Warlock Enhancements: Tainted Scholar

[Silverleafeon]

Honestly no disrespect here, but why would you want a thematical spell that has no uses in the game.
Example poison damage is being resisted by most enemies, or in the worst case they are straight out immune to it.

Now if you added some kind spell that does the same but is bane damage and scaled properly, then ok sure.
But this way its just flavor and im pretty sure that at least i want warlock to be a actual playable class

I'm flexible.

What about just placing Creeping Doom on the Warlock Spell book list instead?
Thematic and no one has to choose it, and if they actually upgrade the spell its already there?


How about Acid Fog (nice for raiding) in place of GH or do people prefer to just have GH?

Looking for other spells, perhaps Cloudkill?


This starts getting into the Pact Known Spells pretty quick like, and a few of them imho need revising...

[WanderingGrump]

Why is the Heighten Metamagic reduction included here at all really. Consider that Warlock is restricted to having just level 6 spells that seems to be quite the trap when on the few spells that you want it you will get extremely minimal DC raises. I understand the desire for the CC ability of the Command SLA but even on a Pure FvS a heightened Command is poorly suited for use after level 15ish and utterly useless in epics.

Or is there something I am not seeing here?

[Artagon]

Honestly no disrespect here, but why would you want a thematical spell that has no uses in the game.
Example poison damage is being resisted by most enemies, or in the worst case they are straight out immune to it.

Now if you added some kind spell that does the same but is bane damage and scaled properly, then ok sure.
But this way its just flavor and im pretty sure that at least i want warlock to be a actual playable class

My answer was in general terms. I do not see it as being something I would want every warlock in X pact/enhancement line to get in place of a more favorable ability. It should, however, be an option in the spell book for those thematic reasons, not just because it is super good/bad. If all we did was give a class all the best spells for their spell list it would be in no way balanced. I won't disagree that it could use a little tweaking to make it useful.

[Silverleafeon]

Why is the Heighten Metamagic reduction included here at all really. Consider that Warlock is restricted to having just level 6 spells that seems to be quite the trap when on the few spells that you want it you will get extremely minimal DC raises. I understand the desire for the CC ability of the Command SLA but even on a Pure FvS a heightened Command is poorly suited for use after level 15ish and utterly useless in epics.

Or is there something I am not seeing here?

Most of their spell point usage for metamagics will be for heightened.
Their DCs are at the low edge of normal casting.
They will need every little bit of DC they can grab.

Empower and Maximize will likely be applied to SLAs, EB, etc w/o the need for reductions.

Since its level 1 thru 6 notice spell levels are being dropped (which lowers their DCs) for example, Disco Ball from the Fey Pact is a level 5 spell, not level 7.

[slarden]

I see some nice low-hanging fruit to go with enlightened spirit.

I would probably take the first 4 cores and into the 4th tier with enlightened spirit as my main tree. I don't see anything in the 5th tier or final 2 cores that make tainted scholar more compelling than enlightened spirit - even on a pure caster build.

[Maelodic]

I see some nice low-hanging fruit to go with enlightened spirit.

I would probably take the first 4 cores and into the 4th tier with enlightened spirit as my main tree. I don't see anything in the 5th tier or final 2 cores that make tainted scholar more compelling than enlightened spirit - even on a pure caster build.

I think Tainted Scholar is more or less supposed to be the eldritch blast caster more than just the warlock caster. I'm assuming Soul Eater will be more castery/supporty.

[Silverleafeon]

I see some nice low-hanging fruit to go with enlightened spirit.

I would probably take the first 4 cores and into the 4th tier with enlightened spirit as my main tree. I don't see anything in the 5th tier or final 2 cores that make tainted scholar more compelling than enlightened spirit - even on a pure caster build.

Improving upper levels would involve the spells granted?
What about double dipping?

Find the best spells on this list and add them to 18 and capstone?

After all there might be more than 2 great spells on this list?

Level 5
Circle of Death
Control Undead
Create Undead
Finger of Death
Globe of Invulnerability
Greater Teleport
Hold Person, Mass
Invisibility, Mass
Mind Fog
Protection from Elements, Mass
Shadow Walk
Summon Monster VIII
Symbol of Stunning
Tenser's Transformation
Undeath to Death
Waves of Exhaustion


Level 6
Mass Charm Monster
Dominate Monster
Hold Monster, Mass
Mordenkainen's Disjunction
Power Word: Stun
Summon Monster IX
Symbol of Death
Trap the Soul
Wail of the Banshee

[fmalfeas]

I don't know what the cooldown on it is, but I have to point out for people that Eldritch Ball isn't set as a blast shape, but rather, a clickie. So during that moment between Eldritch Chains firing off, you can hit the button, and fireball the targets too.

[Angelic-council]

There are a couple of places where hit points are affected. We've also considered having some things cost hitpoints to activate, though right now we're leaning away from that for Depravity, SP, cooldowns, or weirder stuff.

All that said, "sacrifice" abilities can be hard to make. Most players have an aversion to obvious "downsides", and an appropriately balanced ability that's otherwise similar but has no downside is generally much, much more well received, so if it could go either way we'll tend to lean towards "no downside". (There are always other considerations, of course, and flavor in this tree can be one of them.)

There's a very "game designer" answer for you!

I see, very cool Varg, thanks for the reply.

I really like the idea of Depravity, and how everything are implanted in this tree. I understand that Tainted scholar has its own flavor and this is not the only tree that warlocks get, it's all about the combination and a balance. I see some of the things are directly affect HP and it's really cool. But when I read the description from the handbook: No secret is barred from the tainted scholar's grasp, and if such forbidden knowledge comes at the cost of his soul, he's willing to pay that price. I just thought, what is really so forbidden about this tree. Tier five allows you to choose: + 1d6 damage boost, an AoE eldritch blast, Mass confusion and +1 DC to all spells. You don't really get any secretively powerful SLAs at lv18 - lv20 core. If there is such a thing as forbidden knowledge, I was hoping it would be something similar to Eldritch Tempest from wizard enchantment tree: Eldritch knight tier five. But except, it's a very wide AoE attack that will stun any monsters including red names with no save for 1 - 2 seconds at the cost of your depravity and very long CD. I believe that kind of SLA really fits this tree, but I could be wrong - just an idea. 1d6 (with a cap) damage that scales with spell power and wide AoE stun.

This is just my idea, but I really like this tree so far. And I think you guys did a good job, keep it up!

[fmalfeas]

The whole 'forbidden knowledge' thing...yeah, I could see this tree being eligible for some interesting tricks. Stuff that normally only mobs get to do to us. Like a top-tier multiselector that gives you a choice of a list of nasty mob-only abilities.

Maybe even going so far as, instead of energy drain in the 20 core, offer up a choice of things between like the Devourer of Dreams big, unresistable stun, Lailat's triple-cometfall, a Beholder's antimagic gaze, or even the ability to temporarily give yourself a Lich's Mantle...or even just permanently have the Mantle. Truly forbidden knowledge. The kind of thing nobody else could (or in some cases, would) learn. Could even make choices in there that are pact-specific. Like maybe you can only get the Antimagic gaze or Bees of Xoriat if you have the Old Ones pact. While Fiendish could give you the ability to use Lailat's comets, or a Balor's aura of flames (a somewhat weaker, but constant version of Body of Sun). Fey could give you...um...well, that can get just as strange as Old Ones, and we don't have many fey in game to steal from right now.

[janave]

I know it will have to be "sold". (is it really the goal to trivialize/outperform the more focused caster classes?)

Currently this design is too powerful really. ( only comparing to actual caster classes, clearly a barb will do better raw dps, which is enough to get thru most quests)

1) 1 AP, class level 1: Tainted Spellcasting:

The most loaded 1APs i ever seen? The scaling per cores is a neat idea tho:

2) +60% spell crit damage? That is seriously overkill :P
id change it to 1/2/2% spell crit, +20% crit damage in the capstone only!.

3) +4 cha in capstone? Again, none of the primary caster classes have this much casting stat given away.
+2 is plenty enough.

4) The stun length is too much really, unless its a non helpless variant of the stun. Again granted too cheap for a ranged attack, where other classes have to work much harder to get reliable stuns.

Id change it to: 6seconds, only works in Point Blank range. It should be single target regardless of EB shape.

5) Penetrating Blast: Eldritch Essence Stance: Your Eldritch Blast base damage is now untyped instead of Force. You deal +1d6 Eldritch Blast damage.

I would move this to T5 -> it basically converts your DPS into irresistible. Incredibly huge benefit.

6)
Enervating Shadow: Eldritch Blast Shape Stance: This Eldritch Blast auto-attack seeks out enemies, and inflicts a negative level 10% of the time.

Bewitching Blast: Your Eldritch Blast has a 10% chance to Confuse non-boss monsters for 6 seconds.

Confused monsters attack and are attacked by both monster characters and player characters.

If those works with aoe shapes, the rate is way too much. Id drop that to 6-7% if they can hit multiple targets.

7) Low cores are too loaded with spell DCs.
Id either change them to spell pen, or just offer them as AP buyouts in T3 planar focus. With the Requirement to have 5/10/15 levels in Warlock.

Otherwise looks good, interesting, has a nice flavor feel. As per 1st post, the power is quite overdone. EB is possibly the strongest main attack yet in DDO, everything else can be a support ability, or multiclass flavor.

[Angelic-council]

1) 1 AP, class level 1: Tainted Spellcasting:

The most loaded 1APs i ever seen? The scaling per cores is a neat idea tho:

Yes, +25 spell power and +2 DC is pretty big, but as a dc caster, you want to go pure. It has 1 minute CD.

2) +60% spell crit damage? That is seriously overkill :P
id change it to 1/2/2% spell crit, +20% crit damage in the capstone only!.

This requires testing, but come on. Warlocks are not traditional casters, they have no offensive spells. Except eldritch blast and some SLAs. I'm sure there might be adjustments, but 20% is way too low for a warlock.

3) +4 cha in capstone? Again, none of the primary caster classes have this much casting stat given away.
+2 is plenty enough.

It's a capstone. Again, warlocks are not traditional casters. Their spells cap at lv6, same as a bard. They shouldn't lack in DC.

5) Penetrating Blast: Eldritch Essence Stance: Your Eldritch Blast base damage is now untyped instead of Force. You deal +1d6 Eldritch Blast damage.

I would move this to T5 -> it basically converts your DPS into irresistible. Incredibly huge benefit.

Yeah, kinda true. But, does it affect every single blasts? I mean, how about pack bonus and everything. This needs some testing.

6)
Enervating Shadow: Eldritch Blast Shape Stance: This Eldritch Blast auto-attack seeks out enemies, and inflicts a negative level 10% of the time.

Bewitching Blast: Your Eldritch Blast has a 10% chance to Confuse non-boss monsters for 6 seconds.

Confused monsters attack and are attacked by both monster characters and player characters.

If those works with aoe shapes, the rate is way too much. Id drop that to 6-7% if they can hit multiple targets.

This needs testing as well, I don't know how fast we can really cast eldritch blast, definitely not as fast as magic missiles.

7) Low cores are too loaded with spell DCs.
Id either change them to spell pen, or just offer them as AP buyouts in T3 planar focus. With the Requirement to have 5/10/15 levels in Warlock.

If you look closely, it says: +1 DC to warlock spells. And warlocks need it very badly..

[Ausdoerrt]

The Blast stances here and the Auras in Enlightened - are they mutually exclusive between themselves and with one another?

[rehakp]

Interesting tree. Seems like the main tree for pure 20lvl locks. Centered around Eldritch Blast and giving some nice casting perks.
But bacause we still dont know how exaclty EB will work on life its little soon to comment on how (in)effective it will be life.
But i will definately stay tuned

[cdbd3rd]

[sidestep topic]


I'm not caster enough to help dig into the guts of all that kinda stuff - but I do have to say that the Eldritch Ball is gonna be a blast of a party with all that Depravity going on.

...

...and completely off topic:
Probably too late to prod the art department, but something like this as a "standing idle" animation would be sweet.

[end topic sidestep]

[BananaHat]

Obviously playtesting will reveal all, but right now I don't see this tree as really overtaking enlightened spirit in the realm of best eldritch blast.

TS: +3d6 blast, +4d4 pact dmg (has a save), +10% firing rate, bigger crits and more spellpower (mostly driven by gear)
ES: +6d6 light dmg to EB

Those bonuses seem fairly similar considering the base blast is 9d6 and base pact damage is 10d4 with the exception of the attack speed. Now take the spell power hit for the chain shape... It seems like the DPS might be similar depending on attack speed of the base blast. More hits for less damage in TS, but the ES gets weapon attacks too, I guess that is their bonus for being close up.

*shrugs*

Again, playtesting will help. I guess I just expected more EB damage from the description of TS. Maybe the core ability at 20 could change the d6's to d8's or something. We can't throw together certain more-stay-at-range-and-blast test builds without Soul Eater, which I'm looking forward to seeing.

EDIT: very very quick numbers I tossed together has a TS standard EB doing 20-25% more damage compared to the aura's damage. Chain will bring it down obviously, but the real difference will be in base activation speed. How does the base EB compare to 2 seconds for the aura?

[Vargouille]

I don't know what the cooldown on it is, but I have to point out for people that Eldritch Ball isn't set as a blast shape, but rather, a clickie. So during that moment between Eldritch Chains firing off, you can hit the button, and fireball the targets too.

This is correct. Some of the wording is very precise and potentially confusing, which is why the diagram also has some colors in it.

Eldritch Essences: Unholy Blast, Faltering Blast, Penetrating Blast: You can turn one on at a time. They change the way other Eldritch Blasts work (including the single target one you get at first Warlock level, or Eldritch Chain, or Eldritch Cone, or Enervating Shadow, as well as the Aura in Enlightened spirit.)

Eldritch Blast Shapes: Basic single-target, Chain, Cone, Enervating Shadow. These are toggles that make your basic attack 'cast' Eldritch Blast. These are affected by things that say, "When you Eldritch Blast", or variations thereof (we probably need to lock down text templates for these but might not be there yet). This includes the Eldritch Essences but also other things that we choose not to make Eldritch Essences (it's not good to have too many since you can only turn on one at a time).

*Aura in Enlightened Spirit: This is similar to Eldritch Blast Shapes but is a bit different. It doesn't replace your auto-attack. There's also a few things that won't work directly with it (such as increased attack speed in Tainted Scholar). However, most of the "on-hit" effects of Eldritch Blast will work with this.

Activated Eldritch Blast: These are activated abilities that are not Shapes. These will usually function like SLAs, and deal damage based on your Eldritch Blast dice (both base and Pact), and trigger "on-hit" effects that care about Eldritch Blast (or spells!). This includes things like Eldritch Ball, Eldritch Burst and Spirit Blast. Whether you are auto-attacking with Eldritch Blast or not doesn't matter for these abilities, similar to how you can just cast spells between doing other things.

[davmuzl]

All that said, "sacrifice" abilities can be hard to make. Most players have an aversion to obvious "downsides", and an appropriately balanced ability that's otherwise similar but has no downside is generally much, much more well received, so if it could go either way we'll tend to lean towards "no downside". (There are always other considerations, of course, and flavor in this tree can be one of them.)

Honestly I think it shouldn't discourage you from adding flavor or interesting mechanics to the game, just because a few players complain on the forum about how downsides of some ability or item will make it unplayable. While it might be true that the majority of players don't like this kind of ability, because all they see is the fact that the ability HAS a downside, there is also a lot of players who will look at the full picture and if the ability is worth being used with the downside they will use it. There are also a lot of players who will start using this kind of ability, when they see "good" players use it. The damage on Frenzy and Deathfrenzy were not actually that significant (compared to how much damage the enemies did) once you had healing, especially in the higher levels.
This is also where having competition in the game helps a lot, because simply looking at what builds do well give a very objective look at what is op and what is not so good.
It might also be good to give the player a choice. Make them pick between one ability without downsides and a better ability with downsides. That way people have less to complain about.

Talking about sacrificing stuff... I don't like the kind of ability that puts a debuff on the PC until he rests. It very much discourages the player from actually using it. This of course very subjective, but I simply like it when my Characters don't run out of resources and I don't have to worry when the next shrine comes.
It's the same for the Barbarian temp hp ability that permanently reduces con and the same with stanch, which reduces the max hp by 1% every time you use it. If I am in a very dangerous situation and know the next shrine is just around the corner it is an easy choice, because 1% is barely noticable. On the other hand if I know I have to wait an hour for the next shrine or I'm in a raid where the harder phases are still waiting I wouldn't want to use it unless I can prevent a party wipe by doing it.
My suggestion would be to change it so the hp reduction goes up to 5-10% per stack and let the debuff last about 5 minutes. 5-10% are still not that bad (most of the time you won't even notice) and it essentially puts the ability on a 5min cooldown with the option of using it more often at a higher cost. There can also be some adjustments made like changing it so stacks fade 1 at a time or all of them go at once and changing it so the penalty stacks multiplicative.

[Vargouille]

1) 1 AP, class level 1: Tainted Spellcasting:

The most loaded 1APs i ever seen? The scaling per cores is a neat idea tho:

1st Cores are a challenge to design, like all low-tier abilities. High tier abilities are much easier to design, they can be unique, flashy, and powerful, and have far fewer restrictions on how they need to fit the puzzle.

They are essentially class features, since the limit on how many trees you can take is not prohibitive, so we have to assume all Warlocks will gain all the 1st Cores from all trees (if they are at all desirable for that). Enlightened Spirit partially sidesteps this by having the Aura there -- if you want to actively Eldritch Blast, it's not really for you. Tainted Spellcasting attempts to deal with this by being relatively bad if you are not taking more Tainted Scholar cores (and we may well increase the 7 second time up to a higher time for just the first Core, depending on testing).

2) +60% spell crit damage? That is seriously overkill :P
id change it to 1/2/2% spell crit, +20% crit damage in the capstone only!.

We'll see. Without the capstone, it's about a 15% damage boost if you have 50% crit chance. (15% great to have, of course!)

Capstones should be strong.

4) The stun length is too much really, unless its a non helpless variant of the stun. Again granted too cheap for a ranged attack, where other classes have to work much harder to get reliable stuns. Id change it to: 6seconds, only works in Point Blank range. It should be single target regardless of EB shape.

This is an activated ability. It doesn't trigger on every Eldritch Blast. There's no "shape" here, it's always single-target.

5) Penetrating Blast: Eldritch Essence Stance: Your Eldritch Blast base damage is now untyped instead of Force. You deal +1d6 Eldritch Blast damage.

I would move this to T5 -> it basically converts your DPS into irresistible. Incredibly huge benefit.

Right now our thinking is that we actually want any Warlock to be able to get this, even if they want Tier 5s in other trees.

Enervating Shadow: Eldritch Blast Shape Stance: This Eldritch Blast auto-attack seeks out enemies, and inflicts a negative level 10% of the time.

Bewitching Blast: Your Eldritch Blast has a 10% chance to Confuse non-boss monsters for 6 seconds.

Confused monsters attack and are attacked by both monster characters and player characters.

If those works with aoe shapes, the rate is way too much. Id drop that to 6-7% if they can hit multiple targets.

Only Bewitching Blast affects other Shapes. Confusion (the ability, not effect) and Enervating Shadow are single-target activated abilities.

7) Low cores are too loaded with spell DCs.
Id either change them to spell pen, or just offer them as AP buyouts in T3 planar focus. With the Requirement to have 5/10/15 levels in Warlock.

Why?

Otherwise looks good, interesting, has a nice flavor feel. As per 1st post, the power is quite overdone. EB is possibly the strongest main attack yet in DDO, everything else can be a support ability, or multiclass flavor.

We're pretty sure this isn't blowing away DDO's melee attacks, which can reasonably have the equivalent of +600% Critical Damage. (Picks start with +300%. Spellcasters currently get more Spellpower than melee characters get Melee Power, there are other balancing factors, etc.)

Yes, +25 spell power and +2 DC is pretty big, but as a dc caster, you want to go pure. It has 1 minute CD.

Yes. If this needs adjusting, adding 20 seconds to cooldown is well within the realm of possibilities, or making it harder to get Depravity with only 1 Core. (We're less worried about the guy who has 41 points in Tainted Scholar than the guy who has 1.)

If you look closely, it says: +1 DC to warlock spells. And warlocks need it very badly..

This is the major benefit for the capstones Charisma in our mind, yes.

The Blast stances here and the Auras in Enlightened - are they mutually exclusive between themselves and with one another?

The Shapes are exclusive with the Aura. You can't be blasting constantly with your auto-attack while also passively blasting around you.

Probably too late to prod the art department, but something like this as a "standing idle" animation would be sweet.

While your auto-attack is Eldritch Blast, we're looking into having a custom combat-idle.

[Vargouille]

EDIT: very very quick numbers I tossed together has a TS standard EB doing 20-25% more damage compared to the aura's damage. Chain will bring it down obviously, but the real difference will be in base activation speed. How does the base EB compare to 2 seconds for the aura?

A single target Eldritch Blast fires off a lot faster than one per two seconds. Exact numbers and animations are in progress, but assuming you go through the whole attack chain, it's likely going to be faster than one per second. This isn't ponderous, stately spell casting, this is flinging arcane balls of doom around. (You don't get to also attack with melee/ranged while doing this, of course. Melee attacks are also more often than one per two seconds!)