Update 29 Feats: Legendary Feats

[Hipparan]

• Scion of the Plane of Earth
  
  • +4 to the DCs of Conjuration spells, +2 to the DCs of other spells
  • +20 PRR
  • +10 Acid Spell Power, +30 Universal Spell Power
  • Add 2d20 Acid damage to weapon and unarmed attacks (Scales with Spell Power)

How will this work with eldritch blast for a warlock will they only get the spell power or will the 2d20 acid be attacked to the blast same as a sword or bow

The way that this is worded, the 2d20 damage will only be added for melee or ranged damage, since eldritch blasts count as spells.

[Steelstar]

Some nice options :-)

Limbo looks fun, question; about Limbo;
* do I have to cast the buff each minute?
* or cast it once and it cycles?
* or is it a passive that cycles automatically?

Mechanus allows a BF to free up alot of racial AP, also gives a FTP warforged (non caster) reconstruct at 30

Scion of Limbo is a passive that cycles automatically.

Does the sneak attack damage of Scion of the Ethereal Plane work on ranks of hide, points spent in hide, or your hide score?

It is currently based on your full Hide score. I see a lot of number-crunching going on in this thread, which is good. If it's too strong, we can adjust that.

Scion of the Shadowfell
+4 to the DCs of Necromancy spells, +2 to DCs of other spells
+40 Negative Spell Power
+20 Negative Amp (assuming you take healing from Negative)
Weapon and Unarmed attacks heal you for 1d6 Positive damage, or 1d6 Negative damage if you are Undead.

Why not 30 Universal Spell Power and 10 negative like the others?

It could be. Why should it be like the others?

I don't feel this dps buff is good enough to compete with some of the others. Maybe add +1 crit threat? For monks add +1 ki regen and an additional 20% doublestrike?

It is very intentional that not every feat is on an even keel in terms of DPS. Is the overall feat good enough to compete with the others?

It would be nice for Scion of Elysium to have Creature Regeneration or Vampirism, its always a pain to heal up those creatures. Perhaps even double there summon times? Since its time sensitive.
or Maybe provide a new summons that will work in epics.

Between the new base-epic-level bonuses to Summons (which everyone will have), Epic Augment Summoning, and Scion of Elysium, there are a lot of new buffs for summoned creatures in this update. We'll be keeping an eye on them overall. These bonuses certainly don't fix every issue that summons/hires/pets have, but they are meant to help them.

In general I find all these changes to be problematic power creep for players.

This increase in power comes with a level cap increase. It would be bad if it didn't increase the power level.

I see options for boosting DCs of 3 schools, Necro, Evo, and Conj.

There any plans to help out other schools, too?

I could argue that Evo & Conj, in particular, needed more help the least, since they already have a couple ways to get higher DC not available to other schools. (Draconic Precise, and Sorc/Clr PLs.)

Every school gets at least a +2 DC boost when taking those feats. Evocation, Conjuration and Necromancy were chosen for those feats due to having related schools, and that a very large portion of offensive spellcasting relies on those schools, but every school is getting a significant buff to DCs in this update, provided you spec for it.

I'm currently using an invisibility guard on my rogue, and if you didn't know, the invisibility is unbreakable (even if attacking) AND it resets all aggro you have at the time. On it's own, this is useless for soloing (great for shedding aggro in a party), but if you sneak and run a ways, you will be completely concealed and aggro reset. I use it all the time in my static group and it's incredibly useful.

Bingo.

[Elfishski]

My first impression was that this is an interesting list where the different feats have something for a few different types of build but on a second look...

These are all just straight power increases for characters to be better at whatever they're already excellent at doing. They don't really add new options, they just add (a LOT) of extra power creep.

These feats just help cement a situation where all current content becomes completely irrelevant to a level 30 character. Even if Legendary quests require these sorts of buffs, there will only be a handful of them to begin with, so why work so hard to make every other quest in the game more irrelevant (including the already easy for a decent party on EE level 30 raids)?

My suggestion would be to throw these legendary feats out entirely, and move the level 29 feats to level 30 where they would logically be following the previous progression - the proposed level 29 feats (aside from the boring law/chaos ones which are straight bonus DPS and the stunning one which is too powerful unless the timer is really long) are much more interesting and would add variety and options. Personally speaking, these legendary feats would just make me more bored with any character at level 30.

I'd also remove all the bonus and unnecessary melee power, ranged power, and now spell power at each epic level, but keep the spell point discount. They didn't add any options to the 'dead' levels, just more power, which isn't exciting.

[slarden]

My first impression was that this is an interesting list where the different feats have something for a few different types of build but on a second look...

These are all just straight power increases for characters to be better at whatever they're already excellent at doing. They don't really add new options, they just add (a LOT) of extra power creep.

These feats just help cement a situation where all current content becomes completely irrelevant to a level 30 character. Even if Legendary quests require these sorts of buffs, there will only be a handful of them to begin with, so why work so hard to make every other quest in the game more irrelevant (including the already easy for a decent party on EE level 30 raids)?

My suggestion would be to throw these legendary feats out entirely, and move the level 29 feats to level 30 where they would logically be following the previous progression - the proposed level 29 feats (aside from the boring law/chaos ones which are straight bonus DPS and the stunning one which is too powerful unless the timer is really long) are much more interesting and would add variety and options. Personally speaking, these legendary feats would just make me more bored with any character at level 30.

I'd also remove all the bonus and unnecessary melee power, ranged power, and now spell power at each epic level, but keep the spell point discount. They didn't add any options to the 'dead' levels, just more power, which isn't exciting.

I think it's too early to say that until we understand what the difficulty is like on Legendary Elite.

It would be expected that lower level quests get easier with more levels added - the real test is whether this power buff is too much for the new content.

[slarden]

It could be. Why should it be like the others?

Because alot of builds that care about necromancy DC don't care much about negative spell power. Negative spellpower is mainly a pale master thing. I would suggest a split between negative spell power and universal spell power.

[count_spicoli]

My first impression was that this is an interesting list where the different feats have something for a few different types of build but on a second look...

These are all just straight power increases for characters to be better at whatever they're already excellent at doing. They don't really add new options, they just add (a LOT) of extra power creep.

These feats just help cement a situation where all current content becomes completely irrelevant to a level 30 character. Even if Legendary quests require these sorts of buffs, there will only be a handful of them to begin with, so why work so hard to make every other quest in the game more irrelevant (including the already easy for a decent party on EE level 30 raids)?

My suggestion would be to throw these legendary feats out entirely, and move the level 29 feats to level 30 where they would logically be following the previous progression - the proposed level 29 feats (aside from the boring law/chaos ones which are straight bonus DPS and the stunning one which is too powerful unless the timer is really long) are much more interesting and would add variety and options. Personally speaking, these legendary feats would just make me more bored with any character at level 30.

I'd also remove all the bonus and unnecessary melee power, ranged power, and now spell power at each epic level, but keep the spell point discount. They didn't add any options to the 'dead' levels, just more power, which isn't exciting.

Hopefully the level 30+ content is excrucationally difficult from monsters to traps to everything so these feats with a maxxed out char will be needed to be effective. And my initial reaction was to say that any quest below 30 with a 30 level char in it should take a big xp hit but that would limit the number of lfms for capped chars and there already is a shortage of lfms for capped chars. Not sure what the solution is here unless they plan on putting out so much 30+ content that we can just binge on it. But i do like the options they have provided and could make for some interesting choices.

[Atremus]

My suggestion would be to throw these legendary feats out entirely, and move the level 29 feats to level 30 where they would logically be following the previous progression - the proposed level 29 feats (aside from the boring law/chaos ones which are straight bonus DPS and the stunning one which is too powerful unless the timer is really long) are much more interesting and would add variety and options. Personally speaking, these legendary feats would just make me more bored with any character at level 30.

I'd also remove all the bonus and unnecessary melee power, ranged power, and now spell power at each epic level, but keep the spell point discount. They didn't add any options to the 'dead' levels, just more power, which isn't exciting.

Um.... NO

[HastyPudding]

My first impression was that this is an interesting list where the different feats have something for a few different types of build but on a second look...

These are all just straight power increases for characters to be better at whatever they're already excellent at doing. They don't really add new options, they just add (a LOT) of extra power creep.

These feats just help cement a situation where all current content becomes completely irrelevant to a level 30 character. Even if Legendary quests require these sorts of buffs, there will only be a handful of them to begin with, so why work so hard to make every other quest in the game more irrelevant (including the already easy for a decent party on EE level 30 raids)?

My suggestion would be to throw these legendary feats out entirely, and move the level 29 feats to level 30 where they would logically be following the previous progression - the proposed level 29 feats (aside from the boring law/chaos ones which are straight bonus DPS and the stunning one which is too powerful unless the timer is really long) are much more interesting and would add variety and options. Personally speaking, these legendary feats would just make me more bored with any character at level 30.

I'd also remove all the bonus and unnecessary melee power, ranged power, and now spell power at each epic level, but keep the spell point discount. They didn't add any options to the 'dead' levels, just more power, which isn't exciting.

Judging from the power of these feats, I think it's a step in the right direction. We're going to start having REAL end-game content now that the official cap is 30 for the foreseeable future. That means harder quests, legendary raids, and the devs are probably going to pull out all the stops to make things difficult to scale with these feats. In addition, there's still reaper difficulty on the horizon, which the devs have stated is going to be intentionally brutal and difficult even for the top 5%.

Also note that the majority of these new feats (including epic destiny, level 21/24/27/30 epic feats, as well as legendary feats) are designed with spellcasters in mind, who have fallen behind in the past year. While we're probably not going to get an uber class revamp for wizards and sorcerers (let's face it, they just need some touch ups, not a full pass) this is a push in the right direction to help balance the playing field which is currently dominated by melee and ranged builds.

On the feats themselves, I love them. They give good caster bonuses (like dc's, spell critical damage, and spellpower) while still giving bonuses that any melee/ranged class might look at "who cares about that spell critical damage but wow, I can get even more dodge from that feat, or I can get some nice healing amp from that one, or some much-needed MRR from that one." all packaged with elemental damage on their auto-attacks.

[TPICKRELL]

It is very intentional that not every feat is on an even keel in terms of DPS. Is the overall feat good enough to compete with the others?

I don't think it is good enough to compete.

I play mostly unarmed and this was the one that caught my attention due to the kicker for centered.

But looking at it a bit more closely, it appears to be about 70% less damage than the other feats due to the others scaling with spell power. Unless I'm missing something my monks are going to have quite a lot more spell power than melee power and could easily slot an augment to get a lot more.

I typically use stunner builds, so +4 tactics looks nice, but my DCs are already good enough for 95% of content and there are more than average number of red names in the 5% so this is a very nice kicker in a very limited situation. I might be able take this and then free up other resources that are invested in stun dc so there may be some as yet unidentified trickle down benefits possible,

+4% dodge is nice but I'm already dodge capped on all of my monk based toons so unless you add 4% to max dodge, the only possible benefit is finding some other investment in dodge that can be reallocated.

Given the long delays in addressing handwraps/unarmed, I had really hoped that you were going to throw unarmed a small bump somewhere in this mass of changes, but I'm not seeing it.

[Steve_Howe]

• Scion of the Astral Plane
  
  • +4 to Tactical Feat DCs
  • +4% Doublestrike & Doubleshot. An additional +4 if you are centered.
  • +4% Dodge.
  • +4 to Reflex Saves.

Would this also add to the Stunning Fist and Quivering Palm DCs?

[CThruTheEgo]

It is currently based on your full Hide score. I see a lot of number-crunching going on in this thread, which is good. If it's too strong, we can adjust that.

I don't think it is too strong. I'm thinking about how my assassin (link in sig) would benefit from the +20 melee power feat. Assassins do a lot of sneak attack damage inherently, which is affected by 1.5x melee power. Coupled with the extra melee power to base damage, rough math indicates they are comparable. The bonus to base damage would probably pull the melee power feat ahead a bit, but the sneak attack feat has greater defensive benefit (or could, if the displacement is made to last for a time after coming out of sneak mode). So overall, this seems well balanced.

EDIT: I'm considering this for my specific build only. Not sure how they compare on a ranger, for example, who does a lot less sneak attack damage, and therefore may not benefit as much from the +20 melee power. But they do have higher base damage, so they get more benefit out of the melee power in that regard.

[CThruTheEgo]

[*]Scion of the Ethereal Plane

• Permanent Blur, and while sneaking, permanent Displacement.
• +1 point of Sneak Attack damage for every 2 points of Hide you have
• +2 to all Skills
• Permanent Invisibility Guard, as per the item effect

I'm still catching up on the dev tracker, so not sure if this has been addressed yet by a dev, but I agree with a few other comments that the displacement needs to last for a time after coming out of sneak mode, otherwise it's kinda pointless. The whole point of sneaking is to avoid any attention whatsoever, because even a missed attack will still pull you out of sneak mode (which doesn't make sense imo), so what good does it do you to be displaced only while sneaking. Make the displacement effect remain for 10 seconds after coming out of sneak mode. That's the same duration as measure the foe, so there's less micromanagement of buffs by those who want to maximize their potential.

[Iriale]

It could be. Why should it be like the others?


It is very intentional that not every feat is on an even keel in terms of DPS. Is the overall feat good enough to compete with the others?



Every school gets at least a +2 DC boost when taking those feats. Evocation, Conjuration and Necromancy were chosen for those feats due to having related schools, and that a very large portion of offensive spellcasting relies on those schools, but every school is getting a significant buff to DCs in this update, provided you spec for it.



Bingo.

Because a DC caster needs spell dps. Do you realize that there are currently a serious problem with the DC casters not being able to get spell DPS and spell DC, and also a huge difference between your school of specialization and the others? This necro feat aggravates the chronic lack of dps of pale masters. And yes, they need dps thanks to all the immunities that exist to their school. Not only there are monsters immune by D&D lore, epic ward and champions are bloated with crazy immunities. Weapon dps is universal, spells are not universal. Spells do not work against all because you, designers, have plagued the epic game with immunities.

You need to reduce the differences between different schools; in the DC field, these feats are good designed: specilization and general bonus (although the gap is so huge before this level that needs to be fixed). But DC builds should not need to invest everything in DC and have a so pathetic dps, because this is only a source of frustration. You need dps, in this game the dps is the most important thing. Because there are too many mobs that only can to be killed with dps (I guess that DoJ is your way of reminding us this important fact, right? lol). Think, Steel, because these, along with bloated bosses and immunities, are the reasons why the epic game is so frustrating now for spellcasters (and definitely unfun)

Could we ever get a spellcasting *epic* feat that is not an ultra-specialization? If these feats are legendary, why we can not get the spell damage and spell DC in only a feat?

Spell Critical Damage with ALL spells should be part of ALL spellcasting feats, not only of the Scion of the Plane of Fire. Why you relate the plane of fire, and only the plane of fire, with the damage of all spells, all schools? Ridiculous. Give options of DC and damage to all feats, with a slight specialization by the lore of the feat. But enough of ultraespecializacions!

Please, with this feats give us a slight specialization and a steady general up. Epic magic, in this state of game, needs a wider use of our spellbook and less specialization. I'm sick of specialization. What good is that my class give me access to many spells, if in the end I can only use three?

[Vooduspyce]

I like the themes here, it's a pretty cool list. I was hoping for an option that was more tanky.

[Holymunchkin]

...
It is currently based on your full Hide score. I see a lot of number-crunching going on in this thread, which is good. If it's too strong, we can adjust that.
...
It [tactical lvl 30 legendary feat] is very intentional that not every feat is on an even keel in terms of DPS. Is the overall feat good enough to compete with the others?
...

I don't feel that the tactical 30feat is very competitive. If it decreased the cooldown on EIN by a minute maybe. I don't know. With KTA a GMoF monk can reach mid 60's on QP DC. With new goggles the ability is spammable; however, having played it recently I feel that DC monks are underwhelming in current meta. The game is too fast for their abilities to be useful. They are single target spells basically (with the exception of EIN).

Doubling the doublestrike bonus is something I would do for sure.

[Basura_Grande]

It is currently based on your full Hide score. I see a lot of number-crunching going on in this thread, which is good. If it's too strong, we can adjust that.

A flat number would be easier to balance. Maybe a flat number of 25 or 30?

[Grailhawk]

You're right, I forgot Greater Heroism and Camo. Only stacking cosmetic I can think of is spider cult mask, others are competence and non stacking. Equipping a +20 item would likely require sacrificing more DPS or survivability than would be gained by 5 hide, and I included deepwood stalkers skill effect, ship buff I did forget.
So let's say in total you do manage to get 100 Hide. Sneak Attack increases by 12 from my number, *2.4 is 28.8, * 6 is 173 extra damage, putting total DPS increase at around 700. My point still stands that the original poster had significantly boosted numbers, and if you provide a breakdown on where you're slotting a +20 item and a +6 insightful dexterity skills bonus I'm fairly certain I can point out how it's dropping DPS or survivability (Greensteel would be effective for +6 insightful dexterity skills and probably is the best option to include this).

Your attack speed is also a bit low though. TWF at bab 20 has 133.3 swings per minute hast boost and haste (swings not attacks so at 100% off hand proc that's 266 attacks per minute).

133*1.58 + 133*1.35
133.3( 2.93)
390.56 attacks per minute
6.51 attacks per second

50 Sneak attack damage
160 Melee Power (@150% = 240) (melee power multiplier is (100+240)/100 = 3.4)

50*3.4 = 170 damage per hit after applying 160 melee power at 150% scaling

6.51 Attacks per second
170 * 6.51 = 1106.61 DPS

4.99 Attacks per second (haste only no Haste boost 102.2* 2.93 = 299.45/60 = 4.99)
170 * 4.99 = 848.30 DPS

104 Total Global Sources of Hide Skill points before dex
23 Ranks
10 Epic Skills
05 Tome
20 Competence Bonus
05 Enhancement Bonus (Ghostly Item)
06 Dex Skills Item
04 Good Luck Item
03 Human Stealthy
03 Class Stealthy
06 Shadow Dancer Stealthy
02 Completionist
03 Skill Focus
02 Setalthy Feat
05 ED Skill Focus Hide
03 Rogue Past Lives Sneak of Shadows (active Feat)
04 Greater Heroisom

20-30 Points form Dex (50-70 Dex Score)

Spells that are very class specific
10 Camoufloge
20 Spiderskin


Note also that The Rogue PL active ability now gives an additional +33 Hide skill (3 of that is passive and always on)

104+30 = 134
Sneak of Shadows burst 164

134/2 * 3.4 * 4.99 = 1136.72 DPS

164/2 * 3.4 * 6.51 = 1814.99 DPS

I know that not every toon will take all the skills bonues or have all the gear I've presented but it is an option for some I think and Hide sill will now give enough of a bonus to make things like Ring of Shadows more appealing then it was before.

[ned_ellis]

My first impression was that this is an interesting list where the different feats have something for a few different types of build but on a second look...

These are all just straight power increases for characters to be better at whatever they're already excellent at doing. They don't really add new options, they just add (a LOT) of extra power creep.

These feats just help cement a situation where all current content becomes completely irrelevant to a level 30 character. Even if Legendary quests require these sorts of buffs, there will only be a handful of them to begin with, so why work so hard to make every other quest in the game more irrelevant (including the already easy for a decent party on EE level 30 raids)?

My suggestion would be to throw these legendary feats out entirely, and move the level 29 feats to level 30 where they would logically be following the previous progression - the proposed level 29 feats (aside from the boring law/chaos ones which are straight bonus DPS and the stunning one which is too powerful unless the timer is really long) are much more interesting and would add variety and options. Personally speaking, these legendary feats would just make me more bored with any character at level 30.

I'd also remove all the bonus and unnecessary melee power, ranged power, and now spell power at each epic level, but keep the spell point discount. They didn't add any options to the 'dead' levels, just more power, which isn't exciting.

I agree with most of this. Regardless of how difficult legendary quests will be it's too much; all existing lvl30ish content will be even easier and new content will not be enough quantity wise to justify it. Power creep is dangerous for the long-term viability of the game - have we learnt nothing from the recent(ish) past?!
I appreciate the attempts at more flavour and trying to help areas/classes that are behind others for the most part but it's just too much and it smacks a little of pleasing only a certain demographic...

[SableShadow]

I'm still catching up on the dev tracker, so not sure if this has been addressed yet by a dev, but I agree with a few other comments that the displacement needs to last for a time after coming out of sneak mode, otherwise it's kinda pointless. The whole point of sneaking is to avoid any attention whatsoever, because even a missed attack will still pull you out of sneak mode (which doesn't make sense imo), so what good does it do you to be displaced only while sneaking. Make the displacement effect remain for 10 seconds after coming out of sneak mode. That's the same duration as measure the foe, so there's less micromanagement of buffs by those who want to maximize their potential.

Some really clean, thought out recommendations there.

[B]
Scion of Limbo
Confetti explodes around your shoulders. Festive!

Not a fan. That kinda thing tends to get old ...

I can't resist this...

"There is no agro reset."

"That's a 50 DKP MINUS!!!!11!!" *mad*

key question right here.
Already INT assassins are behind; this is the death knell (am fine with dex assassins, just saying)

Maybe average it over more skills than just hide?
I, for one, think it's cool that skills are involved; changes up the itemization options at the very least (assuming they stick with total score).
I am a little concerned about "skill lag" being created when everything recalculates from an item swap ...

[BigErkyKid]

Hopefully the level 30+ content is excrucationally difficult from monsters to traps to everything so these feats with a maxxed out char will be needed to be effective. And my initial reaction was to say that any quest below 30 with a 30 level char in it should take a big xp hit but that would limit the number of lfms for capped chars and there already is a shortage of lfms for capped chars. Not sure what the solution is here unless they plan on putting out so much 30+ content that we can just binge on it. But i do like the options they have provided and could make for some interesting choices.

The problem I am seeing is that increasingly characters need to be specialized full out in some dimension to reach reasonable levels. These feats very much go in that direction.