2019 ED Pass: Martial Sphere

[J1NG]

Let's see...

Inner Focus and Wholeness of Spirit now allow for movement during use

A nice change, but nothing important. It's fast enough in using that most players whom would be using it would be using it whilst jumping around anyway to bypass the issue.

Wholeness of Spirit has its cooldown reduced to 2 minutes

A welcome change. It was more of an emergency "oh crud" use this now ability than a commonly used ability. Now it might be more useful.

Ki actives (the left column) now scale with the higher of Melee or Ranged Power

A needed change since a long time ago. Although given that the damage is along the lines of going from 250-300 to double (500-600), that's not really much of a change really. Especially given the high saves of enemies vs the other actives.

Ki actives get Stunning bonuses added to their DC calculations

A welcome change, this will make Lotus, Blossom and Petals now viable instead of being ignored abilities or hope the enemy rolls a 20.

Ki actives can now be used under Antimagic, as they are not spells

Excellent. Always was annoyed with them being unable to be used in anti-magic zones. Being the very few combat Destiny abilities to be affected so.

Ki actives are no longer linked in a line

Not sure how I feel about this one. Because each of the Actives have their own effects, but really only the higher tier ones are of any use, for range, or effects they perform. Will need to see later how this pans out, but I think each of the Actives needs a minor modification to make them each stand out against each other and hence are just as viable as each other if you can only pick one. Right now, you never pick the lowest ones because they only deal damage and hardly any in the first place.

Lily Petal and Orchid Blossom now care about levels 26-30 in terms of scaling with character level (was previously capping at 25)

Nice, but again. Minimal damage numbers change, means it can scale to twice the amount or even more, but it means little overall because the numbers involved whilst increased from before, doesn't scale well with cost (Destiny Point that is more worthwhile in something else instead) vs enemies it is applied against (where extra base damage would do more in the end).

Lily Petal now grants 5 Ki instead of costing Ki

Really? Lily Petal grants Ki on activation? That's a new one. This should be interesting. Henshin Mystics with ranged Ki Strikes and high Ki Regen could in theory make use of this, as there will be enough Ki to fight at range with the Ki actives and ranged abilities then. Interesting...

A Scattering of Petals no longer grants Dodge, and instead grants +100 PRR and MRR for 12 seconds.

VERY nice...

Except... Monks have a cap of 50 MRR (as others have already pointed out). And since tests I've done show that having temp increases without increasing the cap does nothing, you can give +9001 MRR and it wouldn't make a single bit of difference. And since you can't Twist it either as it sits on T6 as an ability, you're really only giving players +100 PRR and +50 MRR at best out of that.

+100 MRR Cap (temp) is required as well for this ability to make it stand out. And stand out it will if this is also added.

Why +100 and not +50? This is because there are some players with Monks sitting at +100MRR already, to only give +50 MRR Cap would make this only half effective. And so ideally, you need to give a temp MRR cap boost of +100 to make this fair for everyone who would use it.

A Scattering of Petals also reduces enemy Fortification by 200% for 12 seconds, and affected creatures lose immunity to Sneak Attack for that duration.
A Scattering of Petals now has a detect the same size as Drifting Lotus (i.e. twice as large).
A Scattering of Petals now has a 90 second cooldown.

Interesting, so it's basically becoming a debuff option as well whilst allowing GMoF players to wade into the middle of battle, not get killed in one hit from the extra PRR and MRR but also not be TOO far into the heat of things so as to allow a bit more leeway for players less tanky to debuff as well. Potentially very useful.

A Dance of Flowers is now 0.25[w]/0.5[w]/1[w], but no longer requires you to be Centered.

Very nice. Although, might I recommend that those who are Centered gains a tiny bonus on top? I think someone else suggested this as well. As it seems like the Devs decided to just make everything suitable for Twisting instead and forgot about what your own design goals was as well: To make it suitable for their usual architype to benefit from it suitably as well. Which this currently doesn't seem to do.

A +0.25 or +0.5 or even a +1.0 (or a bit more) on T3 for Centered might be worthwhile. Also it makes it a tough choice for players as well. Do they build their toon to be Centered viable as well? Gaining more base damage that way by using TWO Twists? Enlightnment and A Dance of Flowers? Or keep just the one?

Running with the Wind now adds 2/4/6% Doublestrike to everyone (no more stance requirement)
Walking with Waves no longer requires Ocean stance for its Dodge bonus
Standing with Stone no longer requires Mountain Stance for its PRR.
Dancing with Flame no longer requires Sun Stance for its (w) bonus.

Nice. Having the secondary passives available stance agnostic is always good.

Hail of Blows now adds +3 melee damage in addition to its doublestrike

No direct comment on this one, so I'll skip this one. Although the boost is always a welcome change.

Everything is Nothing moves to a 3 minute cooldown, no longer requires charging.
Everything is Nothing now has a smaller detect (double the size of Drifting Lotus, but still smaller than its existing version), and hits a maximum of 4 enemies. This is for both balance and performance reasons, as it significantly taxes the game on use & will now be used more frequently.

Umm. You're joking right?

Bwahahahahaha!

5 minutes to 3 minutes, now warrants a smaller size AND a limit of 4 enemies?
Has the DC been removed from it? So it 100% kills every time its used?
Or has Stunning Bonuses been now applied to the DC?
Or does it include bosses? That'll be great too.

If it doesn't. Why would ANYONE take this?

Right now, EiN is a tactical ability. Barely more than 2 characters per raid group carry this, because it's faster to melee/range/insta things to death instead. But it's great as a major "Oh Crud" moment to give everyone a few seconds to help recover something going badly wrong. If you happen to have heavy Wisdom investment without being a gimp in another important ability, then you might get enough Wisdom to make it semi-reliable to take out some enemies whilst the majority simply remain stunned for 6s before taking some untyped damage.

A reduction of size. Fine. A smaller area of effect means GmoF players need to play more tactically. But a reduction of how many enemies it can take out? When you also have SO many enemies that like to Phase/Immune (Red Named) as well? And so the EiN won't work on them and waste it?

You might as well remove the ability and make an excuse saying that it's for "balance" reasons instead. Because right now, that limitation of 4 enemies is really hurting it. ONLY if it was no save every 3 minutes, would that even be considered useful equatable to how it is right now, because it is then a tactical ability that you need to consider, plan and use correctly. But when used, it gives difinitive results.

In short, not feeling this change. And if it goes live. It'll be the first time my main has dropped EiN from their repertoire since 2012 when MotU came out. (Yes, I've used it that long, so I know all the in's and out's of it, and also know its weakness' too. And this change will kill it hard as it reads in this post).

NEW: T2: The Flower's Thorn: +3[w] attack. 6 second cooldown. Does not require Centering. Has cool petal FX. (1 Rank, 1AP)

You've given an attack inside an Epic Destiny. That does... damage only? Most Enhancements these days has something more, and some even on lower cooldowns. Unless there is something else to this ability, this seems like a wasted spot inside the Destiny. A % chance to slow a target down would be good given the name.

NEW: T5: Devastating Critical (+1 Critical Multiplier on a 19-20) (1 Rank, 1AP)

Always good for those not Centered to get something more melee out of this Destiny.

---

Overall, I like most of the changes proposed. But the EiN change I'm OK with the range change, but NOT the number of enemies affected change. That needs to go back and get redone.

J1NG

[Selvera]

I don't see much of a need to hit centered monks (or centered fighter/monks) so hard and hand out their toys to everyone else. GMoF already had *some* nice twist bait in it (Mostly just hail of blows and piercing clarity, but how much twist bait does each ED need?) And giving out their toys to others seems to just buff other melees (if they're good enough) without buffing centered builds, and reduce the unique flavor of centered builds, which are extremely restricted as is.

I can understand that leveling GMoF is a pain if one's not playing a monk; and as an edge destiny new players have to level this to 4 to unlock another sphere. But we're talking 1,080,000 epic xp to be acquired once here, not once per life, but once in a character's entire story. That's less XP then a single heroic pastlife doing quests that give xp about 5x faster than heroic quests. It's not painful if the player plans ahead a little and uses a centered build and it's not painful if the player just levels the destany with saga xp or even just does EN/EH dailies.

But yeah; better to not have any bad experience like leveling through GMoF uncentered right? Well, GMoF already allows you to be centered on any character. What it is was mainly lacking is granting benefits to centered characters to take advantage of this; along with having it's centered requirement perhaps a little too strict. Improvements to pedals attacks will help a little with the former, while the latter could be addressed by something like adding a tier 1 ability that costs 2 ED points that grants "You may remain centered with any melee weapon you are proficient in". And add to the stance abilities; the ability to use that stance (if you don't already have it from being a monk).

[ntvirtue]

So we see another monk nerf.....Am I going to have to suspend my account till this gets fixed?

[Hawkwier]

So first off, removing the prerequisites for momentum swing and lay waste seems wrong. Just one more reason to herd everyone not raging into precision when the apparent general aim is to try and diversify. You should reconsider.

Then there is the nerf to combat brute.50%->15% seems quite excessive in one swoop. Suggest, if you need to nerf it at all (see below) you go for 25-30% on this pass. If that doesn't do the trick in context of all the other changes then you can always revisit to tweak things further.

I'm also not clear why that particular nerf is deemed so necessary. Given it's damage comes into play on mobs which are defenceless anyway and are therefore not long for this world of woe, it only serves to slow down the inevitable?

I switched to LD from Fury a couple of years ago. Nothing to do with combat brute, but much more to do with the relative strengths of epic moments. If you really want more folks to play in Fury, there is a simple solution - make adrenaline cleaves work. It's ridiculous adrenaline IPS works for bows, but not cleaves for melee. You could even restrict the adrenaline cleave effect to work on thf only, which would also help that particular playstyle.

Please give us interesting choices. Nerfs like these, particularly when they seem arbitrarily over eager in scale, are simply unwelcome.

[Jandric]

So first off, removing the prerequisites for momentum swing and lay waste seems wrong. Just one more reason to herd everyone not raging into precision when the apparent general aim is to try and diversify. You should reconsider.

Then there is the nerf to combat brute.50%->15% seems quite excessive in one swoop. Suggest, if you need to nerf it at all (see below) you go for 25-30% on this pass. If that doesn't do the trick in context of all the other changes then you can always revisit to tweak things further.

I'm also not clear why that particular nerf is deemed so necessary. Given it's damage comes into play on mobs which are defenceless anyway and are therefore not long for this world of woe, it only serves to slow down the inevitable?

I switched to LD from Fury a couple of years ago. Nothing to do with combat brute, but much more to do with the relative strengths of epic moments. If you really want more folks to play in Fury, there is a simple solution - make adrenaline cleaves work. It's ridiculous adrenaline IPS works for bows, but not cleaves for melee. You could even restrict the adrenaline cleave effect to work on thf only, which would also help that particular playstyle.

Please give us interesting choices. Nerfs like these, particularly when they seem arbitrarily over eager in scale, are simply unwelcome.

+1

[SerPounce]

I imagine the reduction in LD helpless damage is set in stone and you're expecting push back, but it really feels like a bummer that is going to be the entirety of the destiny pass for most DPS builds. LD gets a nerf, and other destinies get minor buffs, but not enough to seriously compete with LD. So we get a whole system revamp that boils down to loss of 35% helpless damage to about a third to a half of players...

It would be nice if the one good DPS destiny didn't get worse.

[Carpone]

A single feat -- Mass Frog -- is more epic than EIN. 4 mobs every 3 minutes is a poor cousin compared to 6 mobs every 1 minute, even with Mass Frog's spell penetration bug.

[Cantor]

I don't see much of a need to hit centered monks (or centered fighter/monks) so hard and hand out their toys to everyone else. GMoF already had *some* nice twist bait in it (Mostly just hail of blows and piercing clarity, but how much twist bait does each ED need?) And giving out their toys to others seems to just buff other melees (if they're good enough) without buffing centered builds, and reduce the unique flavor of centered builds, which are extremely restricted as is.

I can understand that leveling GMoF is a pain if one's not playing a monk; and as an edge destiny new players have to level this to 4 to unlock another sphere. But we're talking 1,080,000 epic xp to be acquired once here, not once per life, but once in a character's entire story. That's less XP then a single heroic pastlife doing quests that give xp about 5x faster than heroic quests. It's not painful if the player plans ahead a little and uses a centered build and it's not painful if the player just levels the destany with saga xp or even just does EN/EH dailies.

But yeah; better to not have any bad experience like leveling through GMoF uncentered right? Well, GMoF already allows you to be centered on any character. What it is was mainly lacking is granting benefits to centered characters to take advantage of this; along with having it's centered requirement perhaps a little too strict. Improvements to pedals attacks will help a little with the former, while the latter could be addressed by something like adding a tier 1 ability that costs 2 ED points that grants "You may remain centered with any melee weapon you are proficient in". And add to the stance abilities; the ability to use that stance (if you don't already have it from being a monk).

These are great ideas.

[Tilomere]

I imagine the reduction in LD ... is set in stone

It was set in stone 2 years ago with Ravenloft Sentience system giving melee/ranged power. They had to wait a few years prior to withdrawing it from LD or everyone would riot at the immediate nerf and having to level a sentient weapon to recover from the nerf. This way people were able to level sentient weapons before paying the balance price of them.

Remember last time they added melee/ranged power with epic power to epic levels they withdrew that power from LD as well. Dungeons are balanced against character power. You can't just add character power without removing it somewhere else or the game falls out of balance.

[Carpone]

[*]Walking with Waves no longer requires Ocean stance for its Dodge bonus

Please change this enhancement to increase Dodge cap instead. It's trivial to max Dodge at level cap without this enhancement, monk or not.

[Grace_ana]

This really is a nerf/proxy nerf to monks, and I don't understand it. There are some nice changes in GMoF here (I particularly like that Lily Petal gives ki, and I say that reluctantly because I notice that when we like things, they are usually taken away). However, there is a lot here to be unhappy about.

1. The nerf to Dance of Flowers is a double nerf, really - it scales down monks who already lost a lot in the handwrap weapon change, and it nerfs them in comparison to other melees who will certainly twist this. Also, having it turn into a melee must-twist is just a bad idea for any ED ability. I see no reason to change this from what it is on live.

2. The changes to Wind/Waves/Stone/Flame should give extra bonuses if you are in stance. If you feel the need to buff it for other non-monk players to consider, fine, but being a monk should still give you extras, just like it is now.

3. The huge nerf to EIN is honestly terrible. If you really, really need to reduce the range, okay I guess, but limiting it to only 4 targets is completely out of line with other top-tier feats/spells/abilities. If the range is smaller, there is no need to limit the number of targets.

Related, the 50 MRR limit for cloth armor is literally killing monks, especially melee monks. There is no real reason for it, especially in today's game. Please remove it so all the melee monks can actually care about some of the changes here you have made, or they will be completely useless. (Arcanes will also thank you.)

As far as LD goes, 50% to 15% is a huge nerf. Please consider bringing it down to 30% instead.

[Chacka_DDO]

Right, Grandmaster of Flowers is currently only good for monks and with your grandiose nerf then it is not even good anymore for monks, congratulations!

EIN was good and working and there was no nerf need at all, I played often a monk and there is no any noticeable performance issue with that ability for me and your explanation sounds to me just only as a kind of cheap excuse.
Do you even know that most monks run LD nowadays because even with the current EIN GMoF is not too powerful at all?
EIN should work on at least 6 targets and have a cool-down of 1 minute then it would be still a nerf but acceptable.
And if you bring EIN that close to a normal death spell also the DC should be addressed and not only wisdom based!

Personally, I was in hope that you are finally also addressing Drifting Lotus so the DC is also counting in a trip or stun bonuses and that you are finally better the cool-down to duration ratio, I would expect at least a 6-second trip with the 15-second cool-down.

[Arkat]

3. The huge nerf to EIN is honestly terrible. If you really, really need to reduce the range, okay I guess, but limiting it to only 4 targets is completely out of line with other top-tier feats/spells/abilities. If the range is smaller, there is no need to limit the number of targets.

Related, the 50 MRR limit for cloth armor is literally killing monks, especially melee monks. There is no real reason for it, especially in today's game. Please remove it so all the melee monks can actually care about some of the changes here you have made, or they will be completely useless. (Arcanes will also thank you.)

As far as LD goes, 50% to 15% is a huge nerf. Please consider bringing it down to 30% instead.

YES...to all these!

[Propane]

[QUOTE=Steelstar;6217740]

Grandmaster of Flowers
This tree needed a lot of love. It was only OK for Monks, and really not-great for everyone else. There's now a fair bit of twist fodder in here, and fewer things require strict centering. Top-tier actives became massively more powerful with the changes, so they were scaled back somewhat to reflect being able to use them much more often.

Most of this is very good - a few concerns / suggestions...

[LIST]
[*]A Scattering of Petals no longer grants Dodge, and instead grants +100 PRR and MRR for 12 seconds. (add 25% stacking incorp)

• A Scattering of Petals also reduces enemy Fortification by 200% for 12 seconds, and affected creatures lose immunity to Sneak Attack for that duration.
• A Scattering of Petals now has a detect the same size as Drifting Lotus (i.e. twice as large).
• A Scattering of Petals now has a 90 second cooldown.

[*]A Dance of Flowers is now 0.25[w]/0.5[w]/1[w], but no longer requires you to be Centered. (If using a Two handed weapon 0.5W/1.0W/1.5W)
[*]Everything is Nothing now has a smaller detect (double the size of Drifting Lotus, but still smaller than its existing version), and hits a maximum of 4 enemies. This is for both balance and performance reasons, as it significantly taxes the game on use & will now be used more frequently. (way too much nerf - time or target change is needed...wow ouch)


Legendary Dreadnought
This Destiny is very good in its current incarnation. We opened up some of the restrictiveness of the two attacks and fixed an ability that did nothing/wasn't good. For balance vs. other destinies, we did diminish some of their damage vs. Helpless targets only.

[LIST][*]Momentum Swing and Lay Waste no longer require Power Attack to be active to use. (Good - allows for CE to be active an still use - nice)
[*]Momentum Swing and Lay Waste no longer require Cleave and Great Cleave (though those feats still reset the cooldown of Momentum Swing). (this doesn't feel right - I feel there should be some bonus if you have the feats...)

[IBCrabin]

Tactical Genius (which never really worked) is now: Unusual Tactics: Passive: You are a studied master of a wide variety of methods for gaining the upper hand. +2 to the DCs of your Tactical Feats, DC of Rune Arm shots, DC of Breath Weapons, DC of Assasinate, DC of Poisons, and +2 to the Perform, Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate skills.

The change is better than what is currently on live, but as a tier 4 this doesn't give a whole lot for a twist or usefulness in the tree. Maybe if this was move down to tier 2.

[Grailhawk]

So I think your right on the money nerfing Combat Brut to 15% helpless damage.

However an alternative to nerfing that could be Nerf Sense Weakness to 10% helpless damage (3/6/10%) Then give Fury or the Wild, Shadowdancer, Divine Crusader, Primal Avater and Fatesinger+5% Helpless damage in each core. That's a 10% buff in Fury, 0 or 30% nerf in LD (removes a must have twist for most people) and a 30% buff to all other destinies.

This is a bit more nuanced the then the strait nerf.

[Lynnabel]

The change is better than what is currently on live, but as a tier 4 this doesn't give a whole lot for a twist or usefulness in the tree. Maybe if this was move down to tier 2.

The only issue I have with that is Tier 2 is currently full. Without pushing something else somewhere, there's not really a place for it to go.

[Grailhawk]

The only issue I have with that is Tier 2 is currently full. Without pushing something else somewhere, there's not really a place for it to go.

There's and open slot in T3. Increase the bonus to +3 to each DC and put int in T3? lots of 3s is almost destiny ...

[Dark_Helmet]

Hello! This is an early look at the Epic Destiny Pass currently slated for Update 43. (The second Sharn raid is coming before this, so there's still a bit of time before this reaches Lamannia). A few notes about this pass, before we get to details:
[*]Improve the ability for people to play in Destinies that match their Archetype (ranged characters in Shiradi, etc) without significantly hindering the current ability for people to play in Destinies that don't (casters in Shiradi, etc)[/LIST]

This not only reminds me of why I mainly don't play Epic but also why I don't buy the releases since it just supports nerfing. In the "attempt" to Make a destiny appealing to other classes you nerfed the main class. There is no way I can make that leap nor fathom your logic.

RIP Monk. Honestly, I am glad to say I will save money and save it for my kid... at least Legos do not change overnight so that the pieces don't fit together anymore..

[Carpone]

If you want to give monks and light armor classes more of a reason to play in GMOF, then increase the MRR cap for cloth/light armor in the cores or in a T5/T6 enhancement (something non twistable).