Update 39 Preview 2: Favored Soul + War Priest Revamp

[edrein]

Surprise surprise; The Blood is the Life and Ameliorating Strike still don't work while undead.

Are either of these actually going to get changed or should I give up? I'd rather an official no so I can stop reporting this at every turn.

[Morroiel]

Goals[*]NEW: Cometfall SLA (20/15/12 second cooldown,35/30/25 SP)

The cooldown on this is too long. Let me explain, outside of heroics the primary use of this spell is for CC.

Base Spell: 35 SP base cost + 15 sp heighten + 10 sp quicken = 60 SP per cast before magical efficiency (epics) and metamagic efficiency -> 50 sp realistic cost at cap, with a cooldown of 5 seconds or 4.5 seconds with arcane alacrity epls

SLA: 25 SP cost at cap with a cooldown of 12 seconds

The sla has 2.7X the cooldown and half the cost. The base spell is unquestionably better to have at cap if you have to pick between the two.

There are use cases for having two cometfalls in certain fights/quests but the vast majority of endgame content having the base spell is enough.

Compare to Heal SLA in beacon of hope: where the SLA is better than the actual spell.

On my FvS caster, I'll be running in BoH as it stands both because I like the buffing style but also because its optimal. You end up being down 2 universal DC (if this gets put in core 6 like mentioned) and 1 evocation DC, but have access to Heal, Harm, Cometfall, and undeath to death.

Proposal: Change the cooldown of cometfall to be 6 seconds at max rank to be inline with the utility that heal brings in with BoH tree. It is especially important for the cooldown to be as close to or under 6 as possible, as reaper reduces its duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds - anything longer than 6 seconds leaves openings for the mob to break free that DO NOT exist under the actual spell.

[Corzak]

I've noticed after some testing that the healing effect from Ameliorating Strike no longer applies on offhand or doublestrike hits. I like the shorter cooldown, but losing the extra heals/lesser restoration tics hurts.

[SpardaX]

[*]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.

Testing it in game now, and the in game description of the ability lists: Cost: 30 spell points, Creates a wall that lasts for 30 seconds, with a 60 second cooldown.

Well it seems to have the worst of both worlds. It has the 15 second duration listed here (In forum), and also the 60 second cooldown and 30 spell point cost listed in the ability.

Also

Both Beacon abilities list 2 different spell point costs, and both take the higher cost.
Beacon of Grace says: Activation Cost 6 sp (and costs 6 sp) but in the description says it only costs 2 sp, and
Beacon of Hope says: Activation Cost 30 sp (and costs 30 sp) but in the description says it only costs 15 sp.

Also also because I dont want to have a purely negative post.

Falconer tree, It's excellent I love it.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

I've noticed after some testing that the healing effect from Ameliorating Strike no longer applies on offhand or doublestrike hits. I like the shorter cooldown, but losing the extra heals/lesser restoration tics hurts.

Oof, this is rough if true and not just bad luck hitting with both weapons. I think I'd rather have it stay the current length of time if it meant I had the chance for double-healing.

The wording of Righteous Weapons has me slightly concerned. Does the offhand weapon get the extra to-hit/damage? Does the offhand weapon need to be favored to get the extra to-hit/damage? Why limit it to "when favored weapon is in the off-hand" so I lose that spellpower when I grab a scroll with a favored weapon in in the offhand, or I'm fighting with a, say, sentient Sunsword in the mainhand and a morninglord favored weapon in the offhand? Seems to me like you're basically just replicating the current +1 enhancement bonus without the need for Articles of Faith/spellpower aug. Why not just keep it as-is (with the enhancement bonus) so that if for whatever reason I'm holding something else in the main hand I'm still getting the bonus in the offhand favored weapon? Why not make it "when wielding a favored weapon in either hand" you get the bonus? I mean, the extra points in Wrathful Weapon is nice, but why effectively replicate the already-existing enhancement bonus? All this does is 1) limit you to having a favored weapon in the main hand; 2) presumably give you the bonus with non-favored weapons in the offhand; and 3) give you the spellpower irrespective of whether or not you took Articles of Faith. Just... seems like a lot of work to limit you in some respects and free you in others.

And seriously, removing the offhand proc from Ameliorating Strike is a serious nerf, oof.

[edrein]

Oof, this is rough if true and not just bad luck hitting with both weapons. I think I'd rather have it stay the current length of time if it meant I had the chance for double-healing.

And seriously, removing the offhand proc from Ameliorating Strike is a serious nerf, oof.

When I was still on the PC and Steelstar originally proposed changing War Priest; this was part of Steel's original design as a trade off for the lessened cooldown. Not sure if this was an accidental upload of an older bit of code or what. But most of us on the PC fought tooth and nail against removing the ability for offhand and doublestrike to proc on this.

Really hoping this isn't an intentional ninja nerf.

[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
  
  • Core 1: Smite Foe is now a Multiselector with a Melee and Ranged version.
  • Core 1: Smite Foe's cooldown has been reduced to 12 seconds
  • Core 5: War Caster: Haste now grants +1 Competence Bonus to Critical Threat Range with your Favored Weapon in addition to its other benefits.
  • Core 6: 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)
  • Righteous/Wrathful Weapons: No longer gives out +1 Enhancement Bonus at each tier; instead, when wielding your Favored Weapon in your main hand, you gain +1 to hit and damage and +3 Universal Spell Power.
• Tier 3
  
  • Inflame: Energy Absorption is now "Greater Inflame", has all the effects of Inflame: Energy Absorption and Inflame: Saving Throws
  • Righteous/Wrathful Weapons: No longer gives out +1 Enhancement Bonus at each tier; instead, when wielding your Favored Weapon in your main hand, you gain +1 to hit and damage and +3 Universal Spell Power.
  • 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)
  • Righteous/Wrathful Weapons: No longer gives out +1 Enhancement Bonus at each tier; instead, when wielding your Favored Weapon in your main hand, you gain +1 to hit and damage and +3 Universal Spell Power.
  • 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
  • Righteous/Wrathful Weapons: No longer gives out +1 Enhancement Bonus at each tier; instead, when wielding your Favored Weapon in your main hand, you gain +3 to hit and damage and +9 Universal Spell Power. 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 Vessel functionality has been altered in many ways and is now: "Passive: Your attacks generate a stack of Diving Conduit. When Divine Conduit reaches 25, all stacks are cleared and you gain one charge of this attack. (Max uses: 1/ You may continue to gain stacks of Divine Conduit, but will not gain another charge until you expend your existing one.) Active: (Melee or Ranged Multiselector) Favored Weapon Attack: Expend 1 Charge. Make a sweeping weapon attack against all nearby enemies for +5(W) damage. Affected enemies are hit by a meteor, taking 1 to 4 Fire and 1 to 4 Light damage per character level. (Damage from the meteor is affected by Fire and Light Spell Power). Shares its cooldown with the Great Cleave feat. You may only gain a stack of Divine Conduit once every second. If you have Implacable Foe, Divine Vessel will gain a charge upon reaching 20 stacks of Divine Conduit, instead of 25.
  • Divine Vessel visual has been completely remade.
  • 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.

This tree is still incredibly weak. Once again, compare what you have in here to splashing 6 levels of fighter/ranger and its a no brainer what to use. Going through the tree to point all the issues it has out:

Cores:

Core 1- decent core. The only problem is the same with all the cores, the passive sucks. 2 AC? a pure cleric is never going to get its ac high enough to matter in epics. At least its slightly appropriate I guess? 5 light and fire spell power. Completely useless outside of the t5. What are you going to do with fire and light spell power on a MELEE build. Once again, hybrid dps casters and melee DO NOT WORK, as it would be far, far, far better to specialize in one or the other to max your damage completely. I suggest either positive spell power or heal amp, things useful to a battle cleric.

Core 2- 5 dr. You are changing barbs in the same patch because dr is worthless in epics. Change this to be like the barbs a straight 5% damage reduction. passives already mentioned, they are **** for what a warpriest does except for the t5.

Core 3- ok, an ocrap button. Its pretty weak for its uptime and takes too long to activate really.

Core 4- blur was great in 2012, but in todays game everyone either has it slotted or can scroll it. Change to displacement or something else useful.

Core 5- Haste has the same issue as blur, replace with something else. at least you added a +1 treat range for those that dont want to take war domain and for fvs.

Core 6- cool idea, terrible in practice. There is no reason to t5 this tree as it stands much less capstone. I guess maybe a cleric healer in a raid might capstone warpriest to drop this buff once every three minutes, but for general play purposes, as a melee tree, there is no reason to go past 14 cleric, there are no level 6,7,8, 9 spells worth slotting as a melee build. This is the largest crux of the issue and why druid pass worked much better and is far superior to your current pass. Druids have spells that make being a pure/18 druid worth it. So either the capstone needs to be really, really, really wow worthy or whats the point?

Tier 1
divine might- clerics should have the same multiselector as fvs imo. Then again, with the new bird tree, you are likely going to want to take wis to hit and damage so a hybrid melee/dc might be possible.

toughness- 5 hp for an ap is weak in todays game.

righteous weapons- diety weapon choices are just plain bad in this game. The only decent ones are not going to use this tree anyways (in fact I cannot see ANYONE using the tree as is. Therein lies the issue). Once again, do something with the level 6 diety feats to balance things out if you want this tree to have any chance (and it still has little chance for twf as long as tempest sits there looming over it. The tree needs things to set it apart from other dps trees. Currently it has nothing). Further the line is much weaker than equivalant lines in other trees when it should be better if its more restricted (favored weapons again.....)

sacred touch- weak filller ability but w/e.

Tier 2

Smite weakness- decent especially with the reduced cd. Well unless you took away double procs like you did for ameliorating strikes. Then still decent but..... why needlessly nerf it?

Wall of steel- decent tier 2

Inflame- 6 aps for a 33% uptime is a rip off. make it at least action boost level of uptime (2/3) but it really should be 100% for what it does for 6 aps.

tier 3

Magical backlash- meh never been a fan of gaurd abilities. Its ok I guess.

radient flourish- single target attack with marginal extra damage with a chance to blind 1 enemy. Either make it a full on blind, or make the chance to blind an aoe effect. Its a soft cc and the effect is rather weak.

tier 4

ameliorating strike- a dont take away double procs. b. this ability is what might, possibly, maybe justify going past 10 points in the tree. adding the double strike helps too.

double strike- ok sounds good

Silence the wicked. 4 second silence with a minor damage boost. Meh, its ok but id much rather have opportunity attack in kensai or growing storm from tempest or even merciful strike in dws..... See the issues this tree faces?

tier 5

divine power- not bad, glad the str bonus got retyped, though with the new bird tree it has kinda gone out of style. At least it provides full bab.

divine vessel- sounds like a fun ability, is not great in practice. 1. it needs fire and light spell power, what else, at all, does a warpriest need these for? Answer nothing. So I would need to slot more gear, on a melee build which is already, by far, the most gear intensive in the game, for this one ability. Seems like a really bad idea to me. The building mechanic is clunky and severally limits the ability making its effective cd far longer than 25/20 seconds, the only nice thing is the ability to save up to spam it back to back. I suggest giving the ability a knock down effect to make it worth more than just dps.

wrathful weapons, decent glad it was updated to reflect other t5 damage abilites, except again favored weapons............. and the fact that I cannot seem to roll vorpals to save my life. Scales with melee power.... in a tree with no melee power lol.

the new t5s- do not limit them to armor choice in a tree already far to constrained as it is.

Divine intervention- needs replaced. 1. the heal in reaper might not be enough to even get you back up. 2. even if it does the odds are pretty good you will get hit and die as soon as you do. 3. an ability that needs you to be doing poorly to work... is not a good ability. 4. How often would it even be used even if it worked better? I die very rarely its not worth a t5 for.

All in all the tree just has no place in the current game. Again, there are no spells past 14 a melee cleric will want, further, they likely wouldnt have the dcs to make it work anyways. Thats why druid was so successful, there were useful spells at higher levels that they want that WORKED with melee stats. With no 7,8,9 spells worth taking, the tree needs to be able to compete in some way with a 6 splash of fighter or ranger. Currently it offers nothing that the 6 splash doesnt offer better of, and it does nothing special that the 6 splash cannot do. To further compound the issue, the class does not have a decent tree to pair with it due to RS being rather lackluster for a melee, where as the splash can pair either stalwart or dws with their main trees and be far superior for it. To even further compound the issue is that you sev, seem to insist on hobbling the tree with favored weapons, yet seem to be unwilling to do something to make using favored weapons selection better and worth using (hint, place it in the level 6 feat or in warpriest somewhere). I gaurentee you any 1her build will be far better off using a different tree and 2wfers are far, far, far, far better off taking tempest. My only suggestion would be to add some way to use melee stats for certain dc castings (cc only leave iks for the true dc casters) to bring something different to the table, then being less dps is ok as you have something else worth having. Additionally adding some 7,8,9 spells that are useful to a melee would help matters, but I know that adding spells is hard so I wont hold my breath. Also, the tree has 0 melee power.... in a melee tree... with abilities affected by melee power....

TL;DR: Warpriest is rarer than an undead unicorn in ddo, and the devs seem to want to keep it that way because the tree cannot compete with any other melee trees that are easily splashed in and brings nothing interesting to the table that other melee trees do not. Oh and favored weapons are still far too limited and suck far too much.

[TMTrainer]

So. Seeing how War Priest/Soul is clearly intended to be a hybrid tree:

1. I don't see a reason why it doesn't have an "Articles of Faith"-esque ability somewhere as a T2 enhancement for Clerics (or FvS) to benefit from.
2. I don't see why it's "attacks" (Radiant Flourish and Silence the Wicked) scale with melee power and ranged power in a class that doesn't provide melee power or ranged power (it should scale with spell power like Divine Vessel).

Also, Cleric/FvS is still an extremely feat starved class (a ranged Cleric needs Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, IPS, Manyshot, and Improved Critical: Ranged; which is 6 out of 7 heroic feats eaten up to make this work. This is a huge investment to barely get this build kinda working.), it's deity options are still bad beyond Sylvanus (Sylvanus is the only deity weapon that actually gets a significant and tangible bonus when you choose it. Basically, if you don't choose Sylvanus, you are actively choosing to make your melee cleric worse because of how powerful Sylvanus is) and are mildly MAD; probably not first life friendly requiring high STR/DEX, CON and WIS to work (this last point is pretty important honestly, I would not recommend making a first life melee/ranged cleric to a new player, as it is currently, for the same reason why I wouldn't suggest a monk or paladin... you'll probably feel weak and be stretched really thin until far later).

On the Sylvanus note, the two other deities that actually support melee combat in some significant way is the Lord of Blades (Most notably, +4 Strength and +4 damage and BAB equal to your level, which is an effective (+6) + (15/15/10/5) damage at level 30... which is great! Except you lose the ability to cast spells or be healed for 144 seconds at level 30! Woohoo!) and Onatar (+3 to tactical feat DCs, +10 Melee Power, +10 Repair Spell Power, +10 Rust Spell Power, and +10 Fire Spell Power). Lord of Blades is the only one that comes close, but the downside and downtime makes it straight up bad (10 minute cooldown and immunity to healing spells for longer than 2 minutes..? And the cherry on top? You have to be a Warforged, one of the worst races for both Clerics AND FvS! -2 WIS and CHA with a penalty to positive healing!).

[edrein]

Alright, let's list the problems including the ones already mentioned by other people and possible solutions.

• DPS: Let's just be honest here. The DPS in War Priest/Soul is awful. It's been that way before this pass and it's going to remain that way after. Yes, there are minor improvements to this but not any worth note to the likes that will prevent splashes as previously pointed out in the thread. The solution to this? Turn Righteous Weapons into an AA style toggle. In fact ensure it is an AA style toggle for the purpose of preventing elf/half elf AA-War Priest/Souls running around with Paralyzing Arrows and DPS arrows. To reuse my previous condensing of this suggestion I'll quote myself:

  Righteous Weapons: Select one of two options, options are based on deity, Light damage is available to everyone. Passive: +1 enchantment bonus to favored weapons.

  • Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 1d8 light damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: None
  • Vol Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 1d4 light damage on hit and 1d4 negative energy damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Follower of Blood of Vol
  • Vulkoor Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 1d4 light damage on hit and 1d4 poison damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Follower of Vulkoor
  • Silver Flame Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 1d4 light damage on hit and 1d4 holy damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Follower of Silver Flame
  • Onatar Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 1d4 light damage on hit and 1d4 fire damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Follower of Onatar
  • Silvanus Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 1d4 light damage on hit and 1d4 lightning damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Follower of Silvanus
  • Lord of Blades Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 1d4 light damage on hit and 1d4 slashing damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Follower of Lord of Blades
  • Aureon Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 1d4 light damage on hit and 1d4 force damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Follower of Aureon

  
  
  Righteous Weapons: Increase the damage die of your weapon imbue by +1. Passive: +1 enchantment bonus to favored weapons.

  • Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 2d8 light damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Righteous Weapons rank 1
  • Vol Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 2d4 light damage on hit and 2d4 negative energy damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Vol Righteous Weapons rank 1
  • Vulkoor Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 2d4 light damage on hit and 2d4 poison damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Vulkoor Righteous Weapons rank 1
  • Silver Flame Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 2d4 light damage on hit and 2d4 holy damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Silver Flame Righteous Weapons rank 1
  • Onatar Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 2d4 light damage on hit and 2d4 fire damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Onatar Righteous Weapons rank 1
  • Silvanus Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 2d4 light damage on hit and 2d4 lightning damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Silvanus Righteous Weapons rank 1
  • Lord of Blades Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 2d4 light damage on hit and 2d4 slashing damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Lord of Blades Righteous Weapons rank 1
  • Aureon Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: While wielding your deity's favored weapon you deal 2d4 light damage on hit and 2d4 force damage on hit, scales with spellpower. Requires: Aureon Righteous Weapons rank 1

  
  
  -Insert Rank 3 and 4, scaling by +1 die each time similar to AA.-
  
  Wrathful Weapons: When you score a Vorpal with your Deity's weapon you deal a burst of 10d6 light damage, gain a bonus 1d8 light damage on hit buff for 10 seconds, and apply an additional buff or debuff based on your deity. This effect scales with spellpower. Passive: +1 enchantment bonus to favored weapons.

  • Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: You have a chance to blind the enemy with no save on criticals. Passive: You gain ghost touch. Requires: Righteous Weapons rank 4
  • Vol Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: You deliver 1 negative level to the enemy on criticals. Passive: You gain Vampirism (This also applies to undead.) Requires: Vol Righteous Weapons rank 4
  • Vulkoor Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: You deal 1d10 random ability damage to the enemy, as well as having a chance to paralyze the enemy on criticals. -Insert scaling or high DC- Requires: Vulkoor Righteous Weapons rank 4
  • Silver Flame Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: You deal an additional burst of 10d6 Holy Damage on vorpals. Requires: Silver Flame Righteous Weapons rank 4
  • Onatar Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: You apply a stack of Vulnerability on critical hits. Passive: Weapon attacks gain Destruction. Requires: Onatar Righteous Weapons rank 4
  • Silvanus Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: On Vorpals you apply Cloudburst and apply Peals of Thunder for the next 10 seconds. Requires: Silvanus Righteous Weapons rank 4
  • Lord of Blades Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: You summon an allied Whirling Blade for 10 seconds on a vorpal. Requires: Lord of Blades Righteous Weapons rank 4
  • Aureon Favored Weapon Imbue Toggle: On critical hits you produce an Arcane Blast centered on your target with a chance to knockdown enemies hit. Requires: Aureon Righteous Weapons rank 4

  Despite my previous idea on Wrathful weapons; I'd retract it to work similar to the T5 AA imbues. Give unique on hit/crit effects and strip away the light damage buff. Even if the deity options are too much work, the basic light damage imbue would be more than enough to bring the tree's DPS more in line with the Nature's lines from druid.
  
  
• Cores: The cores improved a bit. But not in the way feedback was targeted and explained. The cores are outdated and aren't really getting a facelift. Give each core +2 melee power if you're intent on adding melee power scaling abilities to this tree as there's current no melee power gain in the tree, but you're giving them melee power scaling abilities. It's an oddity to say the least.
  
  Like other people brought up: The 5/- DR from the level 3 core should be turned into the 5% reduction similar to barbarians. And in the case of Favored Souls I'd also suggest if possible to turn their DR at cap into similar reduction or significantly increase their DR to about 40-60. Sanctuary is meh; it's a panic clicky that almost never gets use on a hotbar or even slotted on a hotbar to my knowledge. Your data may say otherwise and I'll accept that.
  
  The level 12 core is fine; that being said please do the right thing and move the Critical Threat range from level 18 to level 12. Due to the way you designed the domains (and limited us to only one) there's no reason to go to level 18 as a cleric. And as a FVS that's a stretch, but more likely given the free extra HP they get from it. That being said; giving threat range at 12 reinforces the fact that war soul is supposed to be offensive and gets their entire crit suite two levels before War Domain. In the mean time non-war domain clerics don't suffer fatigue/require splashing as much unless they really want a multiplier boost down the line. And War Domain doesn't lose anything, they gain threat 2 levels before they pick up holy sword. It's a win win.
  
  Haste at 18 is a hot mess, it's useless. Haste isn't what it used to be due to gear, the epic haste feat, etc. Please remove haste and give us something a bit more substantial such as Displacement, bonus points if we can cast this displacement on allies given War Priest/Soul a good use in a party.
  
  Capstone. Oh boy; here we go. Implacable Foe; the actual worst capstone in the game, including non-updated ones such as Wiz and Sorc. This is like the poor man's hybrid of warchanter and enlightened spirit's love child, except it doesn't get the benefits of either parent. For 18 seconds you get to have a less powerful version of Brilliance (without the epic adjustment) and slightly better melee damage output than the permanent Chant of Power. With a now 3 minute cooldown. Look for a level 20 capstone ability this is an absolute joke. Make Implacble Foe a toggle effect. It should be permanent just like the two abilities that are passives acquired long before level 20 and overall scale and help the party better. If you don't want to make it a toggle, drop the cooldown to 1 minute and make the duration 30 seconds, also add scaling to the temp HP. Similar to druids getting Winter's Heart and Jaw's of Ice.
  
  
• Inflame: Other than living up to it's name currently, this is a bit of a mess. For 6AP you should just turn this version of Inflame into a permanent aura, reduce the absorption values to accommodate this and call it a day. As previously stated on Implacable Foe and Displacement; give us group buffs that are meaningful and unique. Warchanter gives resists, Enlightened Spirit gives PRR/MRR, let Warpriest/Soul give absorption.
  
  
• Tree Differences: Even with your proposed changes there's nothing actually reinforcing the War Priest and War Soul split. The offense vs defense argument is weak. Give the Core 3's additional uses. War Priest's core 3 should give them a small 10-15% competence HP boost. Where as War Soul's should give +1W to their deity's favored weapon. You now have a distinction in who is offensive and who is defensive; is it respectively as good as Defender Stance and Kensai? No, but it helps. Personally, I also don't like tying them down to armor types. Both should be able to chose all three to benefit from if they have access since FVS don't innately have access to heavy armor.
  
  
• Active Abilities: Please; make these scale with spellpower like normal. Or rather I should say; Radiant Flourish should scale with spell power. Additionally; Radiant Flourish's blind effect shouldn't be a chance. Instead it should be a DC attack. Best of Wisdom, Strength, or Charisma + Tactics/Evocation + Character Level. This means we have a light CC that we can rely on if we build for it. I'd love if the blind effect was a small AOE; or if the attack was a sort of conal strike.
  
  For Silence the Wicked, please add a small spell power debuff for bosses.
  
  Divine Vessel is great. I love the new direction; I'd like to be able to hold two charges at once however. And again add us some CC to the ability. Make the meteors have a knockdown component since this reuses Celestial Bombardment. Best of Wisdom, Strength, or Charisma + Tactics/Evocation + Character Level. Give us a little druid style love.
  
  
• Ameliorating Strike: Come on now, you knew from the moment you originally proposed changing how this worked back on the Players Council a year ago that this was a bad idea based on feedback. The sudden ninja-nerf change on this preview of Lamannia speaks volumes. Revert this change as it's one of the key features that actually makes people consider War Priest/Soul as an enhancement tree. Additionally bump the restoration to a normal restoration either as a T5 or a core ability. It hurts to use this in Reaper when it heals 0 stat damage. (Also it should heal racially, Lord of Blades and Vol are both deities. Repair and Negative healing should be options from this.)
  
  
• Deities: I feel like this goes without saying as you've expressed dissatisfaction, we've expressed dissatisfaction. But as it's been brought up in this thread no deity competes with Silvanus currently. Normally I'd say that's alright, the other deities provide utility. However... The other deities suffer from the 2 minute use with 10 minute cooldowns. The Blood is the Life for instance is neat in concept; you practically turn into a pseudo-undead gain fort and defensive boosts while gaining vampirism on daggers. It's great on paper, but is absolutely awful in use due to the duration and cooldown. It should be a passive the same as Silvanus' threat range, even if it means the +4 con and half the PRR/MRR boosts have to be dropped. The same could be said of Bladesworn Transformation (which arguably has more penalties than benefits at this stage) and Onatar's Forge. All three of these should be toggles, as should Helm's if you remove the +4 wisdom and halve the PRR again. While it sucks that the other weapons don't compete with Mauls, it's even worse that their deity feats aren't toggle passives that give unique trade offs compared to the raw damage of a maul. Or perhaps it's time to bite the bullet and just plain nerf Silvanus eh?
  
  
• Racial Healing: Again pointing back towards Ameliorating Strike, racial healing should be a thing in this tree. Perhaps some Amp in one of the cores as a multiselector for Healing, Repair, or Negative amp. Ameliorating Strike should be racial based not strictly positive energy based. And Vol's The Blood is the Life vampirism effect should reuse the Scion of Shadowfell coding. As it doesn't work with undead as well.

[Vish]

Ok, I have looked this over again...

And I see no reason to play a 20 warpriest
Even with wis to hit damage figured in
I mean you have to go war domain to get the crit increase
And you should go favored weapon to get the weapon increase
But favored weapon is to restricted to poor choice
Like ppl say, silvan us only good option
I mean, I appreciate that you've given clerics diversity,
But the result is that nothing stands out
I mean, 20 cleric warpriest, with wis conversion, and you can cast implosion
So it's a casting cleric with weak melee
And it's a weak caster since your gonna hafta gear melee
And you're gonna hafta feat melee
And if you go tier5 warpriest, you're not radiant
So you're gonna hafta self heal just to stay alive

Steel,
I can't figure anything warpriest that will be any good
There is too much choice, poor restriction, and the 18 and 20 core don't measure up
The only way I'd play warpriest,
If you were to give fav weapon some melee power,
And change 18 core to displacement
Otherwise, 14 cleric is all you need
You be a poor fighter with a heal
And youd prob dump stat wisdom and have a poor sp pool
I mean it's just too spread out
You cant hybrid cleric, it just is mediocre

At any rate, I would not play one
You'd be better off splashing
And that defeats the whole purpose
Maybe keep hast for fvs
But give displacement to warpriest
And give them some melee power
A clicky doesn't not count, that's burst damage
Otherwise, no one will play a warpriest
And it's always been my hope that vish could go back to his original idea
Of being a fighting cleric
(that doesn't suck)
Thanks

[Steelstar]

BUGS THAT NEED FIXING

• If hope for victory or Hope for success are applied to a player, hope for Success will not apply (but it will go on cooldown). This means you can't stack hopes and also that if you slip up you literally can't use hope for success ever.

Did some digging on this one; the feedback on Success isn't appearing on Lamannia, but the actual visible effect does appear on the weapon in question. Feedback will be better before it hits Live, we're cooking up some visuals.

• Hopes only last 12 seconds but the tooltip claims they last 18.

Fixed internally. They're going to land at 20 before Live, it didn't quite make Lamannia.

• Wall of Healing claims to cost 15 spellpoints and have a 30 second cooldown in this thread but IN GAME it costs 30 and has a 1 minute cooldown.

Wall of Healing is getting some significant adjustments before Live (lower cooldown for 100% uptime, but lower healing) - We'll be double-checking that the documentation matches the release version.

• Flight of Glory doesn't work. I tried using it next to allies, and it doesn't give temp HP to myself or other players.

Still working on this one... It's vaguely inconsistent.

• Beacon spells do not apply to yourself if moving backwards.

You're moving out of the zone's area of effect :P I'll see if I can pad it, but the faster you are the more likely it is that backwards movement will cause it to miss you.

• Wall of healing shiradi procs on allies, meaning you can get a bad proc and blow your friend to bits. Might not be good.

Working on this.

• Beacon of hope claims to cost 15sp, but actually costs 30.

The 30 is correct, will adjust text.

FEELINGS

Feels really clean.

• I felt active while healing. I was engaged and I enjoyed being able to pump damage while playing.
• Close wounds for spot healing is great. Wall of healing performed really well. The targetting was a little weird but I think it just needs practice.
• The beacon spells are oddly delayed, or at least they feel that way. The heal goes out, a galf second goes by, then the actual healing happens. It felt strange.
• As a point, the only spells I was casting were implosion and soundburst. All healing abilities were from the tree, and it was enough. I never needed to cast and healing spells, only SLAs.
• Mights reward is weird. Is poent 3 points for 36 spellpower. I guess it's good.
• Extremely fun, looking forward to giving it a go on live.

We'll take a look at the delay on the Beacons. Otherwise, glad that the tree felt good! Thanks for checking it out.

[Xyfiel]

When I was still on the PC and Steelstar originally proposed changing War Priest; this was part of Steel's original design as a trade off for the lessened cooldown. Not sure if this was an accidental upload of an older bit of code or what. But most of us on the PC fought tooth and nail against removing the ability for offhand and doublestrike to proc on this.

Really hoping this isn't an intentional ninja nerf.

Just went and reread most of that thread and I didn't see any mention of removing offhand or doublestrike. Might be a bug.

[GotSomeQuestions]

Fixed internally. They're going to land at 20 before Live, it didn't quite make Lamannia.


Wall of Healing is getting some significant adjustments before Live (lower cooldown for 100% uptime, but lower healing) - We'll be double-checking that the documentation matches the release version.

These are good changes. Matching the duration of Hopes to Action Boosts should make life easier for everyone involved. And having 100% uptime on the Wall will make it an excellent baseline healing tool, even if it heals for less than the current values.

[Steelstar]

Just went and reread most of that thread and I didn't see any mention of removing offhand or doublestrike. Might be a bug.

My apologies; this should have gotten notes, and it seems I dropped it in the midst of the other changes. We'll make sure it gets a note before Live.

Ameliorating Strike should not be inherently much better for Two-Weapon Fighting characters and Ranged-With-Improved-Precise-Shot characters than other Warpriest/War Soul builds. To fix that disparity, Ameliorating Strike can now only proc once per use.

[J-mann]

My apologies; this should have gotten notes, and it seems I dropped it in the midst of the other changes. We'll make sure it gets a note before Live.

Ameliorating Strike should not be inherently much better for Two-Weapon Fighting characters and Ranged-With-Improved-Precise-Shot characters than other Warpriest/War Soul builds. To fix that disparity, Ameliorating Strike can now only proc once per use.

So we nerfed the only ability that might be worth taking the tree past 10 points. Steel i guess i can understand the reasoning but once again, who is going to t5, much less capstone, this tree? I have yet to see any adressing on how weak this tree is. In all seriousness, the new universal tree is a better warpriest tree then warpriest.

Steel, what does this tree bring to the table that splashing 6 fighter or ranger does not do better in every way? What do you get out of this tree that others cannot provide? The answer right now is nothing. The tree only provides dps and a minor heal, and does so poorly at that. The tree either needs some serious buffs or it needs something that sets it aside as unique against kensai or tempest. Also the devs have done little to address the concerns about the selection, or really lack there of, of decent favored weapons. Im not sure what else we can say to get through to the devs that this tree will not get used and all you work will be for not unless you improve it some way. My suggestion still is to give warpriest a way to use melee statting to cast some schools of spells (conjuration enchantment and evocation to be specific), additionally an overhaul of the 12, 18, and 20 cores is desperately needed.

[Rathic]

I feel like Divine conduit needs to be a more defining ability for the tree, currently it is just a cleave with a super long cool down that looks cool. While the charge up mechanic was kinda cool thematically it just makes it too restrictive. It should just have a cool down like other cleave abilities and should have a knockdown save like cometfall and maybe a no save blind for enemoes of opposing alignment to add flavor.

[edrein]

My apologies; this should have gotten notes, and it seems I dropped it in the midst of the other changes. We'll make sure it gets a note before Live.

Ameliorating Strike should not be inherently much better for Two-Weapon Fighting characters and Ranged-With-Improved-Precise-Shot characters than other Warpriest/War Soul builds. To fix that disparity, Ameliorating Strike can now only proc once per use.

Lol. That's honestly the worst nerf you've ever produced. There's no compensation (reducing the CD on Smite doesn't help in this case). What you're doing now is killing build diversity while justifying it as leveling the playing field between combat types.

TWF had the benefit of being the most healing potential. There was no guarantee unless you splashed to pick up 100% offhand. And even then you still had to build up high enough doublestrike to see the third proc.

If you're concerned about IPS silver flame users changing the scene too much, why not code an internal cooldown on the ranged version of the Smite since they are separated attacks? Stop balancing around exceptions like War Domain or in this case IPS, and saying TWF is also a problem when it isn't. Ameliorating Strike has always been the one saving grace of War Priest, and now you've decided to chuck it out the door as well without addressing any player feedback or concern.

[Mindos]

What you're doing now is killing build diversity while justifying it as leveling the playing field between combat types....
...
Ameliorating Strike has always been the one saving grace of War Priest, and now you've decided to chuck it out the door as well without addressing any player feedback or concern.

Hear ye, Hear ye.

Put another way: Stop chosing to play builds that are too good! Or at least, if you find some really cool combo that works wonders, then for the love of Helm- Don't tell anyone.

More choices for paying customers makes a better game. I keep saying that but no one listens. It seems all the Devs do is streamline and homogenize everything. From builds to scaling effects, from number of effects per item to must kill all mobs to advance. Everything is cookie cutter the same, with only trivial differences anymore. Let's make one class, call it Blah. And give everyone one weapon, call it Gah. Have fun.

[Steelstar]

More choices for paying customers makes a better game.

We agree wholeheartedly; that's why balance adjustments in the interest of preventing a very small number of specific builds from benefitting disproportionately like this are especially important.

Should every Single Weapon Fighting build and every Two Handed Fighting build in this tree be placed at an automatic disadvantage? It would be bad for build diversity.

[edrein]

We agree wholeheartedly; that's why balance adjustments in the interest of preventing a very small number of specific builds from benefitting disproportionately like this are especially important.

Should every Single Weapon Fighting build and every Two Handed Fighting build in this tree be placed at an automatic disadvantage? It would be bad for build diversity.

Everyone's at an automatic disadvantage until you take the time to actually update this tree properly. All you're doing at this point is nerfing the exception and making another full fledged Eldritch Knight situation. You know a tree no one uses at all?