U36: Artificer & Battle Engineer Changes

[Tlorrd]

In today's Wednesday U36 preview livestream (at around the 30:00 mark), Steelstar clarified that the damage for the new battle engineer attacks scale with RANGED POWER rather than SPELLPOWER (as had originally been outlined in the Lammania release notes). I am a bit disappointed if this is the case. I guess to a certain extent, it makes sense that it would scale with ranged power, but I was really looking forward to having REPAIR (rust) spellpower being useful for attacks. I was going to go all in on this caustic strike, and try to max out my repair spellpower.

Could we please please have CAUSTIC STRIKE still scale with ACID and REPAIR spellpower?

So I pointed out in a previous thread how with Warlock nerfs ... they were neglecting some balance issues with Caustic shot when paired with IPS when it was affected by spellpower. The problem now is that going to ranged power it is so overwhelmingly underpowered and there is no in between.

Spell power vs melee power vs ranged power are not comparable at all. Even when they scale things 200% ranged power ... it is so underwhelming compared to spell power.

Looking at near end game or end game type toons ... the amount of ranged power one can gain is any where from 100-150 roughly and maybe bursting to 200ish. For special attacks ... there is just no comparision.

It's the same issue with alchemical traps that are affected by ranged power ... at near end game, the damage portion is so underwhelming since 100 RP that is 200% for a special attack has no comparison to an attack like stricken that is 20d6 affected by spell power.

Now look at stricken vs caustic shot ...

20d6 affected by metamagics and spell power vs caustic shot 3d6 affected by ranged power. There is just no comparision. Unfortunately there is not a good in between unless you say caustic shot is affected by 10x ranged power. Than things are a little more balanced.

[Tlorrd]

Problem with using Ranged Power (RP) is that range players are starved of it. Currently there are few ways to get RP and often its not worth the cost or effort when other things can easily outclass it.

While i like the changes for Battle-Engineer overall, the lack of RP and Endless Fusilade's clunky pre-fire animation should be dealt with before U36 release.

Other then that, the Arcane Archer imbue limitations are moronic and the AA imbues left as-is. This change alone will kill off so many ranged builds and in general **** off a good portion of Ranged players that are built using the tree.

18 sec duration for Endless Fusilade ... who cares about the pre-animation ... this is extremely to over powered.


This mechanic isn't clearly understood nor is it documented anywhere "in-game" so that new players are aware of the current limitations.
IMO, as a player levels this penalty should be scaled back and when BE's capstone is reached, the penalty should be removed entirely.

Lets not forget that repeaters originally has 5 shots per reload but were nerfed to firing only 3.
Despite this, the in-game models still show 5 bolts loaded into the weapon. Would love to see the weapon return to it's prior state without penalty to doubleshot.

Would be way OP if capstone included this.

[Phoenicis]

8<SNIP>8
Other then that, the Arcane Archer imbue limitations are moronic and the AA imbues left as-is. This change alone will kill off so many ranged builds and in general **** off a good portion of Ranged players that are built using the tree.

AA imbues were never meant to work with anything but arrows, that they did is an exploit per multiple Dev statements.

Basing a build on an exploit, well, personally I would expect it to be fixed eventually.

[CThruTheEgo]

You apply the argument I was making about one trap to the other and then accuse me of a strawman? Pot. Kettle. Black.

Actually, I addressed the three specific traps you mentioned showing how you do not need to get hit by the trap to disable it. Just to be clear, here is what was said, point by point:


Just off the top of my head VoN5.

The trap before the final boss room can only be disabled by standing in the spinning blade trap.

Emphasis added. The emphasized part is incorrect because:


As PsychoBlonde already mentioned, the trap before the boss room has a safe spot where you can stand and not get hit by the trap but still be able to reach the box to disable it.

Then there's the west hallway trap, about which you said:


Similarly, the west hallway has a trap that you stand in while disabling. You are not close enough to trigger it if you are against the wall but if someone else goes through you still have to make a save to avoid damage.

Again, emphasis added, and it is the emphasized parts, both of them, that are incorrect because:


The trap in the west hallway also has a safe spot. If you are right up against the wall where the box is, you do not get hit by the trap, even if someone else goes through it on the other side.

I did, in fact, test this before making my post about it. Try it and see for yourself. If you are getting hit by the trap while it is going off, then you are not in the safe spot. Finally, the north hallway:


You could make the argument that the north hallway has some traps that really make evasion important as well.

To which I replied:


And the north hallway traps all have safe spots. You don't even need to go back and forth, but you do need to know where to stand to not get hit.

Yes, evasion always makes any trapping easier, but it is by no means necessary, and that is the point of my whole argument.

I have acknowledged that there are many traps in the game where you have to go through the trap to get to the box, thus requiring a degree of skill to get to the box to disable it, but only one where you literally have no alternative to getting hit by the trap while disabling it, thus requiring evasion to disable. In your own reply, you quoted yourself and added your own emphasis:



There are other traps where you have to stand where the trap can hit you to disable them

I'm still waiting for you to point out where these "other traps" are in the game. So far, you have not done so. As I said I am willing to admit I am wrong if someone can identify other traps which are impossible to disable without evasion.


Nevertheless, it misses the point that my analogies made and that you were apparently afraid to address other than to dismiss them out of hand (and what a convincing argument that was).

But lets be very clear, a strawman argument attacks an argument someone is not actually making.

I'll ignore the personal attacks and just point out that your analogies are straw man arguments. A straw man argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man) is when you compare my claim (i.e. evasion is not required to disable traps in DDO, therefore artificers do not need evasion) as analogous with another claim (i.e. a baseball bat makes a fine golf club because some people can use them effectively, or some pilots can fly a 747 with one engine so two engines are not really needed) which is obviously completely false and also has nothing to do with the original claim, then by proclaiming the falsity of the second claim you assert the first argument has been defeated due to its similarity with the second, when in reality you have not addressed the original claim at all, that there are no other traps for which evasion is required to disable them.

[Niminae]

Problem with using Ranged Power (RP) is that range players are starved of it. Currently there are few ways to get RP and often its not worth the cost or effort when other things can easily outclass it.

While i like the changes for Battle-Engineer overall, the lack of RP and Endless Fusilade's clunky pre-fire animation should be dealt with before U36 release.

Other then that, the Arcane Archer imbue limitations are moronic and the AA imbues left as-is. This change alone will kill off so many ranged builds and in general **** off a good portion of Ranged players that are built using the tree.


"Endless Fusilade's clunky pre-fire animation" is working as intended. I'd link to the dev statement, but I don't care enough. Suffice to say that they consider a lengthy wind up in advance of laying down some serious DPS to be a good thing. U36 will either make or break repeater builds. My bet is on make since they already were a strong Heroic build.

[elvesunited]

Initial observations:

with 18 Artificer / 2 Monk Epic 9 Needle + Lucid dreams

Overall damage is higher for crossbow and runearm is improved.

Fusilade is much more useful. Before it was only useful in "NPC is invulnerable until he finishes his speech" situations.

Caustic strike is an "eh". The acid damage barely registered. ( even though it showed on all 3 shots ) I suppose the +1.5 W helped. One thing of note though, it didn't look like it had a 10 second cooldown. Much faster than that. The good news is that it didn't disrupt the attack animations at all. So every few seconds I can get a slight bump in damage just to keep my fingers from getting bored.

Ignored Shattered defenses. Just 1 AP to get next item on list. The sunder effect didn't impress me enough to put 2 more AP in it. Anything weak enough to its fortitude save vs my DC wouldn't live long enough for the sunder effect to matter.

Thundershock weapons. You get the full effect for 1 AP. That's nice. That said the electrical damage was still weak. And I never saw it pull off a trip on epic hard. I was using a insightful combat mastery, but no sunder item. I might just have to find a sunder item. Like caustic weapons it seemed like the cooldown was much faster than 10 seconds and didn't interfere with the fire rate. It also seemed to process the electrical for all three shots of the repeater which makes me wonder if the trip processes for all 3 too and my DC is just too low.

I can't tell from the tool tip on my crossbow if the increased critical range from reconstructed armaments is working. But it didn't look like it was. I'll have to test with the training dummy.

[Baelorn]

200% runearm imbue damage, sucks royally. And i mean royally.

140 ranged power at 30.
Epic normal dungeon. Tovens hammer (2-16 lightning damage per shot), scaling. Bumped it to 2-27 damage.
Epic hard dungeon. Tovens hammer (2-16 lightning damage per shot), scaling. Bumped it to 0-22 damage.

200% of 140 = 280 ranged power, it gained 11 damage in normal, and 6 in hard? Really? Thanks for keeping it worthless.
So in other words, you basically need 12-13 points of actual ranged power, to increase the max damage by 1 of whatever runearm inbue for element damage, it does. And that's counting in the 200% scaling, basically 25 points per after the fact of it being scaled = 1 point of damage.

Working on arti again. Can get to 58 Ranged power @ lvl 6. Guess how much it actually improves the damage of my runearm. Nothing. No improvement in either reaper diff, elite diff, same values showing in both. Either the precise shot stance, archers focus isn't adding to this because its a temp thing.. or they flubbed it up even more.

If that's the case, you pretty much get 1 pt of damage increase per 20 after 200% scaling, for ranged power. Either way, its still worthless. By the time you get any actual ranged power, the mobs health is so high its practically useless. another 6-10 damage by the time you hit 30 isn't going to make any difference at all. You guys really need to either fix its scaling, or change it so it at least goes off of spellpower. Because ranged power is far too hard to aquire early on, even upto 20. 200% of ****, is still ****, we just get more of it.

[JOTMON]

Lots of good stuff that should add to QOL for players of Artificers. Especially removing the slowdown for charging the rune arm.

Another QOL change that would not impact Artificer 'power' at all would be to make all rune arms BtA. There are a lot of BtA rune arms, so it can't be that a BtC status is just intended for all rune arms. But there are a good number of BtC rune arms, and I'm stuck with them in my bank even when I'm not running an Artificer life. I'd not be terribly concerned if the existing ones can't be changed, but if any that drop after the update were BtA that would be fantastic.

Same argument could be made for all BTC items being converted to BTA.
Why is there BTC at all.. we are the same players playing all the toons on our accounts..
Sure would make my TR cache clearing a lot easier if I could swap all these BTC maybe use in a future life someday items to an alt mule toon.

[psykopeta]

Would have liked to see a change that permits an Artificer to learn the Empower Healing Spell feat without multiclassing. Empower Healing Spell is an Artificer bonus feat and affects Curative Admixture spells, yet it can't be purchased unless you multiclass into a Bard 1, Cleric 1, FvS 1, Druid 1, Paladin 4 or Ranger 8.

they could change the feat to.... empower restoring spell, so it would boost auras not negative bursts xD, repairs (it's lame the empower/maximize route) and everything that is a spell and deals positive damage, like admixtures or whatever heals