U41 Preview 2: Eldritch Knight

[Claver]

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.

I'll go one further...make quicken cost zero spell points while in improved knights transformation (Tier 5). Spell points go too quickly when operating at point blank range

[psykopeta]

I'll go one further...make quicken cost zero spell points while in improved knights transformation (Tier 5). Spell points go too quickly when operating at point blank range

that would make sense, since you're forced to use spells on touch range

however i would be a bit restrictive, so i would make it available for non save AND damaging spells (so must have both conditions), that way you remove healing, cc and instakill for free, from the equation (and remove the opness)

also free maximize + empower once we're on it

swing swing and polar ray in the face

sounds right to me, since defensive won't be top notch, at least some nice dps XD

[TheBenWalker]

I'm presently running racial reincarnations to maximize my pale master shuriken monk (EK). By far my favorite build I've ever put together. This reworking of the tree effectively destroys my toon. Why are you shoving out ranged options on this tree? Why eliminate my alchemical bonus to dex... This is very upsetting.

[Kilgrave]

I'll go one further...make quicken cost zero spell points while in improved knights transformation (Tier 5). Spell points go too quickly when operating at point blank range

If we could get even on of this I would be happy

[TheBenWalker]

There are points in the game where enemies cannot be reached in melee (consider the elementals in "Spies in the House"). Pure melee builds are left trying to goad fire elementals across the map. By making all spells touch and nerfing ranged builds on this tree, you're just creating a new flavor of melee build. Please throw a bone to ranged options here... perhaps by giving half increment increases to ranged power/doubleshot in the tree? For all that is good and holy, please leave in the permanent tensors toggle? (I hate casting that spell every few minutes) Perhaps allow the 5th tier bonuses to effect all weapons, not just melee weapons?

[Cantor]

I'm presently running racial reincarnations to maximize my pale master shuriken monk (EK). By far my favorite build I've ever put together. This reworking of the tree effectively destroys my toon. Why are you shoving out ranged options on this tree? Why eliminate my alchemical bonus to dex... This is very upsetting.

I ran these some time ago, and they are no where near top shuri builds anymore. It's not a big loss.

Also, man you are punishing yourself doing heroic lives on a shuri... ranged builds (especially if not a repeater) hit their flow so late in heroics.

[Sproutecus]

There are points in the game where enemies cannot be reached in melee (consider the elementals in "Spies in the House"). Pure melee builds are left trying to goad fire elementals across the map. By making all spells touch and nerfing ranged builds on this tree, you're just creating a new flavor of melee build. Please throw a bone to ranged options here... perhaps by giving half increment increases to ranged power/doubleshot in the tree? For all that is good and holy, please leave in the permanent tensors toggle? (I hate casting that spell every few minutes) Perhaps allow the 5th tier bonuses to effect all weapons, not just melee weapons?

I think creating a new flavor of melee build is sort of their point.

[Sproutecus]

that would make sense, since you're forced to use spells on touch range

however i would be a bit restrictive, so i would make it available for non save AND damaging spells (so must have both conditions), that way you remove healing, cc and instakill for free, from the equation (and remove the opness)

also free maximize + empower once we're on it

swing swing and polar ray in the face

sounds right to me, since defensive won't be top notch, at least some nice dps XD

Personally I am fine with CC and instakill being touch. I would prefer it turn AOE's into PBAOE., but I can live with hitting tab real fast. It is annoying but I get the flavor aspect of it.

Healing spells on the other hand, not so much. if I am healing touch only to heal (either through spells or via scrolls) then I am at a huge disadvantage and EK becomes a non-starter. Having to toggle off, cast heal, toggle on takes way too long.


After some thought, I want to retract my statement above. The touch requirement kills the transformation ability.

Let me preface this by saying that I have been running a EK life to get a feel for where it is at currently and to get a better idea of what the changes mean.


so lets look at Knights Transformation pros and cons

Pros:

T4
+30 USP
+5 to hit
+3 doublestrike
+3 spellcrit
BAB upgrade

T5
+1 crit multiplier
+3 dmg
Mobile Spellcasting

+2 to Evo/Conj or Enchant/Ill
+20 Melee power


cons:
Cant cast at range (including heals and CC)


So, is it worth it to give up casting at range for the bonuses? Seeing as going vistani T5 or fighter 3 gives you the biggest bonuses (crit and melee power), I would say that no, it does not. The DC bonuses are nice, but all they really do is make up for the issues with gearing. And mobile spellcasting is not even really necessary if you can cast at range.

[Sproutecus]

That having been said, I do see the tree being very useful for other stuff, some of which is used today, some of which is new:

Wiz/Sorc's in Korthos and harbor who are using Great Axes (which is most everyone) at low level will default to EK for the cleave, light armor, martial weapons, siphon (30 USP) and Spellsword (Ghost touch and more DPS). That should last at least until water works.
1+ Level in Wiz/Sorc splash for 10% AC, Siphon for more spellpower
2+ Levels in Wiz/Sorc to go for 10 PRR, 10 MRR, MRR, Spellsword for when you run out of spellppoints, martial weapons, Light Armor
3+ levels in Wiz/Sorc's to go for (Medium armor, Arcane Barrier, -15% ASF, 10 USP). This is a no brainer for pure wizards.
4+ levels in Wiz/Worc to go for (no ASF for medium armor, +6 resist, +10 USP, +10 USP with orbs)

Optionally, 4+ levels of Wiz/Sorcs could go into T4 and use a shield along with the medium armor. If you invest in a tower shield feat you could make a tanky caster build. ASF would be (-20% Core 4, -5% Shield Training, -10% arcanedexterity augment, 15% Arcanefluidity, etc). Or just use skyvault. The free HP every 6 seconds is nice too.

[TheBenWalker]

I ran these some time ago, and they are no where near top shuri builds anymore. It's not a big loss.

Also, man you are punishing yourself doing heroic lives on a shuri... ranged builds (especially if not a repeater) hit their flow so late in heroics.

Running heroics as an Arti/Warlock I've played several variations of the shuri-canon builds, but the pm build i was running was a perfect combo of insanely resilient (especially when 4 of us in our guild were running similar builds) with very high dps (15wiz, 3 monk, 2 fighter). For solo runs it is (...perhaps was) superb. The reason I switched to farming RTRs for it was I was going to attempt to reach the 100 dex mark for the guaranteed 3 stars per animation. Regardless, I think I can still make it work if they will allow the tier 4 toggle to be Tensers...

PLEASE ALLOW THE TIER 4 TOGGLE TO BE TENSERS!!! :/

Even now this EK tree is geared toward melee and I have another toon that's going to benefit greatly from these changes, but if I had to choose between the two, I'd take my thrower wraith.

[bloodnose13]

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

so i have ot admit i dont get logic behind this, unless im blind and dont see it, lack of damage portion of this is troubling, for wizard its not a big issue, as there is harper as a source of this bonus (unless you dont have access to that tree, then its a big issue), but what sorc is to do? the only source of cha to att&dmg im aware of, is pdk shaved gorilla which is problematic, i dont get the logic of it because it forcefully breaks the logic of all other effects like this in all other trees (rogues get dex in cores), why do it this way HERE of all places, it either should be like this in all of trees that rewire attack and damage to other stat than str, is it a hint of future change to all of those? (maybe they should have been made a 50/50 str/other stat to damage in the first place? "that was my personal preference of this from start, as it would not invalidate str as melee stat")

[Katalissa]

PLEASE ALLOW THE TIER 4 TOGGLE TO BE TENSERS!!! :/

+1

What about it? Roll the Knight's Transformation/Improved Knight's Transformation into one T5 enhancement, and replace T4 Knight's Transformation with the old perma-Tensers.

People who want the new touch-ranged-only Knight's Transformation can take it at T5, those who prefer the old Tensers and keep ranged spells can now take it at T4. SSG still gets to implement their precious "touch range only" feature, all the people complaining about it get thrown a bone with Tensers available earlier - everyone wins and everyone can be happy.

[Zites]

+1

What about it? Roll the Knight's Transformation/Improved Knight's Transformation into one T5 enhancement, and replace T4 Knight's Transformation with the old perma-Tensers.

People who want the new touch-ranged-only Knight's Transformation can take it at T5, those who prefer the old Tensers and keep ranged spells can now take it at T4. SSG still gets to implement their precious "touch range only" feature, all the people complaining about it get thrown a bone with Tensers available earlier - everyone wins and everyone can be happy.

This is a good idea to add Perma-Tensers with out the penalty to casting, and with out lousing what T4 already has believe me your going to want all the HP you can get with EK as it is a Melee tree. I feel Eldritch Knight is still lacking something and Perma-Tensers with out the penalty to casting could be it.

[The_Golden]

So I downloaded the update straight away and picked out one of my old redundant toons moldering away and respecced him into an EK. Currently level 18 I built him as as a wiz16 Ftr2 drow forgoing the Knights transformation completely for the initial test.

I gotta say I love Love LOVE the new changes. The cooldowns on the cleave abilities isn't a problem because you're dropping spells in between so any shorter and it would just be a waste. It's practically impossible to keep the Force's point buffs maxed unless you're right in the thick of it and he is far too squishy to maintain that sort of heat for long so the result is diving in and out of combat which means you're dropping Force's point stacks in between mobs. However due to the 3 very effective attacks in the tree means when you first get in you hit with a reasonable punch and there's a noticeable increase in damage as the stacks build and with transformation turned off you can fire the occasional MM or Frost Lance to keep things ticking over.

With the fighter feats in this test build and the melee focus the main thing I noticed was that the melee weapon damage far outstrips the spellsword damage. The spell power on this toon is relatively low compared to a nuker build and it shows, however with the focus on melee the damage is still reasonable. This serves to highlight that optimal gearing for this tree is going to be very very difficult but the clever thing is that investment in either will see results in the total damage output.

The other thing to mention is that spell point conservation is a massive challenge. I had initially thought that with the melee as a damage output it would be possible to run without spamming spells but with the damage output being so dependent on keeping forces point and forces edge up and the regular use of the cleaves costing SP the build absolutely chews through the blue bar. This again may be solved with optimal gearing but only serves to highlight the difficulty of covering all the required options needed to keep up effectiveness.

Only my initial thoughts and responses but I am planning at least three separate builds on live to fully test the tree. Despite the challenges I have to take my hat off to to Steel and team on this, its an absolute blast to play. Its a challenge to play and extremely rewarding when you hit your stride right. Its by far the most fun I've had with a play style to date and I'm looking forward to seeing how others get on with it.

Kind Regards All.

[Jerevth]

I think Tenser's still belongs in the tree. It was the epitome of EK.
I also think that if you keep Knight's Transformation with touch range only, those touch limited spells should inflict more damage. (More than +3% crit damage, it should raise the base damage at least 2 levels.) It should be like Bruce Lee's 2" punch but with a fireball.

Late to the discussion, I've just been reading and mulling my own thoughts on it.

[capsela]

I think Tenser's still belongs in the tree. It was the epitome of EK.
I also think that if you keep Knight's Transformation with touch range only, those touch limited spells should inflict more damage. (More than +3% crit damage, it should raise the base damage at least 2 levels.) It should be like Bruce Lee's 2" punch but with a fireball.

Late to the discussion, I've just been reading and mulling my own thoughts on it.

It is a spell that doesn't benefit any sorc or wiz with 10+ levels as they can cast it themselves. Tensors only benefited other classes who splashed 5 levels of sorc/wiz. Don't bring it back, it never belonged in the tree. I just rolled an EK and am leveling from 1 I will let you know what I think of it later.

[Jerevth]

It is a spell that doesn't benefit any sorc or wiz with 10+ levels as they can cast it themselves. Tensors only benefited other classes who splashed 5 levels of sorc/wiz. Don't bring it back, it never belonged in the tree. I just rolled an EK and am leveling from 1 I will let you know what I think of it later.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

[capsela]

Running EK means that you really can't use auto targeting, you are casting at the ground all the time which is really kind of dumb. Auto targeting will lock on randomly and send your spells off into the ether to do nothing. Even with auto targeting off about 25% of my spells failed to hit anything and that just feels bad and wasteful. It's very irritating to not be able to range cast single target and toggling is a huge pain and unworkable in midst of battle.

Some spells like single target spells are not as useful as an EK. This really takes a lot of power from a wizard because some of our best spells are single target spells. Burst aoe spells are best for EK it seems because they can just hit the ground and you get results. EK really limits your spellbook and as such is much better suited to sorc I think.

Overall it's great in heroics, you still are incredibly squishy and generate massive aggro. This really hurts when you get to epics. Leveling in epics is painful as EK you can't kill things fast enough like you can in heroics. Like others have stated there just isn't enough gear spots to properly stat all the things you need to stay alive. I was getting one shotted in epic hard which is really pathetic. The lack of single target killing from range hurts in epics the most. I think EK is really bad in epics and don't even try epic reaper.

The "epic moment" of EK is a huge disappointment overall, I can't see any reason to take the capstone. Eldritch strike is terrible. Waiting 12 seconds to do a simple cleave is an eternity in this game and half the time the energy burst doesn't even go off or if it does the enemies are already dead because the energy burst happens about 1 second after the cleave. 12 seconds makes it a really unfun ability and makes me not want to play EK at all. Like I said earlier wiz and sorc already have too many buttons to push. We need passives in the tree. Maybe other classes need more buttons but not us.

It takes so long to build charges with eldritch strike and you don't even notice when the capstone event goes off. I am so saddened by the capstone it's so awful please change it to some passive so at least we receive some benefits from the capstone. As it stands now very few if any EK's will use or even notice the capstone event occuring or if it does it will be after a fight is over. It is a terrible capstone, maybe the worst I've ever seen. It's also incorrectly labeled in the buff bar as taking 10 charges, the tree correctly states 5. Eldritch strike just tickles mobs in epics, it doesn't scale well at all.

Next life I may not even bother to put eldritch strike on my hotbar. It's just a pain for very little in return. Here is a hint, sorcs and wizards have AOE attacks. Guess what they are called? Spells, yup you got it. I also intensely hate the radiant forcefield tier 5. That is the most useless tier 5 ever. It makes me so mad I can't even think. Throw it in the garbage. Here is an arti spell you might need. No give us int to damage if we have to have an arti spell. It's like getting handouts Pathetic. Give us the arti speed movement. Give us xbows anything else. It's so bad. Unextendable 22 secs, w/ a 3 minute cooldown! What are you thinking? I'm absolutely flabbergasted it's in the tree at all and at tier 5 like we are supposed to be grateful for maybe the worst SLA in the whole game. It's tier 1 if that, at least the auto radiant shield warns you, that you are about to die and for that reason alone its worth something. So we have a tier 5 that doesn't even synergize with the auto radiant shield we have. So when we are damaged and need it the most we can't even use the tier 5 because we already have the auto shield up. It makes no sense at all.

Arcane siphon, action boost, again more activatables! Please stop, with the activatables! Wiz and sorc have a million things on our hotbars now. WE DONT NEED OR WANT MORE BUTTONS TO PUSH! Unless it's a good SLA (there is only 1 good SLA in wiz trees now, PK) and only then because metamagics are overpriced. And you can't fix metamagics because then SLAs are worthless. Kinda put yourself in a corner there.

That said it is a million times better than the current wizard trees. I can't wait until they are updated. Please hurry, this EK has just made me excited to play wizard again and I really want the other trees updated. Please, please, please hurry and update the other wizard trees!

[Katalissa]

I was getting one shotted in epic hard which is really pathetic.

****, even I'M not THAT bad! Well, usually...

The new tree is certainly a noticeable DPS increase over the old one.

The ranged issue does rear its head, as does spells just disappearing into the distance instead of hitting the stuff thats, you know - IN TOUCH RANGE where its supposed to be limited to...

[Tilomere]

Running EK means that you really can't use auto targeting, you are casting at the ground all the time which is really kind of dumb.

Champion hidden immunity to various arcane CC spells on top of needing to hard target yourself to cast spells into the ground most of the time, and sometimes needing to target mobs to cast other spells creates a messy game play.