First Look: Favored Soul Beacon of Hope

[Silverleafeon]

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.

+1

This is concern of mine as well.
Refreshing every 12 seconds with two different buffs is a bit much.

A very interesting option, combining Hope Protection, Victory & Success on the same cast would be better?
If Success if on cooldown it would not trigger?
Also, perhaps making Protection, Victory have equal cooldown with Success would work?
All hit the same target, triggering a 1 minute cooldown?
Duration of Protection and Victory have duration increased to 1 minute?

That would work for me.

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 pure ability boost for extra spell points and overall DCs.
After all, Favored Souls can choose the huge bonus spell point or the huge bonus hit point packages.

Season's Herald should likely be compared to Angel of Vengeance?
Beacon of Hope should likely be compared to the upcoming 3rd Druid tree?

[HungarianRhapsody]

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").

The only reason to have buff SLA's is to use the spell slot for something else. If you have X level 4 spells and you want X+1 level 4 spells, then this SLA is a godsend. If you don't care all that much about level 4 spells and it's the level 5 and level 6 spells that you're short on, then this doesn't do a lot.

[Qhualor]

I see the intention behind this tree and to me it looks like a very powerful healing and buffing tree. that is exactly what it is. if someone was able to figure out a good mix with melee and aura, than someone will figure out a good mix with this tree. this looks like the tree to use over other trees that have a lot of healing and buffing to boost group offense and defense. it looks like the old "healer behind a wall of melees" tree, but now with more marshmallows!

[PsychoBlonde]

+1

This is concern of mine as well.
Refreshing every 12 seconds with two different buffs is a bit much.

Especially since the crit buff has a 60 second cooldown. I think that's a bad idea and it should have the same cooldown as everything else. The bonus melee and ranged power is probably going to net you more damage overall anyway. The way most people play, keeping these buffs active is going to be basically impossible. Most of the time people will be out of range or out of sight when you need to re-cast it. At least favored souls get wings to make the running after people a little bit easier, but only a little bit.

I think it'd be more interesting if, instead of a 6 second cooldown on a 12 second ability, it had a 4 second cooldown and applied a STACK of the buff, stacking up to 3 times, stacks fall off one at a time. Give it a visual effect similar to Eladar's Electric Surge or Niac's Cold Bite or Divine Vengeance, and it becomes a game of trying to stack this up on people while they're fighting. That's a lot more active than just . . . refresh the buff. Wait. Refresh the buff. Wait.

I'd suggest putting some FUNCTIONAL aggro-management in the tree, also, because that would have the potential to be pretty unique, like maybe have the ranged/melee power one also cause the target get a Hate Bomb of some kind that draws enemies to them. I'd suggest doing a Dodge buff that would have an "aggro be gone" effect.

Exerting hefty control over who gets aggro would be really unique and is MUCH NEEDED.

[Bacab]

I like it and would use it.

I think Cure Light Wounds Mass SLA instead of Raise Dead would be better. By 12th level, and GOOD Cleric or FVS is using Resurrection Scrolls.

I don't know what the Timer on a CLWM SLA I would put though. You wouldn't want it better than the Cleric's radiant servant stuff. So Maybe 45, 30,20 sec recast?

[Silverleafeon]

The only reason to have buff SLA's is to use the spell slot for something else. If you have X level 4 spells and you want X+1 level 4 spells, then this SLA is a godsend. If you don't care all that much about level 4 spells and it's the level 5 and level 6 spells that you're short on, then this doesn't do a lot.

+1

This is an extremely important point for Favored Souls, they have a limited amount of spell slots and limited free retraining of spells.

For example,

At character level 10, a Favored Soul have two level four spell slots.

Good ones to take at that level would be:

Cure Critical Wounds (as one does not quite have the Heal spell yet)
Freedom of Movement
Deathward (available as an SLA)
Holy Smite (for caster) or Divine Power (for melee)
Order's Wrath (for caster almost auto stun vs. most chaotic monsters) or Shield of Faith Mass (for melee)
Restoration (which will be scroll cast likely, taking extra time and plat)

notice a trend, more spells than one can take?

Also Deathward becomes outdated by Mass Deathward so it is often retrained at higher levels to make room for:

Order's Wrath
Freedom of Movement
Holy Smite
and one of the following: Dismissal, Shield of Faith Mass, or Chaos Hammer

The lower cost of the SLA Deathward also represent a significant cost reduction for single target rebuffing of fallen foes over the more expensive Mass Deathward.


The trend continues even at end game as Favored Souls have three slots for level nine spells:

Good ones to take:

Mass Heal
Implosion
Energy Drain
True Resurrection

Which one does one not choose?

It could be argued that a player interested in Implosion is likely to take the AoV tree, but still an extra spell slot is nice to have?
SLAs cannot be interrupted so a player might could wait on quicken feat or somehow survive without it?

[Silverleafeon]

I like it and would use it.

I think Cure Light Wounds Mass SLA instead of Raise Dead would be better. By 12th level, and GOOD Cleric or FVS is using Resurrection Scrolls.

I don't know what the Timer on a CLWM SLA I would put though. You wouldn't want it better than the Cleric's radiant servant stuff. So Maybe 45, 30,20 sec recast?

+1
Sounds like an interesting choice.

Mass Cure Spells are also very hard for Favored Souls to slot.

For examples

there are four spell slots for level five spells usually taken up by:
Greater Command
Divine Punishment
Mass Cure Light Wounds
Flamestrike or Slay Living

with scrolls used for
True Seeing
Raise Dead


there are three spell slots for level six spells usually taken up by:
Heal
Blade Barrier
Cometfall or Mass Cure Moderate Wounds (both desirable)

with scrolls used for
Heal (back up healing)
Heroe's feast



there are three spell slots of for level seven spells usually taken up by:
Resurrection (so much better than raise dead)
Destruction
Mass Cure Serious wounds

leaving the desirable Mass Spell Resistance & Greater Restoration not memorized

with scrolls used for
Mass Protection from Elements
Greater Restoration (hard to self cast with neg levels)


there are three spell slots for level eight spells usually taken up by:
Mass Deathward
Mass Cure Critical Wounds
Firestorm or Holy Aura (both desirable)

[Kza]

Lovely tree!
Only thing i want to change (as many others) is the t5 raise dead sla.
It had been fun If it could instead be a raise dead on self once/shrine
Or a mass Cure sla.

The last enhancements tree:s you devs have made has been with
Uniqe ideas and flawor and good But not op. Great job! (But change raise dead sla! Its utter **** tbh)

[Benfe23]

Tier 1:

• 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.

Bare minimum needs to be char score. Modifier? I cant even....

• 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.

This needs to last much longer.... like a minute. Also increase the CD on the ability. Tracking buffs on others is an absolute impossibility in this game. The CD is how u track buffs, so u can have it up on 2 ppl full time (assuming CD is 50% of duration).

Tier 4:

• 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.

Values here r so so so wrong. Melee power needs to be more to keep in line with how ranged get less ranged power. 20 spell power while pure is a drop in the bucket. To give u some perspective, 10 ranged power is like a 5-10% relative boost on the ranged character at cap. In order to have a similar boost on a DMG caster with 1000 spell power (or 1300 with metas on) it needs to be a whopping 50-100 (or 65-130) spellpower. So quadrupling the spellpower buff is in fact far from unreasonable. Duration is also too short as pointed out above. Have it last a minute, with 30 sec CD. Keeping it up will be less frustrating.

In short this needs to be on a pure capped FVS: 20 melee power, 10 ranged power, 80 spellpower.

• Raise Dead SLA: 15 SP, 9 second cooldown
  
  Y is this even here? This is another one of those "what were they even thinking...."
  
  
• Hope for Success: Target ally gains +1 to Critical Threat Range and Multiplier with weapons for 12 seconds. 60 second cooldown.
  
  This can be paired well with fury shot. That's about it. At least have it last a full 20 secs so that it can cover an entire action boost.
  
  Also, this does absolutely nothing for a caster. Have it give like 5% stacking spell crit chance, and like 20% spell critical dmg.
  
  
• Heal SLA: 40 SP, 6 second cooldown
  
  Y is an SLA so expensive?
  

sniff

[GramercyRiff]

The durations of the Hopes need to be increased by a lot. That's my main issue with this thing.

I also can't stand that the Hopes don't work on yourself. I can understand why it's like that, but it doesn't mean I agree with it.

Raise Dead is terrible for tier 5 SLA.

Other than that, this tree seems to have a decent mix of power and flavor. It's pretty well done overall and is a solid start.

[HastyPudding]

I LOVE the idea of a hands-on healer/support that does more than just use healing spells. Kudos for that.

I have an issue with some of the SLA's, though.

Good Hope - Decent early on (saves having to use heroism pots), but this is overwritten by greater heroism (which 95% of people are going to use once it becomes available in scroll or spell form). I think, later in levels, this is just going to be used to get rid of crushing despair and little else. It's decent, but could be better.

Close Wounds - Easy to spam and not overpowered unless you are a healbot, in which case it's what the tree is about, anyway. I approve.

Death Ward - This is redundant, at best. Useful for the few levels before you get the spell, but almost useless after you get the mass version. The only real uses I can see is saving SP on buffing a small party (as if FVS is lacking in SP, anyway) and using death ward on somebody who just recently died. This could be so much better.

Raise Dead - I don't get it. If you're going to be a healer, 9/10 times you're going to be a pure FVS/Cleric/Druid/Bard. Pure FVS gets a true resurrection SLA as a capstone. This is not worthy of a tier 5 ability.

Heal - Acceptable, although I wish clerics would get this, as well. FVS healers tend to have the highest SP in the game, anyway.

A simple suggestion: there's an empty slot in tier 3. Maybe put a Prayer or Recitation SLA here. At least it provides a cheap, extendable buff.

[Cantor]

The capstones are perfect.

I got to the first 12 second buff and was like, ugg this would have to be much better to recast all the time.... then OMG... did someone look at an EQ bard circa 2000 and say you know that's what I wanna do, but I wanna do it to one person at a time? I can't think of a theme for a tree that could be less useful and more annoying than minor single target buffs on a 12 second timer. Seriously if you don't know what EQ bards were like back then, look it up and see why this is not what to do, and they at least had aoe.

The only really good one is a T5 with a 12 second duration and a 60 cooldown. They should all be that strong and have full up time. You are basically giving up and entire party member for it, because you won't be doing anything else.

I don't normally rant, but these are really really bad. Yes we want buffs that matter, but not on a 12 second timer. I can't think of a way to make a character less fun to play then lining up hotkeys and running through them over and over to buff 1 (or stretch 2 for mostly uptime) party member over and over for an entire quest.




Also might's reward is way under powered, i agree with the post that it should be score not mod.

[btolson]

A lot of this tree has a potential to be wasted by overhealing (crit on heal SLA in particular), so a way to convert at least some of that wasted healing into something useful would be good somewhere.

"When you overheal a target, it receives that overhealing as temp hp, up to a maximum value of X per FVS level"

I was initially going to suggest this for core 5 (because it seems underpowered and hard to leverage), but now think this should go somewhere else (earlier in progression). Or possibly make it a feature of core 1 that gets upgraded by each core, hitting a big upgrade at core 5.

[draven1]

For capstone,

"Mass resurrection"

[jakeelala]

• 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.

That SLA Raise Dead is terrible. You can do better for T5. Which brings me to my next point: Hope for Success.

If you really think of this as a buff, it's incrementally increasing ONE party members DPS for 20% of the time. Even in a 6 person group that's not a whole lot. In a raid, marginally, it's really a very small buff to overall party DPS. This should be castable on about half your party members at least at the same interval. So make it's cooldown lower or just let it affect up to 6 people per cast with the same cooldown. Then this would be worthy of T5 and have some value. This would have great syngery with Consecration and standing toe to toe in fights.

[Antheal]

Steelstar, can I have your babies?

[bbqzor]

I do not feel this is an optimal direction to go with FVS, as written. The class itself has few advantages over clr (more sp, can opt for cha base, free diety stuff) and several drawbacks (no heavy armor, poor divine cha-base itemization, no domain). As listed, this tree does little to mitigate those drawbacks, and little to capitalize on the advantages. But there is hope, some of this has a good spark to it.

Functionally, its a class that should be casting more to use its larger mana pool. That is the number one biggest thing it brings to the table. A support class (healing/buffing) by default is reactive, meaning it casts when it needs to, and rewards players for waiting until they need to. The benefits offered by short-term buffs, which seem to be the only reason to start spamming heals/buffs before people are low hp or the buffs are faded, look to be the carrot on the stick encouraging this. But spending all your time and mana providing those buffs will almost certainly offer less return than simply acting yourself. In other words... using your mana to act on your own is likely to provide more beneift/result than using your mana to help someone else act marginally stronger.

Comments below (with heroic/epic numbers listed on either side of a slash, to consider capstone where applicable). I will try to support those statements with evidence. Suggestions in bold.

Core 1: For each Core ability you gain, +1% Positive Spell Critical Chance, +10 Healing Amp, and +5 Positive Spell Power.

A total of 6% crit chance and 30 spell power is largely unnoticeable since it isn't really dps-facing. However 60 amp to yourself is enough to start to counter out the reaper penalty in low-skulls. That is nice to allow the class to self-heal better, which is a function more important to actual healers (most parties wont have two healers). Okay for C1.

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.

A Cone Heal for (20/30) hp is basically pointless, even with scaling. At level 3 when you get this and 100 spell power, it heals for 12. At 1000 positive spell power with epic levels, this heals for 330. A heal scaling from 12 to 330 at its extremes isn't relevant. This ability is basically used for powering up Beacon effects.

Suggestion: Make it Temp Hp. That focuses more on the support/buffing roll, and is unique. It also encourages spamming, as refreshing temp hp is far less a waste than over-healing. As discussed above, and again here, this ability is the Beacon buffer; let spamming it be cool. A temp hp buff sets FVS apart from CLR here.

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.
This scales with your Positive Spell Power. 6 second cooldown.

A Healing Amp / Faerie Fire Cone is actually pretty unique and thematic. Question, is there a save/SR check on the FF (assume yes and no like the spell). This ability is going to help a FVS group-heal the party in front of them better, provided the animation is fast. With a 12s duration, you will have to recast this every 2-3 heals, and as difficulty increases that starts to become impossible (meaning you could lead with this at the start of a fight but not maintain it).

Suggestion: Make it 20s duration and 10s cd. Parallel to an action boost. One shot of this will cover one shot of the party boosting during an engagement. I feel that at 12s, while it is appealing on paper, its going to be too hard to actually use during tougher fights where it would matter. Or see below about Extend

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.

Question, Panacea already heals; is the 5/lvl in addition or in place of the base panacea? This looks to be a status cure Cone, which is also nice and thematic.

Suggestion: Add Remove Paralysis and Bless to the list of buffs cast. Remove Paralysis so that this can also cure Slow and Ghoul Touch without negating the need for something like Break Enchantment or Greater Restoration. Bless so that it removes Bane, and adds a (potential) small buff for people not needing Cures. All of those spells are low enough and peripheral enough that including them here isn't going to break anything, and will make this broad enough to use, rather than reducing it to a tiny heal / lesser resto pot replacement.

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.

While a cool name, getting this at 18 is a bit late. The range of 61/85 temp hp is too tiny as well; 60 temp hp at lv18 is maybe one hit, 85 at lv30 is no go. Also, having Leap trigger this is going to be akward gameplay. If you are using wings to escape being clobbered, temp hp this low won't help. If you are using wings to get nearer to the party, no one will be around to get the buff. As the entire class encourages hanging back and watching the party fight in front of you, so you can use Cone abilities, starting or ending wings near the party is tough. Starting at them youd have to turn around and aim backwards, or risk running into the mobs before them on point. Starting behind them, youd wind up alongside them and unable to get anyone in a cone. Tough to use.

Suggestion: As I suggested above, a temp hp buff is a good idea, but a cone to use during leveling as a progressive mechanic with better hp values makes a ton more sense. Gaining it this late, with those values, on a positional ability is bad. But what would be not-bad that late on a positional ability would be something like a Holy Smite/Holy Aura combination. Pick one based on alignment/deity, as this tree has literally nothing utilizing the deity choices. Then debuff/attack mobs, and buff/protect the party. That way its useful both coming and going. And helps by adding spells to the FVS narrow spell list indirectly (having a 'free' Holy Aura buff slot will help the support role, as FVS will have a tough time fitting everything into their choices, and buffs/cures/etc somewhat rely on having the right tool for the job on hand).

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.

Four to your casting stat is pretty standard, and making epic levels add only when pure-class is actually a nice choice I think. The +3 max level is somewhat annoying in the sense the tree doesn't offer any way to get those 3 levels. True Res is nice, but if the class is working correctly, you won't really want to be using that.

Suggestion: To keep with the epic-focused forward thinking here, make it +5 max caster levels, so it allows your destiny caster level to fully apply when in such a destiny. I was going to suggest Death Pact rather than True Res, but it doesn't work on Reaper and as this ability kicks in at the same time as Destinys, Reborn in Light is similar. I would instead suggest that the Capstone allows Undying Beacon to affect the caster as well. Having the T5 ability affect the player give the party a chance to support them back with a splash heal, and lets them stay closer to the fight to use cones with a little more breathing room. Its also more unique; and with any Beacon you cast refreshing the duration on yourself, itll be active as long as you are engaged and casting, which is thematic.

T1

• 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

Pretty standard T1 stuff. I like the Good Hope SLA to cure Curshing Despair and add damage (if no bard around). I also like seeing mana available early on for FVS (question, do they receive double or are the values already doubled).

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.

Some good stuff, and some bad stuff. Close Wounds might be okay, will have to see how it feels at 1s cd and only 2 mana, but while spamming it you cannot do anything else making it hard to support a party. I am concerned this might outclass the CLW SLA which is a capstone in another tree (not that either of them is powerful, but T2 shouldnt outdo a Capstone - hopefully the other tree revamp will address this by boosting the Capstone spell choice rather than reducing this one). Hope for Inspiration is actually something I really like, as skill support is not done often/well between DDO classes, and +5/8 to a skill is cool. Might's Reward needs help though... Even at 100 ability, this is +45 spell power, which is somewhat analogous to an action boost of sorts I suppose (bigger bonus and duration, much higher investment cost via base ability score).

Suggestions: Without feeling Close Wounds via playtest, and seeing how practical Mights Reward is in practice, hard to gauge. I expect both will be under powered significantly; tying up your actual animations to spam heal one target is normally inadvisable, and while Mights Reward compares fairly against an action boost, it compares poorly to Divine Might relative to Divine Mights impact on Melee. The SLA will probably need to be changed out, and Mights Reward will likely need tweaking (such as making it a bonus to positive crit chance, or positive crit damage, or the whole party's healing so youre supporting everyone supporting each other, etc).

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

Hope for Protection isn't terrible for keeping a tank buffed or something, but with all the short term stuff you need to maintain, it would be impractical to have it on more than one or maybe two persons consistently (see extend suggestion, otherwise more than 2 is impossible due to duration). However +20/30 (hero/epic) prr and mrr is significant, even for those with high values. However, Efficient Empower Healing should go. It is something the cleric tree focuses on, and doesn't really need to be here encouraging parallel builds.

Suggestions: Consider adding Empower Extend, to support the support role. Also, consider allowing extend to work on some of the FVS Cone durations (12s to 24s). Making them action-boost similar durations would be extremely appealing to players, and also have good play-feel as action boosts are a duration people can relate to and work with. 12s can be tough with latency etc, its just too short to be operable more often than anyone would like. Also, consider adding Heavy Armor Proficiency here. Druids got it, and it would allow Aasimar FVS to go the heavy/tower route which is a good support style choice. It doesn't make sense to leave FVS behind in that arena, imo.

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

Again an okay tier, with Hope for Victory being nice on particular offensive character. However, remember that a bonus of 10/15 mp/rp and 20/30 spell power is basically action boost territory. A mini action boost for other members is cool, but will still be less effect than another character contributing (ie, if the FVS is spamming this instead of attacking directly, the party is losing net dps). Optimism is nice, but leaves no save bonuses in a tree where cc effects are likely to be the most dangerous thing (since youre probably standing behind the party using cones). Death Ward is a bit bland.

Suggestion: Make Hope for Victory 20s duration and 10s cd (as mentioned elsewhere, or have Extend apply to it). Even if Extend applied (24s duration, 6s cd) you could keep it on 4/5 other party members (or 4/11 in a raid) at best, with perfect timing. With other things (like the need to heal, as if youre playing this youre likely that guy) and latency involved, 3 people is a more practical max. A collective 30/45 mp/rp or 60/90 spell power is more likely to help take the edge off for a character basically choosing to not dps. I realize there are other benefits for the FVS not dpsing, but they should still be able to contribute in that arena. Also, I would adjust Optimism to be +1 prr/mrr/ac/svs at each tier. FVS need a way to parallel the save boosts of paladins or some cleric domains after a fashion... the last thing you want is your support focused guy sitting idle from failing saves. Plus, FVS is a good-saves-all-round class, and this highlights that class distinction over both clr/pal which have more mods but poorer base values. Let FVS play to their strengths and stand out as a choice. Lastly, consider replacing Deathward with Recitation. Death ward is something enough classes get, and has a mass version, that I would rather see something FVS-centric. Recitation is a good support spell, and an SLA version will help more as it will need recasting more often, and still offers the 'free' lv4 spell slot to benefit FVS.

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.

Some okay stuff here. Raise Dead is fairly weak, considering most anyone can scroll this (even in the lv12 range where this ability comes in, umd in that range is not uncommon), and coming back at low hp in legendary and reaper is less than optimal as you progress. Hope for success is too short, I really do not like the extremely short timers showing up in DDO lately, its an action rpg in some fashion but it has to acknowledge the reality that it doesnt always run the smoothest with immediate-response clicking in the moment. Heal as an SLA is necessary for a class trying to fill this role, and I applaud it being there. Its presence does make Close Wounds earlier on even more suspect though. Undying Beacon is a good parallel to Divine Intervention "the party version", which I like, and also actually plays well with other class identity abilities (sacred defender capstone, cleric healing aura and warlock temp hp aura and this work together, etc). Wall of Healing, yes please, being able to wall of fire your party ahead of you and cone them alive, like a reverse dps class, actually sounds quite amusing to play.

Suggestions: Make Raise Dead into Resurrection. Yes, it provides the spell at lv12 instead of lv13 when you would get it normally, but its harder to replicate via scroll among other classes at large, more useful as you progress through the game, and helps more with limited FVS spell slots. Put another way, having Raise Dead SLA isnt going to prevent you from taking Resurrection and/or True Resurrection as spells. I suspect the intent was to have the Capstone fill that role, but as anyone with the capstone could just scroll use Resurrection themselves, its not very capstone-like. Make it an SLA so this support focused class can do something useful from 12 to 30, which is available on a vendor, as a quality of life choice. Let the capstone be a unique ability. Also, make Hope for Success extendable or 20s duration, 10s cd to parallel an action boost. Let this class "action boost" others in place of its own direct contribution. Providing crit mods while a class can use its own boost is one way to actually make a "support" class have a fair return on their time vs contributing themselves instead.

I think with those changes, this could actually turn into a fun and surprisingly refreshing new play style: A reverse-dps healer, with strong party support, spamming unique buff effects. It definitely needs those changes though, which is of course why the thread is here. Please strongly consider them, as removing one whole body of dps, for healing (which plenty of classes can do while also dps-ing) means the support factor has to be good (ie, stacking, and with relevant numbers). Changing cool downs, offering a few FVS choices like a diety selection and heavy armor, and moving a few modifiers around to highlight their strong saves and spell set up, will go a long ways. I would like to see extend especially be considered, as right now there is basically nothing pushing anyone to that choice, and it would help draw FVS in a different direction from domain clr and away from durations too short to use. Individually 12s might be ok on one ability, but when the *entire class* stands around that one duration, and you can only functionally cast one animation at a time, it becomes impossible to bring your abilities to bear in any meaningful way other than as 1-2 here or there; not as a suite of abilities from a functional build direction. Spamming 2-3 of those cycling around leaves no time for healing or buffing or 'supporting', and turning your character into one permanent action boost on someone else is a lesser contribution than acting yourself. I really feel that with the changes that would go away some, and permit using them between heals or buffs, and let this direction be a good build choice.

Thanks.

[TitusOvid]

I like the overall idea of some buffs in that tree. But with those buffs FvS grow easily to be another piano playing class. I am not fond of that.
And I am not excitet about those raise/Rez slas either. Slas are nice for metamagic and a alternation between the regular spell and the same sla. The benefit for raise and rez would be minimal. Maybe nice to have but there are far nicer things to spend APs on.
Close Wounds as a T2 sla is a bit meager, too. I think T1 for wounds and T2 for Hope would fit better, imo.
50% of the features of that tree are active ones. Seems a bit much, doesn't it?

The other fetures sound interesting. I hope they turn out that way, too.

[Vish]

Fvs rant
Steelstar et al
Ok my initial impression is meh...
Raise ded SLA and heal SLA and true Rez SLA?
Really? Like my fvs with 5000 sp needs mana savers. And that stuff comes at end of combat usually. But now with reaper and raids you may have need of multiple Rezzes.
So this is pretty niche tree. Fvs could heal and Rez just fine before. And I counted 13 points for low hanging fruit. That's good for multiclass. But all this trees worth. I couldn't imagine going t5 and core6 unless you are a dedicated healer. And even then it's overkill. But it does give you 2 heals, tho you should be using your masses. But again there maybe it's good for fvs spell selection. It seems they don't have the slots?
But really all I see fvs good for is implosion and mass frog. They are rare healers. Most are nuking. So this gives them extra healing over their nuking, but none will go tier5. There just ain't that much healing needed in the game. Ands it's not better than a aura. Oh ya and wall of healing? That's too funny. Well it's no aura. Guess it works for phalanxes. If you can get them to line fight for ya. A wizard would do better.
But you know clerics are few and far, as are fvs. I'm always happy when a cleric joins the team, but not so when fvs do. They just don't heal. And I'm talking reaper here, where it counts.
So I know this is what were getting. Maybe some changes but not likely. Already council approved. See I wanted to be on that team, but no apps. Not too rotating. Anyways you wouldn't have taken my advise, I wanted to put dps SLAs in there. Like divine disciple. Because aov just sucks for dps. Is that getting revamped? Now there are 3 lousy trees for fvs. Oh well splashes will be strong.
But there is nothing here that would encourage me to play a beacon of hope. Unless I was in some dedicated team. With a lot of melees. Ya this doesn't shore up anything it just gives them more of the same.
Like I said. It's worth 13 pts. Maybe less if you've got good trees.
Don't know what else to say. You won't rewrite it. Too late for that. Well, at least you're not giving anything away. But this middle approach will not draw people to play the class. Still no divine resurgence going on. I've given up on the healing classes. It's just a support role, and that means dedicated. Even tho there are more reaper teams floating around. And few have went that route. But they're appreciated. For doing the dirty work of being support. But best fvs I know is a spite build. See, gotta dps in this game, even if you're healing. Otherwise too dedicated. And even then, you need melees in the team, and even they aren't that regular. Not with the ranged meta. So niche.
I'd like to say good work, but I'd give it a c. Because it doesn't go far enough and make me want to play one. Maybe I'll give more if there's enough feedback.

Lynnabel,
Found one for ya.
Arcane insight. Supposed to add dc and spell pen. On the buff bar, it displays as 150sp and 20% crit. Obviously wrong? Thx for your work.

And thanks to steel and gang. I'm most impressed we had only 1 patch for this last update.

[mikarddo]

The idea of a healing/buffing tree is nice and certainly goes against the meta in most of the game where the trend is towards being self-sufficient.

But, such a tree should be easy to use not cumbersome.

The Hopes are ironically hopeless. Single target, short duration, tiny effects except for the last one with no effect on self is about as bad as it gets.
- Double the effects on skills, prr, mrr, melee power and ranged power (all except the last Hope). The current effects are far too small. Say a level 12 FvS that gives 6 mrr/prr - hardly noticeable and definitely not worth the hassle.
- Up the duration to 1 min on the first 3 Hopes and 30 sec on the final Hope.
- Make the effect group rather than single target.


The SLA are also a bit lackluster
- Good Hope is outdated by GH scroll/pots/spells, consider making it scale with FvS levels to avoid that.
- Close Wounds is OK.
- Death Ward should be Mass Death Ward for the same price.
- Heal is good
- Raise Dead is a joke in tier 5. By level 12 most builds has Raise Dead scrolls and many have Ressurrection. Change to "Ressurrection AND removes death penalties" and you suddenly have something interesting and unique. Alternatively, change to "Everytime you cast a buff, hope, heal or beacon these affected by it including yourself gains temp hp equal to your FvS level + epic level" - still a small effect but one you can and will add often.

Cores:
- Bacon of Grace given 1 hp pr. FvS level isnt enough. Its rare to have a line of people in front of you and giving maybe 25 hp by level 12 to someone with 400+ hp isnt worth the time usually. Make it a passive cone that does this every 2 seconds automagically and its suddenly something worth having - or make it add 3 hp per FvS level to make it somewhat usefull.
- Flight of Glory needs to scale better into epic levels. Add +10 per epic level.