Paladin: Sacred Defender Changes

[Severlin]

Greetings.

We are updating a few enhancements in the Sacred Defender tree for Paladins. These changes are designed at making the tree more desirable and allowing it to better work with the armor mitigation changes.

First, we changed some AP costs for existing enhancements:

AP cost of Saves Boost changed to 1/1/1.
AP cost of Defense Boost changed to 1/1/1.
AP cost of Reinforced Defense changed to 1/1/1 both times you can take it.
AP cost of Harbored by Light changed to 1/1/1.

Now onto the tree changes:


Innate Abilities

• 1 AP: Holy Bastion: You gain +1 Hit Point and 1 Positive Energy Spell Power for each action point you spend in this tree. Each Sacred Defender Core Ability you possess grants +2% Fortification.
• (Moved to tier 2) 5 AP, Pal3: Sacred Defense: Defensive Stance: You gain 10 Physical Resistance and Magical Resistance and a 50% bonus to threat generation. (Note: the movement penalty was removed.) (Note: the stance does not require a shield.)
• (Moved to tier 3) 10 AP, Pal6: Divine Righteousness: Channel Divinity: You gain temporary hit points equal to your Charisma score and a 100% Sacred bonus to threat generation for 60 seconds.
• 20 AP, Pal12: Redemption: The following spells are added to the Paladin spell list: Level 2: Raise Dead Level 3: Resurrection Level 4: True Resurrection. Passive: You gain 5 Physical Resist Rating and 5 Magical Resist Rating.
• 30 AP, Pal18: Glorious Stand: Channel Divinity: For a short duration you gain DR 20/epic, take reduced damage from elemental and negative energy, receive double healing from positive energy, and are immune to secondary effects of attacks such as 'wounding' or 'vorpal'. Passive: You gain 5 Physical Resist Rating and 5 Magical Resist Rating.
• 41 AP, Pal20: Eternal Defender: Passive: You gain +2 Charisma and +2 Constitution, and grants a Sacred bonus that increases your range of unconsciousness by your Charisma score. (This bonus updates once per minute.) Toggle: While Eternal Defender is active, if you drop below 0 hit points, two uses of Lay on Hands and Turn Undead are immediately expended and you receive a reactive heal for 250 points of Positive Energy healing. Passive: You gain 10 Physical Resist Rating and 10 Magical Resist Rating.

Tier One (0 AP Required)

• Item Defense: You have a (25/50/75)% chance to negate potential item wear.
• Extra Lay on Hands: You gain +(1/2/3) uses of Lay on Hands.
• Improved Sacred Defense: Multiselector:
  
  • Resilient Defense: While in Sacred Defense, you gain a +(1/2/3) Sacred bonus to all Saving Throws.
  • Durable Defense: While in Sacred Defense, you gain a +(5/10/15) Sacred bonus to Physical Resistance Rating and Magical Resist Rating.
  • Inciting Defense: While in Sacred Defense, you gain a (25/50/75)% Sacred bonus to melee threat generation.
  
  
• Sacred Armor Mastery: +(1/2/3) Armor Class and (+1/2/3) Maximum Dexterity Bonus when wearing Armor.
• Saves Boost: Activate to gain a (+2/+4/+6) Action Boost bonus to all Saving Throws for 20 seconds. While under this effect you do not automatically fail saving throws on a roll of a natural 1.

Tier Two (5 AP Required)

• Instinctive Defense: You take 5% less extra damage when struck while helpless.
• Bulwark Aura: Your Aura now grants +(1/3/5) Armor Class.
• Improved Sacred Defense: See tier one. (Pick one you don’t have.)
• Sacred Shield Mastery: +(5%/10%/15%) Shield Armor Class and (+1/2/3) Tower Shield Maximum Dexterity Bonus.
• Defense Boost: Activate to gain a (+5/+10/+15) Action Boost bonus to Armor Class, Physical Resistance Rating and Magical Resistance Rating for 20 seconds.

Tier Three (10 AP Required)

• Resistance Aura: Your Aura now grants +(1/2/3) to Saving Throws.
• Improved Sacred Defense: See tier one. (Pick one you don’t have.)
• Greater Sacred Defense: Multiselector:
  
  • Strong Defense: Sacred Defense: While wearing medium or heavy armor or wielding a shield you gain a +(2/4/6) Sacred bonus to Strength
  • Hardy Defense: Sacred Defense: While wearing medium or heavy armor or wielding a shield you gain a +(2/4/6) Sacred bonus to Constitution
  • Tenacious Defense: Sacred Defense: While wearing medium or heavy armor or wielding a shield you gain a +(10/15/20)% Sacred bonus to maximum hit points.
• +1 Con or Cha: +1 Constitution or Charisma

Tier Four (20 AP Required)

• Reinforced Defense: Improves the Armor Class bonuses you receive from shields or armor.
  Choose One:
  Reinforced Armor: The Armor Class bonus you gain from armor or docents is increased by 15%/30%/50%.
  Reinforced Shield: The Armor Class bonus you gain from using a shield is increased by 15%/30%/50%¹.
• Spellshield Aura: Your Aura now grants a +(2/4/6) Sacred bonus to Spell Resistance.
• Swift Defense: Sacred Defense grants you a 10% sacred bonus to movement speed.
• Greater Sacred Defense: See tier one. (Pick one you don’t have.)
• +1 Con or Cha: +1 Constitution or Charisma

Tier Five (30 AP Required)

• Reprisal: On Attacked: Your next attack gains +1 damage. This effect stacks (3/6/10) times.
• Reinforced Defense: Improves the Armor Class bonuses you receive from shields or armor. Choose the option you didn't choose at Tier 4.
• Harbored By Light: You gain +10/+15/+25 Physical Resist Rating and Magical Resist Rating. You gain 1/2/3 uses of Lay On Hands.* In addition, while you are actively blocking with a shield, enemies that attack you will take 3d4/4d4/5d4 Light Damage.
• Greater Sacred Defense: Further improves your Sacred Defense stance. Pick the third option left.

*Note: Harbored By Light mistakenly gives 1/2/3 Lay On Hands on live. We made it an official bonus.

Sev~

[ForgettableNPC]

Hmm, I'm somewhat turned off by the fact Eternal Defender will consume Lay on Hands as well as Turn Undead charges.

Why not move Sacred Defense to Tier 1 if there's also an Enhancement improving the said Sacred Defense in tier 1 as well?

What sort of other Core Abilities will replace lv 3 and lv 6 Core Abilities now? More Lay on Hands/Turn Undead? Regenerating Lay on Hands and Turn Undead Charges?

EDIT: Boop, silly me, didn't notice the tier 2 and tier 3 core abilities were simply switched.

[Zurrander]

Soo... We lose the light damage form Harbored by Light, and Reinforced defense is now restricted to Heavy Armor? I Love the AP changes, but could you put Harbored by Light back the way it was (6 AP was fine & the Light Damage didn't hurt) and move Reinforced Defense back to Tier 4-5 (This makes taking at least 5 pally levels more attractive). Also, having Eternal Defender Use 2 Lay on Hands is a bad idea (it makes this already lack luster ability much to costly, 2 Lay on hands heals for much more than 250hp by it self). Also, is the +50 PRR form Harbored by Light WAI or are we losing that too?

[slarden]

Wow you keep busy! Thank you for all the work and communication.

My only comment is that the capstone seems underwhelming. I would prefer to see something unique for the capstone like maybe a good dps clickie of some kind and/or a self-healing SLA. While +2 cha and more PRR/MRR is always good, returns are diminishing.

[Krumm]

Tier Five (40 AP Required)
Sev~

I'm going to assume that this is a typo.... right?

Also, I too would like clarification on "Also, is the +50 PRR form Harbored by Light WAI or are we losing that too?"

[Vargouille]

Tier 5 is 30 AP as always; that's definitely a typo.

[Severlin]

Soo... We lose the light damage form Harbored by Light, and Reinforced defense is now restricted to Heavy Armor? I Love the AP changes, but could you put Harbored by Light back the way it was (6 AP was fine & the Light Damage didn't hurt) and move Reinforced Defense back to Tier 4-5 (This makes taking at least 5 pally levels more attractive). Also, having Eternal Defender Use 2 Lay on Hands is a bad idea (it makes this already lack luster ability much to costly, 2 Lay on hands heals for much more than 250hp by it self). Also, is the +50 PRR form Harbored by Light WAI or are we losing that too?

I don't know why that color transferred when I copied the code. We didn't change the light damage in Harbored by Light. Fixed in the OP.

When I tested Harbored by Light locally it provided 25 PRR. If it provides 50 PRR on live it's a bug. With the buff to PRR to use (100 + Rating) / 100 that would be too much.

The cost of Eternal Defender didn't change.

Sev~

[Varinon]

No longer requires a shield, and that is all that matters.

Everything else is nice too!

Edit: Making the defensive stances not slow your down (and potentially speed you up) is a huge improvement. Nobody wants to wait for a tank to get there to do his job, he should be there already.

[Violith]

I'm going to assume that this is a typo.... right?

Also, I too would like clarification on "Also, is the +50 PRR form Harbored by Light WAI or are we losing that too?"

if its not wai, it should be. with these changes even with the pure pali capstone Im still losing 5prr compared to what he has on live, and he's barely hitting the 40% reduc mark.

also while I like the +2con in the capstone as well as the prr/mrr... I dont like the fact that it uses LOH, at all. using purely turn undead were fine, they fueled other abilities and while they regenerated I dont see how it'd be OP'd to allow it to continue using just turn undeads. LOH dont regen at all (without a t4 epic destiny ability) are one of the only healing abilities (aside from useless cure spells) that paladins get. Costing even 1 loh would be too much for what little it gives. Even if you were fully maxed out on the uncouncious HP which is probably like ~-90 given that the item/enhancements all stack, the little it heals isnt worth the cost of a loh especially since if you went that low it would either be by massive damage, in which case the 250hp it heals would be close to meaningless, or your already out of LOH, and thus this ability wouldnt be activated. if it has to cost LOH, restrict it to 1, and make it heal more, either make it truely an eternal defender and have it fully heal them, or at least 50% of their max hp.

edited: didnt see the reinforced defense at t2, so nvm.

[Zurrander]

Thanks for the quick response Sev. One more thing, are paladin & fighter keeping the same reinforced defense? It might just be a typo but the new Paladin tree has it moved to tier 2 and only working with Heavy Armor, yet the New fighter tree has it kept at tier 4 and working with any armor. If possible, can we keep the current version (the fighter one) of Reinforced Defense for both trees? And Violith, i understand how you feel but like Sev said "the formula has changed", after the update you will end up with more defense even if your PRR goes down (and Reinforced Defense is being moved to Tier 2-3 "to my dismay).

[Comp.preacher]

Reprisal: On Attacked: Your next attack gains +1 damage. This effect stacks (3/6/10) times.

Sev~

Just to clarify, will this activate on ranged or melee attack whether it hits or misses? Could actually go sacred defender tier 5 as opposed to KotC with this and the stance requirement changes.

[Violith]

Thanks for the quick response Sev. One more thing, are paladin & fighter keeping the same reinforced defense? It might just be a typo but the new Paladin tree has it moved to tier 2 and only working with Heavy Armor, yet the New fighter tree has it kept at tier 4 and working with any armor. If possible, can we keep the current version (the fighter one) of Reinforced Defense for both trees? And Violith, i understand how you feel but like Sev said "the formula has changed", after the update you will end up with more defense even if your PRR goes down (and Reinforced Defense is being moved to Tier 2-3 "to my dismay).

yea, I seen that after I posted, but still dont quite get what exactly will be changed.. im terrible at math, so. say that his prr is at 120, currently thats a 45% reduc, what will it be in the new system?

[MonadRebelion]

I think Sacred Defense should be moved back to a tier 3 ability requiring 6 levels of paladin. I don't think making it only require 3 levels of paladin will encourage people to play paladins. I think it will encourage people to take 3 levels of paladin and produce even more powerful multiclass builds. Thus, I don't see this change as addressing the issue concerning the power disparity between pure and multiclass characters. As far as I can tell, allowing people to take Sacred Defense with only 3 paladin levels is just going to exaggerate difference between multiclass characters and pure class characters. I think the result of this is you end up making the game's content more trivial without much of a pay off. Everyone gets more powerful, but pure classes don't catch up with multiclasses, so you don't address what is probably the primary concern for why people to want paladins to be boosted.

[Varinon]

yea, I seen that after I posted, but still dont quite get what exactly will be changed.. im terrible at math, so. say that his prr is at 120, currently thats a 45% reduc, what will it be in the new system?

EditEdit: I was wrong.

Old vs. New PRR

Old
10 PRR = 6.22% Reduction
20 PRR = 11.84% Reduction
30 PRR = 16.92% Reduction
40 PRR = 21.52% Reduction
50 PRR = 25.67% Reduction
60 PRR = 29.43% Reduction
70 PRR = 32.84% Reduction
80 PRR = 35.91% Reduction
90 PRR = 38.69% Reduction
100 PRR = 41.21% Reduction
110 PRR = 43.48% Reduction
120 PRR = 45.54% Reduction
130 PRR = 47.40% Reduction
140 PRR = 49.08% Reduction
150 PRR = 50.61% Reduction
160 PRR = 51.98% Reduction
170 PRR = 53.23% Reduction
180 PRR = 54.35% Reduction
190 PRR = 55.37% Reduction
200 PRR = 56.29% Reduction

New
10 PRR = 9.09% Reduction
20 PRR = 16.67% Reduction
30 PRR = 23.08% Reduction
40 PRR = 28.57% Reduction
50 PRR = 33.33% Reduction
60 PRR = 37.50% Reduction
70 PRR = 41.18% Reduction
80 PRR = 44.44% Reduction
90 PRR = 47.37% Reduction
100 PRR = 50.00% Reduction
110 PRR = 52.38% Reduction
120 PRR = 54.55% Reduction
130 PRR = 56.52% Reduction
140 PRR = 58.33% Reduction
150 PRR = 60.00% Reduction
160 PRR = 61.54% Reduction
170 PRR = 62.96% Reduction
180 PRR = 64.29% Reduction
190 PRR = 65.52% Reduction
200 PRR = 66.67% Reduction

[Wizza]

So you want to nerf Divine Grace so people will not just splash paladins for 2 levels for the saves but you are moving Sacred Defense to tier 2 which gives:

25 PRR
25 MRR
+3 saves

Then, for another level of paladin, you can get:

Either +6 STR/ +6 CON/ +20% HP


This on top of Divine Grace and Divine Might. You are not encouraging people to play paladins.


The Capstone is garbage. Range of unconsciousness? Oh please, noone drops below 0 HP, we either die or not.

Reprisal is horrible. 1 hit on EE is 300 damage and we just gain +1 damage for ONE attack? And you want us to stack it TEN TIMES? It makes no sense. When you balance mobs damage/HP of harder content, then we can talk about having enhancements that has to make you take damage to gain X benefit.

[ArcaneArcher52689]

if its not wai, it should be. with these changes even with the pure pali capstone Im still losing 5prr compared to what he has on live, and he's barely hitting the 40% reduc mark.

A pure paladin in this tree w/ capstone will hit 75 PRR just from enhancements, and harbored by light is now less cost as well. Before you had to spend 4 ap for 25PRR(counting but), now it's only 3 ap. And in the new system, that 75 PRR is ~43% reduction, 100/(100+75)=.571. That's not counting PRR from Gear, from wearing heavy armor, from a shield, or from shield mastery feats.

When we count those, we get:
30 from heavy armor -new
26 from heavy armor - current
15 from tower shield -new
24 from item( lvl 19 guardian's ring)
15 from improved shield mastery

for an additional 110 before Epic destinies. That's 185PRR total, or ~65% damage reduction.
and of that 185PRR, 120 of it grants MRR, for 55% reduced magic damage

Oh, and Unyielding sentinel will offer up to 45 more PRR, for 230 total for almost 70% damage reduction.

[janave]

I think Sacred Defense should be moved back to a tier 3 ability requiring 6 levels of paladin. I don't think making it only require 3 levels of paladin will encourage people to play paladins. I think it will encourage people to take 3 levels of paladin and produce even more powerful multiclass builds. Thus, I don't see this change as addressing the issue concerning the power disparity between pure and multiclass characters. As far as I can tell, allowing people to take Sacred Defense with only 3 paladin levels is just going to exaggerate difference between multiclass characters and pure class characters. I think the result of this is you end up making the game's content more trivial without much of a pay off. Everyone gets more powerful, but pure classes don't catch up with multiclasses, so you don't address what is probably the primary concern for why people to want paladins to be boosted.

Exactly, the really good stuff is optimally placed into the core abilities. 18 - 20 is where it would get from "meh" to "woah"!4!!

Reprisal optimally would add %scaling damage source or other kind of goodie, please do away with +1damages, no matter how hard they stack, +1 is meaningless.

I would also rebalance many melee feats granting +1 attack, +2 damage. These are nice until lvl4-5, but as the game scales, every 4 levels or so you need to multiply your damage. Elite Inspired Quarters features 4-5k hps average noname opponents. +10 damage even after a good kind of crit multiplier is not very helpful. A finger of death takes care of these mobs every 6/8 seconds, instantly, from range. Kinda the place where melee characters grouping with arcanes wanna hit alt+f4 every few minutes-

The feat rules are nice for turn based D&D, but even the really mean things rarely feature more than 300 hps.

[Krelar]

Glad some things were reduced in cost (although I still have no interest in the action boosts)

No shield requirement is great, I can finally go back to using my 2 handed weapon when DPS is required and pull out the shield if I need more survivability or to tank.

Reprisal sounds interesting and I nice way to boost damage a bit.

The capstone is still awful. Did you make it more expensive or is that a typo? (On live it uses 2 uses of turn undead, not lay on hands and turn undead)
I said it last time and I'll say it this time. The number of times this would save my life are maybe once a month. That is awful when compared to a capstone that adds damage every time I attack something.
Add tower shield proficiency (this really needs to be somewhere if you want tanks to stay pure) and boost the stat bonuses to +4 then I would be interested.

[ddorimble]

Reprisal is horrible. 1 hit on EE is 300 damage and we just gain +1 damage for ONE attack? And you want us to stack it TEN TIMES? It makes no sense.

If it lasted 3s or something, so you could stack it up while being constantly attacked...ok, maybe...but just for ONE attack? Really really just inexplicably awful.

[btolson]

It's still awfully strange that you can upgrade the defensive stance before receiving it. A possible solution to make this more seamless but (hopefully) not more splashable:

• Change level 1 innate to grant the stance itself with +50% bonus threat, but with 0 PRR, 10% movement speed penalty and double spell-casting cooldowns
• Change level 3 innate to upgrade the stance by 10 PRR and remove the movement speed penalty and spell-casting cooldown

Also, this information is not represented in the OP, but have any dependencies changed? For example, have the Aura upgrades been de-chained (hopefully yes)?