Thoughts On Alchemist After A Long Playtesting

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

Alchemist is fun but I am a little bummed out about the following:

1-Death Salve isn't a toggle and only works on other players

2-Melt Lock isn't working no matter how I try to build to make it work!

3-No support for medium armor proficiency in the Vile Chemist Tree

4-The lack of awesome Sickles in game (Sickle is my favored weapon for this class!)

5-No orb (Or sickle) with legendary affirmation (Or an equivalent modified from the Soul Eating attribute currently only found on Grave wrappings (Handwraps from The Unquiet Graves quest) makes pure Alchemist class Vile Chemist melee builds a little more on the edge of the seat than I'd prefer, also I strongly dislike two weapon fighting! See Sickle Design below if you want to know how I imagine a decent raid tier melee sickle looking!

6-No potions of Reconstruction/repair to throw

__________________________________________________ ____________________________________

Sickle Design For Vile Alchemist Use (Would also likely please that one guy who donated a ton to SSG, run it by him maybe?)

The Vilest Sickle Sickle
Minimum Level: 29

• +15 enhancement bonus
• Legendary Soul Trapping Passive: +0.5[W] damage dice.
  On Vorpal Hit: If your target has fewer than 3000 hitpoints and fails to make a Will DC save 100, it is instantly slain, if it is instantly slain its soul is trapped into a gem. If the target has above 3000 Hit Points, it takes 300 damage instead. (This is a hybrid between the Trap The Soul weapon proc, the Legendary Slay The Living weapon proc, and the Sovereign Vorpal Effect).
• Legendary Soul Eating: On a Vorpal strike, the dark energy that inhabits this weapon will tear at the soul of your foe, inflicting 2d6 negative levels to your target. The Soul Eating weapon will feed this stolen life back to you in the form of 1000 temporary hit points that last for one minute or until depleted by incoming damage. (Does not stack with legendary affirmation or Bloodfeast)
• Insatiable Vampirism 4: This weapon fiercely thirsts for the blood of your enemies, healing you for +4d2 hit points with each hit and dealing 5 constitution damage to the target struck.
• Legendary Cursespewing:On a natural 20 attack roll, this weapon lashes out with a vengeful curse that confers a -10 morale penalty on attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, and skill checks. This agonizing curse also causes the victim to take 12D6 damage every two seconds for a duration of twelve seconds. Additional vorpal strikes while the curse is still active will extend the duration by another twelve seconds. Note: This curse's penalties stack with the Bestow Curse spell.
• Empty Purple Augment Slot
• Empty Red Augment Slot

__________________________________________________ ____________________________________







Overall, the alchemist is a really fun class and what I'd call a real glass cannon, with a little more polishing it could be better, one thing this class needs in legendary content is something to give them that 1000 hitpoint legendary affirmation effect without robbing a build of the freedom to single weapon fight and have a full range of potential filigree usage.

For survival purposes, I'd say go Warforged, however there is a problem.... this class has no curative admixtures for repairs.......... but still, Shards Of Mechanus Filigree set does help out a lot for survival, though you will still die a bit even while running epic elite on your own.

All my testing was done at level cap and based on the difficulty I've had even while I've been at level cap and how often I'd had to use the Reconstruct sla from my Scion Of Mechanus feat I can say with absolutely certainty that this class could use some repair potion skills!

My two favorite spells are: Flesh To Gold (Mass) and Multivial Of Poison!

__________________________________________________ _______________________________

UPDATE!!!!

After realizing that I was wasting a feat on swords to plowshares and perhaps spreading myself a little thin I then decided to swap swords to plowshares and all of the slashing based feats for feats that would improve my vistani knife fighting.

I then rebuilt my tree contributions around purely melee and found it to balance out what I needed to an extent where I can conclude that a a good dagger and some more appropriate gear would complete the feel!

Instead of a Sickle, that item should be a Dagger!



__________________________________________________ ______________

The Vilest Dagger Dagger
Minimum Level: 29

• +15 enhancement bonus
• Legendary Soul Trapping Passive: +0.5[W] damage dice.
  On Vorpal Hit: If your target has fewer than 3000 hitpoints and fails to make a Will DC save 100, it is instantly slain, if it is instantly slain its soul is trapped into a gem. If the target has above 3000 Hit Points, it takes 300 damage instead. (This is a hybrid between the Trap The Soul weapon proc, the Legendary Slay The Living weapon proc, and the Sovereign Vorpal Effect).
• Legendary Soul Eating: On a Vorpal strike, the dark energy that inhabits this weapon will tear at the soul of your foe, inflicting 2d6 negative levels to your target. The Soul Eating weapon will feed this stolen life back to you in the form of 1000 temporary hit points that last for one minute or until depleted by incoming damage. (Does not stack with legendary affirmation or Bloodfeast)
• Insatiable Vampirism 4: This weapon fiercely thirsts for the blood of your enemies, healing you for +4d2 hit points with each hit and dealing 5 constitution damage to the target struck.
• Legendary Cursespewing:On a natural 20 attack roll, this weapon lashes out with a vengeful curse that confers a -10 morale penalty on attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, and skill checks. This agonizing curse also causes the victim to take 12D6 damage every two seconds for a duration of twelve seconds. Additional vorpal strikes while the curse is still active will extend the duration by another twelve seconds. Note: This curse's penalties stack with the Bestow Curse spell.
• Empty Purple Augment Slot
• Empty Red Augment Slot

__________________________________________________ _______

A good trinket to help this build out would be nice!

Enchanted Monodrone Eye Trinket
Minimum Level: 29

• Reconstruction +214
• Insightful Reconstruction +107
• Constitution +21
• Insightful Constitution +10
• Empty blue Augment Slot
• Empty green Augment Slot

[droid327]

1-Death Salve isn't a toggle and only works on other players

2-Melt Lock isn't working no matter how I try to build to make it work!

3-No support for medium armor proficiency in the Vile Chemist Tree

4-The lack of awesome Sickles in game (Sickle is my favored weapon for this class!)

5-No orb (Or sickle) with legendary affirmation (Or an equivalent modified from the Soul Eating attribute currently only found on Grave wrappings (Handwraps from The Unquiet Graves quest) makes pure Alchemist class Vile Chemist melee builds a little more on the edge of the seat than I'd prefer, also I strongly dislike two weapon fighting! See Sickle Design below if you want to know how I imagine a decent raid tier melee sickle looking!

6-No potions of Reconstruction/repair to throw

You seem to always have expectations that are way beyond the point of being OP, and thus always get disappointed....

1 - Its not supposed to be for self-heals
3 - Alchemist is an unarmored class, its one of the fundamental things about its design
4 - There are enough good sickles scattered throughout Heroic and Epic. Devourer's Reaper, e.g.
5 - You can make a LGS sickle with Affirmation?
6 - Of course not. As soon as you smashed the vial, it would repair itself.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

You seem to always have expectations that are way beyond the point of being OP, and thus always get disappointed....

1 - Its not supposed to be for self-heals
3 - Alchemist is an unarmored class, its one of the fundamental things about its design
4 - There are enough good sickles scattered throughout Heroic and Epic. Devourer's Reaper, e.g.
5 - You can make a LGS sickle with Affirmation?
6 - Of course not. As soon as you smashed the vial, it would repair itself.

1-You can heal yourself with the potions as well as heal others so long as you either multiclass into wizard for the shroud or rely on positive energy healing

3-The tree in question is a tree with melee fighting enhancements making it dependent on dodge but the alchemist is too feat starved to have enough for both dodge based and melee feats.

4-Your defining of "Good" is unsatisfactory for endgame purposes. The best sickle so far for DPS at end game seems to be the one for the main hand dropped in the Killing Time Raid, all others tested performed more poorly in the equipment slot comparably speaking!

5-Making a Sickle with legendary affirmation either means you can't use any sentient filigrees for your main hand or are forced to do two weapon fighting, please read what someone writes and take time to comprehend it?

6-No, if repair spells worked that way then by that same logic someone with repair spells should be able to target their damaged weapons and use the repair spell on them rather than needing to pay out platinum for repairs every so often. If the logic does not apply to repairing gear, then by extension it can not apply to the repairing of shards of glass.

[Discpsycho]

1-You can heal yourself with the potions as well as heal others so long as you either multiclass into wizard for the shroud or rely on positive energy healing

3-The tree in question is a tree with melee fighting enhancements making it dependent on dodge but the alchemist is too feat starved to have enough for both dodge based and melee feats.

4-Your defining of "Good" is unsatisfactory for endgame purposes. The best sickle so far for DPS at end game seems to be the one for the main hand dropped in the Killing Time Raid, all others tested performed more poorly in the equipment slot comparably speaking!

5-Making a Sickle with legendary affirmation either means you can't use any sentient filigrees for your main hand or are forced to do two weapon fighting, please read what someone writes and take time to comprehend it?

6-No, if repair spells worked that way then by that same logic someone with repair spells should be able to target their damaged weapons and use the repair spell on them rather than needing to pay out platinum for repairs every so often. If the logic does not apply to repairing gear, then by extension it can not apply to the repairing of shards of glass.

1. As Lynnabel said in your other thread on the same subject, that's WAI. Also, it seems like you answered your own gripe there with the multiclassing option...? Regardless, Converter is the same; if you're a fleshie Arti without Construct Essence, you're in the same boat

3. Warpriest / War Soul are trees in caster classes that also benefit melees but have no room for dodge feats . Vile Chemist boosts attacking both at range and in melee. The cores give +5 Dodge and +10 Cap, which is 5 / 10 more than Eldritch Knight gives and compensates in part for the lack of medium armor proficiency. Finally, there currently aren't any classes that get evasion and give medium armor proficiency in their trees

4 / 5. It seems like the obvious answer is KT Sickle mainhand, Leg Affirmation Greensteel offhand. If you're intent on SWF, the KT sickle may be the best damage thanks to its offhand boost, but Legendary Hook and Leg. Flicker of Crescent Moon are comparable. Neither of those grants bonuses specific to TWF

But what you're asking for is flawed. I challenge you to come up with a weapon design that is balanced for both SWF and TWF without incentivising either. Wielding two weapons with different effects is the way to combine effects of different types - it's what casters have done (with a few recent exceptions) since the death of Thaumaturgy staves. Some SWF folks want an Affirmation weapon, some want a damage-proc weapon. Some TWF want two damage-proc weapons or one of each type.

Using sickles is a choice. Disliking two weapon fighting is a choice. Optimizing for DPS is a choice. Choosing these may change alchemist playstyle towards more of a glass cannon, but if that's not your preference you can always choose to sacrifice some DPS for Affirmation

6. Pretty sure that was a joke (which I chuckled at). At best, this is a way to stack Glass Shards . But either way, reconstruction is artificer territory. Not /signed

[HungarianRhapsody]

You can also swap in Affirmation until you get the HP and then swap back to your DPS weapon like most raid players do. Even with TWF, you aren’t going to sit with Affirmation in your off hand 100% of the time. That’s wasteful.

[Kielbasa]

3. Warpriest / War Soul are trees in caster classes that also benefit melees but have no room for dodge feats . Vile Chemist boosts attacking both at range and in melee. The cores give +5 Dodge and +10 Cap, which is 5 / 10 more than Eldritch Knight gives and compensates in part for the lack of medium armor proficiency. Finally, there currently aren't any classes that get evasion and give medium armor proficiency in their trees

Nature's Warrior you get medium armor from druid and you can get evasion in t5. Theoretically you could make a dex or int based wolf and it would work. You could add vile chemist to the mix and role play an experiment gone wrong.

[Discpsycho]

Nature's Warrior you get medium armor from druid and you can get evasion in t5. Theoretically you could make a dex or int based wolf and it would work. You could add vile chemist to the mix and role play an experiment gone wrong.

You're not wrong. I said "classes that get evasion" and "medium armor through enhancements" because I didn't want to go down a rabbit hole of exceptions:
- Druid (medium armor) + T5 wolf
- Swashbuckler Core #6 vs. Warchanter T4
- Eldritch Knight T4, Enlightened Spirit T4, Warchanter T4 vs. Shadowdancer Core / Primal Avatar T6

I like the idea of a Mr. Hyde build mixing druid and alch, at least in theory. In practice I imagine it'd be tough to make work. Alch will contribute more as the dominant split thanks to Vile Chemist dice, so 12 Alch / 8 Druid for Winter Wolf?

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

1. As Lynnabel said in your other thread on the same subject, that's WAI. Also, it seems like you answered your own gripe there with the multiclassing option...? Regardless, Converter is the same; if you're a fleshie Arti without Construct Essence, you're in the same boat

3. Warpriest / War Soul are trees in caster classes that also benefit melees but have no room for dodge feats . Vile Chemist boosts attacking both at range and in melee. The cores give +5 Dodge and +10 Cap, which is 5 / 10 more than Eldritch Knight gives and compensates in part for the lack of medium armor proficiency. Finally, there currently aren't any classes that get evasion and give medium armor proficiency in their trees

4 / 5. It seems like the obvious answer is KT Sickle mainhand, Leg Affirmation Greensteel offhand. If you're intent on SWF, the KT sickle may be the best damage thanks to its offhand boost, but Legendary Hook and Leg. Flicker of Crescent Moon are comparable. Neither of those grants bonuses specific to TWF

But what you're asking for is flawed. I challenge you to come up with a weapon design that is balanced for both SWF and TWF without incentivising either. Wielding two weapons with different effects is the way to combine effects of different types - it's what casters have done (with a few recent exceptions) since the death of Thaumaturgy staves. Some SWF folks want an Affirmation weapon, some want a damage-proc weapon. Some TWF want two damage-proc weapons or one of each type.

Using sickles is a choice. Disliking two weapon fighting is a choice. Optimizing for DPS is a choice. Choosing these may change alchemist playstyle towards more of a glass cannon, but if that's not your preference you can always choose to sacrifice some DPS for Affirmation

6. Pretty sure that was a joke (which I chuckled at). At best, this is a way to stack Glass Shards . But either way, reconstruction is artificer territory. Not /signed

1-No, you aren't in the same boat as there are no feats that would allow you to turn yourself into an undead type while for artificers there is a feat that can turn you into a construct type! Artificers have excellent build plasticity when it comes to self heal options. No other classes have that level of build plasticity for self healing options! Wizard comes close until you realize that they only have harm spells. Artificers can self heal via curative admixtures (Positive healing), or take construct essence and self heal via repair spells!

3-Irrelevant as warsoul/warpriest builds already get armor proficiency and my stance is either/or on medium armor vs Dodge improvements. The dodge cap for Alchemist needs a little bump, not much of one though.

4/5-No, The answer was to switch to using daggers and the vistani knife fighter tree.

6-"Just because" is not a valid support for any position, a more valid support for your position though may exist in the source material they are taking this Alchemist class from. Also if we tally up classes that can heal people via negative energy, positive energy, and repair and then compare those which one has less classes that have spells to heal such through? For repair you only have artificer, wizard, and sorcerer but for positive and negative you have a lot more people who can heal through such. Meanwhile the warforged race have a feat that allows them to forsake positive healing in favor of some increased defenses in which reduces their healing opportunities even further if they choose to take such.

After the system changes to a multiclassed toon of mine that had a supreme tome used on him made his build obsolete and defective without a free heart to fix it I've lost my taste for multiclassing, so no to any solution requiring multiclassing until there is at least a way to earn +1 or greater lesser hearts of wood in game or the developers agree to give lesser hearts for multiclass builds their updates ruined.

You are focusing on "choice" when you should be accepting that people enjoy different playstyles and are unable to enjoy other playstyles in which isn't a choice but simply is. You should also be paying attention to matters of reason rather than illusions of choice in which from your position would require you to assume less and ask more. People do not choose to enjoy something or choose to not enjoy it, the choice you claim exists doesn't, why not try stepping outside of your bubble and realize people's preferences differ from person to person?

DDO has too many weapons that offer bonuses for using via two weapon fighting style, for once we need something that is great for single weapon fighting styles without trying to convince people to use it in two weapon fighting styles.

Single weapon fighting is crisp, swift, and effective in such a way that satisfies far more than the clumsy feeling I get from two weapon fighting or the clunky feeling I get from two handed fighting. Optimizing a single weapon's effects while having an offhand orb, buckler (If a swashbuckling bard), or runearm is where the satisfaction is at for me.

Single class build, No sneaking/hiding centered builds, Melee, SWF, and self heals via repair or negative energy is my style!

My preferred weapons vary based on class!

Longswords, Daggers, Bastard Swords, and sometimes sickles or warhammers are my preferences

Favorite item effects: Effects that debuff enemies or buff/heal you and effects that give you free items like soul gems or tasty hams

My favorite to least favorite classes in order:

Artificer
Wizard
Alchemist
Warlock
Bard
Sorcerer
Rogue or Fighter
Cleric
Favored Soul
Paladin Or Ranger
Monk
Druid

I designed a universal enhancement tree that would allow me to adequately enjoy all of the above classes with the exception of druid while not even being required for Wizard or Artificer......... unfortunately the Druid Wild forms requiring to use positive energy healing only just kills the enjoy-ability for me!

Some of these may seem in a rather odd order to you, but some classes simply can not make a decent balance between self healing and DPS

My preference of repair healing or negative energy healing is about specific utility compatibility......

Now let's say that my Vampire Universal Enhancement tree was created as I have represented it here on the forums, there is actually a chance that I might call for it to be nerfed depending on how well it does, but the reality is that nerfing would likely have some relation to specific class builds that could be made. Looking at the tree, I think the nullification spellpower provided through this tree would be a primary target for nerfing!

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ree?highlight=

What I have is the understanding on what I enjoy that would be required for elaborating what I enjoy very intricately, a build being overpowered does not tempt me to use it...... hence why I've been able to ignore the inquisitive tree so easily. If this tree existed, my suggestions would be reduced to possibly nerfing the tree, cosmetics and stuff for my wife

I challenge you to elaborate what makes a build enjoyable to you at least in as great of detail as I myself have provided!

[droid327]

6. Pretty sure that was a joke (which I chuckled at). At best, this is a way to stack Glass Shards . But either way, reconstruction is artificer territory.

Yeah it was - though it was based on a real experience. I had a tube of silicone sealant, and the back end ripped open. As you might expect, it sealed itself, and rest of the tube was still usable

3-The tree in question is a tree with melee fighting enhancements making it dependent on dodge but the alchemist is too feat starved to have enough for both dodge based and melee feats.

What? LOL! Alch is not feat starved - they get autogrants AND bonus feats, and while a few of those are "must have" for Alch-specific feats, you can absolutely squeeze in Dodge and Mob once you get past L12. SWFx3, IC, Precision, Dodge/Mob, and 2 metamagics of your choice, plus INT to dmg/hit, INT to Will, and Evasion as your first three Alch feats. Thats a melee kit plus Dodge.

Plus, like he mentioned above, VC gives you big Dodge cap bonuses in the cores, a la Monk stances, and its not hard at all to get your actual Dodge percent capped just with gear, PLs, and enhancements.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

You can also swap in Affirmation until you get the HP and then swap back to your DPS weapon like most raid players do. Even with TWF, you aren’t going to sit with Affirmation in your off hand 100% of the time. That’s wasteful.

Time passes differently for different people, unfortunately that would not work for me especially when my builds often rely on weapon attachment and the 1000 hitpoints depletion rate is not something I personally can pay adequate attention to. The time weapon attachment takes combined with the fact that it has a cooldown timer inbetween uses makes this less of a viable option!

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

Yeah it was - though it was based on a real experience. I had a tube of silicone sealant, and the back end ripped open. As you might expect, it sealed itself, and rest of the tube was still usable



What? LOL! Alch is not feat starved - they get autogrants AND bonus feats, and while a few of those are "must have" for Alch-specific feats, you can absolutely squeeze in Dodge and Mob once you get past L12. SWFx3, IC, Precision, Dodge/Mob, and 2 metamagics of your choice, plus INT to dmg/hit, INT to Will, and Evasion as your first three Alch feats. Thats a melee kit plus Dodge.

Plus, like he mentioned above, VC gives you big Dodge cap bonuses in the cores, a la Monk stances, and its not hard at all to get your actual Dodge percent capped just with gear, PLs, and enhancements.

You came in too late after the switch was announced as to being made to Vistani Knife Fighter to be focusing on that without it seeming obvious that you did not read the updates. The Alchemist is feat starved if you build a pure alchemist melee that uses Sickles unless you go human and intend to not do legendary content. The Vistani knife fighter tree makes a huge difference in viability and survivability!

[droid327]

You came in too late after the switch was announced as to being made to Vistani Knife Fighter to be focusing on that without it seeming obvious that you did not read the updates. The Alchemist is feat starved if you build a pure alchemist melee that uses Sickles unless you go human and intend to not do legendary content. The Vistani knife fighter tree makes a huge difference in viability and survivability!

...wat?

What does VKF have to do with sickles? Or feats?

A sickle alch would use the feats just as I laid out above.

Alch is not feat starved by any metric.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

...wat?

What does VKF have to do with sickles? Or feats?

A sickle alch would use the feats just as I laid out above.

Alch is not feat starved by any metric.

That was already explained, please do read before commenting as it is rude not to!

Swords to plowshares is a feat, building for daggers replaces the use of that feat with the use of the vistani knife fighter while it of course obviously also by extension replaces the weapon used with a dagger.

Alchemist is feat starved if you build it for melee sickle use as there are more feats you need to take for melee improvements than there are feats available to take.

Single weapon fighting feats on their own take up three feat options, Sickle related feats take up three options, critical hit related feats take up two options (One more in epics if you are doing epic levels), and defense related feats such as improved fortification take up the rest. Defensively speaking your best bet is to go bladeforged using a +1 lesser heart of wood!

Quicken is a must for repair spells and due to the details on why that is, Quicken can be considered defensive in nature for said purpose!

Melee Feats:

Weapon Focus: Piercing Weapons (If using sickle weapon focus: slashing instead)

Battalion Brew

Single Weapon Fighting

Improved Single Weapon Fighting

Greater Single Weapon Fighting

Swords To Plowshares (Only if using Sickle)

Improved Critical Piercing Weapons (Improved Critical: Slashing weapons instead if using Sickle)

Power Critical

Precision

Defensive Feats:

Quicken (For making sure your repair spells are not interrupted in combat)

Mobility

Dodge

Construct Exemplar

Liquid Luck

Insightful Courage

Improved Fortification


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Here's the thing though, of the feats given free to Alchemists, they get a total of two free feats that are specifically for ranged combat: Multitude Of Missiles and Quick Draw

There is no option to replace multitude of Missiles with Precision, and there is no option to take Quicken rather than Quick Draw...

Are Alchemists feat starved when built for ranged weapons? Nope, not in the slightest as they are given a head start there with two free ranged feats!

It would seem to me that you are testing for ranged builds if anything, based on your responses I highly doubt you've done any melee build testing for pure alchemist what so ever!

[Discpsycho]

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(Extra rant stuff)
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(Likes / dislikes)
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I challenge you to elaborate what makes a build enjoyable to you at least in as great of detail as I myself have provided!

1. Pale Masters are now healed 50% by positive energy. I can even confirm that it works in-game. And yes, a fleshie Arti is in a very slightly different boat, but it's effectively the same boat. Thanks for nitpicking that, though

3. Soooo multiclass or take armor proficiency? There'll be some ASF, but you'd still benefit from the dodge cap bumps

6. Before alchemist there was one class that could heal for negative energy, and that was unique. As you said, there are only three classes that can slot repair spells, which makes them unique. As it stands there are 5 arcane classes, all of which can easily meet your positive / repair healing requirements, making Alchemist unique

I'm sorry you had a multiclassed character ruined by a patch. Been there, done that. It sucks. In terms of play preferences, I'm largely in the same boat as I play hybrid melee with decent self-heals

I'm gonna avoid the preachy stuff between this and the SWF bit.

There is something that's uniquely great for SWF: the SWF feat line. There are plenty of other weapons that are much more optimal for SWF because they're supported by enhancements rather than base weapon properties; eg, Handaxes for Bards, Warhammers for Artis. To turn it around - why should they create weapons that only work with a single fighting style?

So that we've got a comprehensive list, can you please reply to this with anything I'm missing?

Lokeal's build needs:
- Melee
- Repair and/or Negative healing
- Single-class
- Preferably SWF
- Weapons in Knight's Training / Swords to Plowshares, or Dagger

[droid327]

Power Critical

Construct Exemplar

Improved Fortification

Oh wow, ok. Yeah, there's your problem right there

Power Crit is 100% trash tier feat, get rid of that right off

Construct Exemplar is an Epic feat, its not competing with your Heroic feats

Improved Fort is even worse than trash tier, its like...active self-nerfing. You're deep in a trap there. Negative 100% chance you should ever take Improved Fort.

So based on your stated preferences, a 20 Alch could take:

Core feats: SWFx3, IC:S, StP, Precision, Mobil
Alch: Brew, Courage, Evasion, Quicken, Dodge

Voila

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

1. Pale Masters are now healed 50% by positive energy. I can even confirm that it works in-game. And yes, a fleshie Arti is in a very slightly different boat, but it's effectively the same boat. Thanks for nitpicking that, though

3. Soooo multiclass or take armor proficiency? There'll be some ASF, but you'd still benefit from the dodge cap bumps

6. Before alchemist there was one class that could heal for negative energy, and that was unique. As you said, there are only three classes that can slot repair spells, which makes them unique. As it stands there are 5 arcane classes, all of which can easily meet your positive / repair healing requirements, making Alchemist unique

I'm sorry you had a multiclassed character ruined by a patch. Been there, done that. It sucks. In terms of play preferences, I'm largely in the same boat as I play hybrid melee with decent self-heals

I'm gonna avoid the preachy stuff between this and the SWF bit.

There is something that's uniquely great for SWF: the SWF feat line. There are plenty of other weapons that are much more optimal for SWF because they're supported by enhancements rather than base weapon properties; eg, Handaxes for Bards, Warhammers for Artis. To turn it around - why should they create weapons that only work with a single fighting style?

So that we've got a comprehensive list, can you please reply to this with anything I'm missing?

Lokeal's build needs:
- Melee
- Repair and/or Negative healing
- Single-class
- Preferably SWF
- Weapons in Knight's Training / Swords to Plowshares, or Dagger

Pale masters can not cast the heal spells they are healing by so that's irrelevant!

Artificers however can be self forged and heal through both curative elixirs AND repair spells. Your reading comprehension needs work big time!

You once again ignored that I do not enjoy multiclassing due to bad experiences and change that SSG has yet to make, pure classing only!

3-You are beating the dead horse that the owner already killed, I resolved the build problems with Alchemist by switching to Bladeforged as the race for efficient self healing and Vistani Knife fighting to replace the Swords to Plowshares feat with a defensive feat!

6- What you are saying here makes absolutely no sense what so ever!

No, only SWF...... I do not enjoy any other style and I made that clear, though the monk class does not mesh the greatest with SWF dagger use yet

No, only repair OR negative healing as cast by the character without need for scroll use or potion use

Yes, single class, no multiclassing!

No, you oversimplified it a bit.......

More like:

Bastard swords for artificers and melee classes

Longswords for Eldritch Knight Builds

Sickles, warhammers, and morningstars for early leveling

Daggers and shortswords for bards

If there is room for it: Swords To Plowshares or Knights training feat for Sickle or Longsword use.

Daggers for clerics, Favored Souls, and Paladins unless they are from the forgotten realms (+1 lesser heart used to remove base class) then in that case if I am able to, I will choose Bastard Sword as a favored weapon!

Builds that use blood of Vol deity choice: Daggers and Vistani tree will be used!

Druid builds: Dagger and Vistani build!

If the Vampire Universal enhancement tree I made became a reality, there would be a heavy shift towards Bastard Sword usage in my builds..... unfortunately not for Druid builds or monk builds -_-

Bastard swords are in a relatively good place right now end game variety wise, we really could just get like four more bastard swords and if they are the right combination of traits that could very well be enough to fill any niche need for them! A Bastard Sword themed after the raven queen suitable for fighting forgewraiths, a bastard sword that truly compliments the Deconstructor augment without having any effects that do not stack with it, an indestructible bastard sword for killing rust monsters and oozes, and a Brutal Bastard sword of greed that steals the competence and vitality of enemies struck with its blade to give to the sword's wielder and turns some of them into soulgems (The bastard sword I desire the most). The reality here though is the variety is so good I'd say SSG should hold off on a new one for a while, the next one they should make should be something that is legendary and ice based.

The thing that annoys me about Rangers is that they are inherently driven to support two weapon fighting and there is no way to choose single weapon fighting instead....... this is why I placed them so low on the list.

My problem with Monk is they are too squishy when building on a path less traveled using SWF and the vistani tree, I like the DPS from that build.... just not the fragility! I do believe though that the Vampire Tree would offer enough to offset the problems in said build though.

Druids can not heal through anything other than positive energy while in wild shape form, meanwhile the wild shape form is a big deal, why play druid at all if not making use of such? I think maybe I will edit something into the vampire tree for wolf form..... think Bramstoker....

Oh wow, ok. Yeah, there's your problem right there

Power Crit is 100% trash tier feat, get rid of that right off

Construct Exemplar is an Epic feat, its not competing with your Heroic feats

Improved Fort is even worse than trash tier, its like...active self-nerfing. You're deep in a trap there. Negative 100% chance you should ever take Improved Fort.

So based on your stated preferences, a 20 Alch could take:

Core feats: SWFx3, IC:S, StP, Precision, Mobil
Alch: Brew, Courage, Evasion, Quicken, Dodge

Voila

Improved fortification is fine and will help your survivability if you can self heal reliably, yeah.... forgot about the construct exemplar thing (it used to be a part of the construct essence line!), as for the power critical feat........ honestly critical hit calculations confuse me and I am still trying to find a good explanation for how all it works.

[droid327]

Improved fortification is fine and will help your survivability if you can self heal reliably, yeah....

Giving up ANY ability to heal from Positive (Admixtures on yourself, party mates, heal hires, Cocoon and other ED positive heals, reactive heal effects, etc.) is a severe limitation. You're basically limiting yourself ONLY to Recon and Shards of Mechanus. No wonder you were overvaluing Affirmation

100% Fort is not a major bonus for such a drawback. Its very easy to get your fort up to no-fail in any content, especially as a WF/BF who get it in their cores, and thus making Imp Fort redundant. Especially since you have other feats you'd rather be taking in that spot, that do more and cost less.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

Giving up ANY ability to heal from Positive (Admixtures on yourself, party mates, heal hires, Cocoon and other ED positive heals, reactive heal effects, etc.) is a severe limitation. You're basically limiting yourself ONLY to Recon and Shards of Mechanus. No wonder you were overvaluing Affirmation

100% Fort is not a major bonus for such a drawback. Its very easy to get your fort up to no-fail in any content, especially as a WF/BF who get it in their cores, and thus making Imp Fort redundant. Especially since you have other feats you'd rather be taking in that spot, that do more and cost less.

You misunderstand, shards of mechanus and self heals are sufficient for an artificer build with improved fortification, legendary affirmation would be supplementary as a means to compensate for the lack of regeneration construct type effects for the alchemist. Shards of Mechanus+Legendary affirmation does cover defense needs rather impressively

My main complaint about the pale master is that they are now allowing it to heal through positive energy so the reality is that I prefer choice of healing type, but restriction to a single healing type.

If they would allow fleshies to take improved fortification as a feat so long as said fleshy had construct essence, it would actually please me!

The vampire tree I designed actually has you straight up forsake positive healing in favor of negative healing

[SirValentine]

...the alchemist is too feat starved...

From just that phrase, I now know precisely how much weight to give to what you say about Alchemist.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

From just that phrase, I now know precisely how much weight to give to what you say about Alchemist.

The context is "for melee if using a Sickle" as I keep saying!