U41 Preview 2: Eldritch Knight

[cru121]

The later levels are very intentionally weighted in Spellsword Dice;

• You're heading up the difficulty ramp in Upper Heroics and then on into Epics
• It offsets the DPS you'd gain by 1-8 levels of another class where you'd be able to pick up greater DPS. If the last Core isn't strong, there's no reason to not splash 2 levels of something else every time.
• It prevents splashes from ramping up too high on Spellsword Dice.

I agree that content gets difficult. However:
* Casters are already rewarded for staying pure, they get high level spells.
* By all means, cores should be strong. But should 3 last levels more than double your spellsword damage?
* Imho some of the power can be moved to a new epic feat (or to Arcane Warrior?). Another part can be moved to an ED ability in an Arcane destiny. Maybe a Tier 1 / Tier 2 twist? And yet another portion could be moved to T5.

I could also see room for an item bonus to spellsword dice, maybe a named augment. It would be nice if you created a new cannith crafting scaling affix in extra slot for rune arms, shields, orbs, plain bonus to spellsword damage equal ML/3 maybe.

[Emerge2012]

This is working as designed. Not every build's optimal gear layout is going to be identical, and neither the Belts nor Silent Avenger are going to be in vogue forever, at least in Epics.

+14 Enhancement Bonus
Fortification +202%
Physical Sheltering +50
Parrying +9
Profane Well Rounded +2
Hide +22
Move Silently +22
Deception +16
Ghostly
Quality Dodge +4%
Blurry
Dexterity +19
Quality Dexterity +4
15% Artifact Bonus to Doublestrike and Doubleshot.
+3 Sneak Attack Dice.
+25% Artifact bonus to Fortification Bypass.
+10% Artifact bonus to Damage vs. Helpless Opponents.

Good luck improving on that set without introducing a monstrous leap in power creep that is as big as the SA set was to begin with. I kinda think this set has to be the vogue for a very very long time.

[Ultramaetche1]

Tier 4

• 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 Temporary hit points equal to the enhancement bonus of your equipped shield. Remaining unchanged from preview 1, this ability is VERY underpowered compared to other T4's that grant temp HP, namely: Warlock ES T4 Brilliance, Enhancement bonuses typically cap out at +15 at end game not considering enhancements or PL's that add up to 4-6. +15 Temp HP every 6 Seconds is terrible, works out to be 2.5 HP/sec whereas Brilliance grants CON SCORE every time your ES aura ticks as an AOE whilst doubling the value in epics, meaning an ES can easily grant entire parties 160-200 temp HP every 2 seconds for 80-100 HP/sec as the same T4 enhancement whereas the EK can't even grant enough to themselves to absorb 1 hit. Would you consider making the Temp HP for this to be INT/CHA mod vs shield enhancement, and instead of doubling the HP in epic, double the frequency to every 3 seconds?
  
  
  
  
  • Orb Saves: +1/2/3 to saving throws and +3/6/10 Universal Spell Power while holding an Orb. Similar to Shield striking this is somewhat underwhelming as a T4. Would you consider upping the spellpower to +6/12/20, additionally at rank 3, when you damage an enemy while holding an orb you have a 20% chance to grant yourself your Orb Bonus as temporary SP triggering at most once per 10 seconds?

[Recared]

Hey! Thanks for checking out Eldritch Knight in Preview 2. A few responses to things:



I wouldn't say that there was consensus on the opinion that "Knight's Transformation's range reduction is bad and should not be in this tree". While the subject of a large percentage of post count, it's an opinion expressed by ~15 people across both feedback threads, in a pool of 50+ people that gave feedback in those threads. It's not been that common of an opinion in the other platforms we've gathered feedback through either.

There were several who didn't like it because the bonuses weren't strong enough, which was fair - We've made strides to fix that in Preview 2. We have no plans to remove it from this tree. We understand some people will not like that ability; if that's the case, it is thankfully not mandatory, and there are some great builds out there that do not rely on it.

While many have expressed a desire for INT/CHA to damage, I'm sorry to say we don't have plans to add it to Eldritch Knight.



That'd be interesting! Possibly in the future.



The later levels are very intentionally weighted in Spellsword Dice;

• You're heading up the difficulty ramp in Upper Heroics and then on into Epics
• It offsets the DPS you'd gain by 1-8 levels of another class where you'd be able to pick up greater DPS. If the last Core isn't strong, there's no reason to not splash 2 levels of something else every time.
• It prevents splashes from ramping up too high on Spellsword Dice.

This is working as intended. This is a melee tree that happens to have some ranged synergy; it is not meant to be a big gain on Ranged builds, but something where you could find a weird build that makes use of it.


Builds like this are going to require a lot of stats, and it's going to require a careful balance of gearing. There are definitely level ranges where it'll be harder to find relevant gear, something that Cannith Crafting can help with and that we hope to offset through named items in the future. Over the last few years, we've put out fewer hybrid-centric items as there was no demand for them; I'd expect that to change going forward.


This seems to have missed the notes, I'll make sure it gets there for Live.

• The Arcane Warrior Feat's buffs now last 12 seconds per stack (previously 6)
• Each stack of Arcane Warrior: Magical now grants +2 Universal Spell Power (previously 1).

Not a massive buff, but should make the feat easier to keep up/stack up, and doubles the available Spell Power.


That's a good use of that skill!


Whoops. Thanks for the catch, will fix.


This is working as designed. Not every build's optimal gear layout is going to be identical, and neither the Belts nor Silent Avenger are going to be in vogue forever, at least in Epics.

Steel, would it be too much to ask for spellsword sonic variant inclusion? Would be a nice Christmas gift O By the way spellsword are a very nice tool as they promote knowledge of the game (u know bosses vulnerability, then choose appropriate elemental damage). Thanks for the nice work!

[Hjarki]

Steel, would it be too much to ask for spellsword sonic variant inclusion? Would be a nice Christmas gift O By the way spellsword are a very nice tool as they promote knowledge of the game (u know bosses vulnerability, then choose appropriate elemental damage). Thanks for the nice work!

I'd really like this. Unfortunately, I don't believe it will happen because a Sonic option would effectively be the only option due to Harmonic Resonance.

[Kilgrave]

I like the changes and the new quest fun this was my first trip to lamannia and all the cool stuff you can do blew my mind I wish we has this all the time. The one thing I found in playing EK was casters were tearing me up my prr was fine but my mrr was only 47 in adamantine body you know it's funny I would have thought prr would be the problem.

[btolson]

I wouldn't say that there was consensus on the opinion that "Knight's Transformation's range reduction is bad and should not be in this tree". While the subject of a large percentage of post count, it's an opinion expressed by ~15 people across both feedback threads, in a pool of 50+ people that gave feedback in those threads. It's not been that common of an opinion in the other platforms we've gathered feedback through either.

Eh. There are those of us who simply considered that battle lost before it began, so didn't bother wasting our breath.

Officially, I wonder if you can create a new Range, of "Short", which is like Touch x2 or so. It would ease some facing QOL concerns, among other things. And you still wouldn't be fingering anybody from across the room.

[Sho-sa]

Look, the core abilities seem good, and the refinements to existing abilities seem good.

However, still with this reducing spells to touch range in Knight's Transformation?!?

Look, this is obviously someone's current obsession. I'm waiting for it to turn up in a third feat or enhancement... However, I will say it is not winning any friends in the player base. No-one likes it. If you have to keep it, maybe in the tier 4, fine, but remove it from Improved Knight's Transformation in tier 5. It IS improved transformation after all!

That and INT/CHA to damage!

QFT



Excellent summary!

[The_Golden]

While I understand people's objections to it, I'm opposed to the 'consensus' myself. I think restricting spellcasting to melee range is an entirely reasonable feature of the ability. However, I think you need to look more closely at how it restricts to melee range. For single target spells, dropping to touch range is fine. For standard AE and target area spells, I think you need to change the target entirely to PBAE. Currently, the restriction is a massive nuisance targeting-wise that it doesn't need to be. We know that Fireball is going to detonate in your face, so why not just make it automatically do that rather than requiring a target? It would be a significant QoL change without being more/less powerful than the current implementation.

This exactly, its not the reduction of the range in principle I object to - Its the practical implementation of it in this context. If you could actually cast spells and have them go off reliably at the range cap then the range reduction would be fine.

In a purely theoretical sense, I agree. That being said, the theory only works if Int/Cha to damage isn't otherwise practical to obtain.

For Wizards, the ability is (mostly) useless because most builds will simply take Strategic Combat/Know the Angles from Harper. The availability of Harper also creates an asymmetry between Sorcerer and Wizard in this regard.

For Sorcerers, there's a strong incentive to take PDK - alongside the weapon choices it brings.

What I'd suggest as an approach is a change to Spellsword. Give it about +20 more average magical damage (spread somehow over the cores) and then add a restriction: "While Spellsword is active, you do not get an ability bonus or penalty to weapon damage". This would make abilities like Strategic Combat II or Cormyrean Knight Training useless while providing approximately the same damage.

I don't see the problem with stat to damage in the tree. Otherwise you are basically limiting the tree to PDK Sorc and KTA wizards. I don't see other builds realistically being competitive..

[capsela]

This exactly, its not the reduction of the range in principle I object to - Its the practical implementation of it in this context. If you could actually cast spells and have them go off reliably at the range cap then the range reduction would be fine.




I don't see the problem with stat to damage in the tree. Otherwise you are basically limiting the tree to PDK Sorc and KTA wizards. I don't see other builds realistically being competitive..

This so much. Add KTA to the tree, but only if they already have harpers, it makes no sense to split them.

Targeting fails when the target is close to you because the game insists that you are facing the target and when you are close range the game and lag conspire to have you always facing the wrong direction of your target.

Our beef with close range casting is it causes spells to not land reliably. Surely your dev testing has shown this is true. You can't afford to spend 50+ mana on a spell that doesn't go off. Yeah, it charges you mana if you are facing the wrong direction and puts your spells on cooldown for nothing in return. Fix targeting and I'll be happy even with the stupid range limit especially if you get this out before Christmas.

And put magic movement speed booties in the tree, please please please, I'm tired of running behind my whole party when I'm the leader. Elminster wouldn't tolerate such nonsense like his whole party leaving him behind because he is so darn slow especially if he is an EK.

[GramercyRiff]

For speed just add Phantom Steed or any spell that gives extra speed beyond Haste.

This is Wizard/Sorcerer aka the class with the best spells. Do it.

It's frankly very silly that the Wiz/Sorc spell list is so vanilla. Open up that Spell Compendium. Great book full of amazing spells. Make up spells as well. That works too.

We need more spells both arcane and divine.

[Sormiron]

I do like a lot of the changes I see here. It shows that you have put some effort in this. The spellsword dice change with the cores was very nice. I have to agree that putting most of the juice from spellsword in the last cores is a good thing.
definitely seems problematic leveling with the martial combat style feats and improved critical comming in so late. As a melee I might just go 2handed where the combat feats doesnt matter quite as much in heroic. Maybe spellsword will carry me through anyway. that or i´ll just concentrate on spells while leveling without limiting myself to point blank range.
Sorceror migh have more trouble than that wizard becouse they can not get their main stat to damage. still leaning towards some kind of savant here. Maybe you have some grand plan to add another harper tree or something for charisma to damage. it is the last caster stat missing in a none class tree so It kinda makes sense I guess.

The t5 looks a whole lot better now.

While some might not like watching the buff bar while playing, atleast I like that mechanic. I find it satisfying to see my power grow as I play it right.
i definitely suspect that it will be a challange playing this thing. being squishy and having to hit things in the back. it´s a bit of a rogue style play I guess.

Runspeed was a good sugestion here though. in order to stack up spell/melle power you got to hit a target. wont hit a target if you come over there too late. Monks will kill it before you get a chance!

[cru121]

news flash - we already have a sorwiz spell which increases movement speed.

[K_9]

I'll be honest I'm not keen on this EK stance as it feels basically feels compulsory for Melee. "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 "

I don't feel that it serves any purpose other than to indirectly grief wizards/sorcerers. If you are a melee EK (which is the main reason for going EK) then your play style will not be to spam lots of long range spells. Using this stance means you will have to use quicken on every spell you cast as you are in melee range otherwise it can be interrupted. On top of that you have to spam a spell regularly to keep up your critical threat enhancement from EK meaning spell point management will become even more important. "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."

I like a lot of the new changes, but the main things that need to be done to make this tree more competitive imo:

1. Copy/Use from Nature's Warrior: "Essence of the Shrike: Striking a blow focuses your mind and body. When you critically hit an enemy while in any Wolf or Bear form, you gain [10/20] temporary spell points for 8 seconds.
   " Spell point management due to "Forces Edge" mechanic".
2. Remove the penalty on "Knight's Transformation: Toggle"
3. Fix "Arcane Barrier: (Now 1 Rank): Passive: When your hit points 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." as I believe it also causes half negative healing for PM
4. Change "Eldritch Accuracy: You get (INT/CHA) to hit with weapons and shield bashes." so you also get INT/CHA to damage as well. Wizards can and will get round this due to Harper. Sorcerers will likely not play EK
5. Too much end loading damage at capstone 20, this should be spread out a little through Cores 12, 18 and 20.
6. Change "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 Temporary hit points equal to the enhancement bonus of your equipped shield." change this to triple the enhancement bonus of the equipped shield

[Chacka_DDO]

I wouldn't say that there was consensus on the opinion that "Knight's Transformation's range reduction is bad and should not be in this tree". While the subject of a large percentage of post count, it's an opinion expressed by ~15 people across both feedback threads, in a pool of 50+ people that gave feedback in those threads. It's not been that common of an opinion in the other platforms we've gathered feedback through either.

I'm not sure if you address here the touch range for spells from Knight's Transformation, anyway it is questionable to see a certain number of posts as a kind of voting.
To say we had ~50 posts and only ~15 had this opinion means it is just a minority is very questionable.
In my opinion, in such a thread with 50 posts and 15 people express they don't like something specific is a LOT!
Consider also, that if someone reads through the thread and sees something is already mentioned many times that he is simply not going to repeat something that was already said by many others.
I have more the feeling that you're personally convinced this must be something good and everyone who is against this is mislead.
I have the impression, Your expectations for how many players have to speak up against your opinion are simply too high.
It looks like, your mind is clouded by your opinion and therefore you don't start to seriously think over.
And this leads to such very questionable conclusions.

While many have expressed a desire for INT/CHA to damage, I'm sorry to say we don't have plans to add it to Eldritch Knight.

Many have expressed it for a good reason.
Because it is more or less inevitable that every build gets the option to have one ability score for DCs, damage and to hit.
Int for damage is not really needed because the harper tree provides this already.
But sorcerers have currently not such an option (besides of PDKs and bard splashes), I hope you work on a new enhancement tree that provides charisma for damage, otherwise sorcerer EKs are left behind with there weapon damage and/or DCs.

[SilentRunning]

How about a spell that doesn't cost much mp that will give damage based on your cha/int , in the same way Insightful Damage does for an Artificer ?

[droid327]

Couple thoughts after discussing and considering things...

Go all in on making EK a non physical melee tree. Take out melee power boosts. Keep int cha to dmg out. Change the knight transformation bonuses from weapon crit range and mult to universal spell crit and mult - assuming spell sword procs crit using those stats. That'd make it easier to balance pure and multi class - you could get your physical damage from another class, but you give up spell sword die for it. It also makes EK T5 give some boosts to your actual spell casting.

I still think there should be more support for ranged EKs. The tree is essentially just Weapon Savant - I don't see where the harm is in letting it work with ranged. You're already limited by feat accessibility, by penalties for multi classing, and by ranged combat's inherently slower rate of fire - especially at lower BAB. The survival bonuses in EK are not going to let ranged EKs become immortal...The EDF arguments don't apply here. I'd make the core 0 work as a single target ranged attack like war priest got a ranged smite.

I don't like that you can't take Greater melee style feats as a pure in heroic - they never hit BAB 11. Since I think SWF is the "native" style for EK (compatible with orbs, doesn't require str or dex, provides attack speed), I'd suggest giving GSWF as a T5 if you have ISWF, similar to how Tempest can buy Imp Evasion if they have Evasion. That will also help feat starved sorc EKs compared to wiz.

Can they get an Elemental Vulnerability on hit? Immunes are going to be a big headache and there's no way to bypass it outside a T5 savant. EKs are already going to have to spec for their spell sword element plus force, and realistically for positive too in epic, so having a third element for immunes really strains your gearing options.

[tapster]

Tier 4

[LIST][*]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 Would you consider making the Temp HP for this to be INT/CHA mod vs shield enhancement, and instead of doubling the HP in epic, double the frequency to every 3 seconds?[/COLOR]

The temp hitpoints are pointless as proposed. This is a T4 enhancement so the above doesn't seem OP. Especially considering the lack of healing for non PM wizards

How about a spell that doesn't cost much mp that will give damage based on your cha/int , in the same way Insightful Damage does for an Artificer ?

This seems to be the most elegant solution to the stat to damage concerns

I'd suggest giving GSWF as a T5 if you have ISWF, similar to how Tempest can buy Imp Evasion if they have Evasion. That will also help feat starved sorc EKs compared to wiz.

Can they get an Elemental Vulnerability on hit? Immunes are going to be a big headache and there's no way to bypass it outside a T5 savant.

Again this seems like a senisle way to address the BAB/Combat Feat problems. Not too OP and it is a T5 selection. I replace Arcane Barrier with this and make a multiselector between GTHF, GTWF or GSWF.

Agreed that the power progression could be smoothed somewhat from 12-20 rather than the 18-20 leap proposed

Also keep the doublestrike as it is. TBH I'd like more doublestrike as not many trees apart from VKF provide any reasonable permanent DS adders.

[Aelonwy]

Targeting fails when the target is close to you because the game insists that you are facing the target and when you are close range the game and lag conspire to have you always facing the wrong direction of your target.

Our beef with close range casting is it causes spells to not land reliably. Surely your dev testing has shown this is true. You can't afford to spend 50+ mana on a spell that doesn't go off. Yeah, it charges you mana if you are facing the wrong direction and puts your spells on cooldown for nothing in return.

The bolded part is one of my greatest aggravations in this game. Sometimes I am facing the target when the game tells me I'm not facing but there's a tiny elevation difference, sometimes I'm facing but the target is trying to occupy the same space as my character and I just don't have anywhere further to back up to. Casters don't just kite to avoid getting hit. If you don't have your target locked down with CC sometimes you have to kite just to make the targeting more reliable. I mostly approve of the physics changes that took place years ago but the monsters being able to partially occupy the same space as my character is misery. For all my casters Unearthly Reactions from Magister is a mandatory twist just to function with wonky, costly spell targeting. This goes triple for mobs on speed; they move so darn fast my spells are almost guaranteed to fail due to targeting issues... and I'm still charged the mana/sp pts every time.

[Burakii]

The bolded part is one of my greatest aggravations in this game. Sometimes I am facing the target when the game tells me I'm not facing but there's a tiny elevation difference, sometimes I'm facing but the target is trying to occupy the same space as my character and I just don't have anywhere further to back up to. Casters don't just kite to avoid getting hit. If you don't have your target locked down with CC sometimes you have to kite just to make the targeting more reliable. I mostly approve of the physics changes that took place years ago but the monsters being able to partially occupy the same space as my character is misery. For all my casters Unearthly Reactions from Magister is a mandatory twist just to function with wonky, costly spell targeting. This goes triple for mobs on speed; they move so darn fast my spells are almost guaranteed to fail due to targeting issues... and I'm still charged the mana/sp pts every time.

This is why I would like them to add the Quicken feat to EK's tree, there is so much needed to actually pull off a good Eldritch Knight build it's a nightmare scenario.