U56 Preview 1 - Archetypes

[Hara]

Nice that you are adding a couple of Mass spells, but instead of adding these wouldn't it be simpler to add a new metamagic feat called MASS that could be applied to a number of spells without the need to add new spells.

Also I think someone already suggested this but Spellsinger should get a MASS effect for their Inspiration Song - I don't care if it costs the same number of songs as there are party members to perform it.

Bank changes are welcome, but as Mikardo pointed out I think this is a sticking plaster that doesn't address the issues of Mules and BTC items. If I recall correctly Strimtom mentioned that one of the games he plays has a "Magic Items Manual" which logs the items you have looted and allows you to check them out from a trader, removing the need for a bank to a certain degree.

FVS need nerfing, but this seems excessive, so too with the Tiefling.

None of these changes should be introduced before the end of the current HCL. Put the update on the other servers by all means but the Hardcore server should remain loaded with the current build.

[Caarb]

[*]The Winter Hunt buff from Nature's Warrior core 5 now grants +5 Cold Spell Crit Chance and +15% Cold Spell Crit Damage

Can you make sure wolves get some compensation for this nerf aimed at casters

[Infiltraitor]

[*]Base Attack Bonus is now capped at 25.

This is a massive Warpriest nerf and reduces PRR by 14.

Maybe your internal numbers are saying too many people are taking warpriest tier 5, but I doubt it. Warpriest needs a rework if this nerf goes through.

I am guessing that this is supposed to be an attack speed animation nerf, but it is also very harmful to defensive builds.

[nobodynobody1426]

This is a massive Warpriest nerf and reduces PRR by 14.

Maybe your internal numbers are saying too many people are taking warpriest tier 5, but I doubt it. Warpriest needs a rework if this nerf goes through.

I am guessing that this is supposed to be an attack speed animation nerf, but it is also very harmful to defensive builds.

But they are gonna buff Warpriest by adding more fire spellpower to it as a way to fix them nerfing Divine Discliple!

https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6533113

Step 1: Re-add Fire Spellcasting support by boosting Warpriest. Warpriest already has Fire Spellcasting stuff in its cores, and shifting Fire fully to that tree provides an interesting incentive to diversify your primary tree as a caster. This means that Warpriest gains the following:

Warpriest now gets +1 Caster Level/Max Caster Level with Fire/Force spells in cores 12 and 18. (Since previously in DD these 2 caster levels were in the t5 and core 20, these are slightly earlier in the leveling process)
Warpriest's +5 Light Spellpower per core becomes +5 Universal Spellpower per core

So now your melee / tank cleric can .... cast ... fire harder with their mace?

[ahpook]

[*]The camera has been adjusted such that mouse look will no longer occasionally turn your character 180 degrees and make you look up or down.

I was eager to test out the changes to the camera as I frequently encounter the sudden adjustments that causes a character to be running in the wrong direction. I haven't seen that problem happen with the changes but since it is a sporadic problem (usually for me related to opening and closing windows that take me out of mouse-look) I can not certify that it has been fixed. More significantly, the fix has introduced some inconsistency in turning where sometimes it is smooth and quick and other times it seems to hitch and not turn or turn slowly. At this time, I would say that this fix is not an improvement.

[Aelonwy]

I was eager to test out the changes to the camera as I frequently encounter the sudden adjustments that causes a character to be running in the wrong direction. I haven't seen that problem happen with the changes but since it is a sporadic problem (usually for me related to opening and closing windows that take me out of mouse-look) I can not certify that it has been fixed. More significantly, the fix has introduced some inconsistency in turning where sometimes it is smooth and quick and other times it seems to hitch and not turn or turn slowly. At this time, I would say that this fix is not an improvement.

Yes, I was having trouble with the camera refusing to turn on Lammania too or turning very jerkily.

[Kielbasa]

Can you make sure wolves get some compensation for this nerf aimed at casters

The fact that some casters were dumping 31 points into this tree is hilarious. The lv18 and 20 core for natures warrior are pants buff them to the moon for melee druids please. I usually would skip them on a melee druid so I could multiclass something actually useful. Ever since bears gained strike through there is very little incentive to even go wolf other than to swap forms between fights for snow slide. Anything more than 17 levels on a wolf druid is meh. I know people that would also argue anything more than 8 levels of druid for a wolf is too many.

[Blastyswa]

~~I made a comment along these lines on reddit that someone recommended I put as feedback here, so I am doing so with some tweaks.~~

I theoretically like a lot of the decisions that have been made surrounding archetypes- making them alternatives to the main PL like elf and wood elf, solving the issue of not enough design space for other classes going forwards, and attempting to enable different playstyles all being some of them.

With that said, very disappointed in a lot of the nerfs accompanying the archetypes- DD was a very simple tree with mediocre cores before that needed some love, and instead SSG found the most creative imaginable way to gut it with whatever the heck is going on with those cores- and it doesn't seem like a polish issue, it seems like a fundamental bad decision like the builder stuff in the first attempt to change EDs, not very interesting, confusing to new players (and veterans), and not very good.

Not to mention a lot of the designs SSG is going for just feels like there's a massive disconnect between the developers and how the game actually plays. Like theoretically a negative nuke cleric is cool, but their big single target nuke option (Harm) does 150 average damage compared to Thunderstroke or Iceberg doing over 600. Inflict Critical Wounds Mass with the negative damage buffs does 270 negative damage which is actually better than a same level corollary such as Firestorm, which does just over 200. However, the targetting and area of effect of ICW:M feels way worse, and there is the ever present issue of undead, constructs, and deathwarded enemies meaning that you can't go full negative damage on cleric in the same way you can go full elemental on a sorcerer or a druid, or full light when light is hardly ever immunized against. Creativity can be used here, it doesn't have to be an immunity bypass- at the very least "Your negative spells does not heal foes" is a start, or "Immunity is counted as 50% resistance" would work, or any other variation along those lines. Just something so that a negative cleric doesn't have a terrible time in half the content and a great time in the other half.

This disconnect between what works in the game and what the trees add seems to be the case on all 3 archetypes to me, and the revamped DD. Apostate's Incorp and Concealment being completely useless in like r5+ (From what I've read this is perhaps meant to stack with normal incorp and concealment: so cool, it's very powerful outside of reaper and has zero benefit in high reaper, which still sucks), Bane and Doom being treated like actual spells when they have basically zero impact, the tree not having competence threat ranges or any other focus on physical damage despite wanting you to thwack stuff based on Apostate's Curse, the general low scaling on everything. Many of these issues could be easily adjusted- incorp and concealment should never have been reduced by 5% or whatever the formula is per skull, it always should have been something more like "You lose 10% of your incorp/conceal amount per level", but implemented so that 50% off your 50% incorp leaves you at 25%, not 0%. Bane could be set to scale like bless, and doom could have something done to make it more viable. Apostate could easily gain melee power, doublestrike, and/or crit profile to make it more viable. And maybe these things or other creative solutions will be added and the trees will end up decent, but it just still seems so odd that these things weren't particularly considered/handled earlier on in the design process.

And Stormsinger actually seems like a reasonably cool and interesting tree, until you realize you can't get bypass in any way so you'll be useless against many enemies. Like there's a reason most other MMOs don't combine hyperspecialization into a single damage type with many enemies having absorption/immunity to damage types, it just isn't fun to be useless a decent amount of the time. And sure you have sonic damage spells which can damage most beings, but in that case there isn't much purpose in going into the cold/electric stuff to begin with, not to mention if lightning strike isn't toggleable absorption enemies become a pain.

And while I actually like Sacred Fist as a tree well enough if the numbers were brought up across the board, introducing a third method of utilizing handwraps (Monk, Razorclaw, Now This) when handwraps are already so bad on Monk and Razorclaw just seems silly, and a bit of a slap in the face to handwraps users who've been hoping for things like GMoF working better with weapons than unarmed to be fixed. The "swords to plowshares" crit profile improvement is an attempt, but it completely disregards monks issue of trying to fit in too many feats with too little feat support.

It just feels like someone created these trees based on reading the wiki and not seeing for themselves what works and what doesn't.

And finally, it really feels like the replacing trees thing was a concept that they came up with when designing Apostate as the first tree, and then they tried to just shoehorn in to the other trees. Like Radiant Servant -> Undead Shadow Person makes sense, but swapping KotC for Sacred Fist just doesn't feel like it makes much sense, especially with the added shoehorn of radiant servant replacing vanguard- I would have much preferred to just see vanguard get replaced by Sacred Fist. And I think the worst offender is Stormsinger, where you can very clearly see that they had a "swap-in" idea that worked great for apostate, and then they kinda squeezed it until it fit for Sacred Fist, and by the time they got to bard they're like" eh whatever, just take out a random tree". Just really not seeing any reason for Swashbuckler to get dropped for Stormsinger for this archetype.

And with the poor fits being done already on the three trees they've presumably had the most time and effort to put into designing, I'm really not looking forward to when they attempt more of these in the future and are trying to find a way to shoehorn a ranger into being a caster, or a fighter into being a healer, or a sorcerer into being a tank, and just swapping out random pieces and reusing enhancement trees.

I think it's a cool idea, but unless they're planning to add some method of damage bypass, rework negative damage spells, give handwraps and unarmed some more general love, and tweak numbers upwards across the board on these, I would personally prefer to see them shelf the archetype system until they can deliver a more coherent vision. As it is I'm guessing they'll push out a few archetype trees and then the system will get dropped or at least deprioritized.

[Joldahks]

Disable Full Character Effect Overlays: (default False) while true, full character effect overlays on your character will be disabled. Affected visuals:
Stoneskin
Barkskin
Goldskin
Fire Shield (Cold)
Fire Shield (Hot)

This is awesome! Can we please add Tenser's/Knight's Transformation to this list?

[Havocthedemon]

Could we find a middle way here rather then totally destroy the healing hands ?


Give 5 uses toally and a 5 mins recharge time ?

The nerf to this is so bad. How are melee classes with no heals going to cope with this? This helped mitigate a blatant flaw in rogue/fighter/monk/ranger in heroic leveling. As more and more content is literally just tougher mobs with champs and reapers that ignore AC/Dodge/PRR/Fort how does this make sense to take away such a key mid battle heal clicky? Why do the devs hate melee so much? They are the only classes that care about this all the casters have real heal spells. Da fuq are your brains at

[dogsoldier]

The healing hands nerf does seem pretty heavy handed. Leave the extra charges in the cores, and move recharging to the top tier, locking it behind 15 AP spent would put it in line with powerful abilities in other racial trees, like Tabaxi evasion.

[Seph1roth5]

All the nerfs should really have been halved instead of the giant hammer. Then see how it works.

[Rathdranalon]

Looking forward to all these changes, especially excited to make a shifter sacred fist and try to rage on a centered character.

Jokes aside I think the nerfs on FVS may be a bit to much but time will tell, I hope that the devs will listen to feedback after the changes from players if it has been nerfed to hard and perhaps buff them afterwards.

Either way I am looking forward to the changes.

[Shagarot]

I love idea of archetypes, even if those three aren't really my jam. Although as paladin main I am really dissapointed that we start with this monk instead of something like a blackguard.

[badm0f0]

Looking forward to all these changes, especially excited to make a shifter sacred fist and try to rage on a centered character.

Jokes aside I think the nerfs on FVS may be a bit to much but time will tell, I hope that the devs will listen to feedback after the changes from players if it has been nerfed to hard and perhaps buff them afterwards.

Either way I am looking forward to the changes.

They never rebuff after using the chainsaw ,they just gut it then leave it for whatever reason .. Its happened too many times to have hope ..They dont care if your unhappy with the nerfs just look when they did the major nerf to all toons last year and how many people didnt come back ..

[ChristopHilljr]

So my character is losing 7 base attack bonus and 14 prr. Is there a plan to make up for this like monsters losing some of their AC and maybe more base PRR with armor. Am I just SOL? Just wondering. This isn't a big melee nerf but still feels like one.

[Loromir]

These Archetypes are free!

Key word "These"....does that mean future Archetypes won't be free?

[ShifterThePirate]

Key word "These"....does that mean future Archetypes won't be free?

Of course they won't be free.. they have to sell things just like Classes and Enhancement trees. Probably added to new (mini) Expansion packs on DDO Market also. I'm already surprised these are free.

[Epzilon123]

While the archetypes look cool (I'm very worried about Sacred Fist not being amazing, especially since it's replacing KOTC, a good tree overall, and not benefiting from PDK as hard as regular paladins do.), I think the nerfs were a bit heavy-handed. The wolf howl is pretty dumb in retrospect and was never really intended to be used out of wolf form, but you're kinda not compensating wolves for losing something from cold druid abuse.

Although the real loser is FVS. I feel like you should start with lowering the MCL bonus from +2 to +1 on the cores while maintaining everything else. Or, you could just put those bonuses on the 2nd, 4th, and 6th cores only. I doubt if the nerf is too heavy-handed, you'll go back and quickly rectify it, so it'd be better for the class to be okay for a while instead of potentially just crushed. Mind you, they still have the best base saves in the game (same as monk) and 300 bonus hp as well as free Wings. This feels like a hardcore change that doesn't make as much sense on softcore.

Never played a tiefling, but those nerfs make the race a hard sell. Also, not quite sure about the aasimar. It's been an incredibly strong race, especially for martial, for a long time. However, I think a lot of that comes from the disparity in how good some racial trees are compared to others. I think many races, such as Drow, could use a tune-up. Regenerating Healing hands is a hard-to-balance mechanism, though, you could have considered just increasing the regen time a bit at first before removing it entirely.

Lastly, I don't think the reaper fragment changes go far enough. It does feel like a "make it a bit easier overall but remove the cheese" fix. Maybe something like 65/60 would make it a more realistic long-term goal, as it could take months to craft a single item, especially if you're picky and want a mythic +1/3 to craft on. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with a long-term grind, but when you don't expect a gear set to even last two years as BiS if we're going to be getting level increases fairly often compared to before. P.S: Rework the bonuses on goggles because the disparity between them and other named bonuses is weird. Also, it's weird weapons/orbs don't have named reaper bonuses.

[dgtgtd]

Could we find a middle way here rather then totally destroy the healing hands ?


Give 5 uses toally and a 5 mins recharge time ?

Their change guts that so hard. Makes me real sad I didn't do my Aasimar lives already.