First Look: U41 Eldritch Knight

[Steelstar]

Hello! We're here today to talk about the Eldritch Knight pass coming in Update 41. This updates both the Wizard and Sorcerer versions of the Eldritch Knight tree, adding new enhancements and rebalancing old ones. Conceptually, the Eldritch Knight is an Arcane Spellcaster that also excels with Melee weapons, and truly shines when using a combination of both spells and weapons.

The version you see below is what will be on Lamannia when that comes up (timing still TBD), but in the meantime we'd love your feedback on this tree!

(And if you'd like more information, the Weekly Wednesday Livestream from this week showcases a discussion between myself and Cordovan about this tree!).

• Core 1: Eldritch Strike: Melee Cleave Attack. +1[w]. If this attack hits, your weapon also releases a blast of magical energy, dealing an additional 1 to 2 Force Damage per character level to all nearby foes.(Activation Cost: 0 SP Cooldown: 12 seconds)
  
  • You gain proficiency with Simple Weapons
  • Every Core Ability in the Eldritch Knight tree grants you +10 Max HP

• Core 2: Spellsword (you get all four of the following toggles, 5SP to activate). Passive: +1% doublestrike, +10 Universal Spell Power. You gain proficiency in Light Armor and Martial Weapons.
  
  • Corrosive: Charge your equipped weapon with magical Acid, causing them to deal an addtional 1d6 (element) damage on hit. You gain an additional 1d6 every 3 (wizard/sorcerer) levels (at 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18). This damage scales with Acid Spell Power. While active, your Eldritch Strike deals 1-2 additional Acid damage per Character Level which scales with Acid Spell Power. While this is enabled, your weapon and shield attacks have Ghost Touch.
  • Flaming: As above, with fire
  • Frost: As above, with cold
  • Shock: As above, with electric

• Core 3: Melee weapons are considered Spellcasting Implements in your hands. You gain the Quick Draw feat.
  
  • -15% Arcane Spell Failure from equipped Armor and Shields
  • +1% doublestrike
  • +10 Universal spellpower

• Core 4: Subtle Force: You gain the benefits of the Deflect Arrows feat, knocking aside one incoming projectile that would have struck you every 6 seconds.
  
  • -20% Arcane Spell Failure from equipped Armor and Shields
  • +6 Resistance to Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire, and Sonic
  • +10 Universal spellpower

• Core 5: Subtle Force II: +5% Stacking Incorporeality. Your Deflect Arrows now triggers every 2 seconds.
  
  • +1% doublestrike
  • +10 Universal spellpower

• Core 6: Eldritch Blade:
  
  • 
    
    • Your Eldritch Strike now grants you a Power Charge. When you have 5 Power Charges, they are removed, and you gain Eldritch Power. Eldritch Power: +10% melee damage, +4d6 Spellsword Dice, +3d4 Force Damage on Hit (this scales with Force spell power), +25 Universal spellpower, +15 PRR, +40 MRR. Duration 30 seconds.
    • Passive:
      
      • +1 Spellsword Die
      • +2 (Intelligence/Charisma), +2 Constitution
      • +10 Universal spellpower

Tier 1:

• Improved Mage Armor: (unchanged) Spell Like Ability: Mage Armor. (Activation Cost: 8/6/4 Spell Points). In addition, while you are under the effect of the Mage Armor spell, you gain a +3%/+6%/+10% Exceptional Bonus to Armor Class.
• Arcane Siphon: Melee Attack:+1/2/3[w]. On hit: Gain +10/20/30 Universal Spell Power for 20 seconds. 12 second cooldown.
• Item Defense (unchanged) You have a 25%/50%/75% chance to negate potential item wear.
• Toughness (unchanged) +5/10/15 Max HP
• Battlemage (unchanged) +1/+2/+3 Concentration, Intimidate, and Spellcraft.

Tier 2:

• Improved Shield: Spell Like Ability: Shield (Activation Cost: 8/6/4 Spell points). In addition, while you are under the effect of the Shield spell, you gain +3/+6/+10 Exceptional Bonus to Physical Resistance Rating.
• Mystic Wards: +3/6/10 MRR.
• Action Boost: Spell Power: Activate to gain a +10/+20/+30 Action Boost bonus to Spell Power for 20 seconds. Cooldown: 30 seconds.
• Shield Training: (unchanged) Passive: You gain proficiency with all shields except Tower Shields, and your Arcane Spell Failure chance from equipped shields is reduced by 5%.
• Wand & Scroll Mastery (unchanged) +25%/+50%/+75% effectiveness from your wands, scrolls, and other items that cast spells, and +1/+2/+3 to the save DC of your offensive wands. Taking Wand and Scroll Mastery in one enhancement tree will block its availability in other enhancement trees.

Tier 3:

• Arcane Barrier: (Now 1 Rank): Passive: When your HP drop below 50% of maximum, you are immediately protected by an Arcane Barrier that reduces all incoming damage by 25% for the next 20 seconds. This effect may only trigger once every 90 seconds.
• Eldritch Accuracy: You get (INT/CHA) to hit with weapons and shield bashes.

• Synergetic Magic: While you have Action Boost: Spell Power active, you also get the benefits of Action Boost: Power (+10/20/30 Action Boost bonus to Melee Power and Ranged Power for 20 seconds.)
• Critical Mastery: +1/2/3 to confirm critical hits and critical hit damage (before weapon multipliers)
• Ability Score Multiselctor (unchanged) +1 STR/DEX/(INT or CHA)

Tier 4:

• Knight's Transformation: Toggle: While this is turned on, all your spells and SLAs that are affected by Metamagics have their range reduced to touch range. You cannot enable the Enlarge Metamagic while this is active. You gain +30 Universal Spell Power and +3% Spell Critical Damage. Your Base Attack Bonus equals your Character Level.

• Improved Offhand: Multiselector:
  
  • Shield Striking: (unchanged) On Hit: +5%/+10%/+15% chance to proc an immediate Shield Bash attack with an equipped shield. Every six seconds while you have a shield equipped, you gain Temp HP equal to the enhancement bonus of your equipped shield.
  • Orb Saves: +1/2/3 to saving throws and +3/6/10 Universal Spell Power while holding an Orb
  
  
• Force's Point: When you cast a spell, you gain a stack of Force's Point: Martial (+1 to Hit and Damage). This stacks up to 5 times. When you hit with a melee weapon, you gain a stack of Force's Point: Magical (+2 Universal Spell Power). This stacks up to 10 times. Stacks last for 12 seconds each. You may only gain each effect once per second.
• Armored Arcana: You gain proficiency in Medium Armor, and suffer no Arcane Spell Failure from Light or Medium Armor
• Ability Score Multiselctor (unchanged) +1 STR/DEX/(INT or CHA)

Tier 5:

• Improved Knight's Transformation: If you have Knight's Transformation active, you also gain +1 Competence Bonus to Critical Multiplier with Melee Weapons.
• Knight's Magic: Multiselector:
  
  • Knight Striker: If you have Knight's Transformation active, you also gain +2 to Evocation DCs, +2 to Conjuration DCs.
  • Knight Controller: If you have Knight's Transformation active, you also gain +2 to Enchantment DCs, +4 Spell Penetration.
  
  
• Force's Edge: When you cast a spell, you gain +1 Competence Bonus to Critical Threat Range for 12 seconds. When you make a Melee Attack, you gain +5% Spell Critical Chance for 12 seconds.
• Radiant Forcefield: Spell Like Ability: Radiant Forcefield (Activation Cost: 30 Spell Points. Cooldown: 3 minutes.)

• Eldritch Tempest: Activate: Perform a spinning melee attack, dealing weapon damage +5[W] to all nearby enemies and knocking them prone for 1 second. (Activation Cost: 50/40/30 Spell points. Cooldown: 60/45/30 seconds) If any foes are struck by Eldritch Tempest, your weapon also releases an explosion of magical force, dealing an additional 1d6 Force damage per character level to all nearby enemies. This additional force damage is affected by your spell power. (now 1AP per rank)

[Steelstar]

FAQ:

What's the deal with Knight's Transformation?
You'll probably notice that the cast range restrictions while Knight's Transformation is active are very similar to Epic Defensive Fighting. With the tree's focus on wading into melee range for combat, this is a tree where offensive spellcasting range can afford to be close-quarters; for that tradeoff, the Eldritch Knight gets a big boost to spellcasting AND weapon combat. If you have both this and Epic Defensive Fighting toggled on in the Epic levels, you do not suffer a further penalty to casting range, so they synergize well.

Why did you drop Permanent Tenser's out of this tree?
As we evaluated the existing tree's strengths and weaknesses, it occurred to us that if we wanted the role of Eldritch Knights to be "Character that excels at both Spells and Weapons", then Tenser's was counterproductive to that, as it increased your spell cooldowns dramatically. We put together Knight's Transformation to replace it.

What does 5% Stacking Incorporeality mean (from the 5th Core)?
This is incorporeality, causing a chance to ignore damage similar to the Ghostly item effect. There's an identical bonus in the Tempest Cores.

What does 10% Melee Damage mean (from the 6th Core)?
This is an overall 10% scale-up to damage from Melee Attacks. We removed a lot of this from the game when Melee and Ranged Power were added, but given that you can't get this without 20 Wizard or Sorcerer levels, we felt the powerful scaling was worth it.

Does anything in here work with Ranged Weapons?
If it doesn't say specifically "Melee", assume it also works on Ranged weapons.

How many Spellsword Dice can I get?
A pure 20 Wizard or Sorcerer that took all the Cores has 7d6 stable Spellsword dice, and turns it up to 11d6 when Eldritch Power is active (which you can keep up 50% of the time if you use Eldritch Blade any time it's off cooldown). Those dice scale at the normal rate with Spell Power.

How does the knockdown in Eldritch Tempest work?
It knocks down anything that isn't immune to Trip for one second. There is no saving throw. (It does not affect Bosses, who are normally immune to Trip).

[Sho-sa]

Thank you for giving us a look at this even though the Lama preview ran into a hiccup.


Looks very much improved.

Glad to see SP drain from Spellsword removed and that it scales. LOVE the multi toggle!!!!!

Nice touch the 'exceptional' bonus to PR from Shield SLA.

Tier Three- Synergetic Magic- cool effect to have it double stack with Tier Two- Spell Power AB

----------------------------------------

Core Four: Maybe say, "-5% additional" to ASF? Hate for someone to read it as 15% from Core Three plus another 20% from Core Four.

Tier five- Radiant Forcefield SLA. Will this be able to benefit from Extend metamagic and last for 44 seconds?

Tier Three- Eldritch Accuracy- would prefer switch from hit to damage here, just as with Swashbuckler, please.




All in all, though it looks like y'all have been listening to what we have had to say! Very much appreciated.

[Xgya]

Now that the damage sees improvements, I wanna see how an elven wizard arcane archer (you know, the class they were historically supposed to start off as to become Arcane Archers in the first place :P ) using both elemental arrows and the toggle.
That's GOT to be a ton of extra (scaling) damage per attack, on top of staying a Wizard.

Only saying this because the only thing I can reliably do in melee is politely ask if an ally carries rez scrolls XD

Still, looks promising. Eldritch Knight starts looking like the melee skirmisher it's supposed to be. Splashing other classes to get proficiencies and feats might still be tempting (as it is in all gish builds, really), but this is really looking sweet.

Thanks for removing the mana cost on hit for the toggles and main attack. Adding free Ghost touch as low as level 3 is a nice touch too.

I still dislike the idea of changing the range of spells to force people to melee, but given the fact that Wizards and Sorcerers at their core aren't supposed to be handing out buffs or using healing magic once combat has started, this is one tree I can more easily accept this penalty to show up in.
Just as good at magicking stuff to death as before, they just have to be a bit more up close and personal about it. Quicken spell: don't leave home with it toggled off!

[Sho-sa]

Oh man! Missed the Ghost touch added.


VERY NICE!!!!!!!


Yeah, not a fan of the whole Epic Defensive Fighting thing, but this tree is a great improvement already so... meh.

[Shadrar]

Now that the damage sees improvements, I wanna see how an elven wizard arcane archer (you know, the class they were historically supposed to start off as to become Arcane Archers in the first place :P ) using both elemental arrows and the toggle.

7d6 + 7d8 + 2d20, with 800 spellpower = 700 elemental damage per arrow.

[Xanthrawl]

Does Core 4 -20% ASF supersede the Core 3 -15% ASF? Or will this be a total of -35% Arcane Spell Failure?

[QueenOfTheHook]

Eldritch Accuracy: You get (INT/CHA) to hit with weapons and shield bashes.


Am I overlooking where we get it to damage as well because to hit is only half the battle and the lower half at that.

[Cordovan]

Eldritch Accuracy: You get (INT/CHA) to hit with weapons and shield bashes.


Am I overlooking where we get it to damage as well because to hit is only half the battle and the lower half at that.

INT to damage is not currently available in the Eldritch Knight tree.

[Mindos]

7d6 + 7d8 + 2d20, with 800 spellpower = 700 elemental damage per arrow.

Can you write this out a little more? What are these numbers? 7d6 from this Eldritch Knight revamp, I read 9d8 from Arcane Archer if you Tier 5. What's the 2d20?

So a Elf, or any race with access to Arcane Archer, full level 20 Wizard, sitting at level 30, taking Tier 5 in Arcane Archer, getting full cores from Eldritch Knight, is gonna do about 1000 damage per arrow?

[Silverleafeon]

[*]Core 1: Eldritch Strike: Melee Cleave Attack. +1[w]. If this attack hits, your weapon also releases a blast of magical energy, dealing an additional 1 to 2 Force Damage per character level to all nearby foes.(Activation Cost: 0 SP Cooldown: 12 seconds)

In the live stream at the 4 min mark, Steelstar mentions that this Eldritch strike has reduced cooldown.

But then he mentions off the top of his head (forgivable) it is now 12 sec instead of 24 or 30?
In reality on live it is 12 seconds (which is much slower than the feat cleave which has a 5 second cooldown).

Can I assume that this important feature is going from 12 second cooldown to 6ish second cooldown?
If so, that is a very welcome change.

[Shadrar]

Can you write this out a little more? What are these numbers? 7d6 from this Eldritch Knight revamp, I read 9d8 from Arcane Archer if you Tier 5. What's the 2d20?

So a Elf, or any race with access to Arcane Archer, full level 20 Wizard, sitting at level 30, taking Tier 5 in Arcane Archer, getting full cores from Eldritch Knight, is gonna do about 1000 damage per arrow?

2d20 is from a Legendary Feat. E.g. Scion of the Plane of Earth for acid damage.

I didn't include T5 from AA because I'm not sure you would use T5 from it. You're missing crit range in AA, but can get it from T5 EK.

[Silverleafeon]

[*]Knight's Transformation: Toggle: While this is turned on, all your spells and SLAs that are affected by Metamagics have their range reduced to touch range. You cannot enable the Enlarge Metamagic while this is active. You gain +30 Universal Spell Power and +3% Spell Critical Damage. Your Base Attack Bonus equals your Character Level.

My main concerns about the Epic Defensive feat affecting teamwork would not apply to a heroic wizard who is highly unlikely to provide much in combat team healing.
So this change from permanent tenser (which was primarily good for thrower builds splashing five levels of wizard) seems like a very good change.

If an arcane desires Tenser's, it would be fairly easy to simply cast thus as desired, because the duration for a full wizard would be fairly good.

[Mindos]

Off the bat, I'm thinking Morninglord with a heart respec to full level 20 wizard, AA build...or...
Half-Elf, Arti dilettante, ignore Arcane Archer, and go full heavy repeater/spell points, int, etc...

[Silverleafeon]

Live stream: 17:40

"...this stacks with arcane warrior feat. Also we are boosting the Arcane Warrior Feat a little bit...":

Sounds very nice.

Arcane Warrior definitely could use a boost.
Feel free to be generous there.

Also Deific Warding stacks are removed too quickly.

[OrtRestave]

Very nice changes overall for sure. While at first I was disappointed at the lack of INT/CHA to Weap Dmg, I think that the changes to the Spellswords probably make up for that. Since the idea is that the Eldritch Knight is dealing damage more through arcane means powered by SP rather than martial ability, I can't really complain.

I have two concerns, although they're fairly minor. The first is that Core 5 seems pretty weak. It doesn't need to be the massive boost in power that a lot of Core 5s are, but it just seems like it could use a little more benefit. As a suggestion, one thing that's always bothered me a little is that while the Spellsword abilities have always given a boost to Eldritch Strike, nothing in the tree has ever improved Eldritch Strike much as an ability. Maybe Core 5 could do something like improve Eldritch Strike to +3[w]? And perhaps something else, though I'm not sure what would sit well in balance with the other changes. But because Core 5 is the last opportunity for a core ability to modify the tree's baseline attack for any character with a dip, it seems like an appropriate place.

The second is regarding Eldritch Power, which while much improved, still has the same problem as before. It's not a major issue, but I'd like to point out that it still functions in much the same way as Divine Vessel used to work and which you recently changed to be more under the player's control. I'll acknowledge that it's not quite as bad to have a 50% uptime buff operate in such a manner as it is for an instant PBAoE to do so, but it's still going to be a common situation to have to refrain from using Eldritch Strike because the next encounter will be one where you'll want to have the buff up immediately, and I don't think this is a very positive experience for a rotational ability.

[FuryFlash]

Now that the damage sees improvements, I wanna see how an elven wizard arcane archer (you know, the class they were historically supposed to start off as to become Arcane Archers in the first place :P ) using both elemental arrows and the toggle.
That's GOT to be a ton of extra (scaling) damage per attack, on top of staying a Wizard.

My pure Sorcerer 20 Elven Arcane Archer (currently at level 20) is going to LOVE these changes!

From total gimp to maybe even... good?!

[FuzzyDuck81]

Now this is the kind of thing I was hoping for in an eldritch knight Force's edge in particular is definitely geared towards ensuring that people really make sure to mix in the fighting & spellcasting - I suspect there will be some who splash a bit of warlock & the enlightened spirit line to help keep that up without thinking, but then the trade-off would naturally be to miss out on that tasty capstone so I can't see it being any real issue.

[PsychoBlonde]

Armored Arcana is INCREDIBLY redundant with the cores, and should probably ONLY grant proficiency.

Overall, I think it has potential, and I'm excited to try it out. I love hybrid toons (caster/weapon), so this will probably be a big thing for me.

[Steelstar]

Armored Arcana is INCREDIBLY redundant with the cores, and should probably ONLY grant proficiency.

Overall, I think it has potential, and I'm excited to try it out. I love hybrid toons (caster/weapon), so this will probably be a big thing for me.

To be honest, the reduction found in the Cores is mainly meant for people running Heavy Armor builds.