2019 ED Pass: Martial Sphere

[Carpone]

So Legendary Dreadnought has an option for +2 Assassinate DC, but Shadowdancer doesn't have any options for +Assassinate DC. Seems like an oversight. Please consider adding +1 Assassinate DC per core, and +3 Assassinate DC to Shadow Form.

[Lynnabel]

So Legendary Dreadnought has an option for +2 Assassinate DC, but Shadowdancer doesn't have any options for +Assassinate DC. Seems like an oversight. Please consider adding +1 Assassinate DC per core, and +3 Assassinate DC to Shadow Form.

Shadowdancer currently grants +6 Assassinate (Stealthy, Tier 1, first ability in the row).

[SemanticMirage]

[*]Combat Brute's Helplessness damage is now 15%.

This change seems extremely heavy handed. Its essentially a 35% damage nerf across the board for all melee/range toons... It's not like a single overpowered class is getting tweaked, EVERY build who uses LD, from the first lives to uber completionists will see a substantial power decrease. Sure you're trying to make the other destinies better but there's absolutely nothing new in the other destinies that comes close to compensation for the 35% reduction in damage. This means that melee/range toons will just see a decrease in DPS, even in the new destinies. It'll just make every toon worse. I don't understand why it's necessary either besides trying to heavy handidly push people into trying different destinies...

In end game helpless damage multiplication is the only way DPS toons have a chance on killing trash mobs, trying to beat down a beefy champ in even mid skulls without helpless multiplication is insanely slow, not to mention you'll probably be dead before the mob is. What this change is doing is pushing DPS toons to be essentially ways to kill death warded champs/mobs and boss beaters. As another poster mentioned above, the proposed change will likely just cause runs through dungeons to be slower, as beefy held champs take longer to kill.

As others have proposed, putting helpless damage into other DPS based ED's might be a good way to help balance the playing field, but straight up nerfing LD against trash by 70% isn't a good way to go about that imo.

[draven1]

Shadowdancer currently grants +6 Assassinate (Stealthy, Tier 1, first ability in the row).

LD easily get Stealthy as a twist, but, SD can't get LD's core.
It is very strange, LD can get more direct assassinate DC than SD.

And an assassin's DC would be 15~30 lower than caster's DC after this pass. Because magister would grant +11 DC for spells, and there is no assassination DC on reaper tree, but, +7 more DC from caster reaper tree. And there is no clicky for assassination DC that increase more DC situationally unlike spells(+5 from Arcane insight, +5 from Arcane Spellsurge).

Contents would be balanced around caster's DC, so, it means assassinate would AUTO-FAIL on challenging content.

[Duhboy]

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).


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.

• Combat Brute's Helplessness damage is now 15%.

Diminish some damage vs. helpless targets huh. Currently on live it's an additional +50% while an action boost is active while your new version is +15%. That's a -35% damage loss to helpless targets regardless of your build that uses LD. That's not diminishing some damage with this ability that's snuffing it out to near non-existence while Draconic gets an additional +30% to spell crit damage which I'm sure will apply to Eldritch Blasts, SLAs, etc etc. I said it before and I'll say it again. If LD is working so well then why nerf it? Why not instead raise the other EDs to meet that standard that Dreadnought has set and leave LD alone? They are called EPIC DESTINIES for a reason.

[Duhboy]

This change seems extremely heavy handed. Its essentially a 35% damage nerf across the board for all melee/range toons... It's not like a single overpowered class is getting tweaked, EVERY build who uses LD, from the first lives to uber completionists will see a substantial power decrease. Sure you're trying to make the other destinies better but there's absolutely nothing new in the other destinies that comes close to compensation for the 35% reduction in damage. This means that melee/range toons will just see a decrease in DPS, even in the new destinies. It'll just make every toon worse. I don't understand why it's necessary either besides trying to heavy handidly push people into trying different destinies...

In end game helpless damage multiplication is the only way DPS toons have a chance on killing trash mobs, trying to beat down a beefy champ in even mid skulls without helpless multiplication is insanely slow, not to mention you'll probably be dead before the mob is. What this change is doing is pushing DPS toons to be essentially ways to kill death warded champs/mobs and boss beaters. As another poster mentioned above, the proposed change will likely just cause runs through dungeons to be slower, as beefy held champs take longer to kill.

As others have proposed, putting helpless damage into other DPS based ED's might be a good way to help balance the playing field, but straight up nerfing LD against trash by 70% isn't a good way to go about that imo.

Completely agree with this. Nerfing one ED in order to make the other one more appealing is terrible design. If you guys want people to use other EDs then make them more appealing. Anything else is just asinine.

[Duhboy]

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.

Adrenaline + Cleaves = Happiness.

Having Adrenaline actually work with cleaves would be amazing for fury. I support this.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

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.

• Momentum Swing and Lay Waste no longer require Power Attack to be active to use.
• Momentum Swing and Lay Waste no longer require Cleave and Great Cleave (though those feats still reset the cooldown of Momentum Swing).
• Lay Waste now adds Trip Bonuses to its DC.
• Unmoveable and Thick Skinned are no longer Action Boosts (they didn't really act like them anyway, they were just using their charge counters). Instead, they are instead simply restricted to their respective cooldowns (which are unchanged).
• 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.
• Combat Brute's Helplessness damage is now 15%.

This is a good start I suppose..........

For artificers going melee, this is a good start.... however melee artificers really could use the ability to allow their runearms to use whatever spellpower and spell crit chance is highest to determine scaling, this way artificers could focus on upping their repair spellpower and have that reflect onto their runearm blasts. Further more, with sentient filigrees being a thing, it would not hurts to add the same effect for sentient filigrees such as the new one that does sonic damage! If you make something in a tree where someone's highest spell power and spell critical chance is used for scaling spell swords, sentient filigrees, and runearm blasts then I do believe the melee caster variations would get a fair advantage.

[cru121]

This change seems extremely heavy handed. Its essentially a 35% damage nerf

Your math is off. Assuming an average melee deals around 245% vs helpless, this change reduces it to 210%, i.e. around 14% reduction of damage. Of course, this only happens while an action boost is active; when not boosting your helpless damage is unchanged.

[noinfo]

• Momentum Swing and Lay Waste no longer require Power Attack to be active to use.
• Momentum Swing and Lay Waste no longer require Cleave and Great Cleave (though those feats still reset the cooldown of Momentum Swing).
• Lay Waste now adds Trip Bonuses to its DC.
• Unmoveable and Thick Skinned are no longer Action Boosts (they didn't really act like them anyway, they were just using their charge counters). Instead, they are instead simply restricted to their respective cooldowns (which are unchanged).
• 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.
• Combat Brute's Helplessness damage is now 15%.

[/LIST]

Please consider options for Great Sword etc to headmans chop or pulverizer. It can be assumed that Greatswords were left out originally due to the dominance of ESOS but those days are long gone. Great Axes and Great Swords should be along the same lines but with the features that add to axes they fall behind.

[SemanticMirage]

Your math is off. Assuming an average melee deals around 245% vs helpless, this change reduces it to 210%, i.e. around 14% reduction of damage. Of course, this only happens while an action boost is active; when not boosting your helpless damage is unchanged.

Fair point, I was basing this off of what they'd be doing to LD alone, didn't do the actual calculations. I'd disagree on average melee there, not all builds take no mercy/brutality, I'd say average is at best just sense weakness. So thats 100+50+50+30=230 -> 100+50+15+30=195 => 15% ish but that's more or less irrelevant. My point still stands regardless, nothing in the new destinies properly compensates for that 14-15% damage loss. So melee and ranged toons will just see a DPS hit.

[EllisDee37]

I just wanted to say that we are aware of your concern about the number of attacks over time with Two-Handed fighting in particular, and are looking into some possible improvements. It's a bit early to provider further detail, however.

Rebalance blitz to only generate stacks from mainhand attacks. (So 20% chance instead of 10%? Or maybe 15%? I dunno; test to find the best value.) Simple, elegant, balanced for all combat styles; done and done.

EDIT: Also I guess only the first shot of repeater triplets? I don't know how repeaters work with blitz.

[EllisDee37]

no, just no, so many people have switched to precision for the fort bypass, bonus to hit and the redonculess AC in endgame high reaper mobs, what use does power attack have now? a lonesome barb with power attack enh? bad call

Maybe they could change power attack to grant melee power instead of a straight +5/+10 damage. Something like "Grants a bonus to melee power equal to your BAB, or 1.5 times your BAB if THF."

Would that be enough to have it compete with precision, do you think? Too good or not good enough?

[Seph1roth5]

GMoF: I like the power boost to ki attacks, before I'd just use them to charge up everything is nothing really, now they might actually be useful in combat. And removing the stance requirements for other abilities makes them twistable, but maybe there should be something more in the ED that makes it better as a monk? Maybe make EiN or the cores beefier if you're a monk?

Legendary Dreadnought: I like the PA/Cleave requirement changes, although I'd still probably take both on my 2-handers, it means I can play around with the ED more on other DPS characters that don't necessarily have room for those.

Shadowdancer: Still looks really complicated...but again, glad to see shadow charges go. I haven't made a dex-based char in a while, not since falconer/harper really. I guess I'd still use shadowdancer for my assassin but that's pretty much it. I guess all the assassination-based attacks would be better on a falconer...

[Yokido]

I typically spend the majority of my time criticizing lack of action etc in making improvements to the game...

Although I personally don't place a high priority on EDs, I do agree that what you're doing appears to be a good decision for the players AND the game, and I commend you for it.

/Signed
/Kudos

[Yokido]

I see a few folks discussing numbers they think abilities should have, and I think that's not really something up for discussion since the devs have a better idea of what balanced is with a view of the whole picture. Also taking into account the short window of time they have here, they might've already gotten plenty to chew on from reading some of the first responses.

In their defense, it was honestly hard for me to read past the 2nd and 3rd pages as-well, since there's a few walls of text that I quickly lost interest in for the above reason.

[MaeveTuohy]

Disappointed with the changes that matter to the Grand Master of Flowers. It is now more of a generic ED akin to Falconry and Harper Agent (though less useful).

Can we look forward to a meaningful response from the dev that matters to all the concerns raised above?

[lyrecono]

Maybe they could change power attack to grant melee power instead of a straight +5/+10 damage. Something like "Grants a bonus to melee power equal to your BAB, or 1.5 times your BAB if THF."

Would that be enough to have it compete with precision, do you think? Too good or not good enough?

Thats a hard question, in the current meta, enemy AC is nuts, so increasing the hit to bab for more damage wouldn't work
Adding damage multipliers in epics might, power attack damage multiplied by your epic levels, not reduced in reaper, just like sneak attack.
But the way the game is changing, i doubt it would last though.

Presision is just crazy good in the meta, so much undead and constructs in the last 2 expension packs, the bonus to hit in this crazy enemy ac era is just gravy.

Power attack deliveres 10 damage in an era where 1k+ hits are expected of you, presision is just better.
And the devs know it, i think these changes to power attack and cleaves are done to cater to the alt stat crowd that uses wis/int/dexor charisma to hit and damage, not to cater to the power attack users (aka 2hf).
There is no sollution without handing out incredible power to PA, wich won't hapen.
Instead of helping melees, it's helping alt or light melees.

Sad.....

[Noircere]

We had a few primary goals in the Epic Destiny pass

• First and foremost, try to put each Destiny in a place where it's worth using for at least some builds.
• Fix bugs and remove things that hinder fun or usability
• Improve the ability for people to play in Destinies that match their Archetype

Emphasis mine. I think the changes do not achieve these goals for Grandmaster of Flowers in particular.

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.

This is true. However, I feel that it's been made worse for monks, and it's still slightly worse for everyone else. So, even for ideal builds, it's not even OK anymore. Here's why:

• 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.

On live, I can use EiN about once per quest. I sometimes use it twice in a raid. It can't be used in very short quests, like everything in the Cogs, and it can't be used near the beginning of a quest, nor shortly after resting. I typically use it in one of two ways:

• Tactically, to lessen or neutralize the toughest encounter in a quest.
• Gratuitously, to kill 50+ enemies at a time by pulling waaaaay more enemies than the party could usually handle if EiN weren't available.

So, its currently "worth" about 50 kills per quest at a minimum. When I deliberately save it for a specific encounter, that means I must be getting even more value out of that, or I wouldn't bother. Most quests since Ravenloft take somewhere between 5 and 15 minutes. At 4 kills per 3 minutes (plus one use immediately at the beginning), the new EiN is worth 4 to 20 kills per quest, depending on length. That's a staggering 60% to 92% nerf to the single most powerful ability in GMoF. This is also a quality of life decrease. The reduced range means it probably can't hit the flying Doom Skulls over the lava on Too Hot to Handle. The target count limit means that Deathblocked mobs in the area will also protect other nearby mobs from being killed -- they currently don't. All told, I'm being forced to consider switching over to Legendary Dreadnought, the very overused destiny that you seem to be trying to get people to switch away from.

Real talk: EiN probably does need to be nerfed. Me rounding up 4+ packs of mobs almost certainly causes lag, at least until I kill them all. Being able to kill that many things at once is probably too powerful and too constraining on the design space and encourages toxic behavior. GMoF does have other things going for it, for example +3 tactics DCs, Slippery Mind, all three no-fail saves, and knockdown immunity. Particularly now that Legendary Dreadnought grants +2 tactics DCs, it's really hard to see those benefits adding up to more value than the ~25% more raw DPS and 15% helpless DPS from Legendary Dreadnought. Even for monks, GmoF is still less popular than Legendary Dreadnought, so if a melee monk -- arguably the one spec GMoF is intended to be most suited for -- is reconsidering the whole tree, then these changes have failed the two goals above.

We had a few primary goals in the Epic Destiny pass

• First and foremost, try to put each Destiny in a place where it's worth using for at least some builds.
• Improve the ability for people to play in Destinies that match their Archetype

If the ability really can't be kept as-is, then it needs to be stronger than currently planned or GMoF needs a serious power boost somewhere else. Some people have suggested making EiN a 6-target 1min cooldown ability, effectively a clone of Mass Frog. This would be fine. That would be worth 30 to 90 kills per quest, but it would lose the ability to specifically neutralize the single toughest encounter in a quest. It would scale better with quest length, be usable at the beginning, and not make you want to skip resting to avoid losing it. It would however still have the problem of "wasting" target cap on immune mobs. All-in-all, this would be fair.

If not that, then the build needs significant DPS or survival buffs to make it worthwhile over Legendary Dreadnought. At least some of these should be monk-specific, or better on a monk. Otherwise, ALL the classes currently using Legendary Dreadnought will switch over and you'll create a new problem. A few ways to benefit monks more than other classes might be:

• More desirable ways to spend ki. I generate 25 ki per second, but can only spend 20 ki per second, even spamming everything on cooldown. Most attacks generate the same or more ki than they cost. For example: a "metamagic" that reduces the cooldown on abilities that cost ki, but they cost more ki.
• Boosted MRR cap.
• Boosted dodge cap.
• Improving Deflect Arrows cooldown from 6sec down to 4, 3, or 2.
• Offhand attack chance - monks aren't capped except for T5 Shintao in Air stance.
• Offhand doublestrike.
• Accuracy or enemy AC reduction - Good for first life or ungeared monks more so than other classes; hit triple-dips on DPS, ki generation, AND ki spender's success rate.
• Tactics DCs - it's borderline impossible to get QP high enough for 100% in mid-high reaper Sharn, and will still be so even with the +6 DCs from the new past life.
• Stance or finishing moves improvements - perhaps make a single ability that improves all 4 stances, so other classes can skip just that one ability, rather than feeling shut out from half the tree?
• Void strike access.

These types of effects would benefit monks more strongly than other classes. If you do a little of several different items from this list, they can each make GMoF a little better for several different builds, while also making GMoF better than Legendary Dreadnought for monks but not for other classes.

[Tarinia]

This is great news on GMOF and the other cores. I am generally very pleased with GMOF changes. However let me address 1 or 2 concerns and give a suggestion or two.

1. EIN seems way too restricted to eliminating only 4 creatures. Most caster spells do much more than that and this is the top tier destiny ability. I haven't looked yet but are you scaling back other highest tier destiny abilities? Also does stunning impact this DC of EIN as well -- otherwise it is even weaker without at least 100 Wisdom? Please don't limit the number of mobs it can take out since you are scaling back its range. I mean will it be any different than essentially Frog now? If you must scale it -- I would think 10 mobs would be at the very least a reasonable amount to impact. Personally I have never seen an EIN affect game performance and I've done thousands i'm sure.

2. Ocean -- there is plenty of dodge available everywhere -- this should be an increase to Dodge cap or both Power and Cap.

3. Does Scattering of Petals increase the MMR (and PRR) increase cap for 12 seconds as well? Capped at 50 for monks and other cloth wearers means that will be quite useless....since Monk is it's "designed" destiny this needs to increase both power and cap.

4. Will Scattering of Petals still blind or is this replaced by the enemy reduction?

5. Final Question: Does the left "line" scale with up to 100, 200% melee power or is it unlimited?

Overall awesome work and look forward to the challenge of reworking points in this destiny with so many nice changes.

I am playing a monk only once in a while- in epic destinies I would let all the abilities for monks as they are now and give them free for non centered chars with a lower value.
EIN is the only high tier ability that is similar to a instant death effect for monks in epic destinies. Your nerf is terrible and way to similar to the banshee spell from wizards but without possibility to max the DC.
A 3 minute cooldown and no max. numbers of targets should be way enough and it will still feel as a nerf because of the smaller range.

Best regards
Tarinia