In completion to my post about the requierements. i wasn't so sure about Sylvans so I played a little more.
and regarding their skill set I have the following inputs:
- Imbue ballista should require Imbue Arrow, as you can't imbue your ballista without the ability...
- I'd love to have Nature's Wrath requirement changed to Archery... because I'd love to have fire arrows and archery on a sylvan hero
As for the Ultimate...
Nature's wrath and Dead Man's
Luck sound cool... because they kind of compose the name of the ultimate... but still don't know if that's the best way to go... it could be a little too easy...
I was thinking about a much harder variant that would require
Expert Avenger(3)
Rain of arrows, Deadeye shot(2)
Imbue Ballista(5) - with Imbue arrow as a prereq
Nature's Wrath(4)
Basic Luck(1) - since you could go without taking luck and that's not fair
the difficulty being the fact that according to the manual a Ranger has only 2% chance of getting Attack and War Machines...
Could we get the opinion of a pro in Sylvan? I'd prefer if someone here who has played Sylvan alot could tell us what he thinks... what would he go for?
in studying how the skill tress work,adding another skill tree realistically adds a lot more levels to gaining the ultimate.
your tree for gating, for example, would more likely end up getting the skill somewhere around level 25. Most maps usually don't get your heroes get much beyond level 20 or so.
true. But it is clear that with some Ultimates you would simply rule the game, whereas others are just a good addition. Recently I discovered Academy's ultimate... got it at level 17 and after that i simply owned everything, even armies much stronger than mine... I played with Jhora, on a rather difficult map... because I had mages when the ennemies had angels. I didn't take any magic skills, and consequently I didn't upgrade the mage guild higher than lvl 2, so I had some resources to spare.
When I got the ultimate, all I cast was Puppet Master, then Phoenix, then some Resurections if necesary... You can guess the outcome...
To sum up I think making a mod that would make the ultimates accesible and balanced is kind of impossible. Some of them are simply too strong to get before level 20 and the others too weak to get too late. To make a list:
Unstopable Charge: only useful if got very soon
Urgash's call: too strong before level 20
Nature's Luck: always too strong
Arcane Omniscience: too strong if got early, not so useful if got too late(because you would already build mage guilds and take magic skills)
Rage of the Elements: should get this mid-game
Howl of Terror: mid game
If we agree on the distribution of the skills above this would mean that in average you should get the skills at much different levels. So I'm guessing, in average the levels should be:
Unstopable Charge: 12
Urgash's call: 22
Nature's Luck: 25
Arcane Omniscience: 20
Rage of the Elements: 17-18
Howl of Terror: 17-18
At least this would reflect the rating of the ultimates... I'm gonna start a thread to see how others see these ratings...
Sorry for the huge post... I hope you can bear the reading...