Armor Up - Developer Diary #3

[Severlin]

Greetings,

To give insight to player about the changes involved with our Armor Up changes, Paladin buffs, and other balance changes we are writing a series of developer diaries to explain upcoming changes we have planned for the game.

In the last developer diary we discussed how Melee Power will work with Epic Destinies. If you haven't read through it you can check it out here:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...eloper-Diary-2


With this post we go into more depth about:
~ The redesign of the Paladin spell Holy Sword spell.
~ The increase of the duration of the Zeal spell.
~ Knight of the Chalice changes.

We have previously posted some proposed Paladin changes. While players were happy that we are giving Paladin's much needed attention, we received feedback that some players preferred that the core classes remain close to D&D. As a result we have moved our improvements into the Paladin enhancement trees, and made changes to two spells to help keep Paladin's fun and competitive with other classes.

Holy Sword
We wanted to discuss changes to the Holy Sword spell as part of our ongoing discussion of Paladins.

We have several goals with this spell:

~ Make Paladin spellcasting more valuable.
~ Make the spell valuable when the Paladin has high end gear.
~ Increase the effectiveness of the Paladin class.

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 and +1[W]. The spell also gives a +1 Competent bonus to the threat range and critical weapon multiplier of the weapon.


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.



Knight of the Chalice
As part of our ongoing Paladin examination, we have made a number of changes to Knight of the Chalice to increase the effectiveness of the Paladin.

Keep in mind that many of these abilities scale with Melee Power. If you are unsure what that entails I encourage you to read our previous developer diaries.





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.

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.

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)

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: +10 Positive Healing Amplification. -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

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: +10 Positive Healing Amplification. -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

Tier Five (40 AP Required)
• Censure Outsiders: Your Censure Demons ability now applies to all Chaotic or Evil outsiders.
• Vigor of Life: +10 Positive Healing Amplification. -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.


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

Sev~

[Cardoor]

Are Exalted and Avenging cleave considered tactical feats?

Edit: please disregard, I am reading up on Masters Blitz and see my question is moot.

[B0ltdrag0n]

We have previously posted some proposed Paladin changes. While players were happy that we are giving Paladin's much needed attention, we received feedback that some players preferred that the core classes remain close to D&D. As a result we have moved our improvements into the Paladin enhancement trees, and made changes to two spells to help keep Paladin's fun and competitive with other classes.

This is not what was said. This is not what was said. This is not what was said. We said the proposed changes did not actually help. Not that you should scrap fixing the base class AND only work on the trees.

[Enoach]

I like the direction this appears to be going.

Just some questions on Holy Sword;

Does this mean it won't have its Holy/Silver/Cold Iron DR Bypass?
I realize this would step all over the capstone but I thought I would ask since it being a Holy Sword it just seems the loss of Holy or even Blessed for just the bypass might have been overlooked. Even without the Holy I think this change is in the right direction.

Next, will this buff be similar to the Artificer Insightful Damage/Attack in that it is considered a personal buff and will still be able to be stacked with other Weapons buffs such as Elemental Weapons, Metal Infusions or even deadly?

[Scrabbler]

To give insight to player about the changes involved with our Armor Up changes, Paladin buffs, and other balance changes we are writing a series of developer diaries to explain upcoming changes we have planned for the game.

Public Relations tip: Space these out once per day, so each subject gets its turn in the spotlight. (And so you have time for a little course-correction on the later ones if necessary)

[LuKaSu]

This is fantastic. The Holy sword and changes to the cores are spectacular. Thank you very much!

[peng]

Greetings,
...
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.

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.

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)

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

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

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.


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

Sev~

I like the changes to zeal and holy sword.

Adding +1 to +3 attack vs evil and undead and +1/2 attack vs everyone is a pretty marginal benefit. I understand you want to keep the fighter of evil/undead flavor, but +3 attack doesn't cut it. Maybe +3 attack and damage or additional light dmg vs evil and undead.

Divine might being available to a level 2 paladin, but unusable without 4 paladin levels, a cleric level, or an epic destiny ability continues to baffle me.

Cleaves that share a cooldown with regular (great) cleave, but are equal or worse in power at t1 is also confusing.

Allowing holy retribution to transform turns into smites is nice, but the dc still doesn't scale into epics, even on a cha based paladin. And there's not much incentive other than this ability to go cha based on a paladin. With the % chance to work on lower tiers in addition...

Decent changes otherwise.

[Scrabbler]

Holy Sword
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.

Minor thing: You have the description priority swapped there. The "also increase crits" is the important part, and we couldn't care less about +2 enhancement (it could be -2 and we'd still use the spell).

Major thing: You need to really spell out how this spell stacks, both with other spells castable on weapons and with every other effect that can raise crit profile.

Notice that Holy Sword comes at Paladin level 14, while many other classes get boost to crit profile in tier 5 (which is class level 5)... use caution around builds like Pal14/Rog6 and so forth (if they were allowed to stack crit improvements to huge levels)

• 1 AP, class level 1: Slayer of Evil I: You gain +1 to hit evil and undead creatures.

That's a strange wording. Virtually every undead (except 1-2 named exceptions) is evil.

It's not clear if "evil and undead creatures" means:
Things that are evil undead.
Monsters with an evil alignment, or that are undead.
Monsters which are Evil Outsider type, or undead.

[LeoLionxxx]

Nice job adding cleave-clones as enhancments - this will free up a few feat slots! That new capstone looks nice as well. Now I'm finding myself enthusiastic about my coming paladin life

[B0ltdrag0n]

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.

Please do something other than giving a bonus to Aura of courage... @_@ Also +2 to hit for attacks?
What does scale with 100% melee power mean? THey only scale up to 100% or they start with a bonus 100% melee spellpower on them...If the latter you could have just doubled the damage dice.
Level 18 ability is very weak.
Capstone is still very very bad. Why AURA OF COURAGE BONUSES?!

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.

So exalted Smite and maybe extra turning. Nothing else is going to be taken at rank 1. Divine light still sucks. No way am I using it even with the changes. REmove disease? same deal. Not used. Still wont be used. Attack bonus? No. No thank you.

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)

improved turning is not useful. Turn undead is not useful.
Divine might remains the same.
Rally is still not used much, but its no real difference.
Exalted Cleave. Why bother unless it counts for qualifying for Overwhelming critical.
action boost damage. Its something though I'd like to see it combined with Rally into a single button press.

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

Improved Restoration is...well I suppose all trees have some deadweight. It might be ok if I have absolutely nothing else to spend AP on....in any other tree.
Divine Sacrifice. Please explain the wording of Scales with melee power...is it additive? Is it a maximum of melee spellpower that affects it? What?
Vigor...alright.
Exalted Smite. Ok

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

Censure Demons. Better than it was...but still I'd rather it not exist and something more generally useful exist here.
Passion: Point filler
Vigor of Life as it was
Empowered smite....Well this is somewhat useful actually.

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.

Censure: Um...Alright.
Vigor alright.
Holy Retribution DC is too low you may as well just say it does +5W and 100 holy damage on button press cause thats basically all it does.
Sealed life. No thanks.
Avenging Cleave. See Exalted Cleave.


TLR
What do your phrases scaled to 100% spellpower mean?
Too many things are not changed at all or made worse.
Too many things seem redundant or useless in practice.
Too many abilities cost 2 AP per tier for 2-3 Tiers of effect @_@

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

Sev~[/QUOTE]

[peng]

Cleaves that share a cooldown with regular (great) cleave, but are equal or worse in power at t1 is also confusing.

Nice job adding cleave-clones as enhancments - this will free up a few feat slots! That new capstone looks nice as well. Now I'm finding myself enthusiastic about my coming paladin life

Ah... Didn't realize they worked without having the feats. Not a huge bonus if you're working towards overwhelming crit, but free feats are always nice.

[legendkilleroll]

Cleaves that share a cooldown with regular (great) cleave, but are equal or worse in power at t1 is also confusing.

How are they equal or worse? Cleave +1[W] shares cooldown with exalted cleave +3[w], great cleave +2[w] shares cooldown with avenging cleave +5[w]

woud free up feats for a feat starved class but would also mean no overwhelming crit

[Scrabbler]

Not a huge bonus if you're working towards overwhelming crit, but free feats are always nice.

They really need to change the Overwhelming Crit requirements so there are more feats you can use to qualify. For TWF people to need Great Cleave is pretty bad, but for ranged users it is entirely indefensible.

[Thar]

no great cleave with this tree? is this to move pally's away from overwhelming crit?

if the ap points aren't reduced in the other tree it may not matter much as people can't afford too much in this tree if you tank.

[LeoLionxxx]

Another little nitpick about paladins: I've always found the iconic smite evil ability hard to use.

Often I would try to use the ability, but when the sword gets swung I might find that the enemy has moved away or has already been killed. This isn't much of a big deal except that it means I've lost a smite charge, which takes a full minute to recharge. I'd suggest it be changed to work like adrenalin from the Fury of the Wild destiny, so that the next attack that hits gets the benefit of the smite. Just a little quality of life thing.

[HatsuharuZ]

I like these changes for the most part. However, "Divine Retribution" seems over-complicated and pointless. There is no point in giving what is essentially a vorpal ability a DC check, nor is there any reason to apply a stat debuff to an enemy that is almost dead, that is under 1000 HP, at least in epic levels.

Secondly, I feel that paladins should benefit more from Divine Might. Perhaps you could give paladins their own class-specific epic feat that increases either the benefit or the duration of DM? Any class-specific epic feat would be a buff for paladins, honestly.

Finally, why do these smiting abilities share a cooldown with cleave? There are other cleave-like attacks that do not.

[gwonbush]

Edit: Disregard this post, I missed it was a channel divinity as well.

[Takllin]

I think that there are a lot of good changes in here so far, but see a lot of room for improvement.

First though, THANK YOU for finally combining the Cores so that we get both Undead and EO, I always thought it was asinine we had to choose one or the other.

I think the Cleaves should not share the same CD as there respective feats.

I love the changes to Zeal and Holy Sword.

I like the small changes to the Capstone, but I think it needs more. Give us some more holy damage or something to work with.

[LeoLionxxx]

no great cleave with this tree? is this to move pally's away from overwhelming crit?

if the ap points aren't reduced in the other tree it may not matter much as people can't afford too much in this tree if you tank.

Tire 5:
• 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.


What do all you guys mean about it not interacting with Overwhelming Critical? Is there something other than the epic feat that has that name?
(http://ddowiki.com/page/Overwhelming_Critical)

[Takllin]

Tire 5:
• 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.


What do all you guys mean about it not interacting with Overwhelming Critical? Is there something other than the epic feat that has that name?
(http://ddowiki.com/page/Overwhelming_Critical)

The prereq that you need Great Cleave to qualify for Overwhelming Critical.

On a side note, what about making it so we have access to three level four spells before level 19? Seems a bit odd, that at 14 we can get one, 15 two, but not three until 19 and the fourth at 20. Maybe at 17 or 18 give us three level 4 spells?

Also, what about moving CLW up to level 1, CMW level 2, CSW at 3, and CCW at level 4?