dated that discussion. In the end this discussion left me with the feeling there was so much more they could do with Epic Destinies in their spherical form. It brings up the question why were the adjustments the devs thought they could make never implemented?

The Common Class

In one breath I understand the decision to use a single common class for epic levels and cannot comprehend why it is in use. There are, and have been, many strong arguments to change that system.
I would suggest a much more in depth discussion occur on this topic, involving the player base. To me using a minimum of four classes (Arcane, Divine, Martial, and Primal) makes far more sense than the single common class, and doesn't add the complexity of the Epic Classes, expanded Heroic Classes, or other variants of that system. Using four common classes you could tie the current sphereical epic destiny feats to them while offering slightly different bonuses to each level. Primal could have wilderness lore, an HP bump and maybe 3/4 BAB, while Divine could have Religious Lore Alignment (and Fire) spell power with a 1/2 BAB.

The Pigeon Holing Design Conundrum

In the old design Twists were a great enabler of heterogenous character design or build variety. That system didn't turn bad builds into top tier builds, but it allowed players to play lower tier builds and either reinforce strength or lessen weakness allowing them to play their way.
This new design doesn't have that flexibility. If you are a solo player and would like to twist in healing you now need to not only dedicate one of your three trees to it, you have to spend a fairly substantial number of points for things you used to twist in.
Many of the new tree designs are very specific in the playstyle they are aimed for. If you are a TWF Cleric or Bow Wielding Paladin or a Mechanic Rogue or any number of dozens of other playstyles where are you going to spend your points. That new Razorclaw Handwrap wearing barbarian that is a new iconic class, well you don't truly align up with anything in the new Epic Destinies and you are out of luck.
Grand Master of Flowers?

New/Casual Players vs. Experienced/Hard Core Players

I would argue that at least to me it is easy to see where significant design changes were made to appease the various groups. Everyone of them is a head scratcher in terms of game design. All you are doing is upsetting both groups of players without effectively dealing with the power gap between both groups.
For new players the old system was confusing and lacked in-game tutorial. There were many options for them to make poor choices. Epic Leveling was a slow grind. The Twists allowed these players to play their way and enjoy the game.
For Experienced players too much time was spent in off destines grinding out Epic Past Lives that slowed their grind down.
Level Gating vs. Front Loading vs. Point Expenditures vs. Quests or Wilderness Adventure Areas. This is a whole conundrum of problems. In the end I think even more experienced players will use Wilderness Adventure Areas to quickly earn XP in epic levels, meaning even less of the Epic Content will be run. In 15 to 17 hours of dedicated play 5 players can earn 7.5 million XP without a pot. Throw in a slayer pot and that gets faster and throw in a XP pot more XP.
I think that it is casual players who are feeling the biggest disadvantage in the new system. Experienced players will adapt and move on, casual players for a myriad of reasons cannot make those same adjustments. They don't have the gear, the bonuses the past lives give characters, the know how to adapt their game. It may add a small handful of hours for an Experienced Player to level up a character for 20 to 30, it will take about 15 to 20 more hours for the casual player, on top of it taking four to ten times longer already.

In the end I don't think what we are getting are better, only different. Under the concept the devil you know, I see more warts and pitfalls in the new system. There is going to be way too many players frustrated by the overall philosophies behind the changes. The problem is I like many other veteran players will adapt and move on, but for the those casual players when they adapt and move on it will be to a different game.

[Vish]

walking a labyrinth versus twister,
i agree
a time twister

[Annex]

It's kinda funny. The developers removed optional experience from quests to make players run a wider variety of quests. The fast movers switched to slayers. People like me who need to quest because slayer experience sucks solo without cheat potions, ended up having to run much worse experience per time quests, slowing us down. This new Epic Destiny revamp will slow me down further. I will lose a ton of power at L20, forcing me to drop the difficulty, losing a bunch more experience, and forcing more quest reruns, resulting in even more lost experience from lost optional experience. *laughs*

What really concerns me is the Anniversary Party, Cannith Challenges, Crystal Cove, and Night Revels. I typically run those at L20, when I can use Epic Destiny power to over power me so I can survive and earn greater rewards. That will no longer be possible. Those are some of my favorite things to run in DDO. It makes me sad to think I will not be able to run them and succeed.

I have come to the conclusion it is intentional. Slowing down solo players, players without a support network, players without all the Expansions and equipment, compels them to purchase Expansions and store cheats to catch up. Restructuring the Epic Trees to work like Heroic Trees gives the developers room to sell more power to the most powerful players while squeezing the least powerful players for more catch ups. It really is quite clever, if you think about it from that perspective.

Sorry. I need to offer an aside here. I was so really looking forward to trying Horizon Walker. Running around with a bow is super fun in other games. When I saw I needed to pay an extra $40 for it I laughed. I think Torchlight I and II cost me $6 US, total. Titan Quest cost me $10 US with all the expansions.

I personally find the whole revamp boring and confusing. In a game like Torchlight, the Trait Trees are very compact. About half the skill tree upgrades provide a new ability--a rain of arrows, arrows that explode on impact, seeking arrows--stuff like that. Each new ability really changes game play. None of the abilities have cool down timers. It is super fun.

It's fine. Whatever. I will squeeze what fun I can out of DDO then move on. DDO is still very fun for short periods, before the weight of the catch up, the horrific repetition, the confusion of building characters, saps all my hope. That usually takes two to four weeks. I suppose that works fine for Standing Stone Games. They get revenue from me every time I return, but since I only play a month or two, tops, I do not bog down their servers. Win win from a certain point of view.

I feel bad writing this. I know the developers worked very hard building the new Epic Trees. I am a bubblehead and find them confusing and unhelpful but will make do. I just want to run through dungeons and blow up monsters with neat abilities and win. The whole make a spreadsheet to build the perfect character aspect of DDO really drags me down.

[silinteresting]

I'm sorry but build diversity has just gone through the roof, hybrids are going to be much better to play. Geez if I'm reading things right even the old builds are going to be making a return, for instance the old undead magic missile spammer. You've got to look at what not your losing but at the myriad of possibilities your gaining. I for one as a solo player can't wait for the revamp it's going to be glorious.

[TFerguson]

These changes are bad.

The old system this is replacing is better than what is being proposed.

Is it savable? Maybe, but the trees need a ton of work.

[TPICKRELL]

I'm sorry but build diversity has just gone through the roof, hybrids are going to be much better to play. Geez if I'm reading things right even the old builds are going to be making a return, for instance the old undead magic missile spammer. You've got to look at what not your losing but at the myriad of possibilities your gaining. I for one as a solo player can't wait for the revamp it's going to be glorious.

Did you try to rebuild your toons on lammania in the new system? I rebuilt two, one with all the epic past lives and both of them were weaker in the new system. By the time they took tier 5 in their main destiny there were barely enough points left to get the cores in the other two trees and mostly fluff to take to get the cores since the epic mantle and strikes are the main features for tier 1 and 2 enhancements and they are exlusive/share timers.

My toons have lost considerable flexibility and power, even the one with max permanent destiny points.

[Memnir]

Haven't checked out the changes for myself yet, but the number of trusted voices who are saying the changes aren't positive has me very concerned.
Time will tell, but sadly I'm not overly optimistic.

[Seph1roth5]

It seems like the only really good thing about the new system is not needing karma anymore. When they first announced that ED would be changing and during the first preview, that was really the ONLY all-positive change, and they hawked it, a LOT. But the ridiculous thing is, they could've just taken that requirement out and left EDs as they are.

Everything else said ~positively about the new system was basically them defending it. It wasn't "this is new and cool" it was "well you're losing __ BUT, now ___"

I agree that there are going to be new options available, but I still don't think our ED was so broken it needed this overhaul. It baffles me that they can't make things better or give more options without making sweeping nerfs/changes..

Take the last XP pass as an example. They looked at metrics of how often quests were run, and bumped up the worst quests' XP. That alone would've been great! But, they also looked at the most-run quests, in other words, the quests people LIKED TO RUN THE MOST, and nerfed their XP.

Why do they feel the need to tell us how to play the game? They keep saying this new system will make it so you're unlocking things on the way from 20-30 (and beyond), but were there many (any?) people clamoring for that? Other than maybe elitists who are going to mow through everything anyway, they might think the current system is boring because it's too easy, but then will just mow through everything after u51 too because max reaper points or constant 50% xp pots+throwing $$ or something.

I've heard multiple times from devs that there was a proposed legendary tree system that would have been separate from epic, I'm guessing a 30-40 system like how epic destinies are 20-30. I think that would've been 1000x better. The devs themselves obviously thought it was good at the time, but supposedly the player's council didn't like it, and it was scrapped in favor of this complete overhaul.

I really wish I could get a look at that proposed system lol (without the NDA), because I thought that's what they WOULD do when they announced they'd be raising the level cap, and it sounds like a much better idea. If we had a separate system for legendary they wouldn't have NEEDED to do a stat squish, or change EDs, because there would be new quests/difficulty that could be tailored for that power level.

[GoldyGopher]

I'm sorry but build diversity has just gone through the roof, hybrids are going to be much better to play. Geez if I'm reading things right even the old builds are going to be making a return, for instance the old undead magic missile spammer. You've got to look at what not your losing but at the myriad of possibilities your gaining. I for one as a solo player can't wait for the revamp it's going to be glorious.

To me it appears that you haven't really tried the system and are relying upon the commentary of the Development Team made prior to the early preview.

In Preview 1 we saw 9 of the 12 Epic Destinies that we will have when U51 is released. I transferred 25 of my 42 characters over to Lammania and attempted to build out the Three Destiny Trees. Now I am going to add that this was very much an early try and my point expenditure probably will be adjusted slightly in an attempt to be more efficient with point expenditures.

1 Character was clear more powerful than with the previous system.
6 Characters had power that was on par with the previous system.
9 Characters had power that was less powerful than with the previous system
9 Characters had power that was greatly diminished compared with the previous system.

I had one character who truly aligned with the tropes used to design the system. My 32 point Khorvairian elf assassin build. Not shockingly I had meaningful choices and everything I ended up taking in the two trees aligned with the character. My sneak and assassinations stayed at the same level and I was able to raise my generic DPS a decent amount. I lost 2 points of AC, picked up 225 HP, lost 5 in saves but raised my PRR and decreased my melee threat by 10%.

I looked at six characters that were somewhat aligned to the design, a Fighter Vanguard, a TYWA Barbarian, a Bear Tank, hybrid Pally Tank, A Thrower, and a Sorc*. I didn't have any choices, I filled out one tree that sort of aligned with my build and had to waste eightish points on things I wouldn't have spent but needed to move up the tree. I also didn't have meaningful secondary trees to use and so forth. I am not saying these characters were worse but they clearly weren't better. And if I redesigned them to better align with the philosophies for each tree -- Fighter Vanguard becomes Paladin Vanguard -- they probably would be more powerful.
* My Sorc is currently water spec'ed and I am comparing to fire spec'ed of previous life.

There were nine characters that I looked at that had some connection to the system. Many of these I spent points more equally in multiple trees because I didn't align at all, example Centered Paladin/fighter/Monk THF build. In my example I was clearly not a Divine Crusader, Legendary Dreadnought, not Fury of the Wild.
Even getting more points is not going to move these characters up on the power scale.

The rest of the characters I looked at had no connection to the design tropes used in tree design, or were monks. Now what.. You have no tree to lean into. In the previous system you could make a Pyrrhic Choice and twist in four/five choices from four other trees to make a ED that sort of worked. Now you are limited to the Pyrrhic Choice and a secondary tree you can spend 10/20 points in that makes the build less than viable.
Or the characters were Monk, to quote someone else, the GMOF is a Tree for other characters who want to cosplay monks. It was awful.

This is all very contrary to the stated design goal of versatility. As the poster child for an altoholic whose every character is designed and played differently that design goal appealed to me. The fact they missed the mark by so much is very disappointing. But that is my opinion.

I've heard multiple times from devs that there was a proposed legendary tree system that would have been separate from epic, I'm guessing a 30-40 system like how epic destinies are 20-30. I think that would've been 1000x better. The devs themselves obviously thought it was good at the time, but supposedly the player's council didn't like it, and it was scrapped in favor of this complete overhaul.

I really wish I could get a look at that proposed system lol (without the NDA), because I thought that's what they WOULD do when they announced they'd be raising the level cap, and it sounds like a much better idea. If we had a separate system for legendary they wouldn't have NEEDED to do a stat squish, or change EDs, because there would be new quests/difficulty that could be tailored for that power level.

I shutter to imagine what could be so awful that the Players' Council rejected it out of hand.

[MistaMagic]

Did you try to rebuild your toons on lammania in the new system? I rebuilt two, one with all the epic past lives and both of them were weaker in the new system. By the time they took tier 5 in their main destiny there were barely enough points left to get the cores in the other two trees and mostly fluff to take to get the cores since the epic mantle and strikes are the main features for tier 1 and 2 enhancements and they are exlusive/share timers.

My toons have lost considerable flexibility and power, even the one with max permanent destiny points.

Only done the one toon myself (My shuri thrower) and its a lot of swings and roundabouts as I have less dex (No longer in the tree) so damage down BUT gains are more doubleshot and a couple things I am not going to mention in case they get nerfed

[J1NG]

Did you try to rebuild your toons on lammania in the new system? I rebuilt two, one with all the epic past lives and both of them were weaker in the new system. By the time they took tier 5 in their main destiny there were barely enough points left to get the cores in the other two trees and mostly fluff to take to get the cores since the epic mantle and strikes are the main features for tier 1 and 2 enhancements and they are exlusive/share timers.

My toons have lost considerable flexibility and power, even the one with max permanent destiny points.

This was my experience as well.

Current approach on Live allows me to pick the Twists from a variety of areas (from differing Destinys) as Tiers so long as I've invested into them.

The new approach makes it hard to grab "what I really need" from other trees due to investment costs needed before I can reach them (assuming they are in the same tree that is).

Fairly certain diversity of character creation will fall after this Destiny change (a few character designs I've made will need to be entirely remade after the Destiny change). And main mains (that aren't affected as much) being (at best) kept in parity with a main Destiny is all we can hope for right now.

J1NG

[Hawkwier]

Agree with J1NG here.

There simply aren't enough points to take all the T5 in a main tree and do much more than put 11 into the other two for cores.

There is also comparatively little reward for Epic Completionists, at 1 point for each. That's far less comparatively for all the extra effort and expense to do all those epic PLs imo. 3 points would be a lot fairer and give more opportunities for build flexibility and diversity.

The principle of having access to 3 trees supports diversity, but in practice, the dearth of points and restrictions around mantles and epic strikes makes that hard to fulfill. Inability to switch EDs on the fly has also been severely curtailed.

Whether one likes the new system or not, for a variety of reasons, is open to question and YMMV after all, but positing the new system as being more flexible than what we currently have via twists just doesn't make much sense in practice.

[Aelonwy]

Agree with J1NG here.

There simply aren't enough points to take all the T5 in a main tree and do much more than put 11 into the other two for cores.

There is also comparatively little reward for Epic Completionists, at 1 point for each. That's far less comparatively for all the extra effort and expense to do all those epic PLs imo. 3 points would be a lot fairer and give more opportunities for build flexibility and diversity.

The principle of having access to 3 trees supports diversity, but in practice, the dearth of points and restrictions around mantles and epic strikes makes that hard to fulfill. Inability to switch EDs on the fly has also been severely curtailed.

Whether one likes the new system or not, for a variety of reasons, is open to question and YMMV after all, but positing the new system as being more flexible than what we currently have via twists just doesn't make much sense in practice.

Wholeheartedly agree. Virtual +1

And its really annoying seeing people say things like "well if you have ALL the epic past lives then you can have this hypothetical example"... I barely have ANY epic past lives and most of my characters are better off in the original system with what twists they can afford. So if this new system was meant to make epics a better experience for new players my experience with it is going to be far more representative than some triple epic completionists. People seem to loose sight of how long such a grind as that is and what the game experience is going to be heading into that grind.

[tapster]

I've read many, many threads and comments now about the ED changes and it seems to me that if we kept the option to twist abilities, as we do now from other ED's, then 95% of the criticism would melt away.

What is the reason for completely dropping Twists? (We still track past lives and fate points as they provide additional destiny points.)

Full disclosure - I've played a bit on Lam and U51 makes DDO less fun aka more boring. And it certainly drives a bus sideways through build diversity.

[Aelonwy]

I've read many, many threads and comments now about the ED changes and it seems to me that if we kept the option to twist abilities, as we do now from other ED's, then 95% of the criticism would melt away.

What is the reason for completely dropping Twists? (We still track past lives and fate points as they provide additional destiny points.)

Full disclosure - I've played a bit on Lam and U51 makes DDO less fun aka more boring. And it certainly drives a bus sideways through build diversity.

I could be wrong but I think its because of how the system is designed to spend ED AP the same way as heroics so unlike the current ED design where you fill out each tree as permanently as you like but can then activate another tree leaving the points spent and enhancements chosen in stasis so to speak... in the current design you can only have points spent in an already ACTIVE tree. Without those "in stasis" selections how do you select twists? You obviously don't want twists from active trees but only active trees can have points spent in them or enhancements selected.

To me the new system is more of a burden than the old, more shackling and rules and hurdles.
Level gating, points spent on cores when before they were free just for leveling up, watering down effects so the sentiment doesn't end up oooh I get to take more enhancements each level but oh! I must take more enhancements each level to come even halfway close to what I had before. But what I had before I had at 20 and now I won't have it till 30... gee that sounds like so much fun... /s No more twists, no more switching trees easily and conveniently for specific situations, nerfed/lowered magnitudes, lowered durations, longer cooldowns, shared cooldowns, exclusives. I'm just not seeing many net positives.

So far I've seen two hands down obvious improvements in the new system, no more ER tied to Karma per sphere and the DCs of ED abilities being more generalized to Character level +highest ability modifier. A third qualified positive is earning ED Ap at more regular consistent intervals, feels more progressive but its a shame that the enhancements had to be so watered down that it feels like two steps forward, one step back. I also like the changes to the Scion feats but that is somewhat tangential to the ED changes.

There are definitely positives, however... however I see no reason those unqualified positive changes could NOT have been made to the old system. So at this particular moment I view this system change the same as the stat squish, a method for reigning in character power, after it had already been sold to us, and consequently loosing a good portion of the convenience and flexibility of the old system. They could have revamped the old system with new tiers and cores that were level gated to level 30 and beyond and people wouldn't have batted an eye. But instead we've been given a repainted heroic system for epics shackled by exclusives and shared cooldowns and they wonder why it doesn't seem epic enough to us.

[MasterDragonan]

It's kinda funny. The developers removed optional experience from quests to make players run a wider variety of quests. The fast movers switched to slayers. People like me who need to quest because slayer experience sucks solo without cheat potions, ended up having to run much worse experience per time quests, slowing us down. This new Epic Destiny revamp will slow me down further. I will lose a ton of power at L20, forcing me to drop the difficulty, losing a bunch more experience, and forcing more quest reruns, resulting in even more lost experience from lost optional experience. *laughs*

What really concerns me is the Anniversary Party, Cannith Challenges, Crystal Cove, and Night Revels. I typically run those at L20, when I can use Epic Destiny power to over power me so I can survive and earn greater rewards. That will no longer be possible. Those are some of my favorite things to run in DDO. It makes me sad to think I will not be able to run them and succeed.

I have come to the conclusion it is intentional. Slowing down solo players, players without a support network, players without all the Expansions and equipment, compels them to purchase Expansions and store cheats to catch up. Restructuring the Epic Trees to work like Heroic Trees gives the developers room to sell more power to the most powerful players while squeezing the least powerful players for more catch ups. It really is quite clever, if you think about it from that perspective.

Sorry. I need to offer an aside here. I was so really looking forward to trying Horizon Walker. Running around with a bow is super fun in other games. When I saw I needed to pay an extra $40 for it I laughed. I think Torchlight I and II cost me $6 US, total. Titan Quest cost me $10 US with all the expansions.

I personally find the whole revamp boring and confusing. In a game like Torchlight, the Trait Trees are very compact. About half the skill tree upgrades provide a new ability--a rain of arrows, arrows that explode on impact, seeking arrows--stuff like that. Each new ability really changes game play. None of the abilities have cool down timers. It is super fun.

It's fine. Whatever. I will squeeze what fun I can out of DDO then move on. DDO is still very fun for short periods, before the weight of the catch up, the horrific repetition, the confusion of building characters, saps all my hope. That usually takes two to four weeks. I suppose that works fine for Standing Stone Games. They get revenue from me every time I return, but since I only play a month or two, tops, I do not bog down their servers. Win win from a certain point of view.

I feel bad writing this. I know the developers worked very hard building the new Epic Trees. I am a bubblehead and find them confusing and unhelpful but will make do. I just want to run through dungeons and blow up monsters with neat abilities and win. The whole make a spreadsheet to build the perfect character aspect of DDO really drags me down.

Awesome post, you hit it 100%, Thank you!
I did stop spending any money on this game and not planning on doing it anymore.
Just going to come back once in a while to run some favorite quests with what I got.
Nerfing quests, xp, and lvling speed was a first straw,
This is second.

[Monkey_Archer]

Agree with J1NG here.

There simply aren't enough points to take all the T5 in a main tree and do much more than put 11 into the other two for cores.

The main issue is going to be for martial builds. Stacking 3 tree cores for 90 melee power is essentially mandatory, forcing the 34/11/11 split with no real room for character customization. Spell casters on the other hand don't have this constraint as the DCs from cores don't stack. This allows for 34/22/0 splits that are far more interesting.

IMO DCs and melee/ranged power should follow the same pattern. Either they both stack or neither do, preferably neither. (and adjust the values to 30 per core)

There is also comparatively little reward for Epic Completionists, at 1 point for each. That's far less comparatively for all the extra effort and expense to do all those epic PLs imo. 3 points would be a lot fairer and give more opportunities for build flexibility and diversity.

Completely disagree.

4x Epic completionist on live is only 1 or 2 low tier twists.
4x Epic completionist+tomes is 11 points to spend in the new system. ie. 3 full cores +tier 1&2 effects. Its actually a massive buff to the value of epic lives.

[Hawkwier]

The main issue is going to be for martial builds. Stacking 3 tree cores for 90 melee power is essentially mandatory, forcing the 34/11/11 split with no real room for character customization. Spell casters on the other hand don't have this constraint as the DCs from cores don't stack. This allows for 34/22/0 splits that are far more interesting.

IMO DCs and melee/ranged power should follow the same pattern. Either they both stack or neither do, preferably neither. (and adjust the values to 30 per core)


Completely disagree.

4x Epic completionist on live is only 1 or 2 low tier twists.
4x Epic completionist+tomes is 11 points to spend in the new system. ie. 3 full cores +tier 1&2 effects. Its actually a massive buff to the value of epic lives.

These are good points.

[GoldyGopher]

The main issue is going to be for martial builds. Stacking 3 tree cores for 90 melee power is essentially mandatory, forcing the 34/11/11 split with no real room for character customization. Spell casters on the other hand don't have this constraint as the DCs from cores don't stack. This allows for 34/22/0 splits that are far more interesting.

IMO DCs and melee/ranged power should follow the same pattern. Either they both stack or neither do, preferably neither. (and adjust the values to 30 per core)

The real problem for Melee (and potentially Spell Casters) is that the trees themselves are designed around very specific character design tropes that don't align with some segment* of characters being played today. For example Divine Crusader is designed for a Paladin Vanguard. If you are a Paladin TWF or THF you don't align with that trope or if you are a fighter vanguard or a shield using bear tank and you use that tree where are you going to spend enough points to make the tree useful. Now what are you going to choose for your secondary trees? The further away from the design trope your character is the harder it will be to use the system.

Completely disagree.

4x Epic completionist on live is only 1 or 2 low tier twists.
4x Epic completionist+tomes is 11 points to spend in the new system. ie. 3 full cores +tier 1&2 effects. Its actually a massive buff to the value of epic lives.

I understand what you are saying, but in practice it is not going to matter. It will matter even less as the Level Cap goes up.

The new system gives you 11 points.... As you said for Melee it is already mandatory that you spend your points across multiple cores so it is not a third tree with 11 points it is spend 11 points in your secondary tree or a couple points in your primary tree and a the rest in your secondary tree. With 58 points that my more complete melee characters have you are already limited to 36, 11, and 11. The new player will start with 52 points and have a 30, 11 and 11 split. So those six points gives me what? An unepic epic moment? Some minor Tier 4 thing?

For me Epic Completionist gives me a free Cocoon with a free twist spot. So it frees up a twist spot I already had dedicated to that allowing me to take a twist that more aligns with my build. That free twist is more helpful in character design to a broader range of characters.

[mr420247]

Casters get nothing that stacks and no dcs spell power but melees have it so hard lol

very interesting what a joke of a system