Disclaimer
Everything seen on the preview server, Lamannia, is not final and is subject to change or removal before live release.

Greetings! This is a pretty crazy read, so buckle up!

Epic Destinies
We are going to fully revamp the ED structure from the ground up to provide a cohesive leveling experience from levels 20-30 and beyond. The new structure will resemble heroic Enhancements - 6 cores along the bottom and 5 tiers reaching to the top. However, there are some notable differences and similarities to the old ED structure:

You can now be in a maximum of 3 Epic Destinies at a time. Think of it like the current Enhancement window, but without any ability to scroll horizontally along trees. You select up to three trees at a time, socketing them into place in your ED window, just as you select your Heroic Enhancement Trees. You can spend points freely between these three trees, and resetting your ED points out of a tree will allow you to choose a new one.

As you level up beyond level 20, you will earn Destiny Points that you can spend in these ED trees. Epic Levels now display their experience in Ranks, just like Heroic levels do. Each point is earned at each Rank of an Epic Level, which means that each Epic Level corresponds to 4 Destiny Points. The 5th rank of each Epic Level is the level itself, as it is in Heroics. This means that you'll earn Destiny Points at a steady rate rather than in large chunks every 5 ranks.

Each Epic Destiny ability in the new Destiny system has a destiny point requirement as well as a level requirement - just like heroic enhancements do - so you can't jump right to the end at level 20 or without spending the requisite points up the tree. The Level and AP requirements are as follows:

Core 1: Level 20, 0 AP
Core 2: Level 23, 5 AP
Core 3: Level 26, 10 AP
Core 4-6: Will eventually be available at levels higher than 30. Exact breakdown TBD.

Tier 1: Level 20, 0 AP
Tier 2: Level 20, 5 AP
Tier 3: Level 23, 10 AP
Tier 4: Level 26, 20 AP
Tier 5: Level 30, 30 AP (you may only be in one Tier 5 at a time)

You'll notice that the tiers and cores don't exactly match Heroic enhancement trees, and we'll get to that in a moment.

These new ED trees are a mix of the old ED abilities and brand new ones, providing a huge variety of options to players both familiar with our current EDs and hungry for new exciting abilities. As we examine just what made the old Epic Destinies compelling, we're able to make sweeping changes to themes and designs to better support the widest range of available play. You'll see familiar abilities in unfamiliar places, new abilities in the places of old ones, and a lot of radical changes to bring the entire Destiny system together into more of a cohesive whole. We'll have a separate post about the general design notes of the new trees so you can examine the changes in more detail before diving into the trees themselves.

Unlocking Trees
Assuming you've never been in epics before, when you reach level 20, you will be directed to the Fatespinner and a new public area accessible from her dialogue. This area will contain NPCs that correspond to each Destiny. Speak to those NPCs to unlock the destiny for this character permanently. This NPC will give you a description of the playstyles that the tree supports, as well as serve a small part in a new, lightweight tutorial. Once you have done this once on a character, you will not need to do it again. This is just a way for us to vector new players to the Epic gameplay loop into a space that can give them a bit of an aesthetical introduction to our Epic game.

If you have at least one character before this overhaul that has fully capped all of their Epic Destinies, you will receive an exclusive Cloak featuring the now-deprecated Starmap to commemorate your achievement.

Unlocking a tree in the new system also provides +2 Fate Points per tree, which means that a brand new character reaching 20 for the first time will begin with 24 Fate Points.

Fate Points
There are no more Twists of Fate in this system - as players are able to branch out across up to three trees - but Fate Points still have a use. Every 3 Fate Points you've earned will contribute to 1 Permanent Destiny Point in the Epic Destiny Trees. These points are available at level 20 and can be freely spent between the trees you have slotted. If this is your first time in Epics, you will begin with a bare minimum of 24 Fate Points (from unlocking the 12 currently available trees), which means you'll start level 20 with 8 Permanent Destiny Points. This Permanent Destiny Point system is where we recapture the currently-frontloaded Destiny flow and allows us to offer playstyle-defining elements right out of the gate. The first two tiers of each tree are accessible at level 20, so you'll have quite a bit of choice and power at the start.

Fate Points also grant +2 Hitpoints and +1 Spellpoints each, starting at level 20.

You earn Fate Points in a variety of ways - from the Tomes of Fate currently available, from Epic Past Lives at the ratio of 3 Epic Past Lives to 1 Fate Point (which is an improvement, compared to 4:1 as it is currently), and from unlocking Destinies in the new system. You will no longer receive bonus Fate Points at levels 29 and 30.

The current maximum Fate Points is 43: 24 from unlocking trees + 16 from Epic Past Lives + 3 from a Tome of Fate. This means that you will start with up to 14 Permanent Destiny Points from Fate at level 20 (+1 extra Fate Point).

Epic Reincarnation
Rather than requiring Karma, Epic Reincarnation simply allows a player at level 30+ to take the Epic Past life of your choice and return to level 20.

Epic Completionist, rather than granting a Twist of Fate slot, will instead grant a flat +1 Destiny Action Point. You will also earn additional copies of Epic Completionist every 12 Epic Past Lives you earn thereafter. This means that a player with 24 Epic Past Lives will start with 2 copies of Epic Completionist, and will be able to earn 2 more as they reach the 48 total Epic Past Lives. A player with all 48 will have 4 copies of Epic Completionist, for a total of +4 Permanent Destiny Points.

This means that a player with Epic Completionist, all Epic Past Lives, the Tome of Destiny from Feywild, a +3 Tome of Fate, and all unlocked Destiny Trees, will begin level 20 with 19 Permanent Destiny Points (14 from fate, 4 from four copies of epic completionist, 1 from tome).

Epic XP, Epic Destiny XP, and Karma
Although you may have gleaned this from the above sections, just to make sure everyone is on the same page, there is no Epic Destiny XP or Karma in this new system. A player will not be required to level up in a destiny, or earn XP in a destiny, to unlock new trees or reincarnate. The base 12 destinies will be unlocked at level 20 via a simple tutorial (see the Unlocking Trees header for information) and reincarnation will no longer require Karma to complete (see the Epic Reincarnation header for information).

This means that the only type of XP you need to worry about in Epics is Epic XP, which will be unchanged from how it is earned. Epic XP will be displayed on your XP Bar differently (by splitting each level up into Ranks so we can award points more often), but the amounts and totals needed to level up are unchanged from how they are currently.

Leveling Up in Epics
In order to address the backloaded feat flow and frontloaded enhancement flow, we are meeting in the middle for the new level-up experience for Epics.



As you can see, we are moving the Destiny feat levels to follow directly after the Epic Feat levels. We are making an effort to ensure that every level in Epics gives a player some sort of choice or advancement. We want to smooth out the rate at which a player gains power considerably, which means we will be lowering the minimum levels of the Destiny feats.

Epic and Destiny Feats
Epic Destiny Feats no longer have Sphere requirements, as there are no more spheres. Instead, they will simply have level prerequisites.

The level prerequisites of Destiny Feats have been changed. Whereas before a Destiny Feat would have a prerequisite for levels 26, 28, and 29, they will now follow the new acquisition level flow, moving to min level 22, 25, and 28 respectively.

Several Epic and Destiny Feats have changed in functionality, as will be detailed in a separate post.