Post your feedback here about the Occult Slayer changes
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Post your feedback here about the Occult Slayer changes
I have one concern about this tree. Now that we have more uses for Weapon Bond (i.e. more reasons to spend it), I notice that there are no methods of increasing the rate at which Weapon Bond is regained. Compare this to the "Fury" mechanic, which only stacks up to six times, but has many ways of gaining stacks.
Easiest way is TWFQuote:
Originally Posted by HatsuharuZ
Core abilitiesQuote:
Originally Posted by HatsuharuZ
Weapon Bond: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 1). You build a psychic bond with your weapons. You strengthen this bond by damaging enemies with attacks. Each attack adds 1 to your weapon bond, up to a maximum of 200. Dying resets your weapon bond. Activate: Exhaust 1 Weapon Bond: Gain a +5 Insight bonus to Attack for 12 seconds. (Cooldown: 2 minutes) Changing weapons no longer resets your weapon bond. There is no longer a 1 second cooldown on gaining Bond stacks.
Attack fast, cleave etc. & it should build it right back up again pretty quickly, especially if glancing blows count.
This, it builds up plenty fast. I will have in depth thoughts later.Quote:
Originally Posted by FuzzyDuck81
I am still very saddened by Occult Slayer it's by far the weakest of the 3 prestiges and doesn't succeed in it's own specialization very well.
Starting with the new Tier 5 abilities
Ravager: Small heals on every hit and kill
Frenzied Barb: Slightly bigger heals but only functions whilst raging but with the right build can be almost permanent
Occult Slayer: Massive heal but pretty much negates the entire weapon bond feature of OS if you plan to actually use it
My suggestion for this is too change it so the higher your weapon bond is the more healing you get instead of requiring you to negate any weapon bond related bonuses. Actually what could work is gaining THP equal to half your current WB count that regens every 30seconds or something
Main reason I bring this up first is because removing the "clears all gained weapon bond" effect improves the entire tree and my suggestions are made with the assumption that this is true.
With that said let's get to work
The Cores
Love the ability to actually change weapons/removal of the cooldown, the bonus to attack roll is obviously useless (if your missing your target alot you have other problems) but I get that its mainly to keep an eye on your total WB count so I'll let it slide.Quote:
Weapon Bond: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 1). You build a psychic bond with your weapons. You strengthen this bond by damaging enemies with attacks. Each attack adds 1 to your weapon bond, up to a maximum of 200. Dying resets your weapon bond. Activate: Exhaust 1 Weapon Bond: Gain a +5 Insight bonus to Attack for 12 seconds. (Cooldown: 2 minutes) Changing weapons no longer resets your weapon bond. There is no longer a 1 second cooldown on gaining Bond stacks.
Unless you shift DR to apply AFTER PRR instead of before any boosts to DR are basically useless...the +1 to all saves and +10 HP is meh. So the core gets a rating of mehQuote:
Resistance: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 3) +1 to all saving throws. Improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. You gain +10 hit points.
The HP and heal amp is nice but the "elemental defense" is too reliant on random chance and unless it stack with the Tier 5 Vampiric bond this core may as well not have itQuote:
Elemental Defense: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 6) When enemy spells deal elemental damage to you, there's a 25% chance you'll gain 25 temporary hit points for 30 seconds that scales with 100% Melee Power . This can trigger up to once every 12 seconds. (Elemental Damage includes Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire, Sonic.) Improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. Passive: You gain +30 hit points and +20 healing amplification.
I'll get into how to improve it in my mock-up later
Slippery Mind is nice but Barb Will saves are so low it makes little difference, the DR again is pointless and the HP/HA bonuses are getting to be really nice...the MRR is a little low for an anti-mage.Quote:
Blank Thoughts: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 12) You gain the Slippery Mind feat and improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. Passive: You gain +5 Magical Resistance Rating, +60 hit points and +20 healing amplification.
Immune to magic missiles and 5% chance to resist force damage not really all that impressive especially for a Core 18. The HP/HA bonuses are again mainly the only reason to take the cores...DR is still useless. MRR is still a bit low.Quote:
Force Ward: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 18) You gain immunity to magic missiles and +5% Competence bonus to entirely avoid incoming Force damage. Improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. Passive: You gain +5 Magical Resistance Rating, +100 hit points and +20 healing amplification.
Finally we come to a useful ability there's really nothing to complain about in here.Quote:
Mind Over Magic: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 20) You gain a bonus to your Spell Resistance equal to your Constitution score. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution. You gain +10 Magical Resistance Rating, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.
My Core Mock-up
Core 1 - Weapon Bond: Remain as is except remove the attack boost thing, maybe add something funny instead like the barbarian makes a rude gesture at the nearest spellcaster, or just simply allow this core ability to just be a counter
Core 3 - Arcane Absorption: You absorb some of the magical energies targeting you (Hit, Miss, 0 damage doesn't matter) granting you +1 damage for x seconds (x=amount of OS cores you have) this stacks y times (3 for each core) and loses 1 stack per expiry. Add 5 MRR
Core 6 - Blank Thoughts: Add Half your Con Mod to Will Saves, Gain slippery mind feat, Add +5 MRR
Core 12 - Elemental Resistance Training: Add Half your Con Mod to Reflex Saves (basically the Occult Slayer builds up a resistance to fireballs etc. by purposefully taking them to the face, sitting under a waterfall during a lightning storm etc.)
Core 18 - Defensive Training: DR now applies after all other sources of damage reduction for you instead of before
Core 20 - As is
Tier 1
These are mostly ok just a few changesQuote:
Extend Rage: (1/1/1 AP) Your barbarian rage lasts [25/50/75]% longer.
Ear Smash: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals +0.5/+1/+1.5[W] damage. Damaged enemies can't cast spells for 2/4/6 seconds. (Cooldown: 12 seconds)
Parrying Bond: (1/1/1 AP) While Weapon Bond is 10+: +[2/4/6] Competence bonus to AC and +[1/2/3] to Magical Resistance Rating.
Uncanny Dodger: (1/1/1 AP) You gain +[1/2/3]% Dodge.
Awareness: (1/1/1 AP) +[1/2/3] Listen, Search and Spot. Rank 3: +1 Reflex Saving Throw
- Add a ranged attack version of ear smash called Ear Shot
- Boost P-Bond to +2/4/6 MRR
- Change +Listen to +Balance
Tier Two
Remove the "whilst raged" requirement and add Rank 3: No auto-fail on a 1Quote:
Willpower Rage: (1/1/1 AP) You gain +[1/2/3] to Will saving throws while raged.
Edit wording to include Ear shot, otherwise this is fineQuote:
Knockout: (1 AP) Ear Smash puts enemies to sleep for 6/12/18 seconds. On Vorpal, stunned enemies instead.
Cleaned up the wording a bit and lowered the AP cost a bit.Quote:
Guarding Bond: (2 AP) Gain +4/8/12 PRR/MRR at Weapon Bond 30/60/90
Add light damage to this.Quote:
Lessons of Travel: (1/1/1 AP) +[2/4/6] energy resistance against Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire and Sonic damage.
I loathe short term boosts would like to see a passive alternative that add +1/2/3 to saves vs. magicQuote:
Antimagic Boost: (1/1/1 AP) Action Boost: +[2/4/6] Action Boost bonus to saving throws vs. magic (Cooldown: 30 seconds)
Tier Three
I hate abilities that have a low HP requirement but Bond of destruction saves this one.Quote:
Bond of Retribution: (2 AP) While you are below 50% health you gain +1 critical damage multiplier on attack rolls of 19-20.
This really should just be +2/4/6 Fort and Rank 3: No auto-fail Fort SavesQuote:
Lessons of Nature: (1/1/1 AP) You gain +[2/4/6] to save vs. both disease and poison. Rank 3: You don't fail disease or poison saving throws on a roll of 1.
These are all fine although I'd like to see AE have so sort of lesser effect on bosses maybe reduce spell DCs by 1/2/3 or something.Quote:
Arcane Encumbrance: (1/1/1 AP) When enemies damage you with spells, there's a [10/20/30]% chance they'll be knocked down. (Does not affect bosses.)
Kinetic Bond: (1/1/1 AP) If weapon bond is 20+: Your attacks deal 1d20 force damage that scales with 200% Melee Power. This damage can trigger up to once every 3/2/1 seconds.
Constitution/Wisdom: (2 AP) Multi-selector: +1 Constitution or +1 Wisdom
Tier 4
Reduce the WB loss to 30/20/10 and make the duration 90/180/360 with a 10 minute cooldownQuote:
Driving Force: Expend 60/45/30 weapon bond to gain 10 Melee Power for 12 seconds.
Alternatively have this based on your current Weapon bond score...the higher it is the better the bonus no cooldowns no duration
Cool ability...curious as to how much spellpower enemy mobs haveQuote:
Viscious Strike: Melee Attack: Deals +1/+2/+3[W] damage and inflicts Feedback on the enemy for 6/12/18 seconds. (Cooldown: 12 seconds) Feedback - On Spellcast: Caster suffers 6-60 force damage. This damage is increased by the target's Spell Power.
Tier Five
Makes Bond of retribution not suck, coolQuote:
Bond of Destruction: (2 AP) Your Bond of Retribution doesn't have a health requirement.
Nice ability leave as isQuote:
Metalline Bond: (1 AP) Your equipped weapon gains the Metalline property. It bypasses Adamantine, Alchemical Silver, Byeshk, Cold Iron and Mithral damage reduction. No longer has pre-reqs or Bond requirements.
As said before the basically negates the whole point of this tree so either straight up delete this or make it a multi-selector with vampiric bond (you can have one OR the other not both) and call it Spirit BondQuote:
One Spirit: (1 AP, 3 Ranks) Expend all Weapon Bond. For bond expended you heal for 2 positive energy. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power. Passive: +10/+20/+30 HP, +4/8/12 MRR Cooldown: 120/60/15 seconds.
Spirit Bond: Gain half your WB count as THP every 30 seconds (amount of THP gained and time to regen adjusted as needed)
Should not be THP as it either interferes with your elemental defense ability or my Spirit Bond...being called vampiric bond I think it should actually damage the enemyQuote:
Vampiric Bond: (1 AP) If weapon bond is 100+: Your weapon provides you 20 temporary hit points when you damage an enemy. These temporary hit points scale with 200% Melee Power. This can trigger at most once every 12/9/6 seconds.
Assuming the above is true (Spirit Bond either doesn't exist or is a multi-selector w/ V-Bond) this is what I'd like to see
Vampiric Bond: Deal 1d6 Damage per hit if weapon bond is 100+ this heals your barb for 100% percent damage dealt, this damage and healing is increase by 10% of your melee power per Barb Level (Lvl 20 barb = 200% Melee power)
Very generic, VERY expensive attack...I'd like to see some sort of spellcaster vorpal effect insteadQuote:
Seeker's Strike: (1 AP, 3 Ranks) Expend 50 stacks of weapon bond: Make a melee weapon attack for +1/3/5 (W) damage. This attack has a +1 critical threat range and a +1 critical multiplier.
Anti-magic Blades: On any vorpal hit if target spellcaster has fewer than X hit points, they are instantly slain. If your target has above X hit points, they take X damage.
One of the problems of pure barbarians is that going 18/2ftr you gain heavy armor and two feats.
My suggestion is, what about putting heavy armor proficiency in occult slayer capstone? It's the tanky tree, after all.
I know heavy armor has lower dodge cap than medium armor, but this tree is focused at caster slaying, so Heavy armor helps with MRR.
If you buff two times the same Constitution buff, the spell resistance from Mind over Magic drops to zerro.
Before this devolves...
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...Slayer-Changes
Quote:
Originally Posted by Severlin
The dr provided by the cores should be +3 per and mind over magic should have one too.
Parry bond should add the amount to AC and offer 5/10/15% bonus to ac at weapon bond 100+.
Oath of retribution should be while below 50%, +1 multiplier (make it the same as others).
Oath of destruction, make the multiplier increase by 1 on 19 and 20's.
After playing with Occult Slayer for a while, I see my earlier complaints were mostly correct, and I'll repeat a few of them later.
But here's a few things I didn't anticipate:
- Vampiric Bond seems non-functional.
- Driving Force (was Hated Enemies) has a brief casting time, which makes it nearly useless. In exchange for 10 seconds of slightly-increased damage you suffer more than 1/2 second of no attacking. That really cuts into the benefit, or even makes it counterproductive. Considering that the Weapon Bond might've had other uses, it's pretty likely to be counterproductive.
- Seeker's Strike c1 has cooldown 27, with c2 and c3 having 9 and 3. It doesn't matter much, since Seeker's Strike is pretty bad anyway. Well, I'm assuming Driving Force has been fixed. If Driving Force is fixed then SeekerStrike is pretty bad; otherwise it's merely over-expensive in AP and Bond. (SeekerStrike might be good with FOTW, but I wasn't playing FOTW)
- One Spirit (was Ancestral Bond) is pretty good as an emergency heal, less good for your primary healing source. It works well if you're getting heals from magic and just occasionally need to fill up when something goes wrong. Pre-Epic players can be irritated by often wasting points on overhealing.
- Interestingly, since Occult Slayer has no strong Rage dependencies, it's sorta possible that an OS player might use Cocoon + One Spirit and just skip Barb Raging. (Something should be done to make OS Rage more interesting, without simply attaching features like the other trees do)
- The Weapon Bond icon doesn't mention the active buff. (That's fine, because nobody will want the active buff)
- It would be good if things like Driving Force and Seeker's Strike would turn the icon grey whenvever you don't have enough charges to use.
- Now that Heavy Armor is good for Barbarians, the Dodge 3% in OS t1 is less valuable for pure class or Fighter splash. It's still good for Rogue/Bard mixes, though.
Anyhow, although Occult Slayer has been massively improved by allowing Bond to last through swapping and adding ways to spend Bond points, it still looks like the design work just hasn't happened yet. Removing a couple problem and tossing in a few active icons doesn't mean the tree has been designed yet. The whole Weapon Bond economy isn't working well, and neither the damage nor survivability is there yet.
I will sort the Occult Slayer icons by quality (as usual, ignoring the hp / heal amp in cores):
- Good: Extend Rage, Ear Smash, Knockout, Metalline
- Weak: Weapon Bond, Elemental Defense, Force Ward, Parrying Bond, Awareness, Willpower Rage, Antimagic Boost, Lesson Travel, Kinetic Bond, Lesson Nature, Vicious Strike, Driving Force, Seeker's Strike
- Half-Weak: Resistance, Blank Thoughts, One Spirit, Bond of Destruction, Guarding Bond
- Bad: Arcane Encumbrance, Mind Over Magic
- Broke: Vampiric Bond
That Vicious Strike stands out as a fun idea with a terrible implementation; the Feedback effect is counteracted by your Stunning Blow, Ear Smash, and even Encumberance features (which is the direct prereq for Vicious Strike, and yet it prevents procs). It would be fun to see a statistic on how many times Feedback triggered during a dungeon; I expect only 3-4 times. And the damage isn't impressive when it happens... Vicious Strike should be passive.
To sum up the main point of the above post: Vampiric Bond is kinda garbage.
Additionally, the devs still haven't clicked to the fact that barbarian DR is a joke, having not scaled to the higher, PRR-focused damage output of mobs over the years, even though we've emphasized it repeatedly.
At the very least, double the Occult DR to 2/- per gain, and add an additional gain at Core 20 (which is a bit lacking in draw at the moment, to begin with- once fighters get updated, Occult is really going to benefit from multiclassing, and thus should have some more high level core appeal to counter that).
Summation:
Barbarian is weak in DR
Occult Slayer is weak in high level core gains
Occult Slayer is VERY weak in tier 5, compared to the other two trees.
Weapon Bond still has some issues, especially in cost/gain of point use.
An interesting thing that could be done for Core 20, in relation to a comment made above, is to allow Core 20 Occult Slayers to treat medium armors as heavy armors for the purposes of calculating armor-based PRR/MRR benefits.
1. They don't necessarily need to fix Barb DR; it'd be acceptable to leave it as a bad feature, so long as other features made up for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dagolar
2. They could simply add +1 PRR every time Barb levels or enhancement get 1 DR; that'd be better than nothing.
3. It would be nice if each time your Barb DR improved by +1 you also got a +1 stacking DR bonus. That would give you a nice smidgen better DR than a Fighter wearing the same shadow armor.
Well, a little better would be treating every non-Heavy armor like it was one category higher for PRR and MRR.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dagolar
that would be good, but all in all i see nothing but improvements for Occult slayer. pre update 24 it was pretty strong (stronger actually playing it at level 28 with mornh, TF warhammer, shadow armor, etc etc than it looked on paper) and bascialyl indestructable with heavy armor prof feat taken at 24. update 24 will just make it more powerful...Quote:
Originally Posted by Scrabbler
Dwarf?Quote:
Originally Posted by painkiller3
More Occult Slayer stuff:
- The capstone Spell Resistance is sometimes powerful, but still bad:
- Too dependent upon being a Dwarf Throw Weight build instead of a regular Strength Barbarian.
- SR comes too late. Characters in the level 12-19 range have a powerful range of protections against Hold, Fear, Dominate, Finger, and so on. An Occult-Slayer Barbarian shouldn't be so much worse than generic Cleric/Wizard buffs in that level range.
- Too high SR compared to how other SR sources work.
- The extreme CR caused by Elite mode mean that the SR balance is really broken.
- One Spirit is alright as auxilliary healing. But look at how the healing doesn't improve from when you get it at level 12 up till level 19.
- Compare Occult Slayer's healing to Ravager. The amount of healing per hit from One Spirit or Blood Strength is roughly similar (we don't know if Blood Strength will trigger on kills or not). But to benefit from Blood Strength has no cost, while using One Spirit debuffs your defenses (PRR MRR) and takes points away from damage effects (Driving Force or Seeker's Strike). On it's own its fine for a heal effect to take away from your damage... but not within the total balance of the tree, and not when compared to other trees.
- Compare Occult Slayer's crits to Ravager. OS gets 2 crit damages per 20 attacks (+1 on 19 and +1 on 20 = 2). With an axe, Ravager gets 4 crit damages (+2 on 17 and +2 on 18 = 4) or 6 with a Pick. That's literally 2x or 3x as good... more than that, actually, because magical effects favor increased range better than increased multiplier.
- I went over this before, but I've confirmed: Seeker's Strike is unimpressive for a t5 active attack. It does damage similar to a tier 1 Rogue attack, but costs way more AP and a big big amount of Bond points.
- Knockout still uses the word "sleep" in the description, so that's still a bug.
- Try to think of the times when getting +6 saving throws for 20 sec is even worth pressing the button. That boost should also give MRR, SR, and even Evasion...
A few possible ways to improve Occult Slayer One Spirit (self-heal):
- It uses only up to 100 Bond points. (Maybe re-adjust the hp per point)
- It uses only 50% of your Bond points. (Maybe re-adjust the hp per point)
- It uses only enough Bond points to heal you to full, and leaves the rest.
- The healing per point scales a little according to your Barb+epic levels.
Important ways to improve Vampiric Bond:
- If it doesn't use Weapon Bond points, take the word "Bond" out of the name (replace with Oath).
- Make it trigger on some hits (as opposed to triggering on no hits).
- Scale the temporary hitpoints according to your healing amp. Seriously, almost everything that gives temp hp should scale by heal amp.
- Scale the temp hp according to Barb+epic levels.