First Look: Favored Soul Beacon of Hope

[Steelstar]

Hey, all! SteelStar here with a look at the third Favored Soul tree coming soon: Beacon of Hope! This Healing- and Buffing-Focused tree is currently slated for U39, and ought to be up on Lamannia soon. Have a look (be sure to check out the FAQ at the bottom) and let us know what you think!

• Core 1: For each Core ability you gain, +1% Positive Spell Critical Chance, +10 Healing Amp, and +5 Positive Spell Power.
• Core 2: Beacon of Grace: Cost: 2 SP: You and allies ahead of you* heal for 1 point of Positive Energy per Favored Soul level. This scales with your Positive Spell Power. 6 second cooldown.
• Core 3: Shining Light: Whenever you cast one of your Beacons or use Flight of Glory, you and affected allies gain a Sacred bonus to Healing Amplification equal to your Favored Soul level for 12 seconds. Enemies in the zone of effect are dazzled and take a -1 penalty to attack, spot, and search. These enemies are illuminated by Shining Light, dispelling stealth, invisibility, blur, and displacement, for 10 seconds, and giving a -40 penalty to hide. Sightless enemies are immune to the dazzle effect.
• Core 4: Beacon of Hope: Cost: 15 SP: You and allies ahead of you* take the effects of a Panacea and a Restoration spell, and heal for 5 points of Positive Energy per Favored Soul level. This scales with 100% Positive Spell Power. 30 second cooldown.
• Core 5: Flight of Glory: When you use your Leap of Faith, nearby allies gain Temporary Hit Points equal to twice your character level, plus an additional 25.
• Core 6: True Resurrection SLA: 25 SP. 10 second cooldown. Multiselector:
  
  • Passive:+4 WIS. You gain +3 Maximum Caster Level with all Positive spells. Your Hope and Beacon abilities that scale with Favored Soul level now add Epic Levels as well.
  • Passive: +4 CHA. You gain +3 Maximum Caster Level with all Positive spells. Your Hope and Beacon abilities that scale with Favored Soul level now add Epic Levels as well.

Tier 1:

• Good Hope SLA 10/5/2 SP. (3 second cooldown)
• Confidence: +1/+2/+3 Concentration, Diplomacy and Heal. Rank 3: You also gain +10 Positive Energy Spell Power.
• Divine Durability: +2/4/6 Competence Bonus to PRR.
• Spell Critical Chance: Positive: +2%
• Spell Points: 30/60/90 Spell Points

Tier 2:

• Close Wounds SLA: (6/4/2 Spell Points) (3/2/1 second cooldown)
• Hope for Inspiration: Target ally gains a Sacred bonus to all Skills equal to 1/4 your Favored Soul level for 12 seconds. 6 second cooldown.
• Divine Durability II: +2/4/6 Competence bonus to MRR.
• Spell Critical Chance: Positive: +2%
• Might's Reward: Multiselector (Shares a cooldown and same SP cost as Divine Might).
  
  • You gain an Sacred bonus to Positive Spell Power equal to your Strength modifier for 30/60/120 seconds.
  • You gain an Sacred bonus to Positive Spell Power equal to your Wisdom modifier for 30/60/120 seconds.
  • You gain an Sacred bonus to Positive Spell Power equal to your Charisma modifier for 30/60/120 seconds.

Tier 3:

• Hope for Protection: Target ally gains a Sacred bonus to PRR and MRR equal to your Favored Soul level for 12 seconds. 6 second cooldown.
• Efficient Empower Healing
• Spell Critical Chance: Positive: +2%
• WIS/CHA

Tier 4:

• Death Ward SLA: 10/8/5 SP (4 second cooldown)
• Hope for Victory: Target ally gains a Sacred Bonus to Melee Power and Ranged Power equal to half your Favored Soul level, and Universal Spell Power equal to your Favored Soul level. This lasts for 12 seconds. 6 second cooldown.
• Optimism: Every time you cast one of your Hope abilities, you gain a stack of Rising Beacon, giving yourself +2 PRR, +2 MRR, and +1 AC. This stacks up to 10 times, and stacks fade once every 12 seconds. Hope for Success grants 3 stacks.
• Spell Critical Chance: Positive: +2%
• WIS/CHA

Tier 5:

• Raise Dead SLA: 15 SP, 9 second cooldown
• Hope for Success: Target ally gains +1 to Critical Threat Range and Multiplier with weapons for 12 seconds. 60 second cooldown.
• Heal SLA: 40 SP, 6 second cooldown
• Undying Beacon: Allies affected by your Beacons gain Unconsciousness Range equal to 10x your Favored Soul level. This effect lasts for 12 seconds, and is refreshed if the target is affected by another Beacon spell.
• Wall of Healing: Cost: 30 Spell Points. Create a wall that persists for 30 seconds. Allies and Undead in the wall take a Cure Moderate Wounds spell every few seconds. 60 second cooldown.

[Steelstar]

FAQ:


Why a Healing-themed tree?

• Favored Soul's two existing trees focus around Offensive Casting and Weapon Attacks. This tree gives some good defensive utility and helps round them out with Healing skills.

Why the secondary focus on Buffing?

• Short answer: We wanted to give this tree options to function in a purely-support role if people wanted to go that route, and to have a playstyle available that made it stand out from other existing trees.
• Longer answer: The feedback loop for Renegade Mastermaker taught us that, at least for a wide variety of players, a tree entirely focused on Healing+Defense ends up feeling passive and kind of lackluster. We wanted something for people invested in this tree to do between healing. For some, that might be using weapons (because they split heavily into War Soul) or offensive casting (because they split heavily into AoV), but we wanted something for this tree to do on a secondary level that was useful in its own right. At the top end of their scaling, the buffs here are pretty dang strong.

What do you mean by "ahead of you*" on those Core abilities?

• Think of it like a cone, but fairly long and a static width a bit wider than the player character. You'd be trying to get your allies into a line, similar to how you'd line up enemies for Improved Precise Shot. We're going to work on having visual feedback that makes it pretty clear how long/wide the affected space is. (For the record, it's similar in size to Cone of Cold.)

Are you fixing War Soul with this pass? Angel of Vengeance? ...Any of the Cleric trees?

• We've got an Angel of Vengeance pass nearly done, and plans to try and get Warpriest and War Soul passes in for either U39 or shortly after. Details soon!

Do these work with Metamagics?

• Hope Buffs: Enlarge, Quicken
• Beacons: Empower Healing, Quicken
• Wall of Healing: Enlarge, Empower Healing, Quicken

Hope for Protection doesn't stack with Paladins???

• Correct, though a pure FvS at cap would edge out a Sacred Defender Paladin's PRR/MRR bonuses a little.

Can I cast the Hope buffs on myself?

• Nope.

If I'm friends with another Beacon of Hope, can we cast our buffs on each other?

• Yep.

What does (insert ability here) stack with?

• Assume that any Bonus we didn't add an explicit type to (Sacred, Competence, etc.) stacks with everything. Yes, that includes Hope for Success (though that might change before release, not sure yet).

This looks neat, but I wouldn't take this over Angel of Vengeance on my spell nuker / War Soul on my melee

• Nor should you! Existing builds were built with the existing trees in mind. We'd hope you find some things here worth taking on some of those builds, and that new builds would eventually be built around this tree. But it absolutely makes sense that existing characters using the archetypes of the other two trees keep using those trees as their primary. This is a different sort of role than those trees embody.

[silinteresting]

oh this should be good. all those that are already complaining that theres to much self healing in reaper
are going to have a field day with this. just 5 levels for a heal spell.

from a personal point thx for this it looks good.

your friend sil

i do have one point to make though could the heal sla be a multi selector
and have it combine with harm ?.

[glmfw1]

Looks good... definitely gives more options
Looking forwards to playing with it once it's released!

[Sunnie]

At a glance, it looks pretty ok. I would change a few things, however.

Hope for Protection and Hope for Victory could stand to have somewhat longer durations. They're good, but not gamebreakingly so. 30 seconds seems good to me, if you absolutely want to prevent a FvS doing almost nothing but keeping them up on the party, give them a 10 or 15 second cooldown. Having to reapply a buff on someone every 10 seconds during combat is not really that awesome. Hope for Success is ok, though, keep the cooldown on that as it is. It's a really strong buff fitting for tier 5.

Raise Dead as an SLA however... is really meh. I can't see myself take that when scrolls are plentiful and there's True Resurrection in the capstone anyway. By the time a Favoured Soul is level 12 they can easily scroll Resurrection, which is about 5 times as good as Raise Dead. Being able to cast Raise Dead on yourself while dead once per rest, now that would be a good tier 5.



OH, and cores 2 and 3 in the image do not match cores 2 and 3 in the description.

[Steelstar]

OH, and cores 2 and 3 in the image do not match cores 2 and 3 in the description.

Ack.

Text is correct. I'll see about getting the image updated.

[SerPounce]

Lot of cool ideas here. I like the "ahead of you" cone buffs.

There are a few oddities, like why deathward and raise dead SLAs? 95%+ of the builds that will use this tree will have those spells (most of the good stuff scales with FVS levels, so if you aren't mostly fvs the tree in general doesn't make much sense). Usually SLAs are spells that you want to cast a LOT so you get the benefit of low SP cost and free metas. Neither are really relevant to to raise dead or deathward.

Looking big picture if you're going to with ally-only buffing (which I like) I really think you could scale up the strength of the buffs considerably. As is it seems at best a wash between adding a Beacon of Hope vs. another DPS/caster type that can heal. Even the big t5 ability of +1 crit range/multiplier for 12 seconds every 60 is pretty minor from a party/raid group DPS perspective. I'd like to see all of those buffs be party based rather than single target ally. A t5 where you could self-buff for +1 crit r/m for 12/60 secs would be OK, but nothing special (Vistani has something like this). An ally only buff should be considerably more powerful. A cone that throws that same buff for the same time would be something special without (IMO) being over powered for an ally buff.

I see enough here that will give people who really want to play a buffing/healing FVS something to do, but I don't see enough where parties and raid groups are going to be thinking "boy, I wish we had a Beacon of Hope in this group!" which is really what a buffing class aspires to.

[Pilgrim1]

First Impresions: To many SLA and to many clickies!

Ok, so I like the idea of giving FvS more access to spells to expand there spell books. Spell like abilities only are a real benifit if you cast them alot AND use metta’s on them. The problem with the spell like abilities you have given to FvS are that they are (with the exception of heal) spells that get cast infrequently. I think a better solution would be the one you gave to pallies: add the spells to the spellbook.

Next is the clickies. I like the idea of buffing other players, however the fact that you have 4 diffrent buffs that are single target all on a 6 second cooldown. Ug, such a pain. I would sugest eather making thoes buffs AoE, and/or, having each tear improve on a single buff so you ONLY have 1 buff clicky. The final other option is to increase the duration & cooldown to something like 2min.

I think the only core people will use will be flight of glory, the other ones look like they will be to cumbersome to use much.

You gave druids a capstone of +2 wisdom and +2 con. Maybe you should do the same here, I mean this is a deffensive healing focused tree, no nead for it to have the extra wisdom right?

I like the fact that you can get 14% crit chance with positivie spell power but it would be nice to also add some universal crit chance to the cores or the devotion line, 1% each tear seams like plenty. That way FvS would end up with 4/6 universal crit chance.

Your devotion divine might is really poor. At least make it charsma/wisdom/str SCORE rather than MODIFIER.

The “hope for success” ability has a 60 second cooldown. I think, as a t5 ability, you are realy over-valueing this ability. Especialy since this is a pure suport tree and it only targets alliles. Keep it in line with the rest of the hope abilities and if its to strong - i dont think it will be - take of the extra crit ranger or something. Keep in mind that the t4 hope line will give much more DPS than this one just due to the additional up time.

[Teeaaa]

All I can say.. how long do I have to wait..


I love the implementing of the LoF temp hp and such, that seems so worth my points into it

Also very very very very.... ....very very excited for AoV pass in the near future


Thank you so much for the work!!!


So gonna bring back the idea of a support class

[WiseFreelancer]

I like this tree, which I wasn't really expecting given I'm not overly excited for healing trees generally.

A thought: this tree has really weird multiclass implications. The higher tier SLAs are really positive for 5/6 level splashes, but for the hefty AP investment you get little else as all the big buffs scale with class levels. Given they are all single-target, low cool down abilities I don't know that they really need to be as level-tied as they are.

On that note I really don't think the ability that adds epic levels in needs to be in the capstone. Adding epic levels is a big plus, but its to abilities that 1) require significant AP investment to get many of them and 2) require pretty much total dedication of your time to use them. Sure with epic levels tied to something lower down (or just auto-included) I could probably build better nuking or weapon powers through splashes or spared AP investment in other trees, but when I'm nuking or using weapons I'm getting nothing from the bonus levels anyway...

As a long-term, die hard FvS player I'm super excited to see if War Soul gets rescued from the mess it currently is (I like AoV as it is)...

[Vyrzain]

......
Your devotion divine might is really poor.
At least make it charsma/wisdom/str SCORE rather than MODIFIER.

..........

/agree.. Might's Reward <Multiselector> should be Score vs. Modifier


Also I am assuming that this is the Divine Might in the War Soul enhancements tree NOT Divine Might in the Knight of the Chalice enhancements tree because that one costs a Turn Undead / Channel Divinity.

The War Soul enhancement is listed on the Wiki as…
Activation Cost: 21/18/15 spell points.
Duration: 30/60/120 seconds.
Cooldown: 20 seconds

[SerPounce]

The higher tier SLAs are really positive for 5/6 level splashes, but for the hefty AP investment you get little else as all the big buffs scale with class levels. i

Probably not as good as they might appear. SLAs from class trees are generally based on class level. So with 5 levels of FVS you'd be casting heal and cure moderate (for the wall) as a lvl 5 caster (which isn't usually possible, but the formula still works).

This tree scales heavily with FVS levels all around.

[Kaboom2112]

oh this should be good. all those that are already complaining that theres to much self healing in reaper
are going to have a field day with this. just 5 levels for a heal spell.

**** right we are. This is the kind of broken BS that doesn't belong in the game.

Adding the self-healing penalty and then giving classes easy ways to burn through it (healing hands on a Wisdom toon or a HEAL SLA!) or avoid it (warlock) is asinine.

Yeah, you'll gimp yourself spending a tier 5 for this. But have you seen pugland? Ideas way less dumb than this have spread.

[Xgya]

I'll chime in with others before me.

The SLAs should be of spells you want to consistently cast. Buff and Rez SLAs don't seem very worthwhile.

Too many clickies with low durations. While I DO love the idea of temporary buffs castable on allies to make the fights easier, but combat being the tangled mess it is, I'd rather have a starting ability that improves over time, like the Warpriest's Smite Foe.
Either that, or a stacking effect that tags along with your spells, a rising wave that gets better as the fight goes on.

Do very much love the cone effects and Wall of Healing.

You could combine both ideas, making the SLAs actually give buffs along the spells they copy. (especially the resurrection ones...)

"Raise Dead SLA: 15SP, 9 second CD. Additionally, resurrecting someone grants them X temp HPs/X MRR/PRR/ X Dodge/ X Incorp...". I mean, the useful defensive buffs someone that's coming back to life with a sliver of their health left would like are numerous. Make this apply to any resurrection, so it doesn't come into conflict with the True Resurrection SLA later on, or with the Resurrection spell.
"True Resurrection SLA: 25SP. This resurrection doesn't come with death penalties."

[Silverleafeon]

QUOTE=Steelstar;6103407]Hey, all! SteelStar here with a look at the third Favored Soul tree coming soon: Beacon of Hope! This Healing- and Buffing-Focused tree is currently slated for U39, and ought to be up on Lamannia soon. Have a look (be sure to check out the FAQ at the bottom) and let us know what you think!

Cool!
I like the name, it ties into D&D lore.

• Core 1: For each Core ability you gain, +1% Positive Spell Critical Chance, +10 Healing Amp, and +5 Positive Spell Power.
  
  Typical Core bonus, well written and desirable.
  
• Core 2: Beacon of Grace: Cost: 2 SP: You and allies ahead of you* heal for 1 point of Positive Energy per Favored Soul level. This scales with your Positive Spell Power. 6 second cooldown.
  
  Hmm...something innovative and interesting. Kudos indeed!
  Thanks for thinking of something different.
  
• Core 3: Shining Light: Whenever you cast one of your Beacons or use Flight of Glory, you and affected allies gain a Sacred bonus to Healing Amplification equal to your Favored Soul level for 12 seconds. Enemies in the zone of effect are dazzled and take a -1 penalty to attack, spot, and search. These enemies are illuminated by Shining Light, dispelling stealth, invisibility, blur, and displacement, for 10 seconds, and giving a -40 penalty to hide. Sightless enemies are immune to the dazzle effect.
  
  Very interesting, I like this.
  
• Core 4: Beacon of Hope: Cost: 15 SP: You and allies ahead of you* take the effects of a Panacea and a Restoration spell, and heal for 5 points of Positive Energy per Favored Soul level. This scales with 100% Positive Spell Power. 30 second cooldown.
  
  Looking great! Adding a unique sla is a good thing for Favored Souls who truly lack such.
  
• Core 5: Flight of Glory: When you use your Leap of Faith, nearby allies gain Temporary Hit Points equal to twice your character level, plus an additional 25.
  
  Certainly interesting. Encourages class ability usage.
  
• Core 6: True Resurrection SLA: 25 SP. 10 second cooldown. Multiselector:
  
  • Passive:+4 WIS. You gain +3 Maximum Caster Level with all Positive spells. Your Hope and Beacon abilities that scale with Favored Soul level now add Epic Levels as well.
  • Passive: +4 CHA. You gain +3 Maximum Caster Level with all Positive spells. Your Hope and Beacon abilities that scale with Favored Soul level now add Epic Levels as well.
  
  
  Favored Souls have extreme trouble slotting the ninth level spell "True Resurrection" since they only have 3 ninth level spell slots usually taken by Implosion, Mass Heal (which needs a reduction in casting time), and Energy Drain. The +4 ability stat makes up for the fact that this tree has zero DC bonuses.

Tier 1:

• Good Hope SLA 10/5/2 SP. (3 second cooldown)
  
  One of the buff spells a Favored Soul might desire, good choice. It is a bit powerful, granting a level 3 Bard spell as a tier one enhancement, but when one looks at the spells itself, its not over powerful: granting a +2 morale bonus to attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and weapon damage rolls. All in all, Bard songs take so long, a Favored Soul casting Good Hope would be welcome by a Bard.
  
• Confidence: +1/+2/+3 Concentration, Diplomacy and Heal. Rank 3: You also gain +10 Positive Energy Spell Power.
  
  Typical tier one skill bonus with a burst of extra at tier three. Overall well written and good.
  
• Divine Durability: +2/4/6 Competence Bonus to PRR.
  
  Typical tier one defense bonus. Nice.
  
• Spell Critical Chance: Positive: +2%\
  
  Typical Spell Critical Chance line and well chosen.
  
• Spell Points: 30/60/90 Spell Points
  
  Typical Tier One Bonus Spell Points which Favored Souls could take unless they were double dipping two trees.

Tier 2:

• Close Wounds SLA: (6/4/2 Spell Points) (3/2/1 second cooldown)
  
  Since Favored Souls are very lacking in SLAs this would be a welcome addition. In the past Close Wounds has appeared in more than one initial tree spread, only to sadly disappear later on. Hoping that this one sticks because the typical melee party member takes a lot of attention to keep alive. Obviously, one might spend extra feats to meta this to ultimate (which implies a feat tax for power.
  
• Hope for Inspiration: Target ally gains a Sacred bonus to all Skills equal to 1/4 your Favored Soul level for 12 seconds. 6 second cooldown.
  
  Oooo, a bit more edging into the Bard class, but in a good way. Sacred is very rare type of buff, so that: Inspire Competence stacks Song Description: Gives one ally a +2 untyped bonus to all skill checks. Claims to be a competence bonus, but is actually untyped so it stacks with all other skill buffs (including the usual competence bonus from items). All in all, no toes stepped upon since thus stacks.
  
• Divine Durability II: +2/4/6 Competence bonus to MRR.
  
  Extending the defense Buffs in such as way that is not over powerful.
  
• Spell Critical Chance: Positive: +2%
  
  Expected and good.
  
• Might's Reward: Multiselector (Shares a cooldown and same SP cost as Divine Might).
  
  • You gain an Sacred bonus to Positive Spell Power equal to your Strength modifier for 30/60/120 seconds.
  • You gain an Sacred bonus to Positive Spell Power equal to your Wisdom modifier for 30/60/120 seconds.
  • You gain an Sacred bonus to Positive Spell Power equal to your Charisma modifier for 30/60/120 seconds.
  
  
  Oh, rather cool indeed. I like this.
  

Tier 3:

• Hope for Protection: Target ally gains a Sacred bonus to PRR and MRR equal to your Favored Soul level for 12 seconds. 6 second cooldown.
  
  Twelve seconds is about the same amount of time as a single fight. Interesting ability, also I like scaling with class levels very much.
  
• Efficient Empower Healing
  
  Well placed and appropriate for this tree. {Note that I object to the way over priced cost of all Meta Reduction abilities in all spell caster trees. Hope to see that remedied at some point during this year. Also hope to see Meta Spell Power increase with epic levels via: + ((base spellpower boost/20)*(Epic Levels Earned))
  
• Spell Critical Chance: Positive: +2%
  
  Again, well places and typical for a tree like this.
  
• WIS/CHA
  
  Good choice, this is a Wix/Cha tree.
  

Tier 4:

• Death Ward SLA: 10/8/5 SP (4 second cooldown)
  
  This offers a savings in Entrance Buffing spell points lost (5 sp vs 25 sp per cast on 6 party members = 120 spell points saved). It also helps a heroic Favored Soul to not have to slot this spell due to space limitation and the fact that the favored soul will be untraining this spell approaching epic levels. It also provides a cheap rebuff for those who have died mid dungeon. If possible, could the cooldown on this spell be reduced slightly? Not too important, since typical buffing with be: target party member a, cast FoM then DW, but it might speed up dungeon entrance buffing slightly.
  
• Hope for Victory: Target ally gains a Sacred Bonus to Melee Power and Ranged Power equal to half your Favored Soul level, and Universal Spell Power equal to your Favored Soul level. This lasts for 12 seconds. 6 second cooldown.
  
  Cool, interesting and variety. Hopefully these hope spells do not cost sp as one might be continually recasting thus?
  
• Optimism: Every time you cast one of your Hope abilities, you gain a stack of Rising Beacon, giving yourself +2 PRR, +2 MRR, and +1 AC. This stacks up to 10 times, and stacks fade once every 12 seconds. Hope for Success grants 3 stacks.
  
  Nice, gives one a reason to keep Hope casting.
  
• Spell Critical Chance: Positive: +2%
  
  Typical and well placed.
  
• WIS/CHA
  
  Yes, good.
  

Tier 5:

• Raise Dead SLA: 15 SP, 9 second cooldown
  
  Definitely feel this is misplaced. It was probably a great idea for brainstorming towards the True Resurrection Capstone, but now it needs to be removed. Suggest you replace with one of the following: Resurrection, Mass Death Ward, Mass Spell Resistance, Mass True Seeing (new spell so unlikely), Holy Aura, Death Pact (without the material component cost), +X positive spell power, +y heal skill
  
• Hope for Success: Target ally gains +1 to Critical Threat Range and Multiplier with weapons for 12 seconds. 60 second cooldown.
  
  Impressive, indeed worthy of a tier five ability.
  
• Heal SLA: 40 SP, 6 second cooldown
  
  I am a big fan of this SLA, please keep it. Consider reducing the spell point cost by the proportionate amount that you increased the cooldown. EI: new spell point cost = ((old spell point cost 40) * ((old cooldown 4.5) / (new cooldown 6))) = 30 spell points. Either way an extra SLA one can meta is very nice for Favored Souls.
  
• Undying Beacon: Allies affected by your Beacons gain Unconsciousness Range equal to 10x your Favored Soul level. This effect lasts for 12 seconds, and is refreshed if the target is affected by another Beacon spell.
  
  Very interesting and flavorful. Considering how hard many monsters hit now a days, definitely not over powerful.
  
• Wall of Healing: Cost: 30 Spell Points. Create a wall that persists for 30 seconds. Allies and Undead in the wall take a Cure Moderate Wounds spell every few seconds. 60 second cooldown.
  
  Super cool. Compare to Mass Regeneration Druid Spell, this is not truly powerful. Strongly suggest you decrease the cooldown to 30 seconds, enabling a Favored Soul to immediately restore a Wall of Healing but not stack thus. Please note that will all the various buffs its even more difficult to count 30 seconds till one can recast Wall of Healing.
  

Overall, I like this tree and feel it is well done.

The main flaw that I see lies within the Tier Five: EI replace Raise Dead, decrease cooldown of Healing Wall.

I don't feel capstone is too powerful even with +4 Wis/Cha due to lack to DC bonuses within this tree.

I hope the Close Wounds SLA stays, although I fear people may try to have it removed.

If that is the case, move it upwards in tier if necessary.

[Silverleafeon]

QUOTE=Steelstar;6103408]FAQ:


Why a Healing-themed tree?

• Favored Soul's two existing trees focus around Offensive Casting and Weapon Attacks. This tree gives some good defensive utility and helps round them out with Healing skills.

Makes sense

Why the secondary focus on Buffing?

• Short answer: We wanted to give this tree options to function in a purely-support role if people wanted to go that route, and to have a playstyle available that made it stand out from other existing trees.
• Longer answer: The feedback loop for Renegade Mastermaker taught us that, at least for a wide variety of players, a tree entirely focused on Healing+Defense ends up feeling passive and kind of lackluster. We wanted something for people invested in this tree to do between healing. For some, that might be using weapons (because they split heavily into War Soul) or offensive casting (because they split heavily into AoV), but we wanted something for this tree to do on a secondary level that was useful in its own right. At the top end of their scaling, the buffs here are pretty dang strong.

I like thus. A healing type role does like buffing.

What do you mean by "ahead of you*" on those Core abilities?

• Think of it like a cone, but fairly long and a static width a bit wider than the player character. You'd be trying to get your allies into a line, similar to how you'd line up enemies for Improved Precise Shot. We're going to work on having visual feedback that makes it pretty clear how long/wide the affected space is. (For the record, it's similar in size to Cone of Cold.)

Cone of Cold shape is rather nice. Its going to be a bit hard to place at times, but interesting.

Are you fixing War Soul with this pass? Angel of Vengeance? ...Any of the Cleric trees?

• We've got an Angel of Vengeance pass nearly done, and plans to try and get Warpriest and War Soul passes in for either U39 or shortly after. Details soon!

Nods happily

Do these work with Metamagics?

• Hope Buffs: Enlarge, Quicken
• Beacons: Empower Healing, Quicken
• Wall of Healing: Enlarge, Empower Healing, Quicken

Hopefully the metamagics are free for all of these SLAs? Looks good.


Hope for Protection doesn't stack with Paladins???

• Correct, though a pure FvS at cap would edge out a Sacred Defender Paladin's PRR/MRR bonuses a little.

Sounds good.

Can I cast the Hope buffs on myself?

• Nope.

Smart

If I'm friends with another Beacon of Hope, can we cast our buffs on each other?

• Yep.

LOL, nice

What does (insert ability here) stack with?

• Assume that any Bonus we didn't add an explicit type to (Sacred, Competence, etc.) stacks with everything. Yes, that includes Hope for Success (though that might change before release, not sure yet).

Thanks for the explanation.


This looks neat, but I wouldn't take this over Angel of Vengeance on my spell nuker / War Soul on my melee

• Nor should you! Existing builds were built with the existing trees in mind. We'd hope you find some things here worth taking on some of those builds, and that new builds would eventually be built around this tree. But it absolutely makes sense that existing characters using the archetypes of the other two trees keep using those trees as their primary. This is a different sort of role than those trees embody.

Looking forward to seeing the improved AoV tree.

[HungarianRhapsody]

oh this should be good. all those that are already complaining that theres to much self healing in reaper
are going to have a field day with this. just 5 levels for a heal spell.

5 FvS levels AND 31+ AP into a tree that does nothing for your offensive abilities AND you're locked out of tier 5 enhancements of your preferred tree.

Yeah, a Heal SLA is nice, but that's a LOT to give up in exchange. I'd rather just take 2 levels of Warlock with 8 AP sunk into one tree that also gives other nice benefits and throw Heal scrolls at myself.

[Silverleafeon]

just 5 levels for a heal spell

Heal Spell Description:
Channels positive energy into a target to wipe away injury and afflictions, restores 10 hit points per caster level. Maximum of 150 points at caster level 15.

Giving up tier five abilities and dealing with lack of caster levels?
Seems a bit unlikely for a Fighter 8 / Favored Soul 5 / Ranger 7 type build in Fury of the Wild or Dreadnought?

i do have one point to make though could the heal sla be a multi selector
and have it combine with harm ?.

+1 for this part of the post, that would be interesting choice even if a bit anti thematic.

[btolson]

Overall this looks somewhat infuriating to use with all the short-duration buffs to manage on top of what you already need to be doing, but maybe that's just a playstyle thing.

***

Can't say I see any point in the Deathward SLA, unless it's going to be undispellable. The regular spell isn't that expensive, the mass version is a huge QoL improvement... and I don't generally care what buffs cost anyway, since they typically come out of a Wizardry swap item budget (those spellpoints are "use 'em or lose 'em").

If it's not going to be undispellable, then maybe change this to a consolidation buff SLA, similar to the Resist All SLA that warlocks can take in the ES tree. I'm not sure what buffs to suggest for that, all the useful ones that spring to mind atm have a mass version that's more appealing anyway. But there is probably some sort of QoL SLA to put here.

***

The Raise Dead SLA looks even worse. Won't be casting that often, and as soon as you get a better res (one that doesn't result in your ally immediately dying if something so much as breathes in its direction), it's going to be the only one you use and replace this entirely. Don't even know what to suggest for this.

[lLockehart]

Hey, all! SteelStar here with a look at the third Favored Soul tree coming soon: Beacon of Hope! This Healing- and Buffing-Focused tree is currently slated for U39, and ought to be up on Lamannia soon. Have a look (be sure to check out the FAQ at the bottom) and let us know what you think!

Honestly... it looks kind of terrible.

Risking being too harsh - it's riddled with red flags.

So... Fvs doesn't really need a healing tree since you can deftly heal just fine with the abundance of mana you're granted. If we're stuck with one, it *has* to be worth its weight so having a secondary theme with buffs and self bulk going on is cool and mechanically important but as it is now, it's poised to fail as both. It also trivializes the Cleric tree by mimicry.

Let's take a look:

1) The 1st core is already a red flag since these healing metrics only really function if you have a good outlet, like Clr's aura which is on permanently. To increase the allure and the competitiveness of speccing in healing power/lore you need to offer other goodies like damage/utility spells that scale off it, as it is, it's just overkill healing.

2) Cores 2,3 and 4. Fvs doesn't need these healing clickies and while fun, they don't really change the way you play them. It's just a cone shaped Radiant burst in a class that has plenty of mana to instead heal the party normally. At least have the debuffs be more meaningful and unite the beacons all into one, seriously, casters have too many clickies already, why split the beacons?

3) Flight of glory: ... why? you're not going to be flying around your party to have them receive 85 temp hp, that's just not realistic and it's too low a bonus to be used by the way of serendipity.

4) The capstone... True rez sla? We do know Fvs has the spell right? And the mana to put it to good, quickly use.... why is this here? The only thing it achieves is being even worse than the Angel's one which is a considerable feat. The passive effect is... negligible at best. The 4 attribute score is always good.

5) The first tier.

- Good hope Sla is a nice touch that should rather be on a Bard...? It's great early game but it's dead AP by middle heroics which feels not intentional.
- Positive critical chance has the same problems as the first core.
- The bulk net gain here and up the line needs to scale with something.

7) The second tier.

- Inspiration is good.
- Might's Reward is horrendous, why would anyone take this is beyond me - not only it suffers from the same problems as the 1st core, the net gain is atrociously low.
- Close wounds Sla is... alright'ish for fun purposes.

8) The third tier.

- Hope for Protection and everything up the line has too short of a duration, has this been playtested? you'll burn your fingers through quests by wanting to keep someone buffed which you will.... right? it's what you're speccing in this tree for, it's even worse than Barbarian's two extra rages in berserker. Why is there no playtesting on these things, no one wants to upkeep multiple 12 seconds buffs and outside of the crit profile ones, they're not even that good. By the maker, change the duration on these things, make it permanent even! it would be super balanced or at least 5 mins. It's the same deal with the Arty's shield buff where it's unneeded short fused duration for no reason other than burn the player's will of playing the game.

9) The fourth tier.

-Deathward Sla... why?
- Optimism is good as it rewards dynamic gameplay, I very much enjoy it - why not make it scale or provide utility using positive power/lore?
- Hope for Victory needs to scale with full Fvs lvl or even Char lvl - 10 Power at cap is too low a bonus to be worth upkeeping with the current timer and double (or even triple) for Spellpower.

10) The last tier, where the big boy enhancements are, let's see...

- Raise dead Sla... why? not only does Fvs have the actual spell and the mana to use it aplenty, you also have scrolls which are used by... every single class in this game? This is a waste of space.
- Hope for success is the single reason you're probably speccing in this tree and though it's very good, you're also locking yourself in an otherwise redundant tree - at least it should have the courtesy of a longer timer - 12 seconds is... laughably short and you can't even upkeep it.... why?
- Heal Sla is good but couldn't it cost less?
- Wall of healing is awesome! it's inventive, makes sense and has some very good usability. I feel it should be on the Cleric trees but... it does make some sense seeing as it's a visually powerful spell and Fvs does have their God's power as their right hand in casting.

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Overall... I'm not too much impressed and I'd love to run a Fvs to buff my friends, it's just... there's so much clatter and needless finger burning attrition in upkeeping buffs, no one needs tendonitis inducing gameplay.