U27: The Sudden End of All Endgame DC Casting in DDO?

[Mindos]

Tentatively, amongst other balance changes, we're planning to:

1. Remove the general +4 bonus to saving throws from the Shavarath Environmental Effect (affecting all player characters and monsters in Shavarath).
2. Remove Epic Resilience from Update 27 quests. We still want to revisit this in a more thorough fashion (ideally along with some other factors, such as Epic Ward and related things), but this should make a big difference for Update 27.

This reduces "healthy" monster saves by -10, compared to the most recent Lamannia. The Shavarath Environmental Effects still give player and monsters characters +4 to Will saves vs. Fear and +4 to Will Saves vs. Enchantment (as well as Attack and Skill bonuses), keeping some of the flavor and gameplay differences present in Shavarath. This doesn't cover every change, and there are likely to be some changes to saving throws for some individual monster types as well. (We're likely to make sure that each monster has at least one sufficiently "low" save that moderately built characters should be able to target that save on that monster very effectively.)

We're still exploring options for Spell Resistance, which is potentially "causing problems" for DC casters as much as saving throws, since about 75% of monster types in Update 27 have some kind of Spell Resistance. On Epic Elite, most Update 27 monster types have Spell Resistance between 40->45. To some extent this is the nature of the lore and content, but we still want players to feel like they can contribute here with their characters. It may very well come down to simply lowering Spell Resistances for some groups of Monster Types in ways that aren't necessarily "normal" for those monster types, but we want to explore options before committing to that route. Ideas still welcome. (Some demonstrative but crazier ideas that are less likely to come to pass: Limited, temporary and/or consumable items that increase Spell Penetration; environmental effects that reduce Spell Penetration "on-hit", potentially for spells and/or physical attacks, etc. Most such ideas are probably either just bad design or not feasible due to tech issues, but we'd like to at least consider some such ideas.)

This is the best epic later Friday weekend troll post evar.

This seems like a drastic last moment seat of the pants change. The Shav effects that have always been there will now be changing? I think this could be worded differently. At first glance, it appears that the effect is gone, but then further reading shows +4 to will saves only vs fear and enchantments. Oh, and attack and skill. TLDR: A handy chart of before and after effects to ease comparison instead of poorly formatted/worded too much coffee post.

1. Not all characters need to be equally viable in all content. Sometimes ranged can shine, sometimes a trapper can be best. This homoginization of content is not what I want. I think it leads to bland, choices and teamwork don't matter kind of gameplay.
2. You are setting yourself up for future update/patch problems! By selectivly removing Epic Resilience and now leaning towards a Shavarath Environmental change, it only takes one attribute error on patch day to turn them back on, setting their states incorrectly and ruining gameplay for who knows how long until it's noticed and fixed. Speaking of which...
3. How is it that no one communicates at the DDO roundtable? My second point happens PRECISELY because one Dev doesn't tell the next Dev about Epic Resilience, for example. I know you just started doing Monsters. Good luck


It seems to me that I only see forum posts from the same people all the time, I wish there was a way to get the masses of players into here, but I have to ask finally:

Why is it that news of thoughts of having an increase in difficulty leak recently, suggesting a demand for harder content, but a Llammania build comes out that's perceived so impossible that the lead Dev jumps so high and makes posts like this? Instead of vision of leadership this seems so reactionary. Who plays your game and why do they play it? Even premium accounts have more than one character slot: we don't need to cater to all the classes all the time. (or to the most vocal of the posters either, but that's just my humble internet opinion)

[Thalone]

Excuse me but can someone please give us the breakdown on how to get guaranteed 46 Spell Pen on a 1st Life Lvl 28?

20 class levels
05 destiny levels
08 3x feats
03 destiny spell pen selector
03 class enhancements
05 lootgen item
01 guild buff
=====================
45 before twists and rolling a 1d20, which is minimum 1...

[Cetus]

So...Please tell me what a caster who's only got a 50% 1/2 chance at Instakilling or CCing a mob and every mob has so much hp that Spell DPS is utterly unviable is supposed to do in a group other than buff the melees and pike?

The reason we've hit this point where so many people can solo everything is because no-one wants to have to Pike in Groups!

When Wizards/Sorcs were CC Bots do you remember the complaints?
When Clerics/FvSs were Healers only do you remember the complaints?
When the Assassin wouldn't get the traps because he was an Assassin do you remember the complaints?

I DO!

Everyone wants to be able to do some DPS! Everyone wants to be able to compete! {Yes compete - Do you not recall all the Kill Counters?}, Only a very small number of people are happy to Pike!

Most of all Everyone wants to be seen to be doing something in a Party! To be contributing more than a Heal or getting that one trap in a 45 minute quest!

There's still people out there who build Tanks to TANK! Even with the hatred shown to them in DDO for the past 5-6 Years and going! Because the Tank was the one non-DPS build where you could be seen by everyone to be contributing!
But other people didn't like that so they built DPS characters that could steal the aggro off the tank no matter how good he/she was! They deliberately stole that aggro! So only the very best Tanks were capable and everyone else simply gave up trying to build one!

The Devs have given us what we wanted - They've given us a game where DPS is King! And Self-Healing is Queen!


The Problem we have now is that Requirements to do any of that other stuff - Tanking, CCing, Instakilling etc. have got so high that only Pure DPS is viable!

Mob Saves have to come down!

Think of it like the Trap pass where the Devs rebalanced every trap in the game so as to have quests of Lvl 16 and up actually have DCs that mattered! - Durk's Got a Secret Trap lost about 10 pts of DC, Cabal For One went down by even more!
But we got DCs in Epic levels that actually made getting good trap skills meaningful again!

We need that doing with Mob Saves!
Reduce them everywhere!
Work out what the maximum DC a Player can hit is at each level and balance all Classes with Instakills or CC to be able to hit that max DC with work - Some classes may not be able to hit that max DC at early levels but will catch up at later levels.
Then the Devs can properly balance new content and gear each update rather than having this constant Buff/Nerf cycle!


P.S. If the Devs are relying on a full group with a Fighter to take down the mobs saves by 3 and a Bard to take the mobs saves down by 3 and a FvS to take the mobs saves down by 3 BEFORE the Wizard should cast his Disco Ball/Wail then they're doing it wrong!
There's 14 Classes in DDO now and HUNDREDS of Builds! There's absolutely no guarantee that a Group will consist of the right Builds to do that!

Like I already said, if the highest achievable MIN/MAX enchantment DC in the game is insufficient to CC the hardest EE mobs, then I agree - either their saves need to be lowered or the highest achievable DC needs to be higher. But not so much that the game becomes trivialized with mass holds everywhere, I think the save dynamics should be such that you need to target different saves with different CC spells to be a master CC'er. A first lifer with mediocre gear should definitely struggle in EE content. Or...maybe they should be ok in EE content and a "reaper" difficulty is in order for the players that transcended the power of an average EE player.

If the hardest mobs in the game mentioned above (whether its EE or "reaper") have will saves as their main stat - then they shouldn't be easily CC'ed by spells that target will saves, pretty much unless you went min/max all the way in those spells - but even then, you should have a backup set of spells to target the weaker save - that would, in my opinion, be a smarter way to build and play a toon. I'm ok with one save in a particular mob-type being sky high - say 80 if your game-max possible enchantment DC is 85 - this way they can roll a 1,2,3 or 4 and still get held - so 20% chance to catch em. That's cool if you're game maxed - those that aren't maxed will be outta luck as far as enchantment spells go, but if this same mob also has a fort save of 55 - then you can twist soundburst and still catch them if you had a decent evo investment. Point is: If they have a really high save that gives min/maxers in that specific spell school a run for their money, they should then have another save that is lower that you should be able to target. This way it's still challenging and approachable at the same time.

Spell resistance is a separate can of worms- mid 40's SR should exist in end-game content. Yes, it's a royal pain in the ass - but maybe you can get a couple melees cleaving with improved shattermantle weapons if it means you can catch them with a hold. Team play is what I'm about - content on its hardest difficulty should not be trivial like it has been thus far.

With DDO's many build possibilities, there's a very impressive amount of incredibly efficient builds out there that work well in EE - but you know what, not every single build concocted should function equally well in the games hardest content. There will be builds that just flat out suck there, and that's ok- it all depends on what each player wants to do, and these in-game goals will inherently set some constraints on what kinds of characters they can do that with.

So yea, you can't waltz in with a group of 10 wizard / 3 warlock / and 7 sorc and expect to plow through the games hardest content, some builds just will be objectively worse in that context - but it doesn't mean it can't be fun to play on EN or EH for those who are into that sorta thing.

[moo_cow]

Excuse me but can someone please give us the breakdown on how to get guaranteed 46 Spell Pen on a 1st Life Lvl 28?

That is so easy to get, I can't even ....

[Seikojin]

Like I already said, if the highest achievable MIN/MAX enchantment DC in the game is insufficient to CC the hardest EE mobs, then I agree - either their saves need to be lowered or the highest achievable DC needs to be higher. But not so much that the game becomes trivialized with mass holds everywhere, I think the save dynamics should be such that you need to target different saves with different CC spells to be a master CC'er. A first lifer with mediocre gear should definitely struggle in EE content. Or...maybe they should be ok in EE content and a "reaper" difficulty is in order for the players that transcended the power of an average EE player.

If the hardest mobs in the game mentioned above (whether its EE or "reaper") have will saves as their main stat - then they shouldn't be easily CC'ed by spells that target will saves, pretty much unless you went min/max all the way in those spells - but even then, you should have a backup set of spells to target the weaker save - that would, in my opinion, be a smarter way to build and play a toon. I'm ok with one save in a particular mob-type being sky high - say 80 if your game-max possible enchantment DC is 85 - this way they can roll a 1,2,3 or 4 and still get held - so 20% chance to catch em. That's cool if you're game maxed - those that aren't maxed will be outta luck as far as enchantment spells go, but if this same mob also has a fort save of 55 - then you can twist soundburst and still catch them if you had a decent evo investment. Point is: If they have a really high save that gives min/maxers in that specific spell school a run for their money, they should then have another save that is lower that you should be able to target. This way it's still challenging and approachable at the same time.

Spell resistance is a separate can of worms- mid 40's SR should exist in end-game content. Yes, it's a royal pain in the ass - but maybe you can get a couple melees cleaving with improved shattermantle weapons if it means you can catch them with a hold. Team play is what I'm about - content on its hardest difficulty should not be trivial like it has been thus far.

With DDO's many build possibilities, there's a very impressive amount of incredibly efficient builds out there that work well in EE - but you know what, not every single build concocted should function equally well in the games hardest content. There will be builds that just flat out suck there, and that's ok- it all depends on what each player wants to do, and these in-game goals will inherently set some constraints on what kinds of characters they can do that with.

So yea, you can't waltz in with a group of 10 wizard / 3 warlock / and 7 sorc and expect to plow through the games hardest content, some builds just will be objectively worse in that context - but it doesn't mean it can't be fun to play on EN or EH for those who are into that sorta thing.

This all over the place.

[arkonas]

So...Please tell me what a caster who's only got a 50% 1/2 chance at Instakilling or CCing a mob and every mob has so much hp that Spell DPS is utterly unviable is supposed to do in a group other than buff the melees and pike?

The reason we've hit this point where so many people can solo everything is because no-one wants to have to Pike in Groups!

When Wizards/Sorcs were CC Bots do you remember the complaints?
When Clerics/FvSs were Healers only do you remember the complaints?
When the Assassin wouldn't get the traps because he was an Assassin do you remember the complaints?

I DO!

Everyone wants to be able to do some DPS! Everyone wants to be able to compete! {Yes compete - Do you not recall all the Kill Counters?}, Only a very small number of people are happy to Pike!

Most of all Everyone wants to be seen to be doing something in a Party! To be contributing more than a Heal or getting that one trap in a 45 minute quest!

There's still people out there who build Tanks to TANK! Even with the hatred shown to them in DDO for the past 5-6 Years and going! Because the Tank was the one non-DPS build where you could be seen by everyone to be contributing!
But other people didn't like that so they built DPS characters that could steal the aggro off the tank no matter how good he/she was! They deliberately stole that aggro! So only the very best Tanks were capable and everyone else simply gave up trying to build one!

The Devs have given us what we wanted - They've given us a game where DPS is King! And Self-Healing is Queen!


The Problem we have now is that Requirements to do any of that other stuff - Tanking, CCing, Instakilling etc. have got so high that only Pure DPS is viable!

Mob Saves have to come down!

Think of it like the Trap pass where the Devs rebalanced every trap in the game so as to have quests of Lvl 16 and up actually have DCs that mattered! - Durk's Got a Secret Trap lost about 10 pts of DC, Cabal For One went down by even more!
But we got DCs in Epic levels that actually made getting good trap skills meaningful again!

We need that doing with Mob Saves!
Reduce them everywhere!
Work out what the maximum DC a Player can hit is at each level and balance all Classes with Instakills or CC to be able to hit that max DC with work - Some classes may not be able to hit that max DC at early levels but will catch up at later levels.
Then the Devs can properly balance new content and gear each update rather than having this constant Buff/Nerf cycle!


P.S. If the Devs are relying on a full group with a Fighter to take down the mobs saves by 3 and a Bard to take the mobs saves down by 3 and a FvS to take the mobs saves down by 3 BEFORE the Wizard should cast his Disco Ball/Wail then they're doing it wrong!
There's 14 Classes in DDO now and HUNDREDS of Builds! There's absolutely no guarantee that a Group will consist of the right Builds to do that!

i just wanted to say something about the self healing and mob saves. first off im kinda with cetus on this when some things are meant to be tough and if you really want to be great you would need to earn it through everything to do great vs the content imo this being ee of course. en and eh should be doable. ee should require a lot more from your toons and all.

let me touch on the self healing part very fast. i started the game in october 09 and and it was rough when i first started. first mmo and all. so my toons were a little meh and i was still getting the hang of things. so this was before all of the self healing people complain about today. so yes some healers did heal back then until one day i met one that didn't and yes i did die a few times. i also never thought about oh wait why should i rely on other people to heal me. then later on a sorc joined a quest and expected EVERYONE else to heal him and he didn't think it was his "job" to heal himself. i was only a paladin and didn't have the resources to heal myself and someone else. we didn't have a cleric or fvs or even bard.

he wanted us to buy stuff just to heal him. i was like no. so that really drove the nail in the coffin of me relying on others for any healing of any kind. so from then on i wanted to self heal myself through any means i could get. so from wands/ heal scrolls/ potions and finding ways to incorporate cure spells into my builds. i got to the point where i don't want to wait for someone to decide if i live or die. i took it my own hands i want to live. i wanted to contribute and not make someone play something they didn't like to do. i didn't want to be a burden. so since then and for over 4 years i've always tried to bring a self healing self sufficient toon with me because i frankly got tired of waiting for others/using others to try to play. since then i have kept others alive through my methods of keeping myself alive and they have been thankful for my attempts or success of keeping them alive. so say what you want about self healing. i was doing it well before it being popular today. i prefer it because i will never again rely on another player to do that job. if they choose to play a healer more power to them. i will never tell a player you must do this or this or this. get my point?

[Holymunchkin]

popping in to say that:

the devs won't fix saves on their own!!!!!?????!!!??!?!?! haha

there is more than enough discussion in this thread for a person to know what to do in principle!

maybe lazy is conflating the difficulty of balancing saves from a coding perspective, but....

I am not going to go through every mob and submit a bug report, you <RETRACTED>. You could maybe convince me to go through excel spreadsheets for each raid.

The reflex saves in ToEE are still rediculous for sorcs and fvs. The fact that mobs weren't fixed means there is a difficult problem here?

I hope the devs will just do their own work. Saves are again an issue on lammania and we honestly shouldn't have the same problem 2 updates in a row.

I am not cleaning the spaghetti off the wall with a needle.

[slarden]

Yea, these are all fair points.

To step away from DC's for a moment - the thing that absolutely needs to improve at least for sorcs and wizards is a much better spell damage/spell point ratio. Against current bosses, it's just not anywhere near efficient - unless you're in shiradi.

Yes, this is my issue with casters - sustainability. It's either 2 fvs levels for just reward or play a melee or warlock.

[Cetus]

This all over the place.

How so?

[slarden]

Excuse me but can someone please give us the breakdown on how to get guaranteed 46 Spell Pen on a 1st Life Lvl 28?

• Spell Penetration:
  20: Wizard Levels
  5: Draconic bonus caster levels
  3: Piercing Spellcraft from Draconic
  2: Twist: Echoes of the Ancestor - Arcane
  3: Twist: Piercing Spellcraft from Magister
  3: Archmage Spell Penetration enhancement x3
  8: Spell Penetration, Greater Spell Penetration and Epic Spell Penetration feats
  7: Thunderforged Items
  1: Arcane Sanctum Ship Buff
  Total Spell Penetration: 52
  Destiny: Draconic Incarnation

[FranOhmsford]

let me touch on the self healing part very fast. i started the game in october 09 and and it was rough when i first started. first mmo and all. so my toons were a little meh and i was still getting the hang of things. so this was before all of the self healing people complain about today. so yes some healers did heal back then until one day i met one that didn't and yes i did die a few times. i also never thought about oh wait why should i rely on other people to heal me.

That Healer was the first of many!

then later on a sorc joined a quest and expected EVERYONE else to heal him and he didn't think it was his "job" to heal himself. i was only a paladin and didn't have the resources to heal myself and someone else. we didn't have a cleric or fvs or even bard.

he wanted us to buy stuff just to heal him. i was like no.

Wow - I have no words!

so that really drove the nail in the coffin of me relying on others for any healing of any kind.

Hang on a minute?

Two jerks and you decide they were the ones who had the right idea?

What happened to "in moderation"?


No wonder everyone has Self-Healing now - The Jerks won!

[FranOhmsford]

20 class levels
05 destiny levels
08 3x feats
03 destiny spell pen selector
03 class enhancements
05 lootgen item
01 guild buff
=====================
45 before twists and rolling a 1d20, which is minimum 1...

What's the "destiny spell pen selector"?

• Spell Penetration:
  20: Wizard Levels
  5: Draconic bonus caster levels
  3: Piercing Spellcraft from Draconic
  2: Twist: Echoes of the Ancestor - Arcane
  3: Twist: Piercing Spellcraft from Magister
  3: Archmage Spell Penetration enhancement x3
  8: Spell Penetration, Greater Spell Penetration and Epic Spell Penetration feats
  7: Thunderforged Items
  1: Arcane Sanctum Ship Buff
  Total Spell Penetration: 52
  Destiny: Draconic Incarnation

Hang on - Does it have to be Draconic?

What about Clerics/Souls?

Piercing Spellcraft is a Tier 3 Twist as is Echoes so that's basically every ED maxed and your Twist slots taken up for Spell Pen and 1 Int?

[slarden]

Tentatively, amongst other balance changes, we're planning to:

1. Remove the general +4 bonus to saving throws from the Shavarath Environmental Effect (affecting all player characters and monsters in Shavarath).
2. Remove Epic Resilience from Update 27 quests. We still want to revisit this in a more thorough fashion (ideally along with some other factors, such as Epic Ward and related things), but this should make a big difference for Update 27.

This reduces "healthy" monster saves by -10, compared to the most recent Lamannia. The Shavarath Environmental Effects still give player and monsters characters +4 to Will saves vs. Fear and +4 to Will Saves vs. Enchantment (as well as Attack and Skill bonuses), keeping some of the flavor and gameplay differences present in Shavarath. This doesn't cover every change, and there are likely to be some changes to saving throws for some individual monster types as well. (We're likely to make sure that each monster has at least one sufficiently "low" save that moderately built characters should be able to target that save on that monster very effectively.)

We're still exploring options for Spell Resistance, which is potentially "causing problems" for DC casters as much as saving throws, since about 75% of monster types in Update 27 have some kind of Spell Resistance. On Epic Elite, most Update 27 monster types have Spell Resistance between 40->45. To some extent this is the nature of the lore and content, but we still want players to feel like they can contribute here with their characters. It may very well come down to simply lowering Spell Resistances for some groups of Monster Types in ways that aren't necessarily "normal" for those monster types, but we want to explore options before committing to that route. Ideas still welcome. (Some demonstrative but crazier ideas that are less likely to come to pass: Limited, temporary and/or consumable items that increase Spell Penetration; environmental effects that reduce Spell Penetration "on-hit", potentially for spells and/or physical attacks, etc. Most such ideas are probably either just bad design or not feasible due to tech issues, but we'd like to at least consider some such ideas.)

Spell penetrations are reasonable in the mid 40s. You can even go higher for orange named enemies. The main thing is that I don't think 3 past lifes wizard, 3 past lifes fvs should be a requirement for ee spell pen. If you want to make it a requirement for the nightmare setting that is fine, but ee shouldn't require past lifes. It sounds like you are basing your #s off of first lifers which is the right way to go.

-10 should make a difference. Thank you.

[Cetus]

Spell penetrations are reasonable in the mid 40s. You can even go higher for orange named enemies. The main thing is that I don't think 3 past lifes wizard, 3 past lifes fvs should be a requirement for ee spell pen. If you want to make it a requirement for the nightmare setting that is fine, but ee shouldn't require past lifes. It sounds like you are basing your #s off of first lifers which is the right way to go.

-10 should make a difference. Thank you.

This is where we slightly disagree, and as a result I'm suspecting that this "reaper" difficulty really is warranted.

I mean, EE is supposed to be the *THE" hardest difficulty. It *should* require a substantial investment, the least of which is simple wizard/fvs past lives.

Does EN or EH not even exist anymore for the weaker players?

[slarden]

What's the "destiny spell pen selector"?



Hang on - Does it have to be Draconic?

What about Clerics/Souls?

Piercing Spellcraft is a Tier 3 Twist as is Echoes so that's basically every ED maxed and your Twist slots taken up for Spell Pen and 1 Int?

Clerics and Favored soul can get 3 from Exalted Angel and twist in more. The only builds that suffer in Exalted Angel are bards and Warlocks because they don't get 5 from ED since their main sphere is arcane. They can still get enough for EE though based on the #s Varg provided.

[Braegan]

What's the "destiny spell pen selector"?



Hang on - Does it have to be Draconic?

What about Clerics/Souls?

Piercing Spellcraft is a Tier 3 Twist as is Echoes so that's basically every ED maxed and your Twist slots taken up for Spell Pen and 1 Int?

Thalone meant any of the caster EDs (Magister, Draconic, EA). They all have an option for +3 so he left it at a +3 (pick your poison).

Does not have to be Draconic.

Clerics and FvS do well in EA as that ED gives a Spell Pen option as well.

Well that's for some max spell pen it costs some feats and some EDs.

Thalone answered you when you asked for a breakdown for a 1st lifer to reach 46 SP. He did so without twists.

Slarden further showed just how much higher it could be as a 1st lifer.

Further, you could be an Elf or Sun Elf for an additional +3 that I didn't see on either list.

Your question was answered, it is entirely possible to get a solid SP on a 1st life caster. Some EE Drow, Yuan-Ti and other randoms may still pose a problem. But a 1st lifer can, if built right bypass current SP for majority of content.

[FranOhmsford]

Clerics and Favored soul can get 3 from Exalted Angel and twist in more. The only builds that suffer in Exalted Angel are bards and Warlocks because they don't get 5 from ED since their main sphere is arcane. They can still get enough for EE though based on the #s Varg provided.

Why only 3 from EA?

You posted 5 for Draconic and Thalone posted 5 for Destiny levels?

EA doesn't give 1 per Destiny level then?


What about Divine Crusader? Is every Cleric/Soul who wants to be able to use their Spells going to have to be in Exalted or Draconic?

[slarden]

This is where we slightly disagree, and as a result I'm suspecting that this "reaper" difficulty really is warranted.

I mean, EE is supposed to be the *THE" hardest difficulty. It *should* require a substantial investment, the least of which is simple wizard/fvs past lives.

Does EN or EH not even exist anymore for the weaker players?

Past lifes don't represent skill so it shouldn't be a gate. You can play a barbarian with past life gates why not a caster? This just becomes a divide between players in my opinion and isn't necessary.

Past life was never required in the epics prior to U14 - and that was appropriate. If we have level 30 drow content it might be different.

[FranOhmsford]

Thalone meant any of the caster EDs (Magister, Draconic, EA). They all have an option for +3 so he left it at a +3 (pick your poison).

Does not have to be Draconic.

Clerics and FvS do well in EA as that ED gives a Spell Pen option as well.

Well that's for some max spell pen it costs some feats and some EDs.

Thalone answered you when you asked for a breakdown for a 1st lifer to reach 46 SP. He did so without twists.

Slarden further showed just how much higher it could be as a 1st lifer.

Further, you could be an Elf or Sun Elf for an additional +3 that I didn't see on either list.

Your question was answered, it is entirely possible to get a solid SP on a 1st life caster. Some EE Drow, Yuan-Ti and other randoms may still pose a problem. But a 1st lifer can, if built right bypass current SP for majority of content.

Which all sounds fine - I just wanted to be sure there was nothing required that would hurt elsewhere...Like say DCs themselves or requiring you to be a one-trick Pony?

[slarden]

Why only 3 from EA?

You posted 5 for Draconic and Thalone posted 5 for Destiny levels?

EA doesn't give 1 per Destiny level then?


What about Divine Crusader? Is every Cleric/Soul who wants to be able to use their Spells going to have to be in Exalted or Draconic?

Clerics and Fvs get 5 from EA but warlocks and bards do not since they only get that from arcane skill. The extra 3 is what you can get from the tree just like you can get 3 in magister and draconic.