2019 ED Pass: Divine Sphere

[Steelstar]

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:

We had a few primary goals in the Epic Destiny pass, compounded by a very slim time-frame of 3 weeks for principal changes.

• 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
  
  • You'll notice that every Epic Moment that required you to do weird things to charge it up no longer requires that.
  
  
• 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)

Like we said above, the timeframe was slim. We didn't hit everything we would have liked to, and there are still abilities within individual Destinies that still probably aren't worth taking. We're listening for feedback here, but our ability to act on it is similarly time-restricted; we're unlikely to further revamp whole trees or add completely new skills at this time, but we may be able to make number tweaks and fix outstanding bugs.

That said, this is the thread for Divine Sphere Destinies, so let's dive in. Be sure to check out the other Sphere threads when you're done, as well as the topic on new Epic Past Lives coming with these changes.

Unyielding Sentinel
This Destiny was meant to do two things: Keep you alive and help you tank. It's decent at the first and not great at the second. Most of the changes here are meant to help you tank. The two new Actives aren't perfect; we had some bigger plans and ran into tech issues in doing what we wanted. Hoping they'll at least be helpful, and we can tweak numbers until they are.

• Commanding Presence's hate doubles to 100/200/300%
• Stand Against the Tide's extra hate jumps to 50% per stack (250% at full stacks, was 100%)
• Stand Against the Tide's extra hate now applies to missile weapon damage and magic damage as well (was previously melee-only)
• Divine Energy Resistance can now be cast directly on allies (instead of only yourself)
• Ward Against Evil's light damage scales with 400% of the higher of Melee and Ranged Power
• Rank 3 of Ward Against Evil now also grants you immunity to the Mind Control effects of Evil creatures.
• You can now use Undying Vanguard while Crowd-Controlled and/or Helpless
• Undying Vanguard's Temporary HP now last for 30 seconds.
• NEW: T4: Draw them Out: Melee Attack: +3[w]. This attack adds 300 Hate for the user to creatures it hits on top of its normal damage. 6 second cooldown. (1 Rank, 1AP)
• NEW: T6: Celestial Mandate: Melee Attack: +5[w]. This attack adds 2000 Hate for the user to creatures it hits on top of its normal damage. 6 second cooldown. (1 Rank, 1AP)

Exalted Angel
This is a good tree, for those who can make use of the skills in it. We analyzed it and didn't see much that we thought merited major change, though we might try to loop back for some bugfixes before release. We did make a change to one skill for game balance reasons.

• Reborn in Light no longer charges with Endless Ardor and Righteous Fervor; instead, it is once per Rest (keeps 10min cooldown).

Divine Crusader:
This is also a Pretty Good tree in its current form, but lacks a little scaling and punch. In adding punch, we wanted to give some solid bonuses for Divine characters in here; you can get access to some alternative Favored Weapons, and then really make them shine if you've got a lot of Divine levels. We think Warpriests and War Souls will shine in here, along with Paladins once KOTC gets revamped later this year.

• Castigation's damage now works on bosses as listed
• Castigation now grants its listed Melee Power
• No Regret now grants its listed Melee Power
• Strike Down's tooltip now correctly says it deals Light damage
• Strike Down's Light damage now scales with 200% Melee Power
• Confront Any Foe now adds +3[w]
• Confront Any Foe's Light damage now scales with 300% Melee Power
• Smite the Wicked's Light damage is now 100 against Evil creatures and 100 against Undead creatures. Evil Undead creatures take both.
• Smite the Wicked's Light damage now scales with 200% Melee Power.
• Smite the Wicked now destroys Undead and Evil Outsiders under 1500 HP on a Vorpal.
• Stand and be Judged now has a DC of 10+Wisdom Modifier+Character Level+Stunning Bonuses (We also made it faster & more reliable to cast a few Updates ago)
• Celestial Bombardment now only has 1 rank, that does what the old Rank 3 did.
• Celestial Bombardment now costs 20SP.
• Celestial Bombardment now takes the Enlarge, Maximize, Empower, Intensify, Embolden, and Quicken Metamagics.
• Celestial Bombardment is now significantly quicker to cast.
• Moved Celestial Champion one spot left, to the middle of T5, it just feels better there.
• Celestial Champion's Doublestrike and Doubleshot are now Sacred-typed.
• NEW: T4: The Book of War: (Multiselector): Pick one of the following to gain as a Favored Weapon: Longsword, Longbow, Morningstar, Greatsword (1 Rank, 1AP)
• NEW: T6: The Book of War: Wrath of the Divine: While wielding a Favored Weapon in your Main Hand, you gain +1 to Hit and Damage for every 2 Religious Lore Feats you have with all equipped weapons and shields. (1 Rank, 1AP)

[btolson]

Exalted Angel
This is a good tree, for those who can make use of the skills in it. We analyzed it and didn't see much that we thought merited major change, though we might try to loop back for some bugfixes before release. We did make a change to one skill for game balance reasons.

• Reborn in Light no longer charges with Endless Ardor and Righteous Fervor; instead, it is once per Rest (keeps 10min cooldown).

While the DC casting side of EA is fine, nuking options could use some help.
-The T1 SLA could use better dice. Also examine the saving throw, if one is really required on this.
-The judgment line is unaffected by spellpower AFAIK and extremely weak in today's game (on top of creature type restrictions and heavy DP cost, making that line a really really bad place to put any points at all).
-Ascendance could use some examination. Temp HP/SP scaling. This being a form change is annoying, and makes it a dead core for a lot of builds. IDK what to do about it right now.
-Overall nuking could be enhanced somewhere in the cores. I don't want to borrow the same 5% crit dam as Draconic is getting, but something could go there somewhere.

[btolson]

Divine Crusader:
This is also a Pretty Good tree in its current form, but lacks a little scaling and punch. In adding punch, we wanted to give some solid bonuses for Divine characters in here; you can get access to some alternative Favored Weapons, and then really make them shine if you've got a lot of Divine levels. We think Warpriests and War Souls will shine in here, along with Paladins once KOTC gets revamped later this year.

Will Crusader Aura now affect more than 1 creature per pulse again? It was never clear if that was a bug or an intentional nerf, but building so much of the tree around an "aura" that only pulses on a single target at a time really hampers its usefulness and the appeal of spending DP to upgrade it.

[janave]

Playing EA a lot both on Favored Soul and Sorcerer, here are some things that bug me:

* The spell points extension enhancement "Endless Faith" T1 is far too expensive, ideally this was detached from the spellpowers, this is a fairly low amount of enhancement for almost half the points sinked into it.
* I have a bad relationship with stack building mechanics, as it is not compatible with a bunch of other popular builds, including my own instant kills. Blood and Radiance: is a road block to get to the good stuff
* Soundburst SLA needs a hard target, while the spell can be tossed anywhere. (Actually it has been so long since i tried, it might be changed since then...)
* Be at Peace is overpriced, too long cooldown, little effect.
* All things that reset Endless Ardor and Righteous Fervor stacks, why?
* Astral Vibrance is mostly redundant and very mana expensive (I have never had a situation where I should have used it instead of other healing abilities/spells)
* If forged character using Ascendance lose energy drain immunity.
* Divine Wrath hard targeted will be lost if the target dies while casting, probably WAI, but not less annoying. The best use i found is kinda silly, i run next to the intended targets, and toss it under myself from a jump

Instead of a hard nerf to reborn in light, please consider adding a new T6 that allows to train an ability that lets it slowly recharge. Maybe for some major spell points sacrifice on top.

[Tist]

not loving being told "required you to do weird things to charge it up no longer requires that" actually meaning "nerfed Reborn in Light to be once per rest"

[Mindos]

not loving being told "required you to do weird things to charge it up no longer requires that" actually meaning "nerfed Reborn in Light to be once per rest"

Should Reborn be twice per rest? Three times per rest?

[Tist]

Should Reborn be twice per rest? Three times per rest?

It should have it's charge mechanism removed, and keep it's 10 mins recycle timer. Why mess with the existing timer? It's unbalanced cos some people use it to solo raids? I can use cakes I pay for to achieve the same thing in quests, but that's not unbalanced cos I pay for them? Are the cakes getting a once per rest nerf too?

What should happen is it gets checked for the times it fails (raid rez timer, random times it just doesn't work for no reason) and you keep the charge so you can try again if it didn't rez you.

[Lynnabel]

Soundburst SLA needs a hard target, while the spell can be tossed anywhere. (Actually it has been so long since i tried, it might be changed since then...)

This should be fixed on live right now. If you find that it's still getting tripped up, please let me know

[droid327]

This should be fixed on live right now. If you find that it's still getting tripped up, please let me know

Can you adjust the DC on Sounburst SLA to benefit from Evoc bonuses? IIRC that's the main thing that made the SLA pretty much junk in Epic levels when you'd actually be using it.

[Carpone]

Can you adjust the DC on Sounburst SLA to benefit from Evoc bonuses? IIRC that's the main thing that made the SLA pretty much junk in Epic levels when you'd actually be using it.

Please and thank you.

[J-mann]

This should be fixed on live right now. If you find that it's still getting tripped up, please let me know

Could we get it to apply evocation bonuses to its dc? Even with a 60 stat mod (which im not sure is possible with wisdom) its only a 100 dc vs a fort save.... really quite low. Please add evo dcs to the formula.

[jskinner937]

Playing EA a lot both on Favored Soul and Sorcerer, here are some things that bug me:

* The spell points extension enhancement "Endless Faith" T1 is far too expensive, ideally this was detached from the spellpowers, this is a fairly low amount of enhancement for almost half the points sinked into it.
* I have a bad relationship with stack building mechanics, as it is not compatible with a bunch of other popular builds, including my own instant kills. Blood and Radiance: is a road block to get to the good stuff
* Soundburst SLA needs a hard target, while the spell can be tossed anywhere. (Actually it has been so long since i tried, it might be changed since then...)
* Be at Peace is overpriced, too long cooldown, little effect.
* All things that reset Endless Ardor and Righteous Fervor stacks, why?
* Astral Vibrance is mostly redundant and very mana expensive (I have never had a situation where I should have used it instead of other healing abilities/spells)
* If forged character using Ascendance lose energy drain immunity.
* Divine Wrath hard targeted will be lost if the target dies while casting, probably WAI, but not less annoying. The best use i found is kinda silly, i run next to the intended targets, and toss it under myself from a jump

Instead of a hard nerf to reborn in light, please consider adding a new T6 that allows to train an ability that lets it slowly recharge. Maybe for some major spell points sacrifice on top.

All of this and worth mentioning again...get rid of the 9 points to get the tier 3 echoes. Sad thing is that you are better off twisting than taking it live in the tree due to the pre-reqs. Just make those three trees separate. And the same for blood and radiance.

[DaviMOC]

[*]NEW: T4: The Book of War: (Multiselector): Pick one of the following to gain as a Favored Weapon: Longsword, Longbow, Morningstar, Greatsword (1 Rank, 1AP)

Thank you! Thats lovely! Also can you consider rebalancing point price on Divine Crusader and Undying Sentinel? It's always hard to not just fill the first tiers and to lack on points to invest on the last ones.

[Arkbusya]

Nice modifications, but instead of adding enhancements wich add a weapon to your divinity, you should add a deity (other than the 'lord of Blade') who confer two handed weapons as favored weapon (maybe Dol Arrah ).

[Jandric]

Celestial Champion's Doublestrike and Doubleshot are now Sacred-typed.

Nice! The current method doesn't stack with gear, which took a lot away from the ability.

[voxson5]

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:

We had a few primary goals in the Epic Destiny pass, compounded by a very slim time-frame of 3 weeks for principal changes.

• 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
  
  • You'll notice that every Epic Moment that required you to do weird things to charge it up no longer requires that.
  
  
• 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)

Like we said above, the timeframe was slim. We didn't hit everything we would have liked to, and there are still abilities within individual Destinies that still probably aren't worth taking. We're listening for feedback here, but our ability to act on it is similarly time-restricted; we're unlikely to further revamp whole trees or add completely new skills at this time, but we may be able to make number tweaks and fix outstanding bugs.

That said, this is the thread for Divine Sphere Destinies, so let's dive in. Be sure to check out the other Sphere threads when you're done, as well as the topic on new Epic Past Lives coming with these changes.

Unyielding Sentinel
This Destiny was meant to do two things: Keep you alive and help you tank. It's decent at the first and not great at the second. Most of the changes here are meant to help you tank. The two new Actives aren't perfect; we had some bigger plans and ran into tech issues in doing what we wanted. Hoping they'll at least be helpful, and we can tweak numbers until they are.

• Commanding Presence's hate doubles to 100/200/300%
• Stand Against the Tide's extra hate jumps to 50% per stack (250% at full stacks, was 100%)
• Stand Against the Tide's extra hate now applies to missile weapon damage and magic damage as well (was previously melee-only)
• Divine Energy Resistance can now be cast directly on allies (instead of only yourself)
• Ward Against Evil's light damage scales with 400% of the higher of Melee and Ranged Power
• Rank 3 of Ward Against Evil now also grants you immunity to the Mind Control effects of Evil creatures.
• You can now use Undying Vanguard while Crowd-Controlled and/or Helpless
• Undying Vanguard's Temporary HP now last for 30 seconds.
• NEW: T4: Draw them Out: Melee Attack: +3[w]. This attack adds 300 Hate for the user to creatures it hits on top of its normal damage. 6 second cooldown. (1 Rank, 1AP)
• NEW: T6: Celestial Mandate: Melee Attack: +5[w]. This attack adds 2000 Hate for the user to creatures it hits on top of its normal damage. 6 second cooldown. (1 Rank, 1AP)

Exalted Angel
This is a good tree, for those who can make use of the skills in it. We analyzed it and didn't see much that we thought merited major change, though we might try to loop back for some bugfixes before release. We did make a change to one skill for game balance reasons.

• Reborn in Light no longer charges with Endless Ardor and Righteous Fervor; instead, it is once per Rest (keeps 10min cooldown).

Divine Crusader:
This is also a Pretty Good tree in its current form, but lacks a little scaling and punch. In adding punch, we wanted to give some solid bonuses for Divine characters in here; you can get access to some alternative Favored Weapons, and then really make them shine if you've got a lot of Divine levels. We think Warpriests and War Souls will shine in here, along with Paladins once KOTC gets revamped later this year.

• Castigation's damage now works on bosses as listed
• Castigation now grants its listed Melee Power
• No Regret now grants its listed Melee Power
• Strike Down's tooltip now correctly says it deals Light damage
• Strike Down's Light damage now scales with 200% Melee Power
• Confront Any Foe now adds +3[w]
• Confront Any Foe's Light damage now scales with 300% Melee Power
• Smite the Wicked's Light damage is now 100 against Evil creatures and 100 against Undead creatures. Evil Undead creatures take both.
• Smite the Wicked's Light damage now scales with 200% Melee Power.
• Smite the Wicked now destroys Undead and Evil Outsiders under 1500 HP on a Vorpal.
• Stand and be Judged now has a DC of 10+Wisdom Modifier+Character Level+Stunning Bonuses (We also made it faster & more reliable to cast a few Updates ago)
• Celestial Bombardment now only has 1 rank, that does what the old Rank 3 did.
• Celestial Bombardment now costs 20SP.
• Celestial Bombardment now takes the Enlarge, Maximize, Empower, Intensify, Embolden, and Quicken Metamagics.
• Celestial Bombardment is now significantly quicker to cast.
• Moved Celestial Champion one spot left, to the middle of T5, it just feels better there.
• Celestial Champion's Doublestrike and Doubleshot are now Sacred-typed.
• NEW: T4: The Book of War: (Multiselector): Pick one of the following to gain as a Favored Weapon: Longsword, Longbow, Morningstar, Greatsword (1 Rank, 1AP)
• NEW: T6: The Book of War: Wrath of the Divine: While wielding a Favored Weapon in your Main Hand, you gain +1 to Hit and Damage for every 2 Religious Lore Feats you have with all equipped weapons and shields. (1 Rank, 1AP)

Crusader looks very nice

But have you fixed WF Warsoul crit mods (T5 & core5) breaking if you unequip the deity weapon for any reason (including swapping to the same weapon type)?

[droid327]

[*]NEW: T4: The Book of War: (Multiselector): Pick one of the following to gain as a Favored Weapon: Longsword, Longbow, Morningstar, Greatsword (1 Rank, 1AP)

No Piercing option? If you take IC:P (ie, a Vol Dagger Warpriest) then you'd have to Fred your IC feat to really be able to switch to one of these favored weapon...that seems like more commitment than an ED should require. Rapier perhaps? Some synergies there with Swashbuckler of course.

Also, maybe fold in some Favored Weapons utility in the ED as well, especially since anyone in DC can gain a favored weapon now? Right now the entire FW mechanic is largely pointless. Aside from letting FvS use CHA or WIS as their combat stat, it...has a couple trivial attacks in Warpriest and some boilerplate +1 bonuses. That's not really encouraging me to use my favored weapon over general-meta weapons. If DC gave you some meaningful bonuses or abilities tied to Favored Weapons, it'd be a lot more attractive to builds that have favored weapons that might be getting ignored.

[HungarianRhapsody]

No Piercing option? If you take IC:P (ie, a Vol Dagger Warpriest) then you'd have to Fred your IC feat to really be able to switch to one of these favored weapon...that seems like more commitment than an ED should require. Rapier perhaps? Some synergies there with Swashbuckler of course.

Also, maybe fold in some Favored Weapons utility in the ED as well, especially since anyone in DC can gain a favored weapon now? Right now the entire FW mechanic is largely pointless. Aside from letting FvS use CHA or WIS as their combat stat, it...has a couple trivial attacks in Warpriest and some boilerplate +1 bonuses. That's not really encouraging me to use my favored weapon over general-meta weapons. If DC gave you some meaningful bonuses or abilities tied to Favored Weapons, it'd be a lot more attractive to builds that have favored weapons that might be getting ignored.

If you're a Dagger Vol priest, then you're probably heavily invested in the dagger tree and wouldn't want any of those other weapons.

[Pilgrim1]

I have 3 general issues that I think would change epic destinies for the better:

(1) expand the +1 stat bonuses to all 6 stats.
This enables toon that the destines are not build for to still use that destiny to some effect. It will make leveling off destinies slightly less painful. In addition it increases the different character builds available to take advantage of a destiny like this. Since destinies are designed to be used by many different builds this will only increase the diversity available.

(2) reduce the cost of +1 stats bonuses to 1 AP.
When Epic destinies where reduces most stats maxed out at ~60-70. Today the max is well over 130 for some stats. Thus the value of increasing stats has reduced, with the exception of characters who are defined by abilities on the d20 scale (like DC's). In addition since you are re-vamping and improving the existing destinies this will increase the number of action points stat hungry characters have to spend into the new toys and make for a more enjoyable experience.

(3) Add in base-line amounts of melee and ranged power to all destinies.
Being a physical damage toon in a destiny that has no melee or ranged power is really a painful process. Allowing at least some melee/ranged power into off destinies will make the leveling experience more enjoyable and might lead to interesting build options.

I will give destiny specific feedback in later posts.

[Pilgrim1]

Unyielding sentinel:
I approve of the increase in threat tanking. The new activated abilities seam effective without me testing them.

I would try to combine the 3 stances in the core into one stance and then allow people to improve on aspects of the stance by picking which additional abilities to purchases. As it is now people tend to focus on one stance and ignore the rest.

Exalted angel
All the abilities in EA destiny suffer from a lack of DC scaling. For example a casted soundburst from a cleric can be as much as 30 DC points above what the current soundburst DC is in exalted angel. These abilities that have a DC need to also include evocation DC.

Divine wrath, judgment, lay to rest, and Avenging light do piddly amounts of damage. All of these damage abilities need to be brought up to scale with todays numbers.

Divine Crusader
The entire concentrate line incorporates spell power but not spell crit chance, i would include that, especially the damaging portion of it.
The smites and celestial bombardment need to have there damage potential increased. Even with the incorporation of allowing the meta's and melee power to effect them. A delayed blast fireball will do more damage then celestial bombardment.

In addition i think this tree need a fair bit more melee and ranged power to it. That way it might have a chance to lure some of the toons away from LD.