Dark Apostate Round-Up Version 56.3

[Xezom]

Here's a list of the issues I'm aware of or have seen frequently reported on the Forums pertaining to the Dark Apostate Tree/Skills still present as of Patch 56.3. I've decided to make this jankity tree my main. Found some pretty good potential builds for debuffing and DC casting in it, but still needs some tweaking to make it viable for the masses. Told ya I was going to ride this undead horse across the line. Squeaky wheel and all that.

Bugs/Weird Interactions:

1) Zombie Wizards (Sentinels of Stormreach quest line) are undead enough to be healed by negative energy spells like Necrotic Ray, but are not undead enough to take damage from Cursed words.

2) Frost Forged Defenders (A Frosty Reception) are undead enough to be healed by negative energy spells like Necrotic Ray, but are not undead enough to take damage from Cursed words.

3) Minor visual bug. The red smoke from the Dark Apostate toggle disappears when you change zones for the person who is the Dark Apostate. It appears to others around (party members), but occasionally the added red coloring will not show for the user. (Not a biggie for me as I'm colorblind, but know it's some of the appeal of the look for others.)

4) Ward of Shadow still uses the STUB icon for the enhancement tree. The icon for the skill when you put it on your bar is correct, but the one in the tree is still a STUB.

5) REDACTED --- EDIT: After testing, I can say that the Curse on Crit from Enhanced Curse III does apply. Tested and succeeded with a scepter using Sovereign Host Deity... See bug 6 for that.

6) Bug in favor of the player, but a bug nonetheless: Apostate's Curse works regardless of whether or not you are using a Favored Weapon. Last I checked, scepters/clubs weren't the favored weapon of any of the divine feats yet you gain the on hit effects with them while taking Sovereign Host feats. I'm sure same is true with other Deities, jut haven't gotten around to trying to do it wrong on other characters yet.


Suggestions:

1) I still stand by my suggestion to raise the damage of Pray for Mercy from 1d4/1d6 to 1d4+2/1d6+3 to give the caster Dark Apostate some damage presence. Right now I'm doing another life with my duo partner as a Debuffing DA/Horizon walker/FDI for the huge penalties to saves. It's wonky but hilarious to watch things permanently fail saves thanks to the -15 to saves (-19 if you can get Symbol of Pain to stick) debuffs from DA and Horizon Walker. Even with the debuffs that powerful, you NEED someone who can deal damage and/or take advantage of your save drops. You could never get anywhere efficiently playing solo the way I'm using it, but you make a great support/sixth man. Important to remember that of those 15 saveless, 8 are single target and 5 are melee range. Not suggesting the damage increase because I'm building wonky. It's actually the opposite. I'm building wonky because the damage is horrible. No matter how much light spell power you stack, PFM is horribly weak. So rather than try to focus on what should be the defining skill of a DA CASTER, I decided to forego it in favor of more debuffing from the HW tree. Make PFM useful offensively and it might be a harder decision to make. Right now? No.

2) Return to Dusk's heal is too weak for it's intended use. It's supposed to pair with Blessing of the Shadow to make you essentially raise yourself from the dead (unconscious). Unfortunately, the heal it grants is not strong enough to actually do that if you are on the lower end of your extended unconscious range, and let's face it, if you are getting knocked unconscious on a DA you're likely getting whacked with something really big that's going to put you low in your unconscious range. Even taking spell power into consideration I've had it fail to bring me out of unconscious range more than I've ever had it succeed. My suggestion is to make it either 1) give a flat 150 negative heal that is not effected by spell power (negative healing amp can be considered so you can actually be raise to having some positive HP), or 2) have it grant Diehard rather than a reactive heal. Since it has a 3 minute cool down and requires a Turn Attempt to use I think it'd still be well gated to not be overly powerful, but would still hit it's target goal of being an occasional CMA ability.

I know I'm forgetting something, but I'll edit this if I remember what it is and after I get to start farming Night Revels. Had a busy week so didn't get to farm for more Festive Diamonds yet, just a few regular quests since the patch. Hopefully there aren't too many wonky bugs with the DA and Night Revels. But this is the round up for the DA as of Version 56.3. If there's a bug I've missed, post it. Eventually we'll get this cleaned up. . . I hope.

[droid327]

+1 whenever I see a call for PFM to be tuned up to non-insane levels

[Firebreed]

/signed

[Lotoc]

Honestly I'd propose cursed words just work on everything for the untyped damage on curse, you want to be using curse on anything single target anyway if pray for mercy is intended to be worthwhile - there's no reason not to make the Bestow Curse button itself feel a bit more worthwhile and there are far too many instances of enemies not classed as undead healing from negative that you could really do with this option against (For instance Red Musk Zombies in Thralls of the Fungus Lord, actually I must ask; why do those Red Musk Zombies heal from negative when the ones in Outbreak don't?)

Also the Dark Apostate enhancements for turning are strictly inferior to the Radiant Servant counterparts - A DA is arguably more reliant on turns to deal with groups of undead (what with being thematically a negative caster) and
Enhanced Turning: +[2/4/6] uses of Turn Undead per rest.
is kind of terrible in comparison to

Improved Turning You count as 1/2/3 levels higher when turning undead. This increases the maximum level of creature you can turn and also increases the total number of hit dice you can turn.
In addition, you add an additional 2/4/6 to the number of hit dice you can turn.

Another gripe is less about the DA tree itself and more about how DD supports it. Dark path DD offers no alignment spellpower outside of the universal (old DD used to be that either path gave alignment spellpower equal to either the light or negative gained) while tier 4 DD offers only alignment spells which heavily favors a light path DD. Unholy Blight is effectively a light spell and not only that gives Dark path the shaft in terms of viable targetting without the tier 5, I doubt it sees any use and would honestly be better off replaced with Negative Energy Burst or Inflict Moderate Mass.
Also core spells in DD, Power Word: Stun is just awkward and I imagine sees next to no use even if people go that deep into dark path, the cooldown is dreadful. Trap the Soul for better synergy with going Shadowdancer in epics or Rend the Soul to give Cleric an actual negative spell for level 9 would be far better served.

Also all around feedback for DA and Cleric itself; Cleric needs more high level spells, especially on the alignment and negative axis.

[Ereshkigal]

2) Return to Dusk's heal is too weak for it's intended use. ... or 2) have it grant Diehard rather than a reactive heal. Since it has a 3 minute cool down and requires a Turn Attempt to use I think it'd still be well gated to not be overly powerful, but would still hit it's target goal of being an occasional CMA ability.



Please no to #2).

I am grabbing diehard and the +250 incap range from Fury of the Wild, so making this grant diehard would be bad for me, as I already have it. I do think the healing could/should be better though. Perhaps 1d6+3 / level, though I haven't testing the spellpower scaling to see if that's working properly - if not, that could be the fix. The self healing is a great feature and isn't something that can be replaced by simply adding Diehard.