Update 56 Preview 1: Dark Apostate Archetype

[rabidfox]

Given all the melee based aspect of Apostate's Curse line, should give them unholy sword (unholy version of holy sword spell) as a spell or SLA for crit profile.

[SWCarter]

Could clerics get some Melee Power in one of the trees? Lock it behind a capstone, a T5, or a situational boost (with a short cooldown) if necessary - even a +5 Melee Power somewhere would be nice.

[hit_fido]

Modifying an existing enhancement line so that it works nothing like anything else in the game is not a good way to go.

Please consider leaving DD alone and creating another line.. or even 2 separate lines (Ala Sorc Savants)

Divine Disciple was already pretty solid conceptually. Pick light or dark, then nuke accordingly. These are the clerics that can wield the holy or unholy spiritual energies of the gods to the maximum.

If I were going to criticize the DD tree as is, it's only that the nod to fire in the tier 2 spellpower selector, the tier 5 divine empowerment, and the tier 5 light path flamestrike seemed out of place. You can already choose (for any cleric) to go fire domain and mix in a focus on fire. Of course fire gets associated with divine casting in epic destinies so it's not that big of a deal but if you wanted to make Divine Disciple's light side more thematically tight then you'd adjust those enhancements to drop the fire aspect and change the tier 5 sla. This would have the added benefit of making the dark path also more thematically tight, since fire to me has even less of a connection to the dark side. So make those changes and now DD is strictly a light/negative dichotomy for offensive spell casting which seems like what it was envisioned to be.

What do you replace the light side tier 5 sla with? Really Divine Punishment probably makes the most sense as Flamestrike was also a level 5 spell; Divine Punishment is not very exciting or valuable to me but I would agree that it was a rational replacement since the spell level is the same and it's a light based spell. Divine Wrath would be a pretty powerful light based replacement but how can you justify putting a level 9 spell in as an SLA. Holy Aura could be a reasonable choice - it's a level 8 spell but its offensive effect is not directly damaging. Blinding enemies also fits thematically with a light-dedicated caster.

What's proposed in the new iteration is Heal/Harm and that'd be ok with me as far as not being unbalanced one way or the other but it would be tighter thematically with something like Holy Aura or Divine Punishment for light and Inflict Moderate Wounds, Mass or Negative Energy Burst for dark.

But I also like that idea of a tier 5 option to make certain smite style spells have full effect ignoring alignment. That seems like a similar style of enhancement as other trees that can ignore certain elemental immunities. So you could just drop the tier 5 offensive sla and let this new tier 5 idea enhance the effectiveness of the tier 4 sla for light and dark and that'd be pretty reasonable to me as well.

[SpardaX]

Has anyone tried combining Inquisitive (taking Divine Inquisition) with Dark Apostate to stack both Law dice and Evil dice on the X-Bow? Seems like another fun way of getting cleric PLs.

I mocked up a quick 13 Alchemist / 5 DA Cleric / 2 Artificer on Lam, and picked up a blank Xbow and went hunting. It did some damage by my standards. Poison, Evil, and Law. I'll be looking into it further when it's released, that's for sure.

[Kza]

As a melee focused cleric i miss one thing badly. in Warpriest tree and or dark apostate tree. That is running speed.

To be the slowest guy in the group is not good as a melee. You dont have so fun and cant grab aggro/hit things.

Plz consider some movementspeed buff somewhere!

[SWCarter]

As I mentioned earlier, revisiting previous itemization is an important facet. Another example is the Sacred Helm/Sacred Band set from the Red Fens - these are one of only two sources for an artifact bonus to Alignment crit chance/spellpower. But the Legendary Sacred Helm has Lifesealed on it AND Negative Energy Absorption, both of which are major hindrances to the new Dark Apostate archetype. Ideally, these former items would be updated to be beneficial to the new archetypes so that we don't have to wait for net-new items to debut to fill itemization gaps.

[Merrillman]

I hope this finds the Devs with an open mind.

The Dark Apostate needs some work. First, you have done something great and given us what we have wanted for years for a dark path cleric. An undead form.

Yet... you took away all of the dark cleric path and made it so you have to STILL complement the cleric with LIGHT in RS tree vs dark? Dark clerics do not want light.

This makes zero sense conceptually.

You also took away all the things we loved about a dark cleric. Neg burst, bolt, blast, power word stun.

There is also no complementary element like a storm singer has, for instance.

“Necrotic Lightning” would be a great idea. Dark fire — a wall of Blue or Violet Rimefire (visually) that deals Fire/necrotic or cold/necrotic. At least one or two SLAs or spells like that in the spell book that deals BOTH negative and Lightning, etc... could be very flavorful.personally I like the Lightning. Reminds me of emperor palpatine. Hey... how about a clone? LOL!

This would also give a small way to alleviate the immunity that literally HALF the game has to necrotic. It’s a giant downside to these builds. At least PM has EK as a perfect complement.

If not? I’d say you would then really have to add some level of immunity strip to make this more viable.

The shadow visual is a thing of beauty, but void power & lore is also lacking on this tree.

It is a great, great concept. But if you want it to work and actually be more than a tiny niche concept, you have to take a bunch of what made the dark path great and add a “good” amount of that to the new enhancement tree.

The dark path SLA’s could be a toggle vs inflict. Also why not make something like “mass poison” or “mass contagion?” Mass Enfeeblement! There are many possibilities. How about an implosion version that works off of Negative DC?

These would be good additions and really no different than mass holds or instakills or disco balls as far as slowing a mob. This tree is rife with possibility.

Hope you will consider some of this.

[SpardaX]

As a melee focused cleric i miss one thing badly. in Warpriest tree and or dark apostate tree. That is running speed.

To be the slowest guy in the group is not good as a melee. You dont have so fun and cant grab aggro/hit things.

Plz consider some movementspeed buff somewhere!

I think the Haste spell is in warpriest somewhere?

[SpardaX]

As I mentioned earlier, revisiting previous itemization is an important facet. Another example is the Sacred Helm/Sacred Band set from the Red Fens - these are one of only two sources for an artifact bonus to Alignment crit chance/spellpower. But the Legendary Sacred Helm has Lifesealed on it AND Negative Energy Absorption, both of which are major hindrances to the new Dark Apostate archetype. Ideally, these former items would be updated to be beneficial to the new archetypes so that we don't have to wait for net-new items to debut to fill itemization gaps.

Or they could just....stop having negative energy lowering things....affect you if negative energy is beneficial to you?

The fact that those items lower you're healing if you're undead in the first place feels like a kick in the teeth.

[J-mann]

I think the Haste spell is in warpriest somewhere?

Haste is covered by any move speed item. He's talking the class based move speed boosts like tas runs speed, or the heavy armor boost that fighter/pallies get. Regardless warpriest/soul is the weakest melee tree in the game and has been since its release and the devs were told so but we were ignored. Right now it's only ever really used to get divine might. There are a lot of problems with the tree:

Righteous weapons: most favored weapons are trash tier weapons.

Cores: nothing to help a melee outside the pittance of ac. Move the sp to dd and add something for melee. Being a hybrid doesn't work in ddo.

Sanctuary: 20 prr on a minute cd is lol. Up it significantly so I actually notice the difference.

Blur: utterly outdated especially with devs removing its effect in reaper.

Haste: way, way, way, way too late in the cores and not that useful. Least you have your threat range here too.

Implacable foe, raid wide damage buff that won't get seen since wp sucks so bad. And divine vessel is just terribad even at 20 stacks.

Inflame: the cd is ridiculous for what the ability provides. Bard provides way better with 100% uptime. Remove the cd and make it activat3 on a turn to take advantage of the turns boost in domains.

Radiant flourish: this should not ba a chance to blind, just make it blind. Also agree with another poster just add it to sites.

Ameliorating strike: up its dice. 1d3 at 20 is 80hp on a 12 second cd. Barbs heal faster even if you have 600 sp.

Divine power: agreed with other poster, make it the same as soul to allow other than war domain.

Divine vessel: the ability is just trash. At one point the devs said they were going to allow multiple stacks to build on this then backed off. Now it's impractical to even get a charge since the stacks drop off way, way too fast and take way, way too long to build for an ability that both looks and is drastically underpowered for the constraints.

Wrathful weapons: light damage shouldn't require a vorp and should be spread through the chain.

Divine bastion: ok except for the threat.

[Tempesth05]

Yeah I dont want to see Evil alignments, that's a whole can of worms...but I think "cannot be Good" is fine for this in principle

That being said...it would be nice to run 17 DA/3 Pal or something as a "death knight" type build, which would require LG right now, but maybe we'll see Blackguard as a bona fide Paladin archetype in a future patch

I think a Death Knight build would still be possible by putting points in Warpriest, and/or putting a few levels in Fighter, Barb, or Ranger (Tempest).

[nobodynobody1426]

Haste is covered by any move speed item. He's talking the class based move speed boosts like tas runs speed, or the heavy armor boost that fighter/pallies get. Regardless warpriest/soul is the weakest melee tree in the game and has been since its release and the devs were told so but we were ignored. Right now it's only ever really used to get divine might. There are a lot of problems with the tree:

Righteous weapons: most favored weapons are trash tier weapons.

Cores: nothing to help a melee outside the pittance of ac. Move the sp to dd and add something for melee. Being a hybrid doesn't work in ddo.

Sanctuary: 20 prr on a minute cd is lol. Up it significantly so I actually notice the difference.

Blur: utterly outdated especially with devs removing its effect in reaper.

Haste: way, way, way, way too late in the cores and not that useful. Least you have your threat range here too.

Implacable foe, raid wide damage buff that won't get seen since wp sucks so bad. And divine vessel is just terribad even at 20 stacks.

Inflame: the cd is ridiculous for what the ability provides. Bard provides way better with 100% uptime. Remove the cd and make it activat3 on a turn to take advantage of the turns boost in domains.

Radiant flourish: this should not ba a chance to blind, just make it blind. Also agree with another poster just add it to sites.

Ameliorating strike: up its dice. 1d3 at 20 is 80hp on a 12 second cd. Barbs heal faster even if you have 600 sp.

Divine power: agreed with other poster, make it the same as soul to allow other than war domain.

Divine vessel: the ability is just trash. At one point the devs said they were going to allow multiple stacks to build on this then backed off. Now it's impractical to even get a charge since the stacks drop off way, way too fast and take way, way too long to build for an ability that both looks and is drastically underpowered for the constraints.

Wrathful weapons: light damage shouldn't require a vorp and should be spread through the chain.

Divine bastion: ok except for the threat.

Ameliorating strike is actually a good ability as it keeps scaling past heroics at 2 base HP per character level, multiplied by Positive Spell Power then multiplied by HAMP, and effects the entire party. At 20 with 600 PSP you would have a 280 base HP cure, if melee have 100 HAMP (not hard at 20) they get healed for 560HP. At 30 and 750 PSP we're looking at 510 base, if the melee have 125 HAMP (again not hard) then they receive 1147 HP.

The only thing Smite Foe is missing is a +Crit Multi/Range added to it. This ability is more of a party support ability and not a self heal ability, Clerics have a quickened Heal spell for that.

[nobodynobody1426]

This is much more attractive and supports a bit more variety. The amount of Universal per point is lower than before, but still not bad. I would still urge for 1% Universal to be an option in the crit line, but I do at least like to see that Force is included.

Can you explain what "requires you to have both Light Core 1 and Dark Core 1 to select" means? This part kind of lost me.

Also, I meant to mention before, the spell penetration is a nice touch. Getting decent spell pen on a cleric is difficult.

It means to get the most useful parts of the three you need to sacrifice access to the capstone, sucks but is way better then the initial plan of deleting all domains other then Sun / Death, cause theme.

Here are how the cores are laid out

C1: Light 1 (1) / Dark 6 (20)
C2: Light 2 (3) / Dark 5 (18)
C3: Light 3 (6) / Dark 4 (12)
C4: Light 4 (12) / Dark 3 (6)
C5: Light 5 (18) / Dark 2 (3)
C6: Light 6 (20) / Dark 1 (1)

Yes I believe mind altering substances were involved with this design. To get access to the "balanced" path you need to take both Light 1 and Dark 1, which locks you out of Dark 6 and Light 6. So no +4 to stat / +1 to DC's and +5 USP, it's likely a step down for DC caster cleric and about even or slight step up for elemental cleric due to the crits going from +1 universal to +2 elemental, but light spells suffer. Thankfully both WoB and the CL/MCL is inside the T5, though I'm not sure which spell type WoB is classified as for +CL/MCL.

Basically anyone who's using DD right now is going DD right now is going to have to rebuild their character after this, you are forced to choose one of Light/Alignment OR Negative OR Elemental. Where as before we had Light and (kinda) Elemental OR Negative and (kinda) Elemental.

Honestly ... unless someone is really tied to Cleric, just go play Favored Soul or Druid, they don't have someone forcing theme down their throats. FvS AoV doesn't have to choose to only support some of its' spells and Druids can just change stances. Honestly DD cores should of been based on a Light/Dark/Elemental stance but theme overrides functionality.

[karatemack]

Ameliorating strike is actually a good ability as it keeps scaling past heroics at 2 base HP per character level, multiplied by Positive Spell Power then multiplied by HAMP, and effects the entire party. At 20 with 600 PSP you would have a 280 base HP cure, if melee have 100 HAMP (not hard at 20) they get healed for 560HP. At 30 and 750 PSP we're looking at 510 base, if the melee have 125 HAMP (again not hard) then they receive 1147 HP.

The only thing Smite Foe is missing is a +Crit Multi/Range added to it. This ability is more of a party support ability and not a self heal ability, Clerics have a quickened Heal spell for that.

It doesn't scale well into mid-high skull reaper. If you hang out in R1 and below- it is great- I agree. The CD prevents it from being a replacement for steady healing, but if we had additional ways on WP to heal with attacks, then the CD wouldn't be as much of an issue. It would be nice if the healing would scale higher as well. You're already 2nd-3rd tier DPS on a melee cleric- taking breaks to cast full healing spells only puts your DPS further behind. Essentially you become a bad melee and a bad healer.

[nobodynobody1426]

It doesn't scale well into mid-high skull reaper. If you hang out in R1 and below- it is great- I agree. The CD prevents it from being a replacement for steady healing, but if we had additional ways on WP to heal with attacks, then the CD wouldn't be as much of an issue. It would be nice if the healing would scale higher as well. You're already 2nd-3rd tier DPS on a melee cleric- taking breaks to cast full healing spells only puts your DPS further behind. Essentially you become a bad melee and a bad healer.

Umm nothing "scales well" into higher reapers where there is a 20~36% penalty to all healing. "High reaper" and functionally a different game then the rest of DDO and should never be used as a reason for any sort of design work.

[karatemack]

Umm nothing "scales well" into higher reapers where there is a 20~36% penalty to all healing. "High reaper" and functionally a different game then the rest of DDO and should never be used as a reason for any sort of design work.

I agree with you on not designing specifically for reaper (even though that ship sailed many years ago). That said, uncapped cure spells that RS provides absolutely scale very nicely into high skull reaper. Other healing classes have effective healing in high-skull reaper as well (Druid, Bard, etc.) If you prefer, you can leave reaper out of it and simply compare your melee damage vs other melees and healing abilities vs other healing builds available. Since you're not able to make a war priest that is a top-tier melee, your heals should at least scale within range to be a 2nd tier healer. Currently, the only healing options available to you make you choose between being either a bad melee or a bad healer. Put the "priest" in "war priest" is all I'm saying.

[nobodynobody1426]

I agree with you on not designing specifically for reaper (even though that ship sailed many years ago). That said, uncapped cure spells that RS provides absolutely scale very nicely into high skull reaper. Other healing classes have effective healing in high-skull reaper as well (Druid, Bard, etc.) If you prefer, you can leave reaper out of it and simply compare your melee damage vs other melees and healing abilities vs other healing builds available. Since you're not able to make a war priest that is a top-tier melee, your heals should at least scale within range to be a 2nd tier healer. Currently, the only healing options available to you make you choose between being either a bad melee or a bad healer. Put the "priest" in "war priest" is all I'm saying.

...

Reaper penalties effect all things equally, -36% healing is -36% healing regardless of its' source. "Cure" spells actually have terrible scaling, they only get +1 HP per caster level and the Mass Cure spells have CL's so high that we can't reasonable hit them. CCM is MCL20, MCLW is MCL25, MCMW is MCL30 (not reachable), MCSW is MCL35 and MCCW is MCL40. Ameliorating Strikes actually scales at twice the rate as the Cure spells, don't think it can crit though. High Skull reaper relies on spell crit rate to jack up numbers to get through the -32~36% healing penalty.

https://ddowiki.com/page/Healing_spells

Ever since the ED system revamp, MCL's above 20~24 become meaningless as Epic Knowledge grants +1CL/MCL every 2 Epic/Legendary levels. Since Ameliorating relies on character level it just keeps scaling up.

Now the real issue with Warpriest is that it doesn't have a good source of critical multiplier and it's Core 5/6 are pretty bad with luke warm T5 abilities. What we can do instead is insert 6 levels of fighter to get the +1 Crit Multi / Range from there, or go War Domain to get Holy Sword for that crit bonus. The best combo I've found so far is 6 Paladin + 14 War Cleric, use the KoTC tree for melee support and ascendancy with some points in both Sacred Defender and C4 Warpriest. Makes a pretty solid melee that also has plenty of AoE heals / Buffs to go with it's Ameliorating strikes, pumped up Smites and fully compatible with Divine Crusader for even more AoE party support. Add in the EA healing mantle and occasional Consecration and your a giant bubble of HP.

[karatemack]

...
Reaper penalties effect all things equally, -36% healing is -36% healing regardless of its' source.

Not sure what you were responding to here.

"Cure" spells actually have terrible scaling, they only get +1 HP per caster level and the Mass Cure spells have CL's so high that we can't reasonable hit them. CCM is MCL20, MCLW is MCL25, MCMW is MCL30 (not reachable), MCSW is MCL35 and MCCW is MCL40. Ameliorating Strikes actually scales at twice the rate as the Cure spells, don't think it can crit though. High Skull reaper relies on spell crit rate to jack up numbers to get through the -32~36% healing penalty.

RS allows you to scale CL with cures, so does divine augmentation. Not sure where your spell power, crit chance and crit multi are landing, but you should be at least 1500+ spellpower, 70% crit chance (100% every 5th spell) and 80% crit multi. Even with the healing penalties- I am able to self-heal for a decent amount in R10 when fully equipped for healing.

Now the real issue with Warpriest is that it doesn't have a good source of critical multiplier and it's Core 5/6 are pretty bad with luke warm T5 abilities. What we can do instead is insert 6 levels of fighter to get the +1 Crit Multi / Range from there, or go War Domain to get Holy Sword for that crit bonus. The best combo I've found so far is 6 Paladin + 14 War Cleric, use the KoTC tree for melee support and ascendancy with some points in both Sacred Defender and C4 Warpriest. Makes a pretty solid melee that also has plenty of AoE heals / Buffs to go with it's Ameliorating strikes, pumped up Smites and fully compatible with Divine Crusader for even more AoE party support. Add in the EA healing mantle and occasional Consecration and your a giant bubble of HP.

There have been a lot of suggestions regarding how to improve WP. Some argue to give Clerics multiple domains- some want them to rival top-tier melee DPS... I think it's far more interesting to put the "priest" in "warpriest". Leave it as a 2nd tier melee (when built and played correctly) but also allow it to be a 2nd tier healer at the same time.

[nobodynobody1426]

RS allows you to scale CL with cures, so does divine augmentation. Not sure where your spell power, crit chance and crit multi are landing, but you should be at least 1500+ spellpower, 70% crit chance (100% every 5th spell) and 80% crit multi. Even with the healing penalties- I am able to self-heal for a decent amount in R10 when fully equipped for healing.

Trying to guide you on how RS only effects low level cures. Cure Crit and above have MCL's high enough that T5 in RS has no effect.

Ameliorating Strikes use's positive spell power, the exact same value that Cure spells use. Ameliorating scales better and higher then any Cure spell can due to it using character levels and 2 HP per level instead of 1. Using previous example of a level 20 cleric, 600 PSP and level 32 at 1500 PSP (just for kicks).

Amelioration Strike @20: [20 * 2] 40 * 7.0 = 280
Amelioration Strike @32: [32 * 2] 64 * 16.0 = 1024

CLW @20: [1D6+2+23] * 7.0 = 199.5
CLW @32: [1[D6+2]+29] * 16.0 = 552
CCW @20: [[4[D6+2]+23] = 315
CCW @32: [[4[D6+2]+29] = 816

That is base values without HAMP or cure crit. but should give an idea on the scaling.

[karatemack]

Trying to guide you on how RS only effects low level cures. Cure Crit and above have MCL's high enough that T5 in RS has no effect.

Ameliorating Strikes use's positive spell power, the exact same value that Cure spells use. Ameliorating scales better and higher then any Cure spell can due to it using character levels and 2 HP per level instead of 1. Using previous example of a level 20 cleric, 600 PSP and level 32 at 1500 PSP (just for kicks).

Amelioration Strike @20: [20 * 2] 40 * 7.0 = 280
Amelioration Strike @32: [32 * 2] 64 * 16.0 = 1024

CLW @20: [1D6+2+23] * 7.0 = 199.5
CLW @32: [1[D6+2]+29] * 16.0 = 552
CCW @20: [[4[D6+2]+23] = 315
CCW @32: [[4[D6+2]+29] = 816

That is base values without HAMP or cure crit. but should give an idea on the scaling.

The crits create a huge disparity. Also- the ability to spam multiple spells that are fully scaled is better than one heal every 12 seconds. This is why having additional ways to trigger heals while engaging in melee would be a good thing and would still leave WP as a 2nd tier healer over those spamming spells and benefiting from the crits.