U39 Preview 1: Beacon of Hope

[Cocomajobo]

Goals:

• Primary focus on Healing + Restoration
• Provide new and interesting ways to Heal
• Secondary focus on Buffing, as an active loop for players who are not spending their primary or secondary focus on weapon attacks (War Soul) or offensive casting (Angel of Vengeance).

Key:

• Unchanged since First Look thread
• Changed since First Look thread

Cores:

1. Pleasant Disposition: For each Core ability you gain, +1% Positive Spell Critical Chance, +10 Healing Amp, and +5 Positive Spell Power.
2. Beacon of Grace: Cost: 6 SP: You and allies ahead of you heal for 1 point of Positive Energy per Favored Soul level. Undead enemies ahead of you take the same amount of damage (Will save for half). Both scale with your Positive Spell Power. 6 second cooldown. This ability is considered a 1st Level Favored Soul Spell of the Conjuration school.
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.
4. Beacon of Hope: Cost: 30 SP: You and allies ahead of you take the dispelling effects of a Panacea, Restoration, and Remove Paralysis spell, and heal for 5 points of Positive Energy per Favored Soul level. Undead enemies ahead of you take the same amount of damage (Will save for half). Both scale with your Positive Spell Power. 30 second cooldown. This ability is considered a 5th Level Favored Soul Spell of the Conjuration school.
5. Flight of Glory: Cost: 10 SP: When you use your Leap of Faith, nearby allies gain Temporary Hit Points equal to triple your character level, plus an additional 50.
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 + 1/4 your Favored Soul level for 18 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 5 + your Strength modifier for 30/60/120 seconds.
  • You gain an Sacred bonus to Positive Spell Power equal to 5 + your Wisdom modifier for 30/60/120 seconds.
  • You gain an Sacred bonus to Positive Spell Power equal to 5 + 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 3 + your Favored Soul level for 18 seconds. 6 second cooldown.
• Efficient Empower Healing
• Spell Critical Chance: Positive: +2%
• Ability Score Multiselector
  
  • Wisdom
  • Charisma

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 3 + half your Favored Soul level, and Universal Spell Power equal to 6 + your Favored Soul level. This lasts for 18 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%
• Ability Score Multiselector
  
  • Wisdom
  • Charisma

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 18 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: 15 Spell Points. Create a wall that persists for 15 seconds. Allies and Undead in the wall take a Cure Moderate Wounds spell every few seconds. 30 second cooldown.

[thomascoolone64]

hey Coco, My character (currently standing infront of you in the Dojo) Is Stuck in a T Pose, Ive Reset my client multiple times....

[J1NG]

Something is needed to be changed.

Wall of Healing will produce any item damage effects as well. (Lantern Ring for example, proc'ing light damage on self and others in the Wall of Healing on each tic)

Also, in game (Lamannia) cooldown is currently 60s, not 30s.

J1NG

[Jetrule]

I am wracking my brain to try and come up with something featuring this tree as my main tree that I would enjoy playing. Its sort of like radiant servant without the undead turning or the mobile healing aura. I like that you put the goals at the top of the post. In this case they appear to be spot on. heal your party, buff your party, do some dps on undead.

[edrein]

Will undead allies be healed by the Beacon abilities? After all there's nothing technically in the way of that.

[Wh070aa]

So a worse radiant servant. This tree is completely useless if your allies are not constantly dying, and giving a buff SLA like death ward is completely meaningless IMO. Also the uptime of hope is ridiculously short, making only worth vile thing pretty meaningless, and a chore to use. It's like halfling cleric that decided to invest in halfling racial abilities instead of maxing out Radiant servant for healing. It's unpleasant to play, and takes your attention away from your support role.

Like why would you ever use it? It's not good as a splash and does not synergize with other trees.

I am really disappointed.

Edit:Well at least Fury of the Wild gets a buff, I guess.

[Silverleafeon]

Having now seen the AoV tree, I can say that I am quite pleased with both these trees overall.

Favored Souls as casters will be much better off.

The Raise Dead SLA is still blah to me, however it could simply not be taken (ignored) given the uniqueness of the rest of the tier five abilities being so interesting. In other words, the other four tier five abilities are very strong and well liked by me, so the raise dead sla can easily be ignored and left alone.

Death Ward SLA is interesting, would like to it become a Multi-selection featuring FoM as well.
This would grant continued choices after gaining level 16+ of favored soul.


Beacon is really cool.
Good job on thus.


The Hope Buffs are more interesting when one takes the point of view that one might not keep all of these buffs active all the time.

For example, practical play:
Use inspiration only on trapper
Use protection only on tank
Use victory on whoever catches your favor when time allows
Keep success active on your favorite dps king.

When one take the route that the key is not keeping all the buffs active all the time,
then it seems a little less overwhelming.




Overall, this tree works well with the AoV tree, which is nice.

Like the changes.

Recommend multi-selection on DW sla.

Because Wall of Healing, Heal SLA, unconscious bonus, hope for success are so good, willing to overlook the blah raise dead sla.



Have not playtested this build on Lamania yet, so this is theory crafting opinions.

Thanks for reading and see my earlier comments on the official thread.

[Silverleafeon]

A possible caster build, especially with the reduction in some costs of the AoV tree might be:

AoV
Cores and capstone
avoid metamagics saving some points for Beacon tree.


Beacon
Cores 1 thru 4, possibly 5
Both wis/cha
Pos spell crit chance
Good hope and close wounds sla
spell points if have room
picking up optimism and one of the hope buffs likely victory

[Antheal]

*sigh*

I was really, really, looking forward to Beacon of Hope. For, like, years now. Check my posting history.

But I have to say I'm rather underwhelmed.

Button spamming and redundant SLAs over what I was going to take as spells anyway, give me no real reason to change from my Healing Domain Radiant Servant.

I expected better.

[SirValentine]

Your Hope and Beacon abilities that scale with Favored Soul level now add Epic Levels as well.

I still think that, while an interesting idea, improving scaling in Epics is not something that should be in a single tree of a single class.

[Steelstar]

I still think that, while an interesting idea, improving scaling in Epics is not something that should be in a single tree of a single class.

Even if the only scaling it is improving are abilities that are exclusively in that single tree of that single class?

Interesting. It'd be a much worse tree without it.

[GeoffWatson]

Even if the only scaling it is improving are abilities that are exclusively in that single tree of that single class?

Interesting. It'd be a much worse tree without it.

I think he means that other classes abilities should scale into epic as well.

[scipiojedi]

I think he means that other classes abilities should scale into epic as well.

Initiate corrupt a wish sequence countdown

[GotSomeQuestions]

First, reposting my flavor suggestions from the First Look thread:

Wall of Healing could be renamed after Irian, the Eternal Day. And here are some other abilities that could get that flavor too:

Core One: Irian's Dawn
Core Three: Irian's Light
Core Six: Irian's Zenith
Wall of Healing: Irian Manifest

I would also rename "Undying Beacon" because Eberron already has the Undying Court. The name suggests positive energy undead when that's not what's going on. Perhaps "Beacon of the Eternal Day"?

Second, am I alone in being really excited for this tree? It's super strong for end game play when you actually want to heal people. The Beacons and Wall of Healing are especially welcome. Can't wait to use those.

I really like the scaling effect in the capstone. It makes it competitive with the free Searing Light in the Angel of Vengeance capstone, and helps to differentiate focused healers from characters who take their capstone in AoV or Warsoul.

However, at cap, players who take Scion of the Ethereal Plane will get a small damage bonus from Hope for Inspiration. That means your optimal buff rotation involves targeting multiple players every few seconds, in addition to throwing down heals and other spellcasting. It certainly solves the problem of players just sitting back and healing, but does it go too far in the other direction?

Also, as others noted, some of the SLAs just aren't very "cool". Deathward and Raise Dead have their uses, but no one looks at the tree and goes "oh wow I want those". I don't know how to fix that, though.

Overall, I think this tree does a great job of meeting its goals, and giving healing focused players the tools to excel.

[Silverleafeon]

Even if the only scaling it is improving are abilities that are exclusively in that single tree of that single class?

Interesting. It'd be a much worse tree without it.

100% disagree with players who do not want epic scaling applied into enhancement trees.



There is way too little scaling into Epic of anything caster related in all the caster classes (save warlock).

Please continue scaling into Epic everywhere possible.


Metamagics for example provide a huge boost when acquired then nothing more.


If I were a Dev, would bring idea to table discussion of something like:

"How about considering changing how metamagics work by making them free to apply to all spells and using scaling effects that work well.

Such as: Maximize no longer costs spell points, but provides a metamagic bonus to all spellpower that is additive with other metamagics and multiplicative with all other spellpower bonuses. Possible off the top of my head increase of 10~25% spell power. Empower & Intensify would provide half as much. Empower healing would provide half as much but only apply to positive energy.

Advantages:
SLAs no longer become so important to trees as metamagics are applied to all spells.
Spellpower is scaling as the character progresses thru leveling process.
Better builds benefit more than inferior builds due to better equipment.
Spell usage and rotation becomes more varied among the player base.
Higher level non SLA spells strongly benefit and become more used.

Disadvantages:
Using Max & Emp on a low level heroic SLA becomes less powerful.
(Considering lower heroic is considered easy by many players this is less significant than one might believe)
Figuring and making the math work will take some thought.
There might need to be additions to the math, perhaps an epic scaling modifier along with a legendary cap boost.

Eschew materials could be free sp, just a feat tax.

Heightened would be free sp, making certain low level cc spells more likely to be cast.

Quicken would be free sp, dealing with the problem of concentration checks poorly scaling against epic damage.

Enlarge would be free sp, making players more likely to invest in many of the metamagic feats.


D&D lore uses increase in spell slots as the cost of metamagics, so the free sp cost does have some lore;
although unearthed arcana introduced the whole spell point system which complicates the lore.
Still lorewise, this likely could be ok.


It stops many of the "this sla is too powerful" or "this tree does not have as many slas as class x does...", etc...


Kind of wondering if the "surprise" has to do with metamagics (already dev reported to be in progess revamp), or epic destiny revamp (a bit too early likely after wiz/sor pass?, or challenge classes (without supporting trees), or expansion news, or something else.

So, my wildest theory on the subject would be to remove the problems of too expensive and not scaling in one fell blow, which obviously might be too wild for the devs to consider?




Pardon tangent, please continue with discussion of beacon tree.
Just highly object to any objections concerning epic scaling.

[SirValentine]

100% disagree with players who do not want epic scaling applied into enhancement trees.

Are there any of those? I must have missed it.

There is way too little scaling into Epic of anything caster related in all the caster classes (save warlock).

Exactly my point. This is something that need to be addressed generally, not individually in only 1 of of 3 trees of 1 out of 14 of classes.

[Qezuzu]

I really do not like the mechanical design of the "allies ahead of you" healing.

For FvS builds that may want to splash this tree, but are more aggressive Frontline builds, this core enhancement might be too difficult to use. I generally dislike reducing build diversity like this.

For healing builds I play, which are also cc builds 100% of the time, I can forsee a lot if situations where a heal fails because I was facing away to deal with trash mobs.

Conal healing is a cool idea but for faster paced play I don't think it'd be very enjoyable. All other heal effects don't require facing the target.

[Sebastrd]

100% disagree with players who do not want epic scaling applied into enhancement trees.



There is way too little scaling into Epic of anything caster related in all the caster classes (save warlock).

Please continue scaling into Epic everywhere possible.


Metamagics for example provide a huge boost when acquired then nothing more.


If I were a Dev, would bring idea to table discussion of something like:

"How about considering changing how metamagics work by making them free to apply to all spells and using scaling effects that work well.

Such as: Maximize no longer costs spell points, but provides a metamagic bonus to all spellpower that is additive with other metamagics and multiplicative with all other spellpower bonuses. Possible off the top of my head increase of 10~25% spell power. Empower & Intensify would provide half as much. Empower healing would provide half as much but only apply to positive energy.

Advantages:
SLAs no longer become so important to trees as metamagics are applied to all spells.
Spellpower is scaling as the character progresses thru leveling process.
Better builds benefit more than inferior builds due to better equipment.
Spell usage and rotation becomes more varied among the player base.
Higher level non SLA spells strongly benefit and become more used.

Disadvantages:
Using Max & Emp on a low level heroic SLA becomes less powerful.
(Considering lower heroic is considered easy by many players this is less significant than one might believe)
Figuring and making the math work will take some thought.
There might need to be additions to the math, perhaps an epic scaling modifier along with a legendary cap boost.

Eschew materials could be free sp, just a feat tax.

Heightened would be free sp, making certain low level cc spells more likely to be cast.

Quicken would be free sp, dealing with the problem of concentration checks poorly scaling against epic damage.

Enlarge would be free sp, making players more likely to invest in many of the metamagic feats.


D&D lore uses increase in spell slots as the cost of metamagics, so the free sp cost does have some lore;
although unearthed arcana introduced the whole spell point system which complicates the lore.
Still lorewise, this likely could be ok.


It stops many of the "this sla is too powerful" or "this tree does not have as many slas as class x does...", etc...


Kind of wondering if the "surprise" has to do with metamagics (already dev reported to be in progess revamp), or epic destiny revamp (a bit too early likely after wiz/sor pass?, or challenge classes (without supporting trees), or expansion news, or something else.

So, my wildest theory on the subject would be to remove the problems of too expensive and not scaling in one fell blow, which obviously might be too wild for the devs to consider?




Pardon tangent, please continue with discussion of beacon tree.
Just highly object to any objections concerning epic scaling.

I've been thinking for a while that Metamagics should just be free, but this post includes a lot of detail and good reasoning with some really good ideas for new implementation. I fully support this. It's way past time DPS casting was useful past level 18.

[Zeklijan]

Even if the only scaling it is improving are abilities that are exclusively in that single tree of that single class?

Interesting. It'd be a much worse tree without it.

I don't mind if you take casters in that direction, but other classes need to have a similar treatment in that case.
I have to say that epic levels granting caster levels is a pretty good idea IMO but it should be for everyone, not just a specific tree, otherwise I don't see it's place.

[Steelstar]

I don't mind if you take casters in that direction, but other classes need to have a similar treatment in that case.
I have to say that epic levels granting caster levels is a pretty good idea IMO but it should be for everyone, not just a specific tree, otherwise I don't see it's place.

Many trees have SLAs that function on the Caster Level system - Between "Master" feats and spellcasting destinies, you can get most of the abilities in other trees that cast spells to scale higher once you're in Epic levels by increasing their Maximum Caster Levels and Caster Levels. The Hope and Beacon skills in this tree do not benefit from the Caster Level system, instead benefiting from Favored Soul level directly. Yes, you're benefiting from getting the scaling for these six specific abilities directly out of the tree, but you're also not ?getting scaling from the Epic Destinies or Master feats.