Opinion on enhancements

[Huldrekall]

I didnt try all of them but:

pale master tree is great, but i dont understand one thing. N.E.conduit give us vulnerability to neg.energy but cloak of night give as resistance to pos., neg. energy and others, so does cloak of night completely negates the n.e. conduit?
skeleton as pet - nobel price for you, if nothing else, i can finaly command it to stop attacking or just stand :) I want this live right now!!!

ranger. trees are good but i dont like that only sniper have favored enemy add-ons, shouldnt it have every ranger?
I think we should have also class tree. like race tree+class tree+prestige tree. becouse not everybody want have prestige, one can wish to be just common ranger (not my case but...). in this class tree should be some common perks for class, as we have now.

barbarian ravager and occult, hen-something mystic, assasin, ninja,..are great

also, core perks....I thought that they would be free given after required level in that class, or points spend in tree, not spending AP also on them. In pure build its not so big pain, but in multiclass....I really could use those points in trees :)

new harbor - awesome
that alternative music...succubus performance..in market is....interesting..must try it with bottle of vodka :D

[HastyPudding]

1. I thought favored enemy feats were a ranger specialty (like the monk's spell resistance or paladin's immunity to fear). Even on live, all rangers have favored enemies, but you can increase the damage bonus through enhancements; seems like they made this a special part of DWS. Seems only fitting, considering what the DWS is.

2. I'm irritated about core abilities, as well. Having to purchase them just feels underhanded. It's like buying a car, and you fill out the paperwork only to have the sales consultant tell you that you have to pay for the paper and ink used to sign the documents, too.

[Iriale]

Pale master great? It’s a very weak tree. Heighten spell metamagic reduction is very needed in a pale master, and only archmage (last tier and capstone!) can obtain this. I have to spend 8 APs in forms, when I only want ONE. The weak necromantic spell like cost 6 APs and the last is tier 5. If I want cure the skeletal minion at distance I need these spell like, but then I can’t obtain the heighten reduction. Not sense. 6 APs for 15 hps. 6 for 15??? Ridiculous. And archmage sticks with only one line of spell likes.

My opinion in enhancements? They have an erroneous base idea. We need CLASS trees and smaller prestige trees. My wizard need this. My monk need this. My cleric need this. My rogue need this. All classes need this!!!

I am very disappointed.

[Grosbeak07]

I see many comments and threads here on the forums about the new enhancement pass, about which enhancements are good, which ones are bad. People have built very compelling arguments about why something should be buffed or why something is weak or useless. But few actually answered the question I (and many others) have, how different will my characters be after this pass? How do they play compared to now?

So, I took a different approach to things. I copied over 3 characters to Lamannia a monk, a cleric and a barbarian (All pure) and essentially attempted to recreate their build with the new enhancements and then compared it to what we currently have on live. This is just a sampling and all personal opinion.

I used Epic Normal Devil Assault as my testing ground on both live and Lamannia.

Monk: My monk on live is a Ninja Spy/Earth Stance tankish type build. Wisdom is fairly low, but not dumped, but is essentially high strength and con, with moderate amounts of dex and wisdom. In Grand Master of Flowers, i have over 800 hp unbuffed.

The first thing I noticed was a significant decrease in HP with the new enhancements thanks to no more toughness enhancements. After that I struggled a bit to remake this character. I wanted to stay Ninja Spy for Touch of Death, but found the Ninja Spy tree somewhat underwhelming. Many of the features I use on live, seemed to be put into the Shintao tree, which given the reduced AP costs from the first preview, I was able to achieve. Still I found myself unsure what to take at times and simply taking stuff in order to get the point spent. I eventually maxed out the Ninja Spy tree and about 3/4ths of the Shintao tree along with some human enhancements. I was still around 50 hp less than I currently am on live, but seemed to have a slightly better AC.

In actual combat testing (using mabar wraps and EH Ivy wraps), my dps was comparable to what is on live. Despite the reduced HP total, I did not feel I was taking anymore damage than I currently do.

Overall Impression: Neutral. My character seemed no worse or better than what I have on live now. However the fact that I was struggling at times as to what to pick for enhancements leads me to think there could still be some more work done here.

Cleric: My cleric on live is a healbot, designed to heal raids and EE content and anything else Turbine can throw at us. High wisdom, high con, moderate charisma and not much else! So naturally the Healing Domain was a good fit, but I was really happy to see the Divine Disciple tree, which I primarily used, augmenting it with some of the healing domain stuff and dwarf racial. As others have pointed out that Dark Side of DD, needs some love.

Basically my HP and SP totals were very close to my normal on live. Healing was equal to what I have on live, if not a bit better thanks to the universal spell power enhancements. However my combat spells were improved, most of my spells were doing more damage and I also seemed to be more successful in landing spells like destruction and implosion (or I was just lucky :) ). I will also echo what many have asked more, some ability to take melee enhancements in one of the cleric trees. Being able to swing a weapon now and then is a good thing!

Overall Impression: Positive. My character seemed slightly better than on live thanks to better spell power.

Barbarian: My Barbarian is a dwarf Frenzy berserker using great axes. Pretty vanilla. On Lamannia I took nearly all of the FB Tree, and added quite a bit of Ravager as well as some dwarf enhancements. There seem to be a lot more "clicky" type enhancements for barbs, largely what we have on live with a few extras for good measure. I did find it became a bit of chore to use all the heroic enhancements + epic destiny stuff, while I was testing. I find keeping track of numerous timers and managing clickies to be a distraction from the actual game (personal opinion). Eye of the Storm, seemed excessive to me. I did not like the idea of taking damage when not in combat. This had the added problem of my hireling using much of his mana trying to heal me up between fights. Not 100% sure how to fix this, maybe reduce the max number of stacks you can get (currently 25) or perhaps even make it a stance, which gives the added damage and maybe a 1d30 damage per swing or something along there. I understand the flavor behind the enhancement (your so mad you hurt yourself), but from a game play perspective could be toned down a bit.

In combat testing thanks to some added active enhancements (the one that give 5W is nice with Adrenaline) my per swing damage is similar to what I have on live now, on Lamannia my crits actually seemed a bit higher (about 1200 on Lamannia vs 900 on Live using just Barb Rage and Primal Scream). Using the 5w attack with Adrenaline gives some sorc like crits at times (I hit for 6,000+). In the end my character on Lamannia ended up only 5 hp lower than live.

Overall Impression: Positive. My Barbarian played like my Barbarian. Critical damage actually seemed a bit better and being able to use both the Frenzy Tree and Raveger tree (or Occult Slayer) will help give variety to pure FB barbs, which right now are all pretty much the same.

Bottom line is my characters are not any worse than they currently are on live. A few may be slightly better but not game breaking. In general many of trees suffer from weak low level enhancements and far too often you feel you are taking something for the sake of taking something vs feeling like you a building towards something. There have been many good suggestions by many players on how to improve this. I don't mind the UI, I think it is now easier for newer players to figure out what is good for their class and builds. Being able to use up to 6 trees + racial will open up good things for multi-class builds, but what really excites me is that pure Frenzy Berserkers or Kensai's or Stalwarts or Ninja Spies will have more variety from character to character, instead of being 90% the same like they are now on live. That is a big positive in my book! Still think this needs a couple of more passes, but I think we are on the right track compared to the first preview.