U50 Preview 1: New Universal Enhancement Tree: Horizon Walker

[LittleLexi]

I like the tree so far.

I complained a lot about Universal trees being too good in the past, but this seems like a fairly decent thematic option that doesn't directly outshine others.

The fact it meets this standard is already promising.

This is an important point. I definitely do not want this tree to became anywhere near as dominant as the disaster that is the Inquisitive tree.

[Coffey]

my main is a deep woods sniper wood elf, this will be so much fun (No Step Missed!! & +2 Maximum Manyshot charges)...thx you!

This should already be a Ranger enhancement in the class trees since they are specialists with Bows.

[Tobril]

In no particular order:


Please stop trying to get everyone killed by tumbling around into circles and away from healing. Ranged people already don't know how to stack correctly.


Convenience abilities like the leap are nice.

I'm not currently able to take the capstone...bug?

Marking takes waaaaay to long. Even on boss fights this is a little sketch. This is a bonus action in 5th, it should be much faster or simply automatic based on what you are targeting currently.

Scattershot vs Manyshot seems interesting and versatile. Increasing the charge by 1 on this enhancement would be nice as well.

The trance or tree needs higher accuracy. Missing when your attack speed is slow feels really bad.

The leap looks great.

Opening and Corner appear to share the same cooldown presently AND both appear to halt movement.

DDoor should be usable more than once per rest.

It's nice to have archery options for non-rangers.


The entire tree probably needs a little ranged power, doubleshot, or sneak attack to convince people to use it over Deepwood.

[Assassination]

Throw a bone to us Dexy Types, put the dex trance in tier 1. We deserve it.

[Artos_Fabril]

This should already be a Ranger enhancement in the class trees since they are specialists with Bows.

Why do so many people think that all rangers should be Legolas or Drizzle, or that only rangers should ever hold a bow? That impulse to lock everyone else out of bows is plainly ridiculous, and wholly unnecessary as this tree is clearly not Inquisitive 2.0, or even Inq 0.75. Barring a massive overhaul, some people are going to use HW to supplement their flavor builds, many more will buy it for dex trance, and few if any will spend 41 points on it.

[Coffey]

Why do so many people think that all rangers should be Legolas or Drizzle, or that only rangers should ever hold a bow? That impulse to lock everyone else out of bows is plainly ridiculous, and wholly unnecessary as this tree is clearly not Inquisitive 2.0, or even Inq 0.75. Barring a massive overhaul, some people are going to use HW to supplement their flavor builds, many more will buy it for dex trance, and few if any will spend 41 points on it.

All i said is Rangers should have this feature in their trees as well.

[Coffey]

The extra charges should be added to core 4 at level 12 to alleviate the monotony sooner.

[Coffey]

Scattershot sounds like it should be a very wide AOE like a sawed off.

[losian2]

This is a joke right? This is ridiculously powerful. Like, absurdly.

That's obviously why it's so good and the DDO "Team" just can't get anything right!

I also love how half of it is just regurgitated arcane archer with nothing remarkable going on. I'm all fine with folks cooking up their own ideas, but doing it with such a simultaneously smug and negative attitude is just childish.

[TFerguson]

This is all weaksauce

[Coffey]

I'm all fine with folks cooking up their own ideas, but doing it with such a simultaneously smug and negative attitude is just childish.

I think you are projecting.

[SpardaX]

Focuses of this tree include:

• Avoidance defenses (dodge, incorp, etc)

Tier 3
Two Places At Once: When you use Manyshot or Scattershot, you gain Displacement for 12 seconds. (2AP)
Planar Dodge: +1/2/3 to Dodge, +1/2/3 Maximum Dexterity while wearing light armor. (1AP/Rank)


Tier 4

Walker Training II: +1 to Attack and +1 to Damage with Longbows and Shortbows. (1AP)
Corner the Quarry: +2/3/4[w] Bow Attack. If this is used against your Marked Target, they must make a Reflex Save (d20+your Listen skill) or be immobilized for 12 seconds. On a Vorpal hit, the target is also Stunned with no save (20sec cooldown). On bosses, this does not immobilize or stun. (1AP/Rank)
Tenacious Hunter: Against Extraplanar creatures and Marked Targets (regardless of whether or not they are extraplanar), you deal an additional +2/4/6 damage with Longbows and Shortbows. (1AP/Rank)
Scattershot: Ranged Bow Attack: Expend one charge to randomly select up to three different enemies at close range and shoot one arro at each of them. Each of these shots can Doubleshot. 2 second cooldown. This feat gives 3 charges, you regain 1 charge every 12 seconds you don't use Scattershot or Manyshot. (Requires a Longbow or Shortbow to use). Shares Charges and a Cooldown with Manyshot.(2AP)


Tier 5

Walker's Guidance: You and targeted ally gain Evasion and +5 to Saving Throws vs. Traps for 12 seconds. 60 second cooldown. (1AP)
Misty Step: As Abundant Step, but you disappear. (Shares a cooldown with other abundant steps). (1AP)

I like what you got going here. My two copper on the matter would be, I notice you said in your focuses for the tree, that avoidance was the big thing, and you specify Dodge and Incorp.

Now I do notice the "Displacement for 12 seconds on Manyshot" and I like that a lot actually. And this leads me to assume you meant to say Dodge and Concealment. Because there is no actual Incorporality in the tree. I also notice the evasion thing, and some people are suggesting making it either permanent (I think that might be too strong) or making it work in medium armor, and I'm like 95% sure as nice as that would be, knowing what I've seen in the past to do with "Nice thing but code says no", I'm thinking the code simply would not allow that without major rewrites or overhauls.

My suggestion to make it more viable for the 80-85% of people who either can't do evasion or already have evasion, so the majority of people this ability probably does not appeal to, is to also add some of the previously mentioned incorporality. I'd say 5% - 10% stacking, or somewhere between 15% minimum - 25% maximum non stacking, for the duration of the evasion.This isn't capped by armor, and everyone loves incorporality. And it should definitely help even the people who either already have evasion or can't use evasion. It's also not permanent enough to take the wind out of the characters who can keep 25% incorporality up at all times. I see what I think you wanted this to be, a "Lets run through the trap hallway in The Tide Turns" ability, and that's neat. But this might make it better but not OP.

Or alternatively, I would have it as an addon to Misty Step. But not knowing the CD on Misty Step, I can't make that call on how long I would make the incorp last. (Also personally I think it fits Walkers Guidance way better.)

My other suggestion / something I noticed, is that you have +3 Dodge but no +3 Dodge Cap. This is I think less important than my above suggestion, but I would try and find a place in tier 4 to put +3 dodge cap, which would leave the Displacement and dodge in Tier 3, the Dodge Cap in Tier 4, and the Incorporality in Tier 5, which I think is in line with their respective power scales. I don't know if it really fits, but the only place I can see to slip it in without disrupting anything might be along with:

Tenacious Hunter: Against Extraplanar creatures and Marked Targets (regardless of whether or not they are extraplanar), you deal an additional +2/4/6 damage with Longbows and Shortbows. (1AP/Rank)

This is a nice, but very specific ability that won't actually benefit the user most of the time (Assuming you're hitting 3 or 4 enemies at once with IPS), and a +3 dodge cap addon at least adds a passive ability that will always be helpful.

- I also agree that Spot is thematically a better skill to base things off over Listen. But if you're doing this specifically because you want to buff the skill, then I guess that's fine.

[Zezahk]

Suggestion: Skills -> Planewalker's Resourcefulness: +1/+2/+3 Bluff, Spot and Hide. This bonus is doubled against outsiders and favored enemies. (If your favored enemy is an outsider, this bonus is effectively tripled.)

[Carpone]

Weathered Gear - Filler enhancement. It's only relevant for tanks in DDO, so please stop adding it to non-tank trees. If you're dying so much that your gear is breaking, the difficulty is set too high. Replace this with Improved Longstrider: Spell Like Ability: Longstrider. While you are under the effects of the Longstrider spell, you gain 3/6/10% runspeed.

Scattershot is clunky. Grabbing aggro on *random* mobs is not desired. Provide +1 maximum Manyshot charges, so players that don't want this combat style get something useful out of it.

Planar Dodge - Needs Dodge Cap as well, otherwise the benefit won't be realized.

Walker's Guidance - The target isn't going to have the DEX to make this viable, so this needs to be Improved Evasion to confer any useful benefit. +5 saving throw to traps is laughable for a T5 ability. Replace the saving throw with a passive 10% action boost runspeed for the party. It totally fits the terrain/planar mastery flavor from pen and paper.

[Enderoc]

I could imagine misty step like a blink dog type ranger where you fire a shot and disappear to reappear somewhere else...after making your mark again after aggro is redirected.
I mean fill in the blanks....with elven dragon mark invis scrolls/potions some diplomacy/diversion bonuses you could be a Blink Ranger lol heck splash wizard or sorc and have all bases covered.
Elven Dragon Marked Phantom Bowman... I would make sure I had enough healing amp though being you are taking a hit there
1 rogue for UMD and jump on skills...4 wizard for 2 core Palemaster invisibility and exp retreat...and 15 ranger (bow/stealth) or silver flame cleric of death domain being you really just need precise shot for this its better self healing and you can follow up with a necro SLA.
Anytime you draw aggro instead of kiting try diplo/invisible and reposition.

[magaiti]

Scattershot, like Manyshot, works with IPS.

• If you don't have IPS on, and Random Target #2 is standing directly behind Random Target #1, both of those arrows will hit #1 because arrows hit the first enemy they come in contact with.
• If you DO have IPS on in that scenario, the arrows would pass through and likely hit both of them, depending on exact positioning.

because arrows hit the first enemy they come in contact with.

Only if you don't have Precise Shot, which is a prerequisite to IPS AND provides the Archer's Focus stance, and is therefore mandatory for any ranged character.
Just saying. Can't miss an opportunity to teach a dev the rules of their own game, you know.

[Carpone]

Horizon Walker T5 needs a damage boost to make it competitive with DWS T5.

Average auto-attack damage:

DWS T5/HW Capstone: 6291
DWS T5/DWS Capstone: 6262
HW T5/HW Capstone: 5916
HW T5/DWS Capstone: 5828

DWS T5/DWS Capstone is still top DPS when you factor in Haste Boost from VKF. Deflect Arrows is also a key damage mitigation ability for ranged, and there's not enough AP for it when splitting T5 and capstone across DWS and HW.

Math.

[kmoustakas]

I'm not sure I'm understanding everything I read but

if you can use scattershot without having manyshot, this is great.

Also love the give someone evasion and dimension door. This feels great. I'm sure the number crunchers will do the number crunching but flavor wise seems good.

[A-O]

With how interesting scattershot is, I think you need to do more with it.
Scattershot should be like it is now, but if you have multishot it should be a multishot on 3 different enemies instead of 3 normal shots. In core 3, 4, and 5 it should be 4/5/6 enemies respectively. And in T5 there should be a regenerate charges faster passive.
make it something that feels fun to press and not just a worse multishot in a tree that's supposedly single target.

Obviously that'll never happen unfortunately. But at least consider doing something more with it. 3 targets are too few, and a worse multishot (no crit modifier) isn't satisfying to use. A single arrow on 3 targets on a long CD is not spectacular of a T4.

[zooble]

Things that feel strange:

3 cores upgrading the mark when DWS grants its mark all in 1 core. I guess that benefits splashes but it seems very boring if you wanted to go heavy into Horizon Walker given that the majority of the game doesn't revolve around single target combat.

Scatter Shot. So with Adrenaline + Scatter Shot you can kill at least 3 mobs on EE (I guess on u51 that's Hunt's End) without having to line up your shots. That's nice since it's better than an average of 1 or 2 per shot. I say at least 3 since it can pierce with IPS but of course, lining up shots is very unlikely unless there is a huge pack. On high reapers I'm not sure how good this will be. i.e. 3 shots doing so so damage spread out to multiple mobs with no utility. Being able to Multi Shot a Scatter Shot would be nice. Or doing something like Scatter Shotting a crowd control effect.