U39 Preview 1: War Soul & War Priest Revamp

[Cocomajobo]

Goals:

• Add ranged support to these for Silver Flame builds
• Bring overall weapon DPS up between burst and +[w] attacks (additionally, giving Favored Soul access to weapon criticals)
• Give this tree interesting things to do (Its only attack skill right now is on a long cooldown)
• Fix/Remove a few of the abilities that are huge AP sinks for minor benefit
• Push Warpriest to have more defense than War Soul
• Push War Soul to have more offense than Warpriest

Both CLR and FvS versions:

• Cores:
  
  • Smite Foe is now a Multiselector with a Melee and Ranged version.
  • Smite Foe's cooldown has been reduced to 12 seconds
  • Implacable Foe's cooldown has been reduced to 3 minutes.
• Tier 2:
  
  • Inflame is no longer an Action Boost. It no longer has charges, and now has a 90 second cooldown.
  • Inflame: Saving Throws has been rolled into Greater Inflame (see below)
• Tier 3:
  
  • Inflame: Energy Absorption is now "Greater Inflame", has all the effects of Inflame: Energy Absorption and Inflame: Saving Throws
  • Magical Backlash has been moved to Tier 3!
  • Burden of Sin is gone.
  • Replaced with: Radiant Flourish (multiselect melee/ranged): +1/2/3[w] attack, adds 1d6/2d6/3d6 Light Damage that scales with 200% of (higher of Melee or Ranged Power). Small chance to blind non-Boss enemies with no save. 6 second cooldown.
• Tier 4:
  • Light Guard is gone.
  • Replaced with +3/6/10% Doublestrike or Doubleshot (Multiselector)
  • New: Silence the Wicked (multiselect melee/ranged):
  • +1/2/3[w], affected enemy can't cast spells for 4 seconds.
    • Melee: 14/12/10 second cooldown.
    • Ranged: 20/18/15 second cooldown.
• Tier 5:
  • Wrathful Weapons: Light damage is now 10d6 Light Damge that lasts for 12 seconds, and scales with the higher of Melee and Ranged power at 200%.
  • Divine Power is now a +6 Sacred Bonus to Strength (plus the Base Attack Bonus it already gives).

Cleric (Warpriest) Only:

• Cores:
  
  • Implacable Foe is now a Multiselector (all versions have the same effects):
    • +2 STR, +2 CON
    • +2 CON, +2 WIS
• Tier 2:
  
  • NEW: Action Boost: Melee & Ranged Power
• Tier 5:
  
  • NEW: While wearing Heavy armor, you gain +10 PRR, +10 MRR, +10 AC, and +50% to threat generation with melee and ranged attacks.
  • Divine Power is now 1AP.

Favored Soul (War Soul) Only:

• Cores:
  
  • Implacable Foe is now a Multiselector (all versions have the same effects):
    
    • +4 STR
    • +4 WIS
    • +4 CHA
• Tier 2:
  
  • NEW: Action Boost: Haste
• Tier 5:
  
  • NEW: Divine Champion: While wearing Medium armor, you gain +5% Doublestrike, +5% Doubleshot, +5 to confirm critical hits and critical hit damage (before weapon multipliers)
  • Divine Power remains at 2AP. It now also grants a +1 Competence bonus to Critical Multiplier with weapons.

[Greantun]

[*]Tier 2:

• Inflame is no longer an Action Boost. It no longer has charges, and now has a 90 second cooldown.
• Inflame: Saving Throws has been rolled into Greater Inflame (see below)

Is Greater Inflame actually Improved Inflame on the image?

[Mandelia]

Smite Foe is now a Multi selector with a Melee and Ranged version.

Does this mean divine presence and divine will have been changed to also effect ranged weapon damage?

[EllisDee37]

Favored Soul (War Soul) Only:
[*]Tier 5:

• NEW: Divine Champion: While wearing Medium armor, you gain +5% Doublestrike, +5% Doubleshot, +5 to confirm critical hits and critical hit damage (before weapon multipliers)

Warforged?

I like the look of that a lot, and currently have a warforged melee favored soul (greatswords!) who takes Harper Agent to tier 5 because War Soul is so poor. He of course has adamantine body, because mithril body is awful due to how its incredibly low MDB caps dodge. At least adamantine body offers some PRR.

If it requires medium armor, does that mean melee robot favored souls can't take a body feat? (Because, again, NOBODY should EVER take mithril body...)

In case this isn't obvious, I'm formally requesting you guys do a pass on body feats. Specifically, make both mithril (currenttly unusable) and adamantine (currently okay-ish) good, and add a third body feat for medium armor that's non-metallic so robot druids can wear it. Densewood, maybe?

[J-mann]

Goals:

• Add ranged support to these for Silver Flame builds
• Bring overall weapon DPS up between burst and +[w] attacks (additionally, giving Favored Soul access to weapon criticals)
• Give this tree interesting things to do (Its only attack skill right now is on a long cooldown)
• Fix/Remove a few of the abilities that are huge AP sinks for minor benefit
• Push Warpriest to have more defense than War Soul
• Push War Soul to have more offense than Warpriest

Both CLR and FvS versions:

• Cores:
  
  • Smite Foe is now a Multiselector with a Melee and Ranged version.
  • Smite Foe's cooldown has been reduced to 12 seconds
  • Implacable Foe's cooldown has been reduced to 3 minutes.
• Tier 2:
  
  • Inflame is no longer an Action Boost. It no longer has charges, and now has a 90 second cooldown.
  • Inflame: Saving Throws has been rolled into Greater Inflame (see below)
• Tier 3:
  
  • Inflame: Energy Absorption is now "Greater Inflame", has all the effects of Inflame: Energy Absorption and Inflame: Saving Throws
  • Magical Backlash has been moved to Tier 3!
  • Burden of Sin is gone.
  • Replaced with: Radiant Flourish (multiselect melee/ranged): +1/2/3[w] attack, adds 1d6/2d6/3d6 Light Damage that scales with 200% of (higher of Melee or Ranged Power). Small chance to blind non-Boss enemies with no save. 6 second cooldown.
• Tier 4:
  • Light Guard is gone.
  • Replaced with +3/6/10% Doublestrike or Doubleshot (Multiselector)
  • New: Silence the Wicked (multiselect melee/ranged):
  • +1/2/3[w], affected enemy can't cast spells for 4 seconds.
    • Melee: 14/12/10 second cooldown.
    • Ranged: 20/18/15 second cooldown.
• Tier 5:
  • Wrathful Weapons: Light damage is now 10d6 Light Damge that lasts for 12 seconds, and scales with the higher of Melee and Ranged power at 200%.
  • Divine Power is now a +6 Sacred Bonus to Strength (plus the Base Attack Bonus it already gives).

Cleric (Warpriest) Only:

• Cores:
  
  • Implacable Foe is now a Multiselector (all versions have the same effects):
    • +2 STR, +2 CON
    • +2 CON, +2 WIS
• Tier 2:
  
  • NEW: Action Boost: Melee & Ranged Power
• Tier 5:
  
  • NEW: While wearing Heavy armor, you gain +10 PRR, +10 MRR, +10 AC, and +50% to threat generation with melee and ranged attacks.
  • Divine Power is now 1AP.

Favored Soul (War Soul) Only:

• Cores:
  
  • Implacable Foe is now a Multiselector (all versions have the same effects):
    
    • +4 STR
    • +4 WIS
    • +4 CHA
• Tier 2:
  
  • NEW: Action Boost: Haste
• Tier 5:
  
  • NEW: Divine Champion: While wearing Medium armor, you gain +5% Doublestrike, +5% Doubleshot, +5 to confirm critical hits and critical hit damage (before weapon multipliers)
  • Divine Power remains at 2AP. It now also grants a +1 Competence bonus to Critical Multiplier with weapons.

Unless you are going to get us some more dieties or open up the FR dieties to non-iconics, I am not seeing this tree being used much still, maybe as a secondary at best. Face it, outside of iconics the favored weapon choices just are not that good, and even those that might be ok have better trees to choose from. Going line by line my issues with the tree:

Cores: Actually are fairly decent. My only complaint is the fire and light spell power instead of something useful like positive spell power or heal amp. If you are building a melee, you do NOT have the itemization available to also do spell casting in this game. Im not sure why the devs seem so fixated on, oh but you can cast offensive spells, when really they cannot due to how itemization works, especially as a melee who has the highest itemization requirements in the game. My only other complaint would be that the capstone looks pretty nice, but in practice with that cooldown will not be very effective or useful imo as it wont get used for trash and is really short in duration for a boss fight. Haste is kinda meh too would like it a lot better if it granted perma haste to you as well like the blur core (which is a tad weak in today's game too....)

First tier: Not a bad teir as all things go, but the hp enhancements are a little dated. 5 hp isnt really worth an ap in todays game.

My big complaint is rightous weapons, the vast majority of favored weapons are total garbage for this tree. Either open FR dieties up so we have access to decent ones or add more. Otherwise this entire line will not be taken very often, and the only non-iconic that I can think of that might want this tree/line is an elf aa.

Second tier: not a bad tier. My only comment is that inflame is way too weak for a 90 second cd imo. The 60 seconds it was is plenty, even then it is very weak for 6 ap. See previous comment about righteous weapons, it is way too weak for a 2 ap charge with the weak favored weapon choices we are locked into.

Third tier: Other than the t5 it is the second weakest tier in relative terms. Magic backlash is ok I guess, never was a fan of abilities that need you to get hit to trigger, much less a chance on being hit. Was fun when it worked with monk curse though . See previous comments for righteous weapons.... we need better weapon choices (not locked behind iconics) or this tree falls apart. Also see previous comments on inflame. It is a really weak ability for 6 ap with only a 1/3 uptime. Radiant flourish is the only ability that is really worth much in this tier imo.

Fourth tier: Pretty decent tier outside of righteous weapons see previous complaints.

Fifth teir: whoa boy. You have a decent T5 in the making but it isnt their just yet for several reasons. Divine power is now a great enhancement, simple change good job. Now do the same for all buff spells and we will be really happy campers. Divine intervention: ok I guess, can it be cast on self? Even so its kind of.... meh. Im not a fan of abilities where things need to be going horribly wrong for them to come into play, and cannot see how much use I would actually get out of the ability. The new abilities are decent, not big on the armor requirements though, especially the Harmor requirement when the class doesnt get a lot of prr as it is. Maybe though.

Now for the big things holding back the T5: diety weapon choices are just bad. Wrathful weapons would be a good ability if you could actually pair it with decent weapons. Even the weapons that you might want to pair it with have better options without even a mc build, a bow should go elf/helf and get aa t5s, and dagger should get vistani t5. The only choice I could see for this enhancement is an iconic maul build.

Divine vessel just needs a complete rework. Being unable to control when the ability triggers is really a non-starter imo. Especially with the ridiculously stringent requirements to build up the ability, even with the capstone. Change it to a clicky once every 25/20 seconds and it would be an acceptable ability.

Really the biggest thing holding the tree back imo is the cruddy selection of favored weapons in the game. Give us more/better favored weapons or heck just open the FR deities to non-iconics and we would be much better off.

[EllisDee37]

Favored Souls get a deity feat at level 20 that provides DR. You forgot to include those for the new deities. Since you're revamping War Soul, this might be a logical time to add them in.

[edrein]

First and foremost, I'm liking a lot of the changes.

That out of the way; I'm going straight for my number one priority as previously expressed during my tenure on the PC. Does Ameliorating Strike finally work with undead player characters?

Additionally; can we please get Ameliorating Strike updated to normal restoration rather than lesser restoration. This is to help when facing level draining opponents, or fast stat damaging opponents, as well as being useful for if/when a player moves on to Reaper where that lesser resto won't manage to actually heal any stat damage.

I'd also love to see Smite Weakness and Ameliorating Swap places. From both a perspective of multiclass builds and overall usefulness while leveling/playing. Vulnerability isn't a big boon until later heroics, whereas the 1d2HP heal and restoration is immediately useful from level 1 onwards.

I also wouldn't mind seeing Radiant Flourish dropped to T2 as well. Again, more multiclass options and overall greater appeal. As you've now got two 'attacks' to use earlier on than level 3. That might not be a big deal to some, but I know I'd personally like it earlier than later when it's not a big endgame attack. If I had to choose between moving Radiant Flourish or Ameliorating Strike to T2, I'd definitely vote Ameliorating Strike though.

I do have a question about the Divine Power change; with it being sacred how will this interact with Strength Domain? Will this stack or not, given it's typed as sacred I doubt it which would be a slight bummer.

Like other people I'm not keen on Divine Vessel. I'd love to see it get swapped out with an ability similar to Celestial Bombardment or even a minor form of the Angelic Transformation as a form toggle. (Bonus Points if deity and/or Aasimar Heritage could change the appearance of this.)

[Gratch]

Favored Souls get a deity feat at level 20 that provides DR. You forgot to include those for the new deities. Since you're revamping War Soul, this might be a logical time to add them in.

And swap them all to be additive PRR or %AC boost given DR is not a part of L20 DDO in any meaningful way.
(Though I wouldn't complain if you kept the DR/ that they have just for flavor).

[J-mann]

And swap them all to be additive PRR or %AC boost given DR is not a part of L20 DDO in any meaningful way.
(Though I wouldn't complain if you kept the DR/ that they have just for flavor).

If were doing that can we get some prr on the dr core for warpriest? That would be nice as well as 5dr is not worth much past level 7 or so in reaper.

[Jetrule]

Decent stuff. It wont compete with other classes's trees for damage or tankiness but it brings alot of interesting multi class options to the table. Combined with previous fvs and cleric changes it will allow for players to be a warpriest or soul far more effectively than currently. I would suggest throwing a bone to the pure and nearly pure by adding some melee power to the last two cores.

[edrein]

And swap them all to be additive PRR or %AC boost given DR is not a part of L20 DDO in any meaningful way.
(Though I wouldn't complain if you kept the DR/ that they have just for flavor).

If the DR was bumped to 1 per FVS level and 2 per epic level, then it'd be both thematic and useful at both 20 and at cap.

[Silverleafeon]

Question:

Divine Power is now a +6 Sacred Bonus to Strength (plus the Base Attack Bonus it already gives).

Will this be applied to the tree ability and the Favored Soul spell Divine Power?

Or is this a Tree only feature?

[Wh070aa]

Nice. Now if only you fixed the silver flame feats, I could finally make a silver flame FvS.

[chrysahor]

Question:

Divine Power is now a +6 Sacred Bonus to Strength (plus the Base Attack Bonus it already gives).

Will this be applied to the tree ability and the Favored Soul spell Divine Power?

Or is this a Tree only feature?

I would rather leave the spell untouched, but the tree version be a multi selector to reflect that FvS uses wisdom&charisma to hit/damages. The way divine might got presence and will at T1

[Kza]

[*][*]NEW: Divine Champion: While wearing Medium armor, you gain +5% Doublestrike, +5% Doubleshot, +5 to confirm critical hits and critical hit damage (before weapon multipliers)[*][*]Divine Power remains at 2AP. It now also grants a +1 Competence bonus to Critical Multiplier with weapons.


If i do a favored soul lord of blades…

Can i get adamantine body and have the benefits of divine champion?

Any with lamania clients have tested?

[Ausdoerrt]

Love where this is going. Good potential for fvs / aa multi.

[tqniner]

If you wanted to throw ranged souls a bone have divine will and divine presence work with bows, it's strange that one of the most powerful ability in this tree can't be used with a favored weapon.

Also, does divine power for the clerics not grant a bonus to critical multiplier?

[janave]

Love where this is going. Good potential for fvs / aa multi.

I had that idea scrapped several times, maybe the next one will be realized

[ThomasHunter]

I have long liked this tree and used it on my main toon. When the dagger tree came out I ended up switching to that tree primarily. I've been curious to see what you have planned here for sure. While it's difficult for me to read the change and try to imagine how it works without actually playing, I do have one item that I was really hoping would see the light of day!

Essential I was thinking that replacing the Haste spell with Displacement would be much better and more handy. I just never really use haste at cap these days.

Thanks for listening and I look forward to taking these changes out for a spin!

[Steelstar]

Is Greater Inflame actually Improved Inflame on the image?

Yes.

Smite Foe is now a Multi selector with a Melee and Ranged version.

Does this mean divine presence and divine will have been changed to also effect ranged weapon damage?

Not yet? We're talking over the balance implications. It might involve moving Divine Might/Presence/Will to Tier 2. (As we've said before: It's too OP for Tier 1 in its current form).

Warforged?

I like the look of that a lot, and currently have a warforged melee favored soul (greatswords!) who takes Harper Agent to tier 5 because War Soul is so poor. He of course has adamantine body, because mithril body is awful due to how its incredibly low MDB caps dodge. At least adamantine body offers some PRR.

If it requires medium armor, does that mean melee robot favored souls can't take a body feat? (Because, again, NOBODY should EVER take mithril body...)

In case this isn't obvious, I'm formally requesting you guys do a pass on body feats. Specifically, make both mithril (currenttly unusable) and adamantine (currently okay-ish) good, and add a third body feat for medium armor that's non-metallic so robot druids can wear it. Densewood, maybe?

Warforged details made the Lamannia build but apparently not the notes. (That one's on me, sorry).

• Divine Bastion (CLR Warpriest) requires Adamantine Body.
• Divine Champion (FvS War Soul) requires Mithral Body.
  
  • Yeah, Mithral body isn't exactly equivalent
  • We don't have immediate plans for Warforged Body Feat changes at this time, but if we ever do this (like many, many things) would be up for change.

Favored Souls get a deity feat at level 20 that provides DR. You forgot to include those for the new deities. Since you're revamping War Soul, this might be a logical time to add them in.

It's in the pipeline.

Question:

Divine Power is now a +6 Sacred Bonus to Strength (plus the Base Attack Bonus it already gives).

Will this be applied to the tree ability and the Favored Soul spell Divine Power?

Or is this a Tree only feature?

Tree only. We might change the name of the enhancement to reflect the new difference.

Also, does divine power for the clerics not grant a bonus to critical multiplier?

No, they get their weapon criticals out of War Domain.