Are Passive Skills Boring?

[Red]

In another forum discussing Constitution, the actual fun of passive skills like Thick Skin was brought up. While that forum shouldn't really address a lot of other passive skills, it's something that is worth discussing.

I personally feel that passive skills are a fun part of the game. I really enjoy building a character who is inherently more powerful, without relying on skills that can be put on cooldowns or sustains that can be disrupted. While the most fun passives are things that have special passive effects, like Sun's Vengeance, straight stat buffs are worth keeping in my opinion. It provides the options of either increasing passively all other skills or focusing on a skill you already possess, or learning more skills. It's another option, and one I personally enjoy.

[0player]

I wholeheartedly agree that there's a merit to building a character with passive skills, and that deciding where to spend your points is an interactive experience on its own.
Combat Training skills may be simple, but they're necessary; and I presonally enjoy the process of considering one of them as an option on a certain levelup.

[Red]

It's also nice on less focused melee classes, like Wyrmics. There's a perfectly viable (I'm a shitty, shitty player and got all the way to High Peak with this build) breath based build for Wyrmics that uses no Combat Training skills whatsoever, since all your damage comes from breath attacks and similar. Note, however, this build still uses the Wyrmic Guile, Chromatic Fury, adn Ancestral Life passives. (And it technically has Fungal Growth, which is a passive too, but who actually uses Fungal Growth? I've not seen a build that uses it, and it seems like the main healing based builds are all magic classes.)

[Doctornull]

Justify or defend Combat Veteran.

I dare you.

[Faeryan]

I kinda like Combat Veteran. Many of my chars spec at least some of it.

Especially early game those little Stamina and HP regen help quite a bit. Spell save is nice always and the last one with stamina adds helps some heavy stamina users to keep going.

I understand it seems a bit weak, especially later in the game. With some little fixes it could become a lot more desirable.

The first stamina regen could stay as is. The HP regen I think once scaled with Con. Not sure if it still does as I stat Con rather rarely. A little Con scaling wouldn't hurt the usefulness of either the skill or Con.
The magic save thing could be stretched to do all saves, though it might require toning the numbers down a bit.
The last skill might be more desirable as is after the prerequisites are made useful, or it could get a little boost for all resources, like 1 Vim, 5 mana etc when maxed. Something that'd give at least a little to everyone but still wouldn't make it absurdly powerful. (Like 20 Vim per kill)

[SageAcrin]

I like regen stack builds, and Combat Veteran's first talent is fine for that.

Regen can basically be thought of as slightly delayed but otherwise better flat rate armor.

Quick Recovery I'm never sure what to do with, and Spell Shield just needs work obviously(I'd love to have it do something like shorten the duration of magical status), but overall I think it's a reasonably interesting tree outside of the final talent(which is honestly something that rolling into Quick Recovery might be nice for).

I'm not really sure how you'd replace it, regardless. I don't want every class having huge Stamina or Life regeneration. Could make it stat scale to be more interesting, that'd be fine.

[Red]

I'm running a Ghoul Sun Paladin right now, and I've been putting points in Combat Veteran too. I've got good heal mod and not enough points in healing skills, so that regen goes a long way to helping me survive long fights, and my spell save is pretty low, so I'll be sticking points into Spell Shield soon enough. (Unless I find good Spell Save+ gear.) Admittedly, I've never had stamina issues on this class, but I've never really played a big stamina class for very long either, so I don't know how useful it is.

The only thing that seems useless is the fourth skill, Unending Frenzy. "On killing an enemy" skills are some of the worst in the game by and large, since most of the real tough foes, bosses, rares, etc., do not summon allies. It'd only be useful against Necromancer and Summoner rares, really. Not to mention it only gives 20 stamina with five skill points in it (at mastery level 1, so most classes with it will probably have more like 25) which is only about enough to use one good skill. It might work better as an active skill that works sorta like a Heroism Infusion, giving you bonus combat stats and giving you a large negative HP buffer.

[Who]

On the whole I like them, but I wish melee characters had more flexibility with their generics.

[Davion Fuxa]

Passive Talents in concept are fine, but likely the main problem with Passive Talents in Tales of Maj'Eyal is that the 'unfun' talents are too generic. It may be time to start discussing the removal of category trees like Combat Veteran and Combat Training and look into simply redistributing the effects of those talents into stats. This would mean stats would have more emphasis on overall character design which I think I could be personally fine with.

[Lyoncet]

I very much like passives. Like Red and 0player, I like both the (not at all passive) process of deciding whether I want to boost actives, passives, or sustains, and I also like the feeling of being able to invest class/generic points into boosting what is fundamentally my character him/herself. And being able to choose to focus a character more on one vs. the others introduces some good character differentiation, which is always a good thing.

Hell, I even think it would be cool to have classes that have a greater focus on passives in general. I've only played a few classes, but the closest I can think of is the Mindslayer with the focus on sustains - which do feel quite a bit different because of the toggle/resource usage/dispellability.

[Doctornull]

It may be time to start discussing the removal of category trees like Combat Veteran and Combat Training and look into simply redistributing the effects of those talents into stats. This would mean stats would have more emphasis on overall character design which I think I could be personally fine with.

Yes. Very yes.

I very much like passives.

Some passives aren't boring. They can stay.

The boring ones? They can go away.

[Red]

And what do you consider boring, Doctornull? A list might help, as well as a bit more input from Davion, since so far you two are the ones who think they are dull.

Lyoncet, if you don't mind using a bunch of sustains instead of passives, Doombringer and Sun Paladin can both run ridicluously sustain heavy builds. My current Sun Paladin has a max positive energy penalty of around 80 or so because of all the sustains I maintain, and I didn't even get Precognition for one more sustain. While I do use active abilities, I only really use defensive ones and a few attack abilities. I am fully capable of bumping anything normal to death and potentially bosses too. Hell, I can kill crowds by standing still and doing nothing long enough, what with Retribution and Fearscape Mantle.

[Davion Fuxa]

Anything that can reasonable be rounded out into a stat without being missed.

Look for more here:

Phasing Out Combat Training & Combat Veteran

[Doctornull]

And what do you consider boring, Doctornull? A list might help

In the previous thread, I've given you a list three times already. This is the fourth time:
- Combat Veteran (the whole tree)
- Thick Skin

Just so we're clear, that's NOT EVERYTHING -- there are other boring things which are NOT in that list -- but it certainly ought to be enough to help you figure out what we're talking about.

[Red]

Combat Veteran and Thick Skin are being pretty well addressed in the other thread, linked to by Davion, so anyone who's interested in discussing those skills should head over there.

Are there any other notable skills you'd like to bring up, Doctornull? I'm aware that the skills you consider boring are the passive buffs, the kind of skills that grant a constant modifier rather than a chance for effects, but not having played even close to all the classes yet, I'm not aware what many of the skills might be.