Armor Up - Developer Diary #3

[Severlin]

On a lighter note I have a question for you Sev (PLEASE answer)=

Will grand Master of Flowers petal strikes be allowed to scale with meele power?


These strikes do next to nothing in EE and never scale, monks should want GMoF destiny, but instead run in Fury, LD, or Sentinel. =(

Grand Master of Flowers balancing, beyond the Melee Power addition to the innate abilities, is not on our list to rework for the next update.

Sev~

[Qhualor]

Actually we already discussed the Overwhelming Critical issue with the Player's Council. We are removing both the Strength requirement and the Great Cleave requirement from that feat.

Sev~

strength requirement is fine. removing great cleave is fine and it makes sense. there are already a number of epic feats that must meet a stat requirement, so might as well remove that too if you remove strength or it will seem like this change is to cater to paladins. this is a good feat that stands out for your high strength melees, namely barbs and fighters.

[Ryethiel]

Actually we already discussed the Overwhelming Critical issue with the Player's Council. We are removing both the Strength requirement and the Great Cleave requirement from that feat.

Sev~

O...M...G! Thank you! THANK YOU! TTHHAANNKK YYOOUU!!!

My Artificer was so **** tired of taking 3 feats that he never uses, in order to get that.

[bbqzor]

Holy Sword
The spell is being redesigned as follows.
Holy Sword
Evocation (Good spells)
Paladin 4
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Metamagic: Quicken
Range: Touch
Target: Self
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
Cooldown: 3 seconds
Channels holy power to increase the effectiveness of your equipped weapons. Weapons you currently are wielding gain an additional +2 holy bonus to enhancement value. The spell also increases the threat range and critical weapon multiplier of these weapons by 1.

Very Important Question: What does this stack with? Does it stack with Overwhelming Critical? Does it stack with Epic Destiny modifiers (in Divine Crusader, Dreadnought, etc)? I ask because those are very important things when evaluating this change. Later, when I talk about great cleave, it will come up again... but if this basically replaces Overwhelming Critical, and stacks with Epic Destinies, thats interesting (it makes paladins free-er in the build process, stripping "needed" feats away leaving room to grow) but ultimately doesnt increase where they are by much (yes, lateral growth with different feats, but overall dps is similar). If it stacks with everything, then it even more forces you to go that route, eliminating build choice even more. Both ways have pros and cons, but we need to know what the INTENTION is with the stacking here. Its very critical to providing any feedback on the subject.

Zeal
Zeal is already quite good, but as a quality of life change we are increasing its duration to match the new Holy Sword spell. It will now last one minute per caster level.

Its probably worth asking for some melee power here (like 10, same amount as the doublestrike). Why? Because with the amount of doublestrike available now (its rather easy to build around it and get 40-50% all the time) this has become diluted by proxy. It used to be paladins gained a rather unique boost here, now not so much. And compounding issues is the effectively diminishing returns of more and more doublestrike, in terms that each addition is a lesser increase of overall damage than the one before it. Adding a small melee power boost helps keep this ability relevant in a world where really, its not so much anymore. And without that, people wont take additional paladin levels to load this and holy sword. The goal was to make full paladin more appealing, giving them 2 appealing choices is necessary for that goal. QoL is one thing, but actually making it remain competitive as it was in the face of power creep is also a key factor.

Knight of the Chalice
Core Abilities
• 1 AP, class level 1: Slayer of Evil I: You gain +1 to hit evil and undead creatures. Your attacks deal 1d6 additional Light damage. You resist evil influences particularly well, gaining a +2 bonus to saves against spells and effects produced by evil creatures. All Light damage from core abilities scale with 100% Melee Power.
• 5 AP, class level 3: Courage of Heaven: Your Aura of Courage grants an additional +2 Sacred bonus to saves against Fear and now also grants a +2 Sacred bonus to saves against Enchantment. You gain +1 to hit for all attacks. Your attacks now deal 2d6 additional Light damage.
• 10 AP, class level 6: Slayer of Evil II: You now gain +2 to hit evil and undead creatures. Your attacks now deal 3d6 additional Light damage. All your attacks are considered to be Ghost Touch. You resist evil influences particularly well, gaining a +3 bonus to saves against spells and effects produced by evil creatures.
• 20 AP, class level 12: Improved Courage of Heaven: Increases the Aura bonuses granted by Courage of Heaven by an additional +2. You now gain +2 to hit for all attacks. Your attacks now deal 4d6 additional Light damage.
• 30 AP, class level 18: Slayer of Evil III: You now gain +3 to hit evil and undead creatures. Your attacks now deal 6d6 additional Light damage. You resist evil influences particularly well, gaining a +4 bonus to saves against spells and effects produced by evil creatures. Your vorpal hits against undead do an additional 500 damage.
• 41 AP, class level 20: Champion of Good: You gain +4 Charisma and 10 Melee Power. The bonuses granted by Courage of Heaven are increased by an additional +2. Your attacks now deal 8d6 additional Light damage. Any weapon you wield is considered Good aligned for purposes of bypassing damage reduction.

Overall, good changes. Its basically a combo of the existing ones removing forcing a pick, and a change to make the d6 damage scalar. The lv18 one got "nerfed", in the sense that you can no longer destroy undead on a failed will save. Im not really sure why that was done, but at 20+ it wont matter much and since its a lv18 ability, it had a fairly narrow window to start.

The capstone, I assume, will now actually work and provide good dr breaking? Currently, its broken, so need a fix verified.

Also, please ensure the ToD sets continue to function with "slayer of evil 3", as the current options will be eliminated. Minor, I know, but dont want to see those get lost in the shuffle. The 2 sets (kotc and hunter of the dead) will need to be adjusted to work with the new core.

With the scaling d6 damage, overall, this is a nice set of cores. But it does make me question how this is helping paladin, when its really only making one set of cores viable. I hope we see a similar (but obviously non stacking) addition to the other trees as well. Maybe Sacred Defender can have d6 light guard, or a multi-d6 flash on bash, or something. A parallel thing to ensure paladins, as a class, are always getting their "class based" dps thing in some format.

Otherwise, youll see 20 kotc paladins, and then small paladin splashes everywhere else. I was under the impression that a large part of the package changes here were to ensure paladin levels remain appealing from a class selection stand point. To accomplish that, it needs to be mirrored in other trees. Which, I think, would be an elegant way to approach things. So heres hoping.

Tier One (0 AP Required)
• Extra Turning: +(1/2/3) Turn Attempts per rest.
• Divine Light: Your Turn Undead ability now also deals 6d6/12d6/18d6 light damage to nearby undead. Scales with 200% Melee Power.
• Extra Remove Disease: +(2/4/6) Remove Disease uses per rest.
• Exalted Smite: You gain 2/4 additional use of Smite Evil per rest.
• Action Boost: Attack: Activate to gain a +(4/6/8) Action Boost bonus to hit for 20 seconds.

Nice changes to Divine Light, and Exalted Smite making it scale a bit better. Attack boost is still terrible, but what can you do. One comment which stands here as it does currently on live... what the heck are low level paladins to do? They dont get Turning until 4, and Remove Disease until 6. That means the ONLY thing to spend AP on from lvs 1-4 is smites and attack boost (which again, terrible). Its very limiting. Perhaps you can shuffle the tree around to reflect this a bit better, or add some new lower level things which make more sense (faith weapon as implement is one idea you could steal from other trees, etc). Just saying that from 1-4/6, spending AP in this tree is, and would still be under these changes, less than ideal.

Tier Two (5 AP Required)
• Improved Turning: You count as (1/2/3) levels higher when turning undead, and add (2/4/6) to the number of hit dice turned.
• Divine Might: Channel Divinity: Channel Divinity: You gain an Insight bonus to Strength equal to your Charisma modifier for 30/60/120 seconds. (Cooldown 20 seconds)
• Rally: Channel Divinity: Remove fear from nearby allies. You and the affected allies gain a +2/+4/+6 Moral Bonus to Will Saves vs. Fear effects and a +1/+2/+3 Morale Bonus to Attack and Damage for 60 seconds. (Coodown: 3 minutes)
• Exalted Cleave: Shares its cooldown with the Cleave feat. Make a sweeping attack against all nearby enemies for +1/+2/+3[W] damage.
• Action Boost: Damage: Activate to gain a (+10/+20/+30)% Action Boost bonus to Melee Power for 20 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 Seconds)

And again, important question... whats the intended design here? Without Cleave, paladins cannot use the dreadnought tree very well, nor qualify for overwhelming critical. On the upside, an enhancement based cleave takes the pressure of their (decidedly less than fighter) feat allotment. We need to know the intended function here to offer any real feedback. It could be cool, but in a vacuum, its just not that impressive because of the ramifications elsewhere. That said, if it also did a smite attack (or something) it could be pretty cool. Its just not there yet.

And while we are here, Rally... 3 minute cd? Thats excessive. The bonus to saves vs fear is hardly worthwhile (your paladin aura is already adding something like +8-10 in this tree off the cores, you have Lionheart from lv4 on if its really a problem, and in any event they dont stack with GH as morale bonuses, making spending the ap for an extra +2 to fear in case you didnt mem lions heart kind of a fail). So really, the point of this thing is +3 atk/dmg, as a group action boost kind of thing. My suggestion? Make it more into that. Have it last 30s, with a 60s cd, so it can be on half the time, but more in an action boost scale, so you can use it with other similar things. At once every 3 min, theres times you wont even fire it a 2nd time in a quest. Hard sell to spend AP on something that minor. Or make it like +5/10/15 melee power or something, a more significant bonus. But as it stands, its too marginal and infrequent to ever use.

Tier Three (10 AP Required)
• Improved Restoration: Your Paladin Remove Disease ability now also applies a (Lesser Restoration / Restoration / Greater Restoration) effect.
• Divine Sacrifice: Giving up some of your life force to win the battle, you empower your next blow against your foe. This attack deals an additional (5/7/9)d6 Light damage and increases the critical multiplier of your weapon by 1, but costs you 5 hp and 1 sp, whether or not the attack is successful. Light damage scales with 100% Melee Power.
• Vigor of Life: Your Positive Healing Amplification is increased by (5/10)%, and you take (5/10)% less damage from Negative Energy.
• Exalted Smite: Active: An improved smite that adds +1/+1/+2 to your weapon's critical damage multiplier and 0/+1/+2 to your weapon's critical threat range.
• Str or Cha: +1 Strength or Charisma

Only real change besides splitting the amp into 2 small bumps (hopefully 1 ap each) is to make divine sac scale with melee power. Which is rather interesting in that it makes leveling the ability up actually appealing. Good tier, good change to the only anomaly (not caring about the additional sacrifice tiers), not much else to add.

Tier Four (20 AP Required)
• Censure Demons: You gain On Vorpal: Stuns Chaotic Evil outsiders for 3 seconds.
• Passion: Your Divine Sacrifice ability gains: On Damage: Gain (5/10/15) temporary spell points if you strike an undead or evil outsider an evil creature with this attack.
• Vigor of Life: Your Positive Healing Amplification is increased by (5/10)%, and you take (5/10)% less damage from Negative Energy.
• Empowered Smite: Your Smite Evil and Exalted Smite abilities now grant a buff that increases Melee Power by 10 for 10 seconds.
• Str or Cha: +1 Strength or Charisma

This is where you start to lose people. Censure is good, but chaotic evil outsiders is pretty niche and 3s is excessively short. Divine Sacrifice granting nominal sp is pretty niche. Empowered smite isnt bad... but it depends on the practicality of managing smite timers post destiny changes (and if you dont think thats a thing, check out how divine crusader greys out smites if you hit them in different orders... its definitely a thing). Long story short, it might be cool, but its a small buff for a short time, which may be difficult to manage and only applies AFTER the smite (meaning that for the smite to benefit itself, you have to do two in a row, burning through charges somewhat quicker). And that doesnt even address the fact that smiting things which arent evil just to gain 10 melee power is an expensive way to try and make smite retain usefulness. Even worse, if the smite tree is connected in a chain (its not in the posted graphic, but just saying if that changes this would be worse).

Overall, this tier is questionable. As a T4, it should have some things that really grab you. It doesnt. Its a lot of conditional stuff which you either dont get (how many quests DONT have chaotic evil outsiders, or undead, etc) or only get small fractions of the time (with 10 smites you can get 100 seconds of 10 melee power, by comparison damage boost is 100 seconds of 30 melee power even with just 5 uses... its like the same time but at T4 and one third the value). Basically, the ideas of stuff here (you stun evil things, get bonuses for smiting evil things, get bonuses for smiting anything so smites good even when theres no evil around) are all great ideas. But its too niche/minor to elicit any strong reason to choose this over AP elsewhere.

Could use some buffing. Broaden out some of the abilities, or make them a bit more stand out (so when it does apply theres a bit more wow factor). Remember, something like a ranger gets favored enemy (+10 say) damage. Paladins get... 3s stun? 15 mana? Not even in the same ballpark, and rangers dont have to take T4 in a tree to get it. I know thats not entirely apples to apples (not trying to open that can of worms) just saying... when it shines, let it actually shine. Or make it work more. Either way, needs some buffing.

Tier Five (40 AP Required)
• Censure Outsiders: Your Censure Demons ability now applies to all Chaotic or Evil outsiders.
• Vigor of Life: Your Positive Healing Amplification is increased by (5/10)%, and you take (5/10)% less damage from Negative Energy.
• Holy Retribution: Melee Channel Divinity: Executes a powerful holy strike against the target that deals +1/+3/+5[W] damage. On Damage: Evil creatures with less than 1,000 HP have a 50%/75%/100% chance to be forced to make a Will save (DC 10 + Paladin Level + Charisma Mod) or be destroyed. On a successful save, the affected creature takes 100 holy damage from this attack as well as -6 to all ability scores for ten seconds. (Cooldown: 6 seconds) This ability also recharges one Smite Evil.
• Sealed Life: You are immune to Energy Drain.
• Avenging Cleave: Shares its cooldown with the Great Cleave feat. Make a powerful sweeping attack against all nearby enemies that deals +1/+3/+5[W] damage. Each creature gains one stack of Vulnerability.

And heres where you finish losing people. Theres little to no reason to take this T5 at all, just as on live. Yes, censure becomes decent, but is still limited to a single mob type only present in some areas. And even when it does work, its still only 3s. I think what, except for maybe swashbuckler, the shortest stun timer in game? This whole line could get bumped to 6s stuns and be fine. Or maybe a bit longer. People need time to see it, react, hit smite or something, even when in a group of mobs and with some lag. Dont be afraid to make T4/5 stuff good, its already tied to a single mob type (or single alignment of that mob type). Add some style to it.

Avenging Cleave suffers from the same issues above (ie, whats the intended functionality, how does it stack, will this line be integrated to also function with the dreadnought abilities as if they were cleave feats, etc). And in addition, 1 stack of vulnerability? One? How about 1/3/5 like the W codes, so that it might possibly last long enough to matter a bit.

And Holy Retribution... this thing just needs an overhaul. Look, its just vorpal. Thats all it is. Yea, it has +5W. But, it allows a save for the instant kill part. Thats a wash at best... very few times (if ever) is doing 5W better than just flat out killing whatever it was you hit. The -6 to ability scores for 10s? Who cares. Its an incredibly small window and very hard to capitalize on a -3 saves swing or something. Especially on a paladin, who has little to no save based effects at their disposable. You could maaaaybe help out a group mate by calling out when youre -3 saves swing lands or something, but for T5? Thats just not T5 material. Thats like stacking hypnotism, the paladin version, which takes T5 and a turn attempt and lasts half as long. Recharging a smite... useful. I wont deny that, as they recharge too slow and adding a mechanic for this tree to use more is encouraging. But its a lot of AP just to say you can change your turns into smites. Id revise this, or move it to T4 so all paladins have a shot at smite regen, and add something else T5 worthy to make the tree actually stand out.

......

Overall, ok the Core was some good updates. Middle of the tree, some hits, some things which need another look, but not so bad. T5 though (and to some extent T4).... still lackluster. While people may want more paladin levels for the core, there is essentially nothing to encourage taking T5 in the tree. If you get T4/5 ironed out, and maybe reshuffle some things around so levels 1-6 arent like "ok I buy more smiting because thats all I can actually use), you could get a winner here. But its not there, not yet.

We are still in the process of examining the Sacred Defender tree and will describe those changes in a future post.

Okay. Will keep an eye out.

[Infiltraitor]

I just finished reading the changes... and... WOW.
Just letting you know I will be buying an OTTO box AND renewing my DDO subscription just so I can play a paladin again.

[maddmatt70]

Retribution and the Cleaves are both lackluster. Retribution due to the DC not being sufficient and the Cleaves lack damage or sufficient affect. I do not think these proposed changes go far enough.

[Wongar]

Will Exalted Cleave meet the prerequisites for Great Cleave? Or does a pally still have to burn a feat on cleave if they want to take Tier 5 in the Defender tree?

[bbqzor]

Sigh, tracker didnt refresh before I posted. Sorry. Additional comments:

Actually we already discussed the Overwhelming Critical issue with the Player's Council. We are removing both the Strength requirement and the Great Cleave requirement from that feat.

Because if you could also take Cleave and Great Cleave then we wouldn't really be freeing up feats for the Paladin.

Okay so. The intention is to have paladins take Power Attack, Cleave, Improved Critical, and Overwhelming Crit. They can take or not take the cleave enhancement, as it wont stack with the feat, but they will take the Great Cleave enhancement to essentially keep that function but free up one feat slot.

Then, Im assuming, Holy sword and Exalted smite will stack with Overwhelming. So when you smite evil, you SMITE it (if you crit).

Not sure Im totally sold. Its better than the current situation, no doubt about that. But it basically means you have one useless enhancement (cant ever see spending ap on it if it shares reg cleave timer), and then still wind up in the situation where all your "smite evil" related stuff is highly conditional. I was hoping some of that would get eased up, so that paladins became a bit more reliable and consistent across content.

TLDR version, paladins get 1 feat back by spending AP instead. Coin toss depending on your build if its a gain. But at least its more options.

We didn't feel strongly that it needed changing.

I know its being forward, but you felt wrongly. I posted the details above but count me in, directly stated, as someone who also feels that ability is in dire need of a rework so that it isnt terrible. Its T5. If youre taking it, youre giving up every other T5. "Vorpal with a save, but its okay cause it totally gives you a smite" isnt in that boat. Especially not since the other vorpal ability they got (destroy undead on a failed save, in the old lv18 core) got removed (mentioned because if you were a lv20 paladin taking T5, good chance you had both, and part of this pass is explicitly to make pure paladin more attractive).

How about it does a smite, but on anything? Using a turn instead of a smite evil, and restores a smite evil. And if theyre under 1k hp, its a vorpal.
Or, it just flat out gives you vorpal vs evil outsiders and disruption vs undead? Rogs already get perma vorpal, this is the same kinda thing but for diff mob types. And if it lands, you get a smite back.
Or any number of other things which arent "lol vorpal, but also heres a smite". The smite recharge is cool, but does not a T5 ability make.

[Munkenmo]

Because if you could also take Cleave and Great Cleave then we wouldn't really be freeing up feats for the Paladin.

Sev~

I like to look at it differently. Even if cleaves are removed as pre-reqs for overwhelming critical, giving the feats and these enhancements separate cooldowns provides me with choices.

Cleave and great cleave are 2 feats, the thf chain is 3. On a feat starved class, if the feats are seperated from the enhancements I could still justify forgoing the thf chain and using that third feat to squeeze in a metamagic:

eg.

1. power attack
3. cleave
6. great cleave
9. improved crit
12. extend
15. quicken
18 maximise or empower heal

you're leaving me with:

1. power attack
3. thf
6. ithf
9. improved crit
12. gthf
15. quicken
18. maximise or empower heal or extend.

Allowing the cleave enhancments and the cleave feats to have seperate timers would provide more flexibility for paladins, not less.

[toapat]

giving the feats and these enhancements separate cooldowns provides me with choices.

the failure in your logic is that when it comes down to it, if you have more cleaves that is better than not

[serthcore]

Sorry if this has been responded somewhere, but does the extra crit range and multiplier of zeal stacks with competence bonuses or others? (i'm looking at a paladin/rogue with 11-20 x4 Sireth, or 9-11 x4 in crusader).

Edit: i'm talking about holy sword, not zeal, heh

[B0ltdrag0n]

Addressing the 100% melee power and 200% melee power as caps or additional bonuses for those abilities only (i.e. stacking) is kinda a necessary thing to know.

Also the changes are miniscule to almost nothing compared to what we have now and what you suggested before that was tied to class levels. I really am having trouble comprehending why anyone would look at these as positive changes.

[Delacroix21]

Grand Master of Flowers balancing, beyond the Melee Power addition to the innate abilities, is not on our list to rework for the next update.

Sev~

I am disappointed but appreciate the response. Thank you.


Also I am still unclear if melee power will boost weapon effects like holy, acid etc. or not. Or is it just boost certain class enhancements on a case by case basis?

[Severlin]

Okay so. The intention is to have paladins take Power Attack, Cleave, Improved Critical, and Overwhelming Crit. They can take or not take the cleave enhancement, as it wont stack with the feat, but they will take the Great Cleave enhancement to essentially keep that function but free up one feat slot.

Overwhelming Critical will have no feat requirements at all. The intention is to have Paladins take Exalted Cleave (better than Cleave), Avenging Cleave (better than Great Cleave) and then they can take Overwhelming Critical if they wish.

Then, Im assuming, Holy sword and Exalted smite will stack with Overwhelming. So when you smite evil, you SMITE it (if you crit).

Yes.

Not sure Im totally sold. Its better than the current situation, no doubt about that. But it basically means you have one useless enhancement (cant ever see spending ap on it if it shares reg cleave timer), and then still wind up in the situation where all your "smite evil" related stuff is highly conditional. I was hoping some of that would get eased up, so that paladins became a bit more reliable and consistent across content.

TLDR version, paladins get 1 feat back by spending AP instead. Coin toss depending on your build if its a gain. But at least its more options.

You won't take Cleave and Great Cleave at all, and Power Attack is completely optional. You can still get Overwhelming Critical and free up three feats.

Sev~

[Munkenmo]

the failure in your logic is that when it comes down to it, if you have more cleaves that is better than not

Not necessarily, given the boosts that 2handed will be receiving with melee power and the devs looking into glancing blows whilst moving, the 2hf chain may well provide better bonuses, especially when factoring in abilities like smites which can't work in conjunction with cleaves.

The truth of the matter is though that pairing the enhancements and the feats cooldown removes a build choice.

[Zakharov]

Actually we already discussed the Overwhelming Critical issue with the Player's Council. We are removing both the Strength requirement and the Great Cleave requirement from that feat.

Sev~

I disagree with your philosophy. Feats, enhancements, and destinies should have more requirements not less. Base build should matter more not less.

[Severlin]

Sorry if this has been responded somewhere, but does the extra crit range and multiplier of zeal stacks with competence bonuses or others? (i'm looking at a paladin/rogue with 11-20 x4 Sireth, or 9-11 x4 in crusader).

It is our current intention that Holy Weapon stacks with everything. Zeal will work as it does on live, except for the increased duration.

Sev~

[HatsuharuZ]

Oh, some issues with paladins:

1) 2nd Level spell list is very weak. Most, if not all of the spells here can be replicated with potions. Perhaps adding "Planar Weapons", if only the Good and Lawful versions of this spell, would really help.

2) I would be very grateful if you could add some positive energy spellpower to this tree, similar to how warchanter and deepwood stalker both have some scattered around. Currently, the paladin's best source of positive energy spellpower is the sacred defender tree, and a lot of the enhancements in that tree cannot be used until paladin level six. Bleh.

3) Please increase the duration and/or maximum caster level of divine favor. Or make a paladin-only version of that spell.


Question: Can you say anything about the Stalwart Defender tree, Severlin? Will it be upgraded? Replaced?

[lugoman]

Tier Five (40 AP Required)

• Holy Retribution: Melee Channel Divinity: Executes a powerful holy strike against the target that deals +1/+3/+5[W] damage. On Damage: Evil creatures with less than 1,000 HP have a 50%/75%/100% chance to be forced to make a Will save (DC 10 + Paladin Level + Charisma Mod) or be destroyed. On a successful save, the affected creature takes 100 holy damage from this attack as well as -6 to all ability scores for ten seconds. (Cooldown: 6 seconds) This ability also recharges one Smite Evil.

Sev~

You might as well drop the vorpal effect. You can finish off a 1000HP mob very quickly, the vorpal only saves you a few swings.

[InsanityIsYourFriend]

Overwhelming Critical will have no feat requirements at all. The intention is to have Paladins take Exalted Cleave (better than Cleave), Avenging Cleave (better than Great Cleave) and then they can take Overwhelming Critical if they wish.
Sev~

That sir, is huge. You have simultaneously given paladins, archers, swashbucklers (precision with swash > power attack) feat starved melees/ranged characters a huge boon. It is coming to outstretched welcoming hands! OT will any other epic feats have their feat requirements changed?