Armor Up - Developer Diary #3

[Nodoze]

Being true to this game; in a classic DDO sense, Paladins are OFTEN TWF. Trying to downplay a common playstyle because it isn't true to the p&p version of D&D is misguided. TWF is absolutely a common, and classic, part of the DDO Paladin.

Just in case my reply caused confusion on my position I agree that TWF should be supported for Paladins and that TWF Paladins are part of classic DDO... While still an oxymoron (at least until the changes go live) often DPS Paladins in DDO were/are TWF (especially if focused on single target DPS).

It should be noted before I type the below that I am biased toward Paladins as they are my favorite class from my Pen and Paper days and my favorite Paladins in DDO are TWF Paladins...

That being said, from memory, I think only Pure Rangers and Pure Monks in certain enhancement trees have an edge over Pure Paladins and other Pure classes when trying to maximize TWF. While I love Paladins (& especially TWF Paladins) I don't know that pure Paladins should have an edge in TWF over other pure classes that also TWF like pure Fighters or pure Rogues nor be on par with Pure Rangers and Pure Monks when they TWF...

Hopefully my memory is missing something and other pure classes that also commonly TWF have boosts that Paladins don't thus warranting that Paladins get a boost there also. [Edit: If TWF needs a boost overall I am fine with that but my instinct is that it should be tweaks to TWF and not Paladins and thus be available to every class...]

Note that non-Pure TWF Paladins, by splashing a little ranger (3+ levels) or monk (1+ level & centered), can get +10% offhand (or +20% offhand if both were splashed). This is part of the reason why I recommend that they don't make everything in the Paladin trees/cores be end loaded and kill splashing. Part of the fun in DDO is the fact that we can multi-class and come up with interesting combinations... I don't think making more than 14 levels of Paladin 'mandatory' for Paladin builds is good for DDO...

[Hamlin]

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.
...

Sev~

I really like what you did with the Holy Sword spell. Zeal change is nice also. But please, can you look at paladin spells as a whole? These two spells alone do not sufficiently boost paladin spell utility. I don't think I've ever put a level 2 spell on my hotbars at all. As a matter of fact, the only reason I even bother to memorize spells is so I don't get that annoying "You have unused spell slots" message every time I board my airship.

I don't have any suggestions on what those changes might be. But they seriously need some attention. Maybe give us better heals or more interesting buffs. One thing I DON'T want to see though, are nukes/damage spells. That should solely be the domain of clerics and favored souls. A dot might be okay if it ties into melee combat somehow. Maybe a spell to make consecrated ground, like a stationary pally aura that your group can use. I'm not claiming that these ideas are great, I'm just pulling stuff out of my butt for quick examples. I would just would like to see more interesting stuff in the paladin spell list.

This would go a long way towards making Paladins more fun to play and encourage more than Pally splashes much more effectively than enhancements. You're off to a very nice start with Holy Sword and Zeal. Please continue to focus on Pally spells, at least a little bit.

Thanks for reading.

[maddong]

With the enhancement bonus holy sword breaks celestias, right?

[Karadon_II]

With the enhancement bonus holy sword breaks celestias, right?

Yeah, pretty much everything that flags your equipped weapon breaks Celestia. I think even sneezing on it will as well.

[Noircere]

I hold the opinion that generally the choice of which enhancement to spend points in should be difficult. That is to say, there should never be two enhancements on the same row where one is obviously better than the other. I also believe that all classes should be built such that they can be useful with other classes and for other classes when multiclassing. With that in mind, here's my review of the proposed enhancement tree.

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.

These are all pretty good! They bring Paladin flavor while also being useful to other classes. As first glance, I thought the 10 melee power in the capstone was too big, but it actually compares pretty evenly to two feats from splashing Fighter 2. A big thumbs-up to the core enhancements! I don't think it would be worth much (not much has DR/law), but adding "Any weapon you wield is considered Lawful aligned for purposes of bypassing damage reduction" to level 12 would add more flavor without adding too much power. Currently 6, 18 and 20 all gain a "special" effect on attacks, but 12 doesn't, so it also would make that feel less... jarring.

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.

• Extra Turning is as good as the uses for Turn Undead charges. Looks good to me; if this has a problem, it lies in the Channel Divinity options, not here.
• Divine Light needs work. The damage it deals is overwhelming at very low levels, and irrelevant at mid to high level. Here's the thing, Turn Undead isn't used because against weak targets, you can kill them faster, more reliably, and in greater numbers with a Fireball (or Cleave, or...) and against strong targets, it doesn't even work. For this enhancement to be any good, it needs three things: it needs to make Turn Undead worth enough to at least equal other Channel Divinity options, it needs to make it better than that to justify the points you spend on it, and it needs to make it even better than that to make up for the fact that it's highly situational. Recommendation: Your Turn Undead ability now also deals 1d6/2d6/3d6 light damage per character level to nearby enemies (not just undead). Scales with 200% Melee Power or 100% Radiant Spell Power, whichever is more.
• Extra Remove Disease needs work. For one thing, you don't even gain the ability to use Paladin Remove Disease until Paladin 6. This should not be in Tier One; you can't even use it. (The same can be said about Fighter Stalwart Defense.) The other major problem is that this is nigh-worthless. True, Paladins themselves can't simply scroll it, but you don't really need Remove Disease. Ever. Recommendation: remove this enhancement, and/or bake its bonus into something related.
• Exalted Smite is good!
• Action Boost: Attack used to be bad, but now that Action Boost: Damage uses Melee Power (and so is less relatively-valuable with high Melee Power from other sources) I think this will be ok. It may take players a while to figure out when to choose this over AB: Damage, though. Consider merging the two into an enhancement-selector? Taking both seems like a trap.

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 has all the same problems that Divine Light had in Tier One. Recommendation: remove this enhancement, and/or bake its bonus into something related. Baking it into Extra Turning in Tier One is a good option.
• Divine Might is good! If we assume a middling-amount of CHA (+10 mod or so), then this adds 7.5 damage per attack for 2 minutes. If we assume 40 attacks per minute (not always attacking; sometimes running to next enemy or doing puzzles) then this enhancement converts a turn into ~600 damage. Using the action itself has nearly-zero opportunity cost, as it can be cast just before combat begins. Consider this the baseline value for Channel Divinity effects.
• Rally is good! When used just to buff a group of 6 players, it's worth 720 damage, per the above calculation. When used to actually remove or prevent Fear, its value skyrockets (though these opportunities may be rare due to the Paladin's aura of courage.) Balanced by the long cooldown and being ineffective in small groups.
• Exalted Cleave is great! It's powerful, and effectively also grants a free feat. Note that if the Paladin is just a splash (18 X/2 Paladin) then this enhancement is worth FAR less because it won't count for Great Cleave and Overwhelming Critical prerequisites. It could work as-is, but in the interest of permitting multiclassing, consider finding a way to let this enable those feats.
• Action Boost: Damage is good, see AB: Attack above for discussion. Consider merging the two into an enhancement-selector. Taking both seems like a trap.

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

• Improved Restoration. On the one hand, having Restoration can be a lifesaver if the party otherwise didn't have it. On the other hand, in most groups you're better off having someone else scroll it. Also, this is so situational that it can't justify the AP spent on it. Recommendation: Your Paladin Remove Disease ability now also applies a (Lesser Restoration and Cure Moderate Wounds / Restoration and Cure Critical Wounds / Greater Restoration and Heal) effect. +(2/4/6) Remove Disease uses per rest.
• Divine Sacrifice is good... except the first point spent is much better than the other two. Is this intentional? Consider (1/5/10)d6 light damage; the critical multiplier is very good on the first point already, but 2 AP per rank for the other two ranks is an awful lot.
• Vigor of Life looked very good until I noticed that it needed 4 AP. Humans get 10% healing amp for 2 points, and the 10% negative absorb is not worth 2 more. Recommendation: Costs 1 AP per rank.
• Exalted Smite is very powerful, but strongly-limited by Smite charges. Great enhancement!
• Str or Cha is boring but necessary.

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

• Censure Demons is very weak... except when fighting mostly demons, where it's just a little weak. It's just way too situational to be worth the points. Recommendation: You gain "On Smite Evil Vorpal: Stuns the target for 3 seconds. On Critical Hit: Stuns Chaotic Evil outsiders for 3 seconds." This would give some control over when it occurs, which is a more fun, and it also makes it far less situational.
• Passion is good. It's flavorful, and neither strong nor weak. If you want it to be strong, consider adding "On Vorpal: regain a Smite Evil attempt if you strike an evil creature."
• Vigor of Life - As above.
• Empowered Smite is very powerful, but strongly-limited by Smite charges. Great enhancement!
• Str or Cha is boring but necessary.

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.

• Censure Outsiders is again too situational to be worthwhile. Given the above suggestion for Censure Demons, I recommend: "On Smite Evil Crit: Stuns the target for 3 seconds. On Critical Hit: Stuns any Chaotic or Evil outsider for 3 seconds."
• Vigor of Life - As above.
• Holy Retribution is extra-awesome! Not only does it devastate a foe, but it also converts a Turn into a Smite. Cool! Does the holy and stat damage take effect on enemies with > 1000 HP? It should if it does not. Consider scaling the HP threshold with Melee Power. The save DC is kinda low for epic, consider using Character Level instead of Paladin Level.
• Sealed Life is awesome, yet not overly powerful. Relatively few enemies inflict negative levels, but when they do, it's awful. Does this apply to resurrection sickness? It should if it does not.
• Avenging Cleave is great! It's powerful, and effectively also grants a free feat. ...but it doesn't enable one to select Overwhelming Critical at level 21. Find a way to make this work; otherwise the hidden drawback will make picking this enhancement bittersweet.



Since I recommended removing a few enhancements, building them into multi-selectors or baking them into others, here's some ideas for enhancements to fill the holes.

• Healing Hands: You gain +1/2/3 Lay on Hands uses per rest, and gain +3/6/10 Positive Spell Power. Grants the ability to use Lay on Hands if you don't already have it.
• Reflected Glory: Whenever you heal a friendly character, you and the target both gain +3/6/10 Melee Power for 10 seconds. Can only be triggered once per 30/20/15 seconds.
• Crusade: You gain "On (Vorpal/Critical Hit): Gain temporary HP equal to your character level."
• Improved Holy Aura: Active: Overcharge your Aura of Good into a Holy Aura, producing a burst of holy energy, as per the Holy Aura spell. Costs 5 SP, 45 second cooldown.

[Nodoze]

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

Sev~

Sev,

I hope all the various feedback in this thread is helpful. Could you give us any insights into what comments or requests from here (or elsewhere) are things you are all are considering (in addition or in change to what you have already shared)?

One thought is that, rather than looking at one tree in isolation, it may be good to loot at all of the Paladin trees at the same time so I was curious how the Sacred Defender and any other trees were coming along and if you had an ETA on some previews.

Lastly, I was most curious if you all were considering any changes to "Divine Might". There was lots of discussion/ideas on this but the least risk option would be essentially leaving it as it currently is but adding a toggle to just add damage like it did before so it would be useful for non-strength builds (Elven Dex Paladins, Dwarven Con Paladins, PDK Charisma Paladins, etc)... Even if the toggled straight damage option was less outright damage and didn't get the multipler from stances it would still be appreciated...

Thanks again for stepping out to do this.

Severlin,

If the search features can be relied upon it looks like the last time you replied in this thread was post #371 on 8/1/2014.

15 days with no responses from you after ~300 posts of comments/feedback starts to raise concerns that you may have abandoned this discussion...

Thanks for Posting the Sacred Defender & Stalwart Defender trees for feedback in new threads on 8/13/14 as it engenders hope that you are actually reading these posts and contemplating people's ideas and acting on some even if you aren't able to circle back in the threads and post that it was in response to feedback/requests. Hopefully those posts were not just part of prior plans and everyone's efforts in this thread are in vain...

Do you plan to also release Vanguard or other trees for Paladins and if so do you have a date by you hope to get those posted ?

Lastly, while I appreciate all the efforts to make Paladins at least semi-viable again, I hope you all are also not pigeon-holeing us by only making cookie-cutter-Strength-based-only-Paladins viable. While it seems like the Holy Sword and other changes have been settled, there has been no response that I have seen that makes even the slightest attempt to address the concerns many have noted with the recent changes to Divine Might that created such a disparity.

Again, I respectfully request clarification whether you all are considering any changes for Divine Might that also works for:

• - Elven/other Dexterity based Paladins;
• - Dwarven Constitution based Paladins;
• - PDK Charisma based Paladins;

[SealedInSong]

When you put it like that, there's no denying it.

Rework Holy Retribution to not cost turn undead at all, but instead give it a 15/12/10 second cooldown. And make it something simple, like a +?[W] bonus and some light damage. No save. That would at least be something.

Change the censure line to work on all evil mobs at tier 5. (The tier 4 can stay the same.)

I would never play a tier5 KotC without this change, or something that removes the Turn Undead cost. Censure's duration is irrelevant at 3s and it only works against specific mobs! No thanks.

[Thar]

Any change to the Enhancement costs? make it easier to take these and the abillites in the upcoming vanguard tree or DS?

Divine might needs a bump down to 1ap since it's 3 tiers. is the cleave 1ap per tier?

the smite enhancements need to add a +5 or 10% recharge for smites.

[Nodoze]

Any change to the Enhancement costs? make it easier to take these and the abillites in the upcoming vanguard tree or DS?

Divine might needs a bump down to 1ap since it's 3 tiers. is the cleave 1ap per tier?

the smite enhancements need to add a +5 or 10% recharge for smites.

AFAIK for some reason they still haven't released even a draft of the Vanguard tree. Certainly would be better to be looking at the full picture when discussing the changes.

Edit: They did post a draft of tweaks to both the Paladin and Fighter SD trees though I don't think they address what you are mentioning. They can be found here:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...fender-Changes

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...fender-Changes

[Saekee]

will Holy Sword wirk on throwers? Sorry if this was posted already. Throwing weapons get classes as ammunition which makes this possibly problematic.

Really, though--why not just limit Holy Sword to...Swords?!
If not, then change the name to 'Holy Weapon'

[SealedInSong]

I post this as an adjunct to the argument that critical power is the single most ginchiest thing, and the only thing that defines whether a character is a horrible gimp or the most powerful build in the game.

Just sayin'

[Miightyy]

Severlin,

What's the fate for docent wearing monks? Anything for us or are we left out?? I read some changes but haven't come across anything about docents and monks. I am sorry I don't have time atm to read through EVERYTHING to see if it has been mentioned. Maybe someone else knows? Any insight would be great. Thanks!

[Zurrander]

It just occurred to me that this enhancement tree makes no mention of the light damage being restricted to evil mobs... If its been changed to affect all mobs I would appreciate confirmation from Sev. But In the mean time I'd like to make an argument for why it should remain "Damage against Evil".

1. Paladins (especially Knight of the Chalice) are fighters specialized to destroy evil, and should their for do much better against evil then other mobs.
2. The "Damage Against Evil" effect of Knight of the Chalice acts as a "smite okay" beacon for some paladins (myself included). Helping to prevent wasted smites.
3. It adds a lot of flavor to being a "Divine Fighter", and gives paladins another niche to fill in the DDO community (since the Aura support role has been lost to them).
4. It serves to separate the Vanguard damage tree form the Knight of the Chalice damage tree.

[Nayus]

Severlin,

What's the fate for docent wearing monks? Anything for us or are we left out?? I read some changes but haven't come across anything about docents and monks. I am sorry I don't have time atm to read through EVERYTHING to see if it has been mentioned. Maybe someone else knows? Any insight would be great. Thanks!

Monks and Docents are both unnaffected by these changes, you can keep your build as it is.

[Scrabbler]

Barbarian 18/ anything 2, single weapon fighting deathnip.
Critical rage, death frenzy.
Critical range 15-20 x 5. 13-20 x 5 in divine crusader. Crit power 24/32. This can be achieved on live right now, and it doesn't save barbarians, so clearly there are some other things to consider than just pure crit power.

I know I'm replying to an old comment, but just for the record:

Someone with Critical Rage, Death Frenzy, Divine Crusader, and Deathnip does not have 13-20x5 crits. She has 13-18x4 19-20x5.

The description for Death Frenzy has been incorrect ever since the tree-based enhancement UI was added; it is intentional that the +1 multiplier only work on 19-20. If it really was a blanket +1 multiplier, going Barb18 would be a lot more popular than it is (although Deathnip wouldn't be the leading weapon choice)

Therefore the new +1 crit mult as part of Holy Sword really is a big deal, because it's the first player +1 crit mult that can work with any armed weapon.

[Zurrander]

Does Exalted Smite still eat up 6ap? or did it change to 3ap (because that would be sweet!)... and I'm still unclear on whether the damage form the KOtC is Light or Bane damage...