Changes Based on Preview 2 Feedback

[Kinerd]

I honestly agree, barbarian should be the king of THF dps, and the fighter seems to have a knack for combat tactics, so why aren't there more skills in Kensai dedicated to combat tactics instead of raw damage. Kensai currently is spread out round the concept of short self buffs (action surges), damage, and some combat tactic buffs, but it lacks the combat tactics to take advantage of it. If kensai could get a little less doublestrike/fortification reduction but more combat tactics that people would want to use, kensai would then have a place

maybe something like t2 cleave sunder, t4 cleave trip, t5 cleave stunning blow

or a core ability "tactical cleave" that adds sunder at core 2, trip core 4, stunning blow core 6

throw in a scaling DC bonus?

[majster67]

The fighter needs a rework, and an explanation of their purpose in the game. I have refused to play one, even though the conceptual idea appeals to me because I have been screwed by every other game for choosing this archetype. There are like 4 specialists you could argue are "fighters" - monk, barbarian, paladin, ranger. Each needs to be better at the fighter than something, because if they aren't what was the point? Then there are then multiple variations of fighter, like druid animal forms, warpriest, bard warchanter, eldritch knight, artificer with bastard sword. And if your goal is damage with weapons, you are competing with bard and rogue as well.

The fighter is described as a versatile class with many feats, allowing them to do different things or highly specialize in one. They are described at being able to knock opponents down, and cleave - and in general make their own custom fighting style and "succeed in battle in many different ways".

The barbarian is described as "...beasts of the battlefield. Often using two handed weapons or two weapons at once, they can deal immense amounts of melee damage."

Not saying I agree with the plans [for the fighter], but it certainly seems like they are following the blueprint as described.

I agree.
It obvious that ftr are taken/mixed for more feats But take a look at kensai tree... Its like dedicated to monk specialist, but result is no good fighter nor monk. A main trank for fighters, for which who choose one weapon type and do not mix too much(like fighter lvl 16+/#, # = (0, 4> ), that concern weap. group spec. are good(or could give +2melee power per enh, same as feat required) plus most of T4 & T5 enhancements, but rest... give me a break. Additives to wearing light armor? Which fighter wearing light when fightning at front. Fighter will not reach that high dodge as monks, but it will lower its own prr. Or at least please unlink Athletic Mastery(T3) which can be usful, from Improved Dodge(T2) which is mostly useless. Reed in the wind(T1) - same as previous - nearly no use with no light armor, will be more useful when unlink mentioned T3 from T2. Tier 5 - One with the blade. +20 melee power, that great! and only that. It want work with Grandmaster and most fighters going into LD ED for Blitz or Fury, not Grandmaster when epic moment are based on WIS. Opprotunity Attack(T4) could be more usfull if there is no charges, or more charges(e.g. same as action boost, but saparate count). Shattering Strike(T3). Fighters have enough feat space to take Improved Sunder, and then saved(from this skill) AP always better allocate in Stalwart tree for more prr. So maybe make it more attractive and change -15% fortification on strike on -15% prr on strike or -10%. Fighter tactiical skills are usefull, if used wisely, for entire party, especially for that deal physical dmg. Will be more atractive with suggested changes then now. Coz atm manytimes is worth a spend only 40AP to get capstone and rest in Stalwart tree or racial(if dwarf, orc), after that small changes will be more points to spend and more to consider how to spend.

[DRoark]

Hmm.. It seems devs don't learn from past mistakes.

Devs are making THF as never ending passive Dance of Death now. It can be crit, 3x stat modifier, double-strike.

It should be very careful when you introduce AOE in the game. There is no reason to play single target DPS now.

Like ranged classes, it's pretty useless to use IPS now compared to just playing a caster and doing actual AOE whuppage.

[Stravix]

maybe something like t2 cleave sunder, t4 cleave trip, t5 cleave stunning blow

or a core ability "tactical cleave" that adds sunder at core 2, trip core 4, stunning blow core 6

throw in a scaling DC bonus?

Personally, i think that they should not be cleaves, as that would reduce the strength of THF kensais. I think it should something that plays into the specialties of each fighting style, which means it would probably have to be an on vorpal effect, and maybe a activateable that says your next hit is considered vorpal?

[Ashlayna]

Ok, look. If you are talking about an AA build that utilizes pure FvS, what percentage of your damage would you say came from your imbues? None of that damage is reduced under the IPS changes. If the elemental arrows were only half of your DPS, IPS would give you a 10% nerf while you recieve an attack speed buff of 13% (not talking the SotR one, but the base one). 0.9*1.13=1.017, or translated you would receive a 1.7% buff to your IPS damage, scaling higher relative to your percentage of damage that your imbues add. Your breakeven point on IPS damage shows up when your on hit affects account for only 42.4779% of your damage.

Honest question, is your damage that heavily skewed physical?

Yes, because I don't have the AP to invest in all the things I need from the Racial Tree, the AA Tree, and the FvS tree to function as designed.

I need Arcanum x 3, which is a 6 point investment. I need all of the Elven cores, except maybe the last tier of Elven Accuracy, a minimum investment of 6 AP. I need AA from the Elven tree, which is 4 AP, and I need 10 points in the weapon line. It's a 26 point investment in the elven tree, before I start considering investment in AA and investment in the FvS tree. I need to maximize the damage I do if I need to swap to Paralyzing Arrows for CC in "oops, there goes my guild leader, zerging again" situations, or if I'm trying to solo more than HH/EH. Bows are already the bottom of the barrel for overall DPS, we have that from the 1st iteration of U45 on Lama, and their solution is to cut some more, unless you want to be pigeonholed into one style of play. I don't, and I'm sure not going to pay for the privilege to go back in time to 2011. I don't play copy/pasted builds from the forums, I don't need to, as I build my own characters. There are going to be the "but you have to use Elemental Arrows, or you're doing it wrong" posts, your post here is essentially that, but for someone that doesn't use them, it matters. I've quietly endured the nerf to Many Shot due to the monkcher build, where all they had to really do was make it so that 10K stars didn't work with bows. I quietly endured the changes to the cores, locking my FvS and other caster type archers out of their capstones until 25. I'm not going to quietly endure this.

[PsychoBlonde]

Any chance Whirlwind attack's requirements can be looked at; so it doesn't require 8 feats, a DNA sample, a legitimate witness, and the soul of our first born child?

Honestly Whirlwind makes a lot more sense as the capstone to PA --> Cleave --> Great Cleave the way it's implemented in this game.

But, at a minimum removing Combat Expertise as a requirement would be nice. I could even see rolling Combat Expertise and Dodge into the same feat.

[palladin9479]

Honestly Whirlwind makes a lot more sense as the capstone to PA --> Cleave --> Great Cleave the way it's implemented in this game.

But, at a minimum removing Combat Expertise as a requirement would be nice. I could even see rolling Combat Expertise and Dodge into the same feat.

Well I think it's because the copied the feat tree from D&D 3.5E, and it was really different. That being said, like nobody took that feat line because of how feat expensive it was for how little payoff they could get.

I agree that Whirlwind in this game should be put after Great Cleave and treated just like "Supreme Cleave".

[PsychoBlonde]

Yes, because I don't have the AP to invest in all the things I need from the Racial Tree, the AA Tree, and the FvS tree to function as designed.

I need Arcanum x 3, which is a 6 point investment. I need all of the Elven cores, except maybe the last tier of Elven Accuracy, a minimum investment of 6 AP. I need AA from the Elven tree, which is 4 AP, and I need 10 points in the weapon line.

Arcane Archer no longer requires Arcanum, so the only thing you need to get it is to spend 10 points, total, in the tree, plus the 4 for the AA enhancement itself, an expenditure of 14 points which is UNDER the 15 racial points max you can currently get (13 races + 2 from tomes, going up to 14 +2 when shifter comes out), so the investment in the Elf tree for Arcane Archer can be effectively "free". Compare that with, say, the cost to get con-to-damage for dwarves and elven AA's come off lightly.

If you do the racial lives, you can do, say, a FvS AA really cheaply. 41 points in the AA tree to get capstone leaves you 39 points to invest in whatever else you want, especially because you can go chat to hit/damage or wis to hit damage on an FvS without having to put a single point into Falconry. The only reason people don't do this is simply because Inquisitive is just way, way, way better.

I'd suggest trying an AA/EK Sun Elf 20 wizard build (need a lesser heart +1 tho)--you can get TWO really solid imbues this way, and you only need to put like 6 points in EK to do it. It's a decent build, the only problem is that a straight PA caster wizard is also significantly better. But if you like the flavor, go for it. With the wizard bonus feats it's easy to do. You can use your wizard spells for CC instead of straining to get a workable DC on Paralyzing Arrows.

[PsychoBlonde]

The 1st bear attack in the chain was not benefiting from ability mulitplers correctly such as the 1.5 bonus for using a 2 handed weapon but now is.
Bears now gain +60/30/30% Strikethrough when they take Natural Weapon Fighting their first, second, and third time respectively.
Bears now update their Ability Score Modifier to Damage while using a Two Handed Weapon to 2.0/2.5/3.0 when they take Natural Weapon Fighting their first, second, and third time respectively.
Wolves and Bears no longer increase their Ability Score Modifier to Damage while using a Two Handed Weapon when they take the 3-feat THF line (this only really happened internally/on Lamannia not Live).

Is this stuff going to apply with a bear using a bastard sword or a dwarven axe? Bear requires a shield to get the most out of the defensive tree, after all.

[Mindos]

a straight PA caster wizard

What does PA mean in this context? I keep thinking Pennsylvania caster, but that just can't be right.

[Ashlayna]

Arcane Archer no longer requires Arcanum, so the only thing you need to get it is to spend 10 points, total, in the tree, plus the 4 for the AA enhancement itself, an expenditure of 14 points which is UNDER the 15 racial points max you can currently get (13 races + 2 from tomes, going up to 14 +2 when shifter comes out), so the investment in the Elf tree for Arcane Archer can be effectively "free". Compare that with, say, the cost to get con-to-damage for dwarves and elven AA's come off lightly.

If you do the racial lives, you can do, say, a FvS AA really cheaply. 41 points in the AA tree to get capstone leaves you 39 points to invest in whatever else you want, especially because you can go chat to hit/damage or wis to hit damage on an FvS without having to put a single point into Falconry. The only reason people don't do this is simply because Inquisitive is just way, way, way better.

I'd suggest trying an AA/EK Sun Elf 20 wizard build (need a lesser heart +1 tho)--you can get TWO really solid imbues this way, and you only need to put like 6 points in EK to do it. It's a decent build, the only problem is that a straight PA caster wizard is also significantly better. But if you like the flavor, go for it. With the wizard bonus feats it's easy to do. You can use your wizard spells for CC instead of straining to get a workable DC on Paralyzing Arrows.

Elven AA. It still requires Arcanum for Elven AA, according to the Wiki. This ignores the Spell Pen from it, regardless, which is needed when you have to split your stats enough to be functional. Just as I hadn't intended to go any completionist, I had no intention of chasing racials either. I didn't need it then, and don't see, rather, didn't see, that I was going to need them when I was done goofing off about getting to my final build. Now? The entire game is being built around "you must have it", and this is just the final straw. I've played "against" the "you must be this tall" thing before, I'm not interested in returning to it simply because I don't want to be like everyone else.

[FrostBeard]

Just wanted to suggest that the tier 5, Core 4/5 Vile Alchemist abilities seem a little weak compared to other classes.
Suggestions in red.


Cores

Core 5: Brushed Aside: You gain the Defensive Roll feat (When below 20% HP, there's a chance equal to your Reflex save that attacks do half damage and have their effects negated). Your Poisoned Coating Dice are now d10s (Replacing previous d8s). Your Simple Weapons gain +1 Competence bonus to their Critical Damage Multiplier.
Passive: While your Reaction is Orchidium, +5% Dodge Cap and +5 PRR
Perhaps give some additional benefit here. Defensive roll seems weak and the multiplier could be merged with the Tier 5 passive Fatal Poison.

Core 6: +4 Intelligence. Your Poisoned Coating die size is now d12.
Passive: While your Reaction is Orchidium, +10 PRR and +5% Dodge Cap.
Could do with a buff as there is not much incentive to go pure 20 vile alchemist.


Tier 5

Greater Wave of Poison: Cerulite SLA: You infect enemies in a short cone with a deadly poison that eats away at them. After 6 seconds, target creatures take 1d6+8 Poison damage per Caster Level. This will Contaminate enemies. (MCL:20).
Not sure how this and the other SLA fit into the tree as they appear to be spells. Maybe an imbue of some kind to your weapon would be more appropriate.

Fatal Poison: +2 to hit and +2 to damage with Simple Weapons. +1 Competence Bonus to Critical Range with Simple Weapons. For Darts, this Range bonus is +2 instead.
Merge this with the T4 Core so its one passive +1 threat +1 multiplier. Seems weird to split them.

Toxic Augmentation: Striking Contaminated enemies will apply stacks of Vulnerable.
Seems alright, 20% is average. Not sure if it stacks with any other vulnerability % items/weapons etc from you or other players..

Sapping Ambition: While your Reaction is Orchidium, attacking with Simple Weapons gives a 10% chance to gain 10 temporary Spell Points +1 per Alchemist level.
No idea how this helps the Vile Alchemist at all. Spell points are not needed and it does not fit the theme/class at all.

Chemical Weapon: Passive: Your Simple Weapons gain +1[w]. Your simple ranged thrown weapons attack 15% faster.
This is fine. no problems.

This took me a while to write so please have a read and perhaps rethink some of these passives/abilities in the tree. I only did it because i love the game. Thanks.

[Cetus]

It appears to me that the power of pure paladin after these changes is being very much underestimated. Take a look at the tree:

Melee power:

15 Melee Power from this new spell
75 Melee Power from capstone and ascendancy against evil outsiders/undead (which is a lot of our enemies anyway)
10 Melee Power Champion of Good
10 Melee Power divine sacrifice
5 Melee Power smite
10 Melee Power Censure
25 Melee Power from Sanctified Fervor
___________________________________

150 MELEE POWER vs. 70 that fighters get from their tree and *5* feats combined

Damage:

Holy Combatant + 1 Attack/Damage
Adept Combatant + 1 Attack/Damage
Holy Combatant (tier 3) +2 Attack/Damage
Divine Sacrifice: +2[W]? + 1 Attack/Damage
Ascendancy: +4 Attack/Damage
Divine Vitality: +3 Attack/Damage
Divine Might: With an 80 Cha, this is an extra 7-8 insightful damage
Capstone: 3% Bonus to melee damage
Good alignment for weapons

7d6 light damage = ~25 average damage per hit scaled 200% with melee power. With 300 melee power, this would become:

(100 + 300) / 100 = 4

4 modifier, scaled at 200% * 25 average light damage = 200 extra light damage per hit

Fighter damage:

32 damage from the entire kensei tree and weapon spec feats and strength bonuses combined

LMAO

Unquantified benefits:

Smites - strongest attacks in the game, especially when fueld by adrenaline
Divine sacrifice,
Holy retribution
3[W] and 5[W] cleaves (fighters are stuck with the ordinary feat versions).
20% strikethrough (fighters have none)
15% fortification bypass free (fighters need to land shattering strike for this).

"Well, at least fighter wins on the doublestrike".

Zeal. Add this 10% bonus to the 100% doublestrike calculation I already provided for barbarian. Nope, they don't win on doublestrike either.

Other pally benefits in no random order/category:
LOH
divine grace in case the saves are an issue
and a 5[W] sprint for fun
Holy sword

I'm sure I missed things. But I think the point here is clear.

[FrostBeard]

Just as a side note. I also think that know the angles should be moved might higher up in the Harper Agent Tree. As it is a big dps boost for minimal action points.

Thanks

[Blah2]

i agree and disagree, archmage has horrible cores but rest of tree is decent enough, defender is other way around, decent cores and horrible rest of tree, that has no theme other than giving defense bonuses.

all im asking is for some sort of balance of the tree, why there has to be vanguard when defender should have own shield bonuses, why it has no own damage, own defensive themed smites.
tree is costly enough that there is not enough ap left to get anything meaningful from other trees, it was hard enough before and with those new enchancements it will be even harder.
not to mention that tree is a complete one way street, no matter what you build you end up taking the same stuff every time because choice is between must have and junk.

Im not sure if English is your native language but if its not the DEFENDER tree is supposed to be all DEFENSE

[palladin9479]

That melee power is almost entirely situational and burst, you won't have it all up at the same time, ever.

As for light damage
7 * 3.5 = 24.5 * [1 + 2(200/100)] = 122.5 damage per hit. For those short bursts that you can make 300, which I highly doubt you can maintain for more then a few seconds in optimal situations, you have 171.5 average damage. 200% melee power means your melee power gets multiplied by 2, not that the damage gets multiplied by 2.

Now remember this is at cap, I'm already hitting for 500~600 damage per hit with longswords with crits for 2~4K depending. That extra damage isn't moving the needle much if any, mostly because it doesn't scale with crits.

Paladin got a little bit of melee power with a whole lot of very short term situational boosts. Fighter and Barbarian have boosts across their entire damage and those boosts stay up. Hell Fighter gets the best Action Boost in the game for melees, Haste Boost along with a huge stack of bonus AB's. Last time I played pure Fighter I had something like 22 or 24 Action Boosts at cap, I could just full time Haste Boost with Prowess set and never worry about running out.

[Blah2]

Arcane Archer no longer requires Arcanum, so the only thing you need to get it is to spend 10 points, total, in the tree, plus the 4 for the AA enhancement itself, an expenditure of 14 points which is UNDER the 15 racial points max you can currently get (13 races + 2 from tomes, going up to 14 +2 when shifter comes out), so the investment in the Elf tree for Arcane Archer can be effectively "free". Compare that with, say, the cost to get con-to-damage for dwarves and elven AA's come off lightly.

If you do the racial lives, you can do, say, a FvS AA really cheaply. 41 points in the AA tree to get capstone leaves you 39 points to invest in whatever else you want, especially because you can go chat to hit/damage or wis to hit damage on an FvS without having to put a single point into Falconry. The only reason people don't do this is simply because Inquisitive is just way, way, way better.

I'd suggest trying an AA/EK Sun Elf 20 wizard build (need a lesser heart +1 tho)--you can get TWO really solid imbues this way, and you only need to put like 6 points in EK to do it. It's a decent build, the only problem is that a straight PA caster wizard is also significantly better. But if you like the flavor, go for it. With the wizard bonus feats it's easy to do. You can use your wizard spells for CC instead of straining to get a workable DC on Paralyzing Arrows.

Ummm there is only 12 racial past lives not 13 at the moment (until shifter)

[Cetus]

That melee power is almost entirely situational and burst, you won't have it all up at the same time, ever.

As for light damage
7 * 3.5 = 24.5 * [1 + 2(200/100)] = 122.5 damage per hit. For those short bursts that you can make 300, which I highly doubt you can maintain for more then a few seconds in optimal situations, you have 171.5 average damage. 200% melee power means your melee power gets multiplied by 2, not that the damage gets multiplied by 2.

Now remember this is at cap, I'm already hitting for 500~600 damage per hit with longswords with crits for 2~4K depending. That extra damage isn't moving the needle much if any, mostly because it doesn't scale with crits.

Paladin got a little bit of melee power with a whole lot of very short term situational boosts. Fighter and Barbarian have boosts across their entire damage and those boosts stay up. Hell Fighter gets the best Action Boost in the game for melees, Haste Boost along with a huge stack of bonus AB's. Last time I played pure Fighter I had something like 22 or 24 Action Boosts at cap, I could just full time Haste Boost with Prowess set and never worry about running out.

Melee power:

Sanctified fervor procs 25 on a smite. You have plenty of smites and they recharge.
Ascendancy: Bosses that qualify, that's 100% up time. Mass groups of mobs? I don't see an internal cooldown to the stacks.

Optimize your attack rotation and you have 150 melee power from being a pure paladin.

Light damage:

Melee power formula: (100 + MP) / 100. WIth 300, this equals to a multiplier of 4. If it scales with 200%, you double it.

You don't need to tell me that light damage doesn't scale with crits. Also your analysis is misleading in that it "doesn't move the needle". It's an extra 200 average damage a hit with 300 mp, whether you're critting for 1k or 1 million. And 300 mp is not hard to achieve, considering that lower melee power characters have pushed well over 400 bursted.

Haste boost is a twist away.

Yes, fighter gets more boost counts at least. Shrines are abundant.

[Valerianus]

i'm fine with barbarians as thf masters, and kotc needed help. i agree about fighters being left behind, next step should be revisiting kensei and vanguard.

if it turns out they overtuned barb and pally, don't worry, they are f2p class, a nerf will be fast as fast can be.

[palladin9479]

Melee power:

Sanctified fervor procs 25 on a smite. You have plenty of smites and they recharge.
Ascendancy: Bosses that qualify, that's 100% up time. Mass groups of mobs? I don't see an internal cooldown to the stacks.

Optimize your attack rotation and you have 150 melee power from being a pure paladin.

Light damage:

Melee power formula: (100 + MP) / 100. WIth 300, this equals to a multiplier of 4. If it scales with 200%, you double it.

You don't need to tell me that light damage doesn't scale with crits. Also your analysis is misleading in that it "doesn't move the needle". It's an extra 200 average damage a hit with 300 mp, whether you're critting for 1k or 1 million. And 300 mp is not hard to achieve, considering that lower melee power characters have pushed well over 400 bursted.

Haste boost is a twist away.

Yes, fighter gets more boost counts at least. Shrines are abundant.

Noooo it doesn't work that way.

Melee power is doubled not the total damage.

1 + [(Multiplier) * (Melee Power/100)]

So if you had 200 melee power, double that to 400 melee power.

1 + (400/100) = 5.0

Not

2 * (1 + 200/100) = 6.0

All those melee power boosts are temporary for X seconds get Y melee power, you won't be running around with 300+ melee power, especially if your in Divine Crusader. Before it was about 160~180 depending on reaper points / items / filigree, now it'll be about 190~225.

They took 17~25 base damage away with the Divine Might nerf, but only added 10 damage back from the KoTC tree upgrade. Meaning an overall nerf of 7~15 base damage, meaning damage before all multipliers are most importantly critical hits. Now the extra melee power ends up barely covering the total damage loss so we end up only a few percent beyond where we started at. Smites are still trash abilities and largely a waste of AP as +2/+2 means most smites end up being a regular attack. If you want you can use the 5 piece filigree set but then your also giving up prowess which is largely considered better.

Everything is is a short duration melee power boost if you hit undead of evil outsider, which while being pretty **** plentiful aren't the majority of monsters we fight. Humans are actually the majority of monsters we fight believe it or not.