Quote Originally Posted by Vargouille View Post
We're sensitive to the fact that some players may have characters they don't want to change. That doesn't mean that adding new areas of expertise to existing trees should never happen. "It's always been this way!" is a valid argument because we don't like to force change upon existing characters, but it doesn't automatically trump all other concerns. It's also not compelling to us to maintain previous expectations of what all trees or abilities do; if that were true we wouldn't even be considering changes to Gathering Cold, or the Flicker abilities, etc. Part of what this thread is about is asking these high level questions, and we're obviously seeing a variety of answers between different players.

It's also the case that Spellsinger simply has an exceptionally large amount of the Bard's "ability pie" right now. For it to be the primary healing and DC/CC and offensive DPS casting tree asks for it to be somewhat on par with Divine Disciple + Radiant Servant combined. On the other hand, Warchanter's traditional primary focus (melee) partially overlaps with Swashbuckler, and we'd like to find other significant elements to introduce to Warchanter.

Put another way, it's not clear that Spellsingers should be top notch Healers, DC Casters, and DPS casters, all at the same time, yet we feel each of these elements needs stronger options.

Yes, we are trying to listen to the feedback in this thread, that's true. At the time of that post quite a few more individuals favored Healing in Warchanter rather than Healing in Spellsinger based on the feedback in this thread. I explicitly mentioned this so other players who haven't spoken up might notice and chime in.

The main reason existing Bard-Healers are Spellsingers is because the support for healing is already in that tree. That's not a great reason for it to remain that way in the future. This is a distinct argument from the idea that someone might need to reset their enhancements to continue as they have been, which is absolutely concerning to us. If you think there's other important reasons why Bard-Healers are Spellsingers that are going unaddressed, we're listening.

Note that this still doesn't mean anything in particular has to be removed from trees (though there are some abilities that are likely to be put on the chopping block or heavily revised). Warchanter can become a stronger healing tree without taking anything away from Spellsinger. This may or may not make sense, but it's one of the options we've explicitly said we're open to.

Warchanter also doesn't need to lose any of it's current important melee abilities, but there's an open question as to how much more they should be getting.



This is part of our motivation and why we are even considering moving abilities around at all. This could be similar to how melee abilities left Exalted Angel and moved into Divine Crusader, which made Exalted Angel more focused and clear in what the tree allowed you to do, and helped strengthen Divine Crusader's focus at the same time, instead of multiple choices giving similar things.

Again, this is not a trumping argument that automatically wins over other concerns; we're absolutely not going to automatically take all Spellsinger abilities that target allies and put them in Warchanter (and possibly none at all).
The reason Spellsingers have a large part of the Bardic ability 'pie' is because you folks chose to remove a Pre and fold the vast majority of its abilities into SS. This kinda made SS the more powerful of the two and most migrated into that Pre. The reason most 'healing' bards are in SS is most likely because healing in DDO has almost always drawn folks that place primary emphasis on the spell casting attribute of the class. If they wanted to CC primarily there was little to no power loss in that area if they tossed healing on top as an added bonus. CHA worked fine for both goals. For WC, most folks built for melee and pumping up the spellcasting side of the equation is a lot harder considering the demands melee is placing on ability scores and feats. Healing doesn't fit naturally into what WC is in the game currently.

It sounds like you all decided to essentially make SS the casting tree and SB the melee tree. At some point you remembered Bard had a melee tree (such as it is) and are now trying to find a role for it since you gave its purpose away to the new tree. My suggestion is that if you want a third tree to be healing then you need to delete, rework and rename the Warchanter
tree. Warchanter has never been the place you go to be a healer. The two have never been linked in DDO in any way, shape or form. Warchanter has largely been where folks went if they wanted a gish type character. That is probably going to be Swashbuckler now.

I have read a lot of comments prior to this one expressing a hope that WC could continue on as a place for melee bards that prefer twf and thf. I really do not see that happening the way it has been explained so far. Bards get no additional feats so that is 7 up 'til lvl 20. If you want to be a TWF type you need: TWF, ITWF, GTWF, IC whatever, PA, Cleave and G. Cleave. No room there for any metamagics. There is a bit more room in THF: PA, Cleave, G. Cleave and IC whatever, assuming you are willing to part with the THF feats. Ability scores demand Str and Con for THF and TWF needs Dex too. Where do they get the points for Cha too? Now when a melee bard shows up in a group with a THF or two weapons there will be an expectation they are healers too and I just do not see how they do both in epic levels without more feats and spell points.

Healing makes a lot more sense for a casting bard. SS is going to be the casting Pre. Ergo SS should be the healing spec. That or just remove WC and build a third tree that is the healing tree just like Cleric has a Damage, Healing and Fighting tree.