Pale Master Guide

[EllisDee37]

(maybe that +8 wis ring with slots)

I was looking at that, wondering if the +4 will saves that gives you would be worth anything for spell wards. I can't think offhand of any other will saves a pale master has to actually roll, but those spell wards are all over the place.

[HalfORCastrator]

I was looking at that, wondering if the +4 will saves that gives you would be worth anything for spell wards. I can't think offhand of any other will saves a pale master has to actually roll, but those spell wards are all over the place.

That's a will save? Interesting. Though it would be a swap, not a main setup item. The search continues.

[connerj]

How would one reccomend how to get good gear to a 'noob?' i have any lvling time, but cant figure out gear really well yet.... soo would like some help, can get any PL and looking to make a human PM pure with 50+ necro and 45+ enhancement DC's thanks to anyone that helps!

[Andoris]

How would one reccomend how to get good gear to a 'noob?' i have any lvling time, but cant figure out gear really well yet.... soo would like some help, can get any PL and looking to make a human PM pure with 50+ necro and 45+ enhancement DC's thanks to anyone that helps!

A lot of it it running the needed raids/quests a bunch of times.. Shroud and DQ are easy to get groups for and will put you on your way. What do you have so far? what packs do you own?

[Andoris]

I was looking at that, wondering if the +4 will saves that gives you would be worth anything for spell wards. I can't think offhand of any other will saves a pale master has to actually roll, but those spell wards are all over the place.

I don't see +4 to will save making that much of a difference. Now I do like that ring for any wisdom based class though

[EllisDee37]

I just now for the first time realized it's Ghost-Waking cloak, not Ghost-Walking. As in, you wake up the ghosts. I've edited my posts in this thread (and others) to the correct name.

And I'm starting to fall in love with DR/evil, heh. I think it'll essentially end up being DR/- in most quests.

[Andoris]

And I'm starting to fall in love with DR/evil, heh. I think it'll essentially end up being DR/- in most quests.

Agreed.. so far it seems like there is little that breaks DR/evil. I can't seem myself not running with that cloak

[Andoris]

I just updated the guild and build for U19. Looking forward to your comments, suggestions, and questions.

[Ellihor]

I just updated the guild and build for U19. Looking forward to your comments, suggestions, and questions.

Hi, nice to see someone else is playing pale master! I got a thread about it too in the wizard page. About my thoughts:

- you list 3 int as feat, are you sure it isnt better 1 int + epic necro + ruin. In the end you loose 1 dc to all but necro keeps the same, and you get ruin.

- why just dont dump spell penetration at all and take mental toughness instead?(Yeah i feel the same, those 6 TRs for spellpen are now useless ¬¬ ), and also that opens ap on the archmage tree for one extra tier of improved maximize

- How is empower helping at cap? I dont have this feat to try myself but i belive the extra sp is not worth the damage. Sure it good for burst, but that is one feat cost. Would love to know the differece of your NeB with and without empower (cant try myself because my char doesnt have the feat)

- Why cloak of night III? Better take extra neg sp and crit to fit the 40 ap prereq for capstone

- Orb bonus applies to saves only when blocking

- Your calcs about damage avoided are wrong = 0.9 dodge * 0.9 ghostly * 0.95 elusive target * 0.5 displacement = 0.38475 * 0.812 PRR = 0.312417 = 68.76% damage avoided, that makes me think if elusive target is worth because it gives 1.64% in the end.

[Andoris]

- you list 3 int as feat, are you sure it isnt better 1 int + epic necro + ruin. In the end you loose 1 dc to all but necro keeps the same, and you get ruin.

If I went that way I would do epic necro/epic enchant + other, which preserves the schools I care about at the loss of +1 dc elsewhere. However, I don't really know if Ruin does enough damage per spellpoint to be worth bothering with. For EH I have a lot of spells that can nuke something down quickly if I need to. For EE, unless I can get it to 8k+ (non-crit) I can't see myself even considering it (mobs just have too many hp to nuke on EE, unless you like drinking pots like a sailor). That being said, I really haven't played with Ruin on live -- I might give it a try.

- why just dont dump spell penetration at all and take mental toughness instead?(Yeah i feel the same, those 6 TRs for spellpen are now useless ¬¬ ), and also that opens ap on the archmage tree for one extra tier of improved maximize

- How is empower helping at cap? I dont have this feat to try myself but i belive the extra sp is not worth the damage. Sure it good for burst, but that is one feat cost. Would love to know the differece of your NeB with and without empower (cant try myself because my char doesnt have the feat)

Spell pen is there mostly just to help with EH content. It is not really needed but mental toughness is meh as a well. As for the enhancement tree, I noticed some errors in my build post (corrected now) and I only have 1 rank of spell pen in Archmage, and max ranks of maximize reduction

As for empower -- Did a test (20 castings with empower + maximize, 20 castings with just maximize) and the results are below:

Maximze+Empower: average=282.2, min=197, max=528, standard Dev = 96.05, mode=tie 234 and 242 (3 each)
Maximize:average=243.25, min=161, max=453, standard Dev = 85.17, mode=tie 181 and 205 (3 each)

Considering my other option for that feat slot was extend (mostly just for death aura), I believe that the extra ~40 pts of healing is worth the feat -- YMMV

- Why cloak of night III? Better take extra neg sp and crit to fit the 40 ap prereq for capstone

- Orb bonus applies to saves only when blocking
[snip]

- Your calcs about damage avoided are wrong = 0.9 dodge * 0.9 ghostly * 0.95 elusive target * 0.5 displacement = 0.38475 * 0.812 PRR = 0.312417 = 68.76% damage avoided, that makes me think if elusive target is worth because it gives 1.64% in the end.

Error in post for Cloak of Night. I only spent 1 ap on it so I could hit an even 40ap -- thanks for the catch. Very correct on the orb bonus, I will edit the post to make it clearer.

Just redid the calculation and your right, I must have miss typed while doing the calc (although I was only off by 1% so not sure what happened)

While I agree that elusive target only adds about 2% of avoidance and 1.6% into your total mitigation strategy, however; your other option is 20 spell power (not very exciting for a DC caster). I really wish there were better options.

Thank you for the feedback!

[Fanaval]

Enchantment Lore from Drow line is very important for the +1 enchantment DC at lvl 3. Can't you drop Energy of the scholar and spell critical IV to have points to spend in Enchantment lore?
If you can take a +1 enchantment dc from enhancements you can skip bard active past life and take for example extend. (or whatever you like)

What do you think? It is feasible?

Thank you for your very good guide +1 rep.

[unbongwah]

Enchantment Lore from Drow line is very important for the +1 enchantment DC at lvl 3. Can't you drop Energy of the scholar and spell critical IV to have points to spend in Enchantment lore?

The problem is you have to spend 8 APs to get it: 5 APs to unlock Enchantment Lore and another 3 APs to max it out. Spending 10% of your APs for +1 DCs is not a good ROI. Fortunately, at least there are +INT/CHA bonuses in the drow tree now for wizs & sorcs.

[Fanaval]

The problem is you have to spend 8 APs to get it: 5 APs to unlock Enchantment Lore and another 3 APs to max it out. Spending 10% of your APs for +1 DCs is not a good ROI. Fortunately, at least there are +INT/CHA bonuses in the drow tree now for wizs & sorcs.

Ok, so, for example you can drop Spell critical line to have 8 points for Enchantment lore (5 for prereq and 3 for lore). Don't you think that a +1 enchantment DC is more important in a DC based Palemaster than a +5% critical chance?

[EllisDee37]

Ok, so, for example you can drop Spell critical line to have 8 points for Enchantment lore (5 for prereq and 3 for lore). Don't you think that a +1 enchantment DC is more important in a DC based Palemaster than a +5% critical chance?

Tough call. 5% critical is a lot. I think I'd go with 5% critical over +1 enchantment DC.

I wouldn't fault somebody for choosing the +1 enchant DC, though. It's perfectly justified.

[EllisDee37]

Looking more closely at the enhancements, criticals aren't part of the choice. The real choice is +1 enchant vs enervation SLA:

41 AP in PM tree for capstone; no points can be removed
9 AP in drow tree for +1 enchant DC (6 AP for 2 int, 3 AP for +1 enchant)
31 AP in AM tree for enervation SLA; no points can be removed
---
81 AP

So something has to give. The PM capstone costs 1 and requires 40, and it's not even up for consideration to lose the capstone. That 41 is a hard limit that cannot be touched.

9 AP in the drow tree is the absolute minimum to get the +1 enchant dc due to the +2 int costing 6 AP all by itself. There is no way to switch points around for the +2 int, and the enchant DC is another 3 AP on top of it.

The AM enervation SLA costs 1 AP and requires 30 AP, so that's a hard limit if you want the SLA.


The choice then boils down to whether you want enervation as an SLA or +1 enchant dc. The two are an easy and natural swap for each other, btw, since without enervation all the other SLAs are pointless, meaning instead of 4 AP to take the core to IV you only need to spend 1 AP to take the core to I. That means the enervation SLA costs us 3 AP all by itself, also requiring 31 in tree as a hard limit.

For me, I'd probably take the 3 AP out of the AM core and put them in the drow tree for +1 enchant DC, but I can totally see why the OP prefers the enervation SLA.

I might mention the choice in the enhancement section.

[Fanaval]

Of course you can use energy drain in place of enervation. You cannot use a slot for enervation as spell because 4th level slot are too precious (aura, burst, firewall, dd, bestow curse), so the problem is you have to use a 50sp debuff instead a 10sp sla debuff. This for the +1 dc enchant. It is a though choice. Or maybe the best choice can be to take enervation as spell for 25sp and drop dd (use scrolls). This permit you to take enervation and the +1 dc enchant. What do you think?

[EllisDee37]

Pardon the analogy, but as a rabid NFL fan this is the kind of thing I classify as a "coach's decision." The scenario where both options are totally valid and justifiable, making it a tough call. That's why you pay the coaches the big bucks! hehheh.

For decisions like that the best thing to do is just spell it out in the guide and let the player make the call.


You can't buy ddoor scrolls but you can by fireshield scrolls. Enervation is rough to slot in but can be done, especially on a DC build.

[unbongwah]

9 AP in the drow tree is the absolute minimum to get the +1 enchant dc due to the +2 int costing 6 AP all by itself. There is no way to switch points around for the +2 int, and the enchant DC is another 3 AP on top of it.

Well, technically you could spend only 8 APs if you dropped the 2nd INT enh and took a filler for 1 AP...but why would you want to?

The AM enervation SLA costs 1 AP and requires 30 AP, so that's a hard limit if you want the SLA.

I thought the Enervation SLA only cost 21 APs; it's Waves of Fatigue that costs 31. Or am I misreading the tree?

BTW, what do you think of Enchant AM instead of Necro AM paired w/PM?

[EllisDee37]

Oh snap! You can have your cake and eat it too, I was the one misreading the tree.

So yeah, all we need to do is pull any old 3 AP out of the AM tree to put into drow for +1 enchant DC. On cursory inspection, I vote the third rank of efficient maximize (you need two ranks to unlock efficient heighten II) and arcane bolt.

BTW, what do you think of Enchant AM instead of Necro AM paired w/PM?

I think highly of it.

My pale trapper build goes with enchantment AM for the hold monster sla and +1 enchant dc. He's primarily necro, but it's nice to have that extra enchant dc for running guild raids.

[Fanaval]

Well, technically you could spend only 8 APs if you dropped the 2nd INT enh and took a filler for 1 AP...but why would you want to?

I thought the Enervation SLA only cost 21 APs; it's Waves of Fatigue that costs 31. Or am I misreading the tree?

BTW, what do you think of Enchant AM instead of Necro AM paired w/PM?

So you can drop spell critical line (8AP), have prereq for enervation (20AP) and take it (21AP) and take also the enchantment lore 3 from drow with the points from spell critical (8AP). It is correct? If yes it is a boon 10sp debuff SLA with low cooldown and +1 to enchantment.

Add a bard active past life for +1 enchantment again.
With PL from wizard and FVS you have plenty of Spell penetration and can drop greater spell penetration feat to have room for bard active past life for +1 enchantment.

But there is a problem: Enchantment is still low compared to necro post update 19. It is really good to invest in enchantment? Someone have tried this in game? Mass hold is effective? Bestow curse is needed to debuff? And MOST IMPORTANT bestow curse is still fully functional? (Pre update 19 it did a minimum debuff no matter if the will save was done. NOW?)

I have read many people that was unsatisfied because enchantment (and CC) are now uneffective because DC are not enough to pass the absurdely high saves of monsters. (And it appears that in the endgame all the monsters have not weak saves).

If someone can answer this question do a favor to the community because it is important to know if it is a good thing to invest in enchantment.

Thank you.