Dark Apostate and diseases

[newmart]

I believe that Dark apostate was built to be a debuffer and is nice the concept to use enhancement trees to revamp low-profile spells such as Bane to make them actually useful.

Being so, the Dark apostate abilities seem underwhelming at first glace, only working around Prayer, Curse and Bane. Curse should be transformed in a small AOE at least, or something like spreading to nearby targets after being hit by a bane spell. This would give much more interaction with the abilities.

Moreover, the tree lost the opportunity to make use of diseases and poison spell. Even when i cast over and over to reduce enemy stats, diseases are far from broken strong, and i really don't understand why monsters regenerate stats so fast to avoid helplessness since a Wizard can rend 8 mobs helpless in one second with hold monster.

I'd suggest to put in the cores:

Enhanced Shadowform I: Your Shadow Shrouding gains an additional +5% Incorporeality and Concealment (for a total of 10% each). Passive: +1 Apostate's Curse Dice. Your diseases and poison (applied by contagion and poison spell) now spread to a nearby target every 2(?) Seconds.

Enhanced Shadowform II: Your Shadow Shrouding gains an additional +5% Incorporeality and Concealment (for a total of 15% each). Your Bestow Curse, Doom, and Bane spells no longer have a saving throw. Poison and diseases now deal ability damage every 3 seconds.

Even with these changes, i believe that will be difficult to turn epic monsters helpless. in heroic levels, most monsters take less than 3 seconds to die and bosses are imune anyway.

[Ereshkigal]

I believe that Dark apostate was built to be a debuffer and is nice the concept to use enhancement trees to revamp low-profile spells such as Bane to make them actually useful.

Being so, the Dark apostate abilities seem underwhelming at first glace, only working around Prayer, Curse and Bane. Curse should be transformed in a small AOE at least, or something like spreading to nearby targets after being hit by a bane spell. This would give much more interaction with the abilities.

Moreover, the tree lost the opportunity to make use of diseases and poison spell. Even when i cast over and over to reduce enemy stats, diseases are far from broken strong, and i really don't understand why monsters regenerate stats so fast to avoid helplessness since a Wizard can rend 8 mobs helpless in one second with hold monster.

I'd suggest to put in the cores:

Enhanced Shadowform I: Your Shadow Shrouding gains an additional +5% Incorporeality and Concealment (for a total of 10% each). Passive: +1 Apostate's Curse Dice. Your diseases and poison (applied by contagion and poison spell) now spread to a nearby target every 2(?) Seconds.

Enhanced Shadowform II: Your Shadow Shrouding gains an additional +5% Incorporeality and Concealment (for a total of 15% each). Your Bestow Curse, Doom, and Bane spells no longer have a saving throw. Poison and diseases now deal ability damage every 3 seconds.

Even with these changes, i believe that will be difficult to turn epic monsters helpless. in heroic levels, most monsters take less than 3 seconds to die and bosses are imune anyway.

Eh, I don't really see the Dark Apostate as a Debuffer.

I just see it as a way to gain some decent shroud immunities for a light/alignment cleric that gets a 4 spellpoint Bane AOE which just about makes up for the damage lost to Holy Smite from the last nerf. The 10 temporary spellpoint on light/alignment crit really extends your spellpoint pool as well, considering 40%+ crit chances aren't hard to get with that build.

Alternately the Melee side of DA with some Feydark weapons could compliment a melee cleric build quite nicely as well.

DA, aside from the defensive shroud immunities,has some caster features, and some melee features, either of which can be used to supplement a build based on another tree, but I feel maxing out the DA tree as it is, is a poor use of action points.

As a debuffer tho? I just don't see it, and I think while your suggestion would help make that a viable option I think it would need additional changes to make it viable.

[droid327]

Yeah I think all that accomplishes is adding another weak ability to an already muddy class. What is DA? Is it a divine gish? An alignment nuker? A negative caster? It doesn't really support anything well enough with a clear playstyle, and if you throw an underwhelming poison debuff in there to make it a debuffer then you're just adding fuel to the fire.

What DA needs is a clear, strong central ability to define a playstyle. If they want to make it a debuffer, that's one option, but you'd need to give it way more than just a piddly poison debuff...stat damage is really depreciated in epic/leg, just like incorp/conceal is depreciated in reaper. Especially against bosses, where debuffs are the most important. You really need stacking prr/mrr/vuln/fort/ac since that's what works on bosses. If they could stack a big enough to-hit penalty that would actually be fantastic for ac tanks.

Or, you know, just make Pray for Mercy damage scale the exact same as Stormsinger proc damage so it wasn't totally useless, and then they can just be Alignment nukers...

[Ereshkigal]

Or, you know, just make Pray for Mercy damage scale the exact same as Stormsinger proc damage so it wasn't totally useless, and then they can just be Alignment nukers...

Aye if they gave DA the ability to "bestow curse" as an AOE, maybe through "Cursed Words" enhancement, then the doubled damage from Bane/bless/prayer against cursed targets would be significant.

As it stands, it's not worth it to get the tier 5 ability that boosts the damage, and honestly the Prayer SLA spellpoint cost isn't worth it considering it is centered on self, and as a caster why would you even want to wade into the mobs.

[Onyxia2019]

I have only played one Dark Apostate life and it was not to bad. Although I was more or less a Dark Disciple having focused mainly on the Disciple tree and only taking enough to get the shrouds from the Dark Apostate. I basically took everything that pumped up negative spell power. I would also use Bane and Prayer on groups. Inflict wounds to heal or Inflict Wounds Mass to heal me and hurt them.

I played as mainly as single target nuker with Necrotic Ray and Bolt as SLA's and all meta-magics enables. In elite dungeons at level I was able to one-shot most things but I was also a plate wearing, quarterstaff wielding crazy person.

I also played with my significant other who ran as a Pale Master. With her auras up we had no issues mowing things down.

Side note: I loved fighting Arcane Skeletons as their Death Aura healed me. Not for a lot but was fun to watch.

Now the bad side, UNDEAD. Here is where I needed to switch to light based spells and since they were not SLA's I had to watch the SP consumption as I could reduce it to zero in no time. It helps to having a light/alignment gear set for such situation. Running a dungeon with tons of undead, better put on my holy gear.

Having played many traditional Cleric lives I can say I prefer them more but Dark Apostate is not bad although with the above mention play style a Pale Master is better. You just have to get in the mindset of the dark (not evil) avenger rendering the soul from your enemies.

If SSG even manages to tweak the Dark Apostate tree to be worth investing more points in it over the Disciple tree, that may be interesting. Even scaling the Apostate Curse would be a great start but as it is currently, points are best spent elsewhere.

[newmart]

What DA needs is a clear, strong central ability to define a playstyle. If they want to make it a debuffer, that's one option, but you'd need to give it way more than just a piddly poison debuff...stat damage is really depreciated in epic/leg, just like incorp/conceal is depreciated in reaper. Especially against bosses, where debuffs are the most important. You really need stacking prr/mrr/vuln/fort/ac since that's what works on bosses. If they could stack a big enough to-hit penalty that would actually be fantastic for ac tanks.

Or, you know, just make Pray for Mercy damage scale the exact same as Stormsinger proc damage so it wasn't totally useless, and then they can just be Alignment nukers...

I don't see DA as alignment nukers, and the game doesn't need another nuker. These changes are not meant to completely fix but give an interesting playstyle based on diseases/curses to debuff the enemy. it may work well on heroic but due Epic Ward, ability dmg needs a bigger review in epics.

Bane (-1), Curse (-4), Symbol of Pain (-4), Doom (-2), plus 10 ability dmg that red named can receive (-5), all seem to stack and significantly reduce enemy rolls. Interesting to note, this has an interesting synergy for insta kills.

If these effects are really stacking, its about -16 to attack rolls and some saves, so its a viable debuffer. My suggestions are in order to make them more AOE viable.