Eldritch Knight/Pale Master Splash test results

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

So, I started out with more points in my pale master tree than my Eldritch Knight tree and zero points in the harper tree........ I was in the magister tree with some twists from Divine Crusader, Draconic incarnation, and Legendary Dreadnought.

I died repeatedly, so much that it was like a comedy routine and my melee DPS just plain sucked.

I then switched my trees from such to just Legendary dreadnaught with twists from Magister for my necromancy spells.

I still kept dying, just not as much......... My melee improved though.

This time I swapped my focus away from the necromancy tree and put it into the new eldritch knight tree......... not a very big improvement defensively speaking, in fact I think I saw more of a difference offensively speaking but only after I also spent 13 points into the Harper tree for Int To Damage.

I still had to cast Negative energy burst to keep myself healed about 8 times per encounter and yet still managed to die 21 times before the quest was over. I had death aura, greater boon of the undead, and scion Of Shadowfell. Collectively all of that should have been able to keep me healed but it didn't.


Solutions:

1-Add a necromancy option to the multi-selector for Knight's Magic granting them vampirism and negative healing amplification

2-Change Eldritch Accuracy to Eldritch Combat and allow it to grant Intelligence to hit and damage.

3-Create a melee centric orb that grants mainhand weapon improved cursespewing, legendary affirmation, and perhaps vampirism 4

4-Make the Improved Mage Armor passive similarly to how the shield spell is passive for artificers.

5-Create a cloak with insightful physical sheltering, quality physical sheltering, insightful constitution, and some sort debuff guard proc similar to Sticky Goo Guard as such a piece of equipment would fill in a loot attribute gap that this build suffers.

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Update: Relying on Into to hit in this build is a folly, I rebuilt this character around strength as the primary stat and intelligence as the secondary stat and for the first time didn't die once in the new quest while on epic elite, however I did have to go through 15 sp potions as this build absolutely chews through sp even though the only spells used in combat are Negative energy burst, undeath to death, and wail of the banshee with some buffing spells cast shortly before combat.

Prefered numbers estimated here would be subject to being lowered or increased if I could test them.......

Armor Class: 92 (Preferably this should be at least 125)
PRR: 150 (Preferably this should be at 175)
MRR: 114 (Preferably this should be at 175)
BAB: +15/+30
Negative Spell Power: 458
Negative Healing Amp: 195
Double Strike Chance: 3% (Preferably this would be at 50%)
Melee Attack Speed: 45% (Preferably this would be at 65%)
Melee Power: 66 (Preferably this would be at 125)
Negative Energy Spell Critical Chance: 53%
Defence Chance At Level: 53% (Preferably this would be at 65%)

[droid327]

1-Add a necromancy option to the multi-selector for Knight's Magic granting them vampirism and negative healing amplification

2-Change Eldritch Accuracy to Eldritch Combat and allow it to grant Intelligence to hit and damage.

3-Create a melee centric orb that grants mainhand weapon improved cursespewing, legendary affirmation, and perhaps vampirism 4

4-Make the Improved Mage Armor passive similarly to how the shield spell is passive for artificers.

5-Create a cloak with insightful physical sheltering, quality physical sheltering, insightful constitution, and some sort debuff guard proc similar to Sticky Goo Guard as such a piece of equipment would fill in a loot attribute gap that this build suffers.

1 - I dont see why this would be in EK, its not a necromantic tree. I think this would fit better in an upcoming revamp of PM, maybe give Shroud of the Vampire actual vampirism.

2 - EKs dont need stat-to-damage, their DPS comes from their imbues, and that just needs to hit. I was actually looking to see if they gave only to-hit, and I like that they did. I'm actually a little confused why they gave the crit profile in T5, since a pure 20 EK is still going to have STR to dmg (and that's probably their third stat priority after INT/CHA and CON) with few other boosts through enhancements, and so their physical damage isnt going to be that great anyway. I thought EK might be a crit-agnostic melee build, which would make it different than everything else right now.

An EK multiclass is probably going to have CHA to dmg from their other class (Different Tack, Divine Might, FvS, etc.) I guess you could go 20 Wiz EK with Harper and still benefit from the crit profile, but it seems like 20 Sorcs are kinda left wanting there - maybe it should be a War Soul/Warpriest kind of split where Wiz get the +1/+1 and maybe Sorcs get +10% attack speed?

3 - I had thought you were over your cursespewing/legacy vampirism fetish by now >< They have melee-focused Orbs already though...they're called shields

5 - I dont see how any of those stats are impossible to gear for?

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

1 - I dont see why this would be in EK, its not a necromantic tree. I think this would fit better in an upcoming revamp of PM, maybe give Shroud of the Vampire actual vampirism.

2 - EKs dont need stat-to-damage, their DPS comes from their imbues, and that just needs to hit. I was actually looking to see if they gave only to-hit, and I like that they did. I'm actually a little confused why they gave the crit profile in T5, since a pure 20 EK is still going to have STR to dmg (and that's probably their third stat priority after INT/CHA and CON) with few other boosts through enhancements, and so their physical damage isnt going to be that great anyway. I thought EK might be a crit-agnostic melee build, which would make it different than everything else right now.

An EK multiclass is probably going to have CHA to dmg from their other class (Different Tack, Divine Might, FvS, etc.) I guess you could go 20 Wiz EK with Harper and still benefit from the crit profile, but it seems like 20 Sorcs are kinda left wanting there - maybe it should be a War Soul/Warpriest kind of split where Wiz get the +1/+1 and maybe Sorcs get +10% attack speed?

3 - I had thought you were over your cursespewing/legacy vampirism fetish by now >< They have melee-focused Orbs already though...they're called shields

5 - I dont see how any of those stats are impossible to gear for?

Shields aren't orbs, they do not benefit single weapon fighting at all, in fact they slow your attack speed down and makes the combat look and feel clunky. Also, It's not a fetish, it's an understanding on the potential of such that brings value to it. For me to be done with vampirism and improved cursespewing, they'd have to create a filigree set that provides it, I still feel cheated that they did what they did to the Bloodfeast filigree set that was originally supposed to be a vampirism source according to the first preview that introduced it.

The Eldritch knight defensive capabilities are lacking, a splash between the Battle Engineer tree and the Renegade Mastermaker Tree only works to create a viable melee artificer because both trees offer some defensive and offensive benefits meanwhile, the Eldritch Knight tree is the only of the two that really offers any of such for the Wizard. As for multiclassing, still abstaining until they provide a way to earn at least +1 lesser hearts of wood through end chain rewards. Contrary, the physical damage of the Eldritch Knight is very close to decent as the preview currently has it. If they add intelligence to damage and add a more powerful melee attack to the tree it should be fine assuming you have yourself something with improved cursespewing to debilitate and damage enemies. Defensively speaking I'd say that the Eldritch Knight tree is only half way there, while offensively speaking I'd say it is a 75% there in terms of progress.

Though I did notice the need for a helmet that doesn't exist........ I tinkered with stat effects and found that there really was no decent helm for the build and then I wrote down some attributes that helped when I found an item to equip that had one of such on them and came up with this list of four effects.

Armor piercing +32
Doublestrike +23%
Seeker 19
Manslayer

These effects and that Orb I keep talking about should do the trick!

I will rebuild my character again for further testing though.......

[john0]

Can anyone who has access to lam tell me the ap costs for

Tier 3 Eldritch Accuracy: You get (INT/CHA) to hit with weapons and shield bashes.

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.

Planning to do a bard fighter wiz as previously the only way to get cha to hit was through PDK and that only covered swords. With this im able to use khopesh with cha to dmg vis swashbuckler and cha to hit from eldritch.

Thanks

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

Can anyone who has access to lam tell me the ap costs for

Tier 3 Eldritch Accuracy: You get (INT/CHA) to hit with weapons and shield bashes.

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.

Planning to do a bard fighter wiz as previously the only way to get cha to hit was through PDK and that only covered swords. With this im able to use khopesh with cha to dmg vis swashbuckler and cha to hit from eldritch.

Thanks

Testing has just confirmed that the Int to hit isn't even worth it, if you want to deal melee dps, you are best off upping your strength stat.

[Domince]

The curse spewing and vampirism isnt what this needs, don't want to be rude but those two things arent that good to begin with

[Mindos]

Planning to do a bard fighter wiz as previously the only way to get cha to hit was through PDK and that only covered swords. With this im able to use khopesh with cha to dmg vis swashbuckler and cha to hit from eldritch.

Thanks

I think Sorc gets CHA and Wiz gets the INT to hit. I dont think you can choose which one, have to wiz for int, sorc for cha. I could be wrong.

[droid327]

Shields aren't orbs, they do not benefit single weapon fighting at all, in fact they slow your attack speed down and makes the combat look and feel clunky.

Well yes, you cant SWF with a shield unless you have Skirmisher from Swash. But my point was that orbs were created to be a class of off-hand items for spellcasters that wasnt just another casting-stick weapon. Making an orb that gives only melee-related bonuses is not what they're intended for. Especially since EK is designed to use shields, with shield-related enhancements already baked in. Plus it'd kinda be a slap in the face to other SWF builds that cant use orbs OR shields...sorc/wiz get to have, essentially, a shield that still lets you SWF while they're stuck having to leave the slot empty.

The Eldritch knight defensive capabilities are lacking, a splash between the Battle Engineer tree and the Renegade Mastermaker Tree only works to create a viable melee artificer because both trees offer some defensive and offensive benefits meanwhile, the Eldritch Knight tree is the only of the two that really offers any of such for the Wizard. As for multiclassing, still abstaining until they provide a way to earn at least +1 lesser hearts of wood through end chain rewards. Contrary, the physical damage of the Eldritch Knight is very close to decent as the preview currently has it. If they add intelligence to damage and add a more powerful melee attack to the tree it should be fine assuming you have yourself something with improved cursespewing to debilitate and damage enemies. Defensively speaking I'd say that the Eldritch Knight tree is only half way there, while offensively speaking I'd say it is a 75% there in terms of progress.

I dont think EK is supposed to be a full-powered standalone melee PrE. Its supposed to be a bare-bones melee option that's supported by spellcasting, just a vehicle to deliver more elemental damage through weapon attacks more than anything. I dont think you're supposed to be able to do full physical melee damage, plus imbue damage, plus damage from actual nuking spells...so they make you get INT/CHA to dmg from somewhere else.

Its meant to be a package of passive bonuses (defensive and elemental damage) plus a cleave, that you can either pair with another melee class tree for a dedicated melee specialist, or pair with a Savant or Archmage and play it as a hybrid caster-fighter - using your nukes or your CCs to take down groups of enemies and then finishing them off with your melee attacks.

Testing has just confirmed that the Int to hit isn't even worth it, if you want to deal melee dps, you are best off upping your strength stat.

Why would it be different if you pump CHA and use CHA to hit, vs. pump STR and use STR to hit? Your EK imbues do the same damage either way, as long as you actually hit.

I think Sorc gets CHA and Wiz gets the INT to hit. I dont think you can choose which one, have to wiz for int, sorc for cha. I could be wrong.

Thats what I would've assumed too, but he could just go bard/fighter/sorc instead, especially if he's just splashing enough to get the CHA to hit.