DDOCast 685 - Update 55 Review pt 1

[pjstechie]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAsig94Or70

Vooduspyce joins us this week to review Update 55: Isle of Dread and we talk about the release of Update 56 to the live servers!

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Game News - 3:25
Community News - 47:50
Lightning Post - 52:51
Update 55 Review pt 1 - 56:42

Update 56 Release Notes (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-56-release-notes)
Update 56.0.1 Release Notes (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-56-0-1-release-notes)

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[FuzzyDuck81]

Overall, while I kind of miss the original incarnation of ToEE, I prefer the new version; more favour, easier to farm named loot & more XP than you might think since you have to do all 4 elemental nodes to face Zuggy & will get the MM deeds from enemies in each of them in addition to the quest XP itself.

It's understandable that the named items remain unchanged since a big part of their draw is unusual & expanded damage dice & crit profiles - they're great levelling gear in heroics & for example epic elemental bloom is ml26 with 5[1d6] 19-20/x3 before taking into account other bonuses & it's lack of weighted dice is the main thing that makes it less outright powerful than the raid ones; even so, it still holds up well & if they were adapted to legendary versions, they'd have to lose that uniqueness to not become the new best in slot. It's a shame about losing out on the crafted weapons, I'd have liked more time to farm out some of the legacy materials, as the heroic ones with the AoE damage procs are pretty murderous.

Still need to play around with stormsinger, but my intial feel is it'd be hard to go wrong by treating it as a somewhat cut-down cold/air sorcerer with fantastic party support & crowd control capabilities.

Dark apostate seems fun so far, I LRed my completionist into it so now it's a stick-wielding trailblazer dark apostate/warpriest/falconer with animal domain, far more melee than caster, feels a lot like a divine version of an eldritch knight except with actual range on her spells. Have yet to try it in conjunction with divine disciple.

Sacred fist I'm levelling the old fashioned way with a tiefling one, it's fun so far but is effectively playing as a monk without elemental stances & the assorted large number of clicky attacks & combos, which could actually make it a good intro to the monk playstyle for people intimidated by that aspect. The lower number of feats vs. an actual monk definitely hurts though. I'm getting good mileage out of incinerating wave in heroics & sacred flame empowerment is essentially a ki-powered action boost that grants extra sacred flame dice as well as an on-crit bane damage, it's nifty & once you hit level 10 to get the 2nd level 2 slot so you can also take righteous command for the melee power boost, which has an immediately noticeable effect due to how they scale.

The tumble controls are interesting, now basically if you tap the button while moving you won't stop cold & block but go straight into a tumble & be blocking afterwards if you hold it. There's still a small stutter but since you get reflex save boosts while tumbling it should allow for more ability to dodge certain effects with some practice. Pretty cool for mobility & definitely a plus for the handful of builds that get bonuses after tumbling.

Divine disciple cores is a novel approach for sure - a little confusing at first, but has the benefit that in the lower levels you can work both sides against the middle and double up on the benefits for a nice extra boost.