Divine Disciple Making Archmage look OP

[A-O]

I always thought that Archmage was the worst tree in the game, with only 1 good ability (arcane supremacy) and a bunch of generics. But having recently played a DD life after some time, I've come to realize that compared to DD, Archmage is really fkn good (but it's actually not).

So, DD broken down into the good, the bad, and the ugly

The good
Interesting concept with light/dark focus, and getting access to new spells
A lot of choices on how to focus APs with the light/dark/universal, and dc/dc/universal


The bad
* All T5s are absolutely awful. +1DC. Worst SLA in the game. And +1mcl/CL for the worst spells in the game.
* Except core 3 all the cores are practically and theoretically pointless. The core 3 gives access to sunbolt which is actually good. The rest are just really awful spells that you'll never use.
* The capstone is perhaps the worst capstone in the game. Only +2 wisdom, and getting access to a bunch of craptastic spells that you haven't picked for a reason. Along with +1MLC/CL to the worst spells in the game.
* Since light/dark spells are just awful, the +2/+2/+1 crit enhancements are just +1% universal. Because the only reason you're here is to get +1% crit to your domain spells/healing spells. This is strictly worse than the AM one which is +1/+1/+2/+2.
* All the SLAs are useless since they A) use hte old scaling system. And B) are just bad spells. Divine smite, e.g. has been a bad spell since the release of DDO. Same for flame strike (too long delay). Getting that as a T4/T5 enhancement is just disheartening.
* Your best spell, will be your domain spells. Since e.g. air domain grants wiz/sorc spells (lightning bolt/Chain lighting). These are the only two things that make leveling a caster cleric not make you slit your wrists. Too bad you get CL at 14, and the dmg caps at MCL 15, and you have no way of improving it. So you'll be using Chain lightning from level 14 to 30, and it'll be your best spell you have. And it won't scale past level 15. That's how bad it is.
* Full focus on e.g. light grants you 5+15+15+9=44 light spell power.... You serious? That's also 9 APs spent deliberately to get that. At least AM gets +1universal per point spent.
* The cores give nothing except a new bad spell. At least have them grant +10light/Dark spell power each
* Itemization issues with radiance with no enhanced radiance item. Leading to light being even further behind. The equivalent of 10 epic destiny feats.

The ugly
You can take the T5 specialization as early as level 7ish. Does not require level 12.
The +3/+6/+9 universal spellpower only grants (visually at least), +3/+3/+3. So no improvement (visually at least) between ranks.


Suggestions
Rather than just saying, remake all clk/fvs/drd spells so they, too, scale like sorc/wiz spells. I'll give some easy-to-make suggestions to the tree itself.

A) Make the +1MCL T5 also grant +10MCL to all domain spells (or all spells). Essentially granting "master of X". That way they keep scaling
B) Give the Flame Strike SLA 1d6+5 spell dice. Changing the mass cause moderate wounds to Mass Harm, or mass cause critical wounds, with extra scaling. Or buff MCMW significantly for this SLA. Also make it heal ally undeads
C) All the core spells need to be SLAs, or *drastically* improved dice.
D) All the cores need to grant +10dark/light spell power
E) Air domain, e.g., let's you choose highest of lightning or light spellpower for respective spells. Have that work for crit and crit dmg too.
F) The capstone should grant +4 wisdom and another +20 spell power
G) There needs to be 2 more T5 enhancement to fill out the blanks
H) Core 1 needs to be +1dark/light spellpower per point spent. And then either rework the +spellpower enhancements in the tree, or keep them as is.
I) Make a core, or an ability so that your dark/negative spells can damage undeads, like the PM tree has.

[Aelonwy]

Radiant Servant is awful too. I've been complaining for years that the cleric trees needed at the very least an AP cost rebalance. I thought for certain when they redid Warpriest/Warsoul(~2017) this would get done. But it didn't. I don't know if they're afraid of clerics actually being awesome to play, if its a f2p class versus p2p class issue or if its that clerics can heal therefor they must be less powerful in ALL other ways. I just have no idea why clerics are relegated to the sidekick column. I love mine because its one of my top 3 favorite PnP classes and even more so now with Domains. But prior to domains in DDO cleric could be pretty boring to play and is still often treated by PUG groups as a somewhat more intelligent hireling. Although to be fair I haven't had a zerger of any flavor curse at me for not tagging behind them babysitting their health bar in YEARS. *Insert Caddyshack meme "So at least I've got that going for me."*

[TitusOvid]

I got it from the dark side:








Cheers,
Titus.

[Aelonwy]

I got it from the dark side:








Cheers,
Titus.

Well that's more interest and more info then we've had since Domains were introduced. So that's something anyways, thanks.

[A-O]

The biggest issue with SSG as developers seems to be that that they seem incapable of number fixes.
A lot of issues in old trees could just be fixed by adjusting numbers. Sure a rework here and there is nice. But getting what, 2-3 reworks/year out of 45ish trees? That's 15 years at best to rework the trees.
*waaaay* too long of a time for 50%-75% of the trees being in the ****ter.

One developer could just take a patch-worth of time to adjust numbers without adding new spells, or reworking entire classes. Just make an AP give +20 spell power instead of +3. e.g. Think of it as a band aid. And what would normally take 15-20 years could be done in 2 months. By one developer.
This is literally what every other company does. Except SSG. Not sure why. But it's always been the case too. This is also why my suggestions to the PRE would be band-aid fixes to make it playable. Why wait 6-12 months to rework a tree when some small number fixes and a balance-pass over at lammania would do 90% of the work for you.

[Mindos]

Well that's more interest and more info then we've had since Domains were introduced. So that's something anyways, thanks.

What horrible communication this SSG company has. I have to go to another private owned website (vault) to read a post from someone not from SSG that consolidates all the SSG Dev postings made from a 3rd party forum (Discord) so that I can know what's going on in SSG's own game so I can have a knowledgeable discussion on SSG's own forums. Honestly, just turn off the ddoforums.

What was it, a month or so ago, they didn't even bother to post here that the game downtime was extended? I can see using all these wonderful toys to further and enhance comms with the playerbase, but what's happened is that the forums get ignored. TURN THEM OFF.

The forums are nothing but trouble anyway. Have the updates land, people can read the release notes. No more posting, no more work for SSG. Feedback? They already have discord, and the private comms with the council.

(rant off)

[HungarianRhapsody]

What horrible communication this SSG company has. I have to go to another private owned website (vault) to read a post from someone not from SSG that consolidates all the SSG Dev postings made from a 3rd party forum (Discord) so that I can know what's going on in SSG's own game so I can have a knowledgeable discussion on SSG's own forums. Honestly, just turn off the ddoforums.

What was it, a month or so ago, they didn't even bother to post here that the game downtime was extended? I can see using all these wonderful toys to further and enhance comms with the playerbase, but what's happened is that the forums get ignored. TURN THEM OFF.

The forums are nothing but trouble anyway. Have the updates land, people can read the release notes. No more posting, no more work for SSG. Feedback? They already have discord, and the private comms with the council.

(rant off)

Not just that, but we had to get it as a screen shot from the Vault because SSG won't even let people put the URL for that forbidden hive of scum and villainy here on the main forums. It's only in the last year or so that people are allowed to say the word Vault without getting an infraction.

When the most accurate and complete information available is only posted in an accessible version on a website that SSG won't admit exists (and won't let anyone else talk about on the main forums), that's pretty crazy.

[Aelonwy]

When the most accurate and complete information available is only posted in an accessible version on a website that SSG won't admit exists (and won't let anyone else talk about on the main forums), that's pretty crazy.

That's irony. I thought Titus was posting stuff from Discord which I can't get to work on my comp for some reason.

[HungarianRhapsody]

That's irony. I thought Titus was posting stuff from Discord which I can't get to work on my comp for some reason.

The Vault has a thread that contains screen shots from Discord because finding Dev comments by scrolling up in Discord is an absolute nightmare and it's nice to have more people know about what's going on in the game (since not everyone can do Discord and even if someone can do Discord, it doesn't mean that they can spend all their time there).

There wouldn't be a need for the Vault if SSG had a more honest and transparent way for players to communicate with each other and for players and SSG staff to communicate with each other.

[TitusOvid]

That's why I read on the Vault. I can't be searching for Dev comments all over.
To be fair, in a chat dialogue you've got a whole other development of the narrative than on a forum. The discord is a flowing media, much more flexible than a forum but more fleeting, too. The devs are able to answer immediately to questions, if they are present. Even a "I can't comment on that" is helpful somehow. But it vanishes pretty fast too. So it is an ongoing activity to follow.
The wish for better communication is an old one. And if the official channels can't deliver I go someplace else.

Cheers,
Titus.

[Monkey_Archer]

The biggest issue with SSG as developers seems to be that that they seem incapable of number fixes.
A lot of issues in old trees could just be fixed by adjusting numbers. Sure a rework here and there is nice. But getting what, 2-3 reworks/year out of 45ish trees? That's 15 years at best to rework the trees.
*waaaay* too long of a time for 50%-75% of the trees being in the ****ter.

One developer could just take a patch-worth of time to adjust numbers without adding new spells, or reworking entire classes. Just make an AP give +20 spell power instead of +3. e.g. Think of it as a band aid. And what would normally take 15-20 years could be done in 2 months. By one developer.
This is literally what every other company does. Except SSG. Not sure why. But it's always been the case too. This is also why my suggestions to the PRE would be band-aid fixes to make it playable. Why wait 6-12 months to rework a tree when some small number fixes and a balance-pass over at lammania would do 90% of the work for you.

SSG seems to be staffed by a lot of 'creative-type' people, who naturally look at any under-performing tree as an extensive project that needs to involve the whole team's input to create something entirely new! fun! and exciting!

Whereas, like you said, a single 'math-type' person with experience playing the game could spend virtually no effort, change a few numbers and fix 10 trees before the next patch (QA testing aside, which may actually be SSG's real issue)