Update 56 Preview 1: Dark Apostate Archetype

[adamr09]

Quick balance round up Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

Here are some important notes!

Note 1: Warpriest is staying as-is, so no caster levels, spell crit, universal spellpower, etc etc. You folks have been quite passionate about this and I want to be sure you know your feedback has been heard

Note 2: In keeping with the theme of Divine Disciple being about choice and consequence, we're going to expand the core-choice paradigm seen in the tier 5 (where depending on your light/dark/both choice, you are offered options) to support not just Fire Domain, but all Elemental Domains. So without further adieu:

• The Crit line up the middle will now have a multiselector that offers 2% to Fire, Cold, Acid, Electric, and Force Crit Chance, but requires you to have both Light Core 1 and Dark Core 1 to select.
  ...

Woo! I like this. Domains are a really cool aspect of the class, so it's nice that some of them will have support now/still. I'm a little confused about the requirement of 2 Core 1s though. I saw some mentions in this thread that it means that you're locked out of the capstone? That's kind of a bummer. It would be nice if they could still get the capstone since they miss out on the spell power, caster levels, and MCL from it anyway. But overall, I'm really happy that you are considering our feedback so I can live with this.

Thanks Lynnabel!

[Meat-Head]

Overview

I will go into greater detail below with feedback separated into sections for easier digestion. Overall- I really like this archetype. Playing around with the negative spell casting feels unique from other spellcaster builds. Also, thank you for adding wis to hit and damage outside of the need to go deep into falconry as this will open up additional options for melee cleric builds. The spell damage doesn't quite scale well enough for this to compete with current top-tier spell DPS and leaves some small gaps where builds using this archetype could feel like you're playing a healer that doesn't just heal.

Spells
The spell choices are great. You have a nearly endless supply of AOE spells to cast at your disposal. If I were to request any changes/additions- it would be to add Mass Harm and Dark Wrath. I know most Clerics don't cast mass heal because of casting speed. Maybe this could be addressed in the tree for DA and RS?

Races
DA pairs well with Aureon for DC casting and a few of the other deity feats for melee, but there isn't a great pairing for spellcasting. Negative and Poison are paired together on gearsets in Sands, I think this would be a great opportunity to revamp Vulkoor's Avatar which doesn't really get much play to my knowledge. My suggestion would be something akin to Amaunator's Flames- only a dark flame version that dealt negative damage and reduced light damage. Also- it would be nice if the Human Improved Recovery line in human's racial enhancement tree could be a multi-selector of either positive or negative healing amplification. Humans get a lot of play, but Drow as a preferred choice again would be interesting.

Feats
If possible a Master of Darkness feat would also help boost this if it provided a boost to the caster level of some of the spells in DAs repertoire.

Spell Damage
Having a ton of AOE spells to cycle through is nice, but your damage at endgame is heavily dependent on Cursed Words. Having this share a cooldown with Dark Consumption lowers the overall effectiveness of the build. If you really want to scale the damage well, you're pretty married to Magus. Also- there isn't a way to strip immunity from mobs or cause vulnerability within the class/enhancement tree.

Domains
Death Domain is an obvious choice for DC casters, but it would be nice if a Dark Domain were added (Moon Domain?). This would mirror sun domain, but give Cold and Negative instead of Fire/Light. It would have the same 10% vuln and would grant allies healing from negative energy (even at 50%) for the next 20 seconds. Fill in appropriate SLAs. Also- can you please please please give every other elemental-based domain the same type of vulnerability debuff to enemies when using TU for the corresponding element?

Healing Buffs
I will post more about this in a separate post- but the #1 complaint I have consistently heard over the years when daring to play a Cleric as anything other than a dedicated healer is... "where are my heals?" My main is a Cleric, I've played every version of one there is to play and continue to come up with crazy builds... and if the build doesn't compare with top-tier DPS then the expectation is that you will be able to play dedicated heals in high reapers and raids. Can you please consider giving the enhancement tree a way to mark an ally so they can receive 200% healing from negative energy? Then we could be the tank heal while still playing this playstyle?

Summary
Overall I really like DA. I think it will add something fresh for the Cleric class and am hopeful that some additional tweaks can be made to make it even better.

I was waiting for Grig's feedback. Excellent input, brosef.

I especially agree on having a new domain that compliments, having a Master feat that makes sense, and having some way to strip immunity.

[Meat-Head]

So... not sure if anyone will see/do anything with this feedback but... the main issue with playing Cleric as anything other than a healer is that it isn't quite as good as the other things that do what it does and it also doesn't heal. For example- if you were going to play a melee cleric- barbarian, fighter, ranger, bard, wolf builds, assassins (in no particular order) all outclass Cleric by a large gap. But when you play Cleric as a melee in high skull reaper- you aren't going to be able to heal without taking huge losses to your DPS not to mention that the need for EDF hampers you as well.

Would it be possible to look at ramping up the healing these non-healer Cleric builds are capable of? Like- maybe Warpriest has something that triggers a huge AOE heal on crits? Small heals on attack? Something that triggers an AOE heal when they use an action boost?

DC Casters and most damage spell builds can effectively heal while casting. DA feels like it will be tougher to balance unless we get some type of ability to allow our party to be healed by negative energy.

Also- I missed it in my last post, but on lamannia negative healing amplification is scaling much faster than regular healing amplification on DA. On the char sheet, it shows appropriately but the actual healing from heal is greater than harm on R1 (harm seems like it's been reduced by 66%).

Solid. Imo the fix on the melee is to reduce the CD on Ameliorating strike--or increase the base dice. But I think CD would be better.

[Matuse]

Some kind of explanation needs to be in there for the Divine Disciple enhancement selections with the Apostate. I didn't see anything in there that clarified how it works differently than every other tree in the game.

[Targal]

Howdy friends, happy Thursday! I'm here to post some of our preliminary design changes! Note that all of this is subject to change, as are all things on the preview server.

Dark Apostate:

• Step 1: Fix bugs!
• Step 2: Fix more bugs!

Divine Disciple:

• 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
• Step 2: Figure out a more equitable SLA situation:
  
  • This mostly means going back to the original DD SLA split with some small changes:
  • tier 1: Nimbus of Light, Inflict light wounds
  • tier 3: Searing Light, Necrotic Bolt
  • tier 4: Holy Smite, Unholy Blight (now they are mirrors of each other!)
  • tier 5: Heal, Harm
• Step 3: Get weird with it. DD has a unique core ability situation and we should lean into that more. With that in mind...
  
  • Benediction is now: Multiselector:
    
    • Unholy Benediction (antireq Light core 1): Unholy Blight now deals its upgraded damage to all enemies, regardless of alignment.
    • Unholy Benediction (antireq Dark Core 1): Holy Smite now deals its upgraded damage to all enemies, regardless of alignment
    • Balanced Benediction (req Light Core 1 and Dark Core 1): Chaos Hammer and Order's Wrath now deal either upgraded damage to all enemies, regardless of alignment

Thank you for the amazing feedback so far! If you have any further comments, questions, or suggestions, please feel free to post them here

Touched ranged neg spells are meh, and heal and harm mirror doesn't look to be a good pair in DD unless you really need to change them to deal big damage than healing when its used against an enemy... (besides that I agree heal and harm shojld be RS and DA)
And Necrotic bolt is... a bit meh too, but well, not worst and we don't get good stuff always. I think it's way better.

But again, no to touch ranged neg spells.

[Caarb]

The issue you are going to have (and all caster trees suffer from the same problem) is no SLA is going to see use at level 32 unless it is 1d6+6 minimum (with MCL 20) which makes SLAs useful for levelling only I wish you would revisit your design philosophy on caster trees to make them useful at all levels of play

[Targal]

Somehow duped post

[Natashaelle]

Warpriest has two parts - the war and the priest. That's why it's called Warpriest :P

I pretty much specialise in Battle Clerics, and it is a variety of different playing styles, not just "it's mêlée". Some of mine do focus on that aspect, but my main is a Lightning AA Archer, and there are a bunch of ways to play the concept.

Fundamentally, with a Battle Cleric you combine some variable degree of extra focus on a certain combat style with some lesser focus on this or that other of your cleric abilities. It's not so narrowly focused as FvS.

[Impaqt]

Yes the capstone is only for pure light or dark, the loss is -3 DC and some spell power. Your choice if it's worth it or not.

How would it ever be worth it?

This is so disappointing right now...

[Aelonwy]

Woo! I like this. Domains are a really cool aspect of the class, so it's nice that some of them will have support now/still. I'm a little confused about the requirement of 2 Core 1s though. I saw some mentions in this thread that it means that you're locked out of the capstone? That's kind of a bummer. It would be nice if they could still get the capstone since they miss out on the spell power, caster levels, and MCL from it anyway. But overall, I'm really happy that you are considering our feedback so I can live with this.

On the one hand support for other element domains is hands down awesome! Woot! Woot!

Yes the capstone is only for pure light or dark, the loss is -3 DC and some spell power. Your choice if it's worth it or not.

On the other hand the implementation locks other element domains out of the capstone of their obviously chosen MAIN tree.

How would it ever be worth it?

This is so disappointing right now...

Yeah, this^!

[karatemack]

Solid. Imo the fix on the melee is to reduce the CD on Ameliorating strike--or increase the base dice. But I think CD would be better.

Agree with you on both- reduce the CD and increase the base dice. Even with that, you won't be solid 2nd-tier healer. To clarify from my earlier post- I don't think battle Cleric should reach top-tier DPS. But, to off-set being a 2nd-tier melee it would be nice if you could also simultaneously be a 2nd-tier healer. Not the equivalent of a dedicated healer who overheals with mass cures, but at least enough healing that you can mostly keep the party in melee range going with your natural healing which results from you doing your melee thing- only occasionally needing to break from your DPS to toss more strategic heals for champs, doom reapers, during boss fights, etc.

[Caarb]

Im back to the point where I say leave DD alone. The Dark from the right might be cool in concept but in realiry is a bad idea no other tree does this why make a deliberate inconsistency just because. The revamp is also a healing nerf as there is no universal spell power option. Making balance lose the capstone even with taking all 6 cores is also bad the SLA choices are worse than before.

One suggestion instead of making an enhancement to upgrade alignment spells base it on alignment:

Neutral gets no boost but gets to cast all spells without penalty
Lawful Good gets to cast boosted Holy Smite and Orders wrath
etc
(consider adding evil alignment for for Dark Apostate only)

[SWCarter]

When you are opening entirely new doors for character builds like this, one bullet point that should be on your design checklist should be to update existing itemization to support the 1-32+ leveling process.

For example, the Dreadkeeper set in Sharn should be updated to be applicable for Dark Apostates and Abyss Warlocks by adding Wisdom and Charisma to the set. Having a Heavy Armor option would also be a nice boon.

[hit_fido]

Howdy friends, happy Thursday! I'm here to post some of our preliminary design changes! Note that all of this is subject to change, as are all things on the preview server.

Dark Apostate:

• Step 1: Fix bugs!
• Step 2: Fix more bugs!

Divine Disciple:

• 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
• Step 2: Figure out a more equitable SLA situation:
  
  • This mostly means going back to the original DD SLA split with some small changes:
  • tier 1: Nimbus of Light, Inflict light wounds
  • tier 3: Searing Light, Necrotic Bolt
  • tier 4: Holy Smite, Unholy Blight (now they are mirrors of each other!)
  • tier 5: Heal, Harm
• Step 3: Get weird with it. DD has a unique core ability situation and we should lean into that more. With that in mind...
  
  • Benediction is now: Multiselector:
    
    • Unholy Benediction (antireq Light core 1): Unholy Blight now deals its upgraded damage to all enemies, regardless of alignment.
    • Unholy Benediction (antireq Dark Core 1): Holy Smite now deals its upgraded damage to all enemies, regardless of alignment
    • Balanced Benediction (req Light Core 1 and Dark Core 1): Chaos Hammer and Order's Wrath now deal either upgraded damage to all enemies, regardless of alignment

Thank you for the amazing feedback so far! If you have any further comments, questions, or suggestions, please feel free to post them here

Wow, pretty responsive changes here. I don't have any reaction to the tier 5's. Heal as an SLA is fine with me, to me you've got enough variety in the domains so you lose flamestrike but you can still keep whatever elemental or other SLA from there. So with Holy Smite reduced in power and flamestrike gone it's a modest nerf but not such a gigantic change that it would feel neutered. The benediction thing is a pretty cool idea too.

This looks a lot better, I feel more positive about u56. Great job tweaking things to try and please more of the players, Lynnabel. You can't please everyone but this satisfied me that you are making a positive effort to try, so thanks for that.

[Don1966]

gonna throw this out there, the new dark apostate tree, which will lock out radiant servant, can give +8 to wisdom and +2 to con. radiant servant can give only +6 to wisdom.

[Impaqt]

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)

[Gregen]

Quick balance round up Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

Here are some important notes!

Note 1: Warpriest is staying as-is, so no caster levels, spell crit, universal spellpower, etc etc. You folks have been quite passionate about this and I want to be sure you know your feedback has been heard

Note 2: In keeping with the theme of Divine Disciple being about choice and consequence, we're going to expand the core-choice paradigm seen in the tier 5 (where depending on your light/dark/both choice, you are offered options) to support not just Fire Domain, but all Elemental Domains. So without further adieu:

• The Crit line up the middle will now have a multiselector that offers 2% to Fire, Cold, Acid, Electric, and Force Crit Chance, but requires you to have both Light Core 1 and Dark Core 1 to select.
• Condemnation will also have a multiselector offering 5% Crit Damage and +2 Caster Level/Max Caster Level with the same elements, again requiring both Light and Dark Core 1.
• All Core Abilities will now grant +5 to their appropriate spellpower (So Negative or Light) as well as +5 Universal Spellpower.

What this means is that if you're an Elemental Domain cleric (not just Fire!) you can now grab offensive elemental power by dipping into both the Light and Dark core abilities, something that I find pretty fun and flavorful. Anyway, that's all I've got today If you've got further comments, questions, or suggestions, feel free to post them here!

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.

[carsonfball]

After looking at this a bit more, I have some concerns:

1. Are inflict wounds spells going to be changed to be self-targeting by default?
2. Dark Apostate needs either a turn undead based negative energy burst or death aura added to the spell book, especially if point (1) isn't addressed.
3. Divine Disciple needs a serious pass, as it looks a bit of a mess, to put it lightly.
4. The cores of DA are a little underwhelming. Spell penetration or DCs would be a nice touch.

I second your point about inflict needing to be self-targeting. I played a Pale Master/Cleric flavor build once for the additional self-healing, undead turning, etc. to mimic a PnP character I once had. The healing was a real pain without self-targeting.

I also second your point about death aura. Any undead-themed character should have access to it (or at least something like it).

[carsonfball]

I'm actually okay with the direction you are going here... but I also agree with Nobody that heal/harm feel misplaced now because heal is a Radiant Servant thing and it belongs in Radiant Servant, ergo Harm belongs in Dark Apostate tree as the tree replacing Radiant Servant. I liked Divine Wrath, its too bad you don't have the time or option to make a Dark Wrath version that deals Evil Dmg + Negative Healing. Could look really awesome too with just a graphic color change.

I agree on all counts.

[carsonfball]

Ya, to me making Warpriest all about Fire makes sense since, for one, the tree is very much aesthetically fire-based (red, flames in its icons, etc) but also gave more Fire Spellpower than DD ever did. Leaning harder into that gives it a cool identity as the place to go for Cleric's Fiery might. I think the only thing it's missing is me adding 2% Fire Spellcrit up the central weapon line and it should all work out. That means that Fire clerics actually end up with more Spellcrit than before, and comperable Fire Spellpower.

You're definitely not wrong about the t5 SLA selection. I'm actually now leaning towards offering Order's Wrath versus Chaos Hammer to go along with the split Benediction choice. It would mean you'd need to plan your alignment out carefully but would mean that a Chaotic Good Cleric would actually want different DD choices than a Lawful Neutral one, which I find neato. Or, even cooler, maybe offer all 4 of those spells in both t4 and t5, so you'd end up with 2 picks from the pool of 4.

Seems okay to me. I'd have to actually try it to see how well it works, but it sounds good "on paper" with those changes.