First Look: U43 Pale Master

[Kza]

For balance reason, plz let zombieform have 20% slower casting also.
What i see IF i havent missed anything, this risk to be default casting form.

[darkmoon_cn]

Not sure what game you are playing but my wizard is fine. Want another instakill? use the one in archmage for a pk

lol
i have a pk build,3 pk
but pk is bad instat spell,in high skull
1.need pass 2 save(e.g.range will save is high,but fortitude save low.if using pk has a big chance failure,cause pk need pass will save)
2.has many many many Fear immunity monster,in high skull
3.pk cant kill many races

[noinfo]

lol
i have a pk build,3 pk
but pk is bad instat spell,in high skull
1.need pass 2 save(e.g.range will save is high,but fortitude save low.if using pk has a big chance failure,cause pk need pass will save)
2.has many many many Fear immunity monster,in high skull

I run r10 regularly and my pks land fine, certainly not as regularly as my FOD or COD (also a 2 save instakill) but I pick which ones I am going to hit with it and its faster cast time and cd then hurl.
Now to be fair my wizard has everything from pastlives and completionists etc but those few small dc bonuses will be long overtaken by the new changes to magister etc. So if for some reason you are not landing your pks you might want to look at not just brute forcing but look at what you are targeting.
PK missed and you are going to get killed by the mob? PWK it, that warlock does not have it (unless they are goo) nor does the cleric. Frog and implosion are very nice, but how close do you want to be to those r10 mobs if one breaks ur cc? Hurl through hell is great but you can throw 3pks during that time (fast cd)

Don't get me wrong I would love to have more spells and will based instakills, but I would not trade my spell selection for it otherwise I would be on another caster.

[YUTANG75]

Hello, everyone!

• 
  
  • Shroud of the Vampire: While in this form, +2 Charisma, +2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom. +3 Perform skill, and your melee and unarmed attacks have a chance to heal you for 1d3 Negative Energy damage per Wizard Level.

What are the details on the negative vamp effect? I've always like vamp effects and have been most disappointed at the new version of vampirism due to the "long" cooldown.
If this effect has 0 cooldown and a decent chance to proc I may be able to make a cool build. If it's like the new effect with the cooldown but only a chance of proccing I'm already discarding the possibility of it being useful.

Apart from that, looks decent, not a spellcaster player though Looking forwards to U43!

[Strambotica]

Really like many of the changes except with the “Undead players will now be healed 50% by Positive Energy spells.”. This don’t make any sense.

Think that the other options that many already said could be a better idea.

• Place Harm scrolls in the Vendors.
• Get rid of the “Not Facing” on Harm spell.
• Could give then even more Negative Heal Amp and Negative Spell Power.
  Core 6: Passive: You gain +4 Intelligence and Deathblock. +30 Negative Healing Amplification. +30 Negative Spell Power. +2 Spell Penetration.

Ops, o most forgot: Also fix the FVS SLA from Beacon of Hope, True Resurrection and Raise Death SLA don’t work in Undead wizards. Usually must use the actual Spell or use a Scroll on them.
Since I have the SLA, I avoid taking the spells when swap to this tree at lvl 30, and at the same time I change spells from Heal to Harm (But if undead players will be healed 50% by positive spells, there is no point to take Harm).

And thanks for all the changes.
PS: Sorry for bad english

[Aredharr]

Suggested Tier 5 abilities:

• Lich: "Phylactery" - "Resurrect self" version (like the Monk version). This is the most obvious one - a Lich HAS a phylactery.
• Wraith: "pass through enemies" - (like Magister/Unearthly Reactions(Rank3))
• Vampire: Silver DR + constant regen HP (not just vampiric regen on toHit)
• Zombie: DR like other zombies in DDO + maybe disease on toHit

+1

And they're all fairly equivalent in term of power and there's so much flavor!!

Vampire could get vampirisme similar to the RL wepons instead of regen to force some fighting to get it. and doh, it's call vampirism!

For the wraith, make sure the poof through enemies is black or grey!


Re: "positive healing 50%", I'm not troubled at all by this since the undead forms are "shrouds", and it has always been clear that we were only getting undead traits, not becoming undeads per se.

Very cool work on this pass and can't wait to see how the new capstone aura and 9th lvl spell look like.

I am so hyped by this!

[darkmoon_cn]

I run r10 regularly and my pks land fine, certainly not as regularly as my FOD or COD (also a 2 save instakill) but I pick which ones I am going to hit with it and its faster cast time and cd then hurl.
Now to be fair my wizard has everything from pastlives and completionists etc but those few small dc bonuses will be long overtaken by the new changes to magister etc. So if for some reason you are not landing your pks you might want to look at not just brute forcing but look at what you are targeting.
PK missed and you are going to get killed by the mob? PWK it, that warlock does not have it (unless they are goo) nor does the cleric. Frog and implosion are very nice, but how close do you want to be to those r10 mobs if one breaks ur cc? Hurl through hell is great but you can throw 3pks during that time (fast cd)

Don't get me wrong I would love to have more spells and will based instakills, but I would not trade my spell selection for it otherwise I would be on another caster.

I agree with you.
But you can't deny it.wizard is not the best choice
cause ohter caster can do more.
like many Construct quest
like many undead quest
like KT instant-kill job
like THTH instant-kill job
if Wizard is good CC and instant.wlk,sorc,cleric is good and good and good
and many.....

[Havocthedemon]

Not a huge fan of adding positive healing for PMs, even as someone who runs one and would benefit greatly from it. The game already allows very strong self healing to PMs well into mid reaper difficulties and DC builds already have excellent indirect protection from damage via instakills and CC abilities.

I think the only PM build that has any reasonable claim on being allowed to benefit from positive energy healing is a melee build that has had to make heavy sacrifices to their DCs. A 50% penalty to healing is actually very small especially at cap where overhealing is so commonplace. It's also something that could conceivably be offset with positive healing amp gear, past lives, etc.

To me this just feels like another nail in the coffin of tactical and slower paced play, extending the zergfest towards the highest difficulty levels for nearly everyone. It just feeds into the quick and careless playstyle that characterises so much of DDO. It's also clearly aimed at facilitating play in reaper difficulty, which I believe the developers said they were not going to do.

These changes also beg the question, why wouldn't a wizard invest heavily in PM now? Was the goal to make every wizard in the game a PM? Do you feel like the goal of making 'tough choices' when building a character is being preserved here?

I'd also like to remind the developers that when you shove candy at the community most of them will respond by telling you what a great job you're doing, so what seems like generally positive feedback should be interpreted cautiously. It must be tempting to bask in the glow of adulation from your fans, but you may actually be making the game worse.

Thanks.

I’ve been playing this game since 09, only used the forums to check a for build ideas or release notes and whatnot, but I had to post a reply here. It’s crazy to me how dramatic you are in some statements but also reasonable with others.

Let’s start with “very strong healing capabilities in mid to late reaper” since the topic seems to be focused heavily on the PM receiving 50% heals from positive healing. Now, I don’t know what server you play on, but I run a toon with over 300 hamp, and my self heals are what I’d qualify as quite strong, as I hit myself for around 1.5k in R5. Now, the last time I played a PM I sat at endgame and could barely manage 200 Neg Hamp, which is probably what you could manage now with updated gear. I TR’d out of a PM after 1 day of running after reaper came out because my ticks for 30 HP did absolutely nothing when you get hit for over 1k quite often and quite easily. Add the fact that I couldn’t be healed by party members (besides a nice cleric with harm) and it was over for undead form.

I don’t know about you, but my main has over a hundred lives, and every wizard I’ve run with in reaper is a fleshy these days. PM healing is fantastic in norm/hard/elite...garbage in reaper. While the lore doesn’t make sense for this change, mechanically speaking it does make sense. It’s a game where we want players to group and play through content together. Does wanting to be a PM conflict with that goal when you need heals and your party cannot heal you? Yes, and it would be silly to say otherwise, because the amount of times someone casted “harm” on me during my wizard lives I could count on one hand. Note: and the laughable “I need heals now” button the PMs currently have aka neg energy burst..I remember it healing me for somewhere around 100 HP in reaper, now that’s horrible.

Do I think they are doing this inadvertently to promote reaper without admitting it? Yes, I agree with you there. Again, PM healing in anything other than reaper is fine. Do I think this is going to break PM wide open? Not really, bc I don’t see how them receiving a self tick off of rejuvenation cocoon for half of what a fleshy gets is going to make them gods. Let’s be realistic here, the only thing this change does is let the normal characters (i.e. toons without harm) heal their PM friend in an emergency.

[janave]

Now to be fair my wizard has everything from pastlives and completionists etc but those few small dc bonuses will be long overtaken by the new changes to magister etc. So if .

Yup, this. Some expected too high from this pass, while real business is happening in magister

[BigErkyKid]

Synergy with Eldritch Knight was definitely a sub-goal of mine. I wrote up the first draft of this pass at the same time as the Eldritch Knight pass last year.

Is the incompatibility between the effects in T5 in EK and Pm done on purpose?

I am coming at this from the perspective of a wizard who would stay mostly pure and be melee oriented.

In order to have a decent critical profile, you need t5 in EK. However, then you miss out on ascendant bond, which arguably is the strongest / most unique bonus you could get to undead forms.

Aside from the self healing, which scales poorly in higher reapers, the other benefits do not seem that special for a melee wizard. Sure, people will probably pick them, but that's just because besides EK a wizard has relatively few trees to pick from, I'd say.

I guess I can only see swash or vistani as truly compatible with the PM tier 5, but it seems weird it would synergize so poorly with its own class PrEs.

Something else I do not get are the core improvements to UF. Thematically, they seem linked to certain forms (incorporeal to wraith, etc.), but you say you can pick one, then the other. Does this means that it is just allowing you to have 2 "boosted" forms (via the tier 4 enhancement)?

Ultimately, I think my biggest issue is that to get the most of this tree for melee you would need to multi class something else; looks like this is done thinking of 17/3 wizard swash bard builds.

[blerkington]

... Let’s start with “very strong healing capabilities in mid to late reaper” ...

Not actually what I said but whatever. PM healing is absolutely not garbage in reaper, especially not in lower skull settings. So rather than exaggerating what I've said, making these generalisations and accusing me of being dramatic, perhaps you should dial it down a bit yourself.

... my ticks for 30 HP did absolutely nothing when you get hit for over 1k quite often and quite easily.

This is kind of my point. Why are you being hit so often? On a good DC build you can lock down pretty much anything. You decide how to play and if you're getting hit that much the issue is with your pacing, positioning, not using enough CC and not managing your aggro, not a problem with healing.

I shouldn't have to tell anyone how easy most content in the game gets even on high skulls if your CC person is competent, awake and doing their job. It's literally like shooting fish in a barrel.

My main point is that the extent to which we can steamroll difficult content with a DC caster is already a serious issue in this game. The so-called problems PMs have with healing can already be handled in a number of ways and some of our better players are already doing it. So it's disappointing to see people arguing for more power through survivability when we already have enough of it to do the job.

Thanks.

[rehakp]

Nice nice BUT please ... PLEASE stop doing this
Core 2: ".. and your melee and unarmed attacks have a chance to heal you ... "

Whats the chance ? Is it 1% .. is it 10% .. is it 0.001% ? What is it ? ...
The chance has some % value in the code doest it ? please just stop using this in texts that should say players what the ability does.
Its sooooooo frustrating to gues what it should be when you planning your build ... its soooo frustrating to do tests with 1000 swings and trying to figuring the "chance" number out.
Just PLEASE stop using this textations and give us real numbers.

[noinfo]

I agree with you.
But you can't deny it.wizard is not the best choice
cause ohter caster can do more.
like many Construct quest
like many undead quest
like KT instant-kill job
like THTH instant-kill job
if Wizard is good CC and instant.wlk,sorc,cleric is good and good and good
and many.....

Constructs are easy- web and prismatic. If weak constructs just frog, your dcs should be high enough that your going to hit.
Undead quests- Frog will hit trash undead, undeath to death and sunburst for incorps. flesh to stone/halt them until off timer or again prismatic
KT unless its in final part you can insta there too. for shielded try prismatic.
THTH best insta there is sunburst, you can also frog those too.

Not really seeing an issue. I also have fully geared dc cleric and dc warlock and I know which I prefer.

[LightBear]

Hello, everyone!

In addition to the Epic Destiny Pass and the New Epic Past Lives that we've already given a sneak peek of, Update 43 will also feature a revamp of the Pale Master enhancement tree.

Some of our goals for this pass included:

• Make Pale Master less about progressing through increasingly-powerful Undead Forms and more about picking a single (or multiple) forms to specialize in
• Give each Undead Form a unique playstyle
• Allow players to specialize without enforcing each form completely into a specific role

I like the forms in general that DDO's classes have to offer.
From the Druid's animal and elemental form Bear is my most favorite.
The Sorcs going all in with their savants
But I also like the semi alterations that do not give a real form alteration like wings from FvS or Arties going construct.
Same goes for being undead, big part was being able to switch between forms on the go.
That said I bolded out the part that is not clear to me as Pale Shroud (Core 2) is a Multiselector.
Does this mean I can pick one form and have to stick with it or can I still switch mid quest?

Also as I first read those two words between brackets my initial thought was "Yes, I can now be a zombie vampire... maybe now I can be an undead bear without using Jibbers." but alas I guess not so.

[Garix]

[/LIST]

I like the forms in general that DDO's classes have to offer.
From the Druid's animal and elemental form Bear is my most favorite.
The Sorcs going all in with their savants
But I also like the semi alterations that do not give a real form alteration like wings from FvS or Arties going construct.
Same goes for being undead, big part was being able to switch between forms on the go.
That said I bolded out the part that is not clear to me as Pale Shroud (Core 2) is a Multiselector.
Does this mean I can pick one form and have to stick with it or can I still switch mid quest?

Also as I first read those two words between brackets my initial thought was "Yes, I can now be a zombie vampire... maybe now I can be an undead bear without using Jibbers." but alas I guess not so.

Pick one, there is a Tier 4 enhancement that allows you to pick a 2nd.

[LightBear]

There are gigantic chunks of U43 you all have not even seen yet. It's going to blow you away.

Can you spill some news of that Poisener class that is in the works?

[LightBear]

Pick one, there is a Tier 4 enhancement that allows you to pick a 2nd.

Thx.

Deathly Versatile: Pick a second Shroud Toggle. You may only have one active at a time.

Bummer. Was hoping on two forms.

Oh well, can't have it all I guess.

[red_kain]

Does any of the incorporeality stack with ghostly, or is it all the same type?

[Havocthedemon]

Not actually what I said but whatever. PM healing is absolutely not garbage in reaper, especially not in lower skull settings. So rather than exaggerating what I've said, making these generalisations and accusing me of being dramatic, perhaps you should dial it down a bit yourself.



This is kind of my point. Why are you being hit so often? On a good DC build you can lock down pretty much anything. You decide how to play and if you're getting hit that much the issue is with your pacing, positioning, not using enough CC and not managing your aggro, not a problem with healing.

I shouldn't have to tell anyone how easy most content in the game gets even on high skulls if your CC person is competent, awake and doing their job. It's literally like shooting fish in a barrel.

My main point is that the extent to which we can steamroll difficult content with a DC caster is already a serious issue in this game. The so-called problems PMs have with healing can already be handled in a number of ways and some of our better players are already doing it. So it's disappointing to see people arguing for more power through survivability when we already have enough of it to do the job.

Thanks.

Well, I’m glad you can trivialize R10, but I ran a few the other day and multiple times the entire party died and had to regroup, because even people with wings (75 reaper points) can die. That’s the point. It’s easy to say hey if you die you’re not as good as me, it must be your positioning. I especially like how you alluded to “being handled in a number of ways by better players” so generally but offer no specifics as to what you actually mean. Yeah I suppose the “better players” are already what..popping out of PM form so they can scroll heal then popping back into form?

While I’m quite happy you have a dedicated playgroup with PMs that apparently have no problem self healing or always running with a divine that has Harm memorized (or they are just so good they never take a lick of damage), that you can “steam roll” everything but realistically, not being able to be healed by anything other than the aforementioned “harm” in reaper is a liability.

I’m also disappointed, mostly because I’m not “arguing” for anything. This is what the devs have decided to try and they have the right to do as they see fit, I’m simply agreeing and saying the change 100% makes sense mechanically and from my experience as a PM in reaper. I’m simply stating my opinion and letting my voice be heard should the devs decide to listen but by no means am I arguing about my own point of view. Thanks, and you’re welcome.

[Sho-sa]

I am very pleased with the 50% healing adjustment. This shows the Devs recognize player population is radically down and this reaction is a great quality of life boost to PUGS. Is it perfect role play? Obviously not. But in the reality of a lag-filled MMO it is a positive step.

SLAs getting metamagics, undead form selector toggle= choices for players instead of a trend toward forcing a ,"you must play this way!" mentality.

The Bard pass was overall a definite enhancement to the game. PMs are definitely getting better with this update, people love to play them, so thumbs up on this one.