Introductory Detailed Review of Kensei

[Cetus]

So, I've just played around with this tree for 5 minutes and there are a lot of things wrong with it already

I'll begin with my initial comments, and then I'll expand my opinion on it over the weekend

Feat Requirements

It seems that Greater weapon focus is still required in order to progress toward the keen edge ability. Why on earth would you still make us take such a useless feat?

Turbine, weapon focus grants ******1***** to attack still. And we need to grab two of those in order to get this ability. This is wasteful, as +2 to hit isn't worthy of an action point as far as I'm concerned, let alone two precious feats.

Think about it, the main draw of playing the fighter class is its large amount of feats. Why would you knock 2 of them out if the player chooses to pursue kensei, especially after doing an enhancement pass?

Suggestion:

a) Remove the weapon focus feats, they have been plaguing kensei's for far too long.
b) Or, improve them to be offensively useful, so I don't feel miserable everytime I look at them in my feat list.

Enhancement Prerequisites

Attack Boost & Critical Accuracy

You are doing the same thing here that all kensei fighters despised about the old enhancement tree. And thats the attack boost and critical accuracy enhancements that are required in order to get to the funner stuff.

Why are you forcing us to work through these abilities to get to the ones we desire? They are not good. After all these years playing, I have never hit attack boost once. With 110+ confirm to my critical hits, I don't want to spend my action points on 3 more to my confirm to just get to an ability I desire.

If someone feels that they need it, by all means keep it available in the tree - but please don't force me to take it if I feel that it isn't useful.

Suggestion:

I'd like to most emphatically say: Please remove the attack boost and critical accuracy enhancements from the chain toward the higher tier stuff. Its simply going completely against the ideas you folks proclaim this enhancement pass is supposed to uphold.

How are you giving me more customizability by forcing me to take enhancements that I absolutely loathe having in the game right now? Hopefully you consider this feedback in your revisions.

Next up: Wisdom bonus to fortification reducing attack - With EE saves being what they are, a mid 60's DC would be needed here. There's no way a tactician or DPS fighter can achieve a mid 60's DC on an ability based off a secondary stat. Its useless for EE content, and again, is being forced upon us in order to reach the higher end stuff.

Why are the devs forcing us to take so much stuff we don't want?

Suggestion: Make it Strength or Wisdom, so that wisdom based handwrap users can take advantage of it, as well as kensei str-based fighters.

I'll leave these initial thoughts here for now

[Purkilius]

So, I've just played around with this tree for 5 minutes and there are a lot of things wrong with it already

I'll begin with my initial comments, and then I'll expand my opinion on it over the weekend

Feat Requirements

It seems that Greater weapon focus is still required in order to progress toward the keen edge ability. Why on earth would you still make us take such a useless feat?

Turbine, weapon focus grants ******1***** to attack still. And we need to grab two of those in order to get this ability. This is wasteful, as +2 to hit isn't worthy of an action point as far as I'm concerned, let alone two precious feats.

Think about it, the main draw of playing the fighter class is its large amount of feats. Why would you knock 2 of them out if the player chooses to pursue kensei, especially after doing an enhancement pass?

Suggestion:

a) Remove the weapon focus feats, they have been plaguing kensei's for far too long.
b) Or, improve them to be offensively useful, so I don't feel miserable everytime I look at them in my feat list.

Enhancement Prerequisites

Attack Boost & Critical Accuracy

You are doing the same thing here that all kensei fighters despised about the old enhancement tree. And thats the attack boost and critical accuracy enhancements that are required in order to get to the funner stuff.

Why are you forcing us to work through these abilities to get to the ones we desire? They are not good. After all these years playing, I have never hit attack boost once. With 110+ confirm to my critical hits, I don't want to spend my action points on 3 more to my confirm to just get to an ability I desire.

If someone feels that they need it, by all means keep it available in the tree - but please don't force me to take it if I feel that it isn't useful.

Suggestion:

I'd like to most emphatically say: Please remove the attack boost and critical accuracy enhancements from the chain toward the higher tier stuff. Its simply going completely against the ideas you folks proclaim this enhancement pass is supposed to uphold.

How are you giving me more customizability by forcing me to take enhancements that I absolutely loathe having in the game right now? Hopefully you consider this feedback in your revisions.

Next up: Wisdom bonus to fortification reducing attack - With EE saves being what they are, a mid 60's DC would be needed here. There's no way a tactician or DPS fighter can achieve a mid 60's DC on an ability based off a secondary stat. Its useless for EE content, and again, is being forced upon us in order to reach the higher end stuff.

Why are the devs forcing us to take so much stuff we don't want?

Suggestion: Make it Strength or Wisdom, so that wisdom based handwrap users can take advantage of it, as well as kensei str-based fighters.

I'll leave these initial thoughts here for now

I have only done 1 kensai life but I agree with everything stated above.

[Grosbeak07]

While in general I agree with your statements, I have a feeling we may be seeing additional changes to how to hit/AC works in the near future, which may increase the value of, currently, useless feats.

[voodoogroves]

There needs to be a serious question about whether or not some of these are
- Useful to the kinds of builds people like to play
- Useful at-freaking-all and just a tax

People enjoy varied builds.

[Ape_Man]

Why are the devs forcing us to take so much stuff we don't want?

Same thing for Tempest, tons of garbage to get the goodies.

Same thing with Human, 22 APs to get the third Tier of healing amp. Completely unacceptable.

[Kilbar]

You're looking at it from the metagame and the "I want the good stuff NOW" mentality. In-game and in reality, a swordmaster must train for YEARS to get to be a legend, and that's what a Kensei is, even if only in his region of the land. Tales are told of these men for generations, of the dedication and effort they put into mastering their craft, and here you are metagaming it all saying "let's skip the boring stuff and get to the good parts!". Yeah, it sucks to have to take feats that only give +1 to hit but it also sucks to have to bring Master water from the well or wash Mr. Miyagi's car or whatever. It's what it takes to become a legend.

[Qhualor]

I would be fine with attack boost and weapon focus as a requirement if to hit actually meant something. Until then, its wasted AP and its a wasted feat requirement.

People have different opinions about critical accuracy. If its going to be a requirement, fine. Just make it so it stacks with everything.

My WF pure Kensei fighter doesnt have a lot of wisdom. I suspect a lot of other pure or mostly pure builds wont have much wisdom either. Having wisdom to make saves on a fighter makes 0 sense to me. I dont like that at all.

[Ape_Man]

You're looking at it from the metagame and the "I want the good stuff NOW" mentality. In-game and in reality, a swordmaster must train for YEARS to get to be a legend, and that's what a Kensei is, even if only in his region of the land. Tales are told of these men for generations, of the dedication and effort they put into mastering their craft, and here you are metagaming it all saying "let's skip the boring stuff and get to the good parts!". Yeah, it sucks to have to take feats that only give +1 to hit but it also sucks to have to bring Master water from the well or wash Mr. Miyagi's car or whatever. It's what it takes to become a legend.

That argument makes about as much sense as having a piece of raid-loot, say a Greatsword from the Reaver Raid, full of coloful descriptive text without actually having any abilities.

[Kilbar]

I would be fine with attack boost and weapon focus as a requirement if to hit actually meant something. Until then, its wasted AP and its a wasted feat requirement.

People have different opinions about critical accuracy. If its going to be a requirement, fine. Just make it so it stacks with everything.

My WF pure Kensei fighter doesnt have a lot of wisdom. I suspect a lot of other pure or mostly pure builds wont have much wisdom either. Having wisdom to make saves on a fighter makes 0 sense to me. I dont like that at all.

We could always go back to when saves had nothing to do with stats, would that suit you better? Wisdom is a core component of the saving throw system in this game. You dump it at your own peril. If your fighter has an 8 or 6 wisdom, he's going to do a lot of bone-headed things. Sure, he may have some points in Int for skill points, but he's still gonna end up with gonorrhea because he has the common sense of a doughnut.

[DarkForte]

This new tree maintains the things no one liked about the kensei tree before:
- Stupid feat requirements (swf, anyone?)
- Requiring useless boosts to to-hit. I only not confirm criticals on a 1, and I'd seriously suspect any kensei saying otherwise.

While removing some of the really usefl things in the tree:
- 8 seeker for THF was cool. Unlinking it from the weapon specialization enhancements and putting a whole new enhancement that actually does LESS than before is simply unwarranted.
- Losing up to 4 tactics in the tree severely hampers tactical builds, especially considering you pretty much NEED to go full ****** or maybe even have fighter pls to stun any high fort mobs on today's endgame.
- Extra action boosts. Just lost 3 of them.

[Marewood]

Regarding what was said in the OP:
100%
/signed.

[Taojeff]

I am not sure how many of you have actually tried this line with multiple builds... I have and it far out dps the live version or tempest. I will try to get to a review later today. But I have tested it extensively.

[JOTMON]

Why are the devs forcing us to take so much stuff we don't want?

Pretty much same opinion in the Cleric path....Forced healbot or dont play a cleric.
What happend to 3 prestige line choices.

Not enough AP to go around with this split into 2 or more tree's (racial/class) since you have to pickup a bunch of **** to get what you want, and points spent dont count across tree's..

Now you dont have enough to get what you need out of a single tree and be able to get usefull stuff out of other tree's.

Its 2 steps backwards out of the current system unless you are a pure class who didn't use racial abilities.

I see forced Pidgeonholed builds... and the kick to the nuts death of all my multiclass utility builds.

[ka0t1c1sm]

Sure, he may have some points in Int for skill points, but he's still gonna end up with gonorrhea because he has the common sense of a doughnut.

That's signature worthy right there.

I'll admit to being a little nervous about all I've been reading regarding the costs and prereqs to get to the higher tiers, the skill=spellpower changes, the loss of ranger/paladin devotion, etc. but I'll reserve judgment until I can actually get on Lamannia and try it out for myself.

[Qhualor]

We could always go back to when saves had nothing to do with stats, would that suit you better? Wisdom is a core component of the saving throw system in this game. You dump it at your own peril. If your fighter has an 8 or 6 wisdom, he's going to do a lot of bone-headed things. Sure, he may have some points in Int for skill points, but he's still gonna end up with gonorrhea because he has the common sense of a doughnut.

Depending on the class, you can choose to use a different stat to make saves. Wisdom is generally not a stat fighters are known for and it favors monk splashes. It has no actual benefit to a fighter that has no monk levels.

I already read enough from people that talk sacrifice points in stats to boost other stats for umd and skill points. We dont need another sacrifice even more from your strength and con build points to put in wisdom to make saves.

[SableShadow]

You're looking at it from the metagame

I like flavor as much as (well, more, actually) the next person.

However, discussing game mechanics is about discussing game mechanics; raising a leg to take a wiz on that discussion, when it's actually the topic, doesn't make a whole lotta sense.

[Kilbar]

I like flavor as much as (well, more, actually) the next person.

However, discussing game mechanics is about discussing game mechanics; raising a leg to take a wiz on that discussion, when it's actually the topic, doesn't make a whole lotta sense.

What can I say? I've been drinking deeply from the cup of tabletop play for half a month shy of thirty years. Everyone needs to Obey the Call of the Bladder sometime or another.

[Cetus]

We could always go back to when saves had nothing to do with stats, would that suit you better? Wisdom is a core component of the saving throw system in this game. You dump it at your own peril. If your fighter has an 8 or 6 wisdom, he's going to do a lot of bone-headed things. Sure, he may have some points in Int for skill points, but he's still gonna end up with gonorrhea because he has the common sense of a doughnut.

Whose talking about a 6-8 wisdom? If I have a 40 wisdom its still no good...

Well think about this, my fighter currently runs between a 68-70 stunning blow DC (depending on str buffs that come and go) and I stun things 90-95% of the time, occasionally a minotaur or ogre saves in Tor for example - but it works, to a first approximation, pretty flawlessly in epic elite.

I tried dropping legendary tactics to see if it was overkill, so I went down to 62-64 - and my success rate plummeted to about 60%.

Now, suppose I can completely cut up my gear and epic feats and DPS to achieve a meaningful wisdom. Hell, lets say I can get a 40 wisdom if I bend over backwards and blow my reflex save to nothing. That's 10 base + 15 wisdom modifier + half character level = what, like 37-38? Even if you tack on past lives, legendary tactics, whatever - you're nowhere near the high 60's needed to make that ability desirable. Not even close.

Its simply impossible. I mean, take a look at trip for instance - that's an ability that works off my strength as well and even it doesn't land much unless I equip a vertigo 10 item to get it into the high 60's.

This ability is simply useless to a dps kensei in practice, and its a shame because that's one I'd actually like to have.

[Cetus]

You're looking at it from the metagame and the "I want the good stuff NOW" mentality. In-game and in reality, a swordmaster must train for YEARS to get to be a legend, and that's what a Kensei is, even if only in his region of the land. Tales are told of these men for generations, of the dedication and effort they put into mastering their craft, and here you are metagaming it all saying "let's skip the boring stuff and get to the good parts!". Yeah, it sucks to have to take feats that only give +1 to hit but it also sucks to have to bring Master water from the well or wash Mr. Miyagi's car or whatever. It's what it takes to become a legend.

Let me clarify this post, I don't want the "good stuff now" as much as I want control over my character's abilities.

Think about it, we are enabled with the capacity to invest in multiple trees, with each one requiring you to spend action points on abilities entirely irrelevant to your purposes. I'd rather grab an ability that gives me some lateral expansion, like extra saves or PRR, rather than things that are completely useless to me.

Washing Mr. Miyagi's car provides more benefit than +1/2/3 to confirm critical hit. See, the shoulder's get exercise, oxidative phosphorylation is ramped up, that whole story...meanwhile critical accuracy and weapon focus might as well be hair dye and pet names, no difference as far as my character is concerned - its just not good design, because thats EXACTLY what kensei makes us do now.

[Thrudh]

There needs to be a serious question about whether or not some of these are
- Useful to the kinds of builds people like to play
- Useful at-freaking-all and just a tax

People enjoy varied builds.

Agreed... Some feats and enhancements are absolutely worthless and others are very weak... We should not be forced to take them. If the devs can't tell which is which, fine, leave them all in, but do not make them pre-reqs for good enhancements...

My feedback would be to tone down the number of pre-reqs I see in the new enhancement system... The current system has a few pre-reqs, but the new system has far more...

And that's the WORST part of the enhancement system... And you're adding more... Freedom of choice, remember? That's DDO's big draw... Give us more freedom to choose only the enhancements and feats we want... Don't force us to take weak enhancements and feats.