Valorian

This talent doesn't have to completely eliminate the recovery time for swapping weapons, it could just reduce it to 1 or 2 seconds. The recovery timer should trigger each time you swap a weapon, yes.

They probably observed how powerful shields (coupled with high DT) are and thought of ways to counterbalance that. Still, the shield doesn't lose any of its defensive capabilities by slightly diminishing offense, so it preserves its cardinal purpose. It is not, I believe we can agree, a matter of being realistic (or not).

That's not how it works. Your best bet is to equip the front line person with thick armor and a shield (especially if the shield raises your deflection drastically) and to focus on offense with the rest of your party, hoping that the almighty shield and DT will last long enough while you go full offense with 5 people. Naturally, if AI somehow notices that attacking the closest target is not always the best idea and figures out how to avoid engagement, then other people will start switching to (almighty) shields too.

Combat balance and interesting choices > reality. It shouldn't be: equip [ridiculous deflection bonus] on tank & win VS don't equip [ridiculous deflection bonus] on tank & lose

If all the levels were like that, then you could say that (I wouldn't say that just for 2 levels out of 15 though) But I imagine it's not going to be 1000xp per level but rather 200xp for solving this puzzle, 100xp for that puzzle, The number of levels (beyond 2) that reward the same xp upon reaching is irrelevant for the point I was making. It is also just a tangent that gets mentioned often, right. There is no reason why solving a puzzle should grant xp and killing an enemy shouldn't.

That would be systemic. Not if the rewards were hand-placed. Bugs and other creatures can't assign an XP value to themselves. They're also placed by hand (and so is their eventual xp value). It would be hand-placed if the developers took every bug in the world and assigned experience to them manually. But if a monster type is created and along with its attributes, a certain experience value is assigned to it and then the monsters are just put all around the world, then it's systematic experience. There's a finite number of enemies in the game. Designing them and placing them in interesting encounters is time consuming and challenging; carefully assigning individual XP values is the tiniest problem. If two or more levels in the mega dungeon grant the same XP upon reaching it means it's not hand-placed anymore and it becomes systemic dungeon XP?

That would be systemic. Not if the rewards were hand-placed. Bugs and other creatures can't assign an XP value to themselves. They're also placed by hand (and so is their eventual xp value).

It's insanely powerful against numerous, weak opponents. Against a single, powerful opponent it's useless. These kinds of abilities tend to make you feel like you're doing very well - until everything crumbles down into total charlie foxtrot, which is why I'm not a huge fan of them. I totally expect powerful opponents to have their less powerful sidekicks fighting alongside them.

Paladins. That passive paladin's ability of blessing everyone with near invulnerability (+100 to defenses for 10 seconds) when he kills a foe is insanely powerful. He has the same vitality of a fighter, equal accuracy and almost the same base deflection (-1 AC in d&d terms). I'd say the pally is good enough.

I don't have to see pores on a character's model to appreciate it. So zoomed in for me!

I suspect shields will be too useful. About fighter's health: I'm not opposed to the idea of changing their sta./hlth. conversion rate or having them regenerate a percentage of health lost in the last combat encounter, post-combat (which is similar to changing the conversion rate, but less powerful because a better conversion rate is a stronger shield against dying from depleted health).

Ignoring the "super slow" part of your comment (because the pacing is fine), making combat faster would result in even more clicking and pausing per unit of time. Besides, there's no law saying that something awesome needs to happen each time we click on things.

Indeed, there are filler fake attacks in some IE games. I don't like it. Proper hit reaction animations happen when a character fails at Concentration, which is derived from Resolve. For other hit reactions (grazes excluded) they could use a combination of blood splatter effects, a slight shake animation and hitting sounds.

Oooh, this is such a huge insult... People will have psychological scars forever.

Why is resting every 5 minutes lame, but reloading every 5 minutes (to "fix' any mistakes you may have committed") not lame? I'm trying to understand your logic.

Just your imagination. Josh Sawyer is polite, tolerant and a pleasant person to have a conversation with. I have no reason to believe he doesn't possess these qualities in RL too. This doesn't mean he's never made an unfortunate decision or accepted an undesirable design choice advocated by other people.

There's no "eternity" between weapon swings and combat certainly doesn't need to be sped up. Variations in weapon swings is what we're requesting here, yes. Why don't you think it should be sped up? Every IE game I've played has had much shorter durations between attacks. The recovery time between attacks in IE games is 6 seconds. To attack more often you need to either reach level 7* or specialize in a weapon (only few classes can). And of course, two weapon fighting gives you an additional attack per round. *Only 4 classes get an extra 0.5 attack/round at 7, other classes are at 1 attack forever. The monk is an exception.

I assure you that there are boatloads of people who play single-player and Multiplayer I've probably played more multiplayer over the last 6 years than single-player, but I've always played both and as I'm growing older, I'm playing less multiplayer, but that's mostly due to the fact that most competitive MP games these days are crap. I should have probably clarified that, naturally, enjoying HoN/Dota/LoL as a multiplayer game doesn't mean that people who play such game cannot enjoy a single player game.

MOBA players enjoy: A) Competing against other players (multiplayer). B) Doing so in real time.

There's no "eternity" between weapon swings and combat certainly doesn't need to be sped up. Variations in weapon swings is what we're requesting here, yes.

More than one attack animation per weapon type would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, good combat is like a good cake. Good combat with xp rewards is like a good cake with tasty icing on it. People shouldn't be discouraged from engaging in combat. Complex tactical decisions are good for the brain.

Specifically because it's just 2 seconds. If it was 4 seconds (an appropriate penalty for swapping, I'd say), the talent would be quite powerful.

So is reloading.

I'll try not to drop several consecutive fireballs on top of my party. There are some scenarios where I'd want to queue a few aoe spells. For instance, my front-liner is in the middle of a group of tough enemies, alone. He has a good (reflex) defense and meaty fire resistance. Depending on the HP pools of said enemies, I'd totally queue a few fireballs on top of them, while I'm managing the surrounded person. I've made hundreds of critiques about absolutely everything I've seen in the game since we saw the trailer I know.