U51 Early Preview: Epic Destiny Revamp: Divine Crusader

[Ballrus]

[*]Bring Down Wrath: Your shield is now considered a Favored Weapon for the purposes of your Divine Crusader Destiny Mantle and The Book of War, and now doublestrikes at 50% of the rate of your Mainhand Doublestrikes at 50% of the rate of your Mainhand Doublestrike as if it were an offhand weapon.

Is possible to split the Doublestrike bonus at tiers or cores?

Really, 50% bonus just at lvl 30? Throw 10% at each tier or split it in cores (10/20/20).

Please?

[TaalShiear]

Howdy friends! It's been a crazy few days, right?

I've been gathering up a ton of feedback and I wanted to take some time to write up what I've gleaned from you fine folks so far. Note that this is not an exhaustive list, and also note that (given that this is the DC thread) it's going to be centered on stuff that directly relates to Divine Crusader. These are also in no particular order

1: A lot of players have brought up that the removal of No Remorse was a pretty big tempo loss from this tree. It's not going to return here (because the Aura itself is elsewhere and frankly the scripting was a mess) but we can take what it did and figure out a new way to reintroduce its usage. What I'm currently thinking is to change the Tier 1: Divine Smite enhancement to provide a high-impact AoE Heal whenever you Smite instead of the Temp HP buff. This heal will increase in effectiveness the more Divine Charges you have, and will feel a lot like the Ameliorating Smite enhancements (but with a little more spicy sauce on top). I think this will go a long way to help Divine Crusader fill in its niche as a sustained combat attacker, someone who can dish out damage but also helps keep their allies' topped off. No Remorse was useful for providing healing throughout combat, which is a great feeling, and this new ability will mean that as long as you're pressing Smite Evil buttons, you're also healing up your friends. This kind of healing is also far more controllable than No Remorse (since you can press a number of buttons to trigger it, rather than needing to kill something) and therefore will hopefully be a little more usable mid-fights.

2: This tree has a real problem generating Divine Tokens beyond its builder (and any myriad bugs currently present). 10% chance on crit is WAY too low and unreliable for regular use. With that in mind, another change I'm noodling on is making it so that early on in the tree (in the first 2 tiers, so right at level 20), you'll be able to get something that says "Using Sunder, Improved Sunder, or any other Sundering attack gives you 1 Divine Charge." This charge gain will have a short internal cooldown (less than 10 seconds) but will hopefully make it way easier to reliably gain charges by weaving in existing abilities. This will also help bring another big Divine Crusader mechanic a little closer together. This tree is all about Sunder, sunder DCs, sunder attacks, etc.

3: The Spenders in this tree need some work!! Big attacks are fun and all, but this one was cookie cutter and not in a good way. It's clear from your feedback that what players really want is something that can deal with crowds a la Dire Charge. So, with that in mind, I'd love for us to work together and design something that can fill that same niche (but using Sunder DCs instead of Stunning). Maybe some sort of new Crowd Control type that isn't a Stun? My current ideas are:

a: A charge attack that, if you're using a shield, does some sort of AoE CC to all enemies struck. Divine Charges increase the area of effect size, and at 3+ charges it grants you a short burst of Unstoppability (CC immunity).
b: A melee attack that always tries to apply the CC effect in a straight line backwards for a moderate distance (probably 10 feet). For each Divine Charge, this AoE cone gets wider, until at 3+ charges it's a full 180 degrees centering from where you're facing. If you're using a shield, this attack also grants you a short burst of Unstoppability (CC immunity).

The big problem with both of these ideas is that I have no idea how they'll fit into a rotation if you're a ranged character. So, with that in mind, here's my idea for the Ranged option:

For some amount of time (probably 10 seconds, with additional time for each Divine Charge you consumed), your ranged attacks apply the CC from above to all enemies struck with your basic attacks. Each enemy may only be CCed by this once every 10 seconds or so.

The only real thing that I'm stuck on is what, exactly, that CC type should be. Ideally it's disruptive, provides helplessness, makes sense to scale with your Sunder bonuses, and feels fun to hit enemies with. Any ideas?

4: Law of the Divine is too strong, also slightly inelegant now that I've given it more thought. The good news is that it's sticking around, but it needs a tiny amount of polish. These kinds of feat buffs need to work in tandem with the base feat, not just apply a better version right on top and leave the original there. I think it's clunky that it doesn't just replace the law damage on hit with a better law damage on hit proc. Thankfully this kind of thing - aka replacing the law damage - is easy to put together.

5: The Tier 5 of this tree needs some sort of big flashy thingie that feels great to press. Something that we'll probably go into more detail later on is that we didn't realize that players were so attached to the idea of an Epic Moment. Now, granted, the original Epic Moment of this tree (Celestial Bombardment) is prooobably not the best fit to return, but the good news is that we have more than enough time to think of something a little bit better suited to the new Divine Crusader paradigm. Part of me wants something that provides a ton of mobility, part of me wants to let you drop a super-pumped up Consecration, and part of me wants to wait and see what you fine folks come up with.

6: This tree needs to physically be rearranged so that the Consecration buffs end up in a line and the Mantle buffs end up in a line. Also I need to bring back the old Aura of Purification visuals for when Holy Mantle is turned on.

There's definitely more stuff to adjust (animation changes, buffs to the cores, etc) but these are the big ones I wanted to be sure to bring up ASAP. And of course, if you have any questions or further comments, please feel free to add to the discussion. Thanks!

As a DIVINE CRUSADER and FAVORED SOUL, how am I supposed to unlock a Two-Handed Sword for a Favored Weapon? No God's have 2-Handed Swords as Favored Weapons... if this is true, I have to completely adjust my game-style from 2-handed to 1 handed and a shield. I hate using shields! And since when is a Divine Crusader an Unyielding Sentinel?

[LrdSlvrhnd]

While we are on the subject, can you look at consecration/crusade on Live and see why it doesn't heal hirelings and maybe fix that for the new trees?

That would be nice.

It used to heal hires. However, they removed the ability to affect NPCs because of a couple of quests where mobs would go inactive... and then get healed by a Consecration proc... and then bork and never become active again and kill the quest. And rather than figure out how to include hires & summons while excluding actual quest NPCs, they just removed everything that wasn't a PC. Which is sad-making.

[Normalcy]

Post Deleted

[psymun]

As a DIVINE CRUSADER and FAVORED SOUL, how am I supposed to unlock a Two-Handed Sword for a Favored Weapon? No God's have 2-Handed Swords as Favored Weapons... if this is true, I have to completely adjust my game-style from 2-handed to 1 handed and a shield. I hate using shields! And since when is a Divine Crusader an Unyielding Sentinel?

Lord of Blades.
Faith of the Forest.

https://ddowiki.com/page/Favored_weapon

[YingYang69]

Anything new for TURNING in the new updates, besides Radiant Servant for Cleric enhancements? No? Still nothing? Crickets? When does this system get updated, since it's one of the primary functions of a Cleric? ~ Thanks.

[Lynnabel]

Anything new for TURNING in the new updates, besides Radiant Servant for Cleric enhancements? No? Still nothing? Crickets? When does this system get updated, since it's one of the primary functions of a Cleric? ~ Thanks.

Turn Undead will be an Exalted Angel feature, and will be featured in that Epic Destiny :)

[Jerevth]

The big problem with both of these ideas is that I have no idea how they'll fit into a rotation if you're a ranged character. So, with that in mind, here's my idea for the Ranged option:

For some amount of time (probably 10 seconds, with additional time for each Divine Charge you consumed), your ranged attacks apply the CC from above to all enemies struck with your basic attacks. Each enemy may only be CCed by this once every 10 seconds or so.

The only real thing that I'm stuck on is what, exactly, that CC type should be. Ideally it's disruptive, provides helplessness, makes sense to scale with your Sunder bonuses, and feels fun to hit enemies with. Any ideas?

I'm not certain if it could be done but for ranged what about something that generates a radiant "gust of wind" visual and blinds and knocks everything down in its path on a critical, will save to remain standing? (Size matters not; this is divine energy.)

Or an AOE like sunburst on radiant damage scales 200% ranged power? Daze or stun.
---
For Consecration: make it a selector?
Static: it doesn't move, but each subsequent wave is 1.5 time stronger than the previous.
Mobile: performs as listed.

[Chacka_DDO]

Turn Undead will be an Exalted Angel feature, and will be featured in that Epic Destiny

hmm, you taught us that Exalted Angle is themed around light damage and fighting against devils and demons, and very close to the Favored Soul class (FvS don't have turn undead) I have the slight feeling that Turn undead doesn't really fit thematically to the Exalted Angel destiny.

[slyder67]

hmm, you taught us that Exalted Angle is themed around light damage and fighting against devils and demons, and very close to the Favored Soul class (FvS don't have turn undead) I have the slight feeling that Turn undead doesn't really fit thematically to the Exalted Angel destiny.

Funnily enough, Clerics also have the ability to deal light damage and can absolutely benefit from fighting devils and demons. adding a t1 ability that says "you gain turn undead, if you all ready have turn undead you gain x" all ready exists so it wouldn't be hard to slap that in Exalted. Domain of Sun Clerics would love to get boosts to their light damage and turns. Like Most Destinies, Exalted will probably be useful to a wide range of characters, not just Favored Souls.

[Chacka_DDO]

Funnily enough, Clerics also have the ability to deal light damage and can absolutely benefit from fighting devils and demons. adding a t1 ability that says "you gain turn undead, if you all ready have turn undead you gain x" all ready exists so it wouldn't be hard to slap that in Exalted. Domain of Sun Clerics would love to get boosts to their light damage and turns. Like Most Destinies, Exalted will probably be useful to a wide range of characters, not just Favored Souls.

The fact that Clerics have light spells is no contradiction to what I say, clerics and Favoured Souls have exactly the same spells and the biggest difference is that Clerics have turn undead and Favoured Souls not.
And my impression was that Exalted Angle is the ED for FvS very similar to GMoF the ED for monks is and for this reason in my opinion something for Turn Undead doesn't fit thematically into the Exalted Angle destiny.
One thing is sure, one ED should have something for turn undead but personally, I don't see it in EA.