Skill Customization

Kind of got this idea from glyphs from WoW. I think it would be neat if players can customize their characters a bit by modifying what their skills do.

Essentially what it would allow a player to do is improve a skill in some way while weakening it in another, or change how it functions. These can be changed at any time outside of combat (maybe with reagent cost), and only a certain number of them can be enabled at a time.

Examples:

Arcanist/Scholar/Summoner
Adloquium: Adloquium's barrier is 25% stronger, however its effect is no longer doubled on criticals.
Selene: Increases the effect of Selene's Fey Glow and Fey Light to 45%, however both skills now share the same cooldown.
Ruin II: Ruin II no longer Blinds the enemy.
Fester: Reduces the damage of Fester by 50%, however it no longer consumes Aetherflow.
Summon (Summoner): Summoned pets now appear as either an Emerald, Topaz, or Ruby Carbuncle.

Gladiator/Paladin
Savage Blade: Savage Blade now combos off Riot Blade instead of Fast Blade.
Bulwark: Bulwark causes damage blocked to be reflected back at the attacker, however it no longer increases block rate. Damage cannot exceed 10% of your Max HP per hit.
Fight or Flight: Reduces the cooldown of Fight or Flight by 30 seconds and reduces increased damage dealt to 20%.

Marauder/Warrior
Mercy Stroke: Increases potency to 300, however healing received from killing blows is reduced to 10%.
Berserk: Berserk no longer pacifies when the effect ends, however the effect is reduced to 35%.
Bloodbath: Increases Bloodbath's conversion to 50%, however the duration is reduced to 10 seconds.

Ideas? Thoughts?

I would love to see more customization, but unfortunately I believe that no matter what is added the community will still pigeon-hole people into one best customization. It happens on every game.

Sounds cool, but I wish this kind of customization would come from AF sets.

You mean Merit_Points right?

Great system, but people found out what was best 95% of the time and customization went to, you need to put all your points into this to be the best, anything else is a waste.

I do see this type of system coming but the perks need to be very well balances and work well with each others. To the point where if you have 2 SCH in you're party it would be best if one was skilled one way and the other skilled a different.

we need more customization like the PVP SKILLS have.

I'd rather have these bonus from armor sets rather than the skill itself, that way there wouldn't be a linear optimization towards the character.

I see alot of clones in this game. Or better yet, overhaul the whole skill tree itself. which is....... highly unlikely to happen.

The problem is that the customization choices in specializations will only go so far as the customization in battle choices. If fights are all essentially endgame raid models, there will only be one best choice set (whatever best matches the sidestep-nuke-repeat, etc. patterns of 'raiding'). Even if there were more variation in endgame styles, etc, you'd still be pigeon-holing yourself into a certain type thereof. I'd rather just see more tools in general (more than can be used within any singular pure-dps or pure-tanking, etc. style/rotation), and each ability having more interesting effects, based on underlying mechanics. I can't promise that this would move us further from 'ideal compositions' and the like, but it would at least help us feel like a more integral part of the fights, rather than each dps feeling like they're just doing their own thing. Free-cannoning should still be something 'worth' doing, but it should be a choice, not a standard for lack of anything else to do.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Thorauku

I'd rather have these bonus from armor sets rather than the skill itself, that way there wouldn't be a linear optimization towards the character.

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Even just some simple, quick-fix sort of changes would make gearing for physical classes more interesting. A single TP-recovery combo (not going to happen) or (my preference) having Invigorate be affected by Skill Speed would allow dps to use new rotations without sacrificing long-term dps. (Or just give Straight Shot a more aggregating critical strike chance/rating gain, instead of a flat duration buff, or slightly alter Heavy Shot's SS crit proc mechanics, so that Skill Speed can actually keep up with critical strike rating in terms of extra (effect) on attacks.) Though at the same time that would mean that there are fewer truly inferior stats, and BiS would be a smaller difference, and gearing even more linear... even if less uneven across classes. Hmm...

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Originally Posted by Kewitt

You mean Merit_Points right?

Great system, but people found out what was best 95% of the time and customization went to, you need to put all your points into this to be the best, anything else is a waste.

I do see this type of system coming but the perks need to be very well balances and work well with each others. To the point where if you have 2 SCH in you're party it would be best if one was skilled one way and the other skilled a different.

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I never played FF11 much so I didn't get to experience the system, but it looks like it just buff skills. What I'm suggesting is not straight up buffs, but something that changes how the skill functions or how the numbers are balanced. Make it more of the player's personal choice instead of shoving all your points into the abilities that will increase your DPS the most.

Of course, there will always be those players that will theorycraft what will be the absolute best, but the idea would be to come up with something that's reasonably balanced so that picking different talents than the next guy isn't going to hinder your ability to do your role.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Thorauku

I'd rather have these bonus from armor sets rather than the skill itself, that way there wouldn't be a linear optimization towards the character.

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The problem with making these part of armour set bonuses is that the player may not want the changed functionality. These aren't intend to just make the skill better.

(posterity)

some of the scholar stuff you mentioned could be nice.... especially the selene stuff
but what i really wanted is a not gimp protect... having some sort of "trait" that could be "cross class"-ish, something like...for scholars if you have protect and a conjurer lv.. 30 or so... you can select a new kind of trait from a new tab made especifically for cross class traits, that doesnt give you the proshell, but gives you an aditional effect on your protect, that increses the adloquium effect by 25% or something like this... so in a party with both white mage and scholar there could be times a protect from scholar would be a better option than the white mage....