First Look: U43 Pale Master

[Steelstar]

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
• Help parties effectively interact with Undead players
• Provide an actual way for Pale Masters to combat undead
• Help address concerns of survivability

To call out that last point (& so this doesn't get lost in the shuffle below): One of the big changes here is that Undead players will now be healed 50% by Positive Energy spells. While it doesn't 100% fit Undead lore, we believe the positive benefit to survivability and party dynamics is worth the change.

With that said, here's the tree!





CORES:

• Core 1: Dark Reaping: For each Core Ability in this tree you get +3 Negative Spell Power and +3 Negative Healing Amplification.
• Core 2: Pale Shroud: Multiselector: All forms grant 100% critical hit resistance and allow you to be healed by Negative Energy. You take 50% healing from Positive, and double damage from Light. You are considered undead.
  
  • Shroud of the Zombie: While in this form, +4 Constitution, +20% damage with attacks but you attack 20% slower than normal. You gain +3 PRR, +3 MRR.
  • 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.
  • Shroud of the Wraith: While in this form, +2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence. Enemy attacks have a 10% chance to miss you due to incorporeality, +1 Sneak Attack Dice, and you gain Feather Falling.
  • Shroud of the Lich: While in this form, +2 Constitution, +2 Intelligence, +10 Negative Amplification, +5 Negative Spell Power, and +15 Magical Resistance Rating.
  
  
• Core 3: Multiselector: Improved Shrouding: Pick one of the following abilities that applies while in a Pale Shroud: (Passive: While in a Shroud, you can breathe underwater. +1 Spell Penetration.)
  
  • Deathly Tough: 15 Maximum Hit Points
  • Deathly Resistance: 15 Magical Resistance Rating, +2 to all Saves
  • Inflict Weariness: Your attacks inflict 2-9 points of Negative Energy damage to a living target. This scales with 100% Spell Power. Your Vorpal Melee Hits cause Energy Drain, inflicting 1 Negative Level on victims.
  • Haunting in the Dark: +2 Assassinate DCs.
  • Ghost in the Wind: +15% Incorporeal Miss Chance. (If you are in Wraith Form, this increases your total to 25%).
  • Deathly Power: +10 to Negative Energy Spellpower.
  • +2 Necromancy DC
  • +2 Enchantment DC
  • Undead Chill: +15% bonus to Cold Absorption. You no longer take extra damage from Light.
  • Undead Shock: +15% bonus to Electric Absorption. You no longer take extra damage from Light.
  • Unhallowed Touch: You gain Ghost Touch on all attacks, +5 Hide and Move Silently
  
  
• Core 4: Pick an ability you didn't pick in Core 3. (Passive: +1 Spell Penetration.)
• Core 5: Pick an ability you didn't pick in Core 3+4 (Passive: +50 Maximum Spell Points, +1 Spell Penetration.)
• Core 6: Undead Overlord:
  
  • Active: Greater Death Aura SLA. (Envelops the caster in a sickly aura of negative energy. Living enemies stepping inside the aura take 3 to 12 negative energy damage plus 1 additional point per caster level every two seconds as long as they remain within it. A successful Fortitude save reduces the damage by half. Undead are instead healed by the aura. This aura can affect up to one target per caster level. D&D Dice: Deals 3d4 negative energy damage plus 1 per caster level every two seconds.) (This can be cast simultaneously with Lesser Death Aura and Death Aura).
  • Passive: You gain +4 Intelligence and Deathblock. +10 Negative Healing Amplification. +2 Spell Penetration.

TIER 1:

• Necrotic Touch: 6/4/2 SP, 12/8/4 seconds. Accepts Metamagics. Scales with full Spell Power. For 12 seconds after casting this, your Skeletal Knight reduces its incoming damage by 50%.
• Negative Energy Conduit (relocated)
• Spell Crit: Negative I (unchanged)
• Skeletal Knight: (Cooldown on re-summoning changed to 20 seconds. No summon cost.)
• Deathless Vigor (relocated but otherwise unchanged)

TIER 2:

• (this space intentionally left blank)
• Cloak of Night: While blocking in a Pale Shroud, you gain invisibility, displacement, and do not take extra damage from Light. Passive: +5 Hide.
• Spell Crit: Negative II (unchanged)
• Corpsecrafter: Your Skeletal Knight gain a +2/4/6 Profane Bonus to Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. Rank 3: You gain +1 Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution.
• Efficient Metamagic (unchanged)

TIER 3:

• Necrotic bolt: 10/8/5 SP, 15/10/5 seconds. Accepts Metamagics. Scales with full Spell Power.
• Negative Energy Adept: +10/20/30 Negative Amp
• Spell Crit: Negative III (unchanged)
• Eternal Furor: You (while in a Shroud) AND your Skeleton Knight gain +5/10/15 Profane Bonus to PRR. Your Skeletal Knight gains +3/6/10 to hit and damage, +2/4/6 Profane Bonus to AC, and and its attacks bypass 10%/20%/50% of enemy Fortification.
• CON/INT (unchanged)

TIER 4:

• (this space intentionally left blank)
• Unholy Avatar: While in an Undead Shroud, your Negative Energy attacks leave a lingering debuff on undead foes that leaves them vulnerable to Negative Energy if they were immune.
• Spell Crit: Negative IV (unchanged)
• Deathly Versatile: Pick a second Shroud Toggle. You may only have one active at a time.
• CON/INT (unchanged)

TIER 5:

• Necrotic Blast: 20/15/10 SP, 18/12/6 seconds. Accepts Metamagics. Scales with full Spell Power.
• Animate Ally: 18 second cooldown. Target no longer takes damage over time. Zombie Form is removed on Rest or Death.
• Necromantic Focus (unchanged)
• Dark Discorporation: Multiselector:
  
  • Dark Discorporation SLA (as per the Warlock spell... Because Pale Masters should get to turn into bats and float away).
  • Reactive Discorporation: When your HP drops below 50%, gain Dark Discorporation for 20 seconds. This effect still ends if you attack. This effect may only trigger once every 60 seconds.
  
  
• Ascendant Shroud: You get bonuses based on your current form:
  
  • Zombie: While in Zombie Form, +20 Melee Power & 10 PRR. +20% Racial Bonus to maximum Hit Points.
  • Vampire: While in Vampire Form, +1 Enchantment DC. Your melee attacks have a chance to dominate your adversaries. On Hit: Target has a chance to be Paralyzed (Will save vs. DC 20 + INT Mod + Enchantment Spell Bonuses). On Save: -10% Movement and Attack Speed.
  • Wraith: While in Wraith Form, +10% Incorporeality (bringing your total to 20%, or 35% if you have Ghost in the Wind), +2 Sneak Attack Dice. +3% Dodge & Dodge Cap. +10 to Hide and Move Silently.
  • Lich: While in Lich Form, +15 to MRR cap, +5 Negative Spell Power, +10 Cold and Electric Resistance.

NEW SPELL:
Finally, there will be a new Level 9 Sorcerer/Wizard Spell - "Rend the Soul":
"Twists unholy energies around a single foe, causing it significant negative damage over time. Deals 4 to 10 damage every two seconds for 10 seconds for every caster level up to 20. A successful fortitude save reduces damage by half. D&D Dice: Deals 1d6+4 negative damage per caster level, max 20d6+80, every 2 seconds for 10 seconds."

[Kza]

This is so awesome and good i had to read it twice. Awesome with 50% healage, just awesome!!!!!

[Highdracolich79]

1st you take away my Frostmarrow Mage...

[Xyfiel]

1st you take away my Frostmarrow Mage...

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

[mr420247]

Great stuff now where is the SORC PASS AT

the Arcane class getting screwed by the maj pass and a useless ea tree

[Darckengel]

As a Pale Master main, this post makes me incredibly happy.

First of all the 50% healing from positive energy makes a massive change for epics.

The SLAs are now useful since they scale with full spell power and accept metamagics. Are they moving over to SP, or will it still be HP? It reads SP in the description, I did not know if this was a typo.

Undead Overlord makes me so happy. Especially since you can cast it simultaneously with LDA and DA.

Unholy Avatar is a dream! Running through and hitting an annoying block with a bunch of undead as a Pale Master is incredibly annoying. Usually having to spam some evo skill over and over again to tear through them which takes so much time. Also, just being generally useful in some raids now.

The new spell sounds intriguing. You have my interest!

[Mindos]

Cloak of night seems too powerful or too low in the tree or both. Maybe some odd always tumble playstyle can abuse it?

Animate ally, will players still have the slower movement? Or will it be really cool, and players get all the zombie form changes listed? Hmmm, maybe players will WANT to die, to get animated to get the buffs

I sorta don't understand what you want this tree to do. Melee? Great with the paralysing on hit. Caster? Great with the charms. Undead buddy healer? Even better. I'm just not seeing what this is supposed to really shine at doing. Tanking? DPS? Right now it seems just like it was before. Niche. But buffed niche.

[Blah2]

This is so awesome and good i had to read it twice. Awesome with 50% healage, just awesome!!!!!

This 50% is SOOOOOOOO DISGUSTING. Numerous times players make suggestions and the response is: "That does not fit the FLAVOR" . 50% healing from positive energy tastes (flavor) like the ooze between an orcs toes
IT MAKES NO SENSE

Undead are NOT healed by positive energy PERIOD. I get in its current state PM s are often excluded from epic reapers because of healing issues. This is just a dumb fix

So not to just complain and not give constructive feedback I have a suggestion:
At first i was thinking more neg spell power that helps damage too much. If the intended goal of the DUMB idea of undead being healed by positive energy is to make PMs viable in epic reaper mode then this should fix it:

Core 1: passive +6 negative heal amp per core
Core 5: passive +25 negative heal amp (31 total)
Core 6: passive +75 negative heal amp (81 total)

Based on my calculations, that will be plenty of neg heal amp on reaper 1 to 2 or maybe 3, in epics with little neg heal amp on gear. Should get between 150-200 neg heal amp. Simple fix without a completely nonsensical fix

[jskinner937]

This 50% is SOOOOOOOO DISGUSTING. Numerous times players make suggestions and the response is: "That does not fit the FLAVOR" . 50% healing from positive energy tastes (flavor) like the ooze between an orcs toes
IT MAKES NO SENSE

Undead are NOT healed by positive energy PERIOD. I get in its current state PM s are often excluded from epic reapers because of healing issues. This is just a dumb fix

So not to just complain and not give constructive feedback I have a suggestion:
At first i was thinking more neg spell power that helps damage too much. If the intended goal of the DUMB idea of undead being healed by positive energy is to make PMs viable in epic reaper mode then this should fix it:

Core 1: passive +6 negative heal amp per core
Core 5: passive +25 negative heal amp (31 total)
Core 6: passive +75 negative heal amp (81 total)

Based on my calculations, that will be plenty of neg heal amp on reaper 1 to 2 or maybe 3, in epics with little neg heal amp on gear. Should get between 150-200 neg heal amp. Simple fix without a completely nonsensical fix

I agree that I would prefer the fix for PMs to be more negative healing amp/negative spell power rather than be healed by other means. But this is not everyones preference. And honestly I look at this as a quality of life issue for divines and others wasting resources on undead rather than for the PM player themselves, but also for the melee builds.

What if it was a flavorful enhancement toggle while in shroud form?

For example....Change one of the tier 3 to select either convert half your dead body back into living tissue an become half living and half undead. This allows you to receive 50% positive energy healing instead of 0%, but your negative healing is reduced by 50% and additionally your light damage. When the toggle is off, you are again full undead and can no longer be healed by positive energy, but no longer suffer from the 50% neg healing amp penalty.

[Steelstar]

Hey, everyone. Thanks for the feedback so far! To answer a few questions:

Animate ally, will players still have the slower movement? Or will it be really cool, and players get all the zombie form changes listed? Hmmm, maybe players will WANT to die, to get animated to get the buffs

I sorta don't understand what you want this tree to do. Melee? Great with the paralysing on hit. Caster? Great with the charms. Undead buddy healer? Even better. I'm just not seeing what this is supposed to really shine at doing. Tanking? DPS? Right now it seems just like it was before. Niche. But buffed niche.

Yes, Animate Ally will confer the exact effect of the updated Zombie Form.

As to "what [we] want this tree to do": As a primary focus, allow you to be a negative nuker or Necro DC caster. However, we also want it to provide Undead options to other archetypes as a secondary focus.

I may have missed something, but this seems like big upgrades and big downgrades at the same time. Agar is making up for the loss of 1.5 negative spell power per point spent in tree? Will the other bonuses make up for this so that undead folks still swing for big negative spell power?

We seem to have missed the mark in bringing Spell Power equivalent to what the current tree over. You should be able to get roughly equivalent Negative Spell Power out of the tree; we're going to go look things over to find if we dropped a note somewhere or just accidentally lowballed it.

tl;dr we didn't mean to lower the available spell power, we'll fix that.

Does the incorporeality from Wraith stack with the incorporeality from Discorporation?

Not at this time, no - Just like it doesn't on Live right now. Incorporeality stacking is unclearly worded right now, so we understand the confusion; that's something we might take a stab at clearing up before this update goes live.

Tangentially related, but I've noticed issues being unable to cast my Favored Soul: Beacon of Hope capstone Resurrection spells on actually dead wizards who are utilizing undead forms.

Since you're all fresh out of the fire of the Pale Master frying pan I figured I'd throw that out there. I can still resurrect them via scrolls and the actual spells but the SLA gives me trouble. I'll do some more testing later today since I'm sure I can find a way to let the wizards die for science, it's what they would've wanted after all.

Huh. We'll take a look at that when we can.

Since again you're doing arcane changes do you folks think maybe we could get Spell Pen listed somewhere on the Character sheet that reflected what a user has equipped, set bonuses etc. I know a lot folks who are tired of calculating this when doing gear calculus on their casters especially given how gear is these days. Having to stop in combat and search a log before it scrolls away or catch the little value on the game dice as its rolled for is annoying.

I've asked this before and not heard anything about it but since you folks are in the guts of casters.... though I would mention this one after all we are all stat nerds at heart so... lets throw yet one more thing.

Thanks

We understand there's a number of statistics (including Spell Pen) that aren't listed on the Character Sheet right now. We'd like to get Spell Pen added too. Unfortunately, it's not in scope for U43.

Content-wise, isn't u43 just the raid? I understand that it's huge mechanically, with the ED changes and now PM ones, nut should we expect any gear which will be relevant to non-raiders?

U42 Patch (...something) is coming soonest, it contains just the new Raid.
U43 (coming sometime soon after that) contains a new content pack, the ED changes, the new Epic Past Lives, this Pale Master pass, and More™.
U44 is later this year, and will contain the new class. Possibly some other things too, we'll see.
U45 is also coming this year (as we said in the Producer's Letter), it includes Keep on the Borderlands.

Will the Skeleton Knight act like other pets, the Druid and Artificer Dogs, and be equip-able and/or have a view-able sheet? Being able to throw that Looted Full Plate on my Skeleton would be slick and increase the value of some of the odd-ball armors and random-gens. If the answer is no, would that be only for now pending a pet pass, or solidly no for some design/technical reason?

No major changes to the Skeleton Pet in this update outside of what we've already talked about in this thread. We'd love to make some significant changes to them, but making even minor changes to the pets would take longer than this entire PM pass took. It's on our Hopefully-Someday schedule.

True, but how many people swapped between more than two often enough that a simple enhancement respec wouldn't cover the outlier cases?

Exactly. Very few people consistently use more than two. In the new version of the tree, you can get your preferred form at level 3, and then your second-most preferred form at level 4.

Archmage desperately needs this sort of attention. Thanks for doing this, but please also do Archmage. I want to play a Raistlin/Elminster style wizard and always have. A staff in hand, robes, and mastery over the arcane.

We'd like to do a pass on Archmage down the line. It probably won't happen this year. Archmage is 2-3x the size of every other tree, and will take at least 2-3x as long to do anything meaningful with on our end, so it's a matter of finding the right time. TBH, Archmage is expensive but relatively effective for a number of possible builds; on the other hand, there are some spell school choices and combos that are rarely, if ever, used. We'll probably collect some feedback and data about that as we get closer to actually making a change there.

I get that a lot of people don’t like the 50% positive healing from a “I don’t think pretend magic should work the same way that you think this pretend magic should work” but it’s an enormous quality of life improvement. There’s a lot of the game that has a significant self healing penalty. Add in the healing-from-others penalty and it makes Pale Maters in shroud form close to unplayable in a lot of content for most players. Taking a tree from close to unplayable to challenging-in-some-content but actually usable is a great thing.

Mid you need to come up with a more justification for it, I’m sure we can make one for you that works. The God of retcon. Lesser Pale Masters with her love. Whatever. Sometimes game balance needs to be placed above flavor text.

This is the whole matter in a nutshell.

One of the biggest issues facing Pale Masters right now is that they fit badly into overall party composition; some can self-heal reliably, but if you're building toward that it's at the cost of being effective in other ways and that has a real, material cost that stops these builds from reaching their full potential. While it's understandable that not everyone likes the lore around it, the net effect of allowing half-positive-healing for these builds is overwhelmingly positive for the overall health of Pale Master builds and the game in general, and there haven't been any compelling arguments against it so far in the feedback that outweigh that positive. This isn't to say that arguments against it don't have merit; they do, and we're listening.

Nothing we can do to their potential to Negative Healing will have the same impact; as good as some of the ideas in this thread are, they would band-aid the larger problem rather than fundamentally improve party dynamics and overall survivability in a party setting (and even soloing, really).

[Arty_Farty]

One of the biggest issues facing Pale Masters right now is that they fit badly into overall party composition; some can self-heal reliably, but if you're building toward that it's at the cost of being effective in other ways and that has a real, material cost that stops these builds from reaching their full potential. While it's understandable that not everyone likes the lore around it, the net effect of allowing half-positive-healing for these builds is overwhelmingly positive for the overall health of Pale Master builds and the game in general, and there haven't been any compelling arguments against it so far in the feedback that outweigh that positive. This isn't to say that arguments against it don't have merit; they do, and we're listening.

Nothing we can do to their potential to Negative Healing will have the same impact; as good as some of the ideas in this thread are, they would band-aid the larger problem rather than fundamentally improve party dynamics and overall survivability in a party setting (and even soloing, really).

I am personally completely against the idea of allowing positive healing for Pale Masters, however on the basis this already seems to be a lost cause can we at least have a cost attached to it and make sure it isnt forced on those of us who fundamentally don't want it?

I would suggest that rather than giving it away for free as part of a core, push it up into the tree as an alternative to the negative healing amp of "Negative Energy Adept". Make it something like "Positive Energy Adept", 3 ranks 15/30/50% benefit from positive healing, make it exclusive so you cannot also take "Negative Energy Adept".

This gives those of us who enjoy playing our palemasters with the added challenge of self healing in high reaper the ability to continue to enjoy doing so, and not be forced into an easy button playstyle which we do not want.

It will also allow those who struggle with negative self healing, or simply want an easier time to get the benefits you are intending by spending a few AP's to get benefit you feel is necessary.

Sartorin

[btolson]

We'd like to do a pass on Archmage down the line. It probably won't happen this year. Archmage is 2-3x the size of every other tree, and will take at least 2-3x as long to do anything meaningful with on our end, so it's a matter of finding the right time. TBH, Archmage is expensive but relatively effective for a number of possible builds; on the other hand, there are some spell school choices and combos that are rarely, if ever, used. We'll probably collect some feedback and data about that as we get closer to actually making a change there.

Is some minor triage in scope for Archmage for U43? Like adjusting the cost of T1 Energy of the Scholar (30/60/90 spellpoints) to be 1 AP per rank, to match every other class tree that has a similar enhancement?

[Requiro]

We'd like to do a pass on Archmage down the line. It probably won't happen this year. Archmage is 2-3x the size of every other tree, and will take at least 2-3x as long to do anything meaningful with on our end, so it's a matter of finding the right time. TBH, Archmage is expensive but relatively effective for a number of possible builds; on the other hand, there are some spell school choices and combos that are rarely, if ever, used. We'll probably collect some feedback and data about that as we get closer to actually making a change there.

Well, you can always give up a special school route and give us more freedom to create a good Archmage by creating a system in which we can choose which spells will be as SLs. I think that will be less time consuming by Dev team.

Is some minor triage in scope for Archmage for U43? Like adjusting the cost of T1 Energy of the Scholar (30/60/90 spellpoints) to be 1 AP per rank, to match every other class tree that has a similar enhancement?

And +4 Intelligence on Capstone

[janave]

This is the whole matter in a nutshell.

One of the biggest issues facing Pale Masters right now is that they fit badly into overall party composition; some can self-heal reliably, but if you're building toward that it's at the cost of being effective in other ways and that has a real, material cost that stops these builds from reaching their full potential. While it's understandable that not everyone likes the lore around it, the net effect of allowing half-positive-healing for these builds is overwhelmingly positive for the overall health of Pale Master builds and the game in general, and there haven't been any compelling arguments against it so far in the feedback that outweigh that positive. This isn't to say that arguments against it don't have merit; they do, and we're listening.

Nothing we can do to their potential to Negative Healing will have the same impact; as good as some of the ideas in this thread are, they would band-aid the larger problem rather than fundamentally improve party dynamics and overall survivability in a party setting (and even soloing, really).

Well I think this is very hard to decrypt, but I give it a go, is the more specific issue about "how to keep a melee EK+PMform alive in a group setting", for example with mass cures?

I dont remember the last time I needed "help" on my wraith form casting PM running content I was prepared for (1st life so ~r4 tops) in a party that was ready for that difficulty. On the other hand, I've seen 1500 hits from neg-burst, and 1100 pts aura ticks ( which will be more than doubled with this pass using the new capstone ).

To me, it seems like a perfect opportunity to reuse the spells to touch range toggle, to enable the 50% positive heals. This would be suboptimal for casting enlarged FoD from a safe spot, but affordable enough for an EK to do his thing.

Outside of reaper in a typical LE (r0) dungeon the 2 aura is very close to god mode with moderate investment.

AmIWrong?

[HuneyMunster]

We'd like to do a pass on Archmage down the line. It probably won't happen this year. Archmage is 2-3x the size of every other tree, and will take at least 2-3x as long to do anything meaningful with on our end, so it's a matter of finding the right time. TBH, Archmage is expensive but relatively effective for a number of possible builds; on the other hand, there are some spell school choices and combos that are rarely, if ever, used. We'll probably collect some feedback and data about that as we get closer to actually making a change there.

Does this also mean that Savant tree/s update will not be till next year? And will there ever be a third Prestige for Sorcerers outside of the defensive melee touch spellcasting and dps options?

[MasterKernel]

This is the whole matter in a nutshell.

One of the biggest issues facing Pale Masters right now is that they fit badly into overall party composition; some can self-heal reliably, but if you're building toward that it's at the cost of being effective in other ways and that has a real, material cost that stops these builds from reaching their full potential. While it's understandable that not everyone likes the lore around it, the net effect of allowing half-positive-healing for these builds is overwhelmingly positive for the overall health of Pale Master builds and the game in general, and there haven't been any compelling arguments against it so far in the feedback that outweigh that positive. This isn't to say that arguments against it don't have merit; they do, and we're listening

It would be SO fun to see if all the healers will refuse to heal Wizards whatsoever in order to protest agains the 50% positive healing change…

[Delosari]

As to "what [we] want this tree to do": As a primary focus, allow you to be a negative nuker or Necro DC caster. However, we also want it to provide Undead options to other archetypes as a secondary focus.

.

I can see (and I like them) the negative nuker and undead options for non pure builds. However, I think the necro DC focus has been reduced in this tree in comparison to the old version. Currently, we have:

Zombie: Soak damage and melee utility
Wraist: Avoid damage and rogue utility
Vampire: CC and melee/range utility
Lich: Negative power and some resistances.

I personally like the focus on the Necro DC caster (specially if it wont be available in the archmage pass tree) but currently there is the same DC bonus for necromancy and enchantment.

I would suggest instead of the energy conduit or the negative energy adept enhancements some kind of cursekeeper spell effect to reduce the DC saves from necro spells. Another option would be improving the Lich shroud bonuses for DC casting.

[blerkington]

This is the whole matter in a nutshell.

One of the biggest issues facing Pale Masters right now is that they fit badly into overall party composition; some can self-heal reliably, but if you're building toward that it's at the cost of being effective in other ways and that has a real, material cost that stops these builds from reaching their full potential. While it's understandable that not everyone likes the lore around it, the net effect of allowing half-positive-healing for these builds is overwhelmingly positive for the overall health of Pale Master builds and the game in general, and there haven't been any compelling arguments against it so far in the feedback that outweigh that positive. This isn't to say that arguments against it don't have merit; they do, and we're listening.

Nothing we can do to their potential to Negative Healing will have the same impact; as good as some of the ideas in this thread are, they would band-aid the larger problem rather than fundamentally improve party dynamics and overall survivability in a party setting (and even soloing, really).

The lore argument is very much a secondary issue. It's nice if our game world makes sense rather than just being a series of odd exceptions taped together and has some internal consistency, but game balance is certainly the primary issue.

It's also very alarming that you've chosen one of the least informed and most exaggerated comments in this thread so far as summing up the so-called problem in a nutshell. The claim that most players find PMs unplayable in most content is groundless and absurd. There's just no nice way to say how wrong that statement is.

If you follow that poster's other comments in this thread you will see that s/he actually has no idea about the healing potential of the build, gets taken by surprise when some numbers are quoted and then has to ask for more information. Yet this is the quality of feedback you've chosen to accept in support of the changes you want to make. PM self-healing is godly in sub-reaper difficulties and the development team has insisted they weren't going to balance the game around play in reaper - so where does that leave you with justifying the healing changes?

I think it would be very useful for this discussion if you could give us some specifics on two points you've made. The first being how a largely self-sufficient build with excellent CC options in your opinion somehow work badly with groups, and the second being how building for self-healing (which involves a couple of spell choices, possibly a small AP allocation for neg healing amp in the tree, plus gear) is preventing PMs from reaching their potential as casters. None of these things are actually issues in the game; PMs are strong right now, can provide excellent support for their groups in the form of instakills and CC, and do not in fact have to make any substantial sacrifices to support their own self healing.

This seems like an excellent example of you taking advice from the wrong people and using it to amass a bunch of post-hoc rationalisations that have literally nothing to do with how the game actually works in order to support your chosen course of action. You'd be far better served by talking to people who are experienced playing the build in difficult content rather than random forum participants who are just parroting some slogans they've heard about PMs being bad right now while trying to pass off a huge increase in power via survivability as merely being a QoL issue.

Thanks.

[Eddexp]

one less class to play

[rabidfox]

[*]Core 3: Multiselector: Improved Shrouding: Pick one of the following abilities that applies while in a Pale Shroud: (Passive: While in a Shroud, you can breathe underwater. +1 Spell Penetration.)

• Inflict Weariness: Your attacks inflict 2-9 points of Negative Energy damage to a living target. This scales with 100% Spell Power. Your Vorpal Melee Hits cause Energy Drain, inflicting 1 Negative Level on victims.

Will this 2-9 neg dam work with ranged attacks too? =)