2019 ED Pass: Primal Sphere

[cru121]

Fury:
Can you perhaps review some bugs listed on the wiki? Some might be obsolete:
* Boulder Toss Knockdown DC is not working correctly as even the lowest reflex save enemies almost always save
* Injury's shaken effect has a DC29 will save, lasts only 6 seconds, and offers a recurring save every 2 seconds.
* Injury's 3rd rank effect functions the same as the 2nd rank.
Insult: Does it work? Could use a cost and/or cooldown reduction.


Shiradi Champion
Healing Spring / Fey Form / Fey Spring / Illusion of Well Being: These could use some consolidation. 12 AP total for meager benefit.
- Merge Fey Form into Fey Spring.
- Merge Illusion into Healing Spring.
Probably unlink Elemental Absorption prereq.

[noinfo]

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.


I will give destiny specific feedback in later posts.

Definitely these 2.

[ned_ellis]

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).

Definately need some Evo / Conj DC somewhere in this tree.

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

Yes, all stats please! We can now build around all stats as primary, even when we are in the 'right' sphere for our class.

Fury of the wild
snip

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.

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.

In bold what I specifically agree on in a post full of ideas; scaling and linking abilities to seasons / animal form are a must imo.

[Seph1roth5]

Fury of the Wild: I like how the epic moments' counter-system was removed, I'd usually forget about those on my bar. Fury made placid seems interesting too but not sure I'd ever take it over Fury Eternal, not on a DPS anyway. Might be fun on a fvs or paly?

Primal Avatar: I definitely like that spirit was removed, seems much more streamlined now. Seems like everything was pretty much improved by removing the bookkeeping spirits.

Shiradi: Thought this was a fun ED for rangers...yeah Fury had insane burst DPS, but when you weren't in the epic moment it was kind of boring. Shiradi had a lot more going for it for ranged, and now it seems like everything also got a boost, so yay.

[Synthala]

I think that one of the inconsistencies of fury is the way adrenaline works itself. I don’t really understand why a cleave won’t apply the adrenaline strike to every enemy it hits. The tree will always favor rangers who can fury shot through an entire line of enemies with no mob cap on how many they can hit. That mechanic instantly makes the tree 4 times (or how ever many enemies they can hit) more effective. I think that if y’all could fix that mechanic, 2 handers could compete again.

[BrokenAgain]

Primal Avatar Feedback

I currently play a hybrid melee / caster using Primal Avatar at cap - while it's not too bad getting the spirit charges between spell casting and auto-attacks, I think doing away with the charges will help make the core abilities more accessible, so the direction is good.

Currently, Primal Travel is quite buggy: it's easy to accidentally interrupt the animation resulting in the dodge buff not applying; I remember the same bug happening with Meld into Darkness when I was playing an alt in Shadowdancer a while ago, but that seems to have been fixed. If possible, please apply the same fix here. Additionally, given that a significant animation needs to play out here and the buff only lasts for 12 seconds, the increase in cooldown to 90 seconds seems excessive. In its current state, I only need to hit anything to get a charge back.

As for the capstone, "Walk with the Spirits", the 30 second duration / 4 minute change seems too long. In its current state, once the buff is activated, I can keep it running for more than 30 seconds, and it doesn't take 4 minutes to get back to max charges (and we can always activate/de-activate the toggle even before getting back to max charges). Therefore putting a fixed cooldown on it greatly reduces the usefulness of this ability. I would suggest actually changing this ability to confer lesser but "always on" buffs instead. Perhaps just a slight gain to incorp, keep the bonuses to hide and move silently, and confer invisibility guard and the "ethereal" effect to equipped weapons.

[Steelstar]

Thanks for the feedback so far! To tackle some replies:

30 seconds for this ability is quite a long cooldown if you are trying to attract ranged away from Fury. Especially with the new change to unbridled being used more often.
Adrenaline has a 5 second cooldown with 7 charges yes, but if played right the recharge rate for ranged with IPS is quite high. Even a single fight can give them all 7 charges back. This is also a core ability not a Tier 6.
Unbridled uses adrenaline every 3 seconds for 30 seconds-5 min cooldown. With this being the Tier 6 ability. you are still getting 10 uses max + the 7 charges of adrenaline. While for the 30 second cooldown you could essentially use Horizon shot 10 max for 5 minutes.

Edit: Also the final core of Deepwood is also called Horizon Shot.

We're considering pulling the cooldown down slightly; need to run a few numbers first.

Also, blrgh. I forgot we used that name in Deepwood. (Name literally a few hundred things a year and you start to forget what's already taken). Well, we're open to suggestions.

Also, this tree has a reaper-specific problem. Rainbow can deal positive damage, which is not penalized the way other damage types are. Thus, in higher reaper you end up seeing damage procs in the 50-100 or so range, followed by healing your enemy with positive energy for 2k, wiping out a very substantial amount of time you spent DPSing it. Unless something is done about this, the tree will remain pretty dead for anyone playing reaper. Either omit positive from the selection of damage types, or have it considered a self-heal on the target so it's subject to reaper penalties. Such a massive disparity between damage and healing procs was not envisioned when this ability was first created. Accidentally healing your target is fine and thematic... so long as it's not 20x more powerful than the damage procs.

We can pull the Positive out of Rainbow.

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

J1NG

(This is regarding Primal Travel): Nope. It's got 50% Dodge that ignores your cap, plus it's a get-out-of-a-bad-situation jump; compare to Meld Into Darkness, which has a higher No-Dodge-Cap-Dodge but no jump, and a 33% longer cooldown.

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?

Hrm. We might be able to tweak Stormrage's DC depending on how it's implemented... Not sure. Will take a poke if there's time.

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.

1) There are concerns beyond this one, but the primary one is that this (the creation of 200+ new stat-based enhancements) would be a very large undertaking that we hard-cannot fit into the time we have.
2) We have balance concerns with that, and don't plan to do that.
3) Melee and Ranged power already exist in the Core abilities of the Destinies at levels we are happy with - Except for Shiradi, where we're now considering a sizeable boost to Ranged Power.

[Kielbasa]

If you want to pull bow users away from fury into shiradi consider giving ranged alacrity 30% in core 1. Every xbow enhancement tree gives 30% ranged alacrity yet dws and aa do not in their tier 5s. It would at least make me consider using shiradi until I gain blinding speed or pull my pinion out of the bank when doing a ranged life. Bows fire so very slowly compared to other ranged styles.

[SerPounce]

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.

Agreed. It's probably outside the scope of this update, but I would take the melee line out of primal avatar and put it in fury. Then make the 2hf stuff work in animal form. That makes FotW a barbarian and melee druid tree and at least a decent option for tempests (and other melees). Then make Primal avatar a tanky caster tree with a defensive and threat line replacing the melee line and DC bonuses in the cores. Now the primal sphere has coherent melee, ranged, and caster trees without any of them being unreasonably tied to a single class.

[ThomasHunter]

I’ve always felt that the left side of the tree was a bit weak for animal form druids. Is this in a good place since the last Druid pass? If not, is there a way to buff that column a bit?

How about for elemental Druid builds? I’m simply uncertain where they might fit into Primal Avatar these days. Note that I haven’t played an elemental Druid in a while but that doesn’t keep me from thinking about such things!

Hopefully a bit of wild shape love can be included!

Thank you,
Taleisin

[Ballrus]

[*]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: Strong Swings: +10 Melee Power. While fighting in Two Handed Fighting style, this is instead +25. (1 Rank, 2AP)

Work only with two handed weapon equipped, or work with hand and half weapon using two handed feats? (b swd/d axe + thf feats).

Thanks.

[cru121]

Work only with two handed weapon equipped, or work with hand and half weapon using two handed feats? (b swd/d axe + thf feats).

Thanks.

oh btw aren't handwraps two-handed weapons these days?

[lyrecono]

I think that one of the inconsistencies of fury is the way adrenaline works itself. I don’t really understand why a cleave won’t apply the adrenaline strike to every enemy it hits. The tree will always favor rangers who can fury shot through an entire line of enemies with no mob cap on how many they can hit. That mechanic instantly makes the tree 4 times (or how ever many enemies they can hit) more effective. I think that if y’all could fix that mechanic, 2 handers could compete again.

The problem isn't adrenaline, it's the way glancing blows and cleaves work for 2hf, they don't benefit from alacrity, doublestrike, crits and vorpal the same way ranged, swf and 2wf, thus you can't generate charges fast enough.
The best and lets be real here, only sollution to this oversight is to allow glancing blows and cleaves to benefit from crits, alacrity, doublestrike (and with crits, vorpals), just like any other playstyle, you know, equal treatment.
It would put 2hf a little ahead of all the other playstyles wich is fine, it takes the greatest risks, it should reap the greatest reward.
But i won't be holding my breath.

The devs mentioned allowing vorpal to work on 19&20 for 2hf (to charge adrenaline), i can tell you now that isn't gone cut it, without doubletrike and alacrity, you won't vorpal near the amount a ranger does, even if they allow you to vorpal everyone in cleave range it wouldn' cut it. No pun intended.

I wonder who this is for?
The actual 2hf player? The store sales for epic lives? Gish/hybrid builds(by removing the requirement for power attack in LD).
Eveytime we call the new loot bad or non functional, one of the reasons is the incesive doublestrike that doesn't work with 2handers, the worst insult was the Bloodrage Chrism, who gave 10% doublestrike with 2handers....that don't benefit from doublestrike.... Sigh
And this is why i don't hold my breath, they would 't even give a token acknowledgement when we all told them it wouldn't work.

[Arkbusya]

All the 2 weapon fighting stuff is in primal avatar, I'm not sure why they should choose shiradi over primal.

Perhaps because starting destiny is determine by your current class and a pure ranger tempest has no other choice than starting in epic with shiradi.
And all the 2wf is in primal avatar ?!? ... i see only 2 or 3 enhancement for 2wf in primal, this tree is dedicate to shapeshifter caster (aka druid).
someone else notice it and arrived at the same conclusion and post it but thanks to him, more developped than mine

[Grailhawk]

Perhaps because starting destiny is determine by your current class and a pure ranger tempest has no other choice than starting in epic with shiradi.
And all the 2wf is in primal avatar ?!? ... i see only 2 or 3 enhancement for 2wf in primal, this tree is dedicate to shapeshifter caster (aka druid).
someone else notice it and arrived at the same conclusion and post it but thanks to him, more developped than mine

Starting Sphere is determined by class not Destiny a Tempest Ranger can choose between any of the primal destinies as his first (Primal Avatar, Fury of the Wild, or Shiradi Champion)

Wiki

At level 20, your Destiny may be to become a Fury of the Wild if you have at least:

• No Active Epic Destiny and one of:
  
  • 6 levels of Barbarian
  • 6 levels of Ranger
  • 6 levels of Druid
• Tier Three Shiradi Champion
• Tier Three Primal Avatar

[Grailhawk]

1) There are concerns beyond this one, but the primary one is that this (the creation of 200+ new stat-based enhancements) would be a very large undertaking that we hard-cannot fit into the time we have.

What about adding 66?

• Legendary Dreadnought: DEX
• Grandmaster of Flowers: STR or CON
• Shadowdancer: WIS or STR
• Fury of the Wild: DEX
• Primal Avatar: DEX
• Shiradi Champion: INT
• Draconic Incarnation: STR
• Fatesinger: DEX
• Magister: WIS
• Exaulted Angle: INT
• Unyielding Sentinel: DEX or WIS (for the saves increase)
• Divine Crusader: already has 3

[LT218]

Also, blrgh. I forgot we used that name in Deepwood. (Name literally a few hundred things a year and you start to forget what's already taken). Well, we're open to suggestions.

Ballistic Shot.

[Iriale]

Let's see: shiradi is not a good ED for spellcasting. It's just an ED that was good for magic missile spammers, and that is currently only mediocre even for them. too many nerfs to that ED have made the shiradi builds (I repeat, magic missile spammers) practically disappeared.

Primal avatar is supposedly the spellcasting ED of the primal sphere. But it has been awful in that role since its inception, and now there are no proposed changes that improve ED in this regard. Caster druids still do not have an ED in their own sphere. Primal avatar needs bonus to the DC (as a minimum to evocation, conjuration, and transmutation) Druids need something that improves the damage of their spells, his lack of area nukes, and their role as healers in groups. Keep in mind, devs, that druids casters are good at heroics, but they have an atrocious scaling on epics. And something is needed to help the druid casters to be mana efficient in epics: one of the biggest problems of this type of characters is that they are nukers with MANY less spell points than the other classic nukers (fvs, sorcerers)

So, please, leave the left half of Primal Avatar for the melees druids, but turn the right half into something that really helps a druid caster, and not the hodgepodge of barely useful skills that there are now. And above all: a caster needs DC! DC is not only needed for instantkills, devs! A call lighting spell without DC without going any further is just mana wasted!

Personally I think that all the spellcasting EDs (exalted angel, magister, draconic and primal avatar) should have +1 to DC per core, as the exalted angel already has and you want to put in magister. Because DC is necessary for ALL casters, and not only for CCers /instantkillers. And because DC is something as basic as melee / ranged power for a weapon user

And by the way, add some spellpower to this ED, it need that!

[Iriale]

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.

1) There are concerns beyond this one, but the primary one is that this (the creation of 200+ new stat-based enhancements) would be a very large undertaking that we hard-cannot fit into the time we have.
2) We have balance concerns with that, and don't plan to do that.
3) Melee and Ranged power already exist in the Core abilities of the Destinies at levels we are happy with - Except for Shiradi, where we're now considering a sizeable boost to Ranged Power.

1) But he is talking about modifying the ability selectors of each ED. That's not just much less than 200, but it would almost become a copy-and-paste, that is, not much work for you. Modifying the special attacks of each ED would already be seen in the future, but modifying the ability selectors should be really fast
Pilgrim is right, the game has changed a lot and now str and dex are not the only stats that are used for combat. The EDs should reflect that

2) What balance problems? Maybe +1 to one ability was a great thing in 2012, but seven years later there are many other things that add MUCH greater powercreep. Please lower the cost of these abilities and expand the selectors, so that the EDs better reflect the game as it is in 2019. That allows also allows to catch fun skills in addition to the DC bonus that are so necessary (tacticals or spellcasting)

3) The problem comes with that hybrid characters really do not have good ED options. For example, artificers have to choose drastically between their modest spells and their weapon damage. Where is the ED that gives them intelligence, spell DC and runearm, CL to their spells and ranged power? Well I will tell you: there is no such ED. The EK still do not have an adequate ED in their sphere: fatesinger has no bonuses to int, the other two EDs do not have melee power bonuses.
What Pilgrim proposes makes a lot of sense. Anyway, the ranged / melee power is useless for a pure caster.
Bards and melee druids are hybrids that have support in the EDs. The rest of the hybrids, nothing at all.

[LightBear]

Fury of the wild:
Can understand you want two handers to hang out there but would like to see the inclusiveness of the hand and a half weapons like dwarven axe and bstarsword.
Isn't this one of the trees also used by some ranged builds? (You say so yourself 3 paragraphes down anyway.) Missing some love for them explicitly added for them.

Primal avatar:
Tree animation sucks but that prob is besides the feedback you are looking for, the new limeting timer is to short and the cooldown to long. Like both are waaaaaay off mostly due to the poor animation GFX of the transitions which seem to take up all 6 second of each form which leaves no time to attack.
Walk with spirits is out of whack number wise compared to other things that do the "same", 30 sec duration is ok but cooldown then should be 60 secs with the given specs.

Shiradi:
This ED is nice for warlock and great for artificers, not so much for other casters, imho.
Can't wait to try it out on a diplomancer build.

Overall great work, hope fury remains valid for ranged characters and isn't accidently broken along the way for them.