Falconry T5 / Capstone

[cru121]

I am planning a wisdom-based (Falconry 41 AP) Animal domain (cleric 14+ levels) swashbuckler (bard 3+ levels, 11 AP).
Probably even Vistani with Vol deity.

How good (or bad) are tier 5 abilities of Falconry? 10 MP and couple special attacks on a longish cooldown... Not too hot it seems.
Are the DCs for bird realistically achievable? Mostly worried about performance while leveling.

And upper cores/capstone? Also seems fairly anemic.

Anything in falconry that I should definitely grab?

Any suggestions for the last three levels?

[Melkazar]

I love the falconry tree with my ranger but only use the death from above out of tier 5. Tried the others but decided not to use them. The heal is merely adequate and marking the target does little.

[cru121]

Thanks for your insight.

[Memnir]

I love the falconry tree with my ranger but only use the death from above out of tier 5. Tried the others but decided not to use them. The heal is merely adequate and marking the target does little.

I agree. The only other one I would suggest would be Dangerous (+10 ranged and melee power) if you go T5 for Death from Above and have 2 spare APs, because more attack power is always better than less. The Instakill works almost every with my Ranger - but I've also equipped some Assassinate boosting items, since that helps with the DC. The other two T5s are no-regret skipable.

The upper cores are fairly utilitarian, but you can boost any stat with three and five, so that's nice. I would skip the capstone, though. While +2 to all stats is nice (and the biggest draw), the Freedom of Movement was pretty buggy last time I played with the capstone chosen - and the Death From Above reset almost never procced. They may have fixed those, I don't know.

Besides the bird attacks, the 'must haves' for me were True Seeing, sprint boost, and heal amp.

I have a lot of fun with Falconry. It's a bit weird - but that works for me.

[Melkazar]

Thanks for the reminder. I did take Dangerous also for the melee and ranged power.

[LeoLionxxx]

As a Melee-wolf falconer, I found the trip and blind attacks quite useful - it's the helpless damage boost that you're really after there. I found the single-target attacks resetting the Death-from-above attack fairly often; about half the time, it would be recharged by the time I got to a next totem in Baba's hut.

[Captain_Wizbang]

I've tried a few different builds going T5, not worth it IMO.

The 30 points means sacrificing too much in another tree in most builds. That being said, the tree is just too weak w/ AP spent VS reward.

I like the tree a lot (for limited usefulness) and has its place.

It needs "something", not sure what, but right now it lacks oomph as a primary, or secondary for T5