Update 29 Feats: Other Feats [Archive] - Dungeons & Dragons Online Forums

Steelstar

11-17-2015, 05:21 PM

***Please make sure you have read this thread first, it contains an overview of Update 29 Feats.*** (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467837-Update-29-Feats-Overview)

In addition to the level cap increase and its related feats, we're planning on adding some new general feats. These provide extra options in Epic, especially boosts to Spellcasting.

New ML21 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +110 Maximum Spell Points)

Wellspring of Power

Activate to gain +150 Universal Spell Power and +20% Spell Critical Damage for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

Arcane Insight

Activate to gain + 6 to all spell DCs and +6 to Spell Penetration for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

New ML24 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +140 Maximum Spell Points)

Improved Augment Summoning

Requires Augment Summoning
Your summoned creatures have +8 to all ability scores, +10% Dodge, and +100 Maximum Hitpoints

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save (20 + Highest of your INT/WIS/CHA modifiers) negates the freeze.

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Embolden Spell

METAMAGIC: +2 DCs to all spells with DCs. +10SP. Affects spells

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Artifice

Your Static Shock, Lightning Sphere, Blast Rod, and Lightning Motes spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Music

Your Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reveberate spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Knowledge

Your Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast spells now grant you one stack of Mental Honing (+3 Universal Spell Power, +2% Spell Crit Damage) when cast. This effect can stack up to 30 times. One stack is removed every 6 seconds.

New ML30 General Feat:

Greater Ruin

Requires Ruin.
Deals 1000 untyped damage to a single enemy (no saving throw). Costs 150 SP

Artificers

Improved Construct Essence

Requires 12 Artificer Levels and Construct Essence. May be taken as an Artificer Bonus Feat.
Improves your base Repair to 70%, as well as Rust vulnerability.

Construct Exemplar

ML21, requires Improved Construct Essence.

You are now considered a Living Construct instead of your original race
100% base healing from Repair spells and 100% damage from Rust
Immunity to Sleep, Hold Person, Energy Drain, Nasueated, Exhausted, and Paralyzed effects except those which physically hold you in place
Immunity to ability score damage from natural poisons and natural diseases (but are vulnerable to those that specifically affect wood or metal)
+10 Racial bonus to saving throws against magical poisons, and do not fail saving throws against them on a roll of a natural 1 (this renders you immune to magical poisons with a DC of less than 11+your Fortitude save)
You may remain underwater indefinitely without the need to breathe.
When resting at a Rest Shrine, the health you regain is now based on your Repair skill instead of your Heal skill

In Update 29, the DC for Rune Arms will benefit from all sources of Evocation Bonuses (they currently only benefit from Feat Bonuses to Evocation). This isn't really a feat, I just didn't have somewhere better to mention it!

Flavilandile

11-17-2015, 05:49 PM

No Master Feat for Healing ( Positive ) at LVL 24 ? ( and make that also Negative )

Tyrande

11-17-2015, 06:12 PM

No Master Feat for Healing ( Positive ) at LVL 24 ? ( and make that also Negative )

believe the Master of Death benefits Negative Energy Burst which provides healing for the undead.

guess everyone has access to Cocoon, Sacred Ground, Healing Spring and Divine Wrath and the master feat for healing was deemed unnecessary. Or is it an oversight?

CeltEireson

11-17-2015, 06:19 PM

Quick question - does the improved augment summoning only affect summons, or does it affect pets as well?

Secondly - there seems to be a set of of feats to remove cater levels for various sorcerer SLAs, necromancer, etc. However, I don't see anything similar for an evocation archmage - I'm assuming that's because of how it works with shiradi or because the missile spells are harder to remove caster level for, but not every evocation archmage uses shiradi,, and force spells could do with a similar boost.

And whilst the feat for arcane bolt/blast could be useful the spells themselves aren't. They can't be metamagiced so the damage is mediocre at best, they both have a save and because they can't be heightened most things save for half damage or none if they have evasion. I can possibly see people taking the bolt now just to spam it so they can get the increase in power/spell crit chance - but even then firing that off causes the usual minimal delay in casting something that's actually effective so would it be worth it? If you're not willing to allow metamagics could you at least remove the save?

Demsac

11-17-2015, 06:21 PM

Arcane Insight

Activate to gain + 6 to all spell DCs and +6 to Spell Penetration for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

That's pretty much already in Magister, would those dcs stack? Also, no one really use the clicky. (Too short of timer, too long of cooldown and it bugs out if you jump/run while casting it.)

Spekdah_NZ

11-17-2015, 06:39 PM

How similar is intensify to it's PnP counterpart?

All variable, numeric effects of an intensified spell are maximized, then doubled. An intensified spell deals twice maximum damage, cures twice the maximum number of hit points, affects twice the maximum number of targets, and so forth, as appropriate. Saving throws and opposed rolls are not affected. An intensified spell uses up a spell slot seven levels higher than the spell’s actual level. You can’t combine the effects of this feat with any other feat that affects the variable, numeric effects of a spell.

Been pushing for epic metamagic feats so thank you! Great stuff. This sure opens up some interesting options. With all the different sources of evocation DC, this really brings some nukers back into play.

Portalcat

11-17-2015, 06:47 PM

Well ****. Non-shiradi DPS casting might actually become a thing without ML restrictions on elemental spells. Greater Ruin is also scary powerful.

Certainly though, there's going to be substantial rethinking of all arcane casters after this lands.

Jasparion

11-17-2015, 06:48 PM

I like that you are doing stuff to fix summoned creatures for Epic and Legendary. Do you think they are well balanced for Heroic?

Blastyswa

11-17-2015, 06:56 PM

***Please make sure you have read this thread first, it contains an overview of Update 29 Feats.*** (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467837-Update-29-Feats-Overview)

In addition to the level cap increase and its related feats, we're planning on adding some new general feats. These provide extra options in Epic, especially boosts to Spellcasting.

New ML21 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +110 Maximum Spell Points)

Wellspring of Power

Activate to gain +150 Universal Spell Power and +20% Spell Critical Damage for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

Arcane Insight

Activate to gain + 6 to all spell DCs and +6 to Spell Penetration for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

New ML24 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +140 Maximum Spell Points)

Improved Augment Summoning

Requires Augment Summoning
Your summoned creatures have +8 to all ability scores, +10% Dodge, and +100 Maximum Hitpoints

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save negates the freeze.

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Embolden Spell

METAMAGIC: +2 DCs to all spells with DCs. +10SP. Affects spells

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Artifice

Your Static Shock, Lightning Sphere, Blast Rod, and Lightning Motes spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Music

Your Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reveberate spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Knowledge

Your Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast spells now grant you one stack of Mental Honing (+3 Universal Spell Power, +2% Spell Crit Damage) when cast. This effect can stack up to 30 times. One stack is removed every 6 seconds.

New ML30 General Feat:

Greater Ruin

Requires Ruin.
Deals 1000 untyped damage to a single enemy (no saving throw). Costs 150 SP

Artificers

Improved Construct Essence

Requires 12 Artificer Levels and Construct Essence. May be taken as an Artificer Bonus Feat.
Improves your base Repair to 70%, as well as Rust vulnerability.

Construct Exemplar

ML21, requires Improved Construct Essence.

You are now considered a Living Construct instead of your original race
100% base healing from Repair spells and 100% damage from Rust
Immunity to Sleep, Hold Person, Energy Drain, Nasueated, Exhausted, and Paralyzed effects except those which physically hold you in place
Immunity to ability score damage from natural poisons and natural diseases (but are vulnerable to those that specifically affect wood or metal)
+10 Racial bonus to saving throws against magical poisons, and do not fail saving throws against them on a roll of a natural 1 (this renders you immune to magical poisons with a DC of less than 11+your Fortitude save)
You may remain underwater indefinitely without the need to breathe.
When resting at a Rest Shrine, the health you regain is now based on your Repair skill instead of your Heal skill

In Update 29, the DC for Rune Arms will benefit from all sources of Evocation Bonuses (they currently only benefit from Feat Bonuses to Evocation). This isn't really a feat, I just didn't have somewhere better to mention it!

No complaints here. Having a healer myself, I can say that leaving a healing version out was the right call, as it'll keep players from becoming even more invincible. The artificer feats are something I've been hoping for myself a long time, thank you for introducing these. I'll be tempted to take Wellspring of Power even on non offensive caster characters for what looks to be a highly effective boost to offense or defense (Through healing spells) and the augment summons feat in conjunction with the upcoming changes per character level, while not making a summon based toon effective still, will make it a bit less of a pain to keep fluffy alive in EE's.

Systern

11-17-2015, 07:09 PM

Embolden Spell
•METAMAGIC: +2 DCs to all spells with DCs. +10SP. Affects spells

Does this apply to Eldritch Blast as well? (Which is kind of a level 9 spell, but not really?)

Artificer feats are disappointing. I didn't want to take construct essence before, 2 new feats that require it is not good. Fleshie Artificer's problem is not self-healing, it's that their damage falls off majorly in Epic levels. Cool theme, but doesn't actually address their issues. No Ranged Power. Penalties to doubleshot. etc etc...

kemetka

11-17-2015, 07:17 PM

excited that a full sonic caster bard may be a competative thing in epics, look forward to this greatly

sjbb87

11-17-2015, 07:17 PM

I see many feat to caster...
and melee?
tanks?
ranged....

Wulverine

11-17-2015, 07:20 PM

gwonbush

11-17-2015, 07:23 PM

How similar is intensify to it's PnP counterpart?

Been pushing for epic metamagic feats so thank you! Great stuff. This sure opens up some interesting options. With all the different sources of evocation DC, this really brings some nukers back into play.

Intensify in PnP is super buff that makes something a LOT more pricey to cast while being more powerful than if you put all metamagic on it besides quicken. Intensify in DDO as written is the cost of Maximize for the power of Empower, only useful at all when you have already maximized and empowered a spell and want more power.

EllisDee37

11-17-2015, 07:37 PM

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.
This looks poor.

I wouldn't take this as a heroic feat, much less spend an epic feat slot on it.

Silverleafeon

11-17-2015, 07:54 PM

This looks poor.

I wouldn't take this as a heroic feat, much less spend an epic feat slot on it.

This has to be a misprint of some sort.

Compare to DDO Wiki's quote:

Empower Spell Metamagic Increases the Spell Power by 75, but increases the spell point cost of casting the spell by 15.

Rewrite please to:

•Intensify Spell
•METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +10 SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Willing to consider +15 sp, since all the other feats are so attractive I can ignore this one anyway.

Faltout

11-17-2015, 08:00 PM

Very nice feats.

Temporary ones: Good. Great power for special moments.

I don't get the Burst of Glacial Wrath one. Why add a single ice spell there?

Intensify spell needs more. 25 sp is how much maximize costs and we can cut some of maximize cost with enhancements and items. And maximize adds 150 spell power.

Embolden is nice. Basically it's a heighten * 2. double the cost and double the effect and it works on any spell.

You seem to have not included some of the spells from the master of elements.
- Air: Lightning Bolt yes but Ball of Lightning no. They have the same damage dice per caster level but they are not both included. I guess an explanation would be that one is hard to hit multiple targets and the other is a good AOE. You also don't include eladar's electric surge while niac's biting cold is included in water.
- Earth: Acid Blast yes but Acid Rain no. Acid rain is higher level spell and yet will do less damage than acid blast if acid blast has no min level. Also, you did not include black dragon bolt and yet you include niac's biting cold in water.
- Water: Things get really crazy here. Cold Ray will do much more damage than polar ray with much less sp. otiluke's freezing sphere is not included in favor of snowball swarm that does less damage than acid blast which was included in earth (sphere does same damage)
- Fire: Fireball yes, delayed blast fireball no. They have the same damage dice except delayed costs more. Scorch made it, firewall didn't. Yet firewall costs more and does less damage.
- Music: Reverberate is not a spell. It's an SLA. Does this mean that SLAs for all spells affected will be affected as well? Currently SLAs are kind of a mystery.

Master of Knowledge is nice. Good job there for force casters.

Overall, nice feats. They certainly provide options for a caster and not obvious ones at that. Masters of elements could use tweaking but removing max caster level is something we've been asking.

btolson

11-17-2015, 08:02 PM

Greater Ruin should be scrapped. More alpha in the game is not a good thing.

Ambivalent on the caster-cap removals. They are nice in themselves, but it still means we will be using only SLAs most of the time. In fact, it means we will be using SLAs even more of the time now. Consider removing the caps for all spells of an element (e.g., Master of Fire would also affect DBF, wall of fire, incendiary cloud, etc)? It would really be nice to get more use out of our actual spellbooks.

btolson

11-17-2015, 08:19 PM

This looks poor.

I wouldn't take this as a heroic feat, much less spend an epic feat slot on it.

I think it is just more SLA promotion (for which you get all benefit and no extra cost). They seem really enthusiastic about getting us to use only SLAs.

Silverleafeon

11-17-2015, 08:23 PM

Improved Augment Summoning
[LIST]
Requires Augment Summoning
Your summoned creatures have +8 to all ability scores, +10% Dodge, and +100 Maximum Hitpoints

Thank you for providing this option for pet lovers.

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save negates the freeze.

Make this an SLA?
Sp cost, prefer 20 sp
Cooldown, prefer 12 seconds
Obviously these points are interrelated, but interested if the spell dps is reasonable per sp cost.

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Something wrong here, either make is +150 spell power or +15 sp...

Embolden Spell

METAMAGIC: +2 DCs to all spells with DCs. +10SP. Affects spells

Nice, thank you.

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Love all the master choices they are going to be my favorites.

New ML30 General Feat:

Greater Ruin
[LIST]
Requires Ruin.
Deals 1000 untyped damage to a single enemy (no saving throw). Costs 150 SP

Hmm...pricey as all get out, but still hmm..
Prefer cooldown to be same as Ruin or less.

In Update 29, the DC for Rune Arms will benefit from all sources of Evocation Bonuses (they currently only benefit from Feat Bonuses to Evocation). This isn't really a feat, I just didn't have somewhere better to mention it!

Thank you, very needed.

Silverleafeon

11-17-2015, 08:26 PM

I think it is just more SLA promotion (for which you get all benefit and no extra cost). They seem really enthusiastic about getting us to use only SLAs.

I';m going with copy and past error, but you might be right.
Promoting relook at it either way.

Vooduspyce

11-17-2015, 08:31 PM

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

As it is written, it will not work on Heal/Regenerate. Would be nice if it also would benefit these spells.

Silverleafeon

11-17-2015, 08:53 PM

This looks poor.

I wouldn't take this as a heroic feat, much less spend an epic feat slot on it.

I think the Devs can agree with us that EPIC feats should be superior to HEROIC feats in some manner or another.

Therrias

11-17-2015, 09:21 PM

[URL="https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467837-Update-29-Feats-Overview"]

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Very interesting stuff. I just want to point out something that the team must have overlooked: Necrotic Ray does not currently have a maximum caster level.

I repeat: Necrotic Ray [b]does not currently have a maximum caster level.

Pale Masters will thank you very much to leave Necrotic Ray as is and substitute Death Aura in it's place for this feat.

maddong

11-17-2015, 09:50 PM

Overall awesome job!

1. I hate clickies. I'd remove the level 21 feats. Not worth the programming effort....

2. Intensify spell should be free (no mana cost).

3. A better use of master of knowledge would be to let your arcane bolt/blast be affected by meta magics. I'm guessing this should require wizard levels. Will they each require certain classes so you don't pick feats that are of no use to you?

Holymunchkin

11-17-2015, 09:59 PM

Uncapping the spells looks great! Especially for shouter bards, and artificer's Blast Rod. I don't think it will be enough off hand though. Casters need more burst. High cooldown high sp spells. My 2 cents.

Tlorrd

11-17-2015, 10:16 PM

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

So here is my perspective on this topic of Master of Light. This is coming from a previous cleric who now plays warlock but wishes someday to go back to cleric.

I don't understand the mixture of spells chosen for master of light. To me instead of this feat applying to versatile builds, it seems to narrow build choices for divines.

Lets look at the spells and who can attain them ... and the caveat is that almost all of the other master's feats apply to a single class/PrE such as the various elements for various Sorcs, Druid as listed above, etc.

Sunbolt: Druid, Divine Disciple, or top tier Exalted Angel ED
Searing Light: Cleric or Favored Soul
Sunburst: Druid, Divine Disciple, or Sun Elf

To get all three spell for a build one must be a Divine Discple or Sun-elf Favored Soul running in Exalted Angel. It seems that all the other Master's feats have multiple spells (basically all) that affect a single class and all other caster classes are covered. I understand the light theme and these are basically the best light spells, but it limits a lot of versatility for favored souls as they must be sun-elf and in exalted angel to benefit from all three or a divine disciple. Two of the spells are actually druid spells and not on the normal spell list for clerics or favored souls. Additionally the spells are all an SLA for a Sun-elf Divine Disciple running in Exalted Angel only. The other elemental master feats do not have race restrictions to attain all spells as an SLA. I mean the Master's of Wild feat has 4 spells that are all SLA for druids regardless of race.

The other point I'd like to mention is the choice of Sunburst as having no max caster level. This spell actually has static damage against all foes except undead and oozes of 6d6. So its no limit caster level is only affecting a fraction of the mobs while other AOE spells from the other Master's feats affect almost all mobs unless they are immune which is more rare than common. Additionally one can only get Sunburst if they are a druid (and they already have a Master's feat listed above) or if they are a sun-elf or divine disciple. Non sun-elf favored souls are left out in the cold.

My suggestions is to change Sunburst to an AOE alignment spell such as Holy Smite (as it seems the theme is to boost SLAs) or Order's Wrath. Both Clerics and Favored Souls get these spells with Clerics obviously at an advantage as they get one of them as a SLA.

Silverleafeon

11-17-2015, 10:42 PM

So here is my perspective on this topic of Master of Light...

Perhaps we need:

Master of Alignment: Your four divine alignment spells have no max caster level?

I noticed you did not mention Sunbeam, but it has (as far as I can tell) no max caster level anyway (neither does Firestorm or Nimbus of Light), unless their is a inferred heroic cap that we don't see.

Sunburst is a go to spell vs undead (and their are still a lot of them in DDO).

I think the bigger question is this:

"Will Favored Souls ever get access to light spells?"

Grant Favored Souls light spells for their spell lists inside the Beacon of Hope tree (see my Lost Trees Project for details) and suddenly things look different, don't they?

Beacon of Hope enhancement tree round 9

Core Abilities

Font Of Hope: For each point spent in this tree you gain +0.75 Universal Spell Power and +0.75 Positive Energy Spell Power (for a total of 1.5 Positive Energy Spell Power per point spent).

AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 1 Progression: 0 Requires: Favored Soul Level 1

Beacon Glimmer: Spell Like Ability: Faerie Fire (Activation Cost: 2 Spell Points. Cooldown: 10 seconds.)

AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 1 Progression: 5 Requires: Font of Hope, Favored Soul level 3

Beacon Brightness: Spell Like Ability: Glitterdust (Activation Cost: 5 Spell Points. Cooldown: 20 seconds.) Passive: Adds 10 Positive Spellpower

AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 1 Progression: 10 Requires: Beacon Glimmer, Favored Soul level 6

Summon Healing Archon: Toggle: Spell like ability: A small lantern archon hovers over your other shoulder and heals nearby allies. This archon is indestructible, deals {1d5 + caster level / 2} positive energy healing every 2 seconds, and uses half of your Healing Spell Power and Spell Critical effects for its light healing effects. The archon always heals the ally with the fewest hit points in range that has been damaged. Empower Healing and Enlarge Spell Feats can modify this ability. Cost: 20 spell points. Cooldown: 6 second. (Note: You can only have one Archon active at a time. This Archon and the Offensive Archon will un-summon each other upon casting) Passive: Adds 10 Positive Spellpower

AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 1 Progression: 20 Requires: Beacon Brightness, Favored Soul level 12

Penetrating the Darkness: All Positive Energy Spells and Light Spells Receive the Enlarge Spell Metamagic Effect, without adding additional spell point costs.
Passive: Adds 10 Positive Spellpower

AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 1 Progression: 30 Requires: Summon Healing Archon, Favored Soul level 18

Touch of Hope: You gain +2 Cha, and gain a new Spell-like ability: Panacea: (Activation Cost: 0 spell points. Cooldown: 12 seconds.)
Passive: Add to the list of favored soul spells that you can choose from to learn: Fire Shield as a level 4 spell.

AP Cost: 1 Ranks: Progression: 40 Requires: Penetrating the Darkness, Favored Soul level 20

Tier One abilities

Glow of Hope: When you cast a positive energy spell, you gain 3/6/10 Temporary Hit Points. Tier 3 If you have Epic Levels, Add your Favored Soul Class Levels to this number.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 1 No requirements

Wand Mastery: +25%/+50%/+75% effectiveness of your wands, scrolls, and other items that cast spells, and +1/+2/+3 to the save DCs of your offensive wands.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 1 No requirements

Angelic Touch: Your Positive Energy damage spells have an additional 1% chance to critically hit.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 1 Progression: 1 No requirements

Bedside Manner: +1/+2/+3 Diplomacy and Heal.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 1 No requirements

Spell Points: +30/60/90 Spell Points.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 1 No requirements

Tier Two abilities

Ray of Hope: When you critically hit with a positive energy spell, you gain 3/6/10 Sacred temporary spell points.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 5 Requirement: Glow of Hope

Least Beacon: Add to the list of favored soul spells that you can choose from to learn: Produce Flame as a level 2 spell.
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 1 Progression: 5 No requirements

Angelic Touch: Your Positive Energy damage spells have an additional 1% chance to critically hit.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 1 Progression: 5 Requires: Angelic Touch (Tier 1)

Efficient Empower Healing: Healing spells cast while the Empower Healing Spell feat is activated cost 1/2/4 fewer spell points.
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 3 Progression: 5 Requires: Empower Healing Spell

Embracing the Light: you gain 3/6/10% Light Absorption
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 5 No requirements

Tier Three abilities

Purifying Light: you gain 3/6/10% Acid Absorption
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 10 No requirements

Warming Light: you gain 3/6/10% Cold Absorption
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 10 No requirements

Angelic Touch: Your Positive Energy damage spells have an additional 1% chance to critically hit.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 1 Progression: 10 Requires: Angelic Touch (Tier 2)

Lesser Beacon: Add to the list of favored soul spells that you can choose from to learn: Sun Bolt as a level 3 spell.
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 1 Progression: 10 Requires: Least Beacon

Charisma or Wisdom: Choose one: +1 Wisdom +1 Charisma
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 1 Progression: 10 No requirements

Tier Four abilities

Intense Healing: Your Positive Energy Spells are cast at +1/+2/+3 caster level.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 20 No requirements

Incredible Healing: The maximum caster level of your Positive Energy Spells are increased by 1/2/3.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 20 Requires: Intense Healing

Angelic Touch: Your Positive Energy damage spells have an additional 1% chance to critically hit.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 1 Progression: 20 Requires: Angelic Touch (Tier 3)

Greater Beacon: Add to the list of favored soul spells that you can choose from to learn: Sunbeam as a level 6 spell.
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 1 Progression: 20 Requires: Lesser Beacon

Charisma or Wisdom: Choose one: +1 Wisdom +1 Charisma
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 1 Progression: 20 No requirements

Tier Five abilities

Awaken Elemental Weakness: Light: You are able to curse an enemy, increasing Light damage they take by 15%. (Activation Cost: 5 Spell Points. Cooldown: 20 seconds.)
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 1 Progression: 30 No requirements

Cure Focus: Your Cure Wounds spells have no maximum caster level.
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 1 Progression: 30 Requires: Incredible Healing

Channeling the Light: Whenever you are hit with Light or Fire damage, your next spell is cast with an extra 10/20/30 Fire Spellpower and 10/20/30 Light Spellpower (This can trigger at most once every 6/5/4 seconds, and does not stack if you get hit again before casting a spell)
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 30 No requirements

Supreme Beacon: Add to the list of favored soul spells that you can choose from to learn: Sunburst as a level 8 spell.
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 1 Progression: 30 Requires: Greater Beacon

Partial Ascension: You are immune to petrification and blindness.
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 1 Progression: 30 No requirements

But yes, without those light spells or those SLA, Favored Soul looks more a more like a very nice slash class...

But why would the class that must signifies Light be barred from the best light spells?

And if they are granted, what will distinguish Clerics from Favored Souls?
Almost sounds like the debate over Earthquake.

And yes you have a good point:

The level four Holy Smite, Order's Wrath, Chaos Hammer, and Unholy Blight have terrible Max Caster Levels of level 10.
While the level six Word of Balance has a max caster level of 20.

Should the former simply be dealt with in another manner (such as a mandatory +5 max caster level boost to 15ish)?
{Looking at Acid Rain (also level 4) having a 15d4 damage rating...}

SirValentine

11-17-2015, 10:43 PM

So Greater Ruin is the only ML 30 feat?

alancarp

11-17-2015, 10:45 PM

All of these new feats are pretty stout, but the clerics could really use a little love in one specific area: turn undead.

Something... somewhere in this large list... should help them out.

> Master of the Undead: Your turn dice are increased by 12, which stacks with all other turn dice enhancements.
> Scion of Khyber: AOE effect. All nearby undead are destroyed. 3 minute cooldown.

That would be helpful.

SirValentine

11-17-2015, 10:50 PM

New ML21 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +110 Maximum Spell Points)

Wellspring of Power

Activate to gain +150 Universal Spell Power and +20% Spell Critical Damage for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

Arcane Insight

Activate to gain + 6 to all spell DCs and +6 to Spell Penetration for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

My general approach to boosts: use them for the big boss fights. Not for some random 1/6 of the time of trash mobs getting there.

So...for a nuking type, a nuking boost is perfect, to DPS the boss faster.

For a DC caster...well, bosses are generally immune to those DC-spell effects. Can't see using an Epic feat for such a boost; would rather just use something that helps me all the time, like your new level 24 Embolden, or Great Ability, or [Greater/Epic] Spell Focus.

Artificers

Improved Construct Essence

Requires 12 Artificer Levels and Construct Essence. May be taken as an Artificer Bonus Feat.
Improves your base Repair to 70%, as well as Rust vulnerability.

Construct Exemplar

ML21, requires Improved Construct Essence.

You are now considered a Living Construct instead of your original race
100% base healing from Repair spells and 100% damage from Rust
Immunity to Sleep, Hold Person, Energy Drain, Nasueated, Exhausted, and Paralyzed effects except those which physically hold you in place
Immunity to ability score damage from natural poisons and natural diseases (but are vulnerable to those that specifically affect wood or metal)
+10 Racial bonus to saving throws against magical poisons, and do not fail saving throws against them on a roll of a natural 1 (this renders you immune to magical poisons with a DC of less than 11+your Fortitude save)
You may remain underwater indefinitely without the need to breathe.
When resting at a Rest Shrine, the health you regain is now based on your Repair skill instead of your Heal skill

In Update 29, the DC for Rune Arms will benefit from all sources of Evocation Bonuses (they currently only benefit from Feat Bonuses to Evocation). This isn't really a feat, I just didn't have somewhere better to mention it!

So these increase the benefit of Construct Essence. Since they don't say so, I'm assume they do not make the penalty to regular positive energy healing any worse?

Ligraph

11-18-2015, 12:30 AM

[B]
Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Artifice

Your Static Shock, Lightning Sphere, Blast Rod, and Lightning Motes spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Music

Your Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reveberate spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Like the idea of these feats a lot, but the spells listed seem kind of random, and some of the listed spells have no max caster level already. I would prefer, at least for the Master of the _____ Element feats, that all spells of that element are affected, or let the player choose 3 spells of that element (or spell type for the non-element feats) that will be affected (I like this idea better). For example, for a Sorc Fire Savant, once they have Scorch, why would they ever use Burning Hands? And no Wall of Fire or Scorching Ray?

Edit:.
Actually, on 2nd thought, this could, and maybe should, match up caster's element/spell type with a build/playstyle a little bit.

Aurora999

11-18-2015, 12:42 AM

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

A little sad that Divine Punishment is not on this list. Any chance to see it added seeing as Master of Artifice has 4 spells on its list?

Holyavatar

11-18-2015, 01:23 AM

So devs,whats the point of Master of Knowledge?didnt u guys know dat arcane bolt/blast scale with 50% spell power,and cant use any metamagic?...Besides,they all take like 2s+ to cast...just like the stunning blast in TS..and they have 5s/6s cd with tier3?so basically u force us to invest 9ap for 2 trash SLA does no damage?It seems like this feat can only stack up to 2 stacks..max 30 stacks?LOL:confused: TOTALLY NOT WORTH IT

Dandonk

11-18-2015, 01:43 AM

This looks poor.

I wouldn't take this as a heroic feat, much less spend an epic feat slot on it.

Very much so.

In fact, metamagics such as max and empower spell are already pretty bad in epics. The cost is extremely high, and the bonus damage is, percentage-wise, lower and lower.

So before adding another extremely high cost meta, I'd love for devs to take a look at metas in epics. The value is fairly low on non-SLAs.

MonadRebelion

11-18-2015, 02:01 AM

I like what you're doing with summons here and in the scion feat thread. Will have to see them in action to see if they are enough though. Anyways, it's great to see you guys really thinking about summons.

Wellspring of Power is nice. I can see that being useful.

Arcane Insight I don't see being used unless the cooldown is lowered by a minute.

Wellspring seems a lot better than Intensify Spell. Why not up the bonus to +100 add +7% spell crit and make it cost +40sp

Master of Fire doesn't seem to affect any cleric spells. Shouldn't it?

I am ambivalent about the Master of X feats over all. Why shouldn't pure casters get one for free? Without knowing how the caster pass is going to turn out, it's difficult to judge how good these feats are going to be at the end of the day. I don't even really have a grip on what taking max damage dice away from spells in the current is going to feel like. My worry about putting out these feats before the caster pass is that they will end up guiding the pass in a way that it shouldn't. If a bunch of power gets dumped into casters via these feats that will make balancing casters a mess when their pass comes.

Greater Ruin is cheese ball like its cousin Ruin. However, since Ruin exists we might as well have Greater Ruin for the folks who like it.

The artificer feats look cool.

janave

11-18-2015, 02:24 AM

Greater Ruin should hit 2x500 vs 1000, to avoid further cheese potential, just sayin.

streep101

11-18-2015, 03:27 AM

I'd like to see Completionist be a free past life feat. It's hard to earn it, and on builds that are feat starved, it's tough to justify selecting it.

noinfo

11-18-2015, 03:29 AM

noble_pirate

11-18-2015, 03:39 AM

Greater Ruin should hit 2x500 vs 1000, to avoid further cheese potential, just sayin.

nope. its ok - high dmg but cost a lot of mana and require another epic feat to take

noble_pirate

11-18-2015, 03:45 AM

I'd like to see Completionist be a free past life feat. It's hard to earn it, and on builds that are feat starved, it's tough to justify selecting it.

agree, maybe make it auto-granted if character already earned it

Sephenis

11-18-2015, 03:48 AM

I see many feat to caster...
and melee?
tanks?
ranged....

Typical, the whining starts. This is a beginning of a caster pass pal. NO melee feats. You got your overbuffing for years. Please shut up and let us enjoying our presents.

Sephenis

11-18-2015, 04:00 AM

***Please make sure you have read this thread first, it contains an overview of Update 29 Feats.*** (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467837-Update-29-Feats-Overview)

In addition to the level cap increase and its related feats, we're planning on adding some new general feats. These provide extra options in Epic, especially boosts to Spellcasting.

New ML21 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +110 Maximum Spell Points)

Wellspring of Power

Activate to gain +150 Universal Spell Power and +20% Spell Critical Damage for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

Arcane Insight

Activate to gain + 6 to all spell DCs and +6 to Spell Penetration for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

New ML24 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +140 Maximum Spell Points)

Improved Augment Summoning

Requires Augment Summoning
Your summoned creatures have +8 to all ability scores, +10% Dodge, and +100 Maximum Hitpoints

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save negates the freeze.

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Embolden Spell

METAMAGIC: +2 DCs to all spells with DCs. +10SP. Affects spells

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Artifice

Your Static Shock, Lightning Sphere, Blast Rod, and Lightning Motes spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Music

Your Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reveberate spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Knowledge

Your Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast spells now grant you one stack of Mental Honing (+3 Universal Spell Power, +2% Spell Crit Damage) when cast. This effect can stack up to 30 times. One stack is removed every 6 seconds.

New ML30 General Feat:

Greater Ruin

Requires Ruin.
Deals 1000 untyped damage to a single enemy (no saving throw). Costs 150 SP

Artificers

Improved Construct Essence

Requires 12 Artificer Levels and Construct Essence. May be taken as an Artificer Bonus Feat.
Improves your base Repair to 70%, as well as Rust vulnerability.

Construct Exemplar

ML21, requires Improved Construct Essence.

You are now considered a Living Construct instead of your original race
100% base healing from Repair spells and 100% damage from Rust
Immunity to Sleep, Hold Person, Energy Drain, Nasueated, Exhausted, and Paralyzed effects except those which physically hold you in place
Immunity to ability score damage from natural poisons and natural diseases (but are vulnerable to those that specifically affect wood or metal)
+10 Racial bonus to saving throws against magical poisons, and do not fail saving throws against them on a roll of a natural 1 (this renders you immune to magical poisons with a DC of less than 11+your Fortitude save)
You may remain underwater indefinitely without the need to breathe.
When resting at a Rest Shrine, the health you regain is now based on your Repair skill instead of your Heal skill

In Update 29, the DC for Rune Arms will benefit from all sources of Evocation Bonuses (they currently only benefit from Feat Bonuses to Evocation). This isn't really a feat, I just didn't have somewhere better to mention it!

It's really cool, but it doesn't solve any of the caster problems. But as a start, it's excellent, i just hope you're adding more stuffs at the future updates. And the automatic spell power increase through epic levels still stands?

dunklezhan

11-18-2015, 04:08 AM

Artificer feats are disappointing. I didn't want to take construct essence before, 2 new feats that require it is not good. Fleshie Artificer's problem is not self-healing, it's that their damage falls off majorly in Epic levels. Cool theme, but doesn't actually address their issues. No Ranged Power. Penalties to doubleshot. etc etc...

Agree. My fleshie arti does not have a self healing problem. He can quit whenever he likes.

Ahem.

Seriously, between arti's ML boosts to items, great UMD and healing grenades, fleshie artificers self heal and even to a certain extent spot-heal just fine. Its just not as easy as using the repair spells. Its Epic damage output and DCs are their main issue. The feat which removes caster levels from some of their signature spells is a help to certain specific kinds of damage, but does nothing for the fact that with their DCs evasion is going to avoid most of that damage anyway.

But that's not enough to tarnish the whole list, which looks in general appealing.

Nadion

11-18-2015, 04:24 AM

noinfo

11-18-2015, 05:05 AM

BigErkyKid

11-18-2015, 05:06 AM

[URL="https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467837-Update-29-Feats-Overview"]

[B]New ML24 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +140 Maximum Spell Points)

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save negates the freeze.

Without the cool down and the duration of the freeze we cannot comment.

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Amazing for warlocks.

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Artifice

Your Static Shock, Lightning Sphere, Blast Rod, and Lightning Motes spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Music

Your Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reveberate spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

I need some help with this. Does that mean that they will increase with every level taken in the max caster class? So if I am a bard level 20 in fate singer I am casting spells at level 25? With song of arcane might, level 25. So shout becomes: 1d3+3 per level so 26d3+78? And with gauntlets of the arcane soldier 28d3+84?

Let's see the damage output.

Currently:

Base:
15d3+45 = (15*1.5) +45 = 67.5
Sonic spell power = 638
90 Perform (not really looking into most accurate number here...)
60 Aria
41 Autografts Spell Singer
25 Capstone
144 Epic cord
150 Maximize
75 Empower
20 Spell craft
33 Implement
20 Empirean magic
90+60+41+25+144+150+75+20+33=658
Damage on non crit
67.5*((100+658)/100))=511

Now in the new scenario you are proposing
Base (max):
28d3+84 = (28*1.5) +84 = 126
Sonic spell power = 658+ 195*=853 (*new sources) - This is maximum achievable
90 Perform (not really looking into most accurate number here...)
60 Aria
41 Autografts Spell Singer
25 Capstone
144 Epic cord
150 Maximize
75 Empower
20 Spell craft
33 Implement
*40 Scion of Feywild
*20 Arcane warrior
*60 Autogrants for epic levels
*75 Intensify spell
Additional 40+20+60+75=195
Damage on a non crit
126*((100+853)/100)=1200

You have more than doubled the damage output. I suppose that this will be even better for savants.

Is this enough to make the spell singer tree worthwhile in end game as a DPS tree?

It is an open question, I don't know honestly. Obviously it would be more viable than now.

Has anyone run numbers for other stuff?

Silverleafeon

11-18-2015, 05:36 AM

Has anyone run numbers for other stuff?

Looking at Searing Light:

Old
1d4+4 light damage per 2 caster levels (Maximum damage 5d4+20.), = (32.5 * 100+500)/100 = 195
or deals 1d3+3 light damage per caster level to Undead. (Maximum damage 10d3+30.)

New
1d4+4 per 2 caster levels (Max 25 +3) = (14 * 6.5 * (100+500)) /100 = 486

Given this spell has a 3 second cooldown, its a significant boost for favored souls and clerics alike.
Gaining 500 light spell power for either one is reasonable.

BigErkyKid

11-18-2015, 06:05 AM

Looking at Searing Light:

Old
1d4+4 light damage per 2 caster levels (Maximum damage 5d4+20.), = (32.5 * 100+500)/100 = 195
or deals 1d3+3 light damage per caster level to Undead. (Maximum damage 10d3+30.)

New
1d4+4 per 2 caster levels (Max 25 +3) = (14 * 6.5 * (100+500)) /100 = 486

Given this spell has a 3 second cooldown, its a significant boost for favored souls and clerics alike.
Gaining 500 light spell power for either one is reasonable.

I think you are being conservative here, I was looking at over 800 spell power for a bard with all metamagics. Surely clerics can reach at least 600-700?

(14 * 6.5 * (100+650)) /100= 682

My concern would be that SLA monster could get out of hand. For instance, a dual sunbolt SLA FVS iconic in exalted angel would be dealing pretty serious damage with the new legendary feats. I bet someone can come up with a build that gets to 800-900 spell power and with the 30% extra crit we would be looking at searing light for:

(14 * 6.5 * (100+850)) /100=864 and writing around ~2k damage.

A sun bolt would be doing:

1d4+4 light damage per caster level (caster level 20+5 destiny +3 FVS +2 gauntlets = 30)

So base damage is:
30d4+120 = (30*2.5)+120=195

With a spell power of 850 (I think it should be more, but let's keep it like this)
195*((100+850)/100)=1850 pre crit.

Sestra had 550 pre metas on his FVS before all these changes, now it would be adding:

60 epic autogrant
40 celestia

So that's 650 pre metamagics. With metas
150 maximize
75 empower
75 new metamagic

This is 950 max light spell power. And this would make that sun bolt 2047.5 pre crit. On a crit it would be 2000*2.3=4600.

We for sure need new calculations, but this could be too much.

Bolo_Grubb

11-18-2015, 09:54 AM

I see a lot for casters, but nothing for any melee/tank/sneaky types.

slarden

11-18-2015, 10:00 AM

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save negates the freeze.

Will this work with metamagic like maximize and empower? Is this a spell or SLA?

Dendrix

11-18-2015, 10:44 AM

I'd like to see Completionist be a free past life feat. It's hard to earn it, and on builds that are feat starved, it's tough to justify selecting it.

It's extremly powerful and very worth a feat slot.
It beats all the +1 stat epic feats for instance by being worth 14 of them and much much more.

Hawkwier

11-18-2015, 11:09 AM

***Please make sure you have read this thread first, it contains an overview of Update 29 Feats.*** (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467837-Update-29-Feats-Overview)

In addition to the level cap increase and its related feats, we're planning on adding some new general feats. These provide extra options in Epic, especially boosts to Spellcasting.

New ML21 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +110 Maximum Spell Points)

Wellspring of Power

Activate to gain +150 Universal Spell Power and +20% Spell Critical Damage for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

Arcane Insight

Activate to gain + 6 to all spell DCs and +6 to Spell Penetration for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

New ML24 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +140 Maximum Spell Points)

Improved Augment Summoning

Requires Augment Summoning
Your summoned creatures have +8 to all ability scores, +10% Dodge, and +100 Maximum Hitpoints

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save negates the freeze.

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Embolden Spell

METAMAGIC: +2 DCs to all spells with DCs. +10SP. Affects spells

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Artifice

Your Static Shock, Lightning Sphere, Blast Rod, and Lightning Motes spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Music

Your Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reveberate spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Knowledge

Your Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast spells now grant you one stack of Mental Honing (+3 Universal Spell Power, +2% Spell Crit Damage) when cast. This effect can stack up to 30 times. One stack is removed every 6 seconds.

New ML30 General Feat:

Greater Ruin

Requires Ruin.
Deals 1000 untyped damage to a single enemy (no saving throw). Costs 150 SP

Artificers

Improved Construct Essence

Requires 12 Artificer Levels and Construct Essence. May be taken as an Artificer Bonus Feat.
Improves your base Repair to 70%, as well as Rust vulnerability.

Construct Exemplar

ML21, requires Improved Construct Essence.

You are now considered a Living Construct instead of your original race
100% base healing from Repair spells and 100% damage from Rust
Immunity to Sleep, Hold Person, Energy Drain, Nasueated, Exhausted, and Paralyzed effects except those which physically hold you in place
Immunity to ability score damage from natural poisons and natural diseases (but are vulnerable to those that specifically affect wood or metal)
+10 Racial bonus to saving throws against magical poisons, and do not fail saving throws against them on a roll of a natural 1 (this renders you immune to magical poisons with a DC of less than 11+your Fortitude save)
You may remain underwater indefinitely without the need to breathe.
When resting at a Rest Shrine, the health you regain is now based on your Repair skill instead of your Heal skill

In Update 29, the DC for Rune Arms will benefit from all sources of Evocation Bonuses (they currently only benefit from Feat Bonuses to Evocation). This isn't really a feat, I just didn't have somewhere better to mention it!

Very nice feats, for a caster. :)

Melees and Ranged could also do with some thought though?

Even if not new feats, you could maybe allow the choosing of one heroic feat without requiring prerequisites from a restricted list - feats like Shield Mastery, IPS, Heavy Armor, Combat Expertise, Greater SF/THF/TWF, Imp Evasion, Stunning Blow, Improved Trip might be contenders?

Would allow for an interesting bit of choice & customisation without being too OP at this level.

Hipparan

11-18-2015, 11:21 AM

And whilst the feat for arcane bolt/blast could be useful the spells themselves aren't. They can't be metamagiced so the damage is mediocre at best, they both have a save and because they can't be heightened most things save for half damage or none if they have evasion. I can possibly see people taking the bolt now just to spam it so they can get the increase in power/spell crit chance - but even then firing that off causes the usual minimal delay in casting something that's actually effective so would it be worth it? If you're not willing to allow metamagics could you at least remove the save?

^This (even though I don't have a wizard and like my sorcerer better than wizards :P)

Also, What's with the Burst of Glacial Wrath? Seems sort of out of place since there's nothing else like it in the feat list for other elements. I am very glad to see that casters are getting a nice boost with this update though. :)

Hipparan

11-18-2015, 11:24 AM

I think you are being conservative here, I was looking at over 800 spell power for a bard with all metamagics. Surely clerics can reach at least 600-700?

(14 * 6.5 * (100+650)) /100= 682

My concern would be that SLA monster could get out of hand. For instance, a dual sunbolt SLA FVS iconic in exalted angel would be dealing pretty serious damage with the new legendary feats. I bet someone can come up with a build that gets to 800-900 spell power and with the 30% extra crit we would be looking at searing light for:

(14 * 6.5 * (100+850)) /100=864 and writing around ~2k damage.

A sun bolt would be doing:

1d4+4 light damage per caster level (caster level 20+5 destiny +3 FVS +2 gauntlets = 30)

So base damage is:
30d4+120 = (30*2.5)+120=195

With a spell power of 850 (I think it should be more, but let's keep it like this)
195*((100+850)/100)=1850 pre crit.

Sestra had 550 pre metas on his FVS before all these changes, now it would be adding:

60 epic autogrant
40 celestia

So that's 650 pre metamagics. With metas
150 maximize
75 empower
75 new metamagic

This is 950 max light spell power. And this would make that sun bolt 2047.5 pre crit. On a crit it would be 2000*2.3=4600.

We for sure need new calculations, but this could be too much.

I am not so sure that this would be too much damage. We have yet to see how much HP that the enemies in Epic Shroud will have, and you also need to take into consideration how the cooldown of the spell would affect the DPS as compared to melee characters doing crits for 1k+ every few seconds.

hit_fido

11-18-2015, 11:27 AM

In Update 29, the DC for Rune Arms will benefit from all sources of Evocation Bonuses (they currently only benefit from Feat Bonuses to Evocation). This isn't really a feat, I just didn't have somewhere better to mention it!

This is a good tweak but it sure would be nice to fit in something like this:

"In Update 29, charging your rune arm will no longer penalize your character's movement rate. Moving will still deplete your rune arm charge to its stable charge tier."

Jiirix

11-18-2015, 11:29 AM

[URL="https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467837-Update-29-Feats-Overview"][B]

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Artifice

Your Static Shock, Lightning Sphere, Blast Rod, and Lightning Motes spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Wilds[/I]

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Music[/I]

Your Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reveberate spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

The Elemental Masters look good; I guess Water didn't get all 3 SLA's uncapped because they are all long range?

Master of Artifice fits the Arcanotechnician SLAs obviously. A “fire/force-option” with 3 of the non-lighting/ non-SLA spells would be nice. Prismatic Ray or Tactical Detonation may be stronger than lightning Sphere and Lightning Motes but they don’t come as SLAs and cost way more Spellpoints.

I don’t play druids and I only have a melee bard, so I can’t comment on Master of Wilds and Master of Music. Perhaps Soundsburst could be added to Music? That wouldn’t add to the damage but only to the spell resistance check.

The spell selection of Master of Dead seems a bit odd to me. Negative Energy burst is cool for Pale Master of course. But Necrotic Ray won’t be affected by the feat as mobs will still only take one negative level and the damage potion seems to have no maximum caster level anyway. Chilltouch is a negative energy touch attack, useless for a Pale Master that isn’t suicidal and not that great for an Emissary of Dead as negative energy is the most limited damage form AFAIK (healing undead, reduced/blocked by deathward). Perhaps Necrotic Bolt would be better? Pale Masters and Emissary of DArk both get it, still negative damage but at least not in touch range.

Master of Light should be the perfect match for Emissary of Light and viable for favorite souls I guess? I don’t get it why the elemental savants get all their SLAs uncapped and Emissary of light only one. Sorcs get all the arcane spells to supplement their nuking and divines are stuck with the few mostly lacking divine options. Could you please add “Nimbus of light” to Master of Light? Divine Punishment would be too much to ask for I suppose.

You could add Flamestrike and Firestorm (Arcane don’t get those) to Master of Fire and it would be a nice feat for divine castes too. Perhaps even Symbol of Flame? Maybe the spell would be used for the first time then? Why give Divine Casters fire spells and not support them?

sjbb87

11-18-2015, 11:30 AM

Typical, the whining starts. This is a beginning of a caster pass pal. NO melee feats. You got your overbuffing for years. Please shut up and let us enjoying our presents.

Nop... Its update 29- level cap 30
not caster pass.

Need more other feats, to represent this evolution DDO
I know caster needed love ... and I see this here ...
But need to add other types of feats also.

Steelstar

11-18-2015, 11:43 AM

No Master Feat for Healing ( Positive ) at LVL 24 ? ( and make that also Negative )
Negative is covered in these feats. Clerics already have an avenue for uncapping the caster level of Cure spells, and Healing is in an overall state right now where uncapping caster levels for non-Clerics is not necessary.

Quick question - does the improved augment summoning only affect summons, or does it affect pets as well?

Secondly - there seems to be a set of of feats to remove cater levels for various sorcerer SLAs, necromancer, etc. However, I don't see anything similar for an evocation archmage - I'm assuming that's because of how it works with shiradi or because the missile spells are harder to remove caster level for, but not every evocation archmage uses shiradi,, and force spells could do with a similar boost.

And whilst the feat for arcane bolt/blast could be useful the spells themselves aren't. They can't be metamagiced so the damage is mediocre at best, they both have a save and because they can't be heightened most things save for half damage or none if they have evasion. I can possibly see people taking the bolt now just to spam it so they can get the increase in power/spell crit chance - but even then firing that off causes the usual minimal delay in casting something that's actually effective so would it be worth it? If you're not willing to allow metamagics could you at least remove the save?
IAS applies to everything Augment Summoning does. So, yes, also pets.

Most of the Evocation Archmage SLAs either don't benefit from a MCL increase, or run into issues (Semi-Infinite Magic Missile Projectiles isn't ideal). Master of Knowledge is specifically for Archmages. More on that below.

Tentatively, I'd like to add Metamagics to Arcane Bolt and Blast for Archmages. Possibly in U29.

That's pretty much already in Magister, would those dcs stack? Also, no one really use the clicky. (Too short of timer, too long of cooldown and it bugs out if you jump/run while casting it.)
Yes, it stacks.

Well ****. Non-shiradi DPS casting might actually become a thing without ML restrictions on elemental spells. Greater Ruin is also scary powerful.

Certainly though, there's going to be substantial rethinking of all arcane casters after this lands.
Glad to hear it! :)

Does this apply to Eldritch Blast as well? (Which is kind of a level 9 spell, but not really?)

Artificer feats are disappointing. I didn't want to take construct essence before, 2 new feats that require it is not good. Fleshie Artificer's problem is not self-healing, it's that their damage falls off majorly in Epic levels. Cool theme, but doesn't actually address their issues. No Ranged Power. Penalties to doubleshot. etc etc...
Not sure yet about it working with base Eldritch Blast (which is normally not affected by metamagics). May be a technical issue. We'll let you know!

These Artificer feats are absolutely not meant to address any of their issues. Or to substitute for an "Arti Pass". They are simply new options. Which I made because I like Artificers and had a few spare hours on a weekend. Take 'em if you like them, ignore them if you don't.

This has to be a misprint of some sort.

Compare to DDO Wiki's quote:

Empower Spell Metamagic Increases the Spell Power by 75, but increases the spell point cost of casting the spell by 15.

Rewrite please to:

•Intensify Spell
•METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +10 SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Willing to consider +15 sp, since all the other feats are so attractive I can ignore this one anyway.
Ack yes, misprint. It is 15 in data/the coming Lamannia build. I'll update the OP.

I think it is just more SLA promotion (for which you get all benefit and no extra cost). They seem really enthusiastic about getting us to use only SLAs.
We are really enthusiastic about dedicated casters having higher damage options at lower SP costs. SLAs are a good method of doing that, while continuing to reward the AP choices you made in Heroic. These feats also apply to the non-SLA versions of the spells, if you have them.

Very interesting stuff. I just want to point out something that the team must have overlooked: Necrotic Ray does not currently have a maximum caster level.

I repeat: Necrotic Ray does not currently have a maximum caster level.

Pale Masters will thank you very much to leave Necrotic Ray as is and substitute Death Aura in it's place for this feat.
Ah, that's right. OK. We'll take a tentative look at replacing it with Death Aura. It'll be replaced with *something*, at any rate.

So here is my perspective on this topic of Master of Light. This is coming from a previous cleric who now plays warlock but wishes someday to go back to cleric.

I don't understand the mixture of spells chosen for master of light. To me instead of this feat applying to versatile builds, it seems to narrow build choices for divines.

Lets look at the spells and who can attain them ... and the caveat is that almost all of the other master's feats apply to a single class/PrE such as the various elements for various Sorcs, Druid as listed above, etc.

Sunbolt: Druid, Divine Disciple, or top tier Exalted Angel ED
Searing Light: Cleric or Favored Soul
Sunburst: Druid, Divine Disciple, or Sun Elf

To get all three spell for a build one must be a Divine Discple or Sun-elf Favored Soul running in Exalted Angel. It seems that all the other Master's feats have multiple spells (basically all) that affect a single class and all other caster classes are covered. I understand the light theme and these are basically the best light spells, but it limits a lot of versatility for favored souls as they must be sun-elf and in exalted angel to benefit from all three or a divine disciple. Two of the spells are actually druid spells and not on the normal spell list for clerics or favored souls. Additionally the spells are all an SLA for a Sun-elf Divine Disciple running in Exalted Angel only. The other elemental master feats do not have race restrictions to attain all spells as an SLA. I mean the Master's of Wild feat has 4 spells that are all SLA for druids regardless of race.

The other point I'd like to mention is the choice of Sunburst as having no max caster level. This spell actually has static damage against all foes except undead and oozes of 6d6. So its no limit caster level is only affecting a fraction of the mobs while other AOE spells from the other Master's feats affect almost all mobs unless they are immune which is more rare than common. Additionally one can only get Sunburst if they are a druid (and they already have a Master's feat listed above) or if they are a sun-elf or divine disciple. Non sun-elf favored souls are left out in the cold.

My suggestions is to change Sunburst to an AOE alignment spell such as Holy Smite (as it seems the theme is to boost SLAs) or Order's Wrath. Both Clerics and Favored Souls get these spells with Clerics obviously at an advantage as they get one of them as a SLA.
Yes, that ability does key close to Divine Disciple. Somewhat intentionally. If you have thoughts on a separate "Master of..." feat in the same vein that would lean toward Favored Souls, we're all ears. In the meantime, offensive Clerics can definitely use the bump here. If you have suggestions of what to replace Sunburst with, we'd like to hear that too.

So Greater Ruin is the only ML 30 feat?
Yep. In that you need Ruin first, which is offered at 27. In effect, we can't have Greater Ruin and offer it at a lower level. You also have the pick of every other existing feat.

So these increase the benefit of Construct Essence. Since they don't say so, I'm assume they do not make the penalty to regular positive energy healing any worse?
They do not further decrease your Positive Healing, no.

A little sad that Divine Punishment is not on this list. Any chance to see it added seeing as Master of Artifice has 4 spells on its list?
We'll take a look.

So devs,whats the point of Master of Knowledge?didnt u guys know dat arcane bolt/blast scale with 50% spell power,and cant use any metamagic?...Besides,they all take like 2s+ to cast...just like the stunning blast in TS..and they have 5s/6s cd with tier3?so basically u force us to invest 9ap for 2 trash SLA does no damage?It seems like this feat can only stack up to 2 stacks..max 30 stacks?LOL:confused: TOTALLY NOT WORTH IT
Duration/cooldown is misprinted here, I'll adjust the OP.

Can we avoid having the clickie power boost as feats? I feel particulary they are like the Magister one that no one really uses but when people talk about max DC they will be factored in as if they are useful. The DPS one may have some uses as you could unload on a boss however the DC one is useless on bosses.

Nope. While there are certainly reasons to not run in Magister, you do intentionally give up DCs to do it. These feats are choices. You have the choice to take these, or take something else.

And the automatic spell power increase through epic levels still stands?
Yes, as stated in the Overview thread.

I see a lot for casters, but nothing for any melee/tank/sneaky types.
The average Melee/Ranged is a lot better off in terms of Epic feat choices right now than the average Caster. Making up for some of that gap is the main reason there are new mid-Epic feats in this update at all.

Vargouille

11-18-2015, 11:59 AM

Sunbolt: Druid, Divine Disciple, or top tier Exalted Angel ED
Searing Light: Cleric or Favored Soul
Sunburst: Druid, Divine Disciple, or Sun Elf

To get all three spell for a build one must be a Divine Discple or Sun-elf Favored Soul running in Exalted Angel.

It's a minor point, but a Sun Elf Favored Soul can get a zero-spellpoint SLA of Sun Bolt. That's the Sun Elf version of the Angel of Vengeance capstone.

Elfishski

11-18-2015, 12:02 PM

We are really enthusiastic about dedicated casters having higher damage options at lower SP costs. SLAs are a good method of doing that, while continuing to reward the AP choices you made in Heroic. These feats also apply to the non-SLA versions of the spells, if you have them.

Overall, I like the look of these feats as providing more options for characters, and a bump for casters relative to melee.

However, while I mostly don't play casters, when I do I pretty much only use SLAs on the hotbar for doing damage, with the odd utility spell thrown in. Uncapping damage on the SLA spells while leaving other spells the same won't change that, it just makes having the rest of the spellbook even less relevant. Maybe there's good reasons not to, but what about adding higher level epic feats relying on these that remove level caps on high level heroic spells, as an alternative option instead of Ruin etc?

AzureDragonas

11-18-2015, 12:12 PM

[URL="https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467837-Update-29-Feats-Overview"][B]

Wellspring of Power
[LIST]
Activate to gain +150 Universal Spell Power and +20% Spell Critical Damage for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Master of Knowledge

Your Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast spells now grant you one stack of Mental Honing (+3 Universal Spell Power, +2% Spell Crit Damage) when cast. This effect can stack up to 30 times. One stack is removed every 6 seconds.

Some feats are nice and i am happy you show interest in casters finally but we are here to talk about stuff you thinking to put in game and which can lead to another disaster and nerf bat swinging so here are some questions i would like to ask...

1. Issue
I am not sure if i saw all answers but is it me or these feats especialy a master of Knowledge sounds like shiradi return using instead of mm couple of grenade.
Are you took in account you gonna let any shiradi caster there to get 90 spell power and 60% crit damage for FREE? while spell power and all boosts effects color effects?

All shiradi use this Empyrean Magic: Passive Bonus: Whenever you cast a fire, light, or healing spell you gain a stack of Empyrean Fervor. Each stack of Empyrean Fervor gives you +2 Sacred bonus to Universal Spell power, +1% Sacred Bonus to Critical Chance with all spells. Duration: 10 seconds. Stacks 10 times.

and its a T3 twist which gives 20 spell power and 10% chance to crit with duration of 10s and if i remmeber correct removes all stacks.

You still didn't told us how you gonna solve issues with exploits but before making changes tell us how exactly u imagine them to effect mainstram builds couse right now i can see dozen of shiradi casters already picking this feat asap and loughing to any other caster.

2. Issue
Also about caster level cap remove on certain spells i hope you thought to not allow this on SLA? couse last thing i wanna see sorc using theyr:

Cold Ray: Spell Like Ability: Niac's Cold Ray (Activation Cost: 4/3/2 Spell Points. Cooldown: 12/8/4 seconds.)

30d5 + 150 (if u cast as lvl 30 at least) add 1k+ spell power and nonsense crit damage boost on top of that and all this for 2SP each 4 sec.

15d5 +150 (average) * 10x (i guess at least wit hmetamagic 1k is possible and easy) * 2.1 (same master bonus crit multi) = ~5k damage on single target if he failed save frmo lvl 1 spell SLA.
Can already imagine splashes of /x/x/3wiz

3. Issue
Also you done nothing for issues with fvs
there are 2 divine casters in game
fvs - good light damage/ healing
cleric - good healing/decent light damage

Master of Light
Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

How exactly this fixes issues when fvs can't even cast non of these spells except searing light (with paying full price anyway)

How it stands you gonna make best healing class in game to also be best divine damage caster in game too (which should be somehow fvs) and make fvs even more pathetic in comparison to better cleric who have heals+(sla damage).

4. Issue
when you gonna fix all sla of palemaster/archmage i love how sorc can have sla which actualy do damage and while u give wiz sla something like

Arcane Bolt
D&D Dice: Deals 1d6 force damage per caster level.

which scales and can't be augmented with any metamagic not even quicken couse there is no fun to use sla which does ~200-400 on end game build to 20k monsters in end game content.

Atremus

11-18-2015, 12:14 PM

We for sure need new calculations, but this could be too much.

On live a pure FvS should max out around 730 Light SPP. My pure build today is missing 30 Sun Elf and 30 Iconic PL and hits 630 using reborn in light without potting.

My fully maxed splash / Implsion FvS can peak at 750. And the DPS is trash in the hard stuff. These bumps look big but they are so needed.

I will do some math after lunch on what my FvS will do once he obtains all the new feats.

CThruTheEgo

11-18-2015, 12:42 PM

Artificers

Improved Construct Essence

Requires 12 Artificer Levels and Construct Essence. May be taken as an Artificer Bonus Feat.
Improves your base Repair to 70%, as well as Rust vulnerability.

Construct Exemplar

ML21, requires Improved Construct Essence.

You are now considered a Living Construct instead of your original race
100% base healing from Repair spells and 100% damage from Rust
Immunity to Sleep, Hold Person, Energy Drain, Nasueated, Exhausted, and Paralyzed effects except those which physically hold you in place
Immunity to ability score damage from natural poisons and natural diseases (but are vulnerable to those that specifically affect wood or metal)
+10 Racial bonus to saving throws against magical poisons, and do not fail saving throws against them on a roll of a natural 1 (this renders you immune to magical poisons with a DC of less than 11+your Fortitude save)
You may remain underwater indefinitely without the need to breathe.
When resting at a Rest Shrine, the health you regain is now based on your Repair skill instead of your Heal skill

Just out of curiosity, will there be any appearance changes with these feats? Something to indicate a transition from fleshling to construct? I'm picturing the Borg from Star Trek... I will probably still play a WF arti, so this doesn't really affect me either way, but it would add some nice flavor.

In Update 29, the DC for Rune Arms will benefit from all sources of Evocation Bonuses (they currently only benefit from Feat Bonuses to Evocation). This isn't really a feat, I just didn't have somewhere better to mention it!

Awesome! I'm glad to hear this will finally be fixed.

Cleanincubus

11-18-2015, 12:42 PM

The average Melee/Ranged is a lot better off in terms of Epic feat choices right now than the average Caster. Making up for some of that gap is the main reason there are new mid-Epic feats in this update at all.

http://cdn.meme.am/instances2/500x/2947193.jpg

Seriously, you can give melee and ranged something? They might not need something, but more options are always better.

CeltEireson

11-18-2015, 01:06 PM

Most of the Evocation Archmage SLAs either don't benefit from a MCL increase, or run into issues (Semi-Infinite Magic Missile Projectiles isn't ideal). Master of Knowledge is specifically for Archmages. More on that below.

Tentatively, I'd like to add Metamagics to Arcane Bolt and Blast for Archmages. Possibly in U29.

Thanks Steelstar, metamagics on those would help a lot, though now I'm going to have to completely rethink my enhancement layout!

There is one wizard evocation SLA that could benefit - cyclonic blast - any chance you could increase the cap on it, or even remove it? Also its very problematical to use in a group given that it removes both enemy and friendly persistent effects - changing this to work only for friendly probably entails more work than you can probably afford, but any chance of having two versions - one that doesn't remove effects and is basically damage/knockdown only, and one that does,?

And seeing as its coming up to xmas, I may as well start listing some of my xmas wishes ;) the energy criticals epic past life feat doesn't have force in the list. I know there are other options we could choose, but the energy criticals is the most spellpoint efficient one of the three.

Totally irrelevant in many ways to current topic, but as we're talking about improving casters and evocation wizards in particular!

CeltEireson

11-18-2015, 01:09 PM

Overall, I like the look of these feats as providing more options for characters, and a bump for casters relative to melee.

However, while I mostly don't play casters, when I do I pretty much only use SLAs on the hotbar for doing damage, with the odd utility spell thrown in. Uncapping damage on the SLA spells while leaving other spells the same won't change that, it just makes having the rest of the spellbook even less relevant. Maybe there's good reasons not to, but what about adding higher level epic feats relying on these that remove level caps on high level heroic spells, as an alternative option instead of Ruin etc?

I'd have to agree - probably only a handful of the spells actually get used on a regular basic and, particularly for wizards who have access to them all, it seems a bit of a waste that we're almost encouraged to restrict ourselves to a handful of spells.

Delacroix21

11-18-2015, 01:11 PM

Can you please make Dreamscape a random cycling 30sec buff every minute? Losing all control of your character for 5+ seconds every minute just plain sucks.

Also you guys haven't considered how the community and groups will respond to this. Who is going to want a player joining their raid that keeps stopping to dreamscape every minute and stop contributing? I can see LFMs now= No Dreamscapers or be kicked!

Ebondevil

11-18-2015, 01:14 PM

New ML30 General Feat:

Greater Ruin

Requires Ruin.
Deals 1000 untyped damage to a single enemy (no saving throw). Costs 150 SP

Why are all Epic Spells classed as Feats, it severely limits the selection options for casters.

Would it not make more sense to have a Single 'Epic Spellcasting' Feat and the spells are unlocked based on Caster Level + Epic Levels, Character level, Arcane/Divine/Wilderness Lore, Spellcraft or a combination of the aforementioned.

One Feat for one spell feels really kinda sucky and severely limiting.

It would allow the Developers to have a lot more control over what characters could get which Epic spells (Mass Frog could be Wilderness Lore Locked for example), and allow for a much greater expansion of the Epic Spellcasting system.

Ebondevil

11-18-2015, 01:18 PM

It's a minor point, but a Sun Elf Favored Soul can get a zero-spellpoint SLA of Sun Bolt. That's the Sun Elf version of the Angel of Vengeance capstone.

Only if you use a +1 (or more) Heart of Wood...

Alkusoittow

11-18-2015, 01:20 PM

New ML24 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +140 Maximum Spell Points)

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

For the love of all that is unholy, please replace Chill Touch with Death Aura.

Grailhawk

11-18-2015, 01:23 PM

For the love of all that is undead, please replace Chill Touch with Death Ward

Death Ward has a max caster level?

Pretty sure its +1 min per caster level no max. Even if it does have a max its grater then 25 and at 20-25 min I don't really think it matters.

Qezuzu

11-18-2015, 01:24 PM

Alkusoittow

11-18-2015, 01:30 PM

Death Ward has a max caster level?

Pretty sure its +1 min per caster level no max. Even if it does have a max its grater then 25 and at 20-25 min I don't really think it matters.

You caught me before I finished editing lol. I meant Death AURA

Delacroix21

11-18-2015, 02:03 PM

There's plenty of opportunity to use Tea, i.e. right before a boss, as it's monologue'ing or whatever.

Just because it's off cooldown doesn't mean you HAVE to use it.

Let me get you a watch ok? 5 secs of inaction every 5mins (tea) vs 5 secs inaction every minute.

Tea= lasts boss fight, Dreamscape, will require multiple casts during fight.

Its tiring answering this responses that arent thought through at all. Sigh...

EllisDee37

11-18-2015, 02:10 PM

You caught me before I finished editing lol. I meant Death AURAThey already said they'll look at adding Death Aura.

They wouldn't remove Chill Touch, but instead Necrotic Ray. Because Necrotic Ray doesn't have a max level cap to remove.

BigErkyKid

11-18-2015, 02:14 PM

On live a pure FvS should max out around 730 Light SPP. My pure build today is missing 30 Sun Elf and 30 Iconic PL and hits 630 using reborn in light without potting.

My fully maxed splash / Implsion FvS can peak at 750. And the DPS is trash in the hard stuff. These bumps look big but they are so needed.

I will do some math after lunch on what my FvS will do once he obtains all the new feats.

Please do, I am extremely rusty when it comes to casters.

I think that roughly they double their DPS, but interesting to see what you guys say.

HastyPudding

11-18-2015, 02:24 PM

Most of the Evocation Archmage SLAs either don't benefit from a MCL increase, or run into issues (Semi-Infinite Magic Missile Projectiles isn't ideal). Master of Knowledge is specifically for Archmages. More on that below.

Tentatively, I'd like to add Metamagics to Arcane Bolt and Blast for Archmages. Possibly in U29.
base Eldritch Blast (which is normally not affected by metamagics). May be a technical issue. We'll let you know!

I love that archmage is getting some love. It's long overdue for arcane bolt and arcane blast to be able to use metamagics. Wizards, in general, suffer from a lack in magic damage, being concerned in DC casting mostly from necromancy or enchantment. DC's are nice, but you have nothing to do but waste a lot of SP on red names, raid bosses, and many champions due to that lack of damage. Boosting arcane bolt and arcane blast gives enchanters/conjurers/transmuters/illusionists something to use on bosses without using a ton of SP for minimal results.

It also opens the path for interesting force-based casters. Not the disgusting shiradi missile spammers, I mean real force/untyped based spellcasters. I'd love to see arcane bolt/blast added to the arsenal to go with cyclonic blast, force missiles, disintegrate, and meteor swarm for a force/physical based archmage. That would make me rethink playing a damage-oriented wizard, again, or resurrect my old enchantment archmage.

BigErkyKid

11-18-2015, 02:27 PM

On live a pure FvS should max out around 730 Light SPP. My pure build today is missing 30 Sun Elf and 30 Iconic PL and hits 630 using reborn in light without potting.

My fully maxed splash / Implsion FvS can peak at 750. And the DPS is trash in the hard stuff. These bumps look big but they are so needed.

I will do some math after lunch on what my FvS will do once he obtains all the new feats.

Please do. I think it is too much, but I also think it is too much power atm for melees.

Doubling the DPS of casters (aside from DCs) just before the caster pass seems excessive.

Plus it is mostly uninteresting, just pure raw damage. Removing the caster cap is good though, since it raises spell variety.

But it should be for most spells, not just for those...

Atremus

11-18-2015, 02:27 PM

FvS Light Spell Power Impacts (Math Post!):

Assumptions:
My Build 18 FvS / 1 Clr / 1 Wiz
Sunelf
Using my current light spell power 748
At Level 30, gain 20 more from legendary feat (rounded up to an even 770)
New Epic Meta adds 75 to 770 for 845 light spell power at level cap
Uncapped calcs do not include the 75. [trade off space]
This doesn't include gear changes those are still unknown
Epic Universal doesn't add to Light SPP (it might, I left it out)

Searing Light:

Old Level 28: (5d4+20) * ((100+748)/100) => (10+20) * 8.48 = 261
Uncapped 30: (14(1d4+4)) * ((100+770)/100) => (14*6) * 8.7 = 730
Capped w/ Feat: (5d4+20) * ((100+845)/100) => 30 * 9.45 = 283

Uncapping searing light brings about a lot of power.

Divine Wrath:

Old Level 28: ((2d6)28) * ((100+748)/100) => 168 * 8.48 = 1424.6
Level 30: ((2d6)30) * ((100+770)/100) => 180 * 8.7 = 1566
Level 30 w/ Feat: ((2d6)30) * ((100+845)/100) => 180 * 9.45 = 1701

Divine wrath sees a nice jump in power with the epic meta magic. And without the bonus damage is still OK.

Avenging Light

Old 28: (1d4+4)9 * ((100+748)/100) = 54 * 8.48 = 457
New w/o Feat: (1d4+4)10 * ((100+770)/100) = 60 * 8.7 = 522
New w/ Meta magicFeat: 60 * 9.45 = 567

I just put this in here for comparison to Sunbolt.

Sunbolt

Old 28: (1d4+4)15 * 8.48 = 763
New uncapped: (6*28)* 8.7 = 1461.6
New wFeat capped 90 * 9.45 = 850

Sunbolt is strong when uncapped. This spell as a SLA from AoV might make me go pure as a FvS. The loss of cleric and Wiz will require some tweaks.... Lots to digest after seeing numbers.

BigErkyKid

11-18-2015, 02:41 PM

FvS Light Spell Power Impacts (Math Post!):

Assumptions:
My build Build 18 FvS / 1 Clr / 1 Wiz
Sunelf
Using my current light spell power 748
At Level 30, gain 20 more from legendary feat (rounded up to an even 770)
New Epic Meta adds to 770 for 845 cap
Uncapped calcs do not include the 75 as you drop ruin/great ruin. [trade off space]
This doesn't include gear changes those are still unknown

Searing Light:

Old Level 28: (5d4+20) * ((100+748)/100) => (10+20) * 8.48 = 261
Uncapped 30: (14(1d4+4)) * ((100+770)/100) => (14*6) * 8.7 = 730
Capped w/ Feat: (5d4+20) * ((100+845)/100) => 30 * 9.45 = 283

Uncapping searing light brings about a lot of power.

Divine Wrath:

Old Level 28: ((2d6)28) * ((100+748)/100) => 168 * 8.48 = 1424.6
Level 30: ((2d6)30) * ((100+770)/100) => 180 * 8.7 = 1566
Level 30 w/ Feat: ((2d6)30) * ((100+845)/100) => 180 * 9.45 = 1701

Divine wrath sees a nice jump in power with the epic meta magic. And without the bonus damage is still OK.

Avenging Light

Old 28: (1d4+4)9 * ((100+748)/100) = 54 * 8.48 = 457
New w/o Feat: (1d4+4)10 * ((100+770)/100) = 60 * 8.7 = 522
New w/ Meta magicFeat: 60 * 9.45 = 567

I just put this in here for comparison to Sunbolt.

Sunbolt

Old 28: (1d4+4)15 * 8.48 = 763
New uncapped: (6*28)* 8.7 = 1461.6
New wFeat capped 90 * 9.45 = 850

Sunbolt is strong when uncapped. This spell as a SLA from AoV might make me go pure as a FvS. The loss of cleric and Wiz will require some tweaks.... Lots to digest after seeing numbers.

You are missing spell power. First from epic levels (6 per epic level, times 10 levels).

Second, sun bolt is not correctly computed AFAIK.

30d4+120 = (30*2.5)+120=195 whereas you say 168.

The spell caster is:

20 from levels
6 from enhancements in FVS
5 from destiny

So I even missed one level.

So according to your numbers, 840 spell power plus what you missed makes it 900.

So the new sun bolt on a NON crit is

195*((100+900)/100)=1950 per your numbers.

My concern is that from computing for other builds and classes it seems to me that this is roughly speaking x2 damage across the board. I think it is too much, specially from classes that are attacking from the distance.

BigErkyKid

11-18-2015, 02:45 PM

Also, without tweaking clerics and wizards this is clearly not well balanced. It favors a lot classes that add caster levels with enhancements.

Question for the devs: how much damage do you expect casters to do after this? X2 the current one? 1.5 times? Can we know what is your design goal?

Atremus

11-18-2015, 02:45 PM

Please do. I think it is too much, but I also think it is too much power atm for melees.

Doubling the DPS of casters (aside from DCs) just before the caster pass seems excessive.

Plus it is mostly uninteresting, just pure raw damage. Removing the caster cap is good though, since it raises spell variety.

But it should be for most spells, not just for those...

Pure raw damage will help me a lot. Probably a lot of other casters too. I want to see MCL's gone one day but this is a proverbial step in the correct direction. It doesn't solve all issues but addresses a glaring one (lack of caster damage)

Edit: I went back and added my assumption that the epic universal Sp doesn't stack. It might but to me USP hasn't stacked in the past.

Edit 2: Attacking from a distance still draws mobs to you. If you can't cc, it must die before you do. The damage from Sunbolt sounds big but I have to either be a pure FvS in Iconic, Drop a Reborn in Light or play cleric (where it costs SP and they have small SP pools). Take out 100 light power from Reborn, pick up this in EA and the damage mod goes down.

BigErkyKid

11-18-2015, 02:55 PM

Pure raw damage will help me a lot. Probably a lot of other casters too. I want to see MCL's gone one day but this is a proverbial step in the correct direction. It doesn't solve all issues but addresses a glaring one (lack of caster damage)

Edit: I went back and added my assumption that the epic universal Sp doesn't stack. It might but to me USP hasn't stacked in the past.

Edit 2: Attacking from a distance still draws mobs to you. If you can't cc, it must die before you do. The damage from Sunbolt sounds big but I have to either be pure as a FvS, Drop a Reborn in Light of play cleric (where it costs SP and they have small SP pools)

I don't doubt it. And I agree it is needed. But this is double the damage or more even without accounting for the extra crit damage.

But what casters need is being able to use the variety of spells at cap. And right now this is making you focus on a few spells that will be too uber to pass on.

I understand the idea of raising cap on sla spells...but please, keep in mind what you are doing. You are restricting them to 2 trick ponies.

Atremus

11-18-2015, 03:07 PM

We agree here. But as counter point a caster focuses on a primary element or two tops.

Cold or Fire for Druid

2 of the 4 elements for Sorcs

Wizards are force mostly? I don't play them. I know they can do many elements and swap as needed but they can only wield 2 weapons still.

I agree with what you are saying in a sense that we are now ultra specialized but I don't see the harm in trading other element types for specific power.

EmGreen

11-18-2015, 03:13 PM

Re: Construct Exemplar

If this feat is taken on e.g. a human, would they: continue to wear regular armour, or now have to wear docents, or have the option of both?

Steelstar

11-18-2015, 03:15 PM

Re: Construct Exemplar

If this feat is taken on e.g. a human, would they: continue to wear regular armour, or now have to wear docents, or have the option of both?

You continue to wear standard armor.

BigErkyKid

11-18-2015, 03:49 PM

UurlockYgmeov

11-18-2015, 04:20 PM

Which I made because I like Artificers and had a few spare hours on a weekend. Take 'em if you like them, ignore them if you don't.

Nope. While there are certainly reasons to not run in Magister, you do intentionally give up DCs to do it. These feats are choices. You have the choice to take these, or take something else. .

:) first point - love it. Can't wait to see Arty pass!

Why not both? You have the technology to have it as a clicky and as a stance. Just have the feat have two buttons - one a clicky that shares a cooldown with a stance. Stance that is set to active and continuously cycles.... for those who just don't want another clicky. :P since share cooldown / timer can't break it and have both at once.

Silverleafeon

11-18-2015, 04:38 PM

Tentatively, I'd like to add Metamagics to Arcane Bolt and Blast for Archmages. Possibly in U29.

Do it!

Yes, it stacks.

Thank you!

These Artificer feats are absolutely not meant to address any of their issues. Or to substitute for an "Arti Pass". They are simply new options. Which I made because I like Artificers and had a few spare hours on a weekend. Take 'em if you like them, ignore them if you don't.

Cheers for the generosity of the Man of Steel!
You are appreciated.

Ack yes, misprint. It is 15 in data/the coming Lamannia build. I'll update the OP.

Thought so, lot of data there, great job!

Yes, that ability does key close to Divine Disciple. Somewhat intentionally. If you have thoughts on a separate "Master of..." feat in the same vein that would lean toward Favored Souls, we're all ears. In the meantime, offensive Clerics can definitely use the bump here. If you have suggestions of what to replace Sunburst with, we'd like to hear that too.

I would like to see two new Master of added:

Master of Alignment: Holy Smite, Order's Wrath, Chaos Hammer, and Unholy Smite
{Nice themactics, some will like and it cannot hurt. Either Favored Soul or Cleric could benefit, Order's Wrath is awesome vs chaotic foes.}

Master of Conjuration: Comet Fall, Deific Vengeance, Greater Glyph of Warding or Divine Punishment
{Not comminted to that set, just looking for a comet fall/blade barrier set type}

Master of Blades: Blade Barrier, Divine Punishment, Divine Favor

Master of Warding: Glyph of Warding, Greater Glyph of Warding, Symbol of Flame

I prefer to keep sunburst, but Divine Punishments apparently caps to level 20 and needs a boost?
Flamestrike also could use a boost?

Yep. In that you need Ruin first, which is offered at 27. In effect, we can't have Greater Ruin and offer it at a lower level. You also have the pick of every other existing feat.

Ty for offering greater ruin as a choice.

Silverleafeon

11-18-2015, 04:49 PM

It's a minor point, but a Sun Elf Favored Soul can get a zero-spellpoint SLA of Sun Bolt. That's the Sun Elf version of the Angel of Vengeance capstone.

Aye, since its undocumented:

Sun Bolt:
That capstone SLA has a 9 second cooldown.
The ED SLA has a 12 second cooldown. (prevents taking Reborn in Light, since Divine Wrath is superior to both)

I think the Searing Light capstone is double cooldown: is that 4 or 6 seconds (been a year or more)...

noinfo

11-18-2015, 04:58 PM

Negative is covered in these feats. Clerics already have an avenue for uncapping the caster level of Cure spells, and Healing is in an overall state right now where uncapping caster levels for non-Clerics is not necessary.

IAS applies to everything Augment Summoning does. So, yes, also pets.

Most of the Evocation Archmage SLAs either don't benefit from a MCL increase, or run into issues (Semi-Infinite Magic Missile Projectiles isn't ideal). Master of Knowledge is specifically for Archmages. More on that below.

Tentatively, I'd like to add Metamagics to Arcane Bolt and Blast for Archmages. Possibly in U29.

Nope. While there are certainly reasons to not run in Magister, you do intentionally give up DCs to do it. These feats are choices. You have the choice to take these, or take something else.

.
Sorry not sure you are understanding my point. I am not saying people should not run in magister and I do when I want the max arcane dc possible, but the feedback I am giving you is that clickies to dc do not work well in concept. While you are saying now that you can ignore them I am sure they will start favoring into reqired dc even though not sustainable. Burst dps is good for bosses and orange, if this clickie bypassed epic warded bosses it would be useful as is it is not.

Thar

11-18-2015, 05:13 PM

***Please make sure you have read this thread first, it contains an overview of Update 29 Feats.*** (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467837-Update-29-Feats-Overview)

In addition to the level cap increase and its related feats, we're planning on adding some new general feats. These provide extra options in Epic, especially boosts to Spellcasting.

New ML21 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +110 Maximum Spell Points)

Wellspring of Power

Activate to gain +150 Universal Spell Power and +20% Spell Critical Damage for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

Arcane Insight

Activate to gain + 6 to all spell DCs and +6 to Spell Penetration for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

New ML24 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +140 Maximum Spell Points)

Improved Augment Summoning

Requires Augment Summoning
Your summoned creatures have +8 to all ability scores, +10% Dodge, and +100 Maximum Hitpoints

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save negates the freeze.

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Embolden Spell

METAMAGIC: +2 DCs to all spells with DCs. +10SP. Affects spells

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Artifice

Your Static Shock, Lightning Sphere, Blast Rod, and Lightning Motes spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Music

Your Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reveberate spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Knowledge

Your Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast spells now grant you one stack of Mental Honing (+3 Universal Spell Power, +2% Spell Crit Damage) when cast. This effect can stack up to 30 times. One stack is removed every 6 seconds.

New ML30 General Feat:

Greater Ruin

Requires Ruin.
Deals 1000 untyped damage to a single enemy (no saving throw). Costs 150 SP

Artificers

Improved Construct Essence

Requires 12 Artificer Levels and Construct Essence. May be taken as an Artificer Bonus Feat.
Improves your base Repair to 70%, as well as Rust vulnerability.

Construct Exemplar

ML21, requires Improved Construct Essence.

You are now considered a Living Construct instead of your original race
100% base healing from Repair spells and 100% damage from Rust
Immunity to Sleep, Hold Person, Energy Drain, Nasueated, Exhausted, and Paralyzed effects except those which physically hold you in place
Immunity to ability score damage from natural poisons and natural diseases (but are vulnerable to those that specifically affect wood or metal)
+10 Racial bonus to saving throws against magical poisons, and do not fail saving throws against them on a roll of a natural 1 (this renders you immune to magical poisons with a DC of less than 11+your Fortitude save)
You may remain underwater indefinitely without the need to breathe.
When resting at a Rest Shrine, the health you regain is now based on your Repair skill instead of your Heal skill

In Update 29, the DC for Rune Arms will benefit from all sources of Evocation Bonuses (they currently only benefit from Feat Bonuses to Evocation). This isn't really a feat, I just didn't have somewhere better to mention it!

first thoughts are it looks good. perhaps overpowers the epic spell focus feats, but those were minimally useful with the +1 to dc's.

this helps sla's all over the place but what about other spells. How about a 2% to 5% spell cost reduction per epic spell feat so that all spells get a little help in epics with hps being expanded so high?

Bobby88888

11-18-2015, 05:29 PM

Ok so I get that arcanes needed a boost and all their epic feat options were junk, still 1 or 2 new feats for other options at lvl 21/24 would be fun if you can fit them in, if not oh well.

I am going to start with the level 30 feats. Or should I say feat.
No feats at all at level 30 for anyone who doesn't want ruin?? You didn't tell me before that the level cap raise was actually the caster pass :)
But seriously, where are all the other lvl 30 feats. If you aren't doing any at least add some new lower level ones to take there.....

Greater Ruin
-I don't think the game needs this, ruin has messed up enough things as is. Though I guess ruin is already here so Greater Ruin can't make things much worse, carry on.

Artificer Feats
-Instead of making a feat chain to try make construct essence worthwhile just buff construct essence to be worthwhile. Make Improved construct essence the base feat or make it auto granted at lvl 12 if you have Construct Essence, Construct Exemplar I don't think is needed then.
P.S. Finally your fixing artificer Rune Arm DCs a little bit THANK YOU!

Level 21 feats
Wellspring of Power
- Like a OP action boost with a longer cooldown to compensate. Alright. Though it stomps all over the other choices already at that level before you add the 110 spell points.
Arcane Insight
- Nope this isn't anything like Wellspring. the thing about DCs is you want them all the time if you need them, and if you don't need them you sure aren't taking this, better off heading for epic spell focus if you really need the DCs or epic spell pen for the spell pen, or do the smart thing and just take wellspring.

Level 24 feats
Improved Augment Summoning
-Ok
Burst of glacial Wrath
-DC formula?
-SP cost?
-Cooldown?
Intensify Spell
-The OP still says 25 sp cost but I am fairly sure you said it was meant to be 15. It should be 10. Epic feat should be better than empower spell imo.
Embolden Spell
-Ok, +2 to DCs for 10 sp, exactly like heighten in terms of DC/sp cost but goes above. Will there be anything to reduce the sp cost of these new metamagics? anything in archmage capstone at least which has all current metas?
Master of ....
-Apart from some issues people have mentioned with spells on the list for various reasons seems fine.
-Master of Knowledge: Nice buff but see other people's issues.

Some nice bonuses, the level 21 one Wellspring tramples every other choice, way too much. Level 24 ones are more balanced amoung themselves but really they way better than the old options.

Level 30.... Well I want to play a non caster at cap too, some feat support would be appreciated.

Steelstar

11-18-2015, 05:35 PM

Added the DC of Burst of Glacial Wrath: (20 + Highest of your INT/WIS/CHA modifiers)

BigErkyKid

11-18-2015, 05:46 PM

Added the DC of Burst of Glacial Wrath: (20 + Highest of your INT/WIS/CHA modifiers)

Duration of the freeze? Cool down? SLA or regular spell? In the sense that it can fit metas (which ones) without / with cost.

Not affected by any modifier aside from main ability for the DC? So we are talking about 20 + 30(70 CHA)= 50 DC?

Give us the full picture!

gwonbush

11-18-2015, 06:05 PM

If you add Metamagics to Arcane Bolt and Blast, don't leave out Necrotic Touch, Burst and Bolt as well. The pale master versions suffer from the same problem.

Nimdeadlee

11-18-2015, 06:35 PM

If you add Metamagics to Arcane Bolt and Blast, don't leave out Necrotic Touch, Burst and Bolt as well. The pale master versions suffer from the same problem.

Yes, I never take these anymore due to the fact that there's no metamagics available for them and their cooldowns are now horrendous.

BigErkyKid

11-18-2015, 06:36 PM

Nandos

11-18-2015, 06:49 PM

[QUOTE=Steelstar;5724940][URL="https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467837-Update-29-Feats-Overview"]

Artificers

Improved Construct Essence

Requires 12 Artificer Levels and Construct Essence. May be taken as an Artificer Bonus Feat.
Improves your base Repair to 70%, as well as Rust vulnerability.

Construct Exemplar

ML21, requires Improved Construct Essence.

You are now considered a Living Construct instead of your original race
100% base healing from Repair spells and 100% damage from Rust
Immunity to Sleep, Hold Person, Energy Drain, Nasueated, Exhausted, and Paralyzed effects except those which physically hold you in place
Immunity to ability score damage from natural poisons and natural diseases (but are vulnerable to those that specifically affect wood or metal)
+10 Racial bonus to saving throws against magical poisons, and do not fail saving throws against them on a roll of a natural 1 (this renders you immune to magical poisons with a DC of less than 11+your Fortitude save)
You may remain underwater indefinitely without the need to breathe.
When resting at a Rest Shrine, the health you regain is now based on your Repair skill instead of your Heal skill

Construct Exemplar looks great, but Improved Construct Essence seems a little weak in current form. I think some players will complain it is just a "feat tax" to get to Construct Exemplar.

Grailhawk

11-18-2015, 06:53 PM

My suggestion: uncap all spells. People will gravitate towards slas for metas anyway.

I think it is horrible design to basically have 3-4 spells that actually do decent damage in epics. You are not solving the problem of caster scaling in a way that brings back the rich scenario of mid level heroics.

I may not agree with uncapping all spells but I do think that the feats presented need to open up at least 7 more spells. I also feel that these come to late at ML24 they should be open to ML20 characters.

Tlorrd

11-18-2015, 07:13 PM

It's a minor point, but a Sun Elf Favored Soul can get a zero-spellpoint SLA of Sun Bolt. That's the Sun Elf version of the Angel of Vengeance capstone.

I agree, that is a minor point, but one that I'd forgotten about. I consider it more minor than major as a majority of F2P players would have to own Sun-elf and then buy an LR +x to change that cleric level to a FVS level to get the capstone. Those with $ can do this, those without cannot. Either way, I agree I missed on that permutation of the point I was making and you got it :D

Silverleafeon

11-18-2015, 07:14 PM

I am going to assume that maybe say coin flip or less chance Favored Souls might get something like Cometfall as a capstone/tier 5 sla, if so, we could use a Master of Comets/Conjuration option?

Cometfall (odd school), Deific Vengeance (cause is conjuration divine), and Greater Glyph of Warding

Consider Panacea, Holy Smite, Order's Wrath, etc as subsitutions.....but I prefer the Alignment option too.

Tlorrd

11-18-2015, 07:18 PM

Added the DC of Burst of Glacial Wrath: (20 + Highest of your INT/WIS/CHA modifiers)

This DC seems kind of weak. A lot of ED SLAs get 10+Character Level + Stat modifier and they are easily saved against by EE mobs. The alternative of 30 + stat modifier is also fairly useless in EEs as that is below the aforementioned one of 10 + Char lvl, etc. For being a level 24 feat, I would think you would at least make it 10+Char level+Stat mod to have a 40-50% chance of hitting which seems on par for the 10+char lvl, etc one I mentioned.

Ligraph

11-18-2015, 08:47 PM

I may not agree with uncapping all spells but I do think that the feats presented need to open up at least 7 more spells. I also feel that these come to late at ML24 they should be open to ML20 characters.

Agreed. Also, for Master of Fire, Scorch and Burning Hands are essentially the same thing. Would MUCH prefer to have Firewall of Scorching Ray in there instead, if not more. And why is there only a Water/Ice feat? any plans for other elements?

btolson

11-18-2015, 08:51 PM

My suggestion: uncap all spells. People will gravitate towards slas for metas anyway.

I think it is horrible design to basically have 3-4 spells that actually do decent damage in epics. You are not solving the problem of caster scaling in a way that brings back the rich scenario of mid level heroics.

Yes. Given the choice between basically using only SLAs, or just having all SLAs including EBurst removed from the game and using only regular [rebalanced] spells, I would much prefer the latter.

Regular spells are not supposed to be niche abilities.

EllisDee37

11-18-2015, 09:13 PM

Agreed. Also, for Master of Fire, Scorch and Burning Hands are essentially the same thing. Would MUCH prefer to have Firewall of Scorching Ray in there instead, if not more.Agreed.

Scorching Ray would be sweet. It would be fun to see how many rays people could get into one cast. It's not like it's super powerful regardless how high level you go since the individual ray damage is a fixed value: 4d3+12 = 20 base regardless of caster level.

If my finger counting is accurate, that would be 8 rays @ caster level 31: 20 sorc +5 destiny +6 fire savant cores.

Andoris

11-18-2015, 09:16 PM

Agreed.

Scorching Ray would be sweet. It would be fun to see how many rays people could get into one cast. It's not like it's super powerful regardless how high level you go since the individual ray damage is a fixed value: 4d3+12 = 20 base regardless of caster level.

If my finger counting is accurate, that would be 8 rays @ caster level 31: 20 sorc +5 destiny +6 fire savant cores.

If you wanted to be silly you could get to 9 rays using the Abashi set (+3 CL) and the gloves of the arcane soldier (+2 CL).

maddong

11-18-2015, 09:18 PM

Maybe it would be better to just increase the max caster level by x for all spells of an element so people's polar ray, freezing sphere, dot are all useful instead of just the slas.

EllisDee37

11-18-2015, 09:40 PM

Maybe it would be better to just increase the max caster level by x for all spells of an element so people's polar ray, freezing sphere, dot are all useful instead of just the slas.That still leaves lower level spells kind of useless.

Maybe a formula like 20 + base spell level. Scorching ray would then cap at caster level 22, while polar ray would go to 28.

Tlorrd

11-18-2015, 09:52 PM

Yes, that ability does key close to Divine Disciple. Somewhat intentionally. If you have thoughts on a separate "Master of..." feat in the same vein that would lean toward Favored Souls, we're all ears. In the meantime, offensive Clerics can definitely use the bump here. If you have suggestions of what to replace Sunburst with, we'd like to hear that too.

First of all thank you for replying to my post.

Here are my suggestion(s) and some reasons why. I do not believe as you have stated that every aspect of every feat should be equal for all feats that apply to all classes, PrEs, etc. However, I do believe that you are giving a spell casting bump and the most bang for one's buck is to give it the SLA's at a minimum and other spells that are worthy but not overly powerful. Here are 2 options ...

Option 1: One great feat

Master of Light (or Radiance or Vengeance or whatever you want to call it): Your Sunbolt, Searing Light, Holy Smite, and Flame Strike have no maximum caster level

- Sunbolt and Searing Light can be SLA's for FVS (Avenger capstone), Sunbolt can be SLA for both Clerics and FVS via Exalted Angel, Holy Smite and Flame Strike are SLAs for Clerics and can be powerful for FVS considering the Angel of Vengeance PrE. Thus there is good balance for both classes with regards to SLAs. Remember that Sunbolt and Searing Light SLA for FVS capstone use NO spell points and thus will be nicely balanced for FVS as the other SLAs for clerics here use some amount of spell points.

Option 2: 2 pretty good feats

Master of Light: Your Sunbolt, Searing Light, and Divine Punishment have no maximum caster level

Master of Alignment (or whatever you want to call it): Your Holy Smite, Flame Strike, (unsure of last spell(s) but could use Deific Vengeance vs/and/or Chaos Hammer/Order's Wrath/Unholy Blight)

- Master of light would now include Divine Punishment (nice and really only DOT that divines have in their spell list similar to how you included creeping cold/niacs for the other masters' feats) and Master of Alignment while only having 2 SLAs (and both for clerics) have a nice abundance of alignment spells. Thus FVS could choose either feat (or both at the appropriate levels) and same with Clerics depending on their build. Thus more versatility.

My last caveat is, I can understand why you didn't include Blade Barrier or Cometfall in these are they may seem too powerful, but the balance to this is that if you did include these in some fashion, then the fact that they are not SLAs anywhere would usually minimize how many metamagics are applied as they would be too costly and thus increasing their max caster level could be a feasible solution.

My doubly last caveat is that I believe Silverleafon had this nice idea of Master of Alignment prior to me writing this, so I give him/her credit for spurring this idea on.

Torkzed

11-18-2015, 10:41 PM

ermmm....

Those caster feats worry me. They are easily strong enough to stomp over older content and to force the devs to balance future content on the assumption all casters are using them. Which in turn will make them into a mandatory feat tax at the expense of diversity.

I think its fair to assume that virtually every caster will be running around using Arcane Insight, Wellspring of Power, and whichever Master of ??? is relevant to them. I which point I don't particularly care for the fact that most of these are individually catered to very specific builds / enhancement trees. I prefer the traditional approach of feats being somewhat generic and players building characters by combining them in interesting ways. This is just telling people: If you want to be an an X toon you MUST burn a feat slot on Master of X or suck.

I hardly think every caster would bother with Arcane Insight. Being a effective for 30 seconds every 3 minutes is definitely not worth going back to DC casting for most casters. They will likely be essentially useless the other 2.5 minutes of the cycle. If more is not done to help DC casting, it will remain a flavor choice for players who run EN and EH exclusively. And the increasingly rare max-lives, max gear DC caster that can sort of get by in EE being marginally useful against trash...it still is probably not a must-have. After all, it is a burst improvement to capability that is of no value during a boss fight (the time when you generally want a burst).

Torkzed

11-18-2015, 10:53 PM

This is a good tweak but it sure would be nice to fit in something like this:

"In Update 29, charging your rune arm will no longer penalize your character's movement rate. Moving will still deplete your rune arm charge to its stable charge tier."

Isn't this more or less what the Tactical Mobility enhancement does already? Or do you want to get this ability without having to take Tier 5 Battle Engineer enhancement? And if so, what should replace it for Battle Engineers?

I guess it might be nice for arti splash builds to have the option to take it as a feat instead of a Tier 5 enhancement, but it seems to devalue a deep commitment to artificer.

Ligraph

11-19-2015, 02:20 AM

That still leaves lower level spells kind of useless.

Maybe a formula like 20 + base spell level. Scorching ray would then cap at caster level 22, while polar ray would go to 28.

That would be nice, although I would still prefer either being able to choose 3 or 4 or 5 spells of one element/plane/whatever to uncap, possibly with Master of X uncapping say 3, and Expert *insert better name* of X (requiring Master of X) uncapping 4, ect. Or just make the Master of X feats uncap all the spells of the element/plane, but I think that might be slightly OP.

AzureDragonas

11-19-2015, 02:36 AM

My suggestion: uncap all spells. People will gravitate towards slas for metas anyway.

I think it is horrible design to basically have 3-4 spells that actually do decent damage in epics. You are not solving the problem of caster scaling in a way that brings back the rich scenario of mid level heroics.

In this case image spells like firewall who have no caster cap terrible no? I even would say SLA shouldn't be effected by it damage scales too much for free already, some spells will do 2x more damage and some will do 8x or even more in comparison

in last example i talk abaut nica's cold ray when it was max 5 caster level and now will have no cap easily going to lvl 45 caster level

Lanadazia

11-19-2015, 03:41 AM

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save (20 + Highest of your INT/WIS/CHA modifiers) negates the freeze.

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Embolden Spell

METAMAGIC: +2 DCs to all spells with DCs. +10SP. Affects spells

Master of X and Y

Your X + Y spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Knowledge

Your Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast spells now grant you one stack of Mental Honing (+3 Universal Spell Power, +2% Spell Crit Damage) when cast. This effect can stack up to 30 times. One stack is removed every 6 seconds.

[/LIST]

New ML30 General Feat:

Greater Ruin

Requires Ruin.
Deals 1000 untyped damage to a single enemy (no saving throw). Costs 150 SP

first of all: nice work! i was asking for new feats for some years now, and here we go!

so..
is that glacial wrath basically the same sort of DC like the mass frog? cause 20+mod is hard to get a passable DC, especially in EEs, especially on fort saves!

New metamagic feats! a dream comes true!! will there be more in the future? something like widen spell (increases area of effect)? or some "new creation" like "add an extra projectile to your spell" like +1 ray or +1 meteor in meteorswarm. excited for the new metamagics for sure!

the master of X+Y feats are very nice too. that makes the lower level SLAs from sorcs and divines worth to cast again

master of knowledge feat sounds very interessting. maybe an archmage can hold up with that a little to a SLA sorc

greater ruin? sounds nice. will it share a cooldown with ruin?

Lorianus

11-19-2015, 04:40 AM

New ML21 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +110 Maximum Spell Points)

Removing the maximum caster level on some spells is a great idea. A few more options would be great to be less pigenholed into a small subset of DPS spells in epic levels.

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

The "Necrotic Ray is allready uncapped" thing was allready mentioned. My favorite replacement would be Necrotic Bolt as Pale Master and Emissary of Death both get it. My most favorite set would be "Necrotic Bolt, Death Aura and Energy Burst" because "Necromancy Caster" and "Touch Attack" doesn't mix well. To be precise: Even my level 28 multi pastlives best gear Pale Master can't go near any EE endgame melee monster and survive for more than a couple of seconds.

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Any chances Nimbus of Light could make it onto the light list?

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

I like the idea to add divine only fire spells to give them a "fire"-option too. Would be adding Produce Flame, Flame Strike and Firestorm much work to do? Would make Master of Fire an option for Clerics, Souls and Druids without giving arcanes more benefits as they can't cast those spells.

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

To make good use of this one would have to invest in fire, lightning, cold and force spellpower. If you would change Produce Flame for Salt Ray it was cold, lightning and force spellpower only. And Produce Fame could be used in the "Divine Fire" option :)

Aurora999

11-19-2015, 04:44 AM

noinfo

11-19-2015, 07:13 AM

EllisDee37

11-19-2015, 07:49 AM

The "Necrotic Ray is allready uncapped" thing was allready mentioned. My favorite replacement would be Necrotic Bolt as Pale Master and Emissary of Death both get it. My most favorite set would be "Necrotic Bolt, Death Aura and Energy Burst" because "Necromancy Caster" and "Touch Attack" doesn't mix well. To be precise: Even my level 28 multi pastlives best gear Pale Master can't go near any EE endgame melee monster and survive for more than a couple of seconds. I consider this a valid reason to add an extra spell, not counting Chill Touch as one of the spots but rather tossing it in as what amounts to a freebie.

How about Death Aura, Negative Energy Burst, Necrotic Bolt plus Chill Touch as a toss-in.

Lorianus

11-19-2015, 08:19 AM

I consider this a valid reason to add an extra spell, not counting Chill Touch as one of the spots but rather tossing it in as what amounts to a freebie.

How about Death Aura, Negative Energy Burst, Necrotic Bolt plus Chill Touch as a toss-in.

Fine with me, I just I am still very defensive from all the "bluebar-rage" years.... I still haven't fully adapted to the fact that my Sorc and Pale Master went from “nerf them they steal all the kills” to an endangered species. The Arties and Caster Druids get 4 uncapped spells too. Most sorcs can at least reconstruct to full HP after a touch attack, but I would rather take the water feat because it has a DOT instead of a touch spell.

maddong

11-19-2015, 10:03 AM

I think the Master of Element powers are really lopsided.

Some of them are much better overall, I think people pointed out sunbolt.
And what will lightning bolt be doing, 34d6 with a 50% chance at another 34d6 (68d6) if you pimped it out on a sorcerer (I think you can get it higher than that with the right equipment)?
And it is a SLA....

You could instead just grant +2X max caster level to all 1st and 2nd level spells and +X max caster level to all 3+ level spells so that they all essentially gain X damage dice (titrate X to the amount of power gain you want).

That way the feats let people use a much larger spell selection and they are less class limited.

BigErkyKid

11-19-2015, 10:54 AM

My problem with the current proposal is that it doesn't really solve the problems of spell casting in epics.

Problem 1: The majority of spells don't scale well.
- Damage spells cap
- Majority of buffs cap
- Epic ward reduce effectiveness of charm spells
- Trap the soul and similar cap on HD.
Proposed solution by Turbine: Raise the cap on SLA type spells.
- This just further reinforces the idea that spell casters are reduced to SLAs
- It only works in a extremely small subset of spells
My solution: Raise the cap on all spells.
- Examine one by one all spells and make them scale well, either by increasing HD, increasing bonuses from buffs.

Problem 2: DCs in top quests can sometimes be simply unachievable.
- Current cap quests have for some trash enchant DC over 90.
- Fort DCs over 100
(I haven't tested all of them)
Proposed solution by turbine: Give school specific big bumps to DC.
- This implies über specialization of spell casters on some schools.
- As the game stands, in top content one can only hope to have one school work, meaning that it restricts immensely the variety of spells available.
My solution: Tone down the DCs.
- Mobs should always have a weak save (with maybe some specific mobs being special) for which someone recently geared and build should have options to land with some reliability.
- Right now this all out DC scenario heavily penalizes casting / melee hybrids: you cannot hope to have any success in casting if you give up DCs and spell penetration (for instance in bards).
- Overall, build diversity is badly hurt unless there is a change in DCs.

Problem 3: Prevalence of red named in raids.
- Raids have a super abundance of red named and immune mobs.
- There are no big roles anymore for most raids for DC based abilities.
Turbine's solution: Give casters raw DPS.
- However this is in conflict with allowing for richer DC based spell selections and it makes the game boring. Dealing damage with a bow or with a magic wand...or a magic sword... (ZZzzzZZZzz).
My solution: Give trash an important role in raids.
- MoD is a good example in higher difficulties.
- You can have trash mobs saving almost always some spells in top difficulties, but yet make them weak to others that wouldn't completely destroy challenge.
- Give raids some more shrines...

Problem 4: Prevalence of immune or extremely SR mobs
- CC, aside from quake and warlock, is at an all time low since in end game most mobs are immune.
- This has resulted in end game being non CC friendly and hurt disproportionately bards and enchanters in general.
Turbine's solution: Moar DPS.
- Moar DPS doesn't change this.
My solution: tone down the SR and have more variety of mobs in all quests.
- Just because it is shavarath, or undead, don't make ALL mobs of one type.
- Doing so decreases build diversity in end game and makes it unfun for those who focus on tactics (raw DPS is usually unaffected, or less).

Hephaistor

11-19-2015, 10:58 AM

That some low level spells like Scorch and Electic Loop will outshine what I consider the signature spells of high level spell casting like Meteor Swarm and Black Dragon Bolt seems a bit odd to me.

Steelstar

11-19-2015, 11:01 AM

My problem with the current proposal is that it doesn't really solve the problems of spell casting in epics.

Understood. These feats are not meant to completely solve all the problems of spell casting in Epics.

Raising the cap on all spells comes with its own suite of issues, and we are continuing to adjust monster balance and statting in the new content in addition to these changes.

BigErkyKid

11-19-2015, 11:04 AM

Understood. These feats are not meant to completely solve all the problems of spell casting in Epics.

Raising the cap on all spells comes with its own suite of issues, and we are continuing to adjust monster balance and statting in the new content in addition to these changes.

At least expand the set of spells you increase. In addition, as it is this is favoring disproportionately those with +caster level bonuses on enhancements. Sorcs and FVS will completely dominate wizards, clerics and bards.

slarden

11-19-2015, 11:11 AM

At least expand the set of spells you increase. In addition, as it is this is favoring disproportionately those with +caster level bonuses on enhancements. Sorcs and FVS will completely dominate wizards, clerics and bards.

Wizards have extra feats and more ability to diversify- the caster level bonuses aren't enough to say sorcs are better. Well yeah fvs wins hands-down over cleric at the moment due to the caster level bonuses, just reward, scourge and shield of condemnation and the clerics big unique ability - turn undead- doesn't work on high level EEs. The best way to make a better cleric is by splashing favored soul.

Bard casters problem more than anything is that enchantment DC and stuns going against fort are hard to land in the hardest EEs compared to earthquake for example. The easiest comparison to caster bard is caster druid and caster druid wins hands-down due to better dps spells and better cc. That is the reason why a bard castrer isn't worth playing since U27. If they could land hold monster consistently they are quite good with that 50% dps boost - without it they are a flavor build for buffing the party.

BigErkyKid

11-19-2015, 11:26 AM

Wizards have extra feats and more ability to diversify- the caster level bonuses aren't enough to say sorcs are better. Well yeah fvs wins hands-down over cleric at the moment due to the caster level bonuses, just reward, scourge and shield of condemnation and the clerics big unique ability - turn undead- doesn't work on high level EEs. The best way to make a better cleric is by splashing favored soul.

Bard casters problem more than anything is that enchantment DC and stuns going against fort are hard to land in the hardest EEs compared to earthquake for example. The easiest comparison to caster bard is caster druid and caster druid wins hands-down due to better dps spells and better cc. That is the reason why a bard castrer isn't worth playing since U27. If they could land hold monster consistently they are quite good with that 50% dps boost - without it they are a flavor build for buffing the party.

The combination of useful SLAs of sorcs (now uncapped) and caster level bonuses completely blows out of the water wizards post this update.

The rest we already agree.

rehakp

11-19-2015, 11:35 AM

At least expand the set of spells you increase. In addition, as it is this is favoring disproportionately those with +caster level bonuses on enhancements. Sorcs and FVS will completely dominate wizards, clerics and bards.

I would not say "completely" dominate. Hm ok sorcerer can get +6 casterlevels over wizard. Thats how many ? around +20% on fireball when both takes other +caster level options ? Well sorcerers in capstoned fire savant deserves this i believe and wizards have other benefits like more univesal spell selection + 5 feat slots etc.

maddong

11-19-2015, 11:39 AM

Understood. These feats are not meant to completely solve all the problems of spell casting in Epics.

Raising the cap on all spells comes with its own suite of issues, and we are continuing to adjust monster balance and statting in the new content in addition to these changes.

I liked them at first but it is kind of dumb that people will be using shocking grasp instead of horrid wilting.

I think automatic maximize and automatic empower (free meta magics) on top of making intensify free would be much more fun. You could spend your 24, 27, 30 feats in that instance to have a very wide casting experience with reasonable mana costs as an alternative to slas or shiradi.

BigErkyKid

11-19-2015, 11:43 AM

I would not say "completely" dominate. Hm ok sorcerer can get +6 casterlevels over wizard. Thats how many ? around +20% on fireball when both takes other +caster level options ? Well sorcerers in capstoned fire savant deserves this i believe and wizards have other benefits like more univesal spell selection + 5 feat slots etc.

+6 caster levels on top of the fireball being a SLA for the sorc. This is what is being discussed, that spell cap is only raised for SLA type spells and this favors disproportionately sorcs, who are already benefiting from higher caster levels.

So the sorc casts unlimited metaed SLAs (say the acid splash, not many mobs save that) at +6 caster level vs the wizard who....?

Right.

EllisDee37

11-19-2015, 11:57 AM

+6 caster levels on top of the fireball being a SLA for the sorc. This is what is being discussed, that spell cap is only raised for SLA type spells and this favors disproportionately sorcs, who are already benefiting from higher caster levels.

So the sorc casts unlimited metaed SLAs (say the acid splash, not many mobs save that) at +6 caster level vs the wizard who....?

Right.It makes sense, though.

Sorcerers spam 6sp SLAs with full metamagics and additional caster levels while wizards spam 75sp spells with full metamagics and no additional caster levels to offset the fact that wizards have so many more spell points than sorcerers.

Perfectly reasonable design.

Ebondevil

11-19-2015, 12:12 PM

Any chances Nimbus of Light could make it onto the light list?

As far as I know Nimbus of Light (http://ddowiki.com/page/Nimbus_of_Light) doesn't have a caster level cap, it just deals 1d4 damage +1 per caster level so it scales up very slowly.

I would however very much like to see Divine Punishment on the list somewhere, as other people have said, to match up to the Niac's and Eledar's equivalents

Vanhooger

11-19-2015, 12:18 PM

PLEASE remove +10% sp cost on sorcerer capstone.

LiquidZombie

11-19-2015, 12:45 PM

I consider this a valid reason to add an extra spell, not counting Chill Touch as one of the spots but rather tossing it in as what amounts to a freebie.

How about Death Aura, Negative Energy Burst, Necrotic Bolt plus Chill Touch as a toss-in.

Even as a PM I'm thinking I'll probably take the electric line rather than the death line. Shocking Grasp does similar damage to Chill Touch but is usable against a larger variety of enemies (including undead), Electric Loop is currently overpriced for its damage but will become a lot more viable at CL24 or 26, and a Lightning Bolt which does 125 base damage with a 50% chance at another 125 seems pretty awesome.

Necrotic Ray on the other hand already scales to CL25 (AFAIK), so doesn't benefit from this at all, and I rarely use NEB anyway (although I appreciate others do, particularly on higher difficulties).

LiquidZombie

11-19-2015, 12:51 PM

I liked them at first but it is kind of dumb that people will be using shocking grasp instead of horrid wilting.

Horrid Wilting can be cast at a distance and does AoE damage, whereas Shocking Grasp will remain a touch-range single target spell.

They should probably raise the CL cap on HW to 25 though given its cost, and fix the auto-targeting problems which make it a PITA to use.

Hobgoblin

11-19-2015, 12:57 PM

PLEASE remove +10% sp cost on sorcerer capstone.

please?

and also make it either that you lose the elemental form if you die, or that you keep all the benefits of the form and no the penalty when you die

Mryal

11-19-2015, 01:03 PM

Added the DC of Burst of Glacial Wrath: (20 + Highest of your INT/WIS/CHA modifiers)

Im assuming this belongs to a spell school and youre just forgetting to mention this? Evocation hopefully.
This feat is great, specialy for Druid, while i'd much rather have my fire based druid beign usefull again, i know they will be shelved to flavor builds again just like every other fire based caster was when vale/shavarath was the top end content.
But having this is a good possibility to make Water druid a lot more attractive, water has always been missing a straight damage spell since Ice Flowers is Transmutation school for no good reason.
More information is needed on this thought? Whats the cooldown? Is it a SLA or a regular spell? Wich school it belongs to? You might be expecting feedback about this, so:

Either
A) SLA for 15 sp, 24 seconds cooldown, Evocation spell - best option in my opinion.
or
B) A regular spell for 20 sp (before metamagics),Evocation spell and 12 seconds cooldown.

Yes, that ability does key close to Divine Disciple. Somewhat intentionally. If you have thoughts on a separate "Master of..." feat in the same vein that would lean toward Favored Souls, we're all ears. In the meantime, offensive Clerics can definitely use the bump here. If you have suggestions of what to replace Sunburst with, we'd like to hear that too.

After discussing with my girlfriend that has been playing FVS for over 5 years, we came into an agreement that a "Master of..." feat for FVS would have to contain the following spells:
Cometfall,Holy Smite,Flame Strike.

FVS is a class that has no damagin SLA other than the capstone, however they have a high sp pool, this selection of spells would fit them perfectly because it would allow them to maximize the SP usage by using boosted AOE spells, the feat would also be attractive to clerics, and also has no duplicate spell when compared to the other alredy existing Master of feat.

Mryal

11-19-2015, 01:04 PM

PLEASE remove +10% sp cost on sorcerer capstone.

Agreed.And take time to design the earth and air forms for druid and respective spells.
Its ridiculous that a sorcerer can use elemental forms of all elements and a druid cannot.

Hobgoblin

11-19-2015, 01:09 PM

After discussing with my girlfriend that has been playing FVS for over 5 years, we came into an agreement that a "Master of..." feat for FVS would have to contain the following spells:
Cometfall,Holy Smite,Flame Strike.

call it master of larafey?

Mryal

11-19-2015, 01:21 PM

call it master of larafey?

yes!

CeltEireson

11-19-2015, 01:44 PM

+6 caster levels on top of the fireball being a SLA for the sorc. This is what is being discussed, that spell cap is only raised for SLA type spells and this favors disproportionately sorcs, who are already benefiting from higher caster levels.

So the sorc casts unlimited metaed SLAs (say the acid splash, not many mobs save that) at +6 caster level vs the wizard who....?

Right.

Maybe they should give the wizards the three additional bonus feats at level 23, 26 and 29 they would have gotten under normal epic rules from PnP ;) that would even out the playing field

BigErkyKid

11-19-2015, 02:38 PM

It makes sense, though.

Sorcerers spam 6sp SLAs with full metamagics and additional caster levels while wizards spam 75sp spells with full metamagics and no additional caster levels to offset the fact that wizards have so many more spell points than sorcerers.

Perfectly reasonable design.

I was already sharpening my knives before I read the second part.

Frankly, aren't you in the PC? What is the reasoning behind these proposal for feats? There is little to no explanation in this thread from the devs. Unless I am having a duh moment, I frankly see this proposal as vastly imbalanced. I also don't understand what they will achieve beyond favoring SLA classes, who are already ahead.

I stopped playing casters because epics is a 2 trick pony situation. If you don't want to chuck pots or ride the backpack of another class, that is.

This new power hand out does not mean ANYTHING without knowing how it stands against legendary content (except for the discussed situation between sla classes and the rest). These are feats for legendary, but we have yet to see what it looks like (aside from the bad experiences with current out of whack DCs and saves in some of the so called "legendified").

So...I guess I am done here until a dev hands out more information.

EllisDee37

11-19-2015, 03:40 PM

Frankly, aren't you in the PC?Nope.

As for the bewildering design choices, I'd say I find around 50% of all their design choices to be confounding. (An NPC to pause bravery? Seriously?)

Tlorrd

11-19-2015, 03:43 PM

I would also consider Master of Pain for divines ... it could go as follows

Master of Pain: Your (whichever is choosen single target Inflict Spell x2), and Inflict Moderate Wounds Mass have no maximum caster levels

I would change normal inflict spells/inflict mass spells to be as such

Inflict Light Wounds/Mass 1d3/lvl max lvl 5

Inflict Moderate Wounds/Mass : 1d3+3/lvl max lvl 10

Inflict Serious Wounds/Mass: 1d4+4/lvl max lvl 15

Inflict Critical Wounds/Mass: 1d6+6/lvl max lvl 20

I would also then switch the divine disciple negative SLAs for inflict spells.

Some permutation of the above would be nice. Both FVS and Clerics have access to the Inflict Spells. Why not make them an option to increase versatility.
Obviously the damage listed above is just a rough idea, but is better than what it is currently.

TackW5

11-19-2015, 04:09 PM

I would recommend adding the following spells to be uncapped by the Master of _____ lines.
Air - Chain Lightning, Ball Lightning
Earth - Black Dragon Bolt, Acid Rain
Water - Horrid Wilting, Cone of Cold
Fire - Delayed Blast Fireball, Wall of Fire

Reasons:
1) The power increase is not excessive, since these have relatively high caps already.
2) A ML 24 feat should not be made worthless by Mantle/Globe of Invulnerability. Niac's Biting Cold is the only spell among the current plan that penetrates otherwise. Tossing the Mantle on mobs to change things up should be an option, but not one that negates a feat.
3) It is fun to cast something other than SLAs, and the cost for these is high enough, especially meta'd.
4) The hybrids are getting 4 spells uncapped. Dedicated casters should gain more, not less.

Also, I hope Burst of Glacial Wrath is coded as a spell of a specific school, presumably evoc. or conj., so that we can manipulate/boost its DC and scale into higher content.

BigErkyKid

11-19-2015, 05:22 PM

So lets say I have a level 27 pure earth savant sorc in Draconic. Draconic is +8 caster levels, Twilight is +2, and enhancements are +7 caster levels, for a total caster level of 37.

Spell Power will be 80 Acid from enhancements 60 universal from enhancements, 60 spellcraft, 225 metamagic, 150 item, 30 implement, 15 psionic, 15 blue dragon set, 20 alchemical = 655

Crit ~ 16% + 8% enhancements + 5% base = 29%

Acid Spray SLA does 37d2 + 74 AoE base =129 base > 1,256 damage Cone

Melfs does 2d4 + 18 x 6 ticks = 138 base > 1344 damage arrow

Acid ball does 37d3 +111= 185 base > 1801 AoE

This is about on par with a pure ES warlock on live. Probably a little bit better dps, but less defense. Seems about right.

Your spell power is too low. I did make a mistake before adding universal to spell power of an element, but nevertheless.

This is from an old source, so potentially missing some, but still. Straight from Farwind's build:

Spell Power and Spell Pool:
Everything is counted with Superior Potions bought in House Jorasco, giving 25 Alchemical Spell Power (5 more than Shavarath belts) and Potions of Spellpower from CoVs

Electric: 523, Electrocution (+25 SP), Empyrean Magic (+20 SP), Meridian Fragment (+24 SP) for a max total of 592

I will assume you could get similar stuff for a fire sorc.

So without temporary stuff: 823
523 Base from Fairwind
150 Maximize
75 Empower
75 Intensify
523+150+75+75=823
If you add his temporary buffs: 892
823 base from fixed
25 conflagration
20 empyrean
24 meridian
823+25+20+24=892

Now using your caster level, 37, we get for a fireball SLA:
37d3 +111= 185 base
With SP buff pre crit
185*((100+892)/100)=1835

You see how your calculations were to low? Now crit chances, again coming from you. Taking the 25% extra damage on crit legendary feat.

16% + 8% enhancements + 5% base = 29%

(1835*1)+(1835*0.29*2.25)=3032.337

Now a maxxed out character will have additional crit chances: 29+19=48% crit
9% energy criticals
10% empyrean

So this makes the expected damage of the fireball
(1835*1)+(1835*0.48*2.25)=3816.

You see how this gets out of whack? You were far too conservative.

Silkenwise

11-19-2015, 05:27 PM

Maybe they should give the wizards the three additional bonus feats at level 23, 26 and 29 they would have gotten under normal epic rules from PnP ;) that would even out the playing field

THIS!

Honestly, epic tier spellcasters in Dungeons and Dragons SHOULD be more powerful than melees. It's harder to survive as a squishie, and the reward is a better top-end. It's how D&D has been since first edition.

btolson

11-19-2015, 05:49 PM

So this makes the expected damage of the fireball
(1835*1)+(1835*0.48*2.25)=3816.

I haven't checked all your numbers, but this at least is wrong. You need to multiply the bolded term by the non-crit chance (0.52), which results in a total of 2936.

BigErkyKid

11-19-2015, 05:56 PM

I haven't checked all your numbers, but this at least is wrong. You need to multiply the bolded term by the non-crit chance (0.52), which results in a total of 2936.

You are correct, my oversight.

EllisDee37

11-19-2015, 10:23 PM

So this makes the expected damage of the fireball
(1835*1)+(1835*0.48*2.25)=3816.

You see how this gets out of whack? You were far too conservative.That doesn't seem out of whack to me. Watching melee bruntsmash videos, I see 4-digit crits scroll by in waves.

The fireball SLA has a 6 second cooldown. At 3816 per fireball, that's 636 DPS. Don't melee do like 8000 DPS? Sure, the caster has other SLAs, but they have cooldowns too, and are they significantly better than fireball?

If you had a dozen different fireball SLAs you kept perfectly on cooldown, at 3816 per shot that's 7632 DPS.

If you meant "out of whack" as in too good, I don't see it at all. If you meant it as in too weak because there's only a tiny handful of good SLAs and they all have a way longer cooldown than melee crits, I could be convinced.

BigErkyKid

11-20-2015, 01:20 AM

That doesn't seem out of whack to me. Watching melee bruntsmash videos, I see 4-digit crits scroll by in waves.

The fireball SLA has a 6 second cooldown. At 3816 per fireball, that's 636 DPS. Don't melee do like 8000 DPS? Sure, the caster has other SLAs, but they have cooldowns too, and are they significantly better than fireball?

If you had a dozen different fireball SLAs you kept perfectly on cooldown, at 3816 per shot that's 7632 DPS.

If you meant "out of whack" as in too good, I don't see it at all. If you meant it as in too weak because there's only a tiny handful of good SLAs and they all have a way longer cooldown than melee crits, I could be convinced.

I'll start by saying that I think melees deal too much damage for current content. For my taste, that is.

Also that I was inconsistent since I have said before that all the dps numbers are useless until we know what legendary looks like. For lower than legendary it will mean that casters will two shot packs of mobs, clearly a capped caster will vaporize lower level quests completely (I am assuming we are talking about cap play).

That being said, please keep in mind that the dps dealers with massive aoe and from range is a different beast than that done in close quarters. For obvious reasons. Also, the aoe of a ranger only affects 4 mobs tops, whereas no one stops the spec from rounding up stupid ai mobs in bigger packs.

Now if we think of these numbers in current content, bosses aside, please think how this would play in a party. Is it possible that well built casters will be simply killing everything as say the assassin start swinging? This is a bad possibility.

My concern is always that kiting is too strong. If you give ranged too much power, specially in aoe, it can easily be like heroic play where in most quests grouping with a sorc becomes a bad experience.

That s not to say that spell casting needs more power and a thorough revision. But please keep in mind the consequences and have a look at what has already happened for some content.

Ultimately the fix for this is introduce better ranged for most mobs and attack against kiters. Not to destroy the style, but to make it more on par with close quarters difficulty.

Silverleafeon

11-20-2015, 06:53 AM

I count 4 options designed for Sorcerers:

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

2 Options designed for Wizards

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Knowledge

Your Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast spells now grant you one stack of Mental Honing (+3 Universal Spell Power, +2% Spell Crit Damage) when cast. This effect can stack up to 30 times. One stack is removed every 6 seconds.

1 Option designed for Clerics

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

0 Options designed for Favored Souls
{Yes they can use the Cleric Option, but its not designed for Favored Souls.}

1 Option designed for Artificiers

Master of Artifice

Your Static Shock, Lightning Sphere, Blast Rod, and Lightning Motes spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

1 Option designed for Druids

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

1 Option designed for Bards

Master of Music

Your Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reveberate spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

I see no reason why Divines cannot have multiple options like Sorcerers and Wizards do, in fact I politely protest the lack of Divine options.
Also, all the classes with only one option except Divines have four spells boosted, yet Divines only get three boosted.

Steelstar

11-20-2015, 08:00 AM

Lorianus

11-20-2015, 08:15 AM

That's a fair point.

Given that these are primarily themed around SLAs and low-cost commonly-cast damage spells, what would you say a Favored Soul specific option should look like? And a further Divine option in general?

For Clerics and Druids just add three divine only spells to Fire Master:

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, Fireball, Produce Flame, Flame Strike and Firestorm spells no longer have a maximum caster level.
(Clerics can't use "Produce Flame" but they have Flame-Strike as a SLA)

Symbol of Flame would be a nice addition too, but the spell does not scale at all, it is always 5d3+15 fire damage.

Propane

11-20-2015, 08:53 AM

For Clerics and Druids just add three divine only spells to Fire Master:

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, Fireball, Produce Flame, Flame Strike and Firestorm spells no longer have a maximum caster level.
(Clerics can't use "Produce Flame" but they have Flame-Strike as a SLA)

I have played around with the cleric SLA Flame Strike - it doesn't work well - slow casting / slow effect...

The other cleric SLA are light based, replaced Flame Strike with Sunburst for the casting Tree.

Take the current spells Sun Bolt, Sunbeam, Sunburst, make them the Light Master SLA's and should be good to go :)

janave

11-20-2015, 08:55 AM

Lots of number comparison everywhere, but mind that some content is completely rubbish to play with an element specialized caster.

- force
- light
- sonic
- aligment
- bane
- physical
- untyped

These damage types work much better across content. Even if an elemental sorc could achieve melee dps, they would simply not be on par, over time, they dont have to.

I am fine if casters are bad at sustained damage as long as their burst is really shining. Additional metas will help with that, i dont want to play my casters as a lesser copy of the Warlock. I want them to play as proper casters, even if it means they pike until the next shrine.

Favored Souls are in need of a 3rd tree, as well as a revision on their existing trees, but i dont see why not include a Mastery Feat specifically to help FVS, id like the list to include Comet Fall, Divine Punishment, and maybe Flame Strike. Divine Punishment would go well thematically into the AoV tree as a T5, CL = FVS levels initially before the bonuses from the tree, items.

Tlorrd

11-20-2015, 09:01 AM

That's a fair point.

Given that these are primarily themed around SLAs and low-cost commonly-cast damage spells, what would you say a Favored Soul specific option should look like? And a further Divine option in general?

Steel here is a copy of my previous post ...

Here are my suggestion(s) and some reasons why. I do not believe as you have stated that every aspect of every feat should be equal for all feats that apply to all classes, PrEs, etc. However, I do believe that you are giving a spell casting bump and the most bang for one's buck is to give it the SLA's at a minimum and other spells that are worthy but not overly powerful. Here are 2 options ...

Option 1: One great feat

Master of Light (or Radiance or Vengeance or whatever you want to call it): Your Sunbolt, Searing Light, Holy Smite, and Flame Strike have no maximum caster level

- Sunbolt and Searing Light can be SLA's for FVS (Avenger capstone), Sunbolt can be SLA for both Clerics and FVS via Exalted Angel, Holy Smite and Flame Strike are SLAs for Clerics and can be powerful for FVS considering the Angel of Vengeance PrE. Thus there is good balance for both classes with regards to SLAs. Remember that Sunbolt and Searing Light SLA for FVS capstone use NO spell points and thus will be nicely balanced for FVS as the other SLAs for clerics here use some amount of spell points.

Option 2: 2 pretty good feats

Master of Light: Your Sunbolt, Searing Light, and Divine Punishment have no maximum caster level

Master of Alignment (or whatever you want to call it): Your Holy Smite, Flame Strike, (unsure of last spell(s) but could use Deific Vengeance vs/and/or Chaos Hammer/Order's Wrath/Unholy Blight)

- Master of light would now include Divine Punishment (nice and really only DOT that divines have in their spell list similar to how you included creeping cold/niacs for the other masters' feats) and Master of Alignment while only having 2 SLAs (and both for clerics) have a nice abundance of alignment spells. Thus FVS could choose either feat (or both at the appropriate levels) and same with Clerics depending on their build. Thus more versatility.

My last caveat is, I can understand why you didn't include Blade Barrier or Cometfall in these are they may seem too powerful, but the balance to this is that if you did include these in some fashion, then the fact that they are not SLAs anywhere would usually minimize how many metamagics are applied as they would be too costly and thus increasing their max caster level could be a feasible solution

Atremus

11-20-2015, 09:07 AM

You see how this gets out of whack? You were far too conservative.

Out of Whack? How about more inline with the current game? These changes will make people play casters again. The removal of MCL's allows for the full power of a caster be utilized. These are good changes.

karatemack

11-20-2015, 09:21 AM

That's a fair point.

Given that these are primarily themed around SLAs and low-cost commonly-cast damage spells, what would you say a Favored Soul specific option should look like? And a further Divine option in general?

Master of Life and Death

Toggle/Metamagic +10 SP

"Your curative spells now also inflict negative energy damage in addition to providing the healing effect."

So, cure light mass now provides an effect to enemies in the AOE equivalent to inflict light wounds mass. Mass heal also deals damage equivalent to mass harm.

Master Over Death

Either a toggle ability or a new turn undead icon to replace previous version.

"When attempting to turn undead, any undead not destroyed by your attempt must make a reflex save (1d20 + total charisma score) or take 10d10 holy damage (scales with metas). Additionally, your turn undead attempts recharge 20% faster."

Master of Blessings

SLA 6 SP Duration: 1 min per character level

Your blessing fills multiple Party targets with courage. Each target gains a morale bonus on attack rolls and on saving throws against fear effects equal to your charisma modifier divided by 4 (rounded down evenly). Additionally they gain 15+1 hit points per character level and are granted a bonus to PRR and MRR equal to your total wisdom modifier.

Jiirix

11-20-2015, 09:24 AM

That's a fair point.

Given that these are primarily themed around SLAs and low-cost commonly-cast damage spells, what would you say a Favored Soul specific option should look like? And a further Divine option in general?

Easy fix for favorite souls: Add their beloved shoulder cannon light pew-pew archon to the list of "Master of Light".

If you add Necrotic Bolt (and Inflict Moderate Wounds Mass) to Master of the Dead that would cover the Divine Emissary of Darkness SLAs.

Or make a new "Master of Darkness" Feat with Chill Touch, Necrotic Bolt, Negative Energy Burst and Inflict Moderate Wounds Mass. Unholy Blight and a single-target inflict spell could be added or swapped with an SLA for balancing.

A Master feat for Divine Emissary of Light could be "Master of Smiting" with Holy Smite, Flame Strike and some non SLA spells from the regular spell list like Order's Wrath, Deific Vengeance, (Greater) Glyph of Warding or -if you want the non-light caster clerics go crazy in happiness- the ultimate smite "Comet Fall"

Comet Fall is conjuration school and won’t have DC synergies with the SLA spells, Blade Barrier and Implosion. A Master of Smiting with Holy Smite, Flame Strike and Comet Fall could be the one feat that could make people roll caster clerics again that don't focus on light or instant death spells. And if a SLA fireball is ok a non SLA Comet Fall won't break anything balance wise?

LightBear

11-20-2015, 09:34 AM

Atremus

11-20-2015, 09:42 AM

That's a fair point.

Given that these are primarily themed around SLAs and low-cost commonly-cast damage spells, what would you say a Favored Soul specific option should look like? And a further Divine option in general?

FvS only has 1 SLA by being Pure.

Perhaps:

Master of Punishment: Your Summoned Archon now casts Sunbolt based on your characters spell power and caster levels (uncapped)

Master of Destruction: Your Blade Barrier and Comet Fall no longer have a maximum caster level

Of these, the Archon is really the only low cost/readily accessible FvS SLA.

The build I tested on Lamania was a Pure Iconic to get access to Sunbolt.

Uncapping Blade Barrier would be amazing. A FvS has the Spell Pool to cast it enough, but it doesn't work on stationary targets. Not sure the game wants a FvS dropping 30d6 all over the place.

Will have to think on this more today.

maddong

11-20-2015, 10:47 AM

That's a fair point.

Given that these are primarily themed around SLAs and low-cost commonly-cast damage spells, what would you say a Favored Soul specific option should look like? And a further Divine option in general?

That is the problem with making SLA targeted feats. If these feats just improved all spells of an element then they would be useable by more than 1 class. I still think you would be better off adding +Xd6 elemental damage to all spells of an element. Or you could just make it a toggle that adds Xd6 of that elemental damage to all of your offensive damage spells (per cast not per projectile).

Maybe the master of feats exclude each other so you can only pick one.
Master of Fire: Toggle, your offensive damage spells inflict an extra 5d6 fire damage. You also gain 10 fire spell power and 10% fire critical damage.

That is useful to a lot more people than sorcerers....
That improves your meteor swarm, delayed blast fireball, flame strike, and scorching ray in addition to the sorcerer SLA spells....

Silverleafeon

11-20-2015, 11:34 AM

That's a fair point.

Given that these are primarily themed around SLAs and low-cost commonly-cast damage spells, what would you say a Favored Soul specific option should look like? And a further Divine option in general?

Thank you for listening.

Ok looking at the two options I see, either we get multiple choices for a class with only three spells boosted or we get one choice for a class with four spells boosted.

I will be greedy and choose for Cleric one choice with four spells boosted (as you mentioned they must be SLAs or Low cost spells.

Then I will choose for Favored Soul also the same choice of four spells boosted (as you mentioned they must be SLAs or Low cost spells.

First the Cleric choice, and I see someone has already written out a very nice version which includes a nice boost to divine at a moment when they need it, and it does pretty well helping Favored Souls too:

Steel here is a copy of my previous post ...

Here are my suggestion(s) and some reasons why. I do not believe as you have stated that every aspect of every feat should be equal for all feats that apply to all classes, PrEs, etc. However, I do believe that you are giving a spell casting bump and the most bang for one's buck is to give it the SLA's at a minimum and other spells that are worthy but not overly powerful. Here are 2 options ...

Option 1: One great feat

Master of Light (or Radiance or Vengeance or whatever you want to call it): Your Sunbolt, Searing Light, Holy Smite, and Flame Strike have no maximum caster level

- Sunbolt and Searing Light can be SLA's for FVS (Avenger capstone), Sunbolt can be SLA for both Clerics and FVS via Exalted Angel, Holy Smite and Flame Strike are SLAs for Clerics and can be powerful for FVS considering the Angel of Vengeance PrE. Thus there is good balance for both classes with regards to SLAs. Remember that Sunbolt and Searing Light SLA for FVS capstone use NO spell points and thus will be nicely balanced for FVS as the other SLAs for clerics here use some amount of spell points.

I realize that is a strong request, but each spell listed does fit into the SLA category for a Cleric (Exalted Angel for the Sunbolt) and it is four good choices.

Moving on to Favored Soul options:

Favored Souls have Cure Light Wounds, Searing Light, and Sunbolt as their main available SLA, however they only can receive one of these.
A Favored Soul interested in Light would very likely chose the choice listed above.
Favored Souls lack the third tree which makes a bit of mystery here.
We also want to make this choice definitely different.

I often Cast Order's Wrath as a Favored Soul, so I will start with that, its an effect crowd control spell that lack enough damage.
I will add Holy Smite as its in the same category.
Since Order's Wrath does not affect Chaotic Foes, I will add Chaos Hammer to the group.
Lastly I will go with Deific Vengeance as it is also a low cost spell with the option of upgrading to Flame Strike.
So, three cheap level four spells, along with a cheap level two spell/cleric SLA level five.
All of these spells share a common theme of causing alignment damage.

So the Favored Soul could be:

Master of Alignment
Order's Wrath, Holy Smite, Chaos Hammer, and Flame Strike

However this brings us to the point that we already included two of those spell already, so relooking at

Master of Light
Searing Light, Sunbolt, Sunburst, and Divine Punishment

{Does Nimbus of Light have a max level? If it does would that be a bug?}

Which interestingly look a lot like the other half of this post:

Option 2: 2 pretty good feats

Master of Light: Your Sunbolt, Searing Light, and Divine Punishment have no maximum caster level

Master of Alignment (or whatever you want to call it): Your Holy Smite, Flame Strike, (unsure of last spell(s) but could use Deific Vengeance vs/and/or Chaos Hammer/Order's Wrath/Unholy Blight)

- Master of light would now include Divine Punishment (nice and really only DOT that divines have in their spell list similar to how you included creeping cold/niacs for the other masters' feats) and Master of Alignment while only having 2 SLAs (and both for clerics) have a nice abundance of alignment spells. Thus FVS could choose either feat (or both at the appropriate levels) and same with Clerics depending on their build. Thus more versatility.

And of course all this must include a reference to blade barrier and comet fall...

My last caveat is, I can understand why you didn't include Blade Barrier or Cometfall in these are they may seem too powerful, but the balance to this is that if you did include these in some fashion, then the fact that they are not SLAs anywhere would usually minimize how many metamagics are applied as they would be too costly and thus increasing their max caster level could be a feasible solution

Yeah they are powerful, fully unleased would be quite something...

Kompera_Oberon

11-20-2015, 12:05 PM

That's a fair point.

Given that these are primarily themed around SLAs and low-cost commonly-cast damage spells, what would you say a Favored Soul specific option should look like? And a further Divine option in general?

For Clerics/Favored Souls in particular, pulling the max level off of Blade Barrier (max level 15) and Divine Punishment (max level 20) would be good.

Those are two bread-and-butter (commonly cast, to use your phrasing) spells that simply undergo a retrograde scaling in epic levels: They stop gaining more damage dice, and monsters gain a lot more hit points.

My last caveat is, I can understand why you didn't include Blade Barrier or Cometfall in these are they may seem too powerful, but the balance to this is that if you did include these in some fashion, then the fact that they are not SLAs anywhere would usually minimize how many metamagics are applied as they would be too costly and thus increasing their max caster level could be a feasible solution

Neither Blade Barrier nor Cometfall are "too powerful" in epic content. Both stop gaining damage dice in heroic content, and Cometfall in particular is spell costed for its secondary knockdown effect which is nearly useless in low level epics and completely useless in higher level epics. Casters using either of these spells are not likely to be DC focused and therefore they will be doing half (or none vs. foes with evasion) damage to every opponent.

Jiirix

11-20-2015, 12:50 PM

Neither Blade Barrier nor Cometfall are "too powerful" in epic content. Both stop gaining damage dice in heroic content, and Cometfall in particular is spell costed for its secondary knockdown effect which is nearly useless in low level epics and completely useless in higher level epics. Casters using either of these spells are not likely to be DC focused and therefore they will be doing half (or none vs. foes with evasion) damage to every opponent.

I think Cometfall would be a solid option that won't be out of line withe the other spells that get uncapped, but I think Blade Barrier could easily become to powerful because it is a persitant AOE spell you can use while kiting. Comet fall on the other hand has only a small instant AOE and that it is boosted by cleric past lives gives it a nice touch I think.

LiquidZombie

11-20-2015, 12:59 PM

Regarding the sorcerer-versus-wizard imbalance, would this be solved by changing the feats so that instead of un-capping the spells entirely, they just set the cap equal to your character level?

This would allow both sorcs and wizards to gain from casting the spells at an epic level, but sorcs wouldn't gain a massive advantage due to the extra CLs provided by heroic enhancements.

But perhaps this would suck for some other reason that I haven't considered.

Silverleafeon

11-20-2015, 01:14 PM

For Clerics/Favored Souls in particular, pulling the max level off of Blade Barrier (max level 15) and Divine Punishment (max level 20) would be good.

Those are two bread-and-butter (commonly cast, to use your phrasing) spells that simply undergo a retrograde scaling in epic levels: They stop gaining more damage dice, and monsters gain a lot more hit points.

Neither Blade Barrier nor Cometfall are "too powerful" in epic content. Both stop gaining damage dice in heroic content, and Cometfall in particular is spell costed for its secondary knockdown effect which is nearly useless in low level epics and completely useless in higher level epics. Casters using either of these spells are not likely to be DC focused and therefore they will be doing half (or none vs. foes with evasion) damage to every opponent.

Compromise, allow the now weak Divine Punishment benefits?
Half your request?

I think Cometfall would be a solid option that won't be out of line withe the other spells that get uncapped, but I think Blade Barrier could easily become to powerful because it is a persitant AOE spell you can use while kiting. Comet fall on the other hand has only a small instant AOE and that it is boosted by cleric past lives gives it a nice touch I think.

Good point.

I have to ask Steel, do you want Cometfall as a capstone/tier five for the 3rd Favored Soul tree?
Costs 15 sp, 12 second cooldown?

If so, this unlocks the SLA requirement for the Favored Soul option and tilts the table.
If no, then maybe Order's Wrath/Chaos Hammer/Defiact Veng for a Favored Soul SLA 3rd tree option?

bloodnose13

11-20-2015, 02:42 PM

bit of thoughts on the topic

---------------------------------------------------------
//i dont understadn why do we need those 2 metamagics, there is too many of them already, if anything they should be just passive upgades of the existing metamagics, also how to understand affected by empower? (means that it can affect spells that support empower OR that it requires empower to be active to apply?) adding more metamagics that will make casters use even more sp per spell is not realy a good idea, and in my opinion ddo should go other way, limit how many metamagics can be used at once and make each of them unique and powerful in its own way.

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
//it should be a passive upgrade to heighen.

Embolden Spell

METAMAGIC: +2 DCs to all spells with DCs. +10SP. Affects spells

--------------------------------------------------------------
//this is something that should be done through enchancement changes in wizard/sorc trees and not as a feat.

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Artifice

Your Static Shock, Lightning Sphere, Blast Rod, and Lightning Motes spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Music

Your Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reveberate spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

//from what i tried on lammania, it does not work, unless it does not have effect icon, one more thing of my concern is the universal spell power, at the level we gain this feat everyone is probably haveing a +150 spell power item, if i remember correctly universal does not stack with focused (fire, force, cold etc) spell power effects, since this feat boosts crit damage then maybe it could raise crit chance too instead of spell power.

Master of Knowledge

Your Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast spells now grant you one stack of Mental Honing (+3 Universal Spell Power, +2% Spell Crit Damage) when cast. This effect can stack up to 30 times. One stack is removed every 6 seconds.

[/LIST]

//so we will have two ruins? what we need is a power boost for spells that we have already, so instead of useing only ruin, hellball and sla, we actualy use the spells we have and used them all over heroic levels, instead we are being tunneled towards sla only type of casters. if anything those caster feats should be added to the game after caster enchancement pass and not before.

New ML30 General Feat:

Greater Ruin

Requires Ruin.
Deals 1000 untyped damage to a single enemy (no saving throw). Costs 150 SP

btolson

11-20-2015, 03:25 PM

...i dont understadn why do we need those 2 metamagics, there is too many of them already, if anything they should be just passive upgades of the existing metamagics, ...

I think that's actually an excellent suggestion.

Faltout

11-20-2015, 04:01 PM

That's a fair point.

Given that these are primarily themed around SLAs and low-cost commonly-cast damage spells, what would you say a Favored Soul specific option should look like? And a further Divine option in general?
Why are these only themed around SLAs? For example, fireball gets no max level treatment but delayed blast fireball doesn't, even if it costs more and has the same damage dice (only difference being the MCL).
Or niac's cold ray vs. polar ray (polar ray having less damage dice, but being better than niac's due to MCL).

You are creating an imbalance of spells. As I see it, you have 2 options:
- Uncap all spells of that element
- Uncap all the other spells that have the same or a bit more damage dice with the ones you proposed. SLAs aside, lower level spells should not deal more damage than a higher level SIMILAR spell.

Please do not make the mistake of focusing only on SLAs (as the easy way to add damage without increasing cost). We like the spell list and want to see more spells added, not obliterate all spellcasting in epics (unless it's an SLA).

As for fvs, remember they get bonuses to actual spell casting, not SLAs. If you include other spells as well, fvs would have more options.

LiquidZombie

11-20-2015, 05:59 PM

Why are these only themed around SLAs? For example, fireball gets no max level treatment but delayed blast fireball doesn't, even if it costs more and has the same damage dice (only difference being the MCL).
Or niac's cold ray vs. polar ray (polar ray having less damage dice, but being better than niac's due to MCL).

In my opinion, the highest-level spells of each element that cost at least 20 SP (Delayed Blast Fireball, Polar Ray, Ottiluke's, Chain Lightning etc) should have their caps removed with or without these feats. These spells were presumably introduced when the level cap was 20 or 25, and they should be increased to match the new level cap because there aren't any higher-level spells available. This would mean that the uncapped Fireball would still do the same damage as DBF, but it would have a lower DC and a correspondingly lower cost.

Niac's Cold Ray and Polar Ray can't really be compared because although an uncapped NCR would do huge damage, it allows a reflex save which totally negates its damage, and as a level 1 spell it will be saved against a lot unless heightened (which will make it cost 44 SP, or over 2 Polar Rays). Polar Ray on the other hand does not allow a save at all, so will still be worth using in epic levels especially if it is uncapped too.

maddong

11-20-2015, 06:45 PM

Yeah it feels wrong to be using level 1 spells instead of polar ray. The feats should at least improve some "best of" spells and not just SLAs.

If spells are too pricey increase the mana discount for damage spells.

RobbinB

11-20-2015, 07:35 PM

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

This is absolutely what we don't need. This just makes the no-cost sla's even more powerful. I don't see how this feat would not be mandatory on my Warlock. We need tough choices, not more overwhelming criticals and blinding speeds.

Maybe consider going the opposite way, making an Efficient Empower/Maximize feat. Does nothing for sla's since they are free, but reduces the spell point cost of using Empower by (eg.) 2 and Maximize by (eg.)4. (So my Warlock would ignore the feat but many Sorcs might consider it very valuable.)

Alternatively, make it applicable only to spells with an SP cost, ie not SLA's.

Kompera_Oberon

11-20-2015, 07:57 PM

I think Cometfall would be a solid option that won't be out of line withe the other spells that get uncapped, but I think Blade Barrier could easily become to powerful because it is a persitant AOE spell you can use while kiting. Comet fall on the other hand has only a small instant AOE and that it is boosted by cleric past lives gives it a nice touch I think.
Ok, 3 Cleric past lives give +3 DC to Conjuration (I don't have them, but that's beside the point), but other than Cometfall there's no compelling reason for a cleric to focus on boosting Conjuration DCs. So the +3 is really just window dressing in the current environment of "go huge or go home" DC casting. It won't accomplish anything for the Cleric whose past lives earned the bonus. It's far more useful for a Warlock, for example.

I can't recall the last time Cometfall actually knocked anything over for me in level appropriate epic content. And I don't run EE except when grouped because I can't. Not absolutely can't, when I'm at 28th I can solo about 4 level 20 or 21 EEs. Slowly and painfully. So effectively can't. Cometfall is a spell I will chain with Fire Storm when I've got a pile of mobs stacked up and I have mana to spare before the next shrine (or it's close and I can afford to waste it on high cost, low effect spells). It's also a way to watch a blue hexagon appear over the head of every single mob as they make their saves vs. the knockdown.

Regarding Blade Barrier, gee it's not a bad thing for a Cleric or a Favored Soul to have an effective AOE, is it? You know, bring back that "wow" factor you felt when you hit 11th level and could first cast Blade Barrier? I mean, there's plenty of other examples out there for other classes: Earthquake, Evard's Grasping Tentacles, Ice Storm, Sleet Storm, Wall of Fire, Cloudkill, Death Aura, etc. All of those are persistent AOE spells you can use while kiting, except for Death Aura which moves with the caster.

Right now Blade Barrier caps at level 15 and thus starts providing diminishing benefits from 16th through 28th level content. And it has a DC save for half damage which the vast majority of Clerics or FvS will not have pushed high enough, if at all, to matter. Plus it is a Reflex save and so is doubly ineffective against foes with evasion. That makes it very costly for very little damage in epic content. Unlocking the level would only give it another 9d6 at the proposed 24th level where you could select the feat, plus 1d6 per level until cap. Still save for half damage, evade for none. And at level 24 the monsters have gained a whole lot more than 9d6 hit points (even scaling with Force spell power, which isn't a top spell power type for Clerics or FvS), so I'm not seeing any real problem with unlocking this spell.

EllisDee37

11-20-2015, 08:03 PM

Maybe consider going the opposite way, making an Efficient Empower/Maximize feat. Does nothing for sla's since they are free, but reduces the spell point cost of using Empower by (eg.) 2 and Maximize by (eg.)4. (So my Warlock would ignore the feat but many Sorcs might consider it very valuable.)I like where you're going with that. As a high level epic feat, have it apply to all metamagics. Then, have it either be equivalent to tier 1 enhancements (stacking), tier 2 enhancements (stacking), or tier 3 enhancements (non-stacking).

Efficient Metamagics
You are able to use your metamagics more efficiently:
Empower costs 2 fewer Spell Points.
Maximize costs 3 fewer Spell Points.
Quicken, Enlarge, Extend and Empower Healing Spell cost 1 fewer Spell Point.
Heighten costs you 1 fewer Spell Point per heightened level.
Eschew Materials costs 1 fewer Spell Point.

...or...

Efficient Metamagics
You are able to use your metamagics more efficiently:
Empower costs 4 fewer Spell Points.
Maximize costs 6 fewer Spell Points.
Quicken, Enlarge, Extend and Empower Healing Spell cost 2 fewer Spell Points.
Heighten costs you 2 fewer Spells Point per heightened level.
Eschew Materials costs 0 Spell Points.

...or...

Efficient Metamagics
You are able to use your metamagics more efficiently. This does not stack with enhancements.
Empower costs 6 fewer Spell Points.
Maximize costs 9 fewer Spell Points.
Quicken, Enlarge, Extend and Empower Healing Spell cost 4 fewer Spell Points.
Heighten costs you 2 fewer Spells Point per heightened level.
Eschew Materials costs 0 Spell Points.

The last version would save you 19 spell points per cast for quickened+empowered+maximized spells, +2 per level if Heightened. Plus it could possibly free up some AP from your enhancement trees.

EDIT: Other options would be to have the feat simply make all metamagics free, or give all metamagics the equivalent of full efficient enhancements plus full efficient gear effects, not stacking with either enhancements or gear. (So each metamagic gets two types of bonuses to efficiency from the feat.)

QuantumFX

11-20-2015, 08:13 PM

Steelstar, can we get an epic rune arm feat that adds your epic level to your artificer caster level on rune arms?

maddong

11-20-2015, 08:19 PM

This is absolutely what we don't need. This just makes the no-cost sla's even more powerful. I don't see how this feat would not be mandatory on my Warlock. We need tough choices, not more overwhelming criticals and blinding speeds.

Maybe consider going the opposite way, making an Efficient Empower/Maximize feat. Does nothing for sla's since they are free, but reduces the spell point cost of using Empower by (eg.) 2 and Maximize by (eg.)4. (So my Warlock would ignore the feat but many Sorcs might consider it very valuable.)

Alternatively, make it applicable only to spells with an SP cost, ie not SLA's.

Just do automatic maximize. Makes it free.

Tlorrd

11-20-2015, 10:02 PM

well as there are some SLAs for both FVS and Cleric and some spells added to divine disciple ... here are a list of spells that should be added in some form or another to masters feats. Also if there is some cross over of spells between feats, that should be OK because unlike savants, there are only two main main divine caster classes (outside of druid) and those are divine disciple cleric and angel of vengeance FVS. Also the number of offensive divine spells is much less than wiz/sorc and thus we even though SLAs are different for both cleric and fvs, they can benefit from the added versatility of some spell crossover between feats.

Divine spells to unlock caster level:

Searing Light
Sunbolt
Holy Smite
Flame Strike
Divine Punishment
Sunburst
Word of Balance (if you're going to unlock Sunburst, you might as well unlock this for DD, and I know Sunburst can also be obtained by Sun-elf)
Blade Barrier
Cometfall
Order's Wrath
Chaos Hammer
Unholy Blight
Deific Vengeance

Avocado

11-20-2015, 10:17 PM

[URL="https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467837-Update-29-Feats-Overview"]

[B]New ML24 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +140 Maximum Spell Points)

Improved Augment Summoning

Requires Augment Summoning
Your summoned creatures have +8 to all ability scores, +10% Dodge, and +100 Maximum Hitpoints

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save (20 + Highest of your INT/WIS/CHA modifiers) negates the freeze.

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

Embolden Spell

METAMAGIC: +2 DCs to all spells with DCs. +10SP. Affects spells

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Dead

Your Chill Touch, Necrotic Ray, and Negative Energy Burst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Light

Your Sun Bolt, Searing Light, and Sunburst spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Artifice

Your Static Shock, Lightning Sphere, Blast Rod, and Lightning Motes spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of the Wilds

Your Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, Call Lightning, and Word of Balance spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Music

Your Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reveberate spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Knowledge

Your Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast spells now grant you one stack of Mental Honing (+3 Universal Spell Power, +2% Spell Crit Damage) when cast. This effect can stack up to 30 times. One stack is removed every 6 seconds.

New ML30 General Feat:

Greater Ruin
[LIST]
Requires Ruin.
Deals 1000 untyped damage to a single enemy (no saving throw). Costs 150 SP

Just going to go down the list starting with improved summoning:

Until summons (not including hirelings) are balanced and competitive, this feat will not be taken. Pets need to do more damage, have higher saves and more prr/mrr. Perhaps change the feat to add some dps. I know the warlock tree has some melee power boosts but my druid/arti isnt a warlock.

Is Glacial Wrath affected by spell power or meta magics? Duration of freeze? Sp cost? I cant judge until those are known.

Intensify: This will only be taken by people who use SLAs. Too expensive for regular spells. It is going to buff warlock's EB, keep that into consideration.

Embolden: Looks good to me.

Master spell feats all look decent. It will probably make me actually take SLAs in Sorcerer trees. Only spell I have problem with is Sunburst. Sunburst does very little damage and adding a couple extra caster levels wont be worth it. I use sunburst to blind, not to do damage. Not sure what other spell you would use. Perhaps blade barrier?

Greater ruin: meh, whatever. It's just double ruin. Popular for cleric, fvs and shiradi casters. More bragging about 45k crits.

Its a start for a caster pass. However, I would like to see casters get a free meta-magic feat or something in epic levels. It would help balance casters. You did add spell power to each epic level, but it isnt exclusive to buffing casters. Anyone who uses cocoon or consecrate will also benefit. Melee and ranged power are exclusive to melee and ranged builds and do not benefit pure casters.

Jiirix

11-21-2015, 04:32 AM

Ok, 3 Cleric past lives give +3 DC to Conjuration (I don't have them, but that's beside the point), but other than Cometfall there's no compelling reason for a cleric to focus on boosting Conjuration DCs. So the +3 is really just window dressing in the current environment of "go huge or go home" DC casting. It won't accomplish anything for the Cleric whose past lives earned the bonus. It's far more useful for a Warlock, for example.

I can't recall the last time Cometfall actually knocked anything over for me in level appropriate epic content. And I don't run EE except when grouped because I can't. Not absolutely can't, when I'm at 28th I can solo about 4 level 20 or 21 EEs. Slowly and painfully. So effectively can't. Cometfall is a spell I will chain with Fire Storm when I've got a pile of mobs stacked up and I have mana to spare before the next shrine (or it's close and I can afford to waste it on high cost, low effect spells). It's also a way to watch a blue hexagon appear over the head of every single mob as they make their saves vs. the knockdown.

Regarding Blade Barrier, gee it's not a bad thing for a Cleric or a Favored Soul to have an effective AOE, is it? You know, bring back that "wow" factor you felt when you hit 11th level and could first cast Blade Barrier? I mean, there's plenty of other examples out there for other classes: Earthquake, Evard's Grasping Tentacles, Ice Storm, Sleet Storm, Wall of Fire, Cloudkill, Death Aura, etc. All of those are persistent AOE spells you can use while kiting, except for Death Aura which moves with the caster.

Right now Blade Barrier caps at level 15 and thus starts providing diminishing benefits from 16th through 28th level content. And it has a DC save for half damage which the vast majority of Clerics or FvS will not have pushed high enough, if at all, to matter. Plus it is a Reflex save and so is doubly ineffective against foes with evasion. That makes it very costly for very little damage in epic content. Unlocking the level would only give it another 9d6 at the proposed 24th level where you could select the feat, plus 1d6 per level until cap. Still save for half damage, evade for none. And at level 24 the monsters have gained a whole lot more than 9d6 hit points (even scaling with Force spell power, which isn't a top spell power type for Clerics or FvS), so I'm not seeing any real problem with unlocking this spell.

I didn't say Blade Barrier can't be an option just that one has to be careful with this spells because it has a different game mechanic and different synergies. I don't see any problem with uncapping Comet Fall or Firestorm because these have a similar mechanic like the other spells (Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Sunburst or Negative Energy Burst) Blade Barrier IS different from those and you would have to think about Acid Rain, Wall of Fire and Ice Storm too.

Lanhelin

11-21-2015, 06:06 AM

Arcane Insight

Activate to gain + 6 to all spell DCs and +6 to Spell Penetration for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

I have a question: Will an Otto's Sphere of Dancing, that lasts longer than 30 seconds, or one of the Symbols that last 5 Minutes, when cast while the effect of Arcane Insight is active, keep the +6 DC for their whole duration or lose it after 30 seconds?

Tlorrd

11-21-2015, 10:40 AM

I didn't say Blade Barrier can't be an option just that one has to be careful with this spells because it has a different game mechanic and different synergies. I don't see any problem with uncapping Comet Fall or Firestorm because these have a similar mechanic like the other spells (Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Sunburst or Negative Energy Burst) Blade Barrier IS different from those and you would have to think about Acid Rain, Wall of Fire and Ice Storm too.

I agree they are more of an AOE DOT, but they are also not SLAs so to add a ton of metamagics would be extremely spell point costly and thus most people cannot just metamagic the wazoo out of them. And so uncapping those levels will bring them up on dps while not being overly powerful like a SLA.

Think of how many mobs are in TOEE, you can't keep casting these spells fully metamagiced, you'd burn through spell points to fast.

Trillea

11-21-2015, 01:17 PM

I have a question: Will an Otto's Sphere of Dancing, that lasts longer than 30 seconds, or one of the Symbols that last 5 Minutes, when cast while the effect of Arcane Insight is active, keep the +6 DC for their whole duration or lose it after 30 seconds?

With the current mechanics ingame, the DC of a duration spell is set at cast and does not change even if the caster's DC changes in the meantime.

PsychoBlonde

11-21-2015, 02:23 PM

btolson

11-21-2015, 03:17 PM

Master of the Wilds is kind of craptastic compared to the other ones, because the max caster level on those spells is already high enough that you won't really gain much from removing it.

To be honest, I'm extremely dubious about having feats that are tied into enhancements (SLA'S) that way. I'd really rather have it be something like "max caster level on your level 3- X type spells is removed". This will have the advantage of being universal instead of only really benefiting the class that gets those SLA's.

Maybe as a kicker for both Master of the Wilds and Master of Light, they can also raise your overall Druid/Cleric/FvS Max Caster Level by... +4? (Bearing in mind that an awful lot of cleric/druid spells only gain dice per 2 levels.) This wouldn't have any additional impact on any of the SLAs that have had their caps removed, but would improve other spells to make up for the fact that those SLAs have less to gain than the options for other classes.

HuneyMunster

11-21-2015, 07:22 PM

For Favored Soul

Master of Vengeance

Your Blade Barrier, Divine Punishment and Firestorm spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Covers all 3 spell damage types from Angel of Vengeance tree.

IronClan

11-21-2015, 07:29 PM

Tlorrd

11-21-2015, 08:20 PM

Steel past Epic feats with DC's do not (last I tested) allow increasing via focus feats and gear so the question is will this take Evoc focus, gear Sorc past lives and evoc destiny DC bonuses (like the magister arcane augmentation?):

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save (20 + Highest of your INT/WIS/CHA modifiers) negates the freeze.

50-ish DC is not high enough by 25 for Elite level 25+ content, and it's not high enough by 45 (ish) for Devils* and presumably level 31 legendary content.

This same applies to spells like: Mass Frog, Forced Escape, Hellball, and also the Destiny spells Tsunami, Soundburst SLA, Draconic burst, and etc. Basically every Epic feat spell and every Destiny SLA currently that I've tested.

Also many of these spell where they have spell resistance checks seem to use your total character level for spell penn check and do not gain benefit from gear past lives or feats which means they are total wastes to cast against anything with spell resistance (at all because 28 Spell penn check might as well be zero).

* Just throwing that out there, I'm not convinced anyone knows the real DC needed to land stuff on oranges and higher fort mobs in the new content, my 92 stunning shield doesn't even make most stuff roll a save (last I tried which was pre-nerf update 28.1)... though I have for sure seen Frozen Fury land in DoJ so there must be some threshold at which the mobs actually roll a save and can fail it.

Totally agree ... things mentioned above need updated DCs to actually be usable in higher level EEs. They are great spells/SLAs but need an update to become feasible both on DC and Spell Penetration.

Silverleafeon

11-21-2015, 08:35 PM

For Favored Soul

Master of Vengeance

Your Blade Barrier, Divine Punishment and Firestorm spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Covers all 3 spell damage types from Angel of Vengeance tree.

I like, might not fly, but I would certainly take it if it did.

Divine Spells that don't (unless they are not working as intended) have max caster levels:

Sunbeam (druid, divine disciple)
Nimbus of Light (cleric, favored soul)
Firestorm (cleric, favored soul)
Others?

Divine Spells that don't benefit from increasing caster levels:

Soundburst (cleric, favored soul)
Others?

Morroiel

11-21-2015, 08:42 PM

Steel past Epic feats with DC's do not (last I tested) allow increasing via focus feats and gear so the question is will this take Evoc focus, gear Sorc past lives and evoc destiny DC bonuses (like the magister arcane augmentation?):

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save (20 + Highest of your INT/WIS/CHA modifiers) negates the freeze.

50-ish DC is not high enough by 25 for Elite level 25+ content, and it's not high enough by 45 (ish) for Devils* and presumably level 31 legendary content.

This same applies to spells like: Mass Frog, Forced Escape, Hellball, and also the Destiny spells Tsunami, Soundburst SLA, Draconic burst, and etc. Basically every Epic feat spell and every Destiny SLA currently that I've tested.

Also many of these spell where they have spell resistance checks seem to use your total character level for spell penn check and do not gain benefit from gear past lives or feats which means they are total wastes to cast against anything with spell resistance (at all because 28 Spell penn check might as well be zero).

* Just throwing that out there, I'm not convinced anyone knows the real DC needed to land stuff on oranges and higher fort mobs in the new content, my 92 stunning shield doesn't even make most stuff roll a save (last I tried which was pre-nerf update 28.1)... though I have for sure seen Frozen Fury land in DoJ so there must be some threshold at which the mobs actually roll a save and can fail it.

I agree - there seems to be a disconnect between epic slas and the monster saves in EE content.
Typical spell DC formula follows: DC 10 + level + stat mod + school bonuses

In order for this DC to be in the same ball park as heroic ones, 20 would have to equal 10 + spell level + school bonuses or in other words school bonuses would have to equal 1....

I can only imagine 2 scenarios: either that formula is a placeholder, or they intend to include school bonuses. Otherwise they might as well remove the freezing effect altogether.

I would like to see them go back into all the slas added after MOTU and double check that their DCs are being shown, calculated correctly, and if not adding the school bonuses - then changed to add them.

Note this problem isn't just exclusive to epics - the new warlock slas (create thrall, hurl through hell, and devour the soul) all have bugged DCs.

Morroiel

11-21-2015, 08:52 PM

This is EXTREMELY weak for an epic metamagic.

75 sp for an increase of 25 sp and it takes an epic feat slot....

This will only be useful for shiradi and warlock casters..

I don't know what I expected but considering intensify spell is the most powerful metamagic feat in pnp.. I expected something...well epic.

Comparison:

Maximize Spell: Increases the Spell Power by 150. Spells will cost 25 more spell points while this feat is active.

You get 75 more spell power for maximize (a heroic feat you can take at first level) for the same amount of spell point increase.

I'm confused on the logic behind this? Aren't epic feats supposed to be more powerful?

Silverleafeon

11-21-2015, 10:55 PM

slarden

11-22-2015, 05:49 AM

Master of Air

Your Shocking Grasp, Electric Loop, and Lightning Bolt spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Earth

Your Acid Spray, Acid Arrow, and Acid Blast spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Water

Your Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm, and Niac's Biting Cold spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

Master of Fire

Your Burning Hands, Scorch, and Fireball spells no longer have a maximum caster level.

For 3 of 4 elements you include a level 1, 2 and 3 spell that also happens to line up with the sorc SLAs. For water, you are including niac's biting cold rather than frost lance. I assume this is because it's problematic to implement an increase in caster level for frost lance due to the way it's worded and probably coded.

My issue with Niac's Biting Cold is that when grouped with a druid, a creeping cold or greater creeping cold will shut down niac's biting cold unless this was fixed recently. Can you can please make this spell more party friendly by not having niac's biting cold stopped by a creeping cold or greater creeping cold (and don't forget about creeping cold SLA).

slarden

11-22-2015, 06:18 AM

That's a fair point.

Given that these are primarily themed around SLAs and low-cost commonly-cast damage spells, what would you say a Favored Soul specific option should look like? And a further Divine option in general?

Simple solution would be to add Sun Bolt and Sunburst to favored soul spellbook within the Angel of Vengeance tree. Not sure if the bonus casters level a favored soul gets creates a balance problem with cleric.

As a side note I assume you are aware that cleric sunburst kills undead and blinds non-undead automatically - there doesn't appear to be any save chance for enemies. This should be fixed.

You will need to be careful when adding slas to the favored soul tree as favored souls get 5 caster level bonuses. In addition, just reward is the best sp regeneration ability in the game and if combined with low cost force/light SLAs that do significant damage - it could easily become over-powered. Blade barrier gives just reward, scourge and other abilities multiple proc chances so even an unmeta'd blade barrier with the current cap is useful in epic content.

I do think favored souls need a boost, but due to all the goodness in their tree the interactions need to be looked at as well.

Silverleafeon

11-22-2015, 12:13 PM

Divine spells to unlock caster level:

Great List
Sorted by Schools:

Evocation:

Searing Light ~ favored soul bread and butter
Sunbolt ~ awesome spell
Holy Smite ~ highly useful, but low on damage in end game
Flame Strike ~ a bit sluggish and expensive would be great to expand
Divine Punishment ~ low on damage in end game, very needed when added years ago
Sunburst ~ great anti shadow/undead spell
Word of Balance ~ much stronger than all the other alignment spells; thankfully one could take up to 3 master spells groups
Blade Barrier ~ great spell that is getting left behind due to monster hp vs spell power ratios
Order's Wrath ~ great crowd control spell vs chaotic but weak damage wise at end game
Chaos Hammer ~ kind of blah only a slow effect and weak damage
Unholy Blight ~ gotta be neutral to cast this one, also weaker choice since sicken << blindded or stunned

Conjuration:

Deific Vengeance ~ never used due to very weak damage and off school, however unlocking no max caster levels would do wonders for it
Cometfall ~ considered by some better in epics than blade barrier, hampered by off school DC woes

Might add (but seems not popular choice)

Abjuration:

Glyph of Warding ~ off school, very impressive in heroic normal
Greater Glyph of Warding ~ lacks damage in epics due to no SLA version, off school, would be helped by removing max caster levels

Necromancy:

Inflict Spells ~ off school, lacks damage in epics

Also of interest yet have no max caster levels:
{unless bug caps them at 20?}

Evocation:

Firestorm ~ nice, somewhat bugged in targeting, seems to do less damage than it ought to, maybe my imagination
Sunbeam ~ wonderful bread and butter Druid/Divine Disciple spell w/o metamagics
Nimbus of Light ~ included in favored soul spell cycles often despite low damage; slightly better in divine disciple due to SLA metas

Spells not really affect by max caster level situation:

Implosion ~ thank you for fixing this
Energy Drain ~ not bad but Epic Monsters recover very fast, so its no longer a stable spell unless you are necro focused
Soundburst ~ love the Exalted Angel SLA (please discuss increasing ED levels to 10 someday)

Panzerdart

11-22-2015, 01:02 PM

These Artificer feats are absolutely not meant to address any of their issues. Or to substitute for an "Arti Pass". They are simply new options. Which I made because I like Artificers and had a few spare hours on a weekend. Take 'em if you like them, ignore them if you don't.

I can tell your love for Artificers is undying, Steel, I feel ya there. Much appreciated on the display of love with these new Feats.

How much can I bribe you to do an "Arti Pass" on your free time? Trust me, I'd pay handsomely. ;)

Bacon, Cookies, Coffee, Tasty Hams, Broccoli, Chimichangas, Doritos, Cheeseburgers, Doughnuts, Taquitos, Fish Sticks, Twix, Kit-Kat, Egg Rolls, Gyros, Curly Fries, Spaghetti, Hot Dogs, Pizza, Cinnamon Buns, Eggplant Parmesan, Ice Cream, Nachos, Chicken Wings, you name it. :D

Silverleafeon

11-22-2015, 01:18 PM

I can tell your love for Artificers is undying, Steel, I feel ya there. Much appreciated on the display of love with these new Feats.

How much can I bribe you to do an "Arti Pass" on your free time? Trust me, I'd pay handsomely. ;)

Bacon, Cookies, Coffee, Tasty Hams, Broccoli, Chimichangas, Doritos, Cheeseburgers, Doughnuts, you name it.

I doubt we will ever see one, but if Sev wants to consider a kick-start approach to an expansion, I would toss in $20 to the ones that smacks of class/ED/enhancement/race/end game raiding

sjbb87

11-22-2015, 04:04 PM

The average Melee/Ranged is a lot better off in terms of Epic feat choices right now than the average Caster. Making up for some of that gap is the main reason there are new mid-Epic feats in this update at all.

Here is the list of current epic feats
DPS
Blinding Speed
Overwhelming Critical
Combat Archery(ranged)

Tank
Bulwark of Defense
Epic Damage Reduction
Epic Fortitude
Epic Reflexes
Epic Will
Epic Toughness

skill
Epic Reputation
Epic Skills
Great Ability
Watchful Eye

caster
Ruin
Epic Mental Toughness
Epic Spell Focus
Epic Spell Penetration

Classes

Bard
Inspire Excellence

Monk
Vorpal Strikes
Improved Martial Arts

Rogue
Improved Sneak Attack

Warlock
Epic Eldritch Blast

Now the update 29

Caster
Wellspring of Power
Arcane Insight
Burst of Glacial Wrath
Intensify Spell
Embolden Spell
Master of Air
Master of Earth
Master of Water
Master of Fire
Master of the Dead
Master of Light
Master of Artifice
Master of the Wilds
Master of Music
Master of Knowledge
Greater Ruin

Summoner
Improved Augment Summoning

Artificers
Construct Exemplar

In short...

DPS =3 feats (1 useless and others just for ranged)
Tank =6 feats
Skill =4 feats
Caster update 29 = 10 feats plus one extra for each school
Bard =1 Feat
Monk=2 feats
Rogue=1 feat
Warlock=1 feat

So...
Missing many classes feats ....
Feats for DPS are few ...
And with the update 29 normal feats for dps there is almost only one.
Then await a response if will get away with it ....
Enough legendary feats being a joke for dps ...

slarden

11-22-2015, 05:56 PM

So...
Missing many classes feats ....
Feats for DPS are few ...
And with the update 29 normal feats for dps there is almost only one.
Then await a response if will get away with it ....
Enough legendary feats being a joke for dps ...

I would welcome fewer legendary caster feats - have just a few that grant simply universal spell power, crit damage bonus and global DC rather than having so many feats to choose from on my casters - ultimately the packaging ends up being restrictive. Should we really have to take a feat to get rid of caster level limits? Just take out the limits on the spells identified and free up the feat slot. Give this poster what he wants - fewer caster feats and simplicity.

Most of the feats you have listed as caster feats also have dps abilities as well.

For me it's fairly simple on my melees - go with more crits and more melee power and call it a day.

sjbb87

11-22-2015, 06:23 PM

I would welcome fewer legendary caster feats - have just a few that grant simply universal spell power, crit damage bonus and global DC rather than having so many feats to choose from on my casters - ultimately the packaging ends up being restrictive. Should we really have to take a feat to get rid of caster level limits? Just take out the limits on the spells identified and free up the feat slot. Give this poster what he wants - fewer caster feats and simplicity.

Most of the feats you have listed as caster feats also have dps abilities as well.
DPS to spell from caster...

For me it's fairly simple on my melees - go with more crits and more melee power and call it a day.

The only acceptable epic feat to dps is Overwhelming Critical.
You can add many others, like :
melee power
bonus to critical hit damage,
attack speed
damage bonus
Tactics DC's
critical threat range
stacks of Vulnerability
chance to produce a random effect/hit
etc...

bbcjoke

11-22-2015, 10:38 PM

Very interesting stuff. I just want to point out something that the team must have overlooked: Necrotic Ray does not currently have a maximum caster level.

I repeat: Necrotic Ray does not currently have a maximum caster level.

Pale Masters will thank you very much to leave Necrotic Ray as is and substitute Death Aura in it's place for this feat.

Seconding this.
Also, please take a look at the currently spell duration and/or description. Maximum caster level on damage should not also limit the spell duration (I think).

PsychoBlonde

11-22-2015, 11:08 PM

That's a fair point.

Given that these are primarily themed around SLAs and low-cost commonly-cast damage spells, what would you say a Favored Soul specific option should look like? And a further Divine option in general?

If you guys can manage it, the divine versions ought to be more like:

Master of Alignment
Your Divine Vengeance, Chaos Hammer, Holy Smite, Order's Wrath, and Unholy Blight spells do an additional 1d6 damage per caster level, up to the maximum caster level of the spell.

Master of Affliction
All Inflict Wounds spells deal an additional 1d8 negative damage per caster level, up to the maximum caster level of the spell.

Master of Decay
Contagion now does 1d8 untyped damage per caster level to the target when cast. Poison now does 1d8 poison damage per caster level to the target.

or maybe

Master of Warding
Your Glyph of Warding and Greater Glyph of Warding spells do an additional 1d8 damage per caster level, up to the maximum caster level of the spell.

Iriale

11-23-2015, 07:21 AM

I don't like the new metamagic feats. There is a serious problem on mana efficiency on epics, and you add two metamagic feats. That makes the problem worse. Reducing the cost of epic spells 1% per epic level is too small to be useful. If I can not maintain the current metamagic feats active in epic feats because they drain my mana quickly, how can I choose more feats that I can not use? Think about it, Steelstar, please. Currently I earn +1 to DC with two feats of Greater Ability (int, wis, etc). Would you give up one of those feats to earn a +2 instead of +1 when this has a high cost in spell points and you will have more mana problems? No, thanks. This is useless.

Do you want to help epic spellcasters? Reduce the cost on spell points of the current metamagic feats, please please please. We need that. It is frustrating, metamagic has a high cost: feats and many APs. And then I have to turn it off in epic because my blue bar is not enough to use it. Try this. Reduce the cost of the current metamagic feats. With active metamagic permanently our dps will be more stable and still lower than melee. And then you can already see if extra help is needed or not. Think that metamagic is a luxury in heroics but is needed in epics. An epic spellcaster should be good enough for use it often. It's epic.

Higher free spell power increase or raising the ML cap on spells might work too. But I bet for the metamagic option because it requires a very large investment for then hardly to be used (only on SLAS). It's not fair! And perhaps with reduced metamagic cost and the actual free spellpower per level won't be necessary more adjustments. Why not at least try it? Please, please, please? I would prefer this to be free, but I will pay a feat for it even if it costs me DC (please make it to level 21, not 24 ... anyways the level 21 feats are meh. Give us something that doesn't have a long cooldown)

As for the level 21 feats, I see them useless, frankly. And I think that the feats "master of spell" (level 24) are not the most suitable to help spellcasters. First, because the other big problem of epic levels is the small number of spells that are viable in epic. It is depressing that our spellbook look so small in epic. These feats help only a couple of spells, exacerbating the problem. What I say about metamagic helps to use all our spellbook, which is good. People play a spellcaster because likes the variety. If you do not like the variety, the warlock is much better: free dps and that works against all (rather than a single element, with all the immunities and resistances that implies) and with a CC even better than a wizard (my complecionist wizard is now a warlock, and yes, it is better as warlock... depressing. You should consider adding evard's to the sorcerer/wizard spell list. Not that you have not given level 9 spells to a class that should not have them ...)

Another thing I see wrong with these feats is that they are all about low-level spells. This is great for multiclasses as shiradi, but high-level spells should be rewarded and reinforced over the low level ones. The solution to the multiclasses better than pures is not devalue the DC of the multiclass and that their spells are useless, the solution is that high-level spells are appropriately more powerful than low-level spells. How is in pnp!

And third, there is an imbalance in these feats. Divine ones have 4 spells, arcanes 3 or none (master of knowledge). Why? And the Druid, for example, is much more useful than the arcanes (better and more varied spells). Or cleric: light has very few resistances and immunities; elemental or negative energy have a lot of resistances and immunities. In addition, many arcane spells that you propose are touch range. And Master of Knowledge? Link it to very expensive and suboptimal SLAs and a zero spells? It's not fair. Even if the SLAs had any utility (which do not), a wizard does don’t have APs for that. Everything in the wizard trees costs 2 or 3 APs, and in addition, unlike other classes, you need two trees to be competent (yes, wizards need every bit of DC and they can't give up dps either: you can't finish a quest without dps). If you're going to continue with these feats (which I do not think a good solution), at least improve the arcane feats to give four spells as divines, to be spells that are not touch, to have a spell of high level, and less energy specialized (too many immunities!). All spells of the same element is crazy for an epic feat cost, there are many immunities in epics.

I do not think that these lv 24 feats are the best solution. And level 24 is very late. The problem with dps and mana efficiency grows with epic levels, but there is already a noticeable difference with the melee at low levels. Please. Let us use all our spellbook. Let us use the metamagic feats in which we have invested so much. I'm tired of being a one-trick pony and that the warlock is best in all. It's not fair.

Other request, could you consider improving the epic spell focus feats? They are bad to be epic. They give the same benefit as the heroic feat, and worse than the wizard past life feat. Given inflation of stats in this game, it would be appropriate to give a better bonus than in pnp (eg, +1 DC to all spells and a +1 stackable to one school). There is not an excessive bonus, but as epic feat is appropriate. You removed for free requirements in overwhelming crit feat.

Please think about all this, please please please. I'm not asking OP improvements (which is bad). I am asking for improvements to real problems. You gave free upgrades to all melees. Now you are asking us to change DC for weak feats and inadequate for the real problem. If you ask us a tradeoff (when the melees had the upgrade for free), please give us something useful in return. Metamagic efficiency, Steelstar, please. That help us and it does not affect the warlock, since its blast eldricth is not modified by spellpower, and helps shiradi but not so much (shiradi procs are not affected by metamagics). With that you aid equally multiclass and pures, shiradis and traditional casters, divines and arcanes. And do you don’t favour lower level spells over the high ones. This aid to use more spells in Epic, which is good and it is a step forward in using all our spellbook. Is not a net profit in every way? However, your feats... they are an improvement, but partial and better for one classes than others. With that I am disappointed, with little desire to stay in the game, and with no desire to leave warlock for wizard again.

Another thing I ask you to think: enhancements, gear, EDs and feats (including the new legendary) force us to choose between spell DC and spell dps (with the handicap added that the spell DPS is essential to finish a quest while the CC and instantkilling have many immunities in every epic quest. I repeat: the spell dps is NEEDED; high hps of epic mobs and epic ward forces need to dps) Please note that a DC caster needs dps anyway. There is a good reason why people think that the DPS is the most important thing in this game and the only really necessary. You can complete the quests without CC or without instankill but not without dps. Please, this over-specialization must end. It's crazy to have such over-specialization, there are much DC difference between schools, between a dps specialist and CC specialist. Yes, there should there be differences. But now the gap is huge. Feats as Scion of the Shadowfell need some DPS besides the DC. All legendary feats should have some DC and some DPS and with a small specialization as the background of the feat. You have done well with the DC with these feats: general DC up and a slight specialization. Now also do with the DPS. Think about how difficult it is for a spellcaster keep everything at an acceptable baseline when you are asking specialization in DC about DPS, in DC school, in a energy over others... it is too much specialization. And it's killing supposedly generalist classes as the wizard. What good is having many spells at my disposal, if in the end only work three, and the best tend to be epic SLAs available to everyone?

I wish you had created a real epic magic system where generalists may have access to more spells than specialists, or at least could use the existing in a more flexible form (yes, the sorc does more damage than the wizard with energy burst... now, where is the advantage of the generalist? No access to more spells and can not even change the energy in shrines... same with the new spell feat that you have created now) But I guess that's asking too much, so I do not ask.

But I think some simple but global changes (as the metamagic or at least an up in the ML cap) would to do more good than the proposed feats.

Thanks for reading this far, and I'm sorry about my English. I appreciate your willingness to talk, but I think you are taking a wrong path in recent years

HuneyMunster

11-23-2015, 08:45 AM

I like, might not fly, but I would certainly take it if it did.

Divine Spells that don't (unless they are not working as intended) have max caster levels:

Sunbeam (druid, divine disciple)
Nimbus of Light (cleric, favored soul)
Firestorm (cleric, favored soul)
Others?

Divine Spells that don't benefit from increasing caster levels:

Soundburst (cleric, favored soul)
Others?

Soundburst does benefit from caster levels for spell resistance check but the damage is not boosted. Also not sure, but Destruction is listed on wiki as 1d3+3 bane damage with no max on save and as 3d10+30 so either may fall into one of those two categories. Nimbus does not need a cap as its only +1 extra damage per caster level.

If Firestorm already has no max caster level then adding as an option for Favored Soul and only Fire option is Flame Strike as long as its animation speed is increased (which is really needed as it affects 3 classes).

Favored souls really could do with 1, most probably 2 Sla's as having to wait till 20 for one too is long.

HuneyMunster

11-23-2015, 08:55 AM

Here is the list of current epic feats

Blinding Speed

I find this feat fairly weak for an epic feat when you take into consideration the amount of speed items that are now available, which will only be increased. Its effectively 2% movement speed, 1 Dodge and 1 reflex save.

But, my biggest issue is that Slow, a level 3 spell can dispel the main reason to take this feat. It mean you are still required to carry haste pots to dispel the slow effect. I would like this feat to include immunity to slow spell. Other movement speed effects are fine as they cant be dispelled with haste.

Silverleafeon

11-23-2015, 12:18 PM

Hi Devs,

Yes Epic Greensteel and level cap increase, but...

what really interests me is the Masters of ____ support for pure casters
along with
the new Greater Ruin + Dot/Blades = Tri Caster multiclass support
{Take 5+ Wizard / 5+ Favored Soul / X _____ ; Epic Mental Toughness ; twist in SLAs = Epic Spellcaster build}

My greatest concern is that the Cleric and Favored Soul Master of ____ are strong enough (without being overpowered).

Lots of Options = room to build great casters

All this places you in a different position approaching Druid, Favored Soul and Cleric overviews.
Instead of oh we need to raise power, its oh we can provide new perspectives.
Creativity wins the day as your math wins update 29.

Thumbs up for all the variety being given I love it.
Thumbs up for buffing casters instead of more melee nerfs (its one or the other in the end)

Cheers,
Silver

PS

Master of Light = no max caster level on searing light, sunbolt, divine punishment, sunburst
{Cleric}

Master of Alignment = no max caster level on Holy Smite, Chaos Hammer, Order's Wrath, Flamestrike
{Favored Soul}

Master of Conjuration = no max caster level on Close Wounds, Cometfall, Black Dragon Bolt, Curative Admixture: Cure Light Wounds
{Multi-class}

Silverleafeon

11-23-2015, 12:23 PM

And third, there is an imbalance in these feats. Divine ones have 4 spells, arcanes 3 or none (master of knowledge).

I am very willing to see the arcane choices have a 4th thrown in that is not too powerful.
Not willing to see Druids/Clerics/bards reduced to 3 cause they seriously need the love.
Very much wanting a Favored Soul Master of ____ (even if clerics benefit cause Sorcers are going to pluck up 2 master of elements sometimes too)

Steelstar

11-23-2015, 12:45 PM

Silverleafeon

11-23-2015, 12:51 PM

Atremus

11-23-2015, 01:06 PM

I am very willing to see the arcane choices have a 4th thrown in that is not too powerful.
Not willing to see Druids/Clerics/bards reduced to 3 cause they seriously need the love.
Very much wanting a Favored Soul Master of ____ (even if clerics benefit cause Sorcers are going to pluck up 2 master of elements sometimes too)

I thought about FvS some more. AoV 'souls are generally (not always) casting Evocation based spells. So the "Master of Vengence" feat should play to those spells. We also get boosts in Force/Untyped as well as Fire/Light in the AoV tree.

the list of Evocation spells are: (think these are all of the ones available today)
Nimbus
Soundburst
Searing Light
Chaos Hammer
Holy Smite
Orders Wrath
Divne Punishment
Blade Barrier
Firestorm

From that list: Flame strike and Blade Barrier would be my choices. It plays to the AoV line the most. The trouble is, how strong would BB be. I stopped really using it in epics when I started casting Light spells. And in general Kiting mobs isn't fun in a party. Blade barrier is currently capped at 15d6 and is still sort of good. Uncapped would be 31d6 and that might be too much. Maybe it hard caps at 25d6?

Second option: Holy Smite and Divine Punishment could be considered for uncapping. They don't cause kiting and could cause trade off thinking when compared to the "Master of Light". I think though that BB is really the best spell for FvS based on AoV.

I think at the end of the day, I still take Master Of Light, roll a pure Iconic FvS and run in EA. BB is strong, but archers and casters don't chase you down.

Trillea

11-23-2015, 01:47 PM

We are also planning to change the "Master of..." feats from those spells "no longer having a Maximum Caster Level" to granting "+10 to the Maximum Caster Level". For almost all characters, that doesn't change the damage you'll be doing with those spells in U29. It also keeps existing abilities that boost Maximum Caster Level relevant.

Could we please revisit this on a case-by-case basis?

It completely takes Ice Savants out of viability compared to the other savants:

Ice abilities:
Niac's Cold Ray - while this does get the most out of any caster level increases at all at 15d10, it is single-target only with every enemy in the game having evasion against it.
Snowball swarm - base max caster level on this is 10 - yet it only gets base dmg of 5d6 and an extra 10 caster levels would only max out at 10d6 - *half* the amount of every other "burst" AOE that is boosted by the "Master Of ..." feats such as fireball and acid blast. Also, when casting it, there is a significant delay between the time it is cast and the time it actually goes off.
Niac's Biting Cold - going from 1d6 +20 to 1d6 +30 per stack does absolutely no good when boss HP are in the hundreds of thousands - and since this is not a SLA you have to pay full price for any and all metamagics

As compared to:

Fire abilities:
Burning hands - gets a damage die for EVERY caster level capping out with new change at 15d4 which has the same average base damage as the proposed 10d6 Snowball Swarm
Scorch - only gets 1 dmg die per 2 levels like snowball swarm but has a base damage die of d8 (1d4 +4) and doesn't have the delay that Snowball Swarm has
Fireball - goes from MCL 10 to 20 so it is the same damage as its higher level counterpart Delayed Blast Fireball - now 20d6

Air abilities:
Shocking grasp - OK, this spell is admittedly worse than any other spell in this list due to its extremely short range, 5d6 base caster level (15d6 with the proposed feat) and being single-target.
Electric Loop - does the same damage as snowball swarm, but is basically guaranteed to hit at LEAST 3 enemies, possibly more - and doesn't have the significant casting delay and has a CC side effect to boot
Lightning bolt - AOE (albeit thin), has a 50% chance to doublestrike, and has a full 20d6 per hit with the proposed feat making the average damage of this 30d6.

Acid abilities:
Acid spray - see Burning Hands, it's the same spell except acid
Melf's Acid Arrow - admittedly very weak at 2d4 +1 per 2 caster levels capping at 2d4 +15 with the new feat, at least this gets the free metamagics.
Acid blast - see fireball, but this doesn't break doors unless something has changed since the last time I used it, with inferior targeting. Dmg is the same however - 20d6 AOE

My suggestions (feel free to mix and match, no way I expect all 3 of these):

1)Go back to the original plan of "there is no max caster level" - this would at least let Niac's Cold Ray (which apparently is the primary source of dmg for an ice savant) be viable in Legendary content if you can get the DC high enough.

2)Fix Snowball Swarm to a) get rid of the delay between cast and effect b) get 1d6 per caster level with base MCL of 5 making the spell hit 15d6 base with the new effect c) enemies get slowed some % on failed save

3)change the 3rd spell effected to be Frost Lance instead of Niac's Biting Cold which would allow the free metamagics and 5 projectiles for the extra caster levels instead of 3

I hope that you see this and see that what I am asking for is not unreasonable.

Steelstar

11-23-2015, 02:02 PM

Could we please revisit this on a case-by-case basis?

It completely takes Ice Savants out of viability compared to the other savants:

Ice abilities:
Niac's Cold Ray - while this does get the most out of any caster level increases at all at 15d10, it is single-target only with every enemy in the game having evasion against it.
Snowball swarm - base max caster level on this is 10 - yet it only gets base dmg of 5d6 and an extra 10 caster levels would only max out at 10d6 - *half* the amount of every other "burst" AOE that is boosted by the "Master Of ..." feats such as fireball and acid blast. Also, when casting it, there is a significant delay between the time it is cast and the time it actually goes off.
Niac's Biting Cold - going from 1d6 +20 to 1d6 +30 per stack does absolutely no good when boss HP are in the hundreds of thousands - and since this is not a SLA you have to pay full price for any and all metamagics

As compared to:

Fire abilities:
Burning hands - gets a damage die for EVERY caster level capping out with new change at 15d4 which has the same average base damage as the proposed 10d6 Snowball Swarm
Scorch - only gets 1 dmg die per 2 levels like snowball swarm but has a base damage die of d8 (1d4 +4) and doesn't have the delay that Snowball Swarm has
Fireball - goes from MCL 10 to 20 so it is the same damage as its higher level counterpart Delayed Blast Fireball - now 20d6

Air abilities:
Shocking grasp - OK, this spell is admittedly worse than any other spell in this list due to its extremely short range, 5d6 base caster level (15d6 with the proposed feat) and being single-target.
Electric Loop - does the same damage as snowball swarm, but is basically guaranteed to hit at LEAST 3 enemies, possibly more - and doesn't have the significant casting delay and has a CC side effect to boot
Lightning bolt - AOE (albeit thin), has a 50% chance to doublestrike, and has a full 20d6 per hit with the proposed feat making the average damage of this 30d6.

Acid abilities:
Acid spray - see Burning Hands, it's the same spell except acid
Melf's Acid Arrow - admittedly very weak at 2d4 +1 per 2 caster levels capping at 2d4 +15 with the new feat, at least this gets the free metamagics.
Acid blast - see fireball, but this doesn't break doors unless something has changed since the last time I used it, with inferior targeting. Dmg is the same however - 20d6 AOE

My suggestions (feel free to mix and match, no way I expect all 3 of these):

1)Go back to the original plan of "there is no max caster level" - this would at least let Niac's Cold Ray (which apparently is the primary source of dmg for an ice savant) be viable in Legendary content if you can get the DC high enough.

2)Fix Snowball Swarm to a) get rid of the delay between cast and effect b) get 1d6 per caster level with base MCL of 5 making the spell hit 15d6 base with the new effect c) enemies get slowed some % on failed save

3)change the 3rd spell effected to be Frost Lance instead of Niac's Biting Cold which would allow the free metamagics and 5 projectiles for the extra caster levels instead of 3

I hope that you see this and see that what I am asking for is not unreasonable.

A few things related to this:

We aren't planning on using these feats to change the caster level of anything that creates extra projectiles, including Frost Lance. Sorry.
Individually adjusting each spell is also off the board, sorry.
Here's the core of this: Increasing Max Caster Level doesn't change your damage unless you have extra Caster Levels above the old MCL. For your Cold spells, is your Caster Level more than 10 higher than what the current Max Caster Level of those spells is?

Let's say you were a level 20 Water Savant Sorcerer. You took the Core abilities, but don't have the Capstone toggled on (for the sake of simplicity). Snowball Swarm has a normal MCL of 10, plus the six you get from Water Savant cores - So its Max Caster Level is 16.

In terms of actual Caster Levels, you have 20 for your 20 Sorcerer Levels, and 4 from Water Savant Cores. That means your Caster Level is 24.

If Master of Water grants +10 to MCL, you would cast Snowball Swarm at level 24. If it was uncapped... you would still cast it at level 24, since that's your Caster Level. Ultimately, most caster builds don't have more than 10 Caster Levels above their spells being suppressed by Max Caster Level.

Propane

11-23-2015, 02:08 PM

Holyavatar

11-23-2015, 02:24 PM

Trillea

11-23-2015, 02:39 PM

A few things related to this:

We aren't planning on using these feats to change the caster level of anything that creates extra projectiles, including Frost Lance. Sorry.
Individually adjusting each spell is also off the board, sorry.
Here's the core of this: Increasing Max Caster Level doesn't change your damage unless you have extra Caster Levels above the old MCL. For your Cold spells, is your Caster Level more than 10 higher than what the current Max Caster Level of those spells is?

Let's say you were a level 20 Water Savant Sorcerer. You took the Core abilities, but don't have the Capstone toggled on (for the sake of simplicity). Snowball Swarm has a normal MCL of 10, plus the six you get from Water Savant cores - So its Max Caster Level is 16.

In terms of actual Caster Levels, you have 20 for your 20 Sorcerer Levels, and 4 from Water Savant Cores. That means your Caster Level is 24.

If Master of Water grants +10 to MCL, you would cast Snowball Swarm at level 24. If it was uncapped... you would still cast it at level 24, since that's your Caster Level. Ultimately, most caster builds don't have more than 10 Caster Levels above their spells being suppressed by Max Caster Level.

OK, you have a few mistakes here:

All 6 cores give you a base caster level but only 4 give you max caster level making your actual caster level at lv 20 sorc a CL26 reduced to a 24 without the toggle - the toggle makes it +7 actual, +5 max - so without the capstone toggle by itself yes, you are outleveling this new feat. Not to mention that every Arcane ED (Magister, Fatesinger, AND Draconic) give caster levels to your spells without adding to your MCL. So without the toggle you could be casting at a CL 31 at level 20 with even 1 destiny capped.

This is not counting gear, which all can easily add to caster level - abishai set, epic Winter's Wrath, gauntlets of the arcane soldier to name a few - that raise CL even more without raising max caster level. Twists mostly add to max caster level by the same rate as they add standard caster levels so I have no problems there.

TL/DR - Yes, you can easily outlevel the max caster levels even with this new feat - would you at LEAST make it 15 instead of 10 so that a lv 20 sorc with 1 destiny capped can get the most out of their SLAs and be effective? those 5 caster levels can and will make a difference. Don't forget that these are ML 24 feats, and by the time someone hits level 24 with the new XP curve they will have capped 1 destiny and started on their second, even if this is their 1st life with no prior ED XP.

At lv 24 with 1 arcane destiny capped their CL for any spell with base CL of 10 would be 31 dropped to 29 because 10 base+4 cores+15 new feat = 29. This still leaves room for abilities that raise MCL without raising CL - of which they are few and far between, if any.

Steelstar

11-23-2015, 03:18 PM

OK, you have a few mistakes here:

All 6 cores give you a base caster level but only 4 give you max caster level making your actual caster level at lv 20 sorc a CL26 reduced to a 24 without the toggle - the toggle makes it +7 actual, +5 max - so without the capstone toggle by itself yes, you are outleveling this new feat. Not to mention that every Arcane ED (Magister, Fatesinger, AND Draconic) give caster levels to your spells without adding to your MCL. So without the toggle you could be casting at a CL 31 at level 20 with even 1 destiny capped.

This is not counting gear, which all can easily add to caster level - abishai set, epic Winter's Wrath, gauntlets of the arcane soldier to name a few - that raise CL even more without raising max caster level. Twists mostly add to max caster level by the same rate as they add standard caster levels so I have no problems there.

TL/DR - Yes, you can easily outlevel the max caster levels even with this new feat - would you at LEAST make it 15 instead of 10 so that a lv 20 sorc with 1 destiny capped can get the most out of their SLAs and be effective? those 5 caster levels can and will make a difference. Don't forget that these are ML 24 feats, and by the time someone hits level 24 with the new XP curve they will have capped 1 destiny and started on their second, even if this is their 1st life with no prior ED XP.

At lv 24 with 1 arcane destiny capped their CL for any spell with base CL of 10 would be 31 dropped to 29 because 10 base+4 cores+15 new feat = 29. This still leaves room for abilities that raise MCL without raising CL - of which they are few and far between, if any.

Yep, I flipped the numbers in my example. Sorry about that, it's what I get for multitasking this much on a day like today. :)

This post's math checks out, but we're still planning on sticking to 10 for the time being. There may still be ways to extend MCLs in the future.

Mryal

11-23-2015, 03:28 PM

Holyavatar

11-23-2015, 03:33 PM

Trillea

11-23-2015, 03:36 PM

Question,does the master X feat influence SLA?:mad:thx~

Yes they influence SLAs according to some of the prior posts. Never explicitly stated but heavily alluded to.

maddong

11-23-2015, 04:02 PM

tigerfunlei

11-23-2015, 05:12 PM

Nadion

11-23-2015, 05:31 PM

UurlockYgmeov

11-23-2015, 05:56 PM

Portalcat

11-23-2015, 05:58 PM

Hey, folks.

Wanted to let you know, we are planning to add 1-2 more "Master of..." feats targeted at Divines. No exact details for those yet, but you have provided some good feedback here that'll likely influence our direction.

We are also planning to change the "Master of..." feats from those spells "no longer having a Maximum Caster Level" to granting "+10 to the Maximum Caster Level". For almost all characters, that doesn't change the damage you'll be doing with those spells in U29. It also keeps existing abilities that boost Maximum Caster Level relevant.

This seems like a sizeable nerf. For many if not most of these spells (which are largely capped at level 10), it means that they benefit from 5 fewer caster levels, since most casters will have up to 20 from heroic levels + 5 from epic destiny innate caster levels. Max level 20 versus 25 is a sizeable difference.

Were you really so concerned about the damage that an uncapped Melf's Acid Arrow or Niac's Cold Ray was doing that you needed to shave 20% off it, much less everything someone could get with equipment that raises caster level? Are we waaaay underestimating how good these feats are?

Elemental DPS looks a whole lot less exciting when you only double the damage. The DPS is pitiful to begin with. AoE spells that do double this damage across enemies don't get used because because the damage is still pitiful.

Crazy that something could be so bad that doubling it isn't enough, but seriously, why am I going to want to build an elemental caster over a Shiradi sorc if the damage is capped at "not enough"? It needs to be able to compete with stuff like Shiradi + Meteor Swarm and Shiradi + MM/Force Missles/Chain missiles, which so outclass Delayed Blast Fireball that it's not worth weaving it in. I'm supposed to get excited by a regular fireball now doing as much damage as delayed blast fireball? All this is an aside to the fact that Shiradi arcane builds have been eclipsed by Warlock DPS, especially with rampant fire immunity in the current endgame.

Jasparion

11-23-2015, 06:05 PM

I don't really like that the devs seem to have adopted a theory that casters should be relying heavily on SLA versions of lowish level spells as there main source of DPS.

Competent SP management should be a skill casters develop. Buffing SLAs to this extent will undermine that.

It's also kind of silly that this will mean that low level spells will become stronger than higher level spells. Fireball will be stronger than Delayed Blast Fireball etc.

Implementing this will make actual spells unappealing to cast, except as something to throw whilst SLAs cooldown. High levels spells should be the primary source of DPS, with SLAs mixed in to help manage SP.

Why not just make it +5 MCL to all spells of a particular element? Or if it has to be for specific spells, mix in higher level spells that don't have SLA versions, perhaps 1 low level SLA + 2 higher level spells.

e.g.

Fire: Scorch, Firewall, Delayed Blast Fireball

Ice: Snowball Swarm ,Otilukes, Polar Ray

Acid: Acid Arrow, Acid Rain, Dragon Bolt

Electric: Electric Loop, Ball Lightning, Chain Lightning

Zero cost spells doing the bulk of the DPS is how D&D 5e works, so I can understand it. Saying that MCL is going to work a particular way because "x", then being told that "x" doesnt add up, then responding "you are correct, I got x wrong, but it is still going to work the way I said" is a little more concerning.

MCL is really the big thing holding back DPS casters. It really needs to be done properly.

In the same way that DC sources is the big thing holding back insta-kill, charm, control, etc. builds (though making all the mobs immune to everything and hitting like trucks encouraging everyone to just play some sort of FOTM ranged build is a MUCH bigger problem).

Zakharov

11-23-2015, 06:23 PM

I don't really like that the devs seem to have adopted a theory that casters should be relying heavily on SLA versions of lowish level spells as there main source of DPS.

Competent SP management should be a skill casters develop. Buffing SLAs to this extent will undermine that.

It's also kind of silly that this will mean that low level spells will become stronger than higher level spells. Fireball will be stronger than Delayed Blast Fireball etc.

Implementing this will make actual spells unappealing to cast, except as something to throw whilst SLAs cooldown. High levels spells should be the primary source of DPS, with SLAs mixed in to help manage SP.

Why not just make it +5 MCL to all spells of a particular element? Or if it has to be for specific spells, mix in higher level spells that don't have SLA versions, perhaps 1 low level SLA + 2 higher level spells.

e.g.

Fire: Scorch, Firewall, Delayed Blast Fireball

Ice: Snowball Swarm ,Otilukes, Polar Ray

Acid: Acid Arrow, Acid Rain, Dragon Bolt

Electric: Electric Loop, Ball Lightning, Chain Lightning

Agree completely - SLAs should never be the main source of damage. Specialization in an element should provide benefit to *all* spells of that element, not just SLAs.

Portalcat

11-23-2015, 06:25 PM

MCL is really the big thing holding back DPS casters. It really needs to be done properly.

+1.

You know what doesn't have a maximum caster level anchor? Shiradi DPS. That's why you can put it as an engine into just about every caster build split.

You know what also doesn't have a maximum caster level anchor? Draconic Incarnation Energy Burst. This is the big reason Draconic Incarnation savants have ever been a thing. This is why it's one of the only things DC casters can justify dropping a point of DC to take it.

Tlorrd

11-23-2015, 07:08 PM

Yep, I flipped the numbers in my example. Sorry about that, it's what I get for multitasking this much on a day like today. :)

This post's math checks out, but we're still planning on sticking to 10 for the time being. There may still be ways to extend MCLs in the future.

Steel with all due respect ... and correct me if I'm wrong, but now you are saying that yes what you're doing is a big nerf (from what you initially proposed) but you're doing it anyways.

I'm totally disappointed. Some spells that may be included in the list sometimes only give additional damage every 2 caster levels thus adding +10 MCL is only giving +5 caster levels for those spells (I'm thinking of certain divine spells).

Forumites: Lost in the banter of trying to state your desire to uncap or expand all spells for more usage ... now not only are select spells not getting uncapped, but you have minimal improvement for only select spells. Double wammy of getting taken by the man.

So much for the excitement of the caster pass. Seems like Warlock with the new feats are the way to go. Definitely losing interest in going back to caster. I actually was excited for a few days there.

Silverleafeon

11-23-2015, 09:26 PM

Before this all started, I was pressing for a +8 mcl increase (maybe in the form of a metamagic or the like), so I am happy with +10
{Perhaps with this limit in place we can expand the choice of spells?}

On another note, unlimited max caster levels present a serious threat of closing down of the possibility of increasing ED's levels from 5 to 10.
{Yes, I know, no one (including the Devs) mentions this but me, but I still think its an important concept to consider following thru on the initial development design of EDs}

Requesting an end game item to increase MCL by +2, and I am assuming the Favored Soul/Draconic/Savant MCL increases will stack with the Master of ____ feat group.

knightgf

11-23-2015, 09:36 PM

A few things related to this:

We aren't planning on using these feats to change the caster level of anything that creates extra projectiles, including Frost Lance. Sorry!

Here's the catch about this: It adds to the pile of non-viable spells at epic levels. And that's something you don't want, considering the lack of content at epic levels compared to heroic levels. Projectile spells such as Scorching Ray and Frost Lance are special because they deviate from most standard spells of it's type, Scorching Ray has no save if it hits, while Frost Lance uses fortitude saves instead of reflex to deal damage. By eliminating these type of spells, you restrict the options casters have vs. epic mobs, and that's something you don't want.

In addition, it may be true that right now, we may not be able to take advantage of a +10 maximum caster level bonus for spells of various types. But that's in the present; in the future, you may have more feats, enhancements, item bonuses, spell/potion bonuses, epic destiny enhancements, levels higher than 30 and many more options to boost the caster levels of various types of spells, both in general and in specific schools/elements. Building for the future is a good thing; to not build for the future is to throw away your investments. Don't put your back to the future of the game with this cap; stick with your original plan of no maximum caster levels to spells and try to cover more spells if you can. More spells = more gameplay options = a better game.

maddong

11-23-2015, 10:55 PM

Here's the catch about this: It adds to the pile of non-viable spells at epic levels. And that's something you don't want, considering the lack of content at epic levels compared to heroic levels. Projectile spells such as Scorching Ray and Frost Lance are special because they deviate from most standard spells of it's type, Scorching Ray has no save if it hits, while Frost Lance uses fortitude saves instead of reflex to deal damage. By eliminating these type of spells, you restrict the options casters have vs. epic mobs, and that's something you don't want.

In addition, it may be true that right now, we may not be able to take advantage of a +10 maximum caster level bonus for spells of various types. But that's in the present; in the future, you may have more feats, enhancements, item bonuses, spell/potion bonuses, epic destiny enhancements, levels higher than 30 and many more options to boost the caster levels of various types of spells, both in general and in specific schools/elements. Building for the future is a good thing; to not build for the future is to throw away your investments. Don't put your back to the future of the game with this cap; stick with your original plan of no maximum caster levels to spells and try to cover more spells if you can. More spells = more gameplay options = a better game.

What about adding in something where for every caster level the spell is cast at past the max caster level you get an additional +X spell power (to the main element excluding shiradi procs)? It isn't much but it lets you give something to spells where the level has a low cap. So if x=2 and you cast scorching ray at level 31 you gain 40 extra spell power. That isn't as good for 11/6/3 shiradi builds as it is for a level 20 high caster level build.

Nandos

11-23-2015, 11:58 PM

If they are adding some more divine feats, I could see them adding:

Master of (Inflict Wounds spells)

and

Master of (alignment themed spells) which could include Deific Vengeance, Holy Smite and its variants, and possibly Flame Strike (spell does partial divine) or Word of Balance

Silverleafeon

11-24-2015, 12:10 AM

Sun Bolt

Description:
A powerful bolt of light deals 5 to 8 light damage per caster level (up to a max of 75 to 120 damage at caster level 15) to targets in its path. A successful Reflex save reduces the damage by half. D&D Dice: Deals 1d4+4 light damage per caster level (max 15d4+60).

Favored Souls:
Increases from caster level 15 to 25 (Pure in EA ED) = 66% increase in dps
Add Favored Soul tier 5 increase to caster level 28 = 13/15 increase in dps
Add Gauntlets of the Arcane Soldier which only affects arcane spells = zero change

Clerics:
Increases from caster level 15 to 25 (Pure in EA ED) = 66% increase in dps
Add Divine Disciple tier 5 increase to caster level 26 = 11/15 increase in dps
Add Gauntlets of the Arcane Soldier which only affects arcane spells = zero change

;;;;;

Suppose?

Divine Punishment
Description:
Focuses the power of the gods upon the target, inflicting 1d6 +1 light damage every 2 seconds (no initial tic) for a duration of 16 seconds (at CL1). This damage scales by +1 per caster level light damage up to a maximum 1d6+20 at caster level 20.

This spell can stack on the target up to 3 times, increasing the damage with each stack. Once the third stack is active, the spell will be doing an incredible 3d6+60 damage (at CL20) and display a far more impressive pulsating graphic on the affected enemy.

Max Caster level is increased to 30
Pure with EA ED = caster level 25

Angel of Vengence tier 5 will increase +3 caster level and +3 max caster level
Divine Disciple tier 5 will increase +1 caster level and +1 max caster level
{Neither one of these changes the +5 below max caster level although they do increase DPS.}

Greater Might of the Abishai = 3 Item version: Profane Natural Armor Bonus +3, Profane Strength +3, Evocation Caster Level Bonus +3
{This, I believe would result in the caster level being 2 below max caster level, at the expense of wearing level 20 gear in three slots for endgame..}

Gauntlets of the Arcane Soldier

This affects arcane spells, certainly not divine.
{No effect.}

Jiirix

11-24-2015, 03:25 AM

1Soulless1

11-24-2015, 04:01 AM

janave

11-24-2015, 06:00 AM

It has to go to eleven. ;)

But seriously, 10 seems to be on the low end for Savants and Favored Souls, 12+ or uncap please!
Both of the ^ classes have been ripped apart by Warlocks so i think its not a big strech to allow them to shine that little bit more.

Lorianus

11-24-2015, 07:00 AM

Yep, I flipped the numbers in my example. Sorry about that, it's what I get for multitasking this much on a day like today. :)

This post's math checks out, but we're still planning on sticking to 10 for the time being. There may still be ways to extend MCLs in the future.

Epic spellcasting should be like heroic spellcasting in my opinion: Powerful but not usable non-stop because limited by spell points. You have to choose WHEN to cast your spells, but when you do they should hit hard and not FAIL you most of the time. On the one hand DDO has this "HP and SP don't regenerate” mechanic that makes this game more interesting than others where errors just slow you down because everything regenerates over time. And instead of working with this mechanic in epics (limed use but powerful effects) we get lame low level spells we can use like a ranged weapon. How about that: Epic Spellcasting Feats: No MCL but longer cooldown, +10 to DC but cost X% more SP. "Observe.. wait.. strike.. " should at last be an option and not only "spam away until something happens".

Tlorrd

11-24-2015, 08:04 AM

Epic spellcasting should be like heroic spellcasting in my opinion: Powerful but not usable non-stop because limited by spell points. You have to choose WHEN to cast your spells, but when you do they should hit hard and not FAIL you most of the time. On the one hand DDO has this "HP and SP don't regenerate” mechanic that makes this game more interesting than others where errors just slow you down because everything regenerates over time. And instead of working with this mechanic in epics (limed use but powerful effects) we get lame low level spells we can use like a ranged weapon. How about that: Epic Spellcasting Feats: No MCL but longer cooldown, +10 to DC but cost X% more SP. "Observe.. wait.. strike.. " should at last be an option and not only "spam away until something happens".

In today's game it will be " observe ... wait ... quest is over, your party mates finished for you "

IronClan

11-24-2015, 10:31 AM

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save (20 + Highest of your INT/WIS/CHA modifiers) negates the freeze.

20 plus 30 from 70 casting stat is a 50 DC and totally irrelevant outside of epic normal explorer areas and quests that are below level 24 on hard or Normal. it's a level 24 feat that is instantly useless in any at level content. If you only want 5% of mobs to get frozen just say that in the spell description and stop pretending it has a DC.

Concerns:
1. is this a true cone spell (based off greater shout for example?) and can hit more than 2 mobs?
2. is this actually a "Fat LINE" spell like Tsunami and Cyclonic blast and hitting more than 1 mob is not actually likely to happen unless you target the furthest mob and then get another mob in between you and the target (max 2 mobs hit)?
3. is this slow as hell like Tsunami and will miss the target a good percentage of the time?
4. will this spell require hard targeting and thus suffer from the "you are not facing" bug (it is a bug half the time, for example when you are facing the mob but it's touching your boundary box and the game thinks it's no longer in front of you)

You see the general problem plaguing SP based casters is often not even talked about and that's that we can max and empower a spell up to 80-100 spell points and then MISS because the mob moved 2 inches (it doesn't take much) so the main reason we like some spells over others is that DDO's active combat makes some spells much better than others simply because they don't get "you are not facing" or they don't MISS as often.

Silverleafeon

11-24-2015, 11:52 AM

Burst of Glacial Wrath

Cone spell, deals 30d6 Cold Damage and freezes the creature. Fortitude save (20 + Highest of your INT/WIS/CHA modifiers) negates the freeze.

If the cone shape is the size of cone of cold (which it should be duplicate mechanics for the spell), I see no "half damage on fort save", which makes this an interesting spell if its an SLA or if the sp cost/cooldown is reasonably low. 30 dice of damage is not bad, everyone loves energy burst even with the saving throw.

20 sp = bargain
30 sp = nice
40 sp = probably look at Master of ____ instead
50 sp = over priced

;;;;;

Would love to see a dozen more master of -____ feats, just cause I love em.

Silverleafeon

11-24-2015, 12:49 PM

This post's math checks out, but we're still planning on sticking to 10 for the time being. There may still be ways to extend MCLs in the future.

I can understand your caution on unleashing an unlimited effect.
Now that you have a fixed number, you can be a bit more bold with choices (and extra versions) imho....

EI: How about that cometfall spell into a set?

Vargouille

11-24-2015, 01:51 PM

This seems like a sizeable nerf. For many if not most of these spells (which are largely capped at level 10), it means that they benefit from 5 fewer caster levels, since most casters will have up to 20 from heroic levels + 5 from epic destiny innate caster levels. Max level 20 versus 25 is a sizeable difference.

We agree with you that 5 caster levels is a sizeable difference. We agree that +10 is of course an even bigger buff, and does not need be even more powerful (while restricting future options).

Here's the catch about this: It adds to the pile of non-viable spells at epic levels. And that's something you don't want, considering the lack of content at epic levels compared to heroic levels. Projectile spells such as Scorching Ray and Frost Lance are special because they deviate from most standard spells of it's type, Scorching Ray has no save if it hits, while Frost Lance uses fortitude saves instead of reflex to deal damage. By eliminating these type of spells, you restrict the options casters have vs. epic mobs, and that's something you don't want.

Please note that no one stated we're permanently deciding to never add projectiles or to never boost any specific spells. We're just definitely not doing some things now in Update 29 with the technology available to us. We just don't have time to do it right, consider all the design issues, and investigate technical issues (let alone solve them once we understand them).

Your comments about saves are interesting but are do not mean we suddenly have enough time to deal with those spells (or even that we should, and we don't feel it's necessary right now).

In addition, it may be true that right now, we may not be able to take advantage of a +10 maximum caster level bonus for spells of various types. But that's in the present; in the future, you may have more feats, enhancements, item bonuses, spell/potion bonuses, epic destiny enhancements, levels higher than 30 and many more options to boost the caster levels of various types of spells, both in general and in specific schools/elements. Building for the future is a good thing; to not build for the future is to throw away your investments. Don't put your back to the future of the game with this cap; stick with your original plan of no maximum caster levels to spells and try to cover more spells if you can. More spells = more gameplay options = a better game.

Concern about the future is precisely why +10 is a better design choice than unlimited.

It leaves options where bonuses to maximum caster level can be given and not irrelevant. It doesn't remove design space for feats, enhancements, item bonuses, spell/potion bonuses, epic destiny enhancements. If we went with unlimited, there would be fewer options for all of those things you rightly care about. We would be throwing all those options away otherwise, which would indeed be unwise.

If there's any regret here, it is that some players are unfortunately less happy for seeing the sausage-making which is game design going on. Getting +10 MCL is fairly awesome, and we're pretty confident many players will be quite happy to get that much. That it's not +1000 Spell Power instead (which is mostly better in nearly every way) doesn't make +10 MCL not awesome. Players have long wanted us to expose design ideas earlier with more interaction, and that does come with some negatives such as seeing things made more right after seeing wronger designs. (If you guys knew all the things that were said or considered at some point in time... well, by that measure there's probably dozens "nerfs" every day, probably hundreds on some das, you just don't know about them!)

Renvar

11-24-2015, 02:11 PM

We agree with you that 5 caster levels is a sizeable difference. We agree that +10 is of course an even bigger buff, and does not need be even more powerful (while restricting future options).

Please note that no one stated we're permanently deciding to never add projectiles or to never boost any specific spells. We're just definitely not doing some things now in Update 29 with the technology available to us. We just don't have time to do it right, consider all the design issues, and investigate technical issues (let alone solve them once we understand them).

Your comments about saves are interesting but are do not mean we suddenly have enough time to deal with those spells (or even that we should, and we don't feel it's necessary right now).

Concern about the future is precisely why +10 is a better design choice than unlimited.

It leaves options where bonuses to maximum caster level can be given and not irrelevant. It doesn't remove design space for feats, enhancements, item bonuses, spell/potion bonuses, epic destiny enhancements. If we went with unlimited, there would be fewer options for all of those things you rightly care about. We would be throwing all those options away otherwise, which would indeed be unwise.

If there's any regret here, it is that some players are unfortunately less happy for seeing the sausage-making which is game design going on. Getting +10 MCL is fairly awesome, and we're pretty confident many players will be quite happy to get that much. That it's not +1000 Spell Power instead (which is mostly better in nearly every way) doesn't make +10 MCL not awesome. Players have long wanted us to expose design ideas earlier with more interaction, and that does come with some negatives such as seeing things made more right after seeing wronger designs. (If you guys knew all the things that were said or considered at some point in time... well, by that measure there's probably dozens "nerfs" every day, probably hundreds on some das, you just don't know about them!)

I think that the scope of this is quite limited. You are only giving 3 spells the MCL boost for the cost of a feat. That is a very narrow impact. Your concerns would be more warranted if they were applying to the entire spell book or even an entire school/element. As it is, you can still offer other things in the future with different spells, or different bonus scopes. In that regard, I think that a set of feats that had a variety of scopes would be a better choice. Each with a different level of MCL boost.

You can tinker with the numbers, but for pure example's sake:

+5 MCL for all spells in the book. +10 MCL for a specific element or school (can take multiple times for different schools/elements). +20 MCL for 3 select spells per element/school (again, can be taken multiple times for different areas).

Something that supports generalists and specialists. Again, don't get hung up on the exact numbers. Maybe it is 5/10/15. or 4/8/12. I don't know. Balance them as needed. The point is, you have this type of design in spell power (Potency vs. Radiance/Glaciation/etc.) and crit chance (Spell lore vs. repair/radiance/etc) and you could use it here too. Offer a smaller boost that applies generally or a larger boost that is targeted. The more limited the scope, the larger the boost.

Vargouille

11-24-2015, 02:30 PM

I think that the scope of this is quite limited. You are only giving 3 spells the MCL boost for the cost of a feat. That is a very narrow impact. Your concerns would be more warranted if they were applying to the entire spell book or even an entire school/element. As it is, you can still offer other things in the future with different spells, or different bonus scopes. In that regard, I think that a set of feats that had a variety of scopes would be a better choice. Each with a different level of MCL boost.

You can tinker with the numbers, but for pure example's sake:

+5 MCL for all spells in the book. +10 MCL for a specific element or school (can take multiple times for different schools/elements). +20 MCL for 3 select spells per element/school (again, can be taken multiple times for different areas).

Something that supports generalists and specialists. Again, don't get hung up on the exact numbers. Maybe it is 5/10/15. or 4/8/12. I don't know. Balance them as needed. The point is, you have this type of design in spell power (Potency vs. Radiance/Glaciation/etc.) and crit chance (Spell lore vs. repair/radiance/etc) and you could use it here too. Offer a smaller boost that applies generally or a larger boost that is targeted. The more limited the scope, the larger the boost.

We agree with a lot of this. You'll note there is already a wide variety of kinds the things you mention. Fire Savant boost all Fire Spells. The Might of the Abishai item bonus boosts Evocation and Conjuration spells. Epic Destinies, other items, etc. (many mentioned in this thread).

There has been less of this kind of things for Max Caster Level, and that's something we want to do in the future. That's exactly the point. There aren't single feats that grant +10 caster levels, nor any affecting so few spells. This is where we're landing.

FranOhmsford

11-24-2015, 03:55 PM

In addition to the level cap increase and its related feats, we're planning on adding some new general feats. These provide extra options in Epic, especially boosts to Spellcasting.

New ML21 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +110 Maximum Spell Points)

Better than a kick in the teeth.

Wellspring of Power

Activate to gain +150 Universal Spell Power and +20% Spell Critical Damage for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

So only usable once or twice per quest and most likely saved for a boss fight then?

Arcane Insight

Activate to gain + 6 to all spell DCs and +6 to Spell Penetration for 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

So about that kick in the teeth!

Really!?!

What DC Spells work on Red Names exactly?

Are you expecting us to wait 3 minutes after each spawn of trash mobs before moving on?

Please don't tell me you're going to push up or even keep mob saves at such elevated levels in the expectation that everyone will take this feat that is only usable once every 3 minutes!

New ML24 General Feats: (Each of these also grants +140 Maximum Spell Points)

Intensify Spell

METAMAGIC: +75 Spell Power, spells cost +25SP. Works on any spell affected by Empower.

So this is going to be a must take for Sorcs, Warlocks and other Evoc Casters then!

You realise that by adding in must take feats you're killing diversity and the personal touch right?

Should a Sorc really have to take 3 Feats {Emp, Max AND Intensify now} to be decent at his main focus?
Not to mention Heighten, Quicken, Spell Focus, Greater Spell Focus, Epic Spell Focus, Mental Toughness and Improved Mental Toughness!
Where's the diversity when every Sorc has to have exactly the same Feat List?

Embolden Spell

METAMAGIC: +2 DCs to all spells with DCs. +10SP. Affects spells

+2?

Oh come on!

You know how far behind the curve most players are who don't have every last Caster Past Life, Completionist and Store Bought Pots!

This is an EPIC FEAT and should be at least +5!

The basic Spell Foci/Gtr Spell Foci should be upped to +2 each {Epic - +4}!

P.S. Any + whatsoever to DCs also = Must Take - Even +1 - You may as well make it worth using up that Feat Slot!

Master of Knowledge
[LIST]
Your Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast spells now grant you one stack of Mental Honing (+3 Universal Spell Power, +2% Spell Crit Damage) when cast. This effect can stack up to 30 times. One stack is removed every 6 seconds.

Aaaargh!

I loathe this mechanic!

Just give us a PASSIVE BONUS!

Say +30 USP, +20% Spell Crit Dmg!

New ML30 General Feat:

[LIST]
Greater Ruin

Requires Ruin.
Deals 1000 untyped damage to a single enemy (no saving throw). Costs 150 SP

Costs how much?

Remember that this is going to have to be Maxed, Emped AND Intensified to be useful!

That SP Cost is insane when every single mob has 10k+ HP and there's 100+ mobs in every quest!

Artificers

Improved Construct Essence

Requires 12 Artificer Levels and Construct Essence. May be taken as an Artificer Bonus Feat.
Improves your base Repair to 70%, as well as Rust vulnerability.

Construct Exemplar

ML21, requires Improved Construct Essence.

You are now considered a Living Construct instead of your original race
100% base healing from Repair spells and 100% damage from Rust
Immunity to Sleep, Hold Person, Energy Drain, Nasueated, Exhausted, and Paralyzed effects except those which physically hold you in place
Immunity to ability score damage from natural poisons and natural diseases (but are vulnerable to those that specifically affect wood or metal)
+10 Racial bonus to saving throws against magical poisons, and do not fail saving throws against them on a roll of a natural 1 (this renders you immune to magical poisons with a DC of less than 11+your Fortitude save)
You may remain underwater indefinitely without the need to breathe.
When resting at a Rest Shrine, the health you regain is now based on your Repair skill instead of your Heal skill

These need to be FREE upgrades to Construct Essence gained upon reaching Lvl 14 and Lvl 21!

In Update 29, the DC for Rune Arms will benefit from all sources of Evocation Bonuses (they currently only benefit from Feat Bonuses to Evocation). This isn't really a feat, I just didn't have somewhere better to mention it!

This is a nice buff for Artis but they need a lot more!