Suggestion for Eldritch Knight

[Smokewolf]

While playing my current EK life it occurred to me that the tree really could really use some love. Particularly when it comes to a Wizard playing a "Tanky" EK.
What I have in mind is two fold, a new type of damage-shield and the means to replenish it.

Specifically...

Mana Shield (Tier 4) - Toggle: While this ability is active, you can use your mana pool as temporary hit-points. (Yes just like the Diablo ability) While the Mana Shield is active, all your spells and SLA's are reduced to touch range.

Energy Siphon (Tier 5) - Your melee attacks Siphon mana equal to +3/6/10% of the melee damage done. You may only gain this effect once per second.


As always, constructive remarks are welcome...

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.


-Smoke

[A-O]

While playing my current EK life it occurred to me that the tree really could really use some love. Particularly when it comes to a Wizard playing a "Tanky" EK.
What I have in mind is two fold, a new type of damage-shield and the means to replenish it.

Specifically...

Mana Shield (Tier 4) - Toggle: While this ability is active, you can use your mana pool as temporary hit-points. (Yes just like the Diablo ability) While the Mana Shield is active, all your spells and SLA's are reduced to touch range.

Energy Siphon (Tier 5) - Your melee attacks Siphon mana equal to +3/6/10% of the melee damage done. You may only gain this effect once per second.


As always, constructive remarks are welcome...

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.


-Smoke

Breaks the spell point system even more.
Never mind that 10% of 10k hits (very normal) is 1k SP per crit. Or 1k healing not mitigated by reaper every hit. For ~1.5 times a second, or 1.5k heal every second in crits. Maybe 800 per second average.

[Smokewolf]

Keep in mind that what I presented is just a loose example. The the effect could be scaled down to keep it from being over done.

[A-O]

Keep in mind that what I presented is just a loose example. The the effect could be scaled down to keep it from being over done.

I understand that. I'm just saying that even without the mana shield, any time of "spellpoint leech" will fundamentally break the spell point system.

[Smokewolf]

Well that's assuming the game was ever "balanced" to begin with. Besides if this (your idea of game balance) is the criteria a new feature must pass, then the game will never see anything "new". Rather we'll end up with the same features / enhancements re-packaged for another tree. Which if you look at the Feywild tree, thats pretty much what we got earlier this week. More of the same old-S, re-packaged for ease of monetization.

[A-O]

Well that's assuming the game was ever "balanced" to begin with. Besides if this (your idea of game balance) is the criteria a new feature must pass, then the game will never see anything "new". Rather we'll end up with the same features / enhancements re-packaged for another tree. Which if you look at the Feywild tree, thats pretty much what we got earlier this week. More of the same old-S, re-packaged for ease of monetization.

I get it. You're hyped about your idea.
But DDO isn't a game set out for literally unlimited SP.

A better system would be %DR based on current or Max spellpoints. E.g. reduce dmg taken by a 0.1-0.2% of your max SP. so 4k spellpoints means 4-8% DR.

[Smokewolf]

Its called a “suggestion” for a reason. Yet rarely have I seen developer post here except to declare something that was already about to take place.

Beyond that...

With the system in place now, nothing scales properly beyond Heroics. Thus abilities either become worthless or overpowered. That being said, your suggesting that we use the existing DR mechanics to promote more of the same?

Whats the point of making a suggestion if...
1) Its pointless to do so.
2) We’re stuck with a system that most are unhappy with.

[Pandjed]

I also don't think that any ability that let a character regain SP unlimited and reliable is in any way a good idea, as the game isn't designed around that. That's why there are several enhancments in this game, that grant a small amount of temporary SP, but nothing the like, and there are even enough players that complain that there are even Lost Souls in reaper diff.

Without this second ability, the first one would also be not that well, as depending on the diff, you rapidly lose all your SP, which would cripple the character immensely, as wizards do magic. For the temporary hit points, it might be better to make an SLA (similar to wlk ES), which maybe benefits from spellpower and is able to use metamagics Empower, Maximize, and Intensify on, which ties in with the wizard's bonus feats.



The real *problem* lies, however, in another design: The fact that neither sorcs nor wizards are designed to be *tanky*, and while the EK circumvent some of it, there is a limit of what can be made until a class is so watered down, that it loses its identity. Tanky wizards are not supposed to be a thing, that's something that can be accomplished by multiclassing.
I know, it's a big game, there are a multitude of choices you can do to accomplish whatever, but as a dev, I'd be careful to make too crass decisions for class-designs.

[Smokewolf]

The real *problem* lies, however, in another design: The fact that neither sorcs nor wizards are designed to be *tanky*, and while the EK circumvent some of it, there is a limit of what can be made until a class is so watered down, that it loses its identity. Tanky wizards are not supposed to be a thing, that's something that can be accomplished by multiclassing.
I know, it's a big game, there are a multitude of choices you can do to accomplish whatever, but as a dev, I'd be careful to make too crass decisions for class-designs.

Yet DDO doesn't reward multi-classing due to how the Enhancement tree cap-stones are setup. Thus anything past Heroics thats not using a capstone is effectively gimped, period. IMO, this is a critical flaw of DDO's game-system design. One that actively penalizes players for creatively using the class abilities in ways that go beyond the initial intent of the design. This was the case when the game was first released and its the same today. Nothing has changed, just the same repackaged content, over-hyped for ease of monetization.

Truth be told, if there were a better D&D game available today, we'd all be on it and never look back at DDO. This was true of EverQuest, WOW, GuildWars and numerous other MMO's that were all chasing a similar gaming idea of what an online RPG should be. Unfortunately, they've all proven to be poorly developed over time and thus players continue looking for the better game that doesn't exist. For DDO the game mechanics are the greatest limiting factor and prevents the game from maturing. Its why years later, DDO continues to limp along from one update to the next, without any hope for real change.

[droid327]

While playing my current EK life it occurred to me that the tree really could really use some love. Particularly when it comes to a Wizard playing a "Tanky" EK.
What I have in mind is two fold, a new type of damage-shield and the means to replenish it.

Specifically...

Mana Shield (Tier 4) - Toggle: While this ability is active, you can use your mana pool as temporary hit-points. (Yes just like the Diablo ability) While the Mana Shield is active, all your spells and SLA's are reduced to touch range.

Energy Siphon (Tier 5) - Your melee attacks Siphon mana equal to +3/6/10% of the melee damage done. You may only gain this effect once per second.


As always, constructive remarks are welcome...

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.


-Smoke

Yeah gotta agree with the other posters. DDO deliberately does not have % health leech, and this is just a backdoor way to doing that. Without the mana leech, though, I dont think any Wiz EK would ever activate this since they can easily regenerate HP with Death Aura, but SP are limited and far more precious.

Also consider Sorc EKs. They get double SP from all sources - they'd have incredible eHP if they could count those as HP as well.

I think the Arcane Barrier was kinda how they wanted to implement the idea of being magically shielded. But if you wanted to suggest a mana shield, then yeah I like the idea of either a "DR based on % of current mana" model, or a "DR toggle that ticks a mana cost while active" model. But in either case I suspect it'll have to replace Arcane Barrier's auto-bubble. And I think there's some flaws with a system that rewards a wizard for not casting, too.

And there's just no way that a mana-on-hit skill will ever not be grossly OP. That would effectively mean infinite SP for you, so you could go spamming Meteor Swarms on CD with full metas, and just jump in and clean up the leftovers with a falchion to regenerate all that lost HP. Or Mass Hold every single mob you face, since you'll easily leech back the cost. Spells in DDO, especially for the Wizard class, are balanced with the assumption they're not infinite.

[A-O]

Yet DDO doesn't reward multi-classing due to how the Enhancement tree cap-stones are setup. Thus anything past Heroics thats not using a capstone is effectively gimped, period. IMO

Lol.

I mean, it was pretty clear from your suggestion that balance wasn't a concern of yours. But this is just ludicrous.

If you think you need to play pure to not be "effectively gimped, period". Then you might try some 11brb/6clk/3drd, 18wiz/1clk/1fgt, 14clk/5brb/1fgt iconic, 11rog/6clk/3mnk qstaff, 18fgt/2clk, 13rog/7wiz qstaff, and sooooo on.
Just because pure paladin is the love child of SSG atm, does not mean you need to be pure to avoid being "effectively gimped". Or that that has ever been the case in DDOs history. And you seemingly think that capstones existed at launch? And I'd like to welcome you to the (8)12-6-2 meta that lasted like 3 years. Or the good old 18/2 rng/mnk or fgt/mnk.


You seem super sad about SSG designing a game that doesn't reward innovation and using abilities outside their intended purpose. I advise you to try to use some innovation, 'cause you seem to be missing out on a lot. Not just gameplay/fun wise, but also what's actually strong and not.
For example, I'd bet $50 that you've never considered /7wiz split for 2 auras to snapshot your LGS items and get vacuum stacking (20% vul), ooze (-10 prr, -10 mrr), dust (-35 prr), and ash (-21 mrr) on your auras. And if you think that that was what SSG thought people would do with death aura when it was introduced, you have more faith in the playing abilities of the ssgs devs than I do. Or that /1-6 cleric would be the go-to splash for a year+ because of turn undead giving access to CAF? Or /3 druid just for bear as a conduit for THF since thf got reduced aspd in the patch?

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

About innovation : I'd just loved it if the Feydark Illusionist's Shadowblades could have been daggers as well. Because then I'd just use the Vistani tree with them.

Now they are merely shortswords, and I just cannot use them for the Vistani tree.
The only way to circumvent this would be to use - if I understood this correctly - possibility to enchant weapons as Shadow Blades - and use daggers to be enchanted in this way.

Quoted from the Wiki parts in bold printing by me :

This grants both the ability to conjure physical Shadowblades to wield as weapons as well as the ability to enchant your current weapons to be more powerful.

Enchanting your weapons to become Shadowblades will change their material type to Force and grant them additional bonuses. This is considered an Item Enchantment.

So ... if I can enchant daggers this way, I *might* be using the Vistani tree after all ...

I don't think that I have seen a dagger-wielding Wizard yet. I don't even know if this makes any sense, after all.

In the Illusionist tree I seemingly need to focus on Force Magic, and adding a point into Eldritch Knight gives me that Eldtritch Strike, which - according to its description - scales with Force magic as well.
Which means more power to the shadowblade-daggers, if it can be done this way.

[Smokewolf]

Lol.

I mean, it was pretty clear from your suggestion that balance wasn't a concern of yours. But this is just ludicrous.

Just look at the disparity between casters and melees in Reaper. R5 and higher, there really isnt a comparison.