Update 56 Preview 1: Stormsinger Archetype

[Lynnabel]

Howdy all! Please be sure to check out both the Producer's Letter and the Archetype Overview page before diving in here

Changes from Base Class

Spellbook:
Spell Level 1:
Added: Shocking Grasp
Removed: n/a

Spell Level 2:
Added: Electric Loop
Removed: n/a

Spell Level 3:
Added: Lightning Bolt
Removed: n/a

Spell Level 4:
Added: Ball Lightning
Removed: n/a

Spell Level 5:
Added: Chain Lightning
Removed: n/a

Spell Level 6:
Added: Thunderstroke
Removed: n/a

Past Life
Stormsinger: +5 Lightning and Sonic Spellpower per stack

New Tree: Stormsinger
Replaces Swashbuckler

Themes: Lightning and sonic damage, thunder, offensive spellcasting

Summary: Harness the thunderstorms to bring elemental destruction to your enemies.

Core Abilities

Core 1: Stormsinger: You gain +5 Lightning, +5 Cold, and +5 Sonic Spellpower per core ability you take in this tree.

Core 3: Lightning Strike: Your Sonic and Cold spells have a 20% chance to cause a massive Lightning Strike whenever they hit an enemy. This lightning strike deals an extra 1d6 Electric damage per caster level.

Core 6: Enhanced Bolt I: Your Lightning Strike damage is upgraded to deal 1d6+2 Electric damage per caster level.

Core 12: Enhanced Bolt I: Your Lightning Strike is upgraded to add 1d3 stacks of Vulnerability when it goes off. The damage is upgraded to 1d6+4.

Core 18: Enhanced Bolt II: Whenever your Lightning Strike goes off, the enemy is Stunned with no save for 3 seconds. +1 Caster Level and Max Caster Level with Sonic + Cold + Electric spells.

Core 20: Master of Storms: +4 Cha, +1 Evocation DCs. Your Lightning Strike now deals 1d6+6 damage per caster level. The stun is upgraded to 5 seconds. +1 Caster Level and Max Caster Level with Sonic + Cold + Electric spells.

Tier 1:

• Multiselector: Sonic Blast or Niac's Cold Ray
• Musical Refrain: +1/2/3 Bard Songs
• Spell Critical: Electric and Cold 2%
• Electrocution: Whenever you cast an Electric or Sonic damage spell, you gain +5 to your Electric and Sonic Spell Power for 6 seconds. This stacks up to 1/3/5 times.
• Electric Reflexes: +1/2/3% Dodge

Tier 2:

• Multiselector: Reverberate or Niac's Biting Cold
• Metamagic Reduction: Maximize or Empower
• Spell Critical: Electric and Cold 2%
• Pierce Resistance: You bypass 5/10/15 points of Electric and Sonic Resistance.
• Fast Movement: You run 1% faster for each of your Bard levels.

Tier 3:

• Multiselector: Shout or Snowball Swarm
• Metamagic Reduction: Maximize or Empower
• Spell Critical: Electric and Cold 2%
• Stormcaller's Aria: Your Inspire Courage grants nearby allies +2/4/6 more Universal Spellpower and MRR.
• +1 Charisma

Tier 4:

• Inspire the Storm: Your Bardic Inspiration imbues allies with a chance to deal your Lightning Strike on melee and ranged attacks.
• Ride the Lightning: Your main hand weapon is now considered an Implement. When you sing your Soothing Song, it blasts all nearby enemies for your Lightning Strike.
• Spell Critical: Electric and Cold 2%
• (this space intentionally left blank)
• +1 Charisma

Tier 5:

• Horn of Thunder SLA
• (this space intentionally left blank)
• Spell Critical: Electric and Cold 2%
• Stormcaller: +5/10/15 Electric, Cold, and Sonic Spellpower. Rank 3: You get Iceberg as a spell at level 6.
• Storm Studies: +1 Evocation DCs

Spellsinger Notes:

You may notice that this tree shares a few SLAs with Spellsinger - to help we've added multiselectors to Sonic Blast and Shout (Cure Light Wounds and Cure Light Wounds, Mass). You can't take Sonic Blast and Sonic Blast at the same time, same with the other shared SLAs. Also, we buffed Reverberate a bit!

[Loromir]

Please tell me you are not removing Swashbuckler? It's one of my favorite trees.

[Lynnabel]

Please tell me you are not removing Swashbuckler? It's one of my favorite trees.

You should take a look at the Archetype overview page! This is a new way to play bard - basic bard is not changing :)

[Epicsoul]

Please tell me you are not removing Swashbuckler? It's one of my favorite trees.

Reading is fundamental.

[gorocz]

So... this is really instead of Swashbuckler and not Spellsinger? Can you then take the same SLAs from both Stormsinger and Spellsinger, like the Sonic Blast or Shout SLA? If so, do they share cooldowns? What if they are at different ranks and thus have different length cooldowns?

[Lynnabel]

So... this is really instead of Swashbuckler and not Spellsinger? Can you then take the same SLAs from both Stormsinger and Spellsinger, like the Sonic Blast or Shout SLA? If so, do they share cooldowns? What if they are at different ranks and thus have different length cooldowns?

Check out the last little bit for this:

Spellsinger Notes:

You may notice that this tree shares a few SLAs with Spellsinger - to help we've added multiselectors to Sonic Blast and Shout (Cure Light Wounds and Cure Light Wounds, Mass). You can't take Sonic Blast and Sonic Blast at the same time, same with the other shared SLAs. Also, we buffed Reverberate a bit!

[gorocz]

Check out the last little bit for this:

Ah I see, sorry, was reading too quickly. It does look like taking SLAs from both the trees will be very strong, if you're into the whole metamagic SLAs thing :-)

(As in, taking Sonic ones from one tree and Cold from the other)

[Yamani]

Past Life
Stormsinger: +5 Lightning and Sonic Spellpower per stack

New Tree: Stormsinger
Replaces Swashbuckler

Themes: Lightning and sonic damage, thunder, offensive spellcasting

Summary: Harness the thunderstorms to bring elemental destruction to your enemies.

But all the multiselector spells are Sonic/Cold...

Should at least mention the cold in theme.

[neain2008]

Please tell me that the cold is a typo. There are no Bard spells that deal with cold (unless that's another thing that's getting added to the archtype but isn't stated yet), so the ONLY things that cold will help are those few SLAs (niacs cold ray, niacs biting cold, and snowball swarm) which other than the cold ray arent the best cold spells.

If the cold is instead a typo and supposed to be sonic, that now makes a lot more sense.

I can see the cold being thematic for the name of the archetype (Stormsinger), but it doesn't really make any sense for Bard as it currently exists.

[Zeklijan]

I see this new archetyp e tree being held back by two things:

-The inconsistency of which element you should be prioritizing. It uses all of cold/lightning/sonic without a clear choice of any of the 3 which should be a priority. At least, this is how it feels like. (Compare to druid, who gets many elements through seasons but a clear priority through their elemental form. It is clear a water form druid should prioritize Ice.)

-No way to remove damage immunities. This is a big problem any nuker runs into regularly, and this is by far the biggest limitation here. There was tiefling to help FvS with fire, there is nothing for ice/lightning/sonic.

While it looks really interesting, I don't see myself playing it outside of past lives for the above two reasons. With those changed however... consider me far more interested

[Tanky]

What are the spell levels for the Stormsinger and Spellsinger SLAs?

Reverberate
Niac's Biting Cold
Sonic Blast
Snowball Swarm
Shout
Mass Cure Light Wounds
Horn of Thunder

It matters for targets like the purple titan in Master Artificer, liches, etc.

Please consider adding that information to the tooltip.

[Zenthalas]

Please tell me that the cold is a typo. There are no Bard spells that deal with cold (unless that's another thing that's getting added to the archtype but isn't stated yet), so the ONLY things that cold will help are those few SLAs (niacs cold ray, niacs biting cold, and snowball swarm) which other than the cold ray arent the best cold spells.

If the cold is instead a typo and supposed to be sonic, that now makes a lot more sense.

I can see the cold being thematic for the name of the archetype (Stormsinger), but it doesn't really make any sense for Bard as it currently exists.

Maybe look at the warchanter tree a little closer

[KrazyKaster]

Tier 4:

• Inspire the Storm: Your Bardic Inspiration imbues allies with a chance to deal your Lightning Strike on melee and ranged attacks.
• Ride the Lightning: Your main hand weapon is now considered an Implement. When you sing your Soothing Song, it blasts all nearby enemies for your Lightning Strike.
• Spell Critical: Electric and Cold 2%
• (this space intentionally left blank)
• +1 Charisma

Tier 5:

• Horn of Thunder SLA
• (this space intentionally left blank)
  
• Spell Critical: Electric and Cold 2%
• Stormcaller: +5/10/15 Electric, Cold, and Sonic Spellpower. Rank 3: You get Iceberg as a spell at level 6.
  
• Storm Studies: +1 Evocation DCs

Hi Lich! Super excited to test this archetype out - here is my feedback to put more power into the Stormsinger T5 since I think most people would be hard pressed to drop Spellsinger T5 in its current state. I suggest swapping the tier 4 enhancements (light blue) with the tier 5 enhancements (light pink). Let me know what you think!

[droid327]

- Why does this replace Swash and not Warchanter? Because of the cold synergy? Because it'd be too much overlap with SWF Arti? I'd think Swash+Storm/SS would be a fun build to play...but I dont see WC+Storm being as synergistic, even though its Cold based on both. That might be more about WC needing to be more than just a "support" tree, though.

- I'd be worried about cheese with 18 StS/2 Fey or Carceri Lock and using Chain Shape to proc Lightning Strike

- I applaud the attempt to add more Cold casters to the game...I just dont see where this is it. Why would you gear for Cold when you have just 1 single Epic-relevant Cold spell? Sonic + Elec actually has spell support, and far more synergy in destinies, Dragonborn racials, Horn of Thunder, etc. Casters dont multiclass so this Archetype has to be more self-complete for Cold casting if that's a role you want it to fill. I think it needs at least Otilukes+Polar Ray, if not something more exotic like Ice Flowers or Tsunami.

Plus, taking the Cold SLAs means you're taking the Sonic ones in Spellsinger, instead of the Cure ones that are far better - Cure Light Mass SLA especially is going to scale really well since it ends up about the same place as Cure Serious.

[neain2008]

Maybe look at the warchanter tree a little closer

Good point that I forgot about Warchanter as I don't put many/any points into it for my casters. *Checks the wiki*

However, Warchanter does not add any cold spells, and only adds a tiny amount of on-weapon hit cold damage that doesn't scale with anything (or at least doesn't state that it does on the wiki), and a capstone ability that does a 20d20 cold damage, but as far as I know is mainly a cc ability.

[Krelar]

Maybe look at the warchanter tree a little closer

There are only two abilities that deal cold damage in the warchanter tree, and neither of them are effected by spellpower. (there are also two that "freeze" enemies but don't actually do cold damage.)

[voxson5]

Please add an electric immunity bypass mechanic to t5 or 4th core.

[QuantumFX]

If you try to take the Spellsinger Horn of Thunder enhancement, it locks out tiers 2 and 3.

[Khimberlhyte]

If you try to take the Spellsinger Horn of Thunder enhancement, it locks out tiers 2 and 3.

Horn of Thunder in Stormsinger isn't working either. I can select the first level of Horn, but the second and third are locked out, as is the rest of Stormsinger tier 5.

[Ghustor]

-No way to remove damage immunities. This is a big problem any nuker runs into regularly, and this is by far the biggest limitation here. There was tiefling to help FvS with fire, there is nothing for ice/lightning/sonic.

+1

And only Tifling mechanic is a poor choice, all casters should have they our mechanic to rip out immunities or Sorc/Alch/Druid will still stand on top tier casters far way