I'm a game designer and I love this game, but it has some balance issues. A random list of skill change ideas I had to move toward the goal of unlocking many more fun builds across the classes and balancing overall power, that I think are cool:
Amazon -
Consolidate Evade/Dodge/Avoid and add a dodge roll ability to cover short distances quickly while adding a few frames of high defense.
Poison Javelin - usable with spears, dealing the damage on impact
Impale - small leap before attack if the enemy is out of normal range
Assassin
Weapon Block - works with all weapons at a reduced rate, and at a halved rate with 1 claw.
Psychic Hammer - if cast on a converted enemy, shatters conversion dealing high damage and adding a brief stun. This effect cascades to other converted enemies.
Mind Blast - damage raised significantly, but through a mechanism of additional hits per point so it doesn't affect duels if enemy players have basic/moderate MDR
Fire Blast - can bounce X number of times (going up with level) if it doesn't hit an enemy, and arc is reduced on targeted casts to lower damage delay
Wake of Inferno - sets enemies on fire, dealing damage over time
Dragon Flight - remove or greatly reduce cast time
Barb
Weapon Masteries condensed to two tiers - Blade/Impact/Piercing Mastery. Same effect as old masteries for Swords/Axes/Polearms, Maces/Flails/Hammers, Daggers/Spears etc.
New second tier of masteries - Dueling/Thrown Weapon/Great Weapon Mastery.
* Dueling gives % chance to block attacks with your weapon and instantly counterattack melee attacks
* Thrown Weapon gives piercing, %chance to not consume quantity, replenish quantity on strike (same) and X%chance to repeat attacks at Y different enemies (new)
* Great Weapon Mastery gives cleave (either arc or line depending on weapon) w/ damage = X% and increases the chance of CTC (chance to cast) and power of other on-hit effects like Crushing Blow, Open Wounds, Freeze Target, Slows Target etc
* Increased Stamina - renamed to Iron Lungs. % of your Warcries cost Stamina instead of Mana when over 50% Stamina, increases Warcry radius by X%, and Warcries have a Y% chance to cast again a split second after initial cast
Leap/Leap Attack - increase animation speed with more points
Druid
Bump up FCR/FHR table by a little
Increase life per level/Vitality
Shapeshifting - fix various bugs
Wolf Form - add baseline FRW
Bear Form - add baseline DR
Ravens - no longer limited in number of hits. Reduce damage, but let ravens pick up gold and destroy breakables. Ravens will also pick up potions if your belt has room for a similar/greater quality consumable. Ravens also have X% chance to pick an extra drop off of bodies. Slightly increase attack speed, lower attack delay, and AI prioritize ranged and wounded enemies.
Poison Creeper - poison mats are now barbed, dealing physical damage and slowing enemies that walk through it. Poison damage increased.
Wolves - consolidated into one skill (Dire Wolf). No longer need to eat bodies to gain rage, and wolves with higher health will move to the frontline while those that are damaged will fall back. Can eat bodies to heal themselves.
Swarmcaller - new ability where Dire Wolf used to be. Summons swarms of insects that relentlessly attack enemies dealing physical and poison damage. Flies to attack new enemies after current target is killed.
Carrion Vine - carrion vine can now enter the bodies of X number of enemies, turning them into flesh puppets. It will slowly drain their life, feeding it to you first (and then other allies in range). While possessing enemies, it can use their basic melee attack and will make them aggressively attack other enemies
Solar Creeper - instead of eating enemies, now tunnels around leaving patches of mana shrooms. They release spores that heal you and allies mana over time, but deals magic damage to enemies over time. You can walk through the shrooms but they can be destroyed by enemy fire, blocking occasional hits.
Spirit of Barbs - renamed Spirit of Wrath, aura grants X% bonus to elemental, poison and magic damage dealt (weaker than Convic/LR but a diff mechanic)
Arctic Blast - burst of damage on cast, creates fields of ice that chill/damage enemies, freezes enemies if they're focused long enough
Twister - click to cast, or hold to channel, summoning more twisters and making existing twisters converge and dance around your cursor
Hurricane - now grants Druid flight and minor speed boost. Missiles going through Hurricane have their attack rating reduced. If Hurricane ends while you're over a pit you drop off rapidly at the nearest valid ground.
Necro
Add 10-15 more peak death moans
Raise Skeletal Mage - changed to Invoke Spectre. Summons ghost mages that can fly go intangible at will and use elemental damage (excluding Cold). Damage is increased and body no longer required. If you click on an enemy while casting this, it summons the ghost mage of an element type targeting that enemy's weakest resist.
Blood Golem - attack cleaves and can cause open wounds. Heals you/self for open wounds damage.
Fire Golem - deals massive delayed AOE fire damage after death and AOE damage on summon
Revive - can be cast on Mercenaries and dead party members that have not released yet - if cast on dead party member, they control their revived body for the duration and can press Escape to "release." Revive is also repeatedly on revives that have expired.
Bone Skills - add small amounts of physical damage
Poison Dagger - renamed to Shape Poison. Has several diff forms, dealing phys + poison damage. Wand: flings globe of poison that leaves poison cloud on impact. Dagger: projects a poison dagger forward. Scythe: wide slash that emits slow moving poison clouds at the end of the arc. On hit, X% of remaining poison damage on enemy is dealt instantly
Poison Explosion - no longer requires corpses; a rift in the earth erupts shooting out random corpses while also releasing poison clouds at the target. Corpses are usually medium HP zombies and skeletons that can be Corpse Exploded/Revived/Summoned out of
Poison Nova - deals X% of damage instantly
Bone Spirit - if Bone Spirit kills an enemy, another Bone Spirit is called up at its body and seeks the next closest enemy. Help in PvM without making it more powerful in duels.
Bone Wall - single click casts the standard wall, holding it lets you create linked walls where you draw your cursor over
Bone Prison - changed to Incarnate. Necro dissolves into the earth, gaining high movespeed bonus before reappearing. If you cast and hold this on a summon/piece of bonewall, you appear in that target's place destroying it and gaining X% life
Curses - new synergies, hard points give all Curses a unique bonus. E.g. 1 point in Iron Maiden will make cursed enemies take low physical damage every second, each point in Lifetap will make them shed a small % of total HP/s healing your allies around them, etc
Paladin
Prayer - remove mana cost
Holy Bolt - can damage anything but deals less damage vs regular creatures and doesn't pierce
FOTH - same as above, and holy bolts now also heal allies. Removed cast delay, but individual targets cannot have FOTH cast directly on them by you more than once every 1 to 0.4s (based on skill level). Will make it less awkward in PvE but not change its power in duels
Conversion - if you hit a converted enemy, it takes massive damage and is unconverted. Enemies killed by Conversion drop loot and become permanent allies but do not stray from the area.
Sorc
Inferno - deals a burst of damage on cast, and creates fires where you cast it. Enemies take more damage the longer you burn them.
Blaze - flames slowly spread in random directions while standing/walking
Enchant - gains a 3 yard radius
Telekinesis - gains damage bonuses based on: proximity, Energy and new Orb/Staff Staff Stat: "Telekinesis Damage"
Thunderstorm - number of bolts per second greatly increased, and impact set to 1yd radius. Each individual enemy can only be struck once per X seconds equal to the current delay. Makes TS mesh with Static/Nova builds as an AOE bonus, but won't impact most duels.
A1 Merc
Cold - add Ice Arrow, adjusting % cast on level up to favor stronger versions
Fire - add Immolation Arrow, adjusting % cast on level up to favor stronger versions
Increase baseline run speed
Add Ethereal Bows, might have to give bows durability and lower durability decay on weapons. Add some magic/rare/unique quivers.
Allow Crossbow use
Improve AI so she's better at kiting and attacks from greater ranges
A3 Merc
Add new spells: Chain Lightning, Thunderstorm, Meteor, Ice Bolt, Blizzard respectively. Reduce cast chance of Charged Bolt, Fire Bolt, and newly added Ice Bolt, to close to 0 at level 90.
Fix block bug
Allow use of Paladin shields (cultural adjacency to Kurast/Zakarum) but not benefit from +Paladin skills of course
Allow use of daggers
Bump up cast speed table by 1 frame
Improve AI so they target immunes last, acquire targets at longer ranges, check Static Field radius for enemies
Add moderate, inherent reduce enemy resist and elemental damage increase
A5 Merc
Add BO to 2Her (Barb shouts should not override stronger shouts but extend duration if current shout duration < new shout duration)
Add Battle Command to Frenzy
Allow use of Axes and Hammers
Ty for staying a while and listening/coming to my TED Talk. This post doesn't really have any themes just ideas I think are cool and wanted to share in case I ever want to make a mod.
No chance I’m reading this wall of text.
I’m happy for you or I’m sorry that happened.