Warlock Enhancements: Tainted Scholar

[MrWindupBird]

How much more should a 28 have over 20?

We haven't specified how much Eldritch Blast damage scales with Spell Power, and that's one of the things that's likely to change as we proceed and playtest.

It's a good question. I dont have a nice clean answer for you, but I'm trying to demonstrate what I think is an inevitable wall you'll run into.

These are pretty soft numbers, but having done many many ETRs on multiple platforms, my gut tells me that a well-built level 28 melee with destinies probably does 3-4 times (closer to 4) the damage of the same lvl 20 melee without destinies. For a sorc, the number is probably more like twice as much damage, mostly due to the ED abilities they gain like Energy Burst, Ruin, and Hellball: their spell damage doesn't go up tremendously, and it certainly doesnt double. Warlocks wont have the sp pool to fuel these ED abilities like Hellball/Ruin (I think), and I don't get the impression that the devs want their epic viability to be exclusively contingent on ED abilities like eburst anyway.

So, if warlocks are going to be defined by Eldritch Blast, and Eldritch Blast scales slowly into epics as shown above, then you can balance one end or the other (at 20 or at 28), but not both- there just isn't enough growth in the damage output.

Does that make sense? It's not a new problem, it's one that casters have dealt with for a long time, but it will actually be more acute with warlocks, due to the lack of other options. I'm not saying that the damage is too high or too low, since we cant test that yet and decide, but I am confident saying that right now they'll either be very OP at 20 and ok at 28 or ok at 20 and quite weak at 28. It's not the only part of the game that matters, but it is what most (?) people play nowadays.

Not sure how to fix it: one possibility would be to disallow metamagics and scale eldritch blast with something like 200% spellpower: the extra spellpower from metamagics kind of blunts the increased spellpower gain from 20 to 28, proportionally. Using the numbers from earlier (300 spellpower at 20, 500 at 28) that would give almost multiplier of 7 at 20, and a multipler of 11 at 28. So, about 55% more damage: better, but still lower growth in damage than what other characters experience
Ideally epic levels would have improved base class characteristics and added base dice to Eldritch Blast, but that ship has sailed.

Still want to try it all out, get it to Lammaland soon!

[Silverleafeon]

Well said, MrWindupBird.


Eventually Maximize and Empower figure very heavily into spell DPS, which is why SLA (which can be meta-magiced for free) become so important.


Since you are still designing Epic Level feats what about:

"Epic Maximize" ~ you can apply this metamagic to spell for zero sp cost.
You add 200 spell power to these spells.
This does not stack with Empower or Maximize spell feats.
Requirements: Level 30
Anti-requisite Empower or Maximize spell feats. (You cannot have both.)


Or, add it without the anti-requisiste, it would definately grant Spellcasters a free boost at level cap without more sp cost.

"Epic Maximize" ~ you can apply this metamagic to spell for zero sp cost.
You add 200 spell power to these spells.

[maddong]

How much more should a 28 have over 20?

We haven't specified how much Eldritch Blast damage scales with Spell Power, and that's one of the things that's likely to change as we proceed and playtest.

How much more damage does a level 28 melee or repeater or star chucker with tier 3 thunder forged do vs a level 20?

[Silverleafeon]

Yepper, you folks have front loaded most of the spell power.
The higher one goes the less available...

[Silverleafeon]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats...rovedMetamagic

Plain as day, Epic ability for reduced metamagics:

"Improved Metamagic [Epic]
Prerequisites

Four metamagic feats, Spellcraft 30 ranks.
Benefit

The spell slot modifier of all your metamagic feats is reduced by one level, to a minimum of +1. This feat has no effect on metamagic feats whose spell slot modifier is +1 or less.
Special

You can gain this feat multiple times. The effects stack, though you can’t reduce any metamagic feat’s spell slot modifier to less than +1. "



Of course, one has to understand this is the spell slot system.

[HatsuharuZ]

How much more should a 28 have over 20?

We haven't specified how much Eldritch Blast damage scales with Spell Power, and that's one of the things that's likely to change as we proceed and playtest.

Not sure, but if you added 3 universal spell power at each epic level for all classes, then all casters would appreciate it.

[Silverleafeon]

Not sure, but if you added 3 universal spell power at each epic level for all classes, then all casters would appreciate it.

Good point.

It might should be more, spellcasting are used to doing with 200~400+ spell power.
Melee and ranged power is typically half that.
But whatever.


So looking at a Legendary Dreadnought Toon:

Gains Epic Power = +3 ranged and +3 melee power per epic level
Gains +3 melee power per level of LD (and if this increases from level 5 to 10 which it ought to that complexes things).


However, assuming one changes things from this angle:

All Epic Destiny Levels would be examined and grant about 6ish Universal Spell Power.
Some more, some less.

Then Epic Power would be changed to grant:
+3 ranged
+3 melee power
+6 universal spell power
per epic level


Now we have some decent scaling going on during Epic levels.
Let us see how that compares to Epic Maximize (150 universal free spell power)

Level 20 --- Full ED of 30 universal spell power
Level 28 --- Increase of 48 universal spell power

Hmm...and we have to go thru the effort of ranking all the Epic Destinies too.
Not enough scaling between level 20 and 28 (which is a problem due to the instant full ED available at 20).


How about moving it all to Epic Power instead?
Increase to +10 universal Spell Power per Epic Level

Level 20 --- Zero
Level 28 --- Increase of 80 universal spell power

This is actually about 2 more than the 78 shown above.
But 70 less than my example with the epic feat tax.

I think maybe Sevs Dot Epic Spell, HatsuharuZ's theories and an new Epic Item with a higher reduced spell cost along with some better metamagic item reducing spell costs might be the better route?

Nicely done.

But is it enough?

How much will +80 spell power do for toons that easily have 350 spell power to begin with at level cap?

Take a spell that does 100 damage.

Spell power rating determines how much damage you deal with spells. In most cases, each point of spell power increase increases the base damage of your spell by 1%. Various effects can contribute to your spell power, all effects are added together.

So with 300 spell power (Fawngate's best spell exceed thus but most come to at ? Let me log in and look.)

Assume 300 (which is low).

100 damage becomes 400 damage.

Increasing thus to 380 spell power.
100 damage becomes 480 damage which is an increase of 480/400 = 20% increase in spell damage.

This is assuming one does not apply Empower or Maximize to one's spells.

But, one will go higher.

Fawngate's spells she does not care about are at 318 (and they rise +60 in battle)
The spell she does care about are 393, 467, 441

So her favorite spell type will easily break 500 in a dungeon.
100 damage becomes 600 damage.
Increasing 80 universal spell power, 100 damage becomes 680 damage.

The net increase is 13%

Given the effects that I have seen a mere 20 melee power do, I must conclude that melee power and spell power are in totally different categories.

Should we add an applied +225 for both Empower and Maximize for 725,
the new net increase is about 9%


I am going to lean back and say I like the simple solution of Epic Maximized Metamagic applied for free available at level cap better.
We need more really good Epic Feats.
I made a whole bunch of suggestions on the player's council last year and only one of them was a popular choice among the council members, so I can easily say its tough to get good ideas for epic feats.

[XxJFGxX]

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

I believe this maybe a bit weak in epic content on how mobs regen stat damage/ neg levels especially with a 10% proc rate. I suggest an alternative such as:

Utterdark Blast: Eldritch Blast Shape Stance: This Eldritch Blast auto-attack seeks out enemies, and inflicts 2 negative levels on a failed Fortitude save. DC 10 + Warlock level + Cha mod + Sundering, combat feats, etc.



I personally wouldn't mind a passive bonus to Universal Spell Power every epic level as well as having some critical damage multiplier with spells added to caster feats.

[Silverleafeon]

I personally wouldn't mind a passive bonus to Universal Spell Power every epic level as well as having some critical damage multiplier with spells added to caster feats.

Looking like maybe the best choice...hmm...at the one that scales the best.
Its going to take more than +3 to fix the problematic situation that mob scaling is spiraling out of control.

Melees can swing that sword all day long and just break a sweat.
Even +10 USP per Epic Level will be minor sadly.
I hate to promote power creep, but things are getting out of hand.
Just wait till we get into a Level 34 Raid...

[XxJFGxX]

Looking like maybe the best choice...hmm...at the one that scales the best.
Its going to take more than +3 to fix the problematic situation that mob scaling is spiraling out of control.

Melees can swing that sword all day long and just break a sweat.
Even +10 USP per Epic Level will be minor sadly.
I hate to promote power creep, but things are getting out of hand.
Just wait till we get into a Level 34 Raid...

Well the devs need to add spell critical multiplier into wizards and sorcs through their core enhancements. Reason for this is because the meta right now in this game is mostly melee and casters have been left in the dust in terms of overall dps from their spell casting. And something tells me that the devs arn't going back to tweak wizards and sorcs anytime soon.

[Silverleafeon]

Another reason melee damage overperforms compared to caster dps into epics, there is no caster equivalent to pulverizer, devistating crit, overwhelming crit, you just do double damage on crit, period. Also as melees get better weapons and various ways to add [w], there is nothing like this for casters. Imagine if equipping a thunderforged orb made your fireballs do 4.5[10d6], or ruin do 4.5[500d1]...

Well the devs need to add spell critical multiplier into wizards and sorcs through their core enhancements. Reason for this is because the meta right now in this game is mostly melee and casters have been left in the dust in terms of overall dps from their spell casting. And something tells me that the devs arn't going back to tweak wizards and sorcs anytime soon.

Well, perhaps Epic Power simply needs rewriting:

Epic Power

Usage: Passive
Prerequisite: None

Description

+3 Melee Power
+3 Ranged Power
+10 Universal Spell Power
+15% Universal Spell Crit Bonus Damage

Note This feat is automatically given to all characters each time they gain an Epic level.



Also, each Epic Destiny Innate could have 1d6 Universal Spell Power added to it.
(Or we could use a more scientific method

[XxJFGxX]

Well, perhaps Epic Power simply needs rewriting:

Epic Power

Usage: Passive
Prerequisite: None

Description

+3 Melee Power
+3 Ranged Power
+10 Universal Spell Power
+15% Universal Spell Crit Bonus Damage

Note This feat is automatically given to all characters each time they gain an Epic level.



Also, each Epic Destiny Innate could have 1d6 Universal Spell Power added to it.
(Or we could use a more scientific method

/signed

Whenever the devs decide to tweak wizards and sorcs they should add critical damage multiplier to their cores as well as give sorcs their capstone back through a new enhancement tree. Maybe Acolyte of the Skin?

[gwonbush]

I'm trying to think of an enemy that unholy blast is superior against compared to the normal eldritch blast. Pretty much everything that absorbs force damage in any capacity is a construct and therefor immune to negative energy. Not to mention, your force spellpower should be higher than your negative spellpower since heal isn't a class skill. The only situation I can think of that is better is if you work with a monk who uses the dark-dark-dark finisher to add negative energy vulnerability.

As such, Unholy Blast feels like a 2 AP tax to get to Essences that actually do something besides make your Eldritch blast useful against less targets (no undead, constructs or deathwarded enemies). Maybe it can also boost Eldritch blast damage when toggled, so it applies more damage to the targets that it can effect.

[Failedlegend]

Well, perhaps Epic Power simply needs rewriting:

Epic Power

Usage: Passive
Prerequisite: None

Description

+3 Melee Power
+3 Ranged Power
+10 Universal Spell Power
+15% Universal Spell Crit Bonus Damage

I'd like to see .5 generic DC for each level (obviously with the ED DOcs removed)

[Angelic-council]

How much more should a 28 have over 20?

We haven't specified how much Eldritch Blast damage scales with Spell Power, and that's one of the things that's likely to change as we proceed and playtest.

I don't think anyone can answer this without actually testing it.. but it's a good question.

The difference between lv 1 - 20 content and lv21 - 32 are huge.. You can get 90 spell power item at lv20, and in the end it's 150. People usually get around 200 spell power at lv20 and 400 - 440 at lv28. Let's say, a warlock somehow managed to aquire 1d6 eldritch damage x 30 times (if possible), he would be hitting around 90 - 540 damage (lv20 with 200 spell power) and 150 - 900 (lv28 with 400 spell power). That's if.. he could aquire 1d6' 30 times and eldritch blast scale 100% with spell power. Now, regular monsters at lv20 would have around 3 - 4k HP and 10 - 15k in lv28+ quests.

Now, if a warlock has 60% critical damage, he would be critting somewhere around 1440 damage at lv28 (lucky crit).

Edit: Now the real question. How much "?d?" a pure warlock can get.

[Dalsheel]

Not sure, but if you added 3 universal spell power at each epic level for all classes, then all casters would appreciate it.

Since casters get +1 universal spell power at every epic level through the Skill Mastery feat, it would make more sense to give them +2 universal spell power as the equivalent of +3 MP/RP

[Vargouille]

These are pretty soft numbers, but having done many many ETRs on multiple platforms, my gut tells me that a well-built level 28 melee with destinies probably does 3-4 times (closer to 4) the damage of the same lvl 20 melee without destinies. For a sorc, the number is probably more like twice as much damage, mostly due to the ED abilities they gain like Energy Burst, Ruin, and Hellball: their spell damage doesn't go up tremendously, and it certainly doesnt double. Warlocks wont have the sp pool to fuel these ED abilities like Hellball/Ruin (I think), and I don't get the impression that the devs want their epic viability to be exclusively contingent on ED abilities like eburst anyway.

So, if warlocks are going to be defined by Eldritch Blast, and Eldritch Blast scales slowly into epics as shown above, then you can balance one end or the other (at 20 or at 28), but not both- there just isn't enough growth in the damage output.

Does that make sense? It's not a new problem, it's one that casters have dealt with for a long time, but it will actually be more acute with warlocks, due to the lack of other options. I'm not saying that the damage is too high or too low, since we cant test that yet and decide, but I am confident saying that right now they'll either be very OP at 20 and ok at 28 or ok at 20 and quite weak at 28. It's not the only part of the game that matters, but it is what most (?) people play nowadays.

Not sure how to fix it: one possibility would be to disallow metamagics and scale eldritch blast with something like 200% spellpower: the extra spellpower from metamagics kind of blunts the increased spellpower gain from 20 to 28, proportionally. Using the numbers from earlier (300 spellpower at 20, 500 at 28) that would give almost multiplier of 7 at 20, and a multipler of 11 at 28. So, about 55% more damage: better, but still lower growth in damage than what other characters experience
Ideally epic levels would have improved base class characteristics and added base dice to Eldritch Blast, but that ship has sailed.

Nice post, amongst some other good posts. Thanks for your thoughts.

Still want to try it all out, get it to Lammaland soon!

We're trying! Have to finish making an alpha pass here to test it here locally before there's any chance you guys can see it!

[Lanadazia]

[1]Activate for 7 Depravity: Gains temporary hitpoints equal to your maximum hitpoints. These last for 1 minute. You have -1% maximum hitpoints until you rest, which stacks up to 99 times.


[2]30 AP, class level 18: Blood Component:

• Your Eldritch Blast attacks 10% faster.
• +10 maximum Depravity.
• -25 Maximum HP
• Greater Heroism is added to your known Warlock Spells at level 5.

[3]Feigned Health: When you cast spells on yourself or allies, you grant temporary hitpoints equal to (33%/66%/100%) of your Charisma.


[4]Unholy Blast: Eldritch Essence Stance: Your Eldritch Blast base damage is now Negative instead of Force.


[5]Eldritch Chain: Eldritch Blast Shape Stance: When toggled on, your basic attack an Eldritch Blast that chains to two other enemies. This scales with 66% spellpower.


[6]Faltering Blast: Eldritch Essence Stance: Your Eldritch Blast attacks have a 25% chance to slow enemy movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds.

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

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

1) a shield as strong as max. hp? thats broken, even with the stacking -1% penalty... a shield that is equal to the con or cha score would fit better maybe

2) is that minus 25 hp? like some sort of blood sacrifice to attain a higher caster-status? (don't really know the correct words for what i try to say..)

3) this looks really really cool! i'd try a supporter/off-heal warlock for sure, some interessting stuff in all the trees for that playstyle!

4) is this a fluff-enhancement? i'd like a toggle or a multi-selector, so you can decide if you're doing negative or force damage/ switch between negative/force

5) this looks really cool aswell!

6) i think the enhnacements from 5) and 6) should be swapped, so that you first get the stance and after that the shape stance

7) does that mean that player character damage on a confused monster won't break confusion?

8) again, this looks reall really cool!

overall a very nice enhancement-tree. i like it alot. it seems to be pretty polished already. just some minor tweaks and it should be done

[BMurph]

It's a good question. I dont have a nice clean answer for you, but I'm trying to demonstrate what I think is an inevitable wall you'll run into.

These are pretty soft numbers, but having done many many ETRs on multiple platforms, my gut tells me that a well-built level 28 melee with destinies probably does 3-4 times (closer to 4) the damage of the same lvl 20 melee without destinies. For a sorc, the number is probably more like twice as much damage, mostly due to the ED abilities they gain like Energy Burst, Ruin, and Hellball: their spell damage doesn't go up tremendously, and it certainly doesnt double. Warlocks wont have the sp pool to fuel these ED abilities like Hellball/Ruin (I think), and I don't get the impression that the devs want their epic viability to be exclusively contingent on ED abilities like eburst anyway.

So, if warlocks are going to be defined by Eldritch Blast, and Eldritch Blast scales slowly into epics as shown above, then you can balance one end or the other (at 20 or at 28), but not both- there just isn't enough growth in the damage output.

Does that make sense? It's not a new problem, it's one that casters have dealt with for a long time, but it will actually be more acute with warlocks, due to the lack of other options. I'm not saying that the damage is too high or too low, since we cant test that yet and decide, but I am confident saying that right now they'll either be very OP at 20 and ok at 28 or ok at 20 and quite weak at 28. It's not the only part of the game that matters, but it is what most (?) people play nowadays.

Not sure how to fix it: one possibility would be to disallow metamagics and scale eldritch blast with something like 200% spellpower: the extra spellpower from metamagics kind of blunts the increased spellpower gain from 20 to 28, proportionally. Using the numbers from earlier (300 spellpower at 20, 500 at 28) that would give almost multiplier of 7 at 20, and a multipler of 11 at 28. So, about 55% more damage: better, but still lower growth in damage than what other characters experience
Ideally epic levels would have improved base class characteristics and added base dice to Eldritch Blast, but that ship has sailed.

Still want to try it all out, get it to Lammaland soon!

Honestly, I think it's gotten to the point where empower and maximize need to be revisited/redone yet again. Before we had spell power, they offered a % boost to dmg which stacked additively with all the other damage boosts which is essentially how spell power works now. However this only worked out well before as there wasn't as much scaling as we have now with the epics for enemy hp. Right now if you play a sorc, you can see a huge dmg spike in the low lvls when you first get maximize and empower as that gets you +225 spell power before you can really get any heavy spell power items. However, as you lvl, the effect of those metamagics go down as you gain more spell power.

To better illustrate this, we can say that a fire savant at lvl 3 having both empower and maximize gets that nice +225 spellpower while only being able to use say a +1 thaumaturgy staff which would give 3 + 36 = 39 spellpower and then maybe some fire savant enhancements for some more spell power of say around 26 to give 39 + 26 = 67 total spellpower. Throw in some spellcraft for some added spellpower and well say roughly a nice round +8 to give us 75 for ease of calculations. So then at lvl 3, applying metamagics gives us 4x as much spellpower overall and more than double added dmg (175% compared to 400%).

Now lets look at the opposite side of the spectrum at lvl 28 with say some thunder-forged gear (its easier to make and gives better overall stats at cap) and full ED. 1st we get roughly 90 spellpower from fire savant alone, then, assuming we go full draconic incarnation (just to help with the point of spellpower issues) we get an extra 30 fire spellpower. Then say we twist in flames of purity from DC for another 30 fire spellpower. Next add in the spellpower bonus of spellcraft, assuming full ranks we get 31 total fire spellpower from that. Now the big boost, we have a tier 3 thunder-forged staff for fire so +14 enhancement bonus gives 42 implement spellpower bonus, then we get a 150 spellpower equipment boost. adding all those up we get 90+30+30+31+42+150 = 373 fire spellpower which well just round up to a nice 375 assuming a simple added +2 int mod to spellcraft bonus for calculation simplicity. This could be further boosted temporarily with various items or enhancements that proc on spell cast, but well leave this at this value for now.

Now with our lvl 28 spell power we 375 spellpower without metas, and now 600 with so we go from 475% base dmg to 700%. We've gone from the meta magics more than doubling our dmg at lvl 3, to now only offering an extra 50% roughly at lvl 28, less than 1/4 the original effectiveness. This is why caster dps takes such a nose dive in epic levels. As the monsters hp scales exponentially up, the dps is actually scaling downward in the end (it's still increasing, but just at diminishing rates).

At the very least, empower and maximize should be consistent in its boost thru all levels, and to do that, I believe a simple overall % boost to damage from them applied AFTER spellpower is calculated into the equation would help immensely. Why not make empower and maximize do what they originally were intended to do? Have empower go back to total 50% boost to dmg and have maximize go back to total +100% to dmg. Whether they stack additively or multiplicatively is up to you, but regardless, keeping consistent scaling that'll favor the end game where the caster dps needs it the most would be greatly appreciated.

As always any thoughts, ideas, counter data, supporting data, etc. is appreciated.

[Vargouille]

1) a shield as strong as max. hp? thats broken, even with the stacking -1% penalty... a shield that is equal to the con or cha score would fit better maybe

2) is that minus 25 hp? like some sort of blood sacrifice to attain a higher caster-status? (don't really know the correct words for what i try to say..)

3) this looks really really cool! i'd try a supporter/off-heal warlock for sure, some interessting stuff in all the trees for that playstyle!

• We'll probably be pulling back on the power level of Stanch.
• Yes, the -25 HP represents giving up some of your blood.

4) is this a fluff-enhancement? i'd like a toggle or a multi-selector, so you can decide if you're doing negative or force damage/ switch between negative/force

We're probably going to revisit this and make it into Poison damage due to mismatches between intent, and some confusion. The goal is to give a method to switch away from Force damage for the main Eldritch Blast damage, since players have expressed a lot of concerns over that.

Will probably need a name change!

7) does that mean that player character damage on a confused monster won't break confusion?

Our current thinking is that Confusion doesn't have any chance to break on damage, despite not following the PnP version.