First Look: Shadar-Kai Adjustments

[Saekee]

Will the chain attack use variant ability scores for damage, e.g. you are wielding a Sky Pirate Dagger and hit a mob, you have 30 Dex at level 4 but 12 Str, no enhmacements for Dex to damage—will the chain attack still do dex-to-hit and damage?

[Steelstar]

Will the chain attack use variant ability scores for damage, e.g. you are wielding a Sky Pirate Dagger and hit a mob, you have 30 Dex at level 4 but 12 Str, no enhmacements for Dex to damage—will the chain attack still do dex-to-hit and damage?

Yes, it uses whatever attack stats you normally use.

[Enderoc]

So if you have blinding or paralyzing effects from thunderforged daggers you could do a 3X cleave like attack to proc them?
What if you do like improved feint and bluff everything? You get SA dice for all of it? Poison clickies and all?

[Tilomere]

In another thread about Thief Acrobat and race choices,

TA have very good dungeon clear with 30% helpless, 30% helpless from falconry, and 20% extra helpless from HOrc combined with the +90% strike through from HOrc + TA.

So there is already a TA dungeon clearing race.

The keen changes and stat nerfs also make Staff of Shadows among the most powerful 2H weapon in the game, since it ends up 16-20x4 with the same W as other weapons, attacks faster with acrobatics, and still attacks with 100% doublestrike due to quick strike,. Fittingly, acrobats are going to come out on top of everyone else regardless.

[Aelonwy]

TA have very good dungeon clear with 30% helpless, 30% helpless from falconry, and 20% extra helpless from HOrc combined with the +90% strike through from HOrc + TA.

So there is already a TA dungeon clearing race.

The keen changes and stat nerfs also make Staff of Shadows among the most powerful 2H weapon in the game, since it ends up 16-20x4 with the same W as other weapons, attacks faster with acrobatics, and still attacks with 100% doublestrike due to quick strike,. Fittingly, acrobats are going to come out on top of everyone else regardless.

In case you missed that entire discussion Tilo, the issue with Horc as the most appropriate for Thief Acrobat is several fold:
A) Thief Acrobat has the most synergy with DEX, Horc no bonus dex
B) Thief Acrobat has most synergy with sneak damage bonus race, Horc not good at the sneaky
C) Thief Acrobat as a rogue, also needs Int for skills particularly Search/Disable & UMD, Horc penalties to BOTH Int & Cha

(Sorry I've always role-played my horcs as talking like Hulk in Ragnarok)

You know what Horc has in spades? Bonuses to 2HF. The problem is we have multiple dex based races which should make great Thief Acrobats except they've all been designed with nearly zero support for 2HF or in the case of the new SdK penalized for it (in the form of not being able to use the SIGNATURE Sdk move with Qstaff). So people are looking at a clearly martial race for synergies for this one lone rogue tree... that isn't poorly designed, its just been treated as the red-headed step child by the races.

It would be different if Acrobat were a Universal Tree but its a rogue tree and Horc is clearly not the best rogue although I concede it has benefits for Acrobat it also comes with important drawbacks for building a ROGUE, I should know I have a horc Thief Acrobat but it makes zero sense to build her as dex based or use any of the dex enhancements in TA because she obviously works out so much better STR based as a horc. But then it feels like I'm entirely missing the point of playing a TA and a rogue and she might as well be a martial class instead. Not to mention she has had to be schizophrenic MAD (multiple-attribute-dependent).

What we need is for at least one of the dex based races to get at least a third of the 2HF benefits Horc has when using a Qstaff.

[Haphazarduk]

In case you missed that entire discussion Tilo, the issue with Horc as the most appropriate for Thief Acrobat is several fold:
A) Thief Acrobat has the most synergy with DEX, Horc no bonus dex
B) Thief Acrobat has most synergy with sneak damage bonus race, Horc not good at the sneaky
C) Thief Acrobat as a rogue, also needs Int for skills particularly Search/Disable & UMD, Horc penalties to BOTH Int & Cha

Races don’t need to have the perfect match for a build. Horcs are a great match for a TA - they don’t have to get everything you’d want. If they did they probably wouldn’t make good barbarians or fighters which do they do. They can have great Dex, good int even - is it the highest no, but they get all that other stuff. Hell Horc rage doesn’t even break stealth!

Hap

[Aelonwy]

Races don’t need to have the perfect match for a build. Horcs are a great match for a TA - they don’t have to get everything you’d want. If they did they probably wouldn’t make good barbarians or fighters which do they do. They can have great Dex, good int even - is it the highest no, but they get all that other stuff. Hell Horc rage doesn’t even break stealth!

Hap

I'm not saying they have to be a perfect match or I would have requested more than a third of horc 2HF support... I'm saying nowhere is there a dex based race that supports the 2HF in a dex based rogue tree.

I'm saying why make a horc TA when horc would do way better as any other martial class? Why make a TA as a horc when it makes better sense to go str based as a horc? So what is the point of the tree being Dex based if no dex race apparently ever fights two-handed? It is an outlier, a weird offspring of the spheres. I'm not asking for perfection, I'm asking for rational. Rationally, sensibly, there should be at least one dex based race with some mild synergy for 2HF or why in heck is there a dex based 2hf rogue tree? Who would have been the acrobats of the past? Who would train the acrobats of the next generation? Lore-wise who would become an acrobat? Are the circuses filled with horcs? Are the horcs the natural choice for roof-walking cat burglars? No? Then surely there is some race for which this might be the natural choice?

To clarify I don't want horc changed, I want a dex based race to get some added 2HF support specifically with quarterstaff and I feel about a third of what horc gets for 2HF would be about right.

[cdbd3rd]

To clarify I don't want horc changed,...

Horc make sigh like relief. Horc not wanna change, maybe look too much like Helf.

Horc like swinging Big Stick.

[Haphazarduk]

I'm not saying they have to be a perfect match or I would have requested more than a third of horc 2HF support... I'm saying nowhere is there a dex based race that supports the 2HF in a dex based rogue tree.

Who would have been the acrobats of the past? Who would train the acrobats of the next generation? Lore-wise who would become an acrobat? Are the circuses filled with horcs? Are the horcs the natural choice for roof-walking cat burglars? No? Then surely there is some race for which this might be the natural choice?

Lore is an interesting problem for a game that has evolved over 15 years. Really the whole approach to races enhancements needs updating, arguably the very system itself, but for reasons everyone here understands that’s unlikely to happen. It is one reason why I’m so happy about the epic destiny revamp. Not the specifics of the changes but the fact it’s happening at all. A small team, working on an old code-base, with limited resources - it’s a minor miracle and a sign of hope for the future.

Hap

[Tilomere]

In case you missed that entire discussion Tilo, the issue with Horc as the most appropriate for Thief Acrobat is several fold:
A) Thief Acrobat has the most synergy with DEX, Horc no bonus dex
B) Thief Acrobat has most synergy with sneak damage bonus race, Horc not good at the sneaky
C) Thief Acrobat as a rogue, also needs Int for skills particularly Search/Disable & UMD, Horc penalties to BOTH Int & Cha

Nah, I just glossed over it since rogues have tons of skill points, so I'm not worried about skills, procs become pointless (including sneak damage) as you move to higher and higher levels of gib dps, and a race's base stat also becomes pointless as you move to higher and higher levels of power creep.

The only thing that matters are % scalers that multiply each other: helpless x crit x base damage x power x armor pen. HOrc has 4 of the 5, and that's as good or better than any other race.

When U50 nerfs doublestrike, acrobats at 120% on live will end up ~100%, and end up on top of the melee pile. Plus an acrobats BIS weapon isn't getting nerfed since (Sireth?) SoS isn't keen, while the BiS weapons for every other build are getting nerfed. When U51 eliminates Sense Weakness twist and makes meld permanent +60% uncapped dodge (trololo) HOrc acrobats access to base dodge and helpless from their class tree will make them the undisputed kings of melee.

[Gljosh]

My SDK Stick Fighter was excited to actually use the Spiked Chain...so I get nothing. Just the "Insufficient resources, weapon type, Incorrect Stance/Form".

[tapster]

My SDK Stick Fighter was excited to actually use the Spiked Chain...so I get nothing. Just the "Insufficient resources, weapon type, Incorrect Stance/Form".

Have to use a light weapon. I think the qualifier is 'handedness: light weapon'

I tried longsword, rapier and short sword. Short sword is the only one that worked.

[tarrith_dourden]

Let us know what you think!

Hey Steelstar. Love the changes to Shard-kai. just TR'd into one.
One issue I found is that the Chain Attack does not work with Rapier even when Weapon Finess has been taken.
Is that an oversight/bug? And if so can it be fixed please?

TYIA

Tarrith

[Marshal_Lannes]

Concerning the T4 ability Winter Favored - According to the DDO Wiki it does 1d6 cold damage on sneak attacks that scale with melee power. In game the ability does not have the text "scales with melee power". After trying it out extensively I can report the ability does not scale with melee power doing only d6 extra. It costs 2 points and is a T4 ability so it seems like should scale with melee power otherwise it's extremely expensive and not worth it. Is this ability supposed to scale and is bugged or isn't supposed to scale?

[Certon]

Displacement has a refresh of 2 seconds and no cost. Can we just have it be a toggle or permanent?

Other than that, I <3 what you've done with the chain. I LR+1'd a Shadar-Kai into a pure wizard EK and that extra elemental damage from the chain is SWEET.

[Kulothar]

One thing I would like is a T2 "Stinging" added to the chain which causes spell cast disruption even if it requires a critical hit. It would be a useful chain enhancement for grouping or solo since you could disrupt a group of casters standing together. Since we missed it this time around maybe next time.

[Kitir44]

I've been a tad absent from this game for a while, but these improvements are phenomenal..