2019 ED Pass: Primal Sphere

[Grailhawk]

Primal Avatar
This is another Fairly Weird tree. There's things we didn't hit that I'd still like to (the complex spell that is Tsunami, in particular) but the primary thing we tried to do was to make it more accessible and less frustrating by eliminating the Spirit Charge mechanic. Before, it was very difficult to perform well in this tree if you couldn't min-max Spirit regeneration; that should no longer be a concern. Tree Form still isn't amazing, but that's unfortunately something that'll need to get addressed another time. (At the very least, you should get to use it more reliably and longer in most cases).

• Walk With Spirits is no longer a toggle. On activation, you gain its effects for 30 seconds. It now has a 4 minute cooldown.

Walk with Spirits cooldown is way too long its got double the duration and cooldown as Meld but only 1/4 the benefit its also a "capstone" destiny effect. So its not good as an "o ****" button. It could also be compared to Shadow Veil where you have the same benefit but have an uptime > cooldow.

IMO the design on this ability needs to be rethought out is it an "o ****" button (up the effect to at least 50%), or is it a defensive buff to make the tree more defensive (then make it work like shadow veil uptime >= cooldown)

[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.

[SerPounce]

I play a wolf druid (druid 20 Aasimar) at cap, and do mid (solo)/high reaper regularly, and I will try to give primal avatar a shot on lamania, but I'm really not seeing close to enough to move off dreadnought. Doing away with spirit is nice, but the abilities themselves aren't that great. Gimmicks like flight + leap resulting in 100% are neat, but there's just not enough omph to the tree.

Dreadnought gives you constant action boosts (and more of them), more melee power, improved crit range, more helpless damage (even with the nerf), more PRR (with blitz), one strong defensive active on a reasonable cooldown (thick skin), tactics, better prowess filagree activation, etc. All of which is very relevant to melee druids and f results in dead enemies which also miss you 100% of the time. You need to go so much further on the fundamentals to make primal avatar a competitive option. Primal avatar gives... some extra wisdom, a few defensive actives, and caster levels. Balanced attacks is the bee's knees, but I can twist that.

One particularly odd bit:

Walk With Spirits is no longer a toggle. On activation, you gain its effects for 30 seconds. It now has a 4 minute cooldown.

What about this ability justifies a 4 minute cooldown? It's a bit extra incorporeal and some hide if you use scion of ethereal. Thick skin is a stronger ability and has a 2 minute cooldown.

Now I'm perfectly happy with dreadnought, so maybe primal avatar just isn't for me, but who is this tree for? Caster druids aren't going to want it, there's no DC bonuses and nothing much scales with spellpower. Maybe pet builds (lol)?

Things I'd like to see that might (from my very uninformed perspective on the back end stuff) not be a ton of work:
1. Reduced cooldowns for innate attacks (snowslide in particular)
2. Ways of making stuff vulnerable to sneak attack (like improved deception while in animal form, but stacking with the item effect).
3. Extra damage to knocked down foes (we have a filagree that does this). Make it scale properly for legendary!
4. percentage bonuses to hit in animal form (tough being a non-full BAB melee)
5. healing amp in animal form (one advantage of full druid should be decent self healing, but it just doesn't pack that much punch in reaper)
6. Helpless damage
7. Fort bypass (in significant amounts)
8. Action boosts (haste in particular)
9. Tactics bonuses? (I don't really need them, but might be nice for people without the PLs and such I have)

Scale stuff with wilderness lore feats (or druid levels) to keep silvanus multiclass builds from getting crazy.

Though honestly even with all that it would be hard to give up the raw DPS power of LD.

[whoolsey]

I'll point you to this post from Cordovan earlier today:

i see, i hadn't picked up on that thread.
it's good to know that the dev's are aware, it's a big issue, not counting the meta, where glancing blows do nothing in high reaper, the lack of doublestrike on glancing blows and cleaves, not to mention crits, screws over ED's that rely on procs like that.

What about 1 or 2 points of barb dr?

There were known ED bugs that remained for 7 years. I wouldn't hold my breath about THF getting the revamp it needs anytime soon.

i hope not, my wives favorite toon is her 2hf barb, some positive changes might convince her to play again.

[Grailhawk]

I play a wolf druid (druid 20 Aasimar) at cap, and do mid (solo)/high reaper regularly, and I will try to give primal avatar a shot on lamania, but I'm really not seeing close to enough to move off dreadnought. Doing away with spirit is nice, but the abilities themselves aren't that great. Gimmicks like flight + leap resulting in 100% are neat, but there's just not enough omph to the tree.

Dreadnought gives you constant action boosts (and more of them), more melee power, improved crit range, more helpless damage (even with the nerf), more PRR (with blitz), one strong defensive active on a reasonable cooldown (thick skin), tactics, better prowess filagree activation, etc. All of which is very relevant to melee druids and f results in dead enemies which also miss you 100% of the time. You need to go so much further on the fundamentals to make primal avatar a competitive option. Primal avatar gives... some extra wisdom, a few defensive actives, and caster levels. Balanced attacks is the bee's knees, but I can twist that.

One particularly odd bit:

What about this ability justifies a 4 minute cooldown? It's a bit extra incorporeal and some hide if you use scion of ethereal. Thick skin is a stronger ability and has a 2 minute cooldown.

Now I'm perfectly happy with dreadnought, so maybe primal avatar just isn't for me, but who is this tree for? Caster druids aren't going to want it, there's no DC bonuses and nothing much scales with spellpower. Maybe pet builds (lol)?

Things I'd like to see that might (from my very uninformed perspective on the back end stuff) not be a ton of work:
1. Reduced cooldowns for innate attacks (snowslide in particular)
2. Ways of making stuff vulnerable to sneak attack (like improved deception while in animal form, but stacking with the item effect).
3. Extra damage to knocked down foes (we have a filagree that does this). Make it scale properly for legendary!
4. percentage bonuses to hit in animal form (tough being a non-full BAB melee)
5. healing amp in animal form (one advantage of full druid should be decent self healing, but it just doesn't pack that much punch in reaper)
6. Helpless damage
7. Fort bypass (in significant amounts)
8. Action boosts (haste in particular)
9. Tactics bonuses? (I don't really need them, but might be nice for people without the PLs and such I have)

Scale stuff with wilderness lore feats (or druid levels) to keep silvanus multiclass builds from getting crazy.

Though honestly even with all that it would be hard to give up the raw DPS power of LD.

Its not going to be easy to make Primal Avatar good for a Melee of any kind it's too spread out its trying to be a melee tree and a spell casting Druid tree at the same time its doomed at inception, unless there will to let it be a hybrid thing like DC but there is a desire to keep Druids in a melee is wild shape and casting is elemental "place" this means there destiny needs to be specialized one for melee on for casters this attempted to mix them failed and there not doing enough to correct it. I think they know this though and are just trying to make it not totally suck for people getting it maxed out and will try again in ED pass round 2 when ever that is.

They should add Dex to Fury of the Wild stats a tier 5 that gives alacrity to THF and offhand double strike to TWF. Then make Primal Avatar a spell casting Druid tree.

[Grailhawk]

Fury of the Wild
This is a Pretty Good destiny in its current state, but not enough Melees found reason to stick with this one vs. Dreadnought. We'd especially like Two Handed Fighters to hang out here, so we added some spice for them. Please note that "Two Handed Fighting Style" does not include Natural Weapon Style (aka Wolves, Bears, Trees).

• Cores each add an additional +2 Damage with Two-Handed Weapons (along with what they currently do)
• Fury made Placid is reduced to a 2% chance on no save. Healing scales with Melee Power. Gain +10% Doublestrike and +20 PRR and MRR while in this state.
• Unbridled Fury no longer requires charging. (Keeps its 5 minute cooldown).
• You can now use Unbridled Fury while under Antimagic.
• NEW: T1: (Multiselector with Boulder Toss): Boulder's Might: Requires being in Two-Handed Fighting style to use (i.e. no Natural Fighting). 5[w] attack, 6 second cooldown. Rank 2 and 3 add +1 and +2 Critical Multiplier on that attack. (3 Ranks, 1AP Each)
• NEW: T5: Devastating Blow (+1 Critical Multiplier on 19-20 with Melee weapons) (1 Rank, 2AP)
• NEW: T5: Strong Swings: +10 Melee Power. While fighting in Two Handed Fighting style, this is instead +25. (1 Rank, 2AP)

[B]

Can the Epic Moment be made to work on melee the same way it works on ranged e.g. if the Adrenaline Proc Doublestrikes (and Offhand Procs) let it effect those attacks too? Why is the Epic Moment of this destiny significantly better for Ranged then Melee?

[SirShen]

Shiradi Champion
This tree is alright for casters and not great for ranged characters in its current state. A lot of the Bow users are pulled over by Fury right now, so we gave it a bit of that power to make Shiradi a more viable choice for them. We don't want to take Fury away from bow-users entirely (or Shiradi away from casters), just to make Shiradi a viable choice for ranged weapon characters.

Just add Intelligence to state choice or better yet just add all states.

[Pilgrim1]

Fury of the wild
This destiny needs more umpf to get THF to play in it then LD. In addition all of these changes are focused on 2hf toons, there will be 0 reason for any non 2hf to be in this destiny. Please expand at least some of these benefits to include other stiles.

Primal avatar
Strength of spirit used to provide 30 USP. Now it provides 20.
Primal travel is currently bugged and can barely be used. It does not provide its full benefit. It requires you to jump back 3 times in a row. If you fail to complete this action (by having a wall behind you, or doing anything for ~2 seconds) you only get ~5 second buff. In addition there is no countdown timer so you cant tell how long you have until it expires as it is not constant. If you plan on increasing the cooldown please at least fix the danm ability so it can be used!
Eternal return was not used due to its small amount of healing and HUGE SP drain. the spirit was not a factor.
The change to walk with the spirit means i can no longer use it as a defensive buff. Its cooldown is quite long now. Please change it to a stance like shadow-dancer or change it to increase incorporeal. Make it +50% incorporeal if you plan on keeping a 4 min cooldown on it.
Now avatar of nature can only be used for 30 seconds out of 5 min. It was a terrible ability since the previous nerfing and now its even worse.

Every change you have made to Primal avatar makes it a worse destiny. Please scrap these changes entirely and go back to the drawing board. I will add my suggestions at the bottom of this post if you willing to make any changes.

Shiradi Champion
I dont see why you say this destiny was ever good for casters. The only casters who could use this tree where gimmick casters (who where never primal casters) that used abilities like magic missiles to get many trigger effects. You have taken steps to reduce the effectiveness of this tactic by reducing the power of various effects from shiradi. In addition this style takes a custom build to pull off that is not usfull in reaper. Does anyone still even play this style?

I support your desire to turn this into a destiny for ranged characters. That said legendary dreadnought gives 82 ranged power. This destiny gives 24. You need to significantly increase the amount of range power this destiny provides to make it more appealing.

Many of these abilities scale with 200% ranged power, do they also scale with spell power? Will a ranged toon need to invest in spell power as well?


Primal avatar suggestions
I play many characters in primal avatar. I think it is currently an under-rated destiny. Now this destiny is designed for druids. Thus it reflects some of the many aspects of druids, melee, spell casting, tanking, healing, transformation, pets. So to keep with the theam of druid focus, to remove the spirit aspect parts of this destiny, and to enable ALL aspects of a druid without over-emphasizing any one i suggest the following changes:

Cores:
remove spirit mechanic.
Add in +1 evocation and transmutation DC in each core. This allows druids to remain competitive DC spell casters without having to go to magistrate or exalted angle. Since its limited to evocation and transmutation its unlikely to draw non-druid casters to this destiny.
Add in PETS gain: +20 PRR/MRR/fort/MP, +100 HP, +5 will/reflex/fort. For each core, yes they need it.
Maintain +10 melee power, 50 spell points, +1 CL for each core.
Keep strength of spirit at 30 USP.
Change primal travel as you see fit, but please fix it first.
Mighty among spirits: I like the addition of MRR, also PRR?
Eternal Renewal: Add devotion and lore to this healing. Otherwise it will not scale.
Walk with the spirit: change this to a stacking passive (+10 incorporeal, hide, move silently).

T1:
Ephemeral Evolution: make it PRR + MRR
Cocoon: leave it!
Insidious Spores: up the damage, lower the cooldown, and make it a single teared ability.
Friends of Nature: meh whatever.
wisdom/str: add dex so rangers can use to.

t2:
Seeking Balance: make it a single tear, bring it up to +6 reflex to make it in line with the other save abilities.
Supple as Spring: I would re-design. or at least have it include max dodge to. My suggestion is to have it increase CL + MCL of winter/summer.
Favored Enemy: its fine
Natural Shielding: its fine, but make it a single rank. You could double its effects and add MRR, and fort, and everything else and pets would still be use-impaired.

t3:
Balanced Attacks: its great! leave it!
Summer Smoke: have it scale, or have it linked to season effects.
Tsunami: allow evocation bonuses to be applied.
The Oncoming Storm: this is a terrible ability, i would change it to be 50% chance of working.

t4:
Paired Parry / Symetric Strikes: only change would be 5% ac not 5 ac.
Autumn Harvest: change to 100% or 20% but with spell power effecting it.
Stormrage: increase DC, allow spell power to scale it up.
Summon Dryad Elder: woot, the only semi-useful summon in the game, leave it as is.

t5:
Chill of Winter: make it a single tear ability.
Spirit Boon: fine as is.

t6:
Nature's Fury / Natural Evasion: its fine!
Avatar of Nature Epic Moment: make this an on/off toggle. Seriously. There are so many drawbacks to this ability (no casting, no clickies, no cleave effects, no activated attacks, and its SLOOOOOOW) that if someone can make use of it then they should.

These are my suggestions. I feel that they will help make a druid be able to meet all the possible rolls they must fulfill without making them excessively strong. Most of the changes are all minor, involving small tweaks to numbers. A few (summer smoke, autumn harvest, supple as spring) i suggest re-designing to help caster druids with seasonal effects.

Thank you for reading.

[Mindos]

Shiradi Champion

• NEW: Horizon Shot (T6): Your next shot with a Ranged or Thrown weapon has +400% damage and +16 to its Critical Threat Range. 30 second cooldown. (1 Rank, 1AP)

So why would I go Fury of the Wild then? With Fury epic moment, i get 10 (maybe 11, not sure) ticks of the above for every 3 seconds for 30 seconds. THEN, i have to wait 5 mins. But with the new Shirada Shot I get 1 every 30 secs, so would get 10 in 5 mins. Without being locked out for 5 mins. Sure, one's a burst within 30 seconds, and one is on demand. But that on demand, just when you need it with IPS etc, with only a 30 second wait sure looks nice.

How many times have you heard the adrenaline still pumping, meaning you finished the fight well ahead of the 30 second burst of Fury? This is a huge draw for ranged to Shiradi.

[Grailhawk]

So why would I go Fury of the Wild then? With Fury epic moment, i get 10 (maybe 11, not sure) ticks of the above for every 3 seconds for 30 seconds. THEN, i have to wait 5 mins. But with the new Shirada Shot I get 1 every 30 secs, so would get 10 in 5 mins. Without being locked out for 5 mins. Sure, one's a burst within 30 seconds, and one is on demand. But that on demand, just when you need it with IPS etc, with only a 30 second wait sure looks nice.

How many times have you heard the adrenaline still pumping, meaning you finished the fight well ahead of the 30 second burst of Fury? This is a huge draw for ranged to Shiradi.

Your not understanding that right, it's 1 Adrenaline use every 30 seconds not the epic moment.

Or your not using Adrenaline?

[HastyPudding]

Primal Avatar still isn't useful for caster druids. It offers nothing in the way of DC's and little in terms of spellcasting ability. Tsunami especially needs to be looks at, as it's very anti-caster druid with how it blows away persistent effects (like earthquake and ice storm).

[SerPounce]

Specifically excluding druids in animal form from benefiting from fury of the wild seems odd. It's a primal destiny, and druids are a primal class. You get druid caster levels from the cores. But you want to make a specific exception to make sure that none of the 2hf stuff works for druids in animal form? It just doesn't seem in the spirit of the whole destiny system to intentionally make a destiny not work with a particular class/build. Especially in their own sphere.

[J1NG]

Primal Travel no longer costs Spirit, and now has a 90 second cooldown

Are you sure you didn't hit 9 by mistake instead of 6?

J1NG

[apocaladle]

Why the decision to add nothing to help pets/summons are they are debatably one of the weakest builds around and if I understand correctly a small nerf for performance reasons:

"Summer Smoke, Supple as Spring, and Chill of Winter are now applied more efficiently, should cause fewer performance issues, and should no longer get stuck on players - Like Bard Auras, the effects are re-applied every few seconds and expire after some time. These now only apply to party members (sorry, this was important for performance reasons)."

So do you guys ever plan on fixing summons/pets or are you phasing them out due to performance issues?

Don't get me wrong I love most of the changes and balance passes in general, it just seems odd that summoning builds never seem to make the cut for items/balance passes.

Thanks

[Yamani]

So why would I go Fury of the Wild then? With Fury epic moment, i get 10 (maybe 11, not sure) ticks of the above for every 3 seconds for 30 seconds. THEN, i have to wait 5 mins. But with the new Shirada Shot I get 1 every 30 secs, so would get 10 in 5 mins. Without being locked out for 5 mins. Sure, one's a burst within 30 seconds, and one is on demand. But that on demand, just when you need it with IPS etc, with only a 30 second wait sure looks nice.

How many times have you heard the adrenaline still pumping, meaning you finished the fight well ahead of the 30 second burst of Fury? This is a huge draw for ranged to Shiradi.

Its not a very good draw actually.
Fury still has Adrenalines and Unbridled fury for minimum 17 uses per 5 minutes.
Horizon shot is max 10 per 5 minutes.

If they really want it to be competitive to fury it should have a max 15 second cooldown. Which would put it max 20 per 5 minutes. But since fury can recharge on vorpals they will get more occasionally but also will have unbridled for when they wipe the floor with higher hp mobs/boss's.

[Strambotica]

Primal Avatar always has been a weird ED.
- If you are melee dont want it
- If you are caster dont want it

That been told.

Tier 4. Stormrage. You could fix for a decent DC and give them metamagic?

[Grace_ana]

I too hope that the mentions of scaling with ranged power in Shiradi doesn't eliminate the spellpower scaling currently in place. It would make this tree useless for casters and kill an entire unique build.

[Cantor]

Having played tree builds. OMG total destruction of something already nerfed to uselessness. It should be 15 secs cooldown starting when form drops. Someone built for tree could maintain spirit at those levels and hold form much much longer, this is the first change I've read that is really terrible (ein is a big nerf but still not as much as this). With a 5 minute cooldown you need to throw in quad damage.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

Please retain the "While Unbridled Fury isn't active, You gain 1 Fury each time you vorpal with a melee or ranged attack (roll a natural 20 and confirm the critical hit)."

Note that this is important because it is an improvement from the Fury Eternal one tier below it, which gives 1 Fury on a 33% chance when vorpal.

Except that Fury does nothing but charge up Unbridled Fury, and Unbridled Fury no longer needs charging up. So why would they keep that?

Fury Eternal has a 33% to regain a use of Adrenaline. There is a difference.

Nice changes, destiny reflect more what they are tied to...
except that now...
A first life pure tempest is stuck in shiradi where there is always no things for him ...
Maybe you forget that ranger are not all distant user .

A first life pure tempest is only stuck in Shiradi if they claimed Shiradi for their first ED. There's nothing about Shiradi that says "ranger", it's very clearly ranged (with a minor in casting, which currently is flipped around to primarily be useful for casters). Tempests should obviously be going into PA (with the TWF line) or the more general meleeness of Fury.

Granted, a Tempest has to eventually go through Shiradi to get to other spheres, but a wizard has to eventually go through Fatesinger, and a cleric has to eventually go through US, and casters have to eventually go through LD to get to Primal, etc. There's enough stuff in SC that a pure melee can take... just crank up the Healing Spring to get to T4s and then you have elemental absorption and dodge, or just move on to LD.

But a tempest isn't "stuck" there unless the player didn't actually look at the choices.

[Duhboy]

Would Boulder's Might be a single target attack or some sort of cleave? Please be it a cleave!!!!!