Racially-unlocked Enhancement Trees

[LuKaSu]

(yes, I've also seen and participated in several threads recently about racially-unlocked enhancement threads. I'm just putting these couple posts up in order to link to them in my wishlist in my sig)

I think that the current list of racial unlock trees were:

Dwarf: Stalwart Defender
Warforged: Stalwart Defender
Halfling: Assassin
Half-Orc: Ravager
Elf: Arcane Archer
Drow: Tempest
Human: Pick one. (Slightly higher investment in Racial tree required to unlock.)
Half-Elf: Arcane Archer,

Human, Elf (Yes, in our current plan they can unlock racial trees from the other races if desired. They might be able to go Half-Elf tree -> Human tree -> Any PrE through gargantuan AP expenditures.) These are still subject to change. (Especially that Human part.)

A couple years ago, it was stated that the Devs were thinking about giving each race a racially-unlockable tree, in the same way that elves and half-elves get Arcane Archer. It fell by the wayside, and I haven't heard about it recently, especially by Devs. I wonder if it might be a good time to revisit this idea. I think it's got a lot of potential. My only thing about it is the human one. As it stands, Humans are a free-to-play race that are better than almost any other race (damage bonus, massive hamp, skills, DD dragonmark). I don't think they should ALSO get to choose any racial unlock. In fact, I think they should be the ones without a racially-unlocked tree at all. In my opinion, each race should have a good reason to play it. Whether that be for a battle reason, or a utilitarian or other flavor (not RP. Actual, uniqueness in playstyle) reason. Humans already have tons of reasons to play them.

I think we should work to make other races viable too. A couple weeks ago, in the regular forums, I suggested a slight revamp to the half-Orc tree (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...lf-Orc-Reprise). The goal wasn't to make it even as good as humans, but at least to make them less-worse. I think that each race should at least make the most sense for 1 build type, in the same way that Drow has received a little bit of an interest-boost recently by seeming to be the best Shuriken-thrower.

First, I'd like to make a couple suggestions, then I'll try to play devil's advocate against my own ideas.

Here's my revised list:
Dwarf: Stalwart Defender
Warforged: Kensei*
Halfling: Thief-Acrobat**
Half-Orc: Ravager
Elf: Arcane Archer
Drow: Tempest
Human: none.
Half-Elf: Arcane Archer
Iconics: Maybe we could revisit them after a while, but for now, I'd say leave Iconics out of this upgrade.

*A big Greatsword-wielding follower of the Lord of the Blades seems much more offensive than defensively-focused.
**While halflings are the epitome of rogishness, they have much more of a fast-movement, trip, tumble type of rogue flavor, instead of a "kill them!" type rogue flavor.

Complaint - With even more trees, you won't be able to take what you want!
Response - Exactly right. More options means more hard choices. It's a good thing. Anything you can build now, you will be able to build with these options in place. But there will be more options for those who want more options.

Complaint - This will make [race] OP!
Response #1 - There are certain races that are OP now. We don't have our API, so I can't tell you exact figures, but I'd say it's a safe bet that out of all our races, probably 50% of characters will be one of three races. (this isn't a good response, I know)
Response #2 - To unlock these trees, it will require a certain amount of APs spent in the racial tree. This alone makes it more costly, and more of an investment to take these trees. You're not going to be able to heavily invest in your primary class trees as well as your racially-unlocked tree. In the same way, by multiclassing, you give more options, while reducing your ability to take a lot in your primary class trees.
Response #3 - Well, let's check out those trees and see what's OP.

[LuKaSu]

DETAILS: TL;DR - These are some things that I've thought through concerning how a particular tree wouldn't be OP. Feel free to ignore this post, it's mainly in order to address some concerns before they are brought up by others.



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Dwarf: Stalwart Defender
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Stalwart Defense: Defensive Stance: You gain 10 Physical and Magical Resistance and a 50% bonus to melee threat generation. Cannot be used while Raged. (Cooldown: 6 seconds)

Improved Stalwart Defense: Improves your Stalwart Defense stance.
Choose one:
Durable Defense: While in Stalwart Defense, you gain a +5/+10/+15 Competence bonus to Physical and Magical Resistance Rating.
Inciting Defense: While in Stalwart Defense, you gain a 25%/50%/75% Competence bonus to melee threat generation.
Resilient Defense: While in Stalwart Defense, you gain a +1/+2/+3 Competence bonus to all Saving Throws.

Greater Stalwart Defense: Further improves your Stalwart Defense stance.
Choose one:
Hardy Defense: While wearing medium armor, heavy armor, or wielding a shield and in Stalwart Defense, you gain a you gain a +2/+4/+6 Competence bonus to Constitution.
Strong Defense:While wearing medium armor, heavy armor, or wielding a shield and in Stalwart Defense, you gain a +2/+4/+6 Competence bonus to Strength.
Tenacious Defense: While wearing medium armor, heavy armor, or wielding a shield and in Stalwart Defense, you gain a +10%/+15%/+20% Competence bonus to maximum hit points.

Swift Defense: Stalwart Defense increases your movement speed by 10%

From what I can see, there are a few main groups who will want to use this.
1) Light-weight melees - rogues and ranger-types - They need some survival love anyway, plus they still have their PRR/MRR caps with their light armors. (barbs won't be on this list, as the defensive stance doesn't work while raging)
2) arcane casters - I think this racial unlock alone will bring out more dwarven arcane builds, and that's not a bad thing IMHO. However, if they wanted to invest enough in this tree to boost their hit points or CON, we're talking about 14 AP to unlock the tree and 13 more AP to get to Improved Stalwart. That's more than a third of their APs available in order to get that effect, and they have a lot to spend their APs on.
3) Melee Divines - For Clerics, this will be a very tempting tree, with the extra survivability and all. But in all honesty, a 17 Cleric / 3 Fighter or 17 Cleric / 3 Paladin build will give everything good from this tree and more, without all the racial-investment. Same with 17 Druid / 3 Fighters. The one that I think will gain the most are FvS. Since they get their top level spells at level 18, they would be unable to invest to 3 levels of Fighter/Cleric for the defensive bonuses. I think these FvS builds will be pretty great, but I doubt that giving them some better defenses are going to make them unstoppable.


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Warforged: Kensei*
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Core: 15/Progression 20:
Power Surge: Action Boost: You gain +8 Psionic bonus to Strength for 60 seconds. If you possess the ability to generate Ki, you gain On Hit: +2 Ki.

Fair enough. This one, while costing at least 21 AP worth of investing in the tree, could be pretty powerful to melee builds.

Core lvl 25/Progression 40:
Alacrity: +2 Strength
+15% Doublestrike
+15% Doubleshot
+2 Action Boost uses
+2 to the DCs of all Tactical Feats

This one is doubtful to be used. The massive AP point investment would leave you with only 25 APs to be used in all your class trees combined. If you think this is worth it, then you probably shouldn't have chosen the class you did. However, in the case of a Paladin where many great advantages come from their class levels instead of their trees, this might make a solid investment, but with the recent Paladin pass, there are quite a lot of things you'd be missing out on in your trees. I'll admit, this might make me consider building a WF pure Paladin over a BF one, trading the more-massive survivability of the BF for some more DPS.

Extra Action Boost: +1/+2/+3 extra action boost.

Haste Boost: Activate to gain +10%/+20%/+30% Action Boost bonus to attack speed for 20/20/30 seconds.

Reed In The Wind: Focus Melee Attack: Deals +1[W] damage. If you successfully damage your target you gain a +3%/6%/9% Insight bonus to Dodge for 6 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 seconds.)

Tactics: +1/2/3 to the DC's of your Tactical abilities.

Weapon Meditation: Focus Meditate: You gain the ability to Meditate as if you were a monk, even if you are uncentered. While Meditating, every 6/4/2 seconds, if you have a weapon equipped in your main hand that is part of your Focus, it gains a stack of Meditative Focus: This weapon gains a +1 Insight bonus to Enhancement bonus for 10 seconds. This stacks up to 10 times. On timer expiration, 1 stack of Meditative Focus is removed at a time.

Ascetic Training: Your rigorous training gives you various benefits.
Choose one:
Agility: +1/+2/+3 Concentration, Reflex Saves, and Dodge cap.
Note: Does not stack with Ninja Spy: Agility.
Conditioning: +1/+2/+3 Concentration and Fortitude Saves, +5/+10/+15 HP.
Contemplation: +1/+2/+3 Concentration and Will Saves. Rank 3: Your passive ki regeneration is increased by 1.

Improved Mobility: +1/+2/+3 Maximum Dexterity bonus and Dodge cap while wearing light or no armor. -1/-2/-3 Armor Check Penalty in light armor.

One With The Blade: Your melee Focus weapons are considered Centering. While Centered, you may gain various benefits from levels in Monk or as a Grandmaster of Flowers.

(Most of the damage bonuses that are not listed, and the Tier 5 that increases Crit Range require fighter feats, and therefore would not be a significant source of buffage without fighter levels.)

I copied several of the key advantages to this tree. There could be a strong reason to take this. As it stands, anyone wanting to make a melee warforged has no reason at all to even buy warforged, since the BF is so awesomely powerful. This might make a compelling case to do otherwise. The other obvious synergy is with monks. While you won't have as good of a character as if you built a 12 Monk / 8 Fighter build, with the increased Crit range of Fighter 8, it would open up possibilities for several other monk builds.




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Halfling: Thief-Acrobat**
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Yes, this would obviously make the best stick-fighter in the game, with a halfling taking a lot of Henshin mystic and Thief-Acrobat enhancements. The only thing is, you can get all those same double-dips by just taking some rogue and some monk levels, and then you get your trap skills in the mix as well. For that reason, I don't consider it OP, since you can already mix them.

Staff Control: You can also use your Dexterity modifier to hit with Quarterstaves.

Stick Fighting: You can now use your Dexterity modifier for damage with Quarterstaves.

Kip Up: You are immune to most knockdown effects and slippery surfaces.

(x4) Acrobat Staff Training: +1 to hit and damage with quarterstaves.

Thief Acrobatics: +1/+2/+3 Balance, Jump, and Tumble, +5%/+10%/+15% attack speed with quarterstaves.

Trip Focus: +1/+2/+3 to the save DC's of Trip Attacks

Subtlety: -20%/-30%/-40% threat generation with melee attacks. (This enhancement cannot be combined with other Subtlety enhancements.)

Quick Strike: Melee Quarterstaff Attack: Deals +1/+2/+3[W] damage. You gain a 5%/15%/25% Morale bonus to melee doublestrike for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 18/15/12 seconds)

Haste Boost: Activate to gain a 10%/20%/30% Action Boost bonus to attack speed for 20 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

Sweeping Strikes: Melee Quarterstaff Trip Attack: Deals +1/+2/+3[W] damage to all nearby enemies and trips them. (Balance DC 10 + Half Rogue Level + Dexterity Modifier Negates trip). Cooldown: 30/25/20 seconds. Counts as Cleave for the purposes of resetting Momentum Swing (Legendary Dreadnought).

Staff Specialization: You gain a +1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage Multiplier and Threat Range with Quarterstaves.

Vault: Quarterstaff Action: Use your quarterstaff to propel yourself forward at great speed. Requires you to have a quarterstaff equipped. (Cooldown: 15 seconds)

Almost all of the key enhancements in this tree involve using Quarterstaffs. I think this has interesting possibilities, as all classes have access to this weapon. The potential exploit that jumps out at me is a 15 Paladin / 5 Monk build. Like the WF Paladin listed above, this would be a Paladin that hardly made use at all of his Paladin trees, focusing exclusively on Henskin mystic and Thief-Acrobat trees to max out his Q-Staffs. Toss his Zeal and Holy Sword on that weapon and he'll be rocking it out. But again, to compare it to builds that are already availalbe, such as a 14 Paladin / 3 Rogue / 3 Monk. When you remove the Tier 4's available, by restricting to 3 levels of each, you end up missing out on +2 hit and +4 damage with Quarterstaffs, and that's about it. Kipp up slip immunity, I suppose. You could restrict it one more to 15 Paldin / 3 Rogue / 2 Monk and bring the total difference to +3 hit and +5 damage, but then you'll have enough Paladin levels to get your Zeal back as well.



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Half-Orc: Ravager
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Level 4/Progression 5:
Pain Touch: Your melee attacks deal 1d6 extra damage. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power. Passive: +10 Healing Amplification

Level 8/Progression 10:
Demoralizing Success: Passive: You gain +30 hit points and +10 healing amplification. When you score a vorpal hit in melee, you inflict Crushing Despair on nearby enemies for 30 seconds on a failed DC 20 Will saving throw. You then inflict Vulnerable Will for 15 seconds, regardless of the Crushing Despair saving throw.

Level 15/Progression 20:
Pain Touch: Upgrades Pain Touch so your melee attacks deal 2d6 extra damage. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power. Passive: You gain +60 hitpoints and +20 healing amplification

Level 22/Progression 30:
Subsiding Fury: When you use Barbarian Rage, you gain 3 stacks of Fury. Passive: You gain +100 hitpoints and +20 healing amplification

Level 25/Progression 40:
Visage of Terror: Terrorize up to six enemies, killing them with fear if they fail a Will save vs 10 + Constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are paralyzed with Fear for six seconds instead. Doesn't affect bosses. (Cost 1 Rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds)
Passive:
+4 Constitution
+150 hitpoints
+40 healing amplification

Initially, this sounds super OP, with all that hamp involved and the extra hitpoints. If they took all the cores, spending a minimum of 14 Horc + 41 Ravager=55 AP, they would get up to 100% healing amp! Wow! But in perspective, if they were a human, they could get 60% healing amp for a total of 17 AP. By taking all of these in the Ravager tree, you only have 25 AP total to spend on all other trees. Yes, your hamp skillz would be massive, but you'd hardly have anything else to play with. Just to match the human's healing amp numbers, you would need to spend 14 Horc + 21 Ravager = 35 AP, which is almost half of your total.

Hate: Melee Attack: Deals +(0.5/1/1.5)[W] damage and generate extra threat. (Cooldown: 15 seconds)

Barbarian Power Attack: Your Power Attack feat does 1/2/3 additional point of bonus damage.

Mutilate: Hate additionally deals 1d4/1d6/1d8 Charisma damage and 1d4/1d6/1d8 Bane damage. The bane damage scales with 200% Melee Power

I Like Pain: When you are hit: Small chance to gain 50/100/150 Temporary HP. This gain scales with 100% Melee Power

Cruel Cut: Melee Attack: Deals 1d6/2d6/3d6 extra constitution damage as long as you damage your target.

Action Boost: Melee Power: Activate this ability to receive a +[10/20/30] Action Boost bonus to Melee Power for 20 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

Slaughter: Melee Attack: Deals +(5/7.5/10)[W] damage. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

Festering Wound: Cruel Cut additionally inflicts 1/2/3 5-seconds stacks of 1d6 Poison damage every 2 seconds and that monster's positive energy healing is reduced by 50% for 5/10/15 seconds. Damage stacks fade one at a time.

Laughter: When Slaughter damages an enemy, you gain three stacks of Fury. When Slaughter scores a critical hit on an enemy , you gain three more Fury (for a total of six) and gain 10 Melee Power for 15 seconds.
For many Ravagers, there's no Laughter without Slaughter.

I Hit Back!: When you are hit: 20% chance to deal 2d8/4d8/6d8 bane damage to attacker. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power.

Dismember: Cruel Cut increases Melee Power by 5 for 10 seconds. Cruel Cut additional slows enemy movement speed, or slows attack speed, or deals 2d4/2d6/2d8 bane damage, or deals 6d4/6d6/6d8 bane damage. This bane damage scales with 200% Melee Power

Blood Strength: Each time you land a hit there is a 12% chance you heal positive damage equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for 20 hit points. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.

Uncanny Balance: You are immune to most knockdowns and slippery surfaces.

These special attacks might be some of the hardest ones to sell. The reason isn't because they are so powerful, but because you would be willing to use these attacks along with Paladin's Holy Sword. There is no equivalent, since you can't multiclass Paladin with Barbarian. For this reason, if I was to design this system, I would make the Horc enhancement that unlocks this tree have a requirement of Non-Lawful. It would knock out Paladin and monk exploits of this tree. At this point, I would say that it brings us more of less into balance.

Again, these are very powerful attacks, but these same attacks can be used with a 5 level splash of barbarian, without all the extra racial AP investment. 12 Ranger/5 Barb/1 Rogue could use these attacks to their full ability (other than the Tier 5 Blood strength), 15 Fighter/5 Barb could also. Interestingly enough, the one set of builds that would benefit from this the most seems (to me) to be arcane casters, as they are so much more potent with full arcane levels. Like the Dwarven Defenders, this would add more melee to classes that aren't really built for close combat. But a 17 wizard / 3 Fighter Half-orc using these might be an interesting force to see across the battlefield.

Most people don't seem to play Horcs except for the looks, as humans tend to do everything better than they do. This could help to even the playing field a little bit. Due to the fact that non-Paladin melees tend to be multiclasses anyway, I don't think this would kill anything at all.



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Drow: Tempest
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Shield of Whirling Steel: While you are dual wielding, you gain a +2 Shield bonus to Armor Class. This increases by +1 for each additional Tempest Core Ability you acquire.
In addition, if you are a level 1 character, you gain the Two Weapon Fighting feat until you reach character level 2. (Two Weapon Fighting is granted permanently when you take a second Ranger level).

Tempest: You gain +10% chance to make off-hand attacks when dual wielding. While you are dual wielding, you can use your dexterity modifier to hit with light melee weapons. You now treat Scimitars as if they were light melee weapons.
Note: Does not work with handwraps.

Graceful Death: While you are dual wielding, you can use your Dexterity modifier for damage with light melee weapons.

Deflect Arrows: You gain the benefits of the Deflect Arrows feat while dual wielding, knocking aside one incoming projectile that would have struck you every 6 seconds. You also gain an additional 10% chance to make off-hand attacks when dual wielding.
Note: Does not work with handwraps.

Whirlwind: You gain +5% melee doublestrike chance when dual wielding.

Dervish: You gain +2 Dexterity. You now have a +25% chance to doublestrike with your off-hand when dual wielding.

These would help pretty much any TWF build, especially Dex-based ones. That extra 10% offhand at 12 (would be 15 for racial) is something that you can't get anywhere else or from a 5 level splash, and the 25% offhand doublestrik is in the same boat. Very nice stuff. It would take a 14 racial + 20 point investment in this tree = 34 APs to get those extra 10% offhand (total 20%), but still that could be argued as worth it. You're not going to be able to multiclass too much with this, but if you've got a very focused build, like an assassin, But in all honesty, I could picture a determined drow getting 10% more sneak attacks into a fight. It's powerful, but I don't think it's game-killing.

Improved Reaction: +1/+2/+3 Reflex saves and an additional +1/+2/+3 saves against traps

Improved Defense: Your Shield of Whirling Steel grants +1/+2/+3 additional AC and if you possess Deflect Arrows it can trigger once every 4/3/2 seconds

(x4) Whirling Blades: +1 to-hit and damage when dual wielding.

Improved Parry: Gain +3/+6/+10 PRR when dual wielding

Improved Dodge: +1%/+2%/+3% dodge when wearing light or no armor

Action Boost: Select Haste or Sprint Boost.
Haste Boost: Activate to gain a +10%/+20%/+30% action boost bonus to attack speed for 20 seconds.
Sprint Boost: Activate to gain a +30%/+40%/+50% action boost bonus to movement speed for 20 seconds.

Improved mobility: : +1/+2/+3 Maximum Dexterity bonus and dodge cap while wearing light or no armor. -1/-2/-3 armor check penalty in light armor.

Elaborate Parry: Melee Dual Wielding Attack: Attacks an opponent. For the next 5/10/15 seconds, each time you damage an opponent you gain +2% dodge for 5 seconds. This effect can stack up to 15 times. (Cooldown: 1 minute)

The Growing Storm: Melee Dual Wielding Attack: Attacks an opponent. For the next 5/10/15 seconds, each time you damage an opponent you gain +1 damage for 5 seconds. This effect can stack up to 10 times. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

Evasive Dance: Improves your Evasion ability so on a failed Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, you only take 85/70/50% damage.
Note: Does not stack with improved evasion.

A Thousand Cuts: Melee Dual Wielding Attack: Deals +1/+3/+5[W] damage. You gain +30/+60/+90 melee Doublestrike chance for 6 seconds. (Cooldown: 2 minutes)

Dance of Death: Melee Dual Wielding Attack: Deals +1/+3/+5[W] damage. Your basic attacks when dual wielding strike 2/3/4 targets per swing instead of one for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 15 seconds)

So... yeah, there are a lot of things that make this a very tempting tree to unlock, but again, a 6 level ranger splash is pretty common, as non-Paladin melees are almost always multiclass builds. Those 6 ranger levels also would auto-grant several feats. Due to the fact that this is completely a melee tree, I would say that the Tier enhancements are pretty balanced as they are, since people are very likely to splash ranger in their melee builds.

That being said, since the Core enhancements are so powerful, and unable to be obtained by a 5-6 level splash, I think we would need to decide if they are balanced enough to let them slide. Personally, I think due to the high opportunity cost to access them, I don't think they would be too overpowered.

[SirValentine]

Originally Posted by Eladrin

Human: Pick one. (Slightly higher investment in Racial tree required to unlock.)



Here's my revised list:

Human: none.

Booooo!

[Flavilandile]

The issue is that the Enhancement system resulting from the Enhancement Crash wiped Basic Class Enhancement ( non PRE stuff ) and relegated Racial Class Enhancements to Faire Valoir or AA Unlocking.

At that time they could have tried to fit the old system into a tree form ( It could be done ), but the powers that be and some specific devs didn't want... So we are saddled with a half made system.

Each Class should have a basic tree ( non PRE ), and the racial trees should really be racial, and world Specific - being a Faerun Halfling is not like being an Eberron one, different culture, different skills, different knowledge - ( it's worse for the Elves... as there's more choice on Faerun than on Eberron )

[Rofaust]

Good work. Very well thought out. I like and agree with just about everything. Years ago I was looking forward to WF Juggernaut but now I'm not sure what that would translate to... Kensei makes more sense than defender... In my heart though, I would like to see a custom non-class based tree for WF, but I can let it go lol