Capstones

[Jorquin]

Legendary characters as a rule of thumb generally are pretty broken, but the bit that sucks more is the lack of versatility in classes. There is some wiggle room, but typically every class is shoehorned into one or two types of builds which are purely eq based. Theres minimal customisation. I mean, sure you can stack dodge on a thief as opposed to stacking damage, but fundamentally the playstyle doesn't change.

What could be cool to unbapt legend a bit and add some variance would be to break up legend a bit into specific "capstones", each with their own shtick. You could reuse coded content from other classes, so there wouldn't be a huge amount of work. Capstone should be things which are useful for the class, not horribly game breaking, but offer a new dynamic. This would allow customisation while also repealling some of the brokenness of legend by limiting how many legend ranks you can get - as you could only have one capstone at a time. Further, it would open up a ton of unorth

If you're wondering what the bapt im talking about, here's some hypothetical examples:

Thief
All legends - Access to legend pick rank, adrenaline rush and retaliation

Shadowblade capstone
Access to legend backstab rank
"Gloom" keyword - casts darkness - 4 tick recharge

Assassin capstone
Access to legend envenom rank
Gets the bash skill (auto superb) - use has 2 tick recharge

Distortionist capstone
Gets legend dodge rank
Gets "shimmer" keyword - casts mirror image - 3 tick CD
Gets "relocate" keyword - casts blink - 20 tick cooldown


White Robe
Baseline - gets boon and wither spells, gets access to globe rank

Purifier
Gets access to the cleanse rank
Gets heal as a 9th slot spell

Arcane warrior
-100% spell damage
Extra attack flag
3 damroll, 3 hitroll, +10 shortblades, +10 bludgeons, +10 miscs

--Couldn't think of another off the top of my head--

Cleric

Baseline - ameleorate, rapture, access to legend heal

Warpriest
Gets the strike skill
Gets access to legend steelskin

Danse Macabre
Accesss to animate dead rank
Gets flesh shield spell
Gets zombify spell


Anyway, you get my point. Indirectly a change like this would actually be a nerf as a result of only being able to get 1-2 legend ranks, but it would provide a greater level of customisation than we've seen (If there's 3 options per class).

Just an idea.

[albarn]

Fun,

I could see a Barb as an Iron Ingot, or a barb as a +dam assailant, or a barb as a +cha, Battle cry/Inspire mascot.

Something tells me it would be a lot of work, but it would add a interesting twist to end-game mechanics

[Willoe]

Love this post. Was just talking about something similar to this to someone else. Would be awesome to have some customization to your character.

[Malthros]

Make the white robe capstone give full spell duration on transference and nothing else.

[Tajs]

I like the idea of specializing like this! How easy it would be to switch specialization could be an issue - is it a command with cd or do you buy/sell like ranks? So could swap from solo/duo to group modes

[Lloth]

I do like the idea of breaking up the legendary ranks, currently the power spike once you become legendary is so huge. People will legend and immediately have access to at least 4/5 of the legendary ranks, making their characters power grow significantly in a matter of minutes. My idea was to stagger the legendary ranks to require progressing past rank 25 in order to purchase all of them, however this capstone idea sounds like a pretty cool way to introduce a sort of 'multi-class' option for players. 

It could also be organized similar to what Jorquin said:

If a thief takes the Shadowblade Capstone, they no longer have access to certain other legendary ranks. I certainly am not opposed to spicing things up and allowing further playstyle of characters and possibly reducing the overall power of one singular character.

[Gnua]

I like the idea of specializing like this! How easy it would be to switch specialization could be an issue - is it a command with cd or do you buy/sell like ranks? So could swap from solo/duo to group modes

is the idea that people would have to make difficult legendary choices?
shamans: control or regen
druids: healing cloud or stoneskin/enlarge
paladins: rally or lay
barbs: healdance or assail
warriors: bash or shield block
sky: volley or roc
clerics: animate or heal
mages: rent or locate

how feasible should it be to switch between capstones?  the current coin rank costs tend to discourage experimenting with non-standard builds.

[Lloth]

Regarding ranks, I still am a firm believer in once you purchase a rank, you should always have access to it. Then you could just mix and match ranks at any rank merchant and experiment.

[Jorquin]

There's tons of cool stuff that's possible, this is just one idea. It comes down to the amount of coding effort available (which is often limited) and prioritisation. I'd love to see some cool capstones though, especially if they create build variant options for some of the pigeon-holed classes. Like for example


"Air dancer" for sky scout that gives them
- some meaty bonus to fence
- dodge chance
- a new riposte that's worthwhile to justify, like some sort of burst-esque flurry attack
(sky scout has a viable alternative than afk-bot-plunk-mode)


"Graceful duelist" for warrior which if you're wielding a one handed weapon with no shield, offhand or held item then:
- activating parry causes no lag
- commands can be entered while parrying - including rescue (without breaking parry)
- you attack as per normal regardless of parrying
- when attempting to parry a mobile whose thac0 / hitroll are too high for it to be parried, chance to "deflect" some damage from hits
(warrior tank now actually worthwhile)


"Golem master" for red robe
- you can now have two different golem pets active at the same time
(red robes can now contribute meaningful melee damage)



I mean you could go on forever. I'm sure other people have great ideas, but everything takes time to code... It'd just be great to see greater variation which also limited access to legend ranks. That way, rather than just doing a straight nerf (either through increase legend rank cost, X ranks required to buy more, or straight power nerf) you're actually providing players with something new and awesome, but still getting the reduced overall power outcome which is kinda needed.

[Lloth]

Lord of the Dead:
Cleric(or evil_only Cleric)

-Granted the spell 'rotting flesh'
-Granted the skill 'drain'
-Granted the spell 'corpse explosion' use a corpse in the room as a weapon - explodes the corpse, causing bone fragments to deal nominal to massive area damage
-Granted the spell 'zombie double'

There really is an endless list of things to do, but like Jorquin said, the coding effort would be required. It's kind of fun just to see what cool combos you could make!

[Gnua]

limited) and prioritisation. I'd love to see some cool capstones though, especially if they create build variant options for some of the pigeon-holed classes.

Would it be feasible to have "rank/capstone pages" where one can switch between pages for low cost?  That way tanks could drop the steelskin for the small stuff and have a little fun.  some of the dps could switch into tanky mode when no real tanks are available.  Currently people may feel the need to be in "pigeon hole" for the real fights and think it prohibitively expensive to switch out of and bank into pigeon hole.

[Malthros]

Regarding ranks, I still am a firm believer in once you purchase a rank, you should always have access to it. Then you could just mix and match ranks at any rank merchant and experiment.

Agreed, the coin cost is a time sink more than anything else and essentially punishes you for wanting to try something else.  I'd even be ok with ranks still getting fully reset on reincarnation (though I'd be on board with non-legend ranks remaining when you reincarnate).


"But what if someone farms the coins to unlock all the IMM_[whatever] and damage shield ranks" the naysayers?  Well if someone spends the time to farm the coins, let them?  Spending dozens of hours to buy ranks and expand your options for the rest of wipe is a good way to expand character power without a purely vertical gain like legendary, reincarnation, or the medal solo grind.

[Jorquin]

The idea about having a dual rank tree is pretty cool. Then you could have two sets of ranks and swap between them with a KW with some cooldown. That way you could have your tank ranks, and your damage dealing ranks... or your zoning ranks and soloing ranks.

Coin cost of buying the ranks for both trees would be a bit of a pain in the ass though.

[Vasagh]

The basic idea has some merit but it won't be very valuable/well executed unless considerable design (some coding?) effort is put in to add a lot more to distinguish sub-classes as a whole. The not-so-perfect examples are the scout and mage classes, except for the fact that the selection is  static and made at creation time. The MMO RIFT is another example that works in a good way and allows you to switch on the fly.

For nerfing or balancing legendary characters/ranks, I think those should be looked at more directly and not through the lens of sub-classing or other changes which only complicate balancing even further. Having said that if sub-classing were to happen it might make sense for some ranks to be unique to the sub-class (same as mages/scouts).

I personally would rather see design/coding effort be put into making PK viable again (fighting over zones access or the map rather than just eq!) than these somewhat lower value propositions (like Reincarnation etc) that will never offer as much bang.