The Official Warchanter Lamannia Feedback Thread

[Cordovan]

Let us know what you think after trying this out on Lamannia!

[Maelodic]

The only thing I have to say about this tree is that a lot of it is way too expensive. Particularly Northwind and Expeditious are both 6 AP to grab- along with Reckless the three main abilities at T4 cost a total of 15 AP.

Otherwise the abilities are on-par and you guys have done great at keeping it that way.

[mezzorco]

The only thing I have to say about this tree is that a lot of it is way too expensive.

Entire cold line is a bit expensive.
Even Iced Edges, one would expect something better than d3/d4/d6.
Maybe the cold line could be reworked to have two ranks for each enhancement instead of three, granting current benefits but at two thirds of the cost.
So Iced Edge could be 1d4/1d6, Frozen Fury +2[w]/+3[w] with a 12+/15+ save, etc...
This way you would cut AP cost without reworking everything.

Also, there was a suggestion about letting tactical DC boosters count for Frozen Fury and the like, has it been discarded?

Arcane Shield Chant is a good idea, but +2/4/6 seems more in line with similar things.

Regarding Warmaster, very good job. But music bonus from Warmaster doesn't stack with Ironskin Chant and Arcane Shield Chant. Maybe you should make it unique bonus, or something.

Everything else is pretty fine, a truly good tree.




Except Kingly Recovery that I really don't like, but I guess it's too late for complaining about this.

[Synthetic]

Nice job over all.

Reckless chant should add off hand double strike and increased chance to proc magical effects on glancing blows to help keep all fighting styles in relative balance.

[Scrabbler]

What is the Expeditious Chant duration?

[Delacroix21]

The tree is obscenely expensive, it's ridiculous. Costs of things need to be cut way way down.

[Vargouille]

What is the Expeditious Chant duration?

All of the chants work like this:

• About every 10 seconds all nearby allies get the buff related to the chants the Warchanter has learned from the enhancement tree.
• This buff lasts for 60 seconds.

Note that none of the chants are activated abilities; they are all passive (including a rework of Ironskin Chant and changing Inspire Recklessness to be Reckless Chant). There's no duration to how often you get the bonuses. In many ways these are somewhat similar to Paladin Aura of Good, but they trigger a bit less often and last much longer once triggered.

[DrawingGuy]

I personally am loving the changes to the Warchanter tree, though there are things I do want to see changed.

- Cold line is far too expensive. Maybe if it wasn't a chain, but you want your t3 Spinning Ice? 21 AP investment is pretty extreme. Spinning Ice (since it's a Tier 5) and Northwind being knocked down to 1 AP cost would bring that to a more manageable level. Frozen Fury DC getting bumped up by 5 would also be nice. As it stands, even on a fully invested build, you'd still fail 50-95% of the time in EE content.
- Warchanter capstone. As people have mentioned, the capstone has been trimmed down from the early proposal and does NOT stack with the chants. This boils the capstone down to a stat bonus and having Inspire Heroics add 5 attack/damage, 4 PRR and 5 resists. Making it stack or returning it to the 20 bonus would be preferable.

[Vargouille]

- Cold line is far too expensive. Maybe if it wasn't a chain, but you want your t3 Spinning Ice? 21 AP investment is pretty extreme. Spinning Ice (since it's a Tier 5) and Northwind being knocked down to 1 AP cost would bring that to a more manageable level. Frozen Fury DC getting bumped up by 5 would also be nice. As it stands, even on a fully invested build, you'd still fail 50-95% of the time in EE content.

We'll examine some of the AP costs, though there's very few three-rank enhancements that cost more than 1 AP in the whole tree.

- Warchanter capstone. As people have mentioned, the capstone has been trimmed down from the early proposal and does NOT stack with the chants. This boils the capstone down to a stat bonus and having Inspire Heroics add 5 attack/damage, 4 PRR and 5 resists. Making it stack or returning it to the 20 bonus would be preferable.

Right now we're likely to leave it as a large Music bonus. It doesn't stack with Chants, but it's the largest buff and gives more than the Chants give, and can be used to buff someone who might have reasons to leave the area of the Warchanter for a few minutes. And, of course, you might decide not to take all of the Chant abilities.

[Scrabbler]

Note that none of the chants are activated abilities; they are all passive (including a rework of Ironskin Chant and changing Inspire Recklessness to be Reckless Chant). There's no duration to how often you get the bonuses.

Yes, I thought they lasted forever. I was just kinda hoping it had an unlisted time limit for balance.

But in that case, I don't understand why Expeditious Chant is on a multiselector with Rallying Cry. What kind of person would ever decide to get a few 20-second buffs when he could be letting the group run super-fast all day long?

[gwonbush]

Because Rallying Cry only costs 1 AP a rank instead of 2.

[IronClan]

Yes, I thought they lasted forever. I was just kinda hoping it had an unlisted time limit for balance.

But in that case, I don't understand why Expeditious Chant is on a multiselector with Rallying Cry. What kind of person would ever decide to get a few 20-second buffs when he could be letting the group run super-fast all day long?

I brought this up in the PC, Rallying cry is a T1 or T2 Action boost... who's going to select it? NO ONE... It needs to be something good to be a multiple choice.

[Scrabbler]

I brought this up in the PC, Rallying cry is a T1 or T2 Action boost... who's going to select it? NO ONE... It needs to be something good to be a multiple choice.

I'm wondering if the devs didn't notice how incredibly powerful Expeditious Chant is. Suddenly many kinds of character will be dashing around faster than they ever did before. When it comes to being slightly inside or slightly outside the reach of a powerful bunch of monsters, every little percentage speed can make a huge difference in how much you get hurt.

How fast characters move through the world is one of the most important foundations of how the game plays and balances; it doesn't seem like they've done enough to justify such a big buff.

[Vargouille]

I'm wondering if the devs didn't notice how incredibly powerful Expeditious Chant is. Suddenly many kinds of character will be dashing around faster than they ever did before. When it comes to being slightly inside or slightly outside the reach of a powerful bunch of monsters, every little percentage speed can make a huge difference in how much you get hurt.

How fast characters move through the world is one of the most important foundations of how the game plays and balances; it doesn't seem like they've done enough to justify such a big buff.

Update 22.2 won't increase anyone's maximum speed. Sprint Boost is the same bonus type, except far larger, and Rallying Cry has been available since Update 19, giving the same level and kind of bonus.

We do realize that having this be always-on is pretty amazing, and we went back and forth on where this should be on the tree. There were, and still are, those on the side of making this a Tier 5 ability, not tier 4, both amongst designers and the player base.

Warchanter was often considered the worst of all enhancement trees, which means it deserves some pretty amazing new abilities in the upper tiers. We're happy for you guys to convince us it's too good and should be moved or changed; that's a major reason for the discussion for the past several weeks, after all. (Or we could just default to being super careful about giving out Good Things and never risk being too generous with Awesome Things. I've been warned about being too nice. Being Too Generous is the root cause of most Nerfs, after all.)

[UurlockYgmeov]

Update 22.2 won't increase anyone's maximum speed. Sprint Boost is the same bonus type, except far larger, and Rallying Cry has been available since Update 19, giving the same level and kind of bonus.

We do realize that having this be always-on is pretty amazing, and we went back and forth on where this should be on the tree. There were, and still are, those on the side of making this a Tier 5 ability, not tier 4, both amongst designers and the player base.

Warchanter was often considered the worst of all enhancement trees, which means it deserves some pretty amazing new abilities in the upper tiers. We're happy for you guys to convince us it's too good and should be moved or changed; that's a major reason for the discussion for the past several weeks, after all. (Or we could just default to being super careful about giving out Good Things and never risk being too generous with Awesome Things. I've been warned about being too nice. Being Too Generous is the root cause of most Nerfs, after all.)

shh.... we all want to 'Zerg Härter'!

[maddong]

Update 22.2 won't increase anyone's maximum speed. Sprint Boost is the same bonus type, except far larger, and Rallying Cry has been available since Update 19, giving the same level and kind of bonus.

We do realize that having this be always-on is pretty amazing, and we went back and forth on where this should be on the tree. There were, and still are, those on the side of making this a Tier 5 ability, not tier 4, both amongst designers and the player base.

Warchanter was often considered the worst of all enhancement trees, which means it deserves some pretty amazing new abilities in the upper tiers. We're happy for you guys to convince us it's too good and should be moved or changed; that's a major reason for the discussion for the past several weeks, after all. (Or we could just default to being super careful about giving out Good Things and never risk being too generous with Awesome Things. I've been warned about being too nice. Being Too Generous is the root cause of most Nerfs, after all.)

As much as it pains my brush hook wielder I'd keep move the chant to tier 5.

Edit -> The boost should probably be tier 2 or 3.

[Takllin]

Do Tactical DC bonuses increase the DC of Frozen Fury/Spinning Ice for anyone that has been on lamannia?

[CaptainSpacePony]

(Or we could just default to being super careful about giving out Good Things and never risk being too generous with Awesome Things. I've been warned about being too nice. Being Too Generous is the root cause of most Nerfs, after all.)

I feel obligated to point out that you (Turbine) has a terrible record of nerfing, even when warranted. Meaning you don't nerf and have to rebalance by buffing other things. Power creep indeed. I personally recommend proceeding with caution since there is little political will to take back something that's already been given.

[Scrabbler]

Update 22.2 won't increase anyone's maximum speed. Sprint Boost is the same bonus type, except far larger, and Rallying Cry has been available since Update 19, giving the same level and kind of bonus.

I have some characters who've never once had Rallying Cry cast on them, not even while standing around in the city. Once the Warchanter changes come in, they'll probably get Expeditious Chant almost 50% of the time they're in a party. (And perhaps 80% of the time strolling around Stormreach). Both Spellsinger and Swashbuckler builds will have a big incentive to try getting Expeditious Chant.

Even if we pretend Rallying Cry was widely used, the comparatively tiny duration and few uses mean the uptime is just a slim fraction of what Expeditious Chant has. More important is the gameplay situations that cause running speed to be important: you don't know ahead of time when someone else will truly need a speed boost- the situation arises in a fraction of a second- so the manual activation of Rallying Cry was a major limit on the theoretical power.


PS. Ha ha, I wonder if any Hireling Bards will train for Expeditious Chant. Probably not... I think they'll keep the same old enhancements you can't even get anymore.

[Shinjiteru]

Do Tactical DC bonuses increase the DC of Frozen Fury/Spinning Ice for anyone that has been on lamannia?

Pretty sure they don't because the +2 tactical DC ED feat doesn't work on them. I also think that we need tactical DC bonuses to work on frozen fury to get the DC high enough, cha is not the main stat of warchanters. Only pdks and twfs with some special named weapons might break this rule and take cha as main stat.

I also think the vorpal effect of tier 4 should be a no save freeze, there is already a 12 sec cooldown anyways. And if a no fail freeze every 12 sec would be too strong... maybe make a 20 sec cooldown?
Just asking about that because I have the impression most bards are still having a very hard time to get this DC high enough to use it in highlevel EH and EE quests, so the average bard builds would at least have a freeze on vorpal hits.

The kingly recovery in T5, it's really nice but it doesn't feel bardic for me. Would have prefered a weeker healing ability that uses songs instead.
Personally I would have prefered a true resurrection SLA which uses songs, because warchanters have less synergy with healing than the spellsinger tree, even if the tree has more positive spellpower options now.


Would it be overpowered to let music effects stack with each other like the old dodge on items and exceptional stat increases? Would solve the non stacking capstone issue and would make it easier if somewhen someone decides to create a new bard song which is nice and powerfull on its own but in a use case scenario very week because most other songs/chants already give the same bonus. Inspire heroics for example is only a +4 dodge buff, the +4 saves are already covered by the longer lasting heroism song. This +4 dodge is still good, but I always have a feeling of wasting some song uses if several nice song effects don't stack with each other.

I also think a rebalancing of all old bard songs might be good, but I guess that would take too much time now.

And regarding the now AP heavy warchanter tree... don't forget that for most warchanters 8 AP in the spellsinger tree are going to be mandatory as well. (60% song duration and wand/scroll mastery)