Epic Moments for Draconic Incarnation and Divine Crusader feel bad...

[Aselrik]

Dragonform: Epic Moment: (Cooldown 5 minutes) Activate this ability to take on the aspect of your Draconic Bloodline. For 30 seconds, you gain the following:
You become immune to the Elemental damage of your Draconic Bloodline.
You gain DR 100/- and your hit points begin to regenerate at a fast rate.
Your spells gain a 50% spell cost reduction.
Your spells have a chance to turn a non-boss enemy to gold permanently, adding them to your hoard, with no save.

30 seconds is not really that long in the scheme of things, especially since this serves 2 purposes: Defense and SP reduction. With SP, and Ruin, Greater Ruin and other high cost spells, you can save maybe a couple hundred SP, which... really don't matter. Most players have a ton of SP and a ton of SP restore trinkets and probably even pots. Except like this one time where I forgot pots AND accidently unequipped my SP item, AND it was the one long thing without a rest shrine (DOJ), I've never ever been concerned about SP.

For Defense, you have to be quick enough to hit it when you need it and also NEED it. On like the 2 occassions I have been quick enough, I've noticed a few things. Dr 100/- is not a whole lot at level 30. It's not DR 100/-, it's Dr 100/epic (according to combat log and character sheet), which makes it useless against a lot of enemies where you'd want an "Epic moment." Not sure how high the chance to turn a non-boss enemy to gold is, but if it's the same rate as other abilities... it's only going to proc occasionally. Not to mention... non-boss, how useful is that? Maybe if it works on red named... but then your odds of it working on that specific 1 red named... not great.

My proposed fixes would be one of several things: 1. Make it last much longer, like 1 minute. OR 2. Make it much better. Like, have it entirely block the next first hit, add like 20% barbarian style damage block, fix the DR to be unbypassable, one enemy (with dragonbreath) is guaranteed to turn to gold (in addition to chance on regular spells), that kind of thing. OR 3. Make it a "save you from death" effect. IE, it automatically activates when you're hit below 0, stops you from dying (from that one hit) and activates. Going this route, probably shorten it's timer like the other "save you from death" effects, which IIRC, tend to be like 2 to 3 minutes (Shadarkai PL/racial, the Divine one, etc.)

To be perfectly clear, I'm not saying all of the above, it's a laundry list of possibilities to help make it feel worthwhile.

Even though I have a good amount of Destiny points, I've started putting the points into other pretty meh nodes (like +1 to sorta useful skills) over taking yet another clicky that doesn't really impress.

Beckon Divinity: Epic Moment: Divine Power infuses you and your party members, granting them Divinity for 30 seconds. This blessing is so strong that any allies who are dead are raised from it to their Maximum Hit Points. Divinity: When you are struck by any type of damage, you are healed for 4d6 Positive Healing (this healing becomes Repair if you are a Warforged, or Negative if you are Undead). Furthermore, for the first 10 seconds, you are immune to all forms of Crowd Control. The Resurrection portion of this ability may only affect you once per rest.

So, I don't know how this ability is supposed to work, because I've never seen it do anything. I've tried it 3 or 4 times now, and nobody got resses. It says "party members" which implies unlimited range. However, maybe it's an AOE? Does it not work in raid groups, because a couple times it was a raid group, and a couple it was the party. Does it "missfire" and go on cooldown like casting a spell on an enemy that runs behind an object and is "blocked?" Whatever it is, nobody gets a ress, which is the entire point. I'm pretty sure it should have hit a few times, too, when using it on people within short range (like prayer/AoE buff range). Also, yes, I know about the "no-ress" debuff, it was cleared.

As for the 4d6 Positive healing... meh. Assuming best case scenario, (Lots of healing amp like 200, max roll, NOT on reaper)... we're talking 24*2.0 = 50 actual healing. When mobs are easily hitting you for 1k (since this is a level 30 capstone). If it was every attempted attack, I could see the small numbers (20 enemies, 19 miss, that's 1k healing while getting damaged for like 1k). But it's only after they hit you, so it's like a crappy form of post-hit DR, that gets heavily reduced by reaper.

Immunity to Crowd control? Also meh. It might be great for certain toons using unusual builds but since this is one of the "divine" trees, where divine classes get tons of immunities (especially with a few levels of paladin and a small dip into kotc), there's not a lot of CC to worry about (and you may even have immunities to those other ones from items, heroic enhancements, races, etc.)

Now compare both of these to just the 5 minute secondary buff of EIN.

Emptiness: +3% Dodge, +1% Dodge cap. You gain the effects of the Elusive Target feat, or if you already have it, it instead has double the chance to proc. Ki Cost: 50. Cooldown: 3 minutes.

AKA, +1 to 3% dodge defense, and +5% absolute avoidance defense, for 5 minutes, on a 3 minute cooldown.

And, again, that's just the secondary effect.

Anyways, the short of it is, these two abilities should be buffed (even more so than others) because they're labeled "Epic moments" and are totally forgettable and, as it stands, I think me, and most/all other experienced players will just not take them because they're a waste of points.

[Marshal_Lannes]

Another thing to bear in mind is the cost. Since you need to spend 30 points in the tree to reach the top tier and in Draconic you're going to be taking other things from the top tier that have consistent tangible benefits even choosing the epic moment for 2 points is prohibitive from a destiny point perspective. I took this once and never took it again. The solution seems obvious, doesn't it? This moment always should have been you turn into a dragon. Not only is that thematically amazing, but it also allows for some fairly simple bonuses. From a graphics perspective, we might not actually be able to morph into a dragon but I think it should be possible to create a large winged shadow over our character.

While in dragon form I'd ditch the SP reduction. As outlined SPs in 2022 aren't an issue for sorcerers. Instead put an enhancement on the dragon breath strike, perhaps doubling the double damage. Duration would need to synch up with the breath attack cooldown. Damage reduction per Barbarian would be more useful than 100/epic and finally, the golden horde thing has potential if fleshed out a bit more. Maybe this is something they plan to add to in the future?

[thegreatcthulhu]

Agreed on the whole Dragon Form thing. Also from my own memory and understanding of things, I've seen way better implementations of "Dragon Form" in table top D&D versus the dull point waste that we have in DDO. Overall the ED seems like it tries to be flexible at first but it turns into "oh sorry, you're not a caster, so you probably are in the wrong destiny buddy" after tier 2-3.

The Divine Crusader epic moment is just plain awful IMO. It seems like a very weak version of the Unyielding Sentinel epic moment plus a group res. And if you solo, well, the group res is useless IMO since hirelings are pretty much dead weight in level 32+ elite or reaper content. Otherwise, all it really does is it gives you uh... 30 seconds of not having to worry about healing yourself when fighting a boss? I never take it whenever I hit level 32.

Overall the epic moments on a lot of the EDs need more thought on SSG's behalf. They did well with ones like Action Hero, so I think they can come up with something better for Paladins, Clerics, people who want to feel like they are super Dragonborn, etc.

[JOTMON]

seems more like

[thegreatcthulhu]

seems more like

Come to think of it, several of the deity feats last way longer and seem more useful IMO than the bad epic moments we're talking about. For example, the Blood Is The Life lasts 2 minutes and 24 seconds at level 20 and gives you a decent defensive buff.

:-/


As far as the group res is concerned with Beckon Divinity, I have gotten it to work before with hirelings but that was back when Dread first came out. I haven't used it since then because of how awful it is, IMO, so it may be broken now for all I know.