EK can't take GTHF/GTWF and other issues

[Failedlegend]

Currently a single class EK cannot get GTWF or GTHF only by splashing 2 full BAB classes one level of which needs to be Fighter at Lvl 20 to take said feat its a huge detriment to a melee not to have those and since EK is already subpar it doesn't help things

I'd say either grant them a with the Capstone or have one of the cores make you count as full BAB for feat pre-reqs. If your still against that

I do also have a few other issues/suggestions for EK is general

1. Spellsword, Eldritch Strike and Eldritch Tempest are all really nice abilities both thematically and their actual mechanical effects but they drain Mana like no tommorow especially spellsword not mention the massive cooldowns on ES/ET even when you spend a whopping SIX ap on Tempest

- One possibility is to have spellsword reduce your max SP by X% when active instead of X sp every 6 seconds

- reduce ETs AP requirement 6ap is ridiculous I'd say 1/1/1 or just a single 2ap buy for the full thing

- reduce the cooldown to match Cleave/G-Cleave (5 seconds)

2. Lack of cha or int to atk/dmg makes this tree pretty much pointless...there's little point to a hybrid melee caster if you cant cast your just a mediocre melee and its not like SOrcs can't get Cha to-hit/damage just buy PDK and an LR+1 from the DDOStore and voila u have cha to-hit/dmg...this limits EK Sorvcs to one race and Wizards are hung out to dry.

3. The spellsword ability takes up a whopping 4 core abilities it needs to be merged into a single enhancement


4. The near requirement to use a shield, orbs (and in the future...tombs, staves, rods,etc.) should be an alternative to anything that says "requires a shield" it suits EK much better anyways. "Shield Striking" would deal force damage instead of doing a shield bash when an orb is equipped


5. Arcane Melee are EXTREMELY vulnerable to enemies with anti-magic auras or dispel...it can easily cripple them, no other prestige has a weakness like this...EKs need a way to block this.

Something like Improved Battle Mage: Buffs are no longer dispelable or affected by anti-magic effects. (ie. Beholders)


6. Lack of Heavy Armor Proficiency add this to the capstone so people aren't forced to multi-class to pick it up


7. Remove the critical accuracy line (its useless)


8. Super short buffs are not conducive to the battlestyle of a Arcane melee who has to pay attention to way too many things to be casting a handful of buffs every minute or so and the cooldown increases of tensers and combat expertise don't help a great tier 5 ability (one that would help make it actually worth locking out Savant, AM or PM tier 5s) would be to make Extend better

Something like - Master Battlemage (Doubles the effectiveness of the Extend Metamagic...requires Extend)


9. No threat increase (Eks, in heavy armor and mass amounts of defensive bonuses and even a bonus to Intim but no way to increase aggro)

My suggestion is to rename "Still spell" (since that make no sense anyways) and add threat increase to it which affects both your magic and melee threat gen

Eldritch Spectacle - +25/50/75% Magic/Melee Threat Generation & -5/10/15% ASF (alternative you could have it grant Twilight/Twilight/Greater Twilight on all armors and shields...its more flavorful imo)


10. The EK prestige screams some sort of force guard ability

ie. Force Feedback (5/10/15% chance to do 1d4/1d8/1d12 Force damage on-hit w/ knockdown effect


11. +6 elemental resistance on an arcane is still pointless...maybe replace this with an effect similar to the "Shield deflection" feat which of course requires a shield OR Orb equipped in the off-hand

Here's all my suggestions (and a few other minor changes) put together in tree form...feel free to have a look and please suggestions are welcome :D)

Core 1 Eldritch Strike (gets better with each core) +0.5 USP and +1 Force Power per pt spent in tree
Core 3 Cha or Int Atk/DMG (multi-selector to try avoiding bugs of only one working)
Core 6 Spellsword(choosing element works like Elemental Weapons or Resist Energy)
Core 12 Tensers Toggle
Core 18 Heavy Armor Prof OR Master Mage Armor/Shield (basically makes the already improved spells even better...Heavy Armor would still be superior but it would close the gap a bit so unarmored isn't completely useless)
Core 20 +25 Force SP,+1 Crit Multiplier w/1-h Weapons and +2 Int or Cha

Tier 1

- Improved Mage Armor OR Light/Medium Armor Prof and Armor you equip gains the Greater Twilight Property
- Item Defense: 25%/50%/75% to negate item wear
- Toughness: 5/10/15 HP
- Battlemage: +1/2/3 Concen/Intim/Balance
- Spell Critical: Force +2 % Chance to crit with force damage



Tier 2

- Shield Mastery or Eldritch Combatant (multi-selector choose one - see below for EC-Line effects)
- Adept Fighter: Proficiency and 2/4/6% Doublestrike with all 1-h weapons
- Wand and Scroll Mastery +25/50/75% & +1/2/3 DC
- Spell Critical: Force +2 % Chance to crit with force damage
- Improved Shield OR General Shield Proficiency and Shields gain Greater Twilight Property

Tier 3

+ 1 Any Stat
- Improved Battle Mage: Buffs are no longer dispelable or affected by anti-magic effects. (ie. Beholders)
- Eldritch Barrier (SLA similar to Arty's Radiant Force Shield...cooldown 12min/6min/3min seconds duration 30 seconds + 6 seconds per level...Metas: Quicken & Extend)
- Arcane Senses: +2/4/6 Reflex, Spot and Dodge%
- Spell Critical: Force +2 % Chance to crit with force damage

Tier 4

- Improved Shield Mastery or Improved Eldritch Combatant (multi-selector choose one - Req Char Lvl 6)
- + 1 Any Stats
- Force Feedback (5/10/15% chance to do 1d4/1d8/1d12 Force damage on-hit w/ knockdown effect
- Haste Boost [Req: Arcane Senses]
- Efficient Metamagic: Extend


Tier 5

- Improved Shield Bash or Greater Eldritch Combatant (multi-selector choose one)
- Master Battlemage (Doubles the effectiveness of the Extend Metamagic...requires Extend)
- Improved Tenser's Toggle (reduces penalties and increases benefits)
- Eldritch Tempest (Req: Force Feedback)
- Eldritch Spectacle - +25/50/75% Magic Threat Generation & -5/10/15% ASF
Note: Magic includes your EK SLAs ie. Eldritch Tempest and Spellsword

The Tree (on its side) would look something like this.

1. Improved Mage Armor,Improved Shield,Eldritch Barrier,Force Feedback,Eldritch Tempest
2. Force Crit,Force Crit ,Force Crit, Efficient Meta: Extend, Improved Tensers
3. Toughness, Combat Style,+1 Any stat,Improved Combat Style,Greater Combat Style
4. Wand & Scroll Mastery, Battle Mage,Improved BM, +1 Any Stat, Master Battle Mage
5. Item Defense, Adept Fighter, Arcane Senses, Haste Boost, Eldritch Spectacle

Eldritch Combatant Effects:

EC: When fighting with an orb in your off-hand, you gain 1 temporary spell point and +1 universal spellpower on-hit, 3 temporary SP and USP on crit, and 5 temporary SP and USP on vorpal for X seconds <insert standard language for disappearing stacks here>.
IEC: Any 1-handed weapon gains +1 to Crit range and your touch/ranged touch spells no longer have a level cap.
GEC: Orbs Boni to Saves and Energy Resist no longer requires you to be actively blocking (blocking doubles the effect instead)

[Failedlegend]

No one...hmmm....either the rest of the community has written off EK entirely or its XMAS and people are busy hopefully the latter)

[redspecter23]

No one...hmmm....either the rest of the community has written off EK entirely or its XMAS and people are busy hopefully the latter)

I agree with some of your points and disagree with some others, but I view this tree as one specifically made for multiclassing, which is where much of your points break down. Yes, on a pure class wizard looking to melee, this tree fails. There is much potential in a splash of wizard with anywhere from 1 to 12 levels. I get that it's not what you want for your pure wizard, but I have a feeling it wasn't designed for that role. If I'm mistaken and Turbine actually intended pure or nearly pure wizards and sorcs to be interested in this, then there is much work to be done. They missed the mark by a mile if that's what they wanted.

I would like to mention the concern about cha/int to attack and damage. I feel that would just be a trap, much as dex to damage is for finesse builds. Even if you build for near max int or cha, you could very likely be very close to what your strength score would be anyway simply because of all the collateral strength buffs in the game like rage, tensers, etc.

[voodoogroves]

No one...hmmm....either the rest of the community has written off EK entirely or its XMAS and people are busy hopefully the latter)
I'm in the camp of the first. The only things that I find appealing are:
- an alternate way to get some more INT
- shield as an SLA and/or PRR that means a sorc has a spare low level spot
- free cleave on the first tier, not to be used often but used some
- bonus HP early in the tree

[Scraap]

Pretty much wrote it off as a joke PRE once I saw that it actively drained SP for taking additional risk. Now if there was an active gain on crits or vorpals, it might be worth refining, but as it stands the underlying design philosophy is cracked from conception.

[Vellrad]

No one...hmmm....either the rest of the community has written off EK entirely or its XMAS and people are busy hopefully the latter)

Probably not much people got past this wall of text.

[Saravis]

No one...hmmm....either the rest of the community has written off EK entirely or its XMAS and people are busy hopefully the latter)

I think people have just given up on trying to get through to the devs on the problems of the PrE. They made only a slight change after a ton of feedback was provided, they've pretty much written it off as a finished product.

[Failedlegend]

I agree with some of your points and disagree with some others

I'd love to hear some of your ideas...this tree and its various issues/suggestions have bene changed many times based on feedback from others and I have to believe the better the suggestion the more likely it will happen...well I can hope :)



I view this tree as one specifically made for multiclassing which is where much of your points break down.

I LOVE multi-classing its a big part of the fun I have with DDO and PnP is simply building fun and unusal combos but honestly while I'm totally fine with supporting multi-classing opportunities within a tree (ie. One with the blade) a tree should be able to stand just fine on its own (ie. Kensai)

That said if they wanted to make prestige classes designed to specifically work for multiple classes its shouldn't have been a Sorc/Wiz PrE but a Hybrid PrE that I tried to suggest a while back

Something like this: (using swiftblade as an example)

The Requirements:

Tier 1 Bonus: Arcane1/Martial1 Character Level 3
Tier 2 Bonus: Arcane2/Martial2 CL 6
Tier 3 Bonus: Arcane4/Martial4 CL 9
Tier 4 Bonus: Arcane5/Martial5 CL 12
Tier 5 Bonus: Arcane6/Martial6 CL 15
Tier 6 Bonus: Arcane7/Martial7 CL 18
Capstone: Arcane8/Martial8 CL 20

Note: This means a Arcane18/Martial2 would only have access to tier 2

The "Free Bonuses"

Core 1: Gain Spring Attack
Core 3: Swiftblade I, 10% Blur Effect, +5% To-Hit & Reflex Save, 3% Dodge
Core 6: Haste Lasts 50% Longer (this effect is applied before Extend)
Core 9: Swiftblade II, 20% Blur Effect, +10% To-Hit & Reflex Save, 6% Dodge, All Hits deal an extra 1d6 Untyped Damage
Core 12: Haste Lasts 100% Longer & Cannot be Dispelled
Core 18: Swiftblade III, 30% Blur Effect, +20% To-Hit & Reflex Save, 10% Dodge, All Hits deal an extra 2d6 Untyped Damage
Capstone: Perpetual Celerity - When any Haste effect is on you it lasts until Rest/Death, +2 to any two stats


A few other hybrid prestiges could be Sacred Fist (Divine/Monk), Arcane Trickster (Arcane/Rogue), Fist of the Forest (Druid/Martial), Rage Mage (Barbarian/Arcane), Eldritch Knight (Arcane/Martial),etc.

Otherwise the best place for them is in EDs to be honest




If I'm mistaken and Turbine actually intended pure or nearly pure wizards and sorcs to be interested in this, then there is much work to be done. They missed the mark by a mile if that's what they wanted.

Would be nice to know what the devs goal is with EK so we know how to cater our feedback



I would like to mention the concern about cha/int to attack and damage. I feel that would just be a trap, much as dex to damage is for finesse builds. Even if you build for near max int or cha, you could very likely be very close to what your strength score would be anyway simply because of all the collateral strength buffs in the game like rage, tensers, etc.

Str builds have their place but they aren't the end all be all of everything...its an option with each side having certain advantages/disadvantages which is the way its supposed to be


I'm in the camp of the first. The only things that I find appealing are:
- an alternate way to get some more INT
- shield as an SLA and/or PRR that means a sorc has a spare low level spot
- free cleave on the first tier, not to be used often but used some
- bonus HP early in the tree

Oh yeah its a great tree to spend leftover points in but not anything beyond that


Pretty much wrote it off as a joke PRE once I saw that it actively drained SP for taking additional risk. Now if there was an active gain on crits or vorpals, it might be worth refining, but as it stands the underlying design philosophy is cracked from conception.

Someone should let the devs know APril is still a few months away :P (assuming it was supposed to be a joke...I doubt it)


Probably not much people got past this wall of text.

I won't apologize for being through and detailed. Besides "Wall of Text" usually refers to the posters lack of ability to press the "Enter" key


I think people have just given up on trying to get through to the devs on the problems of the PrE. They made only a slight change after a ton of feedback was provided, they've pretty much written it off as a finished product.

Well I doubt the devs would deliberately ignore feedbakc, its just that WB tells them what matters...they do't have much choice about what they work on...that said this gives me a modicum of hope.



Even if your particular feedback adjustment doesn't make it into Update 20, we’ll continue to monitor the Eldritch Knight to identify possible future adjustments. So, please continue to give us your thoughts!

FoS told us to keep giving feedback and that what I plan to do. My plan is to improve my suggestion every time I bring it up and so far so good.

[redspecter23]

I'd love to hear some of your ideas...this tree and its various issues/suggestions have bene changed many times based on feedback from others and I have to believe the better the suggestion the more likely it will happen...well I can hope :)





If I had to pick a few small things to change it would look something like this

Permanent Tenser's moved to tier 4 max. No matter what I'm multiclassing with, the other tier 5's are better. Free permanent Tenser's is nothing more than a convenience. For me, it just means not having to restock bull's strength potions as often. It's not worthy of tier 5 and it doesn't provide anything that I couldn't get otherwise.

Add more to the cores. I don't "need" all 4 elements. Make me choose one at tier 2 and use the other 3 tiers for other interesting abilities. As mentioned by many others before me, wasting 4 tiers on basically the same thing is pointless.

Reduce the cooldown on Eldritch Strike or add cooldown reductions to higher tiers. This is one of the best abilities the PRE has to offer and you get it right away. Put some abilities up higher in the tree to reduce cooldown or add utility to it. If there is a desire to keep int/cha important to the build add an int/cha based DC knockdown or stun to Eldritch Strike at tier 5. Allow all relevant tactics bonuses to stack onto it. Giving Eldritch Strike an added stun effect at tier 5 is the type of ability that would make me want to take tier 5.

When I look at the power level of tier 1 and 2 compared to 5, it leads me to believe that the devs had no intention of anyone actually taking tier 5 at all if there were any other choices available.

[voodoogroves]

I'd like to see the elementals moved INTO the tree, like the other classes w/ elemental strike like things.

The SLAs, including Tensers, I'd like to see move to the core. Armor 3, Shield 6, Tensers 12 ... and make Tensers an actual SLA instead of an always-on SP-drain. Possibly move them back one, and put the strike itself inside the tree.

[Visty]

and make Tensers an actual SLA instead of an always-on SP-drain.

why you want it to be nerfed?

imo the only bad thing about that always-on Tensers is the ugly armor thingy around your char

@topic: i think EK is, as it is in pnp, designed for multiclass chars and not pure classes
though thats something that should have been done differant, maybe like what is explained a few posts earlier though i dont know how thats coding wise

[LOOON375]

... and make Tensers an actual SLA instead of an always-on SP-drain. .The tensor toggle does not drain SP. However, the elemental toggles do.

Edit: The tensor toggle costs 35 SP to turn on. The elemental damage toggles drain 1 SP every 6 seconds that you are making melee contact. If it is on, and you are not giving melee damage, you do not drain SP.

I see a lot of "ifs" and "might's" and it "looks like", but not any actual trial info.

It's not near as bad as some are making the PRE out to be. Don't knock it until you try it.

Im having a blast with it and think they did an awesome job with it, with the exception of wand and scroll mastery not working.

I can't speak to how a wizzy EK works, buy my WF pure Sorc EK does just fine up through EE content.

[EllisDee37]

Currently a single class EK cannot get GTWF or GTHF only by splashing 2 full BAB classes one level of which needs to be Fighter at Lvl 20 to take said feat its a huge detriment to a melee not to have those and since EK is already subpar it doesn't help thingsPure caster EK's can take GTHF or GTWF as an epic feat at 21, 24 or 27. (Epic levels grant all characters +1 BAB at 21, 23, 25 and 27.)

[Failedlegend]

I'd like to see the elementals moved INTO the tree, like the other classes w/ elemental strike like things.

I dont really care where they are in the tree as long as they dont hog 4 slots...either have it as a single enhancement

The SLAs, including Tensers, I'd like to see move to the core. Armor 3, Shield 6, Tensers 12 ... and make Tensers an actual SLA instead of an always-on SP-drain. Possibly move them back one, and put the strike itself inside the tree.[/QUOTE]

Yeah I'd be fine with it being in core at those locations makes it harder to splash for the armor & shield and being the cores doesn't feel like a massive waste anymore


why you want it to be nerfed?

imo the only bad thing about that always-on Tensers is the ugly armor thingy around your char

IIRC isn't there a wai to turn that off in the options...I love it personally :)



@topic: i think EK is, as it is in pnp, designed for multiclass chars and not pure classes
though thats something that should have been done differant, maybe like what is explained a few posts earlier though i dont know how thats coding wise

I'm assuming u were referring to what I showed above...either way I 100% agree


The tensor toggle does not drain SP. However, the elemental toggles do.

When we say it drains sp we MEAN it...your SP disappears very quickly....that said my Stalwart/Palemaster picks up a single spellsword as its fantastic thing to use wjilst under the effects of echoes of power...the regain is faster than the drain so it lessens the blow that having no mana huirts your effectiveness

[sephiroth1084]

No one...hmmm....either the rest of the community has written off EK entirely or its XMAS and people are busy hopefully the latter)
Plenty of feedback, much identical to your suggestions, was given when this was first proposed, when it was released on Lamannia, and when it went live, with few, mostly insignificant, changes, despite all of the feedback indicating that the PrE was underpowered and lackluster. I think most people have just decided to stop wasting time posting on the subject.

If I didn't feel so strongly about paladins, I would have done the same long ago, as the devs appear to have taken the same stance regarding that class as they have this PrE.

[Failedlegend]

Plenty of feedback, much identical to your suggestions, was given when this was first proposed, when it was released on Lamannia, and when it went live, with few, mostly insignificant, changes, despite all of the feedback indicating that the PrE was underpowered and lackluster. I think most people have just decided to stop wasting time posting on the subject.

If I didn't feel so strongly about paladins, I would have done the same long ago, as the devs appear to have taken the same stance regarding that class as they have this PrE.

Oh I know how you feel, I've been fighting for Gish/Battlemage type builds (and running them decently despite cries of "gimping") and despite the people saying "no one wants EK,DD,etc.,etc." I was ecstatic when the devs started dropping hints that implied EK was indeed coming.

Honestly all EK has brought to this game is people coming odd of the woodwork to bash every single thread about how gishses suck and Str-Based is the only way to go...I liked it better when I'd get 2-3 posts of good advice instead of 100 of nothing.

Another thing that saddens me is whilst EK is useless it has reinvigorated the forums to tryu tp make gish tpes builds (desppite above mentioned trolls) but they all seem to think EK is required or the thing making gishes awesome...that couldn't be farther from the truth...if anything going EK primary actually make them worse.

[oradafu]

Plenty of feedback, much identical to your suggestions, was given when this was first proposed, when it was released on Lamannia, and when it went live, with few, mostly insignificant, changes, despite all of the feedback indicating that the PrE was underpowered and lackluster. I think most people have just decided to stop wasting time posting on the subject.

If I didn't feel so strongly about paladins, I would have done the same long ago, as the devs appear to have taken the same stance regarding that class as they have this PrE.

Pretty much thing.

After the preview and "feedback" period of the new Enhancement trees during Beta Shadowfail, it became pretty apparent that the Devs decided since they caved into the demands of the multiclass players that they didn't need to do any significant improvements to the actual enhancements in the trees. Very little changes were made to any of the trees then and almost no changes were done at all for Pure classes, such as boosting upper Core abilities (where the power used to reside in prestige classes).*

After repeatedly pointing out the problems with both the enhancements themselves and the dramatic power to multiclass players with this new set up, the Devs basically closed down debate on the Pure classes almost instantly and ignored everything else. So alot of players just gave up giving input since it became apparent that the die was cast for the enhancements as soon as they appeared on Lamannia.

* The one exception was when it came to the Protection tree for the Clerics and FvS. After seeing that Warpriest and Eldritch Knight have been added to the game, it appears that the Devs knew that the Protection tree was pure junk and they already had planned to scrap it to add melee trees for all classes. And now we have melee trees for all classes.

[Failedlegend]

Pretty much thing.

After the preview and "feedback" period of the new Enhancement trees during Beta Shadowfail, it became pretty apparent that the Devs decided since they caved into the demands of the multiclass players that they didn't need to do any significant improvements to the actual enhancements in the trees. Very little changes were made to any of the trees then and almost no changes were done at all for Pure classes, such as boosting upper Core abilities (where the power used to reside in prestige classes).*

After repeatedly pointing out the problems with both the enhancements themselves and the dramatic power to multiclass players with this new set up, the Devs basically closed down debate on the Pure classes almost instantly and ignored everything else. So alot of players just gave up giving input since it became apparent that the die was cast for the enhancements as soon as they appeared on Lamannia.

* The one exception was when it came to the Protection tree for the Clerics and FvS. After seeing that Warpriest and Eldritch Knight have been added to the game, it appears that the Devs knew that the Protection tree was pure junk and they already had planned to scrap it to add melee trees for all classes. And now we have melee trees for all classes.

The worst part is that Rowan listed "Eldritch Knight" as a Critical Hit in his "future stuff" letter thing.

[Bumbaragum]

Very good points. I like the way you tackle this Enhancement Line

[Failedlegend]

Very good points. I like the way you tackle this Enhancement Line

Thanks Bumba...any suggestions on how to tweak it? I really am open to it, I want this to be the perfect suggestion :)