I don't understand Sun Lord

[bryanmeerkat]

What is it for ?

It's a cleric iconic . That only gets int bonus.

Then some random Dex to hit bonus at high tier for a few weapons .

Not sure what I am supposed to be doing with it ?

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

I must admit that I never understood the INT part as well.
DEX is, however, not bad for overall defense. ( Could've been more, though. )
I'm playing my Sunlord as a caster with mostly light, but also with fire, and without any INT, except for SEARCH.

[Enoach]

I thought when they did this it had to do more with the Spellcraft skill. With Cleric having such of depth of abilities, it is not always an option to be a DC caster and be able to keep you spell power up in Alignment/Light/Fire/Bludgeon damage.

Intelligence is also something the Elven race is commonly known for.

I do think it would have made better sense to make it a multi-select (Int, Wis and Dex) but I think they were going with letting the Human have that as a primary draw.

[Iriale]

The sun elf's int bonus has nothing to do with increasing his spellcraft. In fact, when turbine created this iconic the spellcrat skill didn't even exist. It has an int bonus because the sun elf in pnp has an int bonus. What's wrong is its associated class. The iconic class for sun elf in all editions of D&S is wizard. That is why the race has a bonus to int. Sun elves are supposed to be good at wizardry. But turbine, and then SSG after them, have gotten "creative" designing the iconics, giving them in most cases classes that are not at all iconic for them. I suspect that to sell +1 hearts, because that or annoying their customers are the only possible reasons, and the second is too childish xd.

[superevbully]

I thought when they did this it had to do more with the Spellcraft skill. With Cleric having such of depth of abilities, it is not always an option to be a DC caster and be able to keep you spell power up in Alignment/Light/Fire/Bludgeon damage.

Intelligence is also something the Elven race is commonly known for.

I do think it would have made better sense to make it a multi-select (Int, Wis and Dex) but I think they were going with letting the Human have that as a primary draw.

lol no as someone pointed out spellcraft was ummm not around at the time lol

[dredre9987]

Spellcraft was added in update 19 the same as the iconic...shadowfell. So no the two above me are completely wrong.


https://ddowiki.com/page/Update_19_Release_Notes

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

It has an int bonus because the sun elf in pnp has an int bonus. What's wrong is its associated class. The iconic class for sun elf in all editions of D&S is wizard. That is why the race has a bonus to int. Sun elves are supposed to be good at wizardry.

Thanks, I didn't know that.

[jskinner937]

The sun elf's int bonus has nothing to do with increasing his spellcraft. In fact, when turbine created this iconic the spellcrat skill didn't even exist. It has an int bonus because the sun elf in pnp has an int bonus. What's wrong is its associated class. The iconic class for sun elf in all editions of D&S is wizard. That is why the race has a bonus to int. Sun elves are supposed to be good at wizardry. But turbine, and then SSG after them, have gotten "creative" designing the iconics, giving them in most cases classes that are not at all iconic for them. I suspect that to sell +1 hearts, because that or annoying their customers are the only possible reasons, and the second is too childish xd.

Morninglord were clerics or paladins. I think the problem is there seems to be a mix of sun elf and morninglord in the enhancements and ability bonuses.

[bryanmeerkat]

Currently the only reason I have to play this race is that I want the past life.

It's pretty lame motivator .

[Enderoc]

What is it for ?

It's a cleric iconic . That only gets int bonus.

Then some random Dex to hit bonus at high tier for a few weapons .

Not sure what I am supposed to be doing with it ?

You are supposed to make a Horizon Walker Arcane Archer 6 ranger/ 14 cleric choosing a domain that gives you force or elemental damage maxing listen and spellcraft of course...
Focusing on force is your best bet though as force damage is applied in both Horizon Walker and Arcane Archer. I think the bonus is +2 /cleric level so at 20 that's an extra 28 SP which with high spellcraft , impulse, insightful impulse, potency, potions, feats in epic etc...that's a pretty boss arrow if you ask me.

[wax_on_wax_off]

You are supposed to make a Horizon Walker Arcane Archer 6 ranger/ 14 cleric choosing a domain that gives you force or elemental damage maxing listen and spellcraft of course...
Focusing on force is your best bet though as force damage is applied in both Horizon Walker and Arcane Archer. I think the bonus is +2 /cleric level so at 20 that's an extra 28 SP which with high spellcraft , impulse, insightful impulse, potency, potions, feats in epic etc...that's a pretty boss arrow if you ask me.

Horizon Walker force damage on arrows only scales with Ranged Power, right? Or did I miss that detail and now need to go find an impulse item for my archer character...

Personally, I read the variety in Morninglord specifically and iconics in general as an attempt to make it appealing to a broad range of characters so its more appealing to buy for a greater variety of players.

I like Morninglord and can think of a variety of builds it can work for:
- Arcane Archer builds (especially ones with a rogue splash as the extra int helps skills)
- Wizard builds (as long as we can afford the +1 lesser heart)
- Cleric (and Favoured Soul) casters that focus on Light spells

[Iriale]

Morninglord were clerics or paladins. I think the problem is there seems to be a mix of sun elf and morninglord in the enhancements and ability bonuses.

But this morninglord is a sun elf too. It was the devs who chose for this iconic a race whose iconic is not a divine class, but a wizard, and on top of that, morninglord is not an elven religion. so the choice of sun elf for this iconic was really bad, because it is not synergistic neither in numbers nor in background (if it were an elven deity... but it is not!)

Did they pick sun elf by name (SUN elf, deity of light and sun and such? Perhaps, but certainly not because of its background. And this is how we have ended up with a race that absolutely does not synergize with the concept of morninglord, both in numbers and in background.

It is not surprising that people do not understand this iconic. But hey, this started the trend of creating non-synergistic iconics to sell +1 hearts. DDO is full of traps like this.

[DaviMOC]

Yeah. as if it wasnt enough to sell the iconic race, all of the 4 base ones came twisted in some way that would welcome +1 hearts or a combination of a couple of +1 hearts and alignment changers. The business intent was clear writeen on how the trees and the race+class combination were made.

Sun elfs always had wizard as a favored class. It has no synergy or acceptable background for iconic clerics as Iriale pointed out. There is nothing iconic about sun elf clerics. But had some nice SLA that could have good use on a wizards as also its int bonus in a time that the only other race that had int bonus was Drow.

PDKs works nice as fighters but was so inclined to be Paladins or bards, both from its racial tree, and the exclusive FR deity Silvanus.

Bladeforged have a strong background, it fits perfect to the class. However the racial tree features abilities that would have most of its benefits on classes such as fighters that lacks self healing.

Shadar-kai got background that fits the class but had little benefits. Hardly a desirable race if not for the silvanus deity option as clerics, paladins and fvs or someone looking to make a rogue already in a iconic race.

In time most of the mixing got "fixed" or gained purpose by the changes in the classes, trees or the iconic race itself like the supercool new sha dar kai chain. Morninglords looks like was left behind . I bet that would be the next one to be reworked.

I could maybe make a case for the newer iconics but I stopped following it XD.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Well, I at least can say that I have my fun with my sun elf. I call her "armageddon" now, because of her blasting through the lower to middle levels ... (The need to get Coin Lords & Kundarak favour ...)

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

... A few days ago I began to wonder how a multiclass character - half Sun Lord, half Wizard - might play ... ?
... It would be a wizard which would be able to heal himself/herself ... And that's quite an survival factor for soloing ...
Light spells and positive spells would be good against almost any undead form ... Except Lich, of course, they are normally harder to beat ...
The problem is, however, that monsters which are vulnerable to light and positive become rarer and rarer the higher the CR of the quest is ...

[DaviMOC]

Usually that kind of self healing wizards are the Warforged and the Pale masters.
The issue there would be caster levels, multiclassing spellcasters takes serious hits by this. Imagine being lvl 20 and casting spells like a lvl 10 wizard. As much spellpower you gather you will still be casting weaker spells. Considering you cant cast wiz spells using Wis or clerics spells using Int, thats another big trip.

I do believe divine spellcasting got some good boost few patchs back and is now viable enough to be healing and damaging...Sp that goes dow really fast on that kind of build.
Or you can go druid spellcaster too for elemental damage instead and keep your healings.

I would support howerver a Mystic Theurge epic Destiny that could fix that. Problem is that it would be a 20+ only solution.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

I'm actually surprised that the Pale Master is the only real self-healing build I can see. (Don't know about Warforged, mine is sitting at level 5 for ages now).

This gives the Pale Master a direct advantage over everything else together with its myriad immunities.

This explains why everybody and their mum are running Pale Master these days, but it dos not explain why there was never a class for living beings that mirrored that.

[Antheal]

They should have made either the Cleric or Paladin Iconic after Aasimar came out, but they'd already used those two classes on other races, so Aasimar got stuck being a Ranger instead.

It's like they were in such a rush to release a Cleric Iconic, they just stuck it in the first race they already had available (Elf-based) instead of waiting for a more appropriate one: Aasimar. Paladin was also already taken so even that class as the 2nd choice wasn't available.

And now we're stuck with a useless race for a Cleric and left over with a sub-optimal class for the Aasimar.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Well, one could see both as a challenge.

[Atremus]

Well, one could see both as a challenge.

The Angel of Amaunator

This is my Sun Elf build from 5 years ago. If you are into divine playstyle it was very fun and should still be viable. With the new level 9 spells coming out - I would drop Implosion for Divine Wrath or Celestial Bombardment for that single Level 9 spell slot..