Early Look: Artificer Changes & Renegade Mastermaker

[cru121]

For the record, I like the Haste for Arcanotechnician and I am very much looking to buffing me and my allies with it. Please don't remove it because some folks prefer drinking haste pots. Ty.

[Arlathen]

Late to thread, but never to late to add some thing useful.



That is all.

---

Ok, not quite. Tree seems cool, but would of loved to have seen an Enhancement that turns the following spells into AoE effects:

• Deadly Weapons
• Armour of Speed
• Thundering Armour

It's been done before with certain Bard Songs and Epic Elyd Edge, so hopefully the tech is somewhere in there to do it.

Now, that is all.

[hit_fido]

I don't see the gripe about ranged benefiting much from this tree. If you want to increase ranged DPS you're not going to go pure. You probably wont even have a majority of your levels in artificer.

Just consider an example, artificer/rogue mix using 36 AP in Mechanic and 27 AP in Battle Engineer. That gets you the more powerful t5 abilities like mechanical reloader, vorpal 19-20, +2W, and another +10% doubleshot, but you still get endless fusilade and +10% doubleshot from t4 battle engineer. You're left with 17 AP, of which 8 is most likely going into harper. Now I have 9 left over to spend in this new tree. That's not enough for anything meaningful. Every AP I pull out of harper, battle engineer or mechanic is losing DPS. I could lose 20% doubleshot which is a big dps loss and now I have 15 AP to spend, that's still not really exciting since I still can't get to t4 renegade. Also every less level of artificer means reconstruct SLA and renewal construct are that much less powerful.

It's a pretty good trade off.

[Memnir]

[chant]RUNE!-ARM!-SOUNDS!!! RUNE!-ARM!-SOUNDS!!! RUNE!-ARM!-SOUNDS!!! [/chant]

[Jasparion]

I don't see the gripe about ranged benefiting much from this tree.

Apart from you becoming an incredibly strong tank with incredible healing abilities while losing none of your ranged DPS.

[hit_fido]

Apart from you becoming an incredibly strong tank with incredible healing abilities while losing none of your ranged DPS.

What builds have 21+ free AP that is going to be able to spend deep into Renegade Mastermaker t4 or better and not lose any DPS enhancements? All I can think of is a pure Artificer and those are not anywhere close to top tier ranged DPS.

[Jasparion]

What builds have 21+ free AP that is going to be able to spend deep into Renegade Mastermaker t4 or better and not lose any DPS enhancements? All I can think of is a pure Artificer and those are not anywhere close to top tier ranged DPS.

What tanks are anywhere close to top tier DPS? What healers are anywhere close to top tier DPS?

How would the new Artificer tank healer ranged DPS compare in DPS to the tanks and healers? They are going to be a bit behind in tanking, but not a lot. They are going to be ahead of healers in Reaper. And I'd bet their DPS is WAY ahead of both.

And they have a huge advantage over tanks. They dont have to be in melee range with everything all the time.

[glmfw1]

You no longer lose HP or SP when your Iron Defender dies. (Yes, this is coming to Druid as well).
Uncaring Master will be replaced. (TBD, this is also a work in progress).

"Uncaring Master" was an enhancement I thought made a lot of sense. I hated the name/description of it as, from my perspective, the "not losing SP/HP" was a strengthening of the bond, not a weakening (you are left with the ability to resurrect your pet if it falls). Without the enhancement, the pet is just "part of the artificer (or druid)" relying on their power, while with the enhancement it becomes an independent yet linked being.
To me it seemed fair to pay a little in enhancement points to make better use of the pet.
I'd rather see the ability remain the same and a similar low tier ability be added to Druid (probably in Nature's Warrior).
Reduce the cost to 1AP (if cost is the issue) or add free pet resurrections to the enhancement. Change the description to reflect a strengthening, rather than a weakening, in the nature of the bond.

That way, people who call the pet but don't look after it (by spending Enhancement points) suffer for their neglect, but people who care about their pets benefit in return.

[hit_fido]

Apart from you becoming an incredibly strong tank with incredible healing abilities while losing none of your ranged DPS.

When you wrote this it seemed to me you were concerned about a DPS character suddenly acquiring "incredibly strong" tanking and healing abilities "while losing none of your ranged DPS". I don't think that's a legitimate concern. other than perhaps a pure artificer. I gave one example character where I'd have to give up significant DPS just to reach into t4. Even in the pure case the farthest you'll get in Renegade is t4 unless, again, you want to give up the DPS enhancements from t5 Battle Engineer. So there's a tradeoff even then. Personally, I wouldn't dip into Renegade on that character because it loses too much DPS for too little gain. You've got to devote at least ~24 points into Renegade for the Reconstruct and Renewal Construct.

What tanks are anywhere close to top tier DPS? What healers are anywhere close to top tier DPS?

Maybe you're coming at it more from the direction of looking at existing tank and healer characters and thinking they'll be obsolete now?

They are going to be ahead of healers in Reaper. And I'd bet their DPS is WAY ahead of both.

Let's address healers. I don't see any artificer being able to insta-kill like clerics or even favored souls, but DPS sure. There's a balance there already. As far as healing I'm not seeing the gripe - artificers can heal other construct characters better than a wizard now, which is thematically appropriate. But they can only target a single fleshy character at a time with converter in order to use their repair spells or reconstruct sla on them. And that's on a 3 minute cooldown, so there's no switching it up on demand to whoever needs healing. Furthermore, they're only going to get a 100% base repair amplification, which is likely going to be much less than the positive amplification they have from past lives and gear - which makes the artificer's converter ability far less powerful than current positive healing archetypes. Reaper or not, artificers will still be significantly less capable at healing fleshy characters. Admixtures? Every time you throw one is time you're not DPSing. They can't be quickened and they cast measurably slower than their spell equivalents.

So I can build an artificer that's moderately better than before at healing fleshy characters, but still much weaker than any other positive healing-focused build. I am now able to heal construct characters much better than a wizard/sorc by virtue of reconstruct sla and innate repair spell power.

I see the converter enhancement as a versatility thing, not a power thing. It means an artificer could, for some period of time, focus on one other team member and be able to provide some additional healing to them. They still wont heal a fleshy as good as a "real healer". It adds a real-time choice: switch focus to help keep this one other character alive. It plays into a support role, not a primary healing or tanking role.

And they have a huge advantage over tanks. They dont have to be in melee range with everything all the time.

I struggle to envision good questing with a "ranged tank". The moment they draw aggro they have to choose: kite and range, or stand and tank. If the former, then you've got five or eleven other party members frustrated the entire quest. I mean, people don't look favorably on that guy who pulls a mob they can't handle and then runs around kiting, right? But this tree is so powerful that we'll all of us patiently chase a group of mobs trailing the kiting ranged tank? If the latter then you're no longer doing DPS at range so it's moot. Can you stand and survive better other tanks? Can you still do it outside that 20 second window?

I get that people are dreaming up six pure artificers running around rotating the temp hp. I think that's an absurd degree of fantasy group-crafting but if SSG thinks that is something that could really occur frequently, make it a five minute cooldown or a ten second boost. I'd contend that twenty seconds isn't nearly enough for a solo artificer to take down legendary elite bosses. I'd actually like to hear from Steelstar or the Players Council who reviewed this to hear why they arrived at 20/120 and the temp hp formula and what scenarios they think this is balanced against.

Practically speaking the only thing that is going to help or impact Steelstar is some kind of theorycrafting showing that your concern is valid. We need to pick a couple current builds regarded as capable "tanks" and then throw up a build that uses the Renegade Mastermaker tree in such a way that it's measurably superior in tanking and dps. Maybe there is, in which case it's good feedback for SSG. Maybe it's superior for that 20 seconds of temp hp "aura" for a pure or near pure class artificer, but only average for the other 100 seconds. I think the concern is overblown but we need some tangible build examples. Maybe someone can put together a fighter/paladin/artificer mix that "abuses" the ac/hp stacking, but now you're down to 12 or less levels of artificer which almost halves the value of the sla and temp hp boost.

[karatemack]

Tier 4:

• Renewal Construct: 25 Spell Points: You create a drone set to disperse protective potions. Every 2 seconds for 20 seconds, you and nearby allies gain a Determination bonus to Temporary Hit Points equal to 25 hit points per Artificer level. Level 20+ characters receive twice as many hitpoints. 2 minute cooldown.

1k HP to 12 people in a raid group every 2 seconds for 20 seconds?

I really don't get this. Can a dev elaborate on this utility vs Shining Through? Perhaps also explain why so many classes are now getting temp hp boosts? How does this factor into Reaper (given the self-healing debuffs)?

These changes seem really inconsistent with other game development choices which were recently implemented.

[Steelstar]

Hey, everyone! Thanks for the great feedback so far. Apologies for the delayed response, since this thread went up I've been getting the tree into an Alpha state and getting data from different builds in internal playtesting.

Will anyone be taking a look at Flame Turret in this pass? I miss that spell, since it's pretty unusable after level 15 with no real way to scale it's damage.

There are a lot of large-scale changes we'd like to do with this cool spell, but most of them are of larger scope than we can fit into this pass - We'll take a look at some small things that might fit in the short term.

What's the likelihood that we'll see the pet fix/enhancement before the end of 2018?

Possible, but more likely after the end of 2018. At the very least, not before the third Favored Soul tree/CLR+FVS tree adjustments. We've also got some other class adjustments in the potential pipeline once everybody's got 3+ trees (looking at you, Sorcs).

I kind of assumed that he just didn't want to type all that again but they have the same restrictions.

Yes, Paragon Body will have the same restrictions as Embed Component.

"overrides" their repairing? So people can use it to debuff/grief any Warforged/Bladeforged who've invested in Mechanist?

As I mentioned further down in the OP, it won't work on Constructs, who would take no effect from it.

Have you considered the disturbing combo of Mastermaker + Single-dagger Vistani, with SWF+runearm? You can be fleshy with immunity to energy drain, expanded crit on your dagger, and that would have you up in the front lines so your temp-hp aura or repair-pulse aura are on the melees against bosses. Toss in a runearm like Toven's Hammer for abusing devils and keeping your sp up...

This is, in fact, one of the builds I've been testing in the last day or two.

WHOA, values WAY out of line with other enhancement trees. This should DEFINITELY be scaled down.

As mentioned by others, the immediate analogue to these spells are the (Mass) Cure Wounds spells Divines get. Radiant Servant Clerics can get No Max Caster Level with those spells; +10 here is still going to leave those behind an analogous Cleric, even if they find 10 Caster Levels to fill that max. Not to mention Admixtures' slower cast time, projectile arc, etc. We'll be keeping an eye on the numbers to see if they're too high, but they're where we're starting.

How is this going to increase the viability of a melee artificer? We still have to use the Harper tree to get a good hit and damage modifier (Not to mention to increase our melee power), meanwhile we still are stuck with the Divine Crusader epic destiny tree if we want a full BAB. So basically, the number of points we'd already need to spend in the harper tree and the Battle Engineer tree still leaves us with too little action points to spare for this new tree. Meanwhile, ranged artificers seem to be the main thing catered to here once again.....

Our impression right now is that most viable Ranged Artificer builds are taking 2+ Rogue levels for Evasion (not to mention crossbow bonuses), and that Pure Ranged Artificers (or ones without defensive investment elsewhere) aren't in spectactular defensive shape. Aside from the defense of "being a ranged character", anyway. Nothing here is intentionally meant to cater to Ranged characters, or to dissuade Melees - It's intended to be very neutral on the subject, in the same way that the defensive bonuses from Stalwart Defender work just as well on a Ranged as a Melee. (Yes, it has Block & Cut as well as Melee Hate, but those aren't defensive bonuses per se).

We'd be interested to know if we're wrong about this impression - Are your pure Artificer Crossbow builds already incredibly survivable?

Steelstar, I want to confirm where we see the words Warforged or Construct Essence can we also expect it to apply to Bladeforged too (see example above).

Cheers.

Yes!

[chant]RUNE!-ARM!-SOUNDS!!! RUNE!-ARM!-SOUNDS!!! RUNE!-ARM!-SOUNDS!!! [/chant]

We'll be looking into this bug, yes.

Will you also no longer be able to use the stance from Aasimar when you take this?

Tentatively, no - Just stances that change your fundamental species. The idea here is that your Embedded Component gets in the way of shapeshifting into something non-Humanoid. It's a gray line, we know; this is one that may change based on feedback and playtesting.

1k HP to 12 people in a raid group every 2 seconds for 20 seconds?

I really don't get this. Can a dev elaborate on this utility vs Shining Through? Perhaps also explain why so many classes are now getting temp hp boosts? How does this factor into Reaper (given the self-healing debuffs)?

These changes seem really inconsistent with other game development choices which were recently implemented.

Ah, the elephant in the room. We wanted an ability in here that would let the Arti support a party in Reaper with defensive bonuses, and almost certainly overshot the number. That's why "Early Look" is in the name of the thread - This early, things aren't going to be balanced right, almost guaranteed. This one's next on my prototyping list, and will likely be different by the time it reaches Lamannia.

[ThomasHunter]

Hey Steel, I posted this paragraph (modified) over in the druid feedback, but it also applies here as well I think:

I feel like you all left off an important play style - "pack mentality". I just don't see the support for pets in any Arti tree that comes close to what we see in the Warlock Enlightened Spirit tree. I mean, I absolutely love those abilities and when I have leveled my Warlock, I have switched into those enhancements. Please change those over to Arti or make something equally spicy there! This would make not only your pet better, but all summons. Fun stuff!

(note that I am going to copy this part over to the Arti conversation so that Steelstar sees this as it applies there as well).

I know Archanotechnician has some stuff, but it doesn't seem to match what ES does which I think is strange. I know this isn't the pet pass per se, but this would make it a nice change and then not as much would have to be done with pet stats and stuff when you get that far perhaps.

Thanks for all you guys do!
Taleisin

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

Full BAB without needing to rely on Divine Crusader Epic Destiny tree or frequently casting Tenser's transformation....... attached to a minimum level 28 Bastard sword that you may only equip if all of your class levels are artificer thus allowing you to expand your build options as a melee artificer!

This weapon would also address a problem with a lack of items with repair amplification....

This item grants you an exclusive feat while equipped that gives you a special SLA similar to consecration where instead of damaging enemies standing within the area it was casted, it lowers their armor class and saves for 15 seconds starting at the point where they first step into the "Mechanical Locust Swarm" and instead of healing you regardless of whether or not an enemy is standing there, it repairs you only if an enemy is standing there.

Still tweaking it, hopefully the final version would be considered a good suggestion for to be made a reality.

As it stands though, this new tree having no benefits specifically for melee artificers and no defence disadvantages for ranged artificers makes it further escalate the problem with there being way too big of a DPS gap between melee and ranged artificers. I'm fine with Melee artificers getting slightly more armor class MRR and PRR but slightly less DPS and ranged artificers getting slightly more DPS but slightly less armor class MRR and PRR (even though more DPS not being something that would be historically compatible as repeating crossbows in real life are not that impressive damage wise without extreme poisons) ..... buuuuuut that's not what they are doing here, instead they are increasing the survivability for ranged artificers while strangling the action point supply that would be needed if said artificer would be a melee artificer so that their DPS remains simply pathetic so long as they would want some defense help.

You could have made something on this tree offer a choice between something like these five....

1:+15 Melee power and full BAB while equipped with a melee weapon, your transmutation and abjuration spells that add buffs are now doubled in duration.
2:+3 universal spellpower per character level and a free discount on the cooldown time of spells, clickies, and SLAs
3:Your flame turret now gains the damage effects and weapon procs of your equipped mainhand weapon, lasts three times longer, costs no spell components,
costs one third of the normal spell point cost for casting, and has much higher durability.
4:Your Iron defender now deals double damage and self destructs upon death dealing massive damage to nearby enemies (This uses up the once per rest revive iron defender SLA charge).
5:On being hit, there is a chance that you gain +50% dodge and your running speed is doubled for one minute or until you attack an enemy.

Anyhow, here's the weapon.....

[Gabrael]

I wanna ask something, can we have mirror of glamouring work on rune arms? some have great look that I would love to borrow

[CSQ]

Hey Steel, I posted this paragraph (modified) over in the druid feedback, but it also applies here as well I think:

I feel like you all left off an important play style - "pack mentality". I just don't see the support for pets in any Arti tree that comes close to what we see in the Warlock Enlightened Spirit tree. I mean, I absolutely love those abilities and when I have leveled my Warlock, I have switched into those enhancements. Please change those over to Arti or make something equally spicy there! This would make not only your pet better, but all summons. Fun stuff!

(note that I am going to copy this part over to the Arti conversation so that Steelstar sees this as it applies there as well).

I know Archanotechnician has some stuff, but it doesn't seem to match what ES does which I think is strange. I know this isn't the pet pass per se, but this would make it a nice change and then not as much would have to be done with pet stats and stuff when you get that far perhaps.

Thanks for all you guys do!
Taleisin

I second this thought. Warlock is better for summons than either Arti or Druid, even with the upcoming changes, which makes very little sense since Warlocks are both highly self-sustainable (with temporary HP from ES) and not particularly gifted with support abilities. Even Pale Master's buffs are only good compared to Warlock ES's, and they only affect Mr. Bones. Artificers and Druids not only are partially specialized to use pets, they really do thematically benefit from pets. Now, on my current arti life, I do like my dog, but I don't even invest in Archanotechnician because it's just not worth it. The pet overhaul will be less valuable, if/when it happens, if the underlying attributes/damage/durability is too low, and offering more enhancements to buff pets is nice. Mastermaker seems to fit thematically with doing so, but does not at this point do so substantially.

[Kza]

Ah, the elephant in the room. We wanted an ability in here that would let the Arti support a party in Reaper with defensive bonuses, and almost certainly overshot the number. That's why "Early Look" is in the name of the thread - This early, things aren't going to be balanced right, almost guaranteed. This one's next on my prototyping list, and will likely be different by the time it reaches Lamannia.[/QUOTE]

This is my concern, from my Point of view you shall be very careful to give out temp hitpoints for any class if they are not reaper affected. If you do they need be small imho.

It feels like devs aint going to kill us in reaper anymore? Low skulls is the new normal mode?

If i were in charge- temp hits affected by reaper scaling.

But - this sounded maybe negative- all in all it is a great and fun revamp of artificer!! Gj! (But be sure you aint buffing them soo much you get the new warlocksneededbenerfednext4years

[thunir]

I never understood this approach, in fact the max damage varies widely on runearms in general. I understand a single target vs AOE blasts, but even here there is room for concern because of so many variants. First being the fact that single target runearms that track always loose 2 bolts that just swarm around and do nothing.

But really, what reason is there to choose the Close range rune arm with ONE burst of 8 to 30 1d10 per level vs The long range runearms FOUR burst of 8 to 30 1d10 AOE damage that will still strike at close range.

This whole premise really negates the use of rune arms like the Blights Inferno or the Flame Warded, or the Chimeras breath. If you really want to put this mechanic on par for a melee artificer then we need to punch up the damage being done with close range rune arm. Especially since we aren't working on battle fists. m2c

[karatemack]

Ah, the elephant in the room. We wanted an ability in here that would let the Arti support a party in Reaper with defensive bonuses, and almost certainly overshot the number. That's why "Early Look" is in the name of the thread - This early, things aren't going to be balanced right, almost guaranteed. This one's next on my prototyping list, and will likely be different by the time it reaches Lamannia.

Glad to hear there will be some changes.

We can only comment on the information the dev team chooses to give us. "Early Look" also implies that what we are reading at least somewhat resembles the final form it will take. If it were a total of 100 temp hp per character every 2 seconds (12,000 total across a raid group) and there were mentions of minor tweaks (maybe down to 50 temp HP every 2 seconds and/or this ability has a super long cooldown timer) then it would probably not have caught my interest. When the number starts out at 120,000 total potential temporary HP (and I'm assuming this was previewed to the PC as well?) then I think it's worth raising our hands to ask the questions.

Overall, I really like most of the changes which are coming to both druid and arty. Long overdue and address many long-time complaints about each of the classes.

[Tilomere]

What builds have 21+ free AP that is going to be able to spend deep into Renegade Mastermaker t4 or better and not lose any DPS enhancements? All I can think of is a pure Artificer and those are not anywhere close to top tier ranged DPS.

Tree builds, if they survive the druid pass.

[Aselrik]

This looks like total garbage to me. The reason is, every ability in here is something another class already does, and much better, at that. Also, the poor attempt to justify an artificer healer with a 3 minute buff is pretty lame. Every ability flies against the face of current meta, so I couldn't never recommend this tree for new or reincarnated characters. This was a waste of time. I'll break down the problems later when I'm not on my phone.