May Amaunator bless Heavy Maces!

[Tokaru]

In today's stream, Cordovan expressed desire for some serious Heavy Mace love. This seems to be something significantly lacking in
DDO, so I considered what classes would want to have a seriously powerful mace to use, and what kinds of issues these classes often
experience, particularly in difficult content. Here's some considerations...

Clerics usually are pretty weak overall, mainly because turn undead is fairly limited in scope and they don't have much utility in a party
outside of healing, buffing, and dealing light damage, which tends to be very taxing on spellpoints. An endgame-level Heavy Mace should be a significant boost for clerics (the most iconic user of Heavy Maces). However, clerics really don't need boosts to spellpower or any of the
aforementioned abilities, but can use some defensive benefits and boosts to physical damage (for warpriests) and turn undead.

Favored Souls are very similar overall to clerics, minus turn undead, and don't have much incentive to use Heavy Maces. DPS-based Favored
Souls used to be pretty common in DDO, and could be very powerful with a strong mace that incentivizes taking the Single Weapon Fighting (SWF)
feats.

Paladins are in a pretty good place overall right now, but there's room for a boost to SWF paladins, as well as vanguards. Smite Evil could also use a boost.

Fringe Benefits: Rogues often used heavy maces to combat undead in PnP (especially at lower levels), and maces were a very common source of the Disruption ability in later versions (particularly 3.0 and 3.5). Giving some mechanical incentives to use the weapon on builds that normally wouldn't consider using a mace adds some nice diversity, and some of the most ingenious builds (think two weapon paladins that used Chaosblades or the influx of crazy crossbow builds lately) have happened when really good named items are introduced to DDO's robust class and enhancement system.

Tie this altogether with a strong deity tie-in in a future raid (Amaunator's ascention to godhood, which directly follows the events of the Caught in the Web Raid and could potentially have some correlations with the events of the Thunderholme raids) and I came up with this:


Amaunator's Rule
Minimum Level:30
Heavy Mace (One-Handed)
Critical 15-20 x4
Base Damage Rating: 50.00
Base Damage: 4.0[2d8]+14
Attack Mod: STR,WIS,CHA
Damage Mod: STR,WIS,CHA

Avatar of Amaunator: Gain a +5 Sacred Bonus to Damage for each Deity-based feat related to Amaunator you possess.
If you have Damage Reduction as a result of a Cleric or Paladin-related ability, it increases by 90. If you do not,
gain DR 50/Silver.

Brilliance of Amaunator: All of your attacks with this weapon deal +10d6 Fire and +10d6 Light damage.

Divine Smite: Your attacks are treated as Lawful for the purposes of bypassing damage reduction. If you possess
the Turn Undead ability, you can expend one charge to automatically kill all undead within the burst (no save). Against
powerful undead that are immune to instant death, it instead deals 5000 damage. If you possess the Smite Evil ability,
each use of Smite Evil also triggers this effect.

Impact X: This Weapon's Critical Threat Range and Base Damage are increased.

Scion of Law: If your Alignment is Lawful Neutral, you gain a bonus to AC and all saves equal to the lower of your Wisdom and Charisma
modifiers, and you no longer take damage from any ability or spell that damages you based on your alignment.

True Conviction: You are immune to knockdown, fear, petrification, and dispelling effects that target you, including a Beholder's
antimagic rays. If you already were immune to knockdown, fear, or petrification, gain a bonus to PRR and MRR instead equal to this
weapon's enhancement bonus. This effect is cumulative for each immunity you possess.

Zealous Faith: If you have the ability to cast the Zeal spell, its effect is tripled. Gain a +5% bonus to Doublestrike for each
Single Weapon Fighting feat you possess.

Orange Augment Slot


This weapon is believed to have been created by Amnaunator before his ascension to godhood. It glows
with the power of the sun and grants its wielder incredible resistance to chaotic attacks and effects.

P.S. Yes, this weapon is very strong. It could function fine without some of the gratuitous boosts to base damage and critical profile and whatnot,
but it's essentially an artifact, and I don't think an ability of this magnitude would be out of place in Legendary content, seeing mobs with
30k+ HP and that can hit for 2k+ damage.

[Starla70]

I like it. The heavy maces do really need a couple of good ones added!

[PsychoBlonde]

*sarcasm alert*

I don't want valuable dev time to be wasted on crappy weapons. Only good weapons should get dev attention. This is just a waste of dev time.

*end sarcasm*

Actually, having a really cool heavy mace would be pretty friggin hilarious.

[Enoach]

Anything that makes weapon choice something more than 3 different weapon types works for me. Glad to see the heavy mace getting some love (possibly)

I actually enjoyed my time as a Heavy mace wielding Cleric.

I also think at this time Long Swords are still the weapon with the most Named in the game.

[unbongwah]

Phosphor is actually pretty good for ML:14; note the 18-20/x2 crit spec. The problem, ofc, is there's nothing worthwhile after it. Forgotten Light is okay for a WIS-based cleric, I guess, if you just want something to swing once in a while. Magistrate's Scepter could've been okay if they'd given it a better crit profile.

Simplest change would be to buff Warpriest: get some crit bonuses to deity weapons in there so they're less laughable.

[Cordovan]

The livestream chat was just that - a personal opinion and fun chat along the lines of, "it would be awesome if there was a Sword of Shadow-power Mace in DDO." I meant Heavy Mace. I think the OP's weapon may be a bit...OP. That said, I'd imagine it would want a wide crit profile, decent base damage, boost to light spell power+light damage+light crit %. Wisdom to damage would be incredible. I think the Turn undead instakill might be a bit much, though...

[mna]

Phosphor is actually pretty good for ML:14; note the 18-20/x2 crit spec. The problem, ofc, is there's nothing worthwhile after it. Forgotten Light is okay for a WIS-based cleric, I guess, if you just want something to swing once in a while. Magistrate's Scepter could've been okay if they'd given it a better crit profile.

Simplest change would be to buff Warpriest: get some crit bonuses to deity weapons in there so they're less laughable.

... that, and attack/damage stat alternatives. Wis/Cha to attack/damage in the cores with deity weapons or something? (Hm. Wis to attack at l6 and Cha to damage at l12?)

Of course then there's the added problem of how to balance it so that the other deity weapons don't become even more overpowered... but that'll be a fairly minor thing.


(Apropos of divine feats... the Vulkoor scorrow needs persistence and a command bar, sort of like the Pale Master skeleton. That'd make it actually useful.)