Proposing Epic Destiny Improvements

[jsm123]

I've been back to DDO for about two months after a five year hiatus. I love the majority of the changes that have happened since my leave, but I can see some things that could use improvements, especially with the new Epic Destiny changes.

To begin, Fatesinger needs to give players the Inspire Courage feat if not already obtained as a Bard. This is because any non-Bard toon that wants to be a Fatesinger is locked out of a large portion of the tree without it. If memory serves, Fatesinger used to give us this feat. We need that back in the tree please.

Secondly, Legendary Dreadnought is supposed to be a melee and ranged focused tree which is apparent through most of the enhancements the tree offers. However, Overpower does not provide 19-20 +1 critical damage version for ranged weapons. There needs to be an Overpower: Archer, or similar name, version for ranged toons that want to be a Legendary Dreadnought because it is a really important damage increase for any toon that uses weapons.

Thirdly, Primal Avatar should offer some sort of Wild Shape transformation via a multi-selector to reflect the Druid class. It could be implemented so that if a toon already has the selected Wild Shape, it instead offers a buff to that Wild Shape.

Also, the recent nerf to Shiradi Champion casters was objectively excessive and needs to be tuned back some. I understand that many casters were just taking Shiradi Champion because Prism and Stay Frosty/Good gave somewhat of a free damage increase and was considered too strong. But a 97% overall power decrease to these is definitely excessive.

Lastly, I've noticed that only some of the Epic Destinies offer a way to obtain full Basic Attack Bonus, three I believe. I propose that any tree that has some sort of focus on melee or ranged, even if it also has a focus on spells, should offer full BAB at tier 5 since BAB is one of the most, if not the most, important damage sources in the game. A max level toon focusing in weapon damage should have access to a passive full BAB, no matter the toon's heroic classes, through Epic Destinies which have a weapon type focus.

Some possible rebuttal I can think of:

1 Most casters have access to Tenser's Transformation.
- Yes, but the -2 penalty to all spell DCs, -2 to your rolls to bypass enemy Spell Resistance, and doubling the cooldown of your spells is too much of a penalty. If the double cooldown penalty was removed, then I can see it being a valid option.

2 Why not just choose an Epic Destiny that already gives full BAB?
- Why limit the choices of players in which Epic Destiny they should choose in this way? Epic Destinies are supposed to be another level of build customization, not another cookie cutter. If the Epic Destiny focuses in weapons at all, it should offer permanent full BAB at Tier 5.

3 Some heroic enhancement trees offer full BAB, just use one of those.
- The few heroic enhancement trees that do offer full BAB require a large investment. In some cases, a build would only benefit from the full BAB in these trees and everything else would be useless. Obtaining full BAB needs to be flexible and offering it to a level 30 toon through a weapon focused Epic Destiny would be a great way of doing that.