Suggestions for Arcane Warrior to make it support EK better

[LevelJ]

I'm assuming that the ED feat Arcane Warrior was intended to support the few Physical/Spellcasting enhancement tree combos around, specifically Eldritch Knight. Wanted to offer a few recommendations in that regard that might help make this more effective. (Note: I have zero experience when it comes to other trees like Swashbuckler and such that use Spell power towards melee/ranged attacks, so feel free to chime in on their behalf too)

• Give DoT/AoE/Aura damage spells the potential to generate multiple stacks of RP/MP
  
  • The fact that this currently doesn't work somewhat disappointed me, because it really kills any chance to maintain stacks. I tried this with an AoE, and it seems to work, but almost erratically (my guess is you can get it work on an enemy once, then they have to exit and come back through it to get it to work again). If you need to increase how often you can gain a stack from this to 2 or 3 seconds, so be it. But these effects would certainly give the feat a bit more usability.

• Allow Eldritch Strike and Eldritch Tempest to generate one of each stack when used.
  
  • Both these abilities cost spell points and are boosted by spell power, yet are melee attacks...in other words, a spell/melee hybrid. I doubt it's overpowered by any means to let them generate a stack of SP and a stack of MP/RP when used, especially considering their cooldown prevents abuse (not to mention their spell point cost).

I know one trick the devs like to use a lot as of late is to ask the players what they think would constitute a reasonably powered version of an ability or concept, so I'll go ahead and give my personal opinion there. From my experience, I know immediately that it would be both confusing and very costly to maintain a stack of each bonus (that is at least mostly full) of this feat while still contributing to the party at near-full power. It's hard to be very effective at both spell damage and melee/ranged damage simultaneously, and I'll be honest...my EK doesn't pull it off. Building stacks with melee hits is easy when melee hits don't cost you anything much, but building stacks with spells is an entirely different ballgame. I'm not asking for Magic Missiles to build up 6 stacks in one shot or anything crazy like that, as I'd definitely consider that OP. But using Firewall or Death Aura* seems fully reasonable to deal damage to your opponent while also getting a decent boost.

That's the opinion of only one kind of physical/spell build...and of only one type of EK too. I would love to hear the opinions of everyone else on this too.


*For a notice on a bug concerning this feat with certain Negative Spells, please see my post here.


-Jayron

[hit_fido]

From my experience, I know immediately that it would be both confusing and very costly to maintain a stack of each bonus (that is at least mostly full) of this feat while still contributing to the party at near-full power.

Reasonable suggestions.

I'm intrigued by this feat as well and the main issue to me is the low timer on stacks dissipating. Six (6) seconds seems too low. How fast can a player spam offensive spells in six seconds while still getting in one physical attack? Is the idea here that a player casts one offensive spell then swings once or twice, then casts, then swings once or twice? That seems like it would be a net loss from the frequent delay between casting and attacking even with the stacks going up. Unless this was tailor made for aura/melee warlocks...

If the developer intent was that (almost) no build can practically work up to high/max stacks of both mp/rp and usp then I guess it is fine as is, but seems less desirable. Otherwise a ten (10) second cool down would make it more appealing and less annoying to try and get the best value from.

[Kebtid]

Personally i don't understand why offensive auras aka death auras don't count toward building stacks yet warlock one does.
Does not make sense that the feat is built specifically for warlock melle builds

[Vhayre]

I support the suggestions made by above posters and would add one or more of the following:

- Allow fire shield and similar abilities to generate a stack when it procs on a mob. With an internal timer on how fast stacks can be acquired this way it doesn't have to be too powerful.

- Add something to EK when the pass comes that will act as a damaging aura using the Spellsword element selected. Similar range and idea to death aura, but instead it just does a small amount of elemental damage to surrounding monsters and doesn't heal the player. This way eldritch knights can have a way to increment stacks in somewhat similar fashion to warlocks, while also fitting with the flavor of the tree.

It also addresses my final point, the fact that it's stated WAI that healing auras are not incrementing stacks. This doesn't make much sense to me to begin with since ES aura, which does work, easily adds as many temp hp from Brilliance as a moderately geared wizard splash heals from death aura.

All in all, I really think that Eldritch Knight and arcane classes besides warlock need better support for this feat, I mean come on, Eldritch knight and Arcane Warrior are basically different ways to say the same thing.
It also opens up build possibilities to sorcerer and wizard, who would otherwise be pigeonholed into splashing warlock, and more build options are a good thing. It is imo one of the core strengths of DDO.

[Vish]

I ran a MC melee lock and had reservations about arcane warrior.
ESP the 6 second part.
But in actual play, I was able to always maintain full stacks while alternating bursts with melee.

It seems arcane w was meant for melee locks, ESP if a EK can't keep up full stacks.

I would be all for expanding the utility of this style, as the buff age isn't that great but helps both ways.

I would love to see more arcane warriors.

Devs, please consider opening up the possibilities.