Rangers and Paladins need their devotion lines back

[SealedInSong]

I think the thought process is that the spell power lines were too cumbersome. There's just too many spell power lines to fit in the tree system.

It's probably safe to infer that wizards and sorcs get something similar to clerics, where every AP you spend on your tree gets you 1 or 1.5 spell power in the "universal" (spellcraft) line.

It does appear to hurt rangers (and pallies) pretty badly, though.

I agree that, hey, it's simpler to not have spell power lines. But at what cost?

Am I to assume now that my bard will just be terrible at healing unless I spec the specific prestige that allows for positive energy spell power auto grants? What if I wanted to make a really great war chanter with all the positive spell power possible? I can do that now, but I can't do that in the future?

My wizard will not be able to focus on fire/acid, or becoming the best cold-nuking pale master I can muster--he'll just have universal spell power and maybe a bump to ____ spell power depending on the tree in which he invests?

I know this is a very premature stage in development, but as everyone loves to point out, we aren't historically significant in the development process no matter how early we're cued in.

This smells of a lot less diversity and choice to me, and that was the biggest fear everyone had about the enhancement pass...

Here's to hoping.

[SealedInSong]

I always use Necrotic Ray, one of the best spells out there.
And i would like to keep using it, also yes i always slot neg spellpower for it.

Did i add umd for wiz? no
Would i like to keep maxing it on a PM trapper, definitely yes.
Full use of umd on a PM trapper is good even without the ability to buy or gain Harm scrolls.
I often found myself as support healer and i rather like to be able to continue that.

Very apt points. Necrotic ray is one of the spells that one can consistently use in EE. It's a cheap, no SR, sizeable damage spell that brings down the colossal inflation of CR out of the stratosphere.

My Pale Master/Rogue also carries around a few stacks of 100 heal scrolls and res scrolls, and his primary goal was to be able to melee, crowd control, support heal, and trap. Will that be taken away from him?

I am not having very good feelings about the direction of these changes.

[blerkington]

They don't improve current things, but they do improve things in general if you forget everything that exists now. It's a whole new and better system.

Hi,

I'm sorry, this is just doubletalk to me. 'Better' implies a comparison.

Thanks.

[blerkington]

I am not having very good feelings about the direction of these changes.

Hi,

The direction so far seems to be towards specialisation.

It will be interesting to hear if that was an intentional design goal or is an accidental consequence of the proposed tree structures and AP costs.

Thanks.

[Postumus]

So you have skill points to spare on all your toons?

This is as bad as the need to have to slot in a Devotion item where pre-U14 it wasn't required with 75% ardor pots.

You keep bragging about how easy this game is and how you crush EE content, you'd think you would appreciate a new challenge, right?

[HungarianRhapsody]

It appears that both rangers and paladins have lost their devotion enhancements. This is a pretty big loss, and the 80 devotion they can have on live (both my ranger and pally get the full 80) don't appear to be made up for with the different skill effects.

Any way they could get them back?

Rangers, Paladins and CLERICS all need their devotion lines back.

You shouldn't be hamstrung by having to spend all of your AP on babysitting duties (i.e. Protection and Healing trees) in order to get spell power for your Heal and Cure spells.

[Missing_Minds]

Given the new skill, and these changes ALL of Turbines' pre built characters (when you make a character vs. going customized) are going to have to be re done.

I wonder if they realized that yet.

[SealedInSong]

1) An INT based skill. So CHA-based builds (e.g. Bards, Sorcs) seem to be getting the short end of the stick.

2) Is a class-skill for Arty, Bard, Cleric, Druid, FvS, Sorc, and Wiz, and a cross-class skill for "everyone else". Which means that Pally and Ranger also appear to be getting the short end of the stick. And since Pally is a CHA-based build, doubly so.

I'm afraid to point it out for fear of the nerf bat, but bards (rightly so) get spellcraft as a skill but NOT magical training?

I can understand rangers and paladins missing out on that blue bar privilege, but at this point, bards need all the leg-ups they can get it, and it doesn't seem logical or fair that bards should be excluded from Magical Training.

If the future of the bard enhancements is that one has to spend a ton of skill points in a prestige tree they don't have any interest in just to have a middling amount of positive spell power, they have to purchase Magical Training and invest in a ton of Intelligence to have a modicum of healing power... then no one should be under the illusion that they're a remotely balanced class.

[Archangel666]

I'm afraid to point it out for fear of the nerf bat, but bards (rightly so) get spellcraft as a skill but NOT magical training?

I can understand rangers and paladins missing out on that blue bar privilege, but at this point, bards need all the leg-ups they can get it, and it doesn't seem logical or fair that bards should be excluded from Magical Training.

If the future of the bard enhancements is that one has to spend a ton of skill points in a prestige tree they don't have any interest in just to have a middling amount of positive spell power, they have to purchase Magical Training and invest in a ton of Intelligence to have a modicum of healing power... then no one should be under the illusion that they're a remotely balanced class.

I'm not even sure it makes sense for Rangers and Pallys to not get the Magical Training Feat to be honest. Doesn't make sense at level 1 sure, but at level 4 when they go to a Class Trainer, who Trains them to use Magic? It should be a free Feat for all Blue bars given at the appropriate levels.

[SilkofDrasnia]

There is no way they should expect to get healing amp though skills. Different intelligence stats and other factors determine skill points. Rangers and pallies are not intelligence heavy classes and forget about multiclassing Rogue and being able to heal too. AP's are equal across the board. A bad move if it goes live.

Gah you get what 2 skill point on a pally lmao, I only start getting more as my tomes start to kick in, this is frigging ridiculous.

[toaf]

ya, i think this whole thing is gona be DOOOOOM!!!! i really liked having a 700 heal water baloon. now i just dont see it happning. i dont think the sad 20% will do it. but maybe im wrong

[SilkofDrasnia]

I don't care about the forest, I like individual trees better. What things do to characters' general power level is irrelevant, what is more important that there are less things that are totally useless.

LoL

Some classes need jump, conc and balance and many like UMD these skill are very useful. Take a pally for instance int is a dump stat, it's not a stat any self respecting paladin will invest in other than eating a +4 tome so they don't only have 2 skill points to use per level.

Tell you what make skill points be cha based for pallies and I will shut up. I don't see any reason why int should be the sole reason to get more skill points anymore considering they are letting dwarves use con for damage etc.

[Ape_Man]

You keep bragging about how easy this game is and how you crush EE content, you'd think you would appreciate a new challenge, right?

Challenge shouldn't be overcoming bad game design.

[Archangel666]

You know, I was just going over in my head how I could respec my pure Ranger AA to compensate for the loss of Ranger Devotion and I suddenly burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Here's how my thinking went.

Ok, so I need more INT to be able to afford the Heal Skill.

So that means dropping another stat.

Ok, which one?

Well, it can't be DEX 'cause I need that to be able to hit mobs.

Can't be CON 'cause I need that, especially now that I'm down 10 HP from losing the Racial Toughness lines and Rangers don't exactly have Barb levels of HP at the best of times.

Can't be WIS 'cause I need that to have the Spell Points to self heal and use all these bloody new Imbues which cost SP each use.

CHA? Hmm, nah, I start at 10 on that and use UMD, I spent ages making those Greensteel Charisma skills boots, getting the Vile Blasphemy Gloves from Abbot (I HATE Abbot!) and grinding out Cove for the epic Spyglass. Don't want all that work to have been for nothing.

Ok, so that just leaves Strength. *sigh* So my Ranger who was already behind most melee type Classes in damage is going to be even further behind? Meh. Ah! But I have Favoured Enemy stuff to compensate a bit. Oh, hang on a minute! No, I don't! That was all moved to the Tempest PrE, wasn't it? Bollocks.

[HungarianRhapsody]

LoL

Some classes need jump, conc and balance and many like UMD these skill are very useful. Take a pally for instance int is a dump stat, it's not a stat any self respecting paladin will invest in other than eating a +4 tome so they don't only have 2 skill points to use per level.

Tell you what make skill points be cha based for pallies and I will shut up. I don't see any reason why int should be the sole reason to get more skill points anymore considering they are letting dwarves use con for damage etc.

I agree with most of what you write in this post, but what class needs jump?

[SilkofDrasnia]

I agree with most of what you write in this post, but what class needs jump?

Have you ever seen a pally jump that didn't invest into it, I swear my pally would trip over a knee high fence if he had to jump over it without the points I put into jump

[Aashrym]

Um, suddenly? I seem to recall only bards and druids having sonic spellpower enhanchments in current system.

Sonic is included in the wiz/sorc electric lines as an added bonus.

And what would pally and ranger need spellcraft for?

Skill affecting positive spellpower (which is what matters for healing) is heal. It's on class skill list of both pally and ranger; and it's wis based (which means that both will prolly get equally low stat bonus).

EDIT: Um, and yeah, this change is... odd, at very least. I don't see why skills affecting spell damage was needed; and I find pale masters needing heal very hilarious.

It can impact the effectiveness of some epic destiny abilities while we are looking at grinding out more fate points.

I'm concerned for bard healers because heal isn't a class skill for them and based on what we've seen song magic will likely no longer exist as well, but from what I saw when it hit lamma previously there was going to be bonuses for universal spell power but when previously clerics and bards both had +80 positive spell power it now it looks like clerics will have +1.5 per point and bards might have +1 per point (universal) plus the need to cross class heal (also wisdom based) and take another relative drop on top of having the smaller spell pool and weaker healing spells.

The healing tree for clerics also has the ability to remove the caster level cap on cure spells. Those cheap CMW's are going to look a lot more attractive with that enhancement.

[BOgre]

The easiest thing to do would be replace the current uneeded trash pre-req abilities with Devotion abilities. Then we could get our much needed heal amp back WHILE spending towards our desired top tier abilities.

[RedHost]

Right, so people can choose to be better at healing, or better at damaging, with possible sacrifice to either or in order to get the other.

ftfy

[sephiroth1084]

It's not unpleasant if you forget everything that was before. Now you simply choose between say balance and heal. Cake or pie.

That only works if the entire game gets rebalanced to account for the across the board reduction in power players are being hit with. If the game isn't tweaked accordingly, you won't be able to forget, because the monsters that were previously hurting you at about the rate that you could heal yourself, or be healed, before are now outpacing your weaker ability, or your character that could previously Balance around a warforged titan before, and heal themselves, now can't do both of those things.

I can almost guarantee you that we are not going to see the game restructured to account for all the nerfing going on with the proposed skill changes/additions and the enhancement butchering. And while a lot of the game kind of needs to be made a little more challenging, the one area that didn't need to be hurt in this way was healing. Yes, healing in DDO is much too powerful, but the game is scaled with that assumption in mind. A lot of content is totally inaccessible to the majority of the DDO playerbase without having a good healer along. This only looks to exacerbate the issue.

Additionally, this simply adds yet another noob trap to character creation and advancement.