U51 Preview 2: Epic Destiny Overview

[Certon]

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.

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: 5
Ranged Power per Core Ability: 4

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.

To make up the rest of the Melee and Ranged Power that was currently available, we are doubling the bonuses of the Epic Power feat that is granted at each Epic Level from +3 to +6. This means that you will earn a total of +60 Melee and Ranged Power from leveling up versus the currently available +30.

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 int/wis/cha if a spell, highest of str/dex/con if a purely physical ability, highest of all ability scores if otherwise/both) + (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)

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.

All I can say is you guys have absolutely succeeded in building a unified and coherent set of trees that are technically sound.

But you have also made them all completely uninteresting. It's like math majors with no imagination built these. Sure, it's all fair and balanced, but it is ANYTHING but exciting. So, congratulations on borking it all up?

[Aelonwy]

When is the next preview? I thought we'd be getting another preview this week with the Divine caster destiny finally. Are we even going to get to play with it before the update now? If we do will there be time for changes before this all goes live?

[elvesunited]

The rumor mill is that they plan to release this at beginning of November
and that we will get one more preview with the possibility of squeezing in another beyond that.
( Though if the additional preview beyond the next one does happen I'm pretty sure it will be a bug fixing one and the changes will be pretty set by then )

[Theboss71]

When is the next preview? I thought we'd be getting another preview this week with the Divine caster destiny finally. Are we even going to get to play with it before the update now? If we do will there be time for changes before this all goes live?

They said they’re planning to release update 51 as soon as night revels ends. Next preview suppose to come out next week at around 19.10.21 (sorry not American) and they might release preview 4 between if needed.

[Kelledren]

In the last previews many solid arguments were presented on why t5 ED abilities should not be gated at only level 30. Some were for level 26-28, most were for this to occupy the blank spot at level 29- and line up with previous gates.
My last ditch argument on why this should be gated earlier than level 30 is this: In this preview you guys added some very fun epic moments and t5 abilities: every epic level we cannot use these while grinding out EPLs will simply be less fun. Fun is why we play. I have not seen an explanation on why these must stay at L30 either, so if there is “must” reason let us know. At least L29- as that seems to be the common sense place for them from the design perspective.

PS Thanks for adding MP to epic levels so the extra 6 cores are not absolute must haves for martials. I feel points are still light, especially for those of us with few EPLs, but getting closer. Still would like to see tier point spend gates dropped by 5 to allow some more diversity.

Thanks-
Kell

[Aelonwy]

In this preview you guys added some very fun epic moments and t5 abilities: every epic level we cannot use these while grinding out EPLs will simply be less fun. Fun is why we play.

Thanks-
Kell

Bolded for emphasis. This just cannot be said enough.

-----------------

Thanks Theboss, elvesunited for info.

[GramercyRiff]

Increase the power and give out more points. It's that simple. Design for fun. If people can't wait to log in and play the game and don't want to log out when they are logged in and playing having a blast, then the game is a failure. Nothing about u51 entices me to play the game. At all.

[majster67]

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)

How about doing away with these limits?
I know this is hard for you to understand and the topic is not new, but these thresholds are often pointless and problematic. Recently in Divine Crusader, as a pally, I had to put 2pts in fire spell power(Flames of purity, tier 2) into Consecrate just to be able to choose something from tier 4. And I was missing points for what I need from tier 4 and 6 having to choose what is more useful. And considering whether to take something for 2pts and have 1pt left, or spend 2pts on something else and have 1 left, or take another useful item with 1pt and then spend 2 to have one left unused, or spend 2pts on something else and have 1 left.... facepalm. This is repeated in many trees. Because first you have to spend points on something that is completely useless.
I am not in favor of tier5 being available as soon as something from Core is taken. But I think it can be regulated differently than thresholds which force you to take something you don't want because it is not in your style of play. Maybe make it dependent on Core? Or some buffer point? I mean here that you can jump alleged limit on next tier provided you take more from next tier? Or something like that? So if tier 2 requires 5pts to be used and tier 3 - 10pts, tier 3 - 15pts... and so on, so I could use 3pts in tier 2 but get to 10 in tier 3 to jump to tier 4? That way there would be 2 buffer points(or condition - whatever you want to call it) - you spend less now but have to make up for it later. Since tiers and cores are dependent on epic lvl, why not?

[elvesunited]

Wondering it this rumor can be confirmed or denied.

Rumor: Some spells from epic destinies are being moved into the spell lists. ( Arcane Tempest, Divine Wrath, Tsumani etc .... )

Is this happening?

[Seph1roth5]

Wondering it this rumor can be confirmed or denied.

Rumor: Some spells from epic destinies are being moved into the spell lists. ( Arcane Tempest, Divine Wrath, Tsumani etc .... )

Is this happening?

It IS but the final count on which spells are going where is still up in the air. I WANT to say lyn mentioned previously that 4 of the old big epic stuffs were being added to spellbooks....but that might've been a preview or 2 ago so the # might be different now.

The problem is they're mostly being added as lv 9 stuff, so warlocks/bards/arti/alchy/paly get screwed.

Also, I've been rallying for the tier 5s moved down from 30 since they were announced months and months ago. The only reason I can think of is that their plans for what to give us at 31 are so lackluster that they want the lv 30 tier 5 to be the main power at that point.

There's no (given) reason as to why it's at 30, there's a big gaping hole in what we get at 29 (lv 29 gear doesn't fit any holes now after stat squish), the VAST majority of players want it lower. Why keep it at 30? Especially since the new epic destiny system is designed to make you ETR a lot.

Like someone said, all lv 30 tier 5s do is take away fun we could have. Yeah it's just a level but it's one more level than nothing.

Tier 5s down from 30!

[elvesunited]

It IS but the final count on which spells are going where is still up in the air. I WANT to say lyn mentioned previously that 4 of the old big epic stuffs were being added to spellbooks....but that might've been a preview or 2 ago so the # might be different now.

The problem is they're mostly being added as lv 9 stuff, so warlocks/bards/arti/alchy/paly get screwed.

Also, I've been rallying for the tier 5s moved down from 30 since they were announced months and months ago. The only reason I can think of is that their plans for what to give us at 31 are so lackluster that they want the lv 30 tier 5 to be the main power at that point.

There's no (given) reason as to why it's at 30, there's a big gaping hole in what we get at 29 (lv 29 gear doesn't fit any holes now after stat squish), the VAST majority of players want it lower. Why keep it at 30? Especially since the new epic destiny system is designed to make you ETR a lot.

Like someone said, all lv 30 tier 5s do is take away fun we could have. Yeah it's just a level but it's one more level than nothing.

Tier 5s down from 30!

Tier 5's down to level 26! Tier 4s down to 23!
If the current level gating system is designed for the future level increase then its the equivalent of "shooting yourself in the foot to avoid stubbing your toe later"

[Theolin]

It IS but the final count on which spells are going where is still up in the air. I WANT to say lyn mentioned previously that 4 of the old big epic stuffs were being added to spellbooks....but that might've been a preview or 2 ago so the # might be different now.

The problem is they're mostly being added as lv 9 stuff, so warlocks/bards/arti/alchy/paly get screwed.

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The other issue is they will add them to most likely 1 spell book not others so you probably will not get the one you want due to where they put it, even if it synergizes with your build. I firmly believe the corrupt a wish philosophy with them.

[Iriale]

It IS but the final count on which spells are going where is still up in the air. I WANT to say lyn mentioned previously that 4 of the old big epic stuffs were being added to spellbooks....but that might've been a preview or 2 ago so the # might be different now.

The problem is they're mostly being added as lv 9 stuff, so warlocks/bards/arti/alchy/paly get screwed.

Also, I've been rallying for the tier 5s moved down from 30 since they were announced months and months ago. The only reason I can think of is that their plans for what to give us at 31 are so lackluster that they want the lv 30 tier 5 to be the main power at that point.

There's no (given) reason as to why it's at 30, there's a big gaping hole in what we get at 29 (lv 29 gear doesn't fit any holes now after stat squish), the VAST majority of players want it lower. Why keep it at 30? Especially since the new epic destiny system is designed to make you ETR a lot.

Like someone said, all lv 30 tier 5s do is take away fun we could have. Yeah it's just a level but it's one more level than nothing.

Tier 5s down from 30!

if they don't come back as EPIC spells it will be a failure.