U51 Preview 1: Epic Destiny Overview

[voxson5]

Are the additional spell crit damage from epic <spellpower> & scion feats WAI?

Epic negative power and scion of shadowfell are not providing the additional crit damage.

Wellspring of power looks to be completely broken (does animation and starts cooldown but does nothing).

Checked via death aura healing numbers and character sheet crit damage.

[Aelonwy]

To repeat what's been said move the tier 5 unlock to level 29 please.

I agree.

I was looking over the chart of planned changes:


Now assuming they want Epic Destinies to follow similar progression to heroic enhancements and simultaneously want to have each epic/legendary level have "something" to increase this perception of progress then the best, most logical thing they can do is follow the pattern they have established in this chart^.

Ergo:
20 Epic Destinies Core1, T1 +T2
21 Epic Feat 1
22 Destiny Feat 1
23 ED Core2, ED T3
24 Epic Feat 2
25 Destiny Feat 2
26 ED Core3, ED T4
27 Epic Feat 3
28 Destiny Feat 3
29 ED T5
30 Epic Feat 4, Legendary Feat 1

Now extrapolate for the next 10 levels they plan on introducing
31 Destiny Feat 4
32 ED Core4
33 Epic Feat 5
34 Destiny Feat 5
35 Legendary Feat 2
36 Epic Feat 6
37 Destiny Feat 6
38 ED Core5
39 Epic Feat 7
40 Destiny Feat 7, Legendary Feat 3, ED Core6

Now why, you may ask, did I lay it out like this? My reasoning is thus: Firstly, this allows each level to have something. Secondly, heroic enhancement cores come quickly at first then have one at 12th level and one at 18th, and cap out with the final one at 20. This progression follows heroic enhancement core progression. Third the Epic Feats every three levels follows a predictable pattern. Following each Epic Feat with a Destiny Feat at the next level was already part of a pattern. Finally, having a Legendary Feat every 5 levels fills in the final holes of the pattern perfectly.

Therefor it only makes sense to have Tier5 at level 29 as it logically follows the rest of the pattern and prevents an "empty" level.

[GeoffWatson]

The Epic Moments seem quite weak in general. Only 20 seconds per 5 minutes?

[rabidfox]

Wellspring of power looks to be completely broken (does animation and starts cooldown but does nothing).

It was mentioned somewhere by a dev that it seems to be broken for anyone who doesn't have the ED that doubles wellsprings duration; so that's on a bug to-fix list.

[voxson5]

It was mentioned somewhere by a dev that it seems to be broken for anyone who doesn't have the ED that doubles wellsprings duration; so that's on a bug to-fix list.

Cool glad that is being looked at. Hopefully the epic / scion crit stuff gets done too.

[SWCarter]

I'm not sure where to post it as there isn't a general thread, but I noticed that some items have been nerfed (again) on Lamannia. For example, the Legendary Dreadkeeper set now only provides +20 PRR vs. the +40 PRR it has on live.

If you are determined to nerf/stat squish this set a second time, can you at least expand it to providing a +3 Artifact bonus to both Intelligence *and* Charisma for Abyss warlocks?

[pjw]

As an excercise in toning down the power curve, this has probably been a success.

But one of the things about the old twist system was that it allowed you to pick the 'fun' thing (or necessary thing) from a whole tree while making use of another whole tree.

Now...it's a bit like running in two off destinies at once: I spend a lot of time buying things I don't care about in order to get to the tier 3 or 4 that I want. Worse, building up these two off destinies now hampers my ability to cap my main destiny.

TL;DR: My character is less powerful (fine, if that's the objective), but is also less interesting to play: They have more really annoying buttons to hit, more timers, and more lockouts.

Things I've lost on my melee wizard:

• Dire Charge (can't afford top tier)
• Acid Burst - was fun but not OP
• Tumble Though Enemies (Magister) - was both fun AND useful
• 12 Reflex save
• Full-scale Adrenaline
• A moderate amount of MRR
• A small amount of MP

Things I've gained:

• Stances are REMEMBERED!!!! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Best feature in update! Just need to remember cosmetic settings now...
• A tradeoff between DPS (Adrenaline) and Healing (Consecrate)
• Buttons to press
• Cooldowns
• Lockouts
• A small amount of PRR
• A small amount of DS

Tradeoffs might sound good if they were not trading a Tier 1 for a Tier 4, and if the other fluff was more than fluff.

Edit:

One of the things about the normal enhancement trees is that there are a lot of them, with some pretty useful and obvious synergies. The only synergies I have found so far are very high up on the trees, or locked behind the awful 'Mantle' lockout system.

[Theboss71]

Hey Lynnabel
I think that you should lower the AP needed to unlock tier 5 to 20 AP (and leave tier 4 with 20 AP needed as well). Most players will have 52 AP (40 from level 30 and 12 from fate points). When a player unlock a tier 5 he uses 35 points in his first tree which leaves him with only 17 points to spend in the next which means he will not have any points to spend on a third tree. Lowering the AP needed to unlock tier 5 to 20 leaves him with 27 points which makes it a lot better. And this change will do no harm since you can only be in 1 tier 5 at a time. This will also improve the quality of the trees because players will not need to spend points in abilities they don’t want only to climb that tree.
Thanks and will do appreciate if you can consider it.

[Artos_Fabril]

Maybe consider changing T5 destiny abilities to 29, so it is not an empty level, Legendary feats are plenty reward for reaching 30.

What's the reasoning behind Tier 5s being unlocked at level 30? Bringing it down to level 29 follows the pattern set for previous core unlocks and is in line with the "effort to ensure that every level in Epics gives a player some sort of choice or advancement." Besides, level 30 already has 2 feats.

Like everyone who's commented on it so far, I agree with this.

The Epic Moments seem quite weak in general. Only 20 seconds per 5 minutes?

Agreed.

This is a kind of awkward cooldown. It's not long enough to really be powerful enough to turn the tide if a fight goes south, but it's long enough that some of us will never use it because we might need it later.

Warlocks are already in a weak place dps wise. Itd be nice to see them get some bonus to damage that other casters are getting with the caster level / max caster level increases. A pact die or eldritch blast die at the same rate seems fair to me?

Agreed.

Warlocks also don't really have a destiny to call home. Do Shiradi's Prism Mantle and Shadowdancer's Dark Imbuement apply to eldritch blast? If it does, it should probably say so "spellcast" or "offensive spells" seem to specifically exclude eldritch blasts. Is that the intent? If so, what destinies do support warlocks? Or are they intended to be only either DC casters or ES melee?

Endgame DCs need a lot of re-balancing. I was hoping to see improvements here since U50 destroyed so many builds, but its just getting worse. Many builds are down 30 DC from U49 now. Its just not functional.

This is a major concern, but should also be the easiest thing to address. If removing Epic Resilience (which Lynnabel mentioned) isn't sufficient, it should be fairly easy to lower all 20+ mob DCs by a few more points. Alternatively, lowering the CR across the board on mobs in legendary/epic content so that players are facing mostly CR~30 mobs rather than CR50+ mobs at level 23

[Eme]

it's like the Brexit update. Someone somewhere got too much airtime over something that wasn't even a problem and now it's all set on a one way path to destruction of everything.

[Natashaelle]

Now extrapolate for the next 10 levels they plan on introducing
31 Destiny Feat 4
32 ED Core4
33 Epic Feat 5
34 Destiny Feat 5
35 Legendary Feat 2
36 Epic Feat 6
37 Destiny Feat 6
38 ED Core5
39 Epic Feat 7
40 Destiny Feat 7, Legendary Feat 3, ED Core6

IMO, apart from the Destiny Feats, should probably be all Legendary Feats here, with the possibility of choosing an Epic or Heroic Feat instead if so preferred.

Maybe add Twist 1, Twist 2, Twist 3 to fill in some of the gaps ? It makes sense to have removed them from the new ED system, but they might be less problematic in the Legendary tier.

And your ED Core 5, by the same logic that puts Tier 5 at level 29, should be granted at level 35, not 38 ; Core 6 at level 38, not 40.

[Seph1roth5]

Tier 5s definitely need to come down to lv 29 (at least). The gap in your OWN chart just makes it seem like that's where it should go, that's where we all want it to go, and it was just moved simply to make the players weaker.

Everyone is pretty much in agreement that the epic moments are not worth a 5 min cooldown. Not sure why devs are so deadset against bringing that down to 3 min like turn the tide (which really seems like the sweet spot). The duration vs cooldown is the big issue. Increasing the melee power or d6s or whatever is not going to impress us, when the problem is how often they're up.

If the duration was bumped up to 45 sec-1 min that might work. Or, if each ED had a way to lower the cooldown somehow.

[Pandjed]

Alright, after reading through everything but before testing, here some thoughts on the concept (full disclosure, I strongly dislike the old system, that's why I don't whine about it).

First, overall it reads well. Not all numbers are where I think they should be, but the design looks neat. Not what I would have liked best, but given with the necessity to somehow connecting to the old system, it's good.

Epic Strikes
Since the early preview, I kept thinking what a ED must do to feel more natural in progression, instead of a race to get to the level of the next cool thing. My idea was, to bring the core mechanics down to tier 1, and only enhance them during progression, so that we get the toys early, implement them into the playstyle, and then improve them.
Epic Strikes are basically that, and even though some don't like their shared cooldown, it's actually a nice touch, as they can be more powerful while also need some thoughts when and how to use them.
I do think though, that each of them needs a passive effect. I imagine that most people only use 1 for the most time (the one of their main destiny) and then want to take another for specific circumstances, but is mostly a dead ability, which can especially be sad, when you put 3 points into it. To make the player feel a bit better with the brickstone, giving a small passive bonus (like some hp, some PRR, a skill bonus, etc.) might help.

Epic Moments
Concept is great, the lateness of it may be a bit sad, but works narritatively and then they can also be a bit bonkers. Not all are where I want them number-wise (as the cooldown will make them either emergency presses or boss fight material), but keep them.

Destiny Mantles
I like the concept, think the exclusivity works in general, but I see few builds that will take more than one. Maybe passive bonuses here may also work to a benefit (like how GMoF grants ki).

Level 29
Generally a fan of the level gating, but seeing that hole there is a bit irritating. I guess, t5 at 30th level is a choice for the future (don't know where you want to extend the levels; and even with the frew points we have, gating t3 and t4 seems to be made to be future proof in case more EPLs and such hit the table), but can we get at least more HP or so like at certain heroic levels?



What I'm personally missing is some tie-in to the spheres. I was neutral about the chargers, but loved the fact, that it made spheres somewhat matter. Guess, I won't cry if there won't be anything, but it's kind of sad that spheres only matter with EPLs now (as in stances), and there is no real tie in there.




Overall, good work on the concept and now let's see if the ideas are properly translated into game mechanics. Time to try some builds.

[Deathrobot]

Since every fate point counts now, is it possible to have the tome of destiny from the feywild preorder be added to the ddo store? The universal tome from the sharn preorder was added after a while, so i think its only fair to add the destiny tome for a reasonable price at the store.

[Aelonwy]

And your ED Core 5, by the same logic that puts Tier 5 at level 29, should be granted at level 35, not 38 ; Core 6 at level 38, not 40.

I was putting the cores at the corresponding levels to heroic enhancement cores so the only one that's off is the first one being available at level 20 which would be zero level to heroic. The heroic cores are Core 1/level 1, Core 2/level 3, Core 3/Level 6, Core 4/Level 12, Core 5/Level 18, Core 6/Level 20. And they seemed to be mostly already following that from the chart they posted so if Core 3 is level 26... Core 4 should be six levels later at level 32, Core 5 six levels later at 38, and the capstone at level 40.

My logic for the tiers was following their own chart where a new Tier became accessible every 3 levels at 23, 26, ? should be 29.

[noinfo]

After the initial calculation and change over so that those who have done the lives have it calculated-

Keep Karma as a permanent way of tracking progress toward points that persists through TR and ER.

It looks basically like 3 lives to 1 point so make it 24.75 mil to a point or whatever.

You should not have to TR etc to progress. If you want the past life fair enough.
Cap the number of points to whatever the progression count for max is now until whatever update.

[Vish]

Now extrapolate for the next 10 levels they plan on introducing
31 Destiny Feat 4
32 ED Core4
33 Epic Feat 5
34 Destiny Feat 5
35 Legendary Feat 2
36 Epic Feat 6
37 Destiny Feat 6
38 ED Core5
39 Epic Feat 7
40 Destiny Feat 7, Legendary Feat 3, ED Core6

ok and add legendary tier 1-5 just like in epic distribution.
the legendary will be 5 trees based on archetype
a 3 fold reduction of the 15 trees we should have for epic, and the 45 trees we have for heroic

and i second the tier 5 being placed at 29

to say the least
and thank you when you do it

because otherwise,
you are penalizing us for not yet playing a legendary game
maybe when you give us the 33 or 35 level you can make t5 a 30 play
but not really?
to only get 30 play at 30 feels like youre killing the 26-29 play
and there arent much xp or chains in that range as it is

it really should be at like 27
20 t1
21 t2
22 t3
24 t4
27 t5

[JoeCamb02140]

It's hard not to notice that most of these changes are caster centric and that a lot of the rationale behind the last destiny revamp is being thrown out. In the last destiny revamp we had a focus on particular styles of play such as TWF, THF, SWF, Ranged, DC Casting, healing and damage caster. This one seems pretty much to focus on casting and casting only. Could you talk a little more about how you see these destinies tying in with the existing 15 classes? If you are not looking at this by class, then are you looking at it by playstyle? If you are looking at playstyle, would you define the playstyles that you have identified and how you see them working into these destinies? It's not clear to me what the thought process is here other than taking a hammer to the old system and coming up with a caster-centric one.

Disclaimer

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

This is a companion post to the main Epic Revamp framework. Please read that post if you haven't already before reading this one! This post focuses on our Design Philosophies and the rules we used to build out the new Epic Destinies themselves.

Epic Destiny Design Paradigm
When looking at our current spread of 12 ED trees, they're all over the place in effectiveness and usability. We've had to contend with several strange and relatively inelegant designs that make balancing the destinies quite difficult. Therefore, when approaching the monumental task of remaking the system from scratch, we wanted to go back to the very beginning and explore the rough edges in the current system and how we've changed our designs to address those problems.

Caster Levels
Old EDs gave specific bonuses to specific caster levels in the cores, but these bonuses did not give Max caster levels, just caster levels. There was also a smattering of specific caster level/max caster level bonuses spread across some trees for only specific spells. This presented a situation where certain spell elements and types were disproportionately boosted.

New EDs will give no specific caster levels to classes. You'll instead gain +1 Caster Level and +1 Max Caster Level with all spells for every 2 Epic levels you've earned - so at level 30, you'll be at +5 to your caster levels.

Spell Schools and Spell DCs
Old destinies supported either a small subsection or all DC types at the same time, and even then, if you wanted DCs, Magister was the clear choice most of the time.

Our goal is for each spell school to have a specialized destiny (for example, Fatesinger and Enchantment), but to also support several DC bonuses. This means that each type of DC has plenty of room to be specialized in instead of living in a single tree. Magister itself is a very special case, but we'll get to that later. Our new Spell DC Paradigm is as follows:

• Each core of a casting tree grants +1 Epic bonus to all DCs (so core 2 grants +2 Epic bonus, core 3 grants +3 epic bonus)
  
  • Since this is typed, it does not stack, so taking cores from other trees will not increase your DCs.
• Each of these casting trees in tier 5 has an enhancement that grants +1/2/3 to all DCs.
  
  • Since this is in tier 5, and like with heroic enhancement trees you can only spend points in the tier 5's of a single Destiny, you can only access one of these universal DC boosts.
• In tier 3, there is a multiselector of a subset of DCs that grants +1/2/3 to the selected DC
  
  • These are antirequisites of the same DC found in other trees. Once you select necromancy in one tree, you can't take it in the other tree.
  • This means that if you are a Necromancy DC caster, you will want 1 of your trees to have that Necromancy, but once you've gotten that DC, your other options are wide open
  • This also means that you can go wide for more DCs for secondary DC values OR go tall to keep focusing, rather than wanting to go wide for all of the DCs across all of the trees that offer it
• We are also planning on removing the Epic Resilience buff from all monsters at endgame to make DCs across the board far easier to achieve.

Spellpower Types
Our goal is for each type of spellpower to have at least one tree that specializes in that type of spellcasting damage, with Draconic and Primal Avatar both leaning on different parts of the role of "choose a spellpower to specialize in". This means that if you're a caster that tries to deal spell damage, you'll have two or maybe three trees full of attractive options to encourage you to pick the ones that are right for your specific build. We're also opening up Draconic and Primal Avatar to cover a lot more ground horizontally, but you'll see that in the specific trees itself.

There simply isn't actually a lot of Spellpower in the current Epic Destinies, which means that compared to a melee or ranged character, your spell damage from raw spellpower didn't actually increase that much in your Epic Destiny.

In our new flow, each core of a Spellcasting Destiny will grant +5 Spellpower in the thematic types (For example, Fatesinger will boost Force and Sonic) as well as +5 Universal Spellpower. There will also be +20 thematic and +20 Universal spellpower in the tiers of each Spellcasting Destiny, for a total of +35 thematic/+35 universal in each tree.

Spell Critical Chance
Old EDs gave a smattering of spell critical chance that disproportionately boosted the elements presented. Fire and Light were at a severe advantage, and other elements were neglected.

New EDs will give no spell critical chance.

Spell Critical Damage
Draconic being the only source of Spell Critical Damage meant it was clearly superior in terms of raw damage for almost all damaging casters, even if it was aesthetically or synergistically suboptimal.

New EDs will give no spell critical damage, but that doesn't mean players won't have access to it going forward, as we'll get to further down.

Melee and Ranged Power
Each tree that wants you to deal damage with weapons will now support both melee and ranged in both their active attacks and respective powers.

Each tree that grants Melee/Ranged power will now do it at an equal rate across all trees to prevent one tree from simply granting more than the others. We want players to choose the tree that best fits their desired playstyle and not the tree that simply has the greatest numerical superiority.

Melee Power per Core Ability: 10
Ranged Power per Core Ability: 8

Each melee/ranged tree will also grant both melee and ranged power at the same time. The exception to this is Fury of the Wild and Shiradi Champion, which will grant only Melee Power and only Ranged Power respectively, and contain only melee and only ranged attacks respectively.

Usage-Per-Rest Abilities
Rather than individual abilities having their own charges (for example, Healing Spring in Shiradi being usable some number of times per rest), if we use a charges-per-rest system in the new ED trees, it will always have a heroic or shared component. Keeping with Healing Spring, in the new paradigm, it will instead use Wild Empathy charges (and grant a few so that you'll be able to start with the same amount of charges or more in the new flow). You'll see a lot more abilities that use things like Turn Undead, Bard Songs, Rage, and Smite Evil, and a lot of ways to augment recovering those charges or increasing your pool. This helps the Epic Destiny trees feel more like an extension of your existing abilities than an unconnected system meant to replace them.

Feat Tie-Ins
We're going to try to reclaim as many of the old and sub-optimal feats as we can - for example, an ED ability that grants a significant bonus if you have the Luck of Heroes Feat trained - in ways that would reward you for having them in your build without making them mandatory. Some feats might need additional help, but with this we're going to make an effort to tie a lot of those loose ends up.

You'll also see a lot of abilities that tie into Destiny and Epic feats that are underused or overlooked, such as Embodiment of Chaos/Law and the Bulwark of Defense feat. When these appear, rather than being requirements to train, they will instead apply an additional bonus if you have the feat to reward players who decide to shift their own meta.

Ability Score Bonuses
There are no more ability score bonuses in these trees (meaning the line of +1 Stat across the right edge of each ED) - they took up a full 1/5th of the real estate of the old EDs and caused far more trouble than they're worth from a build choice perspective. This means that any class or build can effectively use any tree without worrying about ability score mismatches. This also means that we have 20% more real estate per tree to pack in more exciting abilities that better explore the themes of each Destiny.

DC Checks
Old Epic Destinies had DC checks that used specific stats to determine their DC, and sometimes didn't include DC bonuses they should have. This meant that if you were a specific caster type, you were limited in which SLAs had workable DCs.

If an ability in a new Epic Destiny uses a DC, it follows this formula: 20 + (highest of a subset of ability modifiers) + (spell school bonus if it's a spell, appropriate DC boost such as Sunder or Trip if not, includes things like Breath Weapon if it's a Breath Weapon, etc)

More specifically, this means that SLAs of all kinds will use the highest of INT/WIS/CHA instead of just one or a subset. This means that you can expect a relatively small range of DCs for your abilities that use the same stats, even across separate trees. It also means that if you're a spellcaster, your primary spellcasting stat will be able to contribute evenly, regardless of which tree you are in.

New Trees
One of the major changes as a part of this refactor is that we can begin releasing entirely new Epic Destiny trees. Our goal is to end up with 12 at the start, and then slowly start rolling out more, at least until we can get up to 15, with each tree loosely corresponding to a heroic class.

In more immediate news, we're going to be retiring the Magister Epic Destiny and replacing it with Magus of the Eclipse, a brand new ED that focuses on Negative, Cold, and Necromancy spells, as well as weaving potent anti-magical defenses. Eventually The Magus of the Eclipse tree preview post will have a lot more information on why this tree specifically was replaced entirely instead of being refactored but that isn't ready for this early preview. For now, suffice it to say that when we went into building out a new cohesive epic ecosystem Magister in it's current broad form did not fit the framework.

Epic Destiny Mantles, Epic Strikes, and Epic Moments
To help keep Epic Destinies feeling mechanically different than heroic trees, we're putting together a global system of active play across all trees.

Destiny Mantles
In the lower tiers of each Destiny Tree you will find an enhancement labeled as a Destiny Mantle. These are powerful persistent abilities that must be toggled on in order to gain their benefits. You can only have a single Destiny Mantle active at a time. You can take multiple of these Mantles in order to swap between them on the fly, however, you can only gain the benefits from one of them at a time. These exclusive toggles are how we plan to keep powerful passive abilities and aspects separate from each other (for example, Grandmaster of Flower's monk animation suite versus Shadowdancer's Shadowform) without making them truly exclusive. Their exclusivity also means that we can allow players access to them right at level 20.

Epic Strikes
Scattered throughout the Destiny Trees you will find abilities that are labeled as Epic Strikes. These abilities share a cooldown but are not exclusive. These powerful abilities are enhanced as you spend points in their respective trees, and are meant to be accessed right out of the gate at level 20.

Epic Moments
In Tier 5 of each tree you will find an Epic Moment. Epic Moments are powerful abilities with a long cooldown, and represent a significant amount of lategame power. Our design philosophy for Epic Moments was quite loose to give each tree the freedom it needed, but a general rule is that Epic Moments will break one fundamental "rule" of DDO for its duration. As an example, the Shadowform Epic Moment ("Shadow Mastery") allows you to be considered "stealthed" for its duration, regardless of your actions.

[cmckronos]

I wasn't going to say anything because I know it likely won't matter. I'm a casual player and have been for a long time. I have multiple toons with multiple past lives (both epic and heroic), have a handful of reaper points, but I will never reach completionist or anything like that and I have always known that and didn't really care. I have a few minutes some days, sometimes longer on weekends. I like that a number of players chose to post their builds and are especially thoughtful to players who don't have all those extra APs or +8 tomes everywhere and I like to be able to find something along the lines of what I wanted to do with that class and not spend a bunch of time min/maxing and still be able to, for the most part, jump into even a low reaper group and not be a waste of space whose carcass has to be dragged through the entire dungeon. While I have run epic missions to gain XP and hit 30 for the epic TR, it was made tolerable by hitting 20 and being able to get a strong set of abilities that helped me make it through and slog on; however, i rarely hang out at 30 very long as i saw very little incentive to do so outside of earning xp in whatever destiny i was in. The last time the devs went through and radically changed all the classes (and invalidated a great many of the shared builds), I moved on and didn't play DDO for several years. RL interested me (story not gear) and I came back and slowly found myself playing more and enjoying doing so and I have enjoyed (and purchased) the new packs; however, my initial reaction to the changes was i guess time to punt again (along the lines of last time), a sentiment shared by a number of guildies who likewise showed back up again after having been gone for years. Over time of watching adjustments but still overall dreading the release of U51, i'm left asking, if i did chose to look past the changes and stay playing, why i would even bother with epic missions at all at this point? The one thing making it tolerable to a causal player is now gated and the missions (18s+) are significantly more difficult with much lower rewards (xp) made worse by having to epic abilities to make it tolerable.

I guess the point I am making is beware of unintended consequences. There are number of old time players i have talked to that have come back in the last year (after multi-year absences), and not a one is looking forward to the changes and a significant percentage are looking at fading back into the ether once the changes hit, and of the ones who may try to ride it out, they too are looking at epic lives as becoming too much sugar for a dime.

[Kelledren]

I would like to add another vote for the T5 to be gated at level 29 at a minimum. Level 27/28 would be optimal.

As others pointed out there are two lockout mechanisms here- level and points spent to reach a tier, which should align. I think level gating T4/T5 together (say level 27) and letting the number of points available to spend be the primary gate- thus allowing those who gained their past lives earlier access as a reward (I’m saying this as someone who does not yet have many Epic past lives).

Also for epic moments cool downs- 5 minutes seems steep. Three minutes seems better, or allow mantles to passively build up charges which automatically resets the cooldown of epic moments- just a brainstorm idea for a once in a while reset that makes 5 minutes easier to handle. This provides a passive build/spender mechanic, which I would be cool with.

Thanks