2019 ED Pass: Arcane Sphere

[Seph1roth5]

Umm not everyone is soloing R10 quests with one hand while playing an iOS with the other. I'd much rather the devs not balance the game around reaper like they said they wouldn't.

That being said, I like the look of a lot of these changes.

Magister: No one liked being in Magister, usually just saw people twisting a couple things. Now it's a much more attractive ED for any DC-caster. Other EDs have more destiny but Magister'll is at least competitive and not just a place to slog out 2mil exp.

Draconic Incarnation: Being able to meta some of their slas sounds fun, and energy burst was already fun to twist heh. And it seems to do what the devs wanted in that it's all about raw power. I like the AP cost reductions as well, I think I always want to fit in daunting roar and I'm always tight on points.

Fatesinger: This was another ED like magister in that it didn't really help out many of my characters (although it did add SOMEthing usually). This updated version looks to definitely add a little bit of everything. I think the fascinate guard is a bit underpowered too though. The only time I think it'd come up is if I'm an intimi-tank and the party's getting beat up badly, I can intimidate, block, and hopefully fascinate them all...? Still, the changes look pretty cool. The core 6 no ASF sounds like it might be fun to toy around with.

[janave]

Is it possible to adjust Fade Into the Weave to be castable while moving? It has a relatively long cooldown and always sad when I lose while casting on the move. I would suggest a cooldown reduction rather than loading them with spell power, feel cleaner and better.

Fade 90s ?
Imperceptible 45s, -100% threat?

[Targal]

...or this can be a solution. Reduce DC failure penalty. then It'll be like this:

* Draconic: every core, your DC failure damage penalty is decreased by 10%
* when it is decreased by 50% and you failed to DC, 10,000 damage becomes 7,500 damage on save(penalty 5,000 * 50%)
* with full core, it is 60%. 10,000 damage will become 8,000 on save.
(5,000 * 60% = 3,000 away => base damage 5,000 + penalty away 3,000 = 8,000)
* It only applies caster's elemental spells.

I forgot evasive creatures. maybe having more DC will be good for ordinary Nukers

[ned_ellis]

No idea why you're spending so much effort on Arcane Tempest in Magistar. Magistar is an extremely AP starved tree as multiple abilities in the tree require 3 points to select and have 3 point pre-requisites. After putting your 12 AP into your prime stat (failure to do so is a loss of DCs), and after spending 2 more points on tier 1 skills which do nothing for your casting, to unlock tier 2 skills, you only have 10 AP left to work up to Master of (Spell School). Each rank requires 3 AP to max out, so you put 3 into Specialist, Augmentation, and Familiarity and...yea, you get to put 1 into Master of. You can put 2 into there if you only spend 2 into Familiarity, but you can never put 3 into that skill unless you give up main stat increases. So OK, to get Master of maxed, you clip 1 stat increase and pick up +2 DC in a single school at the expense of potentially 1 DC in all schools if your main stat is now an odd number. *You haven't taken any other ability in the entire tree!* No sigils, no tempest, no nullmagic anything. There aren't the APs for any of it, including spell penetration!

Perhaps consider making the Specialist, Augmentation, Familiarity, and Master of lines be a single selection that costs 2 AP for full benefit, retaining the same pre-requisites. You could then go all the way up the tree, at least. You'd still only have two points left over for spell pen and you still couldn't take any of the flavor skills (sigils, nullmagics, tempest, etc), but it would be a bit easier to check almost all of the required boxes. Recall, I can get full DC benefit including full penetration from Exalted Angel today and still have points left over to take a big AoE heal (divine wrath), wings, and a very nice debuff for some flavor. It would be nice if Magistar could provide offer a little bit of flavor for those at which the tree is targeted (DC casters).

I'm not here to stop anyone from putting 100% of their points in DCs. I think it's boring, but that's not especially important. You do you.

Arcane Tempest is there for those who want to drop big damage on stuff part-time.

Please re-think with the bolded part in mind...

+5% spell crit seems like overkill and not too helpful

I'm at 92% fire crit on my sorc right now on live, and it's not even a teifling, or maxed out for spell crits. putting him at 130% doesn't seem helpful.

how about +1 on caster level and max caster level in there

was going to say it should be crit multiplier but apparently it allready is!

Personally I would like to see an epic moment that is actually useful and worth spending points for imo.

I agree; i find both draconic and magister top tier useless; I take arcane tempest just because I feel i need at least one 'toy' to play with!

Magister
There is way to many points to spend in this tree, many of these abilities need to be consolidated into 1 tear. There is currently 68 available options in this tree, it is the most crowded destiny! I suggest the following: Compress all the sigil lines into 1 tear, compress the null magic line into 1 tear abilities. And combine the summing stuff into a single ability.

Keep in mind that this will now provide +5 DC to all schools and +6DC's to a single school, with upto 3 more for charisma/int users. Every FvS will now roll charisma and move to this destiny, every cleric will now move to this destiny and be 3 points behind FvS, and every DC wizard and sorcerer will now be dancing with joy at finally being able to cast spells in an arcane destiny. I would suggest you change the master of school to not include +3 more DC in that school but instead to be a alternative school. So if you focused on necromancy the master would allow you to pick +3 DC in any school other then necromancy. Otherwise the change you did will give school specific wizards a boost of +11 DC. Is that what you want?

Draconic
I like the changes to the core's as well as allowing the SLA to have DC casting added to them. However these changes bring them in-line with the other 9th lvl arcane spells, they do not surpass them. I would also spare a few min to look at the epic feet hell-ball.

I would suggest you change draconic furry to something that increase CL, crit chance, and crit damage instead of just SP.
With draconic hunger make sure they stack otherwise if you kill a handful of mobs you will only get the benefit one time.

Daunting roar and barrier of scales need to be looked at, in both cases i would adjust there cooldown down and increase their effect.

Lastly i would suggest adding some DC's to the core so that damage casters will not fall to far behind magister to the point where they can no longer land there spells.

Fatesinger
This is to new for me to comment on.

Many times the bolded part!! I think of all the changes asked for THIS is the one that will help it not be the new EA for magic users. For eg., Draconic has very little in the way of dc's but sorcs need them to land spells; I dont have sharn (yet?) but if the saves are inflated how long will it take for them to kill an archer?! ;p

As others have said, a DC caster needs some dps and a dps caster needs some dc's.....

Can you make energy sheath a selector type spell, so we dont have to reset it over and over.

+100000! Even make it cost 2ap but please listen to this!

Regarding Draconic Incarnation, I forget if there's any ED that supports Pale Masters well, so would it be viable to add a negative energy option to the selection of energy types? I suppose it could be justified being there with the whole dracolich thing.

[Edit] Some additional thoughts on the idea:
By making a negative energy route, Pale Masters can have access to their own 'Divine Wrath' type heal-damage ability in epics. Even if the healing portion is half of the damage you do; on a 30 second CD the negative version of Energy Burst is balanced.

By having the negative energy route in Draconic Incarnation you prevent PMs from having both the Magister DC boost and great self-healing/damage potential.

You also give an epic level version of Death Aura via a negative version of Energy Vortex.

It also gives Dark Disciple/death domain clerics an alternative destiny in the arcane sphere instead of just going Magister for DCs.

Love this idea!! This would open up a lot of build flexibility and would be fantastically thematic! Who do I need to send gifts to to get this implemented?!

[Whisper1]

Evokers will still need to land holds to efficiently and safely DPS. DC > measily spell damage increases.

adding +crit damage wont help if very often 50% damage or even 0% (evasion) due to saves.

Sorcerors will be forced into Magister tree.

[Katalissa]

Haha... I knew Fatesinger would be the tree that was totally re-written.

The only suggestion I can really make is that the 6th core of it should be called "The Secret Chord" - in honour of the late great Leonard Cohen.

[janave]

Do they even read us?
Otherwise they would know that adding +crit damage wont help if very often 50% damage or even 0% (evasion) due to saves.

Yup, and it takes more investment too than the binary casting, necro casters will have no trouble fitting in the 2 Ruins for boss damage, we cannot do that on our evokers .

Theoretically an evoker is better on Boss fights, tho still much behind a real martial DPS build, the theory lasts up to about R4-5. As for defenses: Instantkill > CC > Charactersheet.

On a second thought, ignore me, I am looking forward for the free* R6 exp

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

I see nothing in these trees for runearm use or spellsword use....... and yet both artificers and wizards are forced to start in the Arcane sphere.....

What artificers need: Full BAB while going melee (maybe give them a special version of Tensor's transformation similar to Knight's Transformation?), the ability to use their highest spell power score to scale runearms from (Rather than always having to change gear to improve the runearm blast of a different runearm), and runearm charge rate increase would be nice.

What Eldritch Knights need: The ability to use their highest spellpower score to determine the scaling of their Spellsword attacks, and some way they can get better armor class, physical resistance, and magical resistance. I'm thinking you could give them an armor class, MRR, and PRR bonus while Improved Knight's Transformation is added like so many points per epic level plus so many points per level gained in a tree.

[silinteresting]

Since Bards also support DEX and INT builds via Swashbuckler Different Tack, can we get 4 options, STR, DEX, INT, or CHA, for Fatesinger ability scores?

i agree with the above this would be good, only because id like to play a ek build in fatesinger.

your friend sil

[Montegue]

Very excited about the changes to Magister. I long to play in this destiny and know that Draconic with a twist is just fundamentally better. This might cause me to stop trying to play Eldritch Knight and focus entirely on being a caster at level 20+.

I would like to add my voice to the chorus saying that the points to achieve that goal are a little heavy, and frustrating (it's a fun tree, and I'd like to have a toy or two when DCs aren't a thing). It's not boring to be a DC caster, it's quite thrilling, but you *have* to focus on DCs because when you don't meet the threshold you may as well be piking. You guys will almost certainly balance against the new available DC caps in higher end content, so we *won't have a choice* but to invest in DCs fully if we want to do our job.

so, you know, great work, but please consider making the tree a little more points-friendly.

[Steelstar]

After the arcane pass, Arcane Tempest is relatively weak (esp for a top tier ability that only offers damage, and a 30 second cooldown). Maybe upgrade to 1d6+6 damage per cl per tick? Or add some sort of CC/debuff to better compare against EA's Divine Wrath heal?

I think we'd be fine changing the damage from (2d6 per CL) to ((1d6+6) per CL). Same cap, averages higher.

When last I tested; [Color] Dragon Breath attacks gained no DC bonus for equipping items that gave "Breath Weapon Focus"; such as the Scarlet Scale Cloak. Is this going to be fixed, or are those items very specifically only for dragonborn breath weapons and not for an ED that anyone can take?

Hmm. Will take a look.

Can you make energy sheath a selector type spell, so we dont have to reset it over and over.

I don't know that this will fit into the timeframe we have, and there may be balance concerns. Will need to talk it over with the team.

Regarding Draconic Incarnation, I forget if there's any ED that supports Pale Masters well, so would it be viable to add a negative energy option to the selection of energy types? I suppose it could be justified being there with the whole dracolich thing.

[Edit] Some additional thoughts on the idea:
By making a negative energy route, Pale Masters can have access to their own 'Divine Wrath' type heal-damage ability in epics. Even if the healing portion is half of the damage you do; on a 30 second CD the negative version of Energy Burst is balanced.

By having the negative energy route in Draconic Incarnation you prevent PMs from having both the Magister DC boost and great self-healing/damage potential.

You also give an epic level version of Death Aura via a negative version of Energy Vortex.

It also gives Dark Disciple/death domain clerics an alternative destiny in the arcane sphere instead of just going Magister for DCs.

An interesting idea, but outside the scope of what we have time for, sadly.

Ok. You find DC casters boring.

I didn't say that! I said I find only taking DC increases at the cost of a lot of other cool things boring.

Draconic Energy Vortex -- any chance you'll fix the discrepancy between the description and current state? Despite the description which says it ticks every 2 seconds, it actually ticks every 3 seconds, for 15 ticks total.

Will take a look.

Daunting Roar needs to have necro (fear) or enchant (mind affecting) or some other DC added to it; it does not scale well.

This is something I wanted to fix but lack the tech to do so right now; it might have to wait until after this update.

[HouseAtreides]

I didn't say that! I said I find only taking DC increases at the cost of a lot of other cool things boring.

But this is literally the way most of your playerbase experiences the game due to scaling. You're either maximum or useless in higher level content, to be blunt. There's no viable half and half version of almost anything, now. Especially a DC caster.

[Thar]

I didn't say that! I said I find only taking DC increases at the cost of a lot of other cool things boring.

Unfortunately, most of the other magistar items do not work well. the totems are not really a caster effect imo when i think of wizards. probably copying some other (game that shall not be mentioned) totem mechanics. Why would someone take a fixed point totem when you have to continually move around as a caster not to be smushed... The null guard effect is limited situationally useful but not as a tier 5/6 ability. DC's were the only item useful in the tree for casters. for non casters, nothing in the tree really gaves them anything useful out of tier 1

ie energy stacking. in epics +10 to resist isn't that useful when we take 9000 pts of fire damage. maybe change to absorb to stack better


summons - need spell focus AND taking the dc line.

tier 6 - whoot a non caster has a spell... but it's tier 6 and would you really stay in the tree for this? for a caster is it cheap enough and able to be boosted to be worth more than a 9th lvl spell you already have?

The tree needs some reasons to want to be here other than DC's. Make DC's a choice not the default in the tree.

null magic - lose 2-4 spell resist? when it's in upper 90s (drow) does that even matter? should be 10-30

that said, the dc's will make me choose between this over exaulted angel +3 core even though i'll miss the healing and cheap, fast tier 6 sla.

[Carpone]

Primal: +1 WIS DEX CON, +25 HP, +10 Spell Resistance and healing amp, +10% Thrown and Bow attack speed, +3 Str while raging

Does the attack speed increase apply to crossbows as well, or just bows? I ask because Shiradi Champion is Primal, and the description reads "This Primal Epic Destiny grants mastery with all forms of ranged combat". So it's not clear if excluding xbows is intentional, an oversight, or just a mistake in the description.

[Lynnabel]

Does the attack speed increase apply to crossbows as well, or just bows? I ask because Shiradi Champion is Primal, and the description reads "This Primal Epic Destiny grants mastery with all forms of ranged combat". So it's not clear if excluding xbows is intentional, an oversight, or just a mistake in the description.

I used the currently available buff numbers, it should be doing exactly what the Shiradi stance does on live right now. I believe it does encompass crossbow speed.

[janave]

The tree needs some reasons to want to be here other than DC's. Make DC's a choice not the default in the tree.
.

In content with spell resistance Magister was already the better eDestiny for arcanes. And I bet EA had the DC edge in MotU to offset Lich form and the many feats Wizards get.

Anyway, freebie or buyout this will likely eliminate off Magister builds for casters.

[Zafaron]

I don't think I've ever said this before, but.. Draconic might be in for too much power. This coming from somebody that loves power creep and huge damage numbers. I mean feel free to ignore me, because it's going to be fun to see the numbered (maximized+empowered energy burst!!!)

This ED pass probably makes me more excited than the Sharn expansion did, and it is very good. Really hope this makes it into the game in the not too distant future, so much good stuff I don't even know where to begin.

[Iriale]

Something that has not been said before: a really welcome change would be that you changed the requirements for [Spell School] Specialist. Currently requires the spell focus of the school, and being as a mandatory twist for any caster (DC or dps focused, it does not matter, and even for hybrids) this requirement is an unnecessary stress for any class that has no bonus feats. If you do not want to eliminate the requirement completely, at least include the wiz PL feat and the complecionist feat in the requirements so that it is not necessary to take the spell focus. Most builds do not have space for spell focus if they want to take DC past lives, and if someone has worked for them, they should be able to pick them up. Currently most of the builds take the twist taking advantage of a bug, without having spell focus, but please, allow this to be done legally. And no, do not fix the bug without changing the requirements, because there is really no room for so many feats in a class without bonus feats.

Think that without bonus feats, there are only 7 heroic feats, and with them you have to take metamagics (maximize, empower, quicken, heighten and empower healing or enlarge), spell penetration, and ... where do you find space, devs, for the spell focus and the two past life feats? Actually without the spell focus you have to discard one of those feats, or use a valuable epic feat for it (and with sharn you want the warlocks to spend a feat more in medium armor proficiency, wow!)... there is no space for the spell focus if you do not have bonus feats.

Please, change the requirements to include spell focus OR one DC past life feat, or delete them. Let us take the twist legally.

[janave]

Good stuff...

Please, change the requirements to include spell focus OR one DC past life feat, or delete them. Let us take the twist legally.

This would be huge! +1

[Iriale]

Regarding the changes that you have suggested: while I believe that now the arcane destinies become competitive with the other EDs of other spheres that had already been improved, I ask you to reconsider the proposed changes. As several people have already said before me, a nuker needs DC for its damage spells to work, and a DC caster needs some damage to function properly. Draconic should have more damage than DC, but should have DC. Personally I think the +1 to the DC by core should have it by default all caster EDs: exalted angel (who already has it), primar avatar (who desperately needs it, the caster druids are still orphans of ED with this pass), draconic and magister.

After that, Draconic should only have a modest up to evocation and conjuration (which really has it, a +2 if you spend points in that), and nothing to other schools. Instead, the magister should have increases to DC to all schools (divided into several enhancement lines). In fact, I think giving +11 to a school is a very bad idea and not only because of the power creep that this implies. Devs are always bringing up what is fun or not. Well, I'll tell what's not fun: that being a caster with a variety of spells from different schools, the game reduce you to a single school instead of let you use all the spellbook. Please, diversify the DC bonus of the magister a little, so that the total bonus to the DC is not so high, but it is obtained in many schools, to better take advantage of our spellbooks. Add some damage to magister or a reduction in the cost of the spells, and voila, it looks perfect. Remember, devs, that the reduction of the cost of the spells given by Arcane Adept does not stack with the one given by the equipment. Really sad for a tier 6 aptitude. At least do Arcane adept stack with equipment. Another possible option different from those already proposed: Magister is a good place to add improvements to metamagic feats, and a change like this is more elegant than adding damage to the classical form

Then there is something else that I would like to bring to your attention. The artificers who like to use all the abilities of their class (aka, spells + weapon) are orphans of ED. Shadowdancer is usually the ED chosen by these toons, but it does not add CL or spell damage, nor spell points, nor runearm improvements... please make fatesinger a more suitable ED for artificers by adding int to its ability selectors and some evocation DC, or add melee / ranged power to caster EDs. Anyway, to the pure casters the melee / ranged power is completely useless, and in this way EKs would also have an ED in their own sphere.