DDOCast 502 - Ravenloft Review pt 2

[pjstechie]

We talk about this week’s game news and Update 37 Patch 2 with our guest Asheras. Our discussion continues our review of The Mists of Ravenloft with guests Evilbeeker, Draculetta & Voodu. This is part 2 of 3.

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Game News - 4:07
Community News - 22:28
Lightning Post - 31:33
“Greetings from Korthos” - 43:05
The Mists of Ravenloft Review pt 2 - 51:43

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[FuzzyDuck81]

I've been really enjoying the vistani tree, using it as the main tree on a couple of multiclassed rogues (1 is with fighter, the other with ranger) & it's downright murderous in straight-up 1-on-1 combat with some pretty solid defensive abilities too. Particular highlights & thoughts:

- Some nice free feats in the cores - deflect arrows is an oft-overlooked gem, completely negating incoming projectile damage periodically &even better with a touch of ranger to allow it to proc more often, the recently-clarified quick draw reducing the delay between weapon & spellcasting makes it great for melee casters & oh hey, there's a divine choice that specialises in daggers...
- mist stalker 1 - that's 25% less damage from negative energy plus a little extra prr & mrr right there, totally worth trying to cram just 3 APs into the tree for that.
- Vistani fortune - nice buffs, and duration is the same as the cooldown so can technically keep it up all the time, though in reality it's a "hit before starting a fight, or hope for the stat boost to edge yourself over DC/stat requirement", but the 60sec duration makes it far more desirable than other, shorter duration clicky buffs.
- Weapon versatility - melee & ranged power are now interchangeable for attacks, a huge damage boost for shuriken throwers in particular since monks get almost no ranged power but can stack up melee power pretty easily through the henshin tree. Note that this only applies to attacks, not abilities which scale with melee or ranged power, they'll still scale with whatever it says.
- Haste boost - now any class can, if you can spare the 8APs required, get a nice burst of attack speed, another thing that's great for monks in particular, or barbarians.
- Fan of knives - surprisingly powerful if you've got some halfway decent ranged power but from my experimentation, still appears to benefit from kinetic critical chance (maybe multiplier too?) likely a bug that will be fixed so enjoy while it lasts I guess. A good combat opener & great fun in epics, open the combat with it, hit a few times, hit them with dire charge, then tumble through and hit them with the fan of knives again when stunned, it can devastate groups of mobs.
- Deadly blades - +1W damage is great & being centered with knives is nice too, but IMO don't be misled into making dagger-based monks, though it can help them with DR breaking instead, think of it mainly as a bonus for epics, just ditch the armour & it'll make grandmaster of flowers far more fun to level.
- Mist stalker 4 - level drain immunity. This is 100% awesome, combine with a deathblock item/augment & it's a permanent non-dispellable deathward, frankly I've been redoing enhancements on a few builds to fit this in if at all possible while still being able to have top-tier enhancements in another tree.
- vendetta - I like the idea but I actually don't ever use this one at all... it's just too short a duration combined with the other action boost things - personally, I'd prefer it if it was more like the level 6 divine abilities, eg. a 60sec boost with a 5min cooldown, which would make it a great boss-killer ability & thematically in keeping with the idea of a vendetta against an individual.
- Blessed blades giving DR breaking & ghost touch don't appear to work, but it's still a +5W attack with relatively short cooldown so a winner.