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[Solarn]

Because avoiding splash damage doesn't really have anything to do with being speedy, and the speed-based class gets a master trait that makes him actually do something faster.

I think of the Technician as someone able to fashion some additional protection or use his armor in a way other people can't.

What's not to like about the class system? Different Doomguys get different useful bonuses, and there's even more traits and possible builds now.

Mostly that there's no "standard" class. Everyone gets some kind of bonus. I'd like if there was a class for old-style DoomRL players with no starting bonuses.

[Midnight]

Marine's bonuses are a replica of the previous doomguy. The only change is the trait tree.

[Game Hunter]

Even if there was a non-specialized class, it would probably have no master traits at all and get some other trait-related bonuses to compensate. The prospect of having multiple classes carry the same master trait is all kinds of nasty when it comes to balancing, because you don't want one class to be obviously better than another with a particular master trait.  It may be more useful from a beginner's perspective, having every master trait available, but from the perspective of someone with experience, there is a clear decision between one class or the other regarding a build, and any builds that are literally inferior versions have no place in the game. I'm not against a masterless class, but a masterful one is wholly unnecessary.

Consider that there are no actual penalties to choosing one class over the other, save that each class has its own unique master traits. If the problem stems from the concern that you may essentially want a different class mid-game (due to wanting a particular master), realize that the point of the class system is to enhance particular playstyles. Thus, you should go into a game with serious intent on playing in a particular way but, at the same time, can choose to play a different way without being punished for it. Master traits are more of a flavor than a necessity, too, as it is quite possible to play masterless and do just as fine as you would with one.

As a matter of fact, the starting bonuses are mostly what make this version manageable. Some of the changes to the game would have made things a LOT harder, were it not for the classes having specific benefits that counteracted the increased difficulty. (Naturally there are some exceptions at higher levels but this is true overall.) Ideally we'd like to make the bonuses less significant and smoothly balance them so that they are different in play but similar in game difficulty: I really doubt we're there yet.

[Kalir]

I love Entrenchment.

TaN and Badass, damage resistance bonuses, and on a class with easy access to Whizkid and instant item use to heal up mid-volley? The lack of Reloader is a huge weakness, yeah, but you can hook yourself up with an assault rifle and fix ammo consumption and reloading issues right quick.

Actually, looking at all the traits here, I get the idea the dev team went through and saw what kinds of builds players liked and made master traits to gel with those.

[Solarn]

I love Entrenchment.

TaN and Badass, damage resistance bonuses, and on a class with easy access to Whizkid and instant item use to heal up mid-volley? The lack of Reloader is a huge weakness, yeah, but you can hook yourself up with an assault rifle and fix ammo consumption and reloading issues right quick.

Actually, looking at all the traits here, I get the idea the dev team went through and saw what kinds of builds players liked and made master traits to gel with those.

In fact, what with the Chained Court and all, an Assault Rifle is probably the first assembly most Technicians make. And it stays with you for a long time, even after you find a plasma rifle.

But yeah, Techs are basically the best tanks right now. Malicious Blades, Fireangel and Entrenchment are all geared towards taking a lot of damage and Sharpshooter is a godsend for AoMr. It's kind of weird, because you'd expect the Marine to be the tank class, but apart from Survivalist it's more of a kill-them-before-they-can-kill-you type of deal.

[Sambojin]

The marine still seems to out-tank the technician for me. Through mastertrait builds with badass thrown in for good measure, an extra 10hp from the start and the 50% extra power-up time you can just keep shooting longer than most builds. Non-mastertrait builds actually seem a little more powerful for marines for me so far though. That extra time in berserk mode or invincibility really lets you take a slapping well. You can often pounce from power up to power up, chain linking a run of zerks, invincibilities and supercharges, making the damage taken for a level or two of the game completely irrelevant. Int(2) marine builds are scarily good at this, to the point of abuse depending on level generation.

As a question: with the berserker trait you get a berserk boost off large health globes. Is this zerking time increased by 50% as a marine?

[Stormlock]

Has anyone tried a malicious blades build without really trying to focus on melee? I've been doing runthroughs of AoMax Carnage to pick up schematics from the armory quickly, and decided to try out malicious blades while taking out the UC too. Those resistances help out a ton when everything is hitting for so much damage. At least, when it's stuff you can resist. Arachnotron caves are evil. But revenants and mancubi are pretty much a joke, especially if you have even a blue armor to bring your fire resist up that extra bit to cut the damage in half. Melee is laughable too. Never mind if you get a berserk sphere or hatred skull to go with it. At any rate, shrugging off all that fire/melee damage while returning fire with a heavily modded plasma rifle is a pretty sweet deal. I'd imagine with an Onyx or Nano pack on some nice armor, it might be a good strat for Ao100.

[Ablogqwer]

Behaviors of certain enemies have changed. Or their pathing has been improved; they'll go around objects to go after you. A nice touch. Makes it easier to do melee runs, too.

Edit: But arch-viles are even more difficult to deal with...

[Bloax]

I don't know how archies were in .9.2, but on my "Blind rage" run, I noticed that they are just about as assholish as it is possible.
Not only are they fast as hell, they also launch off their attacks while moving. Just how assholish is that against a melee build?

Unless I was just slow enough for them to both move away, and attack in one of my moves. (MVm -> No Hr)
Still, bleh.

[Deathwind]

That's nothing new, they have always had about 2-3 actions to your one move (assuming blue or red armor of course)

[AlterAsc]

Lately i've been thinking about new master traits(specifically Sharpshooter and Shottyhead).

About MSs: by itself it is good, there's no questioning here.But getting it is another story.I mean general idea is that you are supposed to benefit from taking traits, but in this case you are not. SoG 3 is obviously useful for pistols, taking first lvl of EE increases your to-hit chance noticeably.After that there is almost no difference in your firepower until you hit lvl7 and take Sharpshooter while your enemies do not wait and grow in strength.So if talking about UV/N! you need to kill barons, revenants, arachnotrons with one pistol with SoG3 to get yourself experience for sharpshooter, when you already want it badly.
MBD and MGK are way better in that way since you are taking traits that help you.
So i'm suggesting to change requirements a bit.At least the last level of EE (How many players take it in their games?I believe noone).

About MSh: what is it's purpose?With MAD you deal more damage, with MFa you become extremely hard to kill if you focus on dodging.
MSh allows you to shoot 3 times faster but unless you suddenly meet someone in small room it's not that strong - you'll just push your enemy to the edge of your vision and start dealing low damage.Most of my time i use shotgun against powerful enemies is spent behind the corner, and shooting faster does not help, since usually even with normal firing speed and rel2 you can prevent enemy from getting close to you.At least requirements are nice to have anyway.

[Sambojin]

I've been mucking around with MSh builds and it is actually quite a nice build. Not even so much for shotguns though. It's an every-weapon build, more-or-less, with shotguns being a major component of it. It also has excellent "extra-building" potential, where you can dump HR->DM in for some active defense, Fin->WK for some modding abilities, grab Int(2) for some perfect knowledge or just dump any traits you need/want as the situation and finds warrant. It just makes you more versatile whilst bringing your shotguns back up to mid/late game speed without becoming an unbalanced/singular weapon type build.

Fair enough, MAD is still my favourite shotty build. But Shottyhead gives you an every weapon platform. You never know what the game will throw at you, so the instant weapon switch, quick shotties and faster run/reload speed just lets you take the game as it comes. Get good mods? Go down the WK path and mod up a nice selection of weapons and armour. Good unique? Build towards its use. It doesn't really excell at anything, it just does a bit of everything, where it might just come together as more than the sum of it's parts.

It looks like a shotty build. It even has the word "Shotty" in the name. But really it's more of a generalist build with good options after the build is complete, but it makes it so that your shotguns don't begin to suck too badly in mid-game. Actually, the tactical shotgun does some pretty good damage at 1/3 fire time, probably out-DPSing most other build's shotguns except in high armour situations. Plus you can mod stuff up nicely at the end, which is something that you can't do with MAD.

I like the whole Fin->Jug->HR->Rel->Rel->SM->MSh way of doing things. Early weapon speed/swapping to get through the Arena/Court, faster big-booms with a slight auto-dodge for mid-game/wall/special levels and then back to fun with shotguns. Plus it's a real bonus to fire off 2-3 blasts of your tac shotty, knock them the hell out of blast-radius range and then whip out your RL/ML and start exploderising what's left. You've got a weapon for every situation as long as you've got the ammo and mods to make them shine.

You've got pretty much any play-style you want, all wrapped up in one nice little loose master trait. Even pistol builds work, as long as you recongnise the fact that a Shottyhead's pistol is actually called an Assault Rifle.

[Matt_S]

I didn't succeed in obtaining MSs when I tried, so I can't say how good it is, but I definitely agree that being forced to take EE3 leaves you underpowered.  Requiring EE1 would be fine, and even EE2 would be acceptable.  So I would second the idea that the third level of EE not be required (if it would be replaced with a specific trait instead of a free trait choice, I'd suggest Finesse).