U41.4 Preview 2: Iconic Tiefling Scoundrel

[Chacka_DDO]

I like the Tiefling appearance and animations so far but...
It irritates me that Tieflings have the same color on horns and skins I think this is quite odd.
Maybe you can change this at least in the future if it is too much work until the planned release (which should be in March if I see it right)

And if Tieflings use the fiddle the currently equipped weapon dont disappear, this is a quite common problem that makes also meditation look stupid on monks who use weapons other than unarmed.
And this is also a problem every other bard has who use lutes, they play the instrument and you have still both weapon in your hand or maybe even a Tower shield...

Another point is that it is certainly very nice that you have now a new instrument, but it would be of course even better if you could play the lute on your Tiefling too if you wish (and fiddles on other races)
Bards could have an additional equipment slot for instruments and the instrument you use decides the animation.
stats on the instruments could be performed skill or improvements for some kind of songs.
This would add a LOT to the bard class.
I just noticed that you have a fiddle you equip to the quiver slot, this is at least something but what happens if you want to use a quiver?
We need a separate instrument slot at least for bards

[Chacka_DDO]

The songs Enthrallment, Suggestion, Mass Suggestion, Song of Freedom use the sound of a lute instead of a fiddle.

[unbongwah]

I guess I’m just really confused by this when you also have things like a tree that will let you swashbuckle with crossbows. It’s a really, really strange choice. I mean, you can swash with crossbows but mostly suck at it, and spend a bunch of AP to get there, but why? There should be some cohesion.

I dunno that it's enough to make it a good idea, but I tested Dashing Inquisition + Swashbuckling tonight and the following appears to work with light crossbows:

• the Doubleshot and Enhancement bonuses from the cores
• the Doubleshot bonus from Dashing Scoundrel
• the sonic-on-crit damage from Resonant Arms
• Battering Barrage's Destruction effect

I didn't bother testing the tier-5 Swashbuckler abilities (i.e., ranged Coup de Grace / Exploit Weakness / Thread the Needle) because frankly I can't see any dual-crossbow build not taking the 30% Ranged Alacrity bonus from tier-5 Inquisitive. And since there's no stat-to-damage option in the Inquisitive tree, I'm just presuming a xbow Swashbuckling Inquisitor will need one of the other available options for xbows instead (i.e., Falconry, Harper, Mechanic, Insightful Damage). The other option is presumably Divine Inquisition + Favored Soul's Grace / Knowledge of Battle feats, but that can't be combined with Dashing Inquisition.

[Chacka_DDO]

[Craigrx]

The Fortified Fiddle buckler has listed as Race Absolutely Required Sun-Elf. I am guessing this is a easy fix to make but I don;t know but wanted you guys to be aware so that it can be changed

[cru121]

... Scoundrel, is a melee focused Bard with an emphasis on Sonic and Fire damage.

Frankly, I don't see this.
* The race has pretty much no melee abilities. No melee power, no doublestrike, no crit expansion, no flashy melee attacks.
* It has some minor fire/sonic abilities, but I don't see any particular emphasis on those.

I see a race with up to +4 enchantment DC (highly situational), a single-target Flesh-to-Stone SLA with high DC, and some fluff.

[leesun]

Base Racial Trait

• Ability Scores
  
  • +2 Charisma

[*]Past Lives

• Passive: +1 Reflex Save per Stack of this Past Life (max 3).
• Toggle: Gain 10/20/30% Enhancement Bonus to Movement Speed (does not stack with Striding/Speed items or Haste).

Enhancement Tree

• Cores
  
  1. Bloodsong Your weapon attacks add 1d4 Sonic damage to enemies under 75% HP. This damage scales with 100% Spell Power. Passive: +5 Fire and Sonic Spell Power.
  2. Charisma +1 Charisma
  3. Bloodsong Your weapon attacks add 1d6 Sonic damage to enemies under 50% HP. This damage scales with 100% Spell Power. Passive: +10 Fire and Sonic Spell Power.
  4. Charisma +1 Charisma
  5. Bloodsong Passive: +20 Fire and Sonic Spell Power. Your weapon attacks add 1d8 Sonic damage to enemies under 25% HP. This damage scales with 200% Spell Power.
• Tier 1
  
  • Obscuring Darkness SLA: You can channel your fiendish nature to manifest a zone of Obscuring Darkness at will. Creatures inside the darkness suffer a 20% chance of missing any attack they make due to concealment. This does not apply to attacking misted targets from outside. 10 SP. Lasts 30 seconds. 30 second cooldown.
• Tier 2
  
  • Traditionalist Caster +3/+6/+10 Universal Spell Power when wielding an Orb or Staff.
  • Lasting Darkness Enemies that enter your Obscuring Darkness have a chance to be Blinded with no save.
• Tier 3
  
  • Dance in Darkness While inside Obscuring Darkness, you gain +3 Saving Throws, +3 Magical Resistance Rating, and +15 to Magical Resistance Cap.
• Tier 4
  
  • Staccato Sovereign You use your Sonic spell power as if it were your Fire spell power if it is higher, and vice versa.
  • Enthralling Weapons While wielding a Dashing Weapon, you gain +2 hit and damage, 1 Sneak Attack Die, and 1 Enchantment DC
  • Magic of Melodies +1 Enchantment DC, +1 Caster Level and +1 Max Caster Level with Enchantment Spells.
  • Sonata of Darkness While inside Obscuring Darkness, you gain Displacement, +5% Dodge, +2 to Enchantment DCs.

Wow this warlock iconic looks rad! the enchantment DC will help my confusion a good bit! the darkness zone with the chance to blind will help the melee zergers in high reaper! and all that tasty sonic damage? fey pacts are going to pack a wallop!

[Chacka_DDO]

[Chacka_DDO]

I'm also not very happy with the Obscuring-Darkness, my experience with this kind of spells shows me that even if I often take similar spells I often dont use them at the end.
And the use of this SLA is at the end even lower, a cooldown of 30 seconds is just too much and in addition, it needs a certain time to "cast" this spell.
This makes it for me almost useless and not worth the spend Action Points.
I would expect at last a reduction of the cooldown to ~10 seconds so it is useful in a fast-moving group (which is the normal case in my opinion)
Ideally, the Obscuring-Darkness would be a toggle or long-lasting buff on you and it would follow you like an aura, similar to death aura or radiant force field.
Or this darkness would follow you and you have to recast it every 30 seconds as it is now.
Or it would be a toggle and it uses every 30 seconds a certain amount of spell points and it toggles off when you are out of spell points.
Maybe it is needed then to reduce the effects if you think it is too powerful then, maybe only a 30% displacement effect and a smaller chance to blind enemys or a save check for the blindness effect.

Another problem I see is the blindness effect, I dont know if it is really intended that this lasts not the full 30 seconds in reaper, at the end in R10 it lasts only 6 seconds.
I know you want to have reaper to be difficult but I think it is the wrong way to make player abilities less useful or even useless.

[Bunker]

Tumble seems slow on a Tiefling Scoundrel. not scaling? or taking into account movement speeds?

[Zites]

I don't care that much about Tiefling, I don't like evil things but I do like to kill them. Because I must have ALL the past lives I will run 3 lives of this EVIL thing. That being said it seems to me your not listening to folks feed back on melee Scoundrel lacking synergy, just going by what I'm reading and I'm not going to test it myself to find out whats good and bad because I don't like evil things and I'm busy killing them.

O and since I will have to group with these infernal creatures can you have horns different color than face?

Cheers

[Maelodic]

Love the high DC stun, echoing other's on the lack of synergy.

I can really only see this being good for fey-locks or Fire/Air savants looking to use sonic spells too - which they shouldn't over standard air spells due to lack of good damage options. If I had max racial AP I'd take the cores and the stun and be done - otherwise there's not a ton of reason to invest in this. Obscuring darkness bonuses are really nice but unless they follow you around they'll see extremely limited use.

The Fire/Sonic marriage in this would actually be really great specifically for a fire draconic bard - but honestly bards are terrible at damage casting.

This is far worse than just standard tiefling for the majority of things - the high DC single target stun is really nice not but worth rolling the race over something like Dragonborn, standard Tiefling, or PDK.

Scoundrel is definitely based on the Swashbuckler tree, but there is no reason to roll Scoundrel as a swashy. The best use I could get out of my testing on a pure bard was a pure caster during heroics and... really nothing in epics. Swash/Warchanter DPS in epics is a C- at best unless you go the unbardly route of deep Barb or Fighter splash and basically play a glorified fighter/barb/battle cleric.

I do think it's time to admit that Swashbucklers are no longer the "pinnacle of a balanced tree" as you've indicated in the past and give them another look.

[Hjarki]

I can really only see this being good for fey-locks or Fire/Air savants looking to use sonic spells too - which they shouldn't over standard air spells due to lack of good damage options.

The simplest example I can think of for a Bard that optimizes the Scoundrel would be a pure Bard with full Swashbuckling, the rest into Spellsinger/Scoundrel going into Fatesinger.

What you're thinking of as 'good for Sonic spells' really isn't because - as you noted - Sonic spells suck. Boosting your Sonic spellpower to the levels of Fire spellpower merely makes them suck slightly less - they're still dramatically below what you could do with a 'real' school of spell damage.

However, this is not the case with additional Sonic damage on melee attack. Between the Scoundrel cores, Resonant Arms and Scion of the Feywild, you're dealing about half what a pure Eldritch Knight would in magical damage dice. Being Sonic damage, nothing resists (or is healed by) it. Being Sonic damage, you get the boosts from both Harmonic Resonance and Fragment of the Song: Valor. Dealing 600+ Sonic damage/attack on top of "C-" melee dps is fairly significant. Especially when you consider you're bringing some fairly hefty control to the table.

[Maelodic]

The simplest example I can think of for a Bard that optimizes the Scoundrel would be a pure Bard with full Swashbuckling, the rest into Spellsinger/Scoundrel going into Fatesinger.

What you're thinking of as 'good for Sonic spells' really isn't because - as you noted - Sonic spells suck. Boosting your Sonic spellpower to the levels of Fire spellpower merely makes them suck slightly less - they're still dramatically below what you could do with a 'real' school of spell damage.

However, this is not the case with additional Sonic damage on melee attack. Between the Scoundrel cores, Resonant Arms and Scion of the Feywild, you're dealing about half what a pure Eldritch Knight would in magical damage dice. Being Sonic damage, nothing resists (or is healed by) it. Being Sonic damage, you get the boosts from both Harmonic Resonance and Fragment of the Song: Valor. Dealing 600+ Sonic damage/attack on top of "C-" melee dps is fairly significant. Especially when you consider you're bringing some fairly hefty control to the table.

I meant C- after sonic damage - I understand that there's some synergy with Fatesinger but that is a largely subpar epic destiny. The same character in Divine Crusader would do much more damage, only miss out on a DC or two, still be able to take stuff like Reign or Aria if they wanted, and have more utility in the form of crusade. I understand Turn the Tide is great, but uptime on that is suboptimal, and to make it optimal, you have to invest more feats or enhancement points than you normally would as well as more points in the epic destiny tree that may not be worth it - meanwhile Divine Crusader just gets full BAB off the bat, tons more doublestrike, crit threat, free healing, 10% more damage for all melees in range of crusade and healing for them too, aoe damage- divine crusader would be able to support the party more than Fatesinger would.

A level 18 Eldritch Knight would be getting 6d10 (7d12 at lv20) in spellsword boosts PER HIT before tiefling and epic feat, which they'd have a choice of (compare to bard's 6d6 ONLY on crit with an absolute max of 65% extra damage... so if the stars align you can do a whopping... 59 damage before spell power on crit - meanwhile a spellsword will do a max of 84 damage before spell power every single strike), not be restricted to light armor, a wizard would have better reflex saves, wouldn't be restricted to using light, low base damage weapons or SWF.

Meanwhile they also get DCs in the melee tree, more defenses in the melee tree, spellpower in the melee tree. The swashy (and warchanter too, for that matter) has to spent a TON of points in other trees. A Wizard EK could easily spec into necro or enchant if they wanted without too much issue because hey, they also get bonus feats. A Sorc EK would have a ridiculous amount of spellpower, and if you pair either with standard Tiefling, no monster can resist the fire effect. Those who couldn't anyway suddenly are taking 5% more from both your eldritch strike, tempest, and standard attack spellsword.

There are reasons to roll a bard. Damage is not one of them.

[Hjarki]

The same character in Divine Crusader would do much more damage,

Divine Crusader wouldn't be remotely close to Fatesinger damage. Keep in mind that doublestrike is capped at 100% and Fatesinger brings 48 more melee power on top of the 50% more Sonic damage debuff and a variety of neat widgets like 3% attack speed (which is actually better than +1 threat range on a pure Swashbuckler). Consecration is a neat trick, but rarely all that useful given the mobile nature of most DDO battles (same reason that Obscuring Darkness is fairly limited).

A level 18 Eldritch Knight would be getting 6d10 (7d12 at lv20) in spellsword boosts PER HIT before tiefling and epic feat, which they'd have a choice of (compare to bard's 6d6 ONLY on crit with an absolute max of 65% extra damage... so if the stars align you can do a whopping... 59 damage before spell power on crit - meanwhile a spellsword will do a max of 84 damage before spell power every single strike), not be restricted to light armor, a wizard would have better reflex saves, wouldn't be restricted to using light, low base damage weapons or SWF.

6d10 (33) + 5 (cores) + 21 (scion) = 59 damage/hit
6d6 * 37.5% (8) + 5 (cores) + 21 (scion) = 34 damage, multiplied by 65% = 56 damage/hit

Both are de facto restricted to light or cloth armor due to the Ravenloft armor set bonuses. The only way around this would be to make your EK a Warforged/Bladeforged, which would eliminate all of the bonuses we're talking about.

The Wizard isn't restricted to using light, low base damage weapons or SWF. But they'd almost certainly do so any way. There's no realistic way for them to use TWF without VKF. If they're going to use any sort of non-finesse weapon, it will be via SWF - and they're not going to have nearly the critical profile of the Swashbuckler. This is especially true when you start to consider caster weapons like Wild Flame (which has a massive critical profile for a Swashbuckler but a mediocre one for an Eldritch Knight).

The Swashbuckler would have +19 Reflex over the Eldritch Knight with equivalent Will (but Slippery Mind) and Fortitude.

[Maelodic]

Divine Crusader wouldn't be remotely close to Fatesinger damage. Keep in mind that doublestrike is capped at 100% and Fatesinger brings 48 more melee power on top of the 50% more Sonic damage debuff and a variety of neat widgets like 3% attack speed (which is actually better than +1 threat range on a pure Swashbuckler). Consecration is a neat trick, but rarely all that useful given the mobile nature of most DDO battles (same reason that Obscuring Darkness is fairly limited).

Oh... there's a ton of changes. I've been gone since they reworked it - good thing I still have my test character...

----

Okay that was ridiculously fun and I appreciate you pointing it out to me.

[Ordinary]

I found the following inconsistency in the Lamannia build to your posted notes:

Scoundrel's Skills - In Lamannia build it said "Balance, Bluff and Diplomacy" while your post says "Balance, Bluff and Spellcraft".

Which is correct?

[JeMaFo]

I noticed a couple things:

1) Male Tieflings (iconic and heroic) glitch when they read a stat/AP/skill tome. They just get stuck in a twitchy dance. Females seem able to read. (Wait... is this an intentional dig?)

2) I created an iconic tiefling, then iconic-reincarnated him as a heroic tiefling, then heroic-heart-of-blooded him into another heroic tiefling and the Iconic Past Life bonus vaporized. Gone. The bard past life is still there, as is the heroic racial past life... but not the iconic.

[lain5246]

If anyone cares to know what this is going to do:

The Flame-touched Fiddle is a Quiver-slot item that, unlike the Scoundrel's other items, is BtA and has no race restrictions. When equipped, your Bard Songs (regardless of what race you are) use the Fiddle animation/music instead of the traditional Bard animation/music.

Doesn't quite work in this build, but we've fixed it internally.

Please tell us that it appears as a cosmetic

[Sho-sa]

Bug report:

Finally rolled one up to test build concepts. The default armor says it is 'Light', yet when equipped shuts down +10 dodge bonus when Swashing with buckler. Not sure if just a display issue in the Log and dropdown AC menu on the Inventory sheet or actually gone.