Divine Disciple

[Vargouille]

We'd love playtest feedback on the new offensive caster enhancement tree, Divine Disciple, especially since it wasn't around for comments in the earlier enhancement preview.

Thank you for any feedback or bug reports.

[Targal]

We'd love playtest feedback on the new offensive caster enhancement tree, Divine Disciple, especially since it wasn't around for comments in the earlier enhancement preview.

Thank you for any feedback or bug reports.

Darkness is much weaker than light path. Inflict spells are not good to use on enemies. I think Inflict spells should be changed like this: "[1d3+3] per caster level on living enemies, 1d4 plus 1 per caster level on undead allies(pale masters)" It's something similar to Positive Burst(1d8 plus 1 per caster level to heal allies, 1d8 per caster level positive damage to undead)

[Ebergar]

First of all, i did not play as Divine Disciple... yet.
But according to what i analyzed and saw in this tree, it is done right and VERY accurately.

Clerics have great amount of spell slots, and You provided means for them to fill those slots - these additional spells are great. Whats more, You fulfilled missing caster enhancements and put them there altogether - another great thing! And the concept of being good or 'evil' is great also. This alignment also makes players treat this tree as "personalized tree", which skills suit character's chosen emissary type.

The developer that worked on this tree did his job well.

@edit I agree with Targal, light and darkness there needs some balancing.

[Targal]

Also 4 tier SLA unholy blight is most useless becuase almost enemise in the game have their alignment as evil. So the spell won't work well.

[Vargouille]

Tentative upcoming fixes / changes based on our internal testing & feedback:

- Add Quicken to the possible Improved metamagics on tier 3 (whups).
- Divine Disciple Spell Critical enhancements function properly instead of not at all (whups).
- Unholy Blight replaced with Necrotic Burst.
- Sun Bolt's maximum caster level reduced. Still subject to possible changes or balancing, but the cap of level 30 that is in the current Lamannia build is ... not quite right for a level 3 spell that has excellent scaling.

We recognize that Dark may be getting the worse deal right now, but still welcome feedback and ideas in that regard.

[EllisDee37]

We recognize that Dark may be getting the worse deal right now, but still welcome feedback and ideas in that regard.

My first reaction is a big thumbs up for the caster tree.

As you note, the darkside could use some love. My necro cleric couldn't be more darkside but will choose lightside now because the difference in SLA usefulness is -- pardon the pun -- like night and day.

The PM SLAs on live are nice but really only useful for running overlevel. They're almost pointless even in EN content on a 25, which means they aren't very good except to (for example) quickly faceroll heroic casual ADQ1 on the way to eADQ2, or maybe blitz through some shroud flagging on normal to put together a signet stone you craft into a base item that you pass to the alt who wants it. In real, actual questing, the PM SLA is an afterthought at best.

The inflict SLAs on beta are 100% useless. My necro cleric never uses any inflict spells at all, and only uses Harm to heal pale masters. I would suggest making necrotic ray -- not burst/blast/whatever -- as the highest tier darkside cleric SLA while leaving the lower tier SLAs the gimpy inflict or PM SLAs. Of course with arrow prereqs, meaning you have to spend heavily on annoying prereqs to get the uberlicious necrotic ray sla.

Short of a necrotic ray SLA, I don't see any way I'll choose darkside. And my cleric is build for the darkside. Light ray SLAs are just too good. (There is not "lightward" spell that completely nullifies light rays like deathward completely negates necrotic ray. That's the balancing mechanic for necrotic ray.)

I'm initially skeptical on the new cleric tree not granting spellpower per point spent while all other caster trees do, but I'd much, much, much prefer this direction for ALL spell power in all trees for all classes. Remove "spellpower per point spent" entirely and balance the selected spellpower enhancements accordingly and your system will be close to finished.

Speaking of which, I notice that ranger STILL has no devotion whatseoever in any tree despite devs assuring us they were going to add it in, and kotc/hotd pallies are still SOL for their devotion. As much as I love the new cleric tree, and the expansion to 6 trees, this oversight on ranger and pally devotion makes me grade the enhancements beta as an F. Complete fail.

[dejafu]

May I just say that this is exactly what I was thinking was needed for a third cleric tree. Bravo!

That being said, yes, Darkness needs some more "oomph." How are these for ideas (that may be too much/difficult to work out in time, but this is brainstorming):

• Make a Darkness ability that combines Mass Cure spells with Mass Inflict spells. Any allies within the area of effect are granted healing, any enemies take negative energy damage instead.
• Give an ability that grants a negative energy damage kicker to other damaging spells. I'm thinking something similar to the Shiradi bonus damage procs, but in this case will just grant a chance to deal extra negative energy damage every time an enemy is damaged by one of your spells.

Also...

<falls to the floor, rends clothes, shaves head and sprinkles ash all over>

PLEASE give us a third FvS tree now as well! One that ISN'T one of the cleric trees! If you can make it something approximating the Divine Avenger we were given glimpses of years ago, I'll even forgive having the Protection tree as filler.

Pleeeeeaaase?

puss_in_boots.jpg

[Hoiii]

Make a Darkness ability that combines Mass Cure spells with Mass Inflict spells. Any allies within the area of effect are granted healing, any enemies take negative energy damage instead.

This may not be a good idea in my opinion as it will make your mass cures heal undead targets.

[Candela90]

May I just say that this is exactly what I was thinking was needed for a third cleric tree. Bravo!

That being said, yes, Darkness needs some more "oomph." How are these for ideas (that may be too much/difficult to work out in time, but this is brainstorming):

• Make a Darkness ability that combines Mass Cure spells with Mass Inflict spells. Any allies within the area of effect are granted healing, any enemies take negative energy damage instead.
• Give an ability that grants a negative energy damage kicker to other damaging spells. I'm thinking something similar to the Shiradi bonus damage procs, but in this case will just grant a chance to deal extra negative energy damage every time an enemy is damaged by one of your spells.

Also...

<falls to the floor, rends clothes, shaves head and sprinkles ash all over>

PLEASE give us a third FvS tree now as well! One that ISN'T one of the cleric trees! If you can make it something approximating the Divine Avenger we were given glimpses of years ago, I'll even forgive having the Protection tree as filler.

Pleeeeeaaase?

puss_in_boots.jpg

True - fvs should have 3 trees. Cleric should have 3 trees.
And Fvs ones should be:
- AoV - almost good as it is now. need a few repairs - focus on crits and dmg, some SLAs
- Divine Avenger - melee tree charisma based skills
- healing/tankish one - Bacon of Hope - some healing SLA
note some crappy copy.

Clerics on the other side should get
- healing- some healing SLA too (here also aura enhancements)
- caster tree - focus on DC, some SLAs
- battlecleric tree - tankish/melee one

Also FVS needs sunbolt.

I just think cleric/fvs should be a little like wizz/sorc almost/ Cleric gets capstone with wisdom (+2 to dc), more dc enhancements right now (wisdom 3) and fvs seems to be focus on dmg more than dc. So why on the earth damaging light spell is in cleric tree? O.o

[Ancient]

- Sun Bolt's maximum caster level reduced. Still subject to possible changes or balancing, but the cap of level 30 that is in the current Lamannia build is ... not quite right for a level 3 spell that has excellent scaling.

I just got done with my test divine disciple build. It was interesting, but doesn't scale well to higher levels. Too many spells hit the max casting level. I was excited to see the level 30.... Nerfing this is going the wrong direction.

[HatsuharuZ]

The problem with inflict spells is that they are more limited than the light spells. For one thing, most of the Inflict spells (not the mass ones) are limited to touch range. Also, spell resistance is an issue.

As for the D.D. tree itself....

I like this in general. It's been a long time in coming, certainly! The dev who made this deverves a Nice Hat. However, I have a few problems with it:

1) The DC-enhancing enhancement is a tier 5 enhancement. Ouch. Please lower it to tier 4 and put a second one in, that lets you choose a second spell school to enhance. Clerics don't have enough offensive spells to stick to one school only, unlike sorcerers or wizards.

2) This tree is very light on top. In the Tempest tree, I see things that make go "OH F*** I SHOULD GET THIS!". In this tree? Not really.

3) No spellpower or saves action boosts. Those would be nice to have.

4) The capstone is odd. It gives you a spellpower *opposite* of the path you chose, plus Word of Balance as a spell. (Yay WoB!). However, if you have been leveling a cleric using nothing but light spells, what is the point of the extra negative spellpower? Kind of odd to me.

[Aregantis]

darkness is really not useful to use...

[Targal]

Tentative upcoming fixes / changes based on our internal testing & feedback:
- Unholy Blight replaced with Necrotic Burst.

We recognize that Dark may be getting the worse deal right now, but still welcome feedback and ideas in that regard.

like wizard DOES NOT DO everything as pale master's abilities(they use their wizard spells), Cleric should use their cleric spells to use Darkness, or useful spells should be added to Darkness(but power word:stun? It's horrible.). Mostly I'd like to say Cleric should use their spells on spellbook frequently. so there's some ways.

1)New spells for Divine
2)Change on current spells
3)special things on Darkness tree

things below are my thought on darkness.



1)New Things which can be special.
Negative Bolt: Light has Sun bolt. why not?

Mass, Harm: why dose it not exist? always wondering.

Lingering Negative: 1d6 plus 1 per caster damage level every 2 secs for a duration of 16 secs, and can be stacked 3 times. same to divine punishment.(I think giving it as normal spell should be OP when used with divine punishment. as an ability of darkness tree would be good.)

Avatar of Darkness: (toggle)make yourself attuned to dark. You're now 10% incorporeal, have 15 negative energy spell power, take light damage by 133%, but can be healed by negative energy. in a word, you're now living and undead both. - It'd be good as divine disciple ability.
(+Avatar of Light: (toggle)make yourself attuned to light. You're now 10% incorporeal, have 15 light spell power, take light damage by 66% and take healing amplification 10%.)

Spontaneous Casting - Inflict: now you spontaneously prepare Inflict spells instead cure spells... or both(how's this as darkness ability?).

Duplicity of life: Your cure spells are also treated as inflict spells, or inflict spells as cure spells. now It's not matter your target is if undead or living. Your cure and inflict spells always heal all allies, also give damage to all enemies. also your empower healing metamagic can be used to inflict spells.
* It would works as this.
1.Positive heal to ally living.
2.Negative heal to ally undead.
3.Positive attack to enemy undead.
4.Negative attack to enemy living.
(It'd be nice if heal and harm worked also.)
(I think adding new spells would be easy for developers, such as conjure moderate wounds, conjure critical wounds working both heal and attack.)




2)Changes
Light Inflict Wounds: 1d6+2 plus 1 per caster level to heal allies(Max 5), 4 plus 1d3+3 per caster level damage to enemies.(Max 6)

Moderate Inflict Wounds: 2d6+4 plus 1 per caster level to heal(Max 10), 8 plus 1d3+4 per caster level damage to enemy.(max 12)

Serious Inflict Wounds: 3d6+6 plus 1 per caster level to heal(Max 15), 12 plus 1d3+5 per caster level damage to enemy.(max 18)

Critical Inflict Wounds: 4d6+8 plus 1 per caster level to heal(Max 20), 16 plus 1d3+6 per caster level damage to enemy.(max 24)

Harm: 10 per caster level to heal(Max 15), 15 per caster levels damage to enemy(Max 20)(maybe It's something meaningless because Harm is not affected by metamagic.)

(I'm not sure about that positive versions should be also changed as this. There's already positive burst on Radiance Servant.)


I hope My feedback would be helpful.

[Silverleafeon]

Tentative upcoming fixes / changes based on our internal testing & feedback:

- Add Quicken to the possible Improved metamagics on tier 3 (whups).
- Divine Disciple Spell Critical enhancements function properly instead of not at all (whups).
- Unholy Blight replaced with Necrotic Burst.
- Sun Bolt's maximum caster level reduced. Still subject to possible changes or balancing, but the cap of level 30 that is in the current Lamannia build is ... not quite right for a level 3 spell that has excellent scaling.

We recognize that Dark may be getting the worse deal right now, but still welcome feedback and ideas in that regard.

Nicely done, tips hat to the Devs.

Please, please, please, please, pleases....keep Sun bolt as is or real close.

[fmalfeas]

We'd love playtest feedback on the new offensive caster enhancement tree, Divine Disciple, especially since it wasn't around for comments in the earlier enhancement preview.

Thank you for any feedback or bug reports.

I'll admit off the bat that I haven't tinkered with it yet...but I have read the thread.

One big thing that would help in getting people liking the Inflict + Harm line is removing Spell Resistance from them. Necrotic Ray, Necrotic Touch, Necrotic Bolt, Necrotic Blast, on the wizard side have never been subject to SR that I know of. So why are the clerical equivalents, especially since clerics are supposed to be better at handling pure positive/negative energy than a wizard anyway?

Also, Harm is incapable of killing, which makes it unpopular, and the Inflict spells are SP-ineffecient.

So you have low to moderate damage (or potentially huge damage that requires more damage no matter what to make the kill) that has a saving throw, is affected by SR, /and/ costs SP as though it were more powerful than it is.

Something's gotta give, for that to be a truely popular path to take.

[My2Cents]

I've removed my post.

Part of it was due to my (understandable but incorrect) assumptions from looking at the beta enhancements UI and drawing incorrect conclusions about what was available.

The remainder of my comments belong in two other, better places.