First Look: U43 Pale Master

[Pyed-Pyper]

How does SSG envision the role of the skeletal knight?

I think SSG should consider somehow tying the power of the SK to a value of the character, a value that is likely to change as more power is introduced later. Otherwise, the SK is likely to again be invalidated in after a few updates, and certainly long before the next wizard class pass.

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That said, I'm curious as to the purpose of these threads. There is no way players can fully appreciate the changes in order to comment meaningfully because the players don't have the full context, regardless of how forthright SSG attempts to be.

[noinfo]

i know how to do that
but ''can'' not ''good''

first ''prismatic'' not stable instant-kill spell,but u r team need stable,in kt
sec ''sunburst'' have very long cooldown,ln/lh maybe ok.but reaper is bad idea

I run r10 and r1 raid regularly,im a RL
I will choose other DC,in r1 kt/thth/rso.cause wizard not a first choice

however,i just wanna Wizard back to T1 DC
cause i love it,12 year

In KT the best instakiller is a EIN monk until the nerf.
Failing that hurl works through the shield 24 seconds per use. prismatic spray and ray 5 and 4 seconds, spam them. Rest of the trash can be killed by anything, just don't try and pk the pallies.

If you think sunburst has a long cd I am very confused. 8 seconds for an aoe insta? To me that by itself is telling.
THTH cleric or FS would be useful because they can heal inbetween but you cant insta orange trash above normal and the trash are easy to insta, faster cd spells or more of them.

RSO not exactly a highlight for any type of instakiller, eles on platform is about it.

I get you want a will based instakill that can break spell resistance or has not spell resistance check. And it seems your wizard is struggling to keep up, I know on some less geared/stat based it can be (until magister pass then no excuses) but its certainly not the number of instakills a wizard has that is the issue.

[droid327]

Keep Evards with Warlocks. This would keep it thematically correct.

Evard himself was a necromancer, so if anyone has a thematic claim to EBT it's Pale Masters...

[Horst-of-the-Wood]

As a PM-player I do like the rethinking of the forms. And I can see some neat flavor builds you now can do with that. But there is something I really dislike.

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.

Just NO. Please. You take away more and more parts of DDO that I love most: uniqueness. There already are spells to heal undead (eg Harm). Some clerics can even use Negative Energy Burst to heal undead. Spells like Harm will be worthless after patch. Having to adopt tactics to different situations is the thing that differs DDO from other MMOs and keeps me interested. Now just every heal type heals everyone, it streamlines gameplay. Same with damage and immunities. You already did this with sorcerer (at least its a capstone there) and druid. Now comes Unholy Avatar to hit undead with negative energy - which also just doesnt fit the lore. I loved it when you have to change spells/tactics depending on the enemies you are facing and not just hit the same rotation on everything. I could play many other games if I want that, with less lag, better graphics and stuff. Same with weapons if you would just set metalline+aligned on end game weapons... what would be the point of different immunities/DRs then?

Thanks for reading... even if I know it wont change anything.

[janave]

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.

So in case in trouble just break the rules with the *MAGIC WILDCARD*? Good way to set a precedent for each class with "troubles". Hey devs my Barbarian cannot land aoe instant kills on r10, plizz change the rules so 50% i always land them when a Bard is playing music on me, and dont tell it is wrong, because *MAGIC*

Ohh and the Barbarian self heal is also bad on r10, hmmm lotsa penalties, but if the pale master aura would proc some CL*100+EL*100 temp hitpoints on my Barbs that would help.

... endless downspiral of silly

[redoubt]

The idea that these are "just shrouds" and that PMs are not really undead is decent justification for the positive healing. I understand just how valuable this will be in reaper. I quit playing my PM because of it. I know many have it covered, but I did not. All this said, I am not yet on board with PM positive healing.

FRang has some good ideas here:

Hiyas! Rather than the above that doesn't seem entirely right as stated, is it feasible to consider/do the following instead?

1) Place Harm scrolls back in the normal Scroll Vendors of the appropriate level, instead of just the Mysterious Remnant vendor? This would place Pale Masters on the same level as as anyone else in the party that does not have innate healing for the heroic levels in terms of wands and scrolls. If party members or the PM have invested in UMD they can be healed outside of negative auras.

2) Permit Necrotic Ray to be target-able on Undead PMs to be able to heal them from afar.

3) Create an (anti) mirror of Rejuvenation Cocoon ("Enveloping Expiration"?) and place it in the Magister Epic Destiny as a twist available for those traveling with PMs during Epic levels. If it needs to scale with x00% Spell power, so be it.

4) If this still is not enough to avoid the 50% Positive Energy Healing being added to the game, perhaps adding to the 5th Core or Tier 5 the ability to grant Temp HP on a successful insta-kill or neg spell cast (not aura?) equal to x% Wizard Levels x INT modifier?

Thanx for taking the time to read this.

Franghasea

Add to #1, allow harm scrolls and the spell to work like heal in range and facing.

In the capstone or in T5 (or maybe both) put in a boost high enough to overcome a chunk of the reaper debuff. I'd make it reaper specific, but I know the devs don't want to put reaper stuff in non-reaper trees. The boost could be put in addition to other things in T5/captone. By putting them there it makes them hard to get and requires someone to truly specialize in being a PM.

[blerkington]

Never mind.

[BigErkyKid]

Someone correct me if I am wrong.

Traditionally, undead forms have been used for two main reasons: i)DC boosts for casting, ii)Self healing.

The small side benefits of the form for melee where a bonus, but not the main reason to go in form; melee undead were almost exclusively being used for self heals.

With reaper, the self healing advantage all but disappeared, and so did melee Shrouded builds.

In terms of enabling melee undead builds, the questions we have to ask are:

i) is the self healing scaling into high reapers?
ii) have the undead forms boosted high enough to merit a build?

And my answer to both is that I don't think so.

Allowing undead to be healed does nothing for a melee build, for which the whole point was the self heal (point i). Casters, on the other hand, are understandably "happy" about this.

The only melee splash that could afford a strong form (T5 PM) would be swashie, but t5 PM doesn't seem worth 30+ AP (point ii).

I really hope I am wrong, someone please show me the light.

Otherwise, looking forward to not seeing another cool option playing in the servers, much like Henshin mystic is completely extinct (who could have said that was going to happen, right Steelstar?).

[Delosari]

Someone correct me if I am wrong.

Traditionally, undead forms have been used for two main reasons: i)DC boosts for casting, ii)Self healing.

The small side benefits of the form for melee where a bonus, but not the main reason to go in form; melee undead were almost exclusively being used for self heals.

With reaper, the self healing advantage all but disappeared, and so did melee Shrouded builds.

In terms of enabling melee undead builds, the questions we have to ask are:

i) is the self healing scaling into high reapers?
ii) have the undead forms boosted high enough to merit a build?

And my answer to both is that I don't think so.

Allowing undead to be healed does nothing for a melee build, for which the whole point was the self heal (point i). Casters, on the other hand, are understandably "happy" about this.

The only melee splash that could afford a strong form (T5 PM) would be swashie, but t5 PM doesn't seem worth 30+ AP (point ii).

I really hope I am wrong, someone please show me the light.

Otherwise, looking forward to not seeing another cool option playing in the servers, much like Henshin mystic is completely extinct (who could have said that was going to happen, right Steelstar?).

For the first question : No self healing, from any class is or will be supposed to scale into reaper.

For the second question : I does for me even if I lose some DC as a pale trapper. Wizards have a very challenging gear tetris, the undead immunities are very nice to help with that and increasing survival rate.

Are these changes good enough for survival in raids...that is a harder question. Is a pale master supposed to be the necromancy DC definitive path... Now I would say no. I think that is the purpose of archwizard and magister.

[BigErkyKid]

For the first question : No self healing, from any class is or will be supposed to scale into reaper.

For the second question : I does for me even if I lose some DC as a pale trapper. Wizards have a very challenging gear tetris, the undead immunities are very nice to help with that and increasing survival rate.

Are these changes good enough for survival in raids...that is a harder question. Is a pale master supposed to be the necromancy DC definitive path... Now I would say no. I think that is the purpose of archwizard and magister.

Thanks for taking the time to answer, I haven't done a PM life in the longest time.

However, please note that I was refering to melee builds; I can understand well that casters are happy with the changes.

However, Steelstar said that one goal was to synergize with melees, and that's where I have a lot of doubts.

[draven1]

How about giving more power or usage on almost unused debuff, or CC spell like
"Ray of Enfeeblement, Waves of Fatigue, Waves of Exhaustion, Symbols, Fear, Chill touch, Contagion, Ghoul Touch, Horrid Wilting, Poison, Cause fear, Scare,"
instead of giving more direct DC?

If you give more power on debuff, it can encourage some kind of skillful play, not power from another reaper point, PL, gear. Current design just encourages grind, not skill.

For now, 1st life wiz who played by best skilled ppl wouldn't have any way to catch high reaper point, ALL PL, best geared wiz who played by brainless 1 click-kill all player.

[Requiro]

Look at my last post HERE

[PublicEnemy]

Very glad to see Pale Master getting the update it deserves and needs.

Agreed

Positive Energy healing.... not a fan. Positive and Negative Energies are polar opposites, you should not be able to benefit from both. If you choose to exist and thrive by the realm of Death, you must make compromises. Instead how about adding some Negative Healing Amp in each of the cores, and give a Negative Energy Burst SLA? Make Harm and Inflict spells have the same range as their corresponding Heal and Cure spells, and put Harm scrolls on vendors.

Unholy Avatar...... using Negative Energy to damage Undead, who are truly and by Lore healed by Neg Energy. Not a fan. Wizard already has several means to deal with undead. Instead, how about using their existing, native Necromancy spells and provide SLA's for the following spells. Similar to how Cleric Domain SLA's work. Grant them at predetermined levels, once a certain # of AP has been spent in PM Tree (Part of Cores I imagine). And On a separate timer from the spell.

Again...we're not true undeads, otherwise make that you chose only ONE form and cannot switch, ever (unless of a respec), that's like saying we should be able to switch from warforged to iron golem...(and saying that it is okay according to the lore)

Vampire: Full Time Regeneration and summon a pack of wolves.

I think its important to keep the Lore and flavor of the Pale Master intact.

Yep, not a true undead so lore is intact, what is really breaking the lore is to be able to be a zombie one second and a wraith the next one...(if we are real undead, that is) you can't get both the butter and the money of it!

as for the pack of wolves, as much as the army of the skeletons, yep pretty cool I agree but...RIP the servers if you get more than two of these in a single raid so...no, just no.

[K_9]

Some positive changes here including changing the currently poor SLA to actually work like SLA with META abilities.

Couple things that are missing though IMO. SLA ability to charm/dominate undead (really this should be there especially if you are a vampire/lich)/ Also in addition what would fit really well here would be a life drain SLA something like Vampric touch.

The main thing I am slightly disappointed in is there is no change to the Skeletal Knight to give options for the now removed archer/mage versions.

[btolson]

Can Necrotic Touch be de-coupled from Bolt? And possibly also Bolt from Blast?

It's moot for me because I still have absolutely no interest in them, can't afford to put nearly 25% of my AP for the tree into weak dps abilities (they're totally outclassed post-spell pass), of which only the 3rd has any value at all. But for other people they'll start approaching something resembling viability if they aren't so cripplingly expensive.

[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.

[Saekee]

NO to undead PM forms healing from positive energy

Some imaginative suggestions from forumites in thread, please note

Or allow PMs to create a ‘temp hp shield pool’ like an outer fake flesh that refurbishes itself from positive healing like an exalted variant like False Life—hey, make it a twist on the False Life Spell

I like the changes to the Cores, very good stuff, vamps got more sexy

[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

[Cadveen]

Somebody mentioned that Evard was a wizard. He was the first lich when I looked in the wiki. This begs the question on why wiz/spec can’t use evard’s Tentacles!?