Update 56 Preview 2: Dark Apostate Archetype

[MrDorak]

Hello ! I'm not sure if this is the right place to bug report but the "Help" menu doesn't work in game so here's what me and my friend found from testing so far :

Dark Apostate Enhancement Tree :

• Inflict Mass X spells still don't heal the caster

• The Dark Consumption enhancement has no effect

• Prayer and Bane SLAs share the same cooldown as their spell

• Inflict spells don't have the "prepared icon" in the spell book despite being prepared by default

• The Apostate's Curse enhancement works even with a non-favored weapon

• Turning on Shadow Shrouding removes your character's shadow but not your weapon's shadow

• Harming yourself with the Harm spell while in the Shadow Shrouding restores ability damage, which isn't mentioned on the tooltip

• Healing yourself with the Heal spell while in the Shadow Shrouding doesn't restore ability damage, which isn't accurate to the tooltip

• Turning off Shadow Shrouding when incapacitated makes the Return to Dusk enhancement damage you instead of doing nothing

• The Benediction enhancement causes the Harm spell to do no damage or healing. Casting on self with Shadow Shrouding on only causes the restore effect, not the healing

QoL that would nice :

• The Return to Dusk enhancement does not have any cooldown timer to show that's it's been used already

• Allow the use of Inflict Wounds / Harm in public areas

Divine Disciple Enhancement Tree :

• Core 3 : Light uses the Lighting Bolt spell icon instead of the Sun Bolt spell icon

• The tier 1 Arcane Smiting I cannot be properly taken (shows 0/1 as green) unless you have access to the tier 5 of the tree; It seems linked to the tier 5 of the multiselector Transcendence "Arcane Smiting I" and considering it as a tier 5 enhancement instead of a tier 1 because taking "Arcane Smiting I" at tier 5 unlock "Arcane Smiting II" at tier 2 even if the tier 1 isn't selected

• Arcane Smiting I cannot be taken if a tier 5 has been taken in another tree

• Arcane Smiting II requires Divine Smiting I instead of Arcane Smiting I

• Arcane Smiting III requires Divine Smiting II instead of Arcane Smiting II

• Arcane Smiting IV requires Divine Smiting III instead of Arcane Smiting III

• Arcane Smiting V requires Divine Smiting IV instead of Arcane Smiting IV

• Disciple of Dawn requires Cleric level 4 on tier 3 and tier 4

• Disciple of Dusk requires Cleric level 3 on tier 3 and tier 4

• The Inflict Light Wounds SLA cost and cooldown doesn't go down as you level the enhancement. The cost and cooldown are also probably wrong

• The Inflict Light Wounds SLA doesn't work on your undead self

• The Necrotic Bolt SLA says 1d6 per caster level instead of 1d6+3 as per the wizard spell. Also, the Necrotic Bolt SLA costs more and has a longer cooldown than the Searing Light SLA (wai ?)

• The Unholy Blight SLA cost 2sp more than the Holy Smite SLA at rank 1 and 1sp more at rank 2

• The tier 5 Bring Balance requires Cleric level 20 in the Transcendence multiselector

• The tier 5 Transcend Light requires Cleric level 3 in the Transcendence multiselector

• The tier 5 Transcend Light cannot be taken if the Emissary of Darkness core has been taken but there is no mention of it in the requirement

• The tier 5 Transcend Darkness is missing in the Transcendence multiselector (it is currently replaced by Arcane Smiting I)

• Taking core 1 and core 2 of Light while having the Darkness to at least core 1 and then removing the Light core 1 and 2 makes the Light cores 1 and 2 as "choosable" by adding the white circle around them, even though core 2 of light shouldn't be choosable unless core 1 is taken

• The new tier 5 multiselector is missing (currently has the Harm/Heal multiselector)

[thomascoolone64]

Er, there are domains in the game currently, which is why I've fleshed out the elemental support for DD. And Harm is not and has never been a touch spell.

One Major Gripe! Why Did yall Remove the Wisdom to Damage?!?!?! AND Replace it With Weapon Implement? You laready Have that . Its in there TWICE!

[galamothreign]

Inflict Mass does not heal self, only party members with Shadow Shroud.

This... exactly the same as the last preview..

And Harm isn't affecting my enemies... I don't know if I am...doing something wrong?

Playing an Aasimar Dark Apostate..

[Archfae]

Can we have parity with heal for harm? Either let us use empower/maximize or let us use empower heal on it? Additionally, can you add mass harm to the game as a level 9 option to pair with mass heal?

Some notes

* The protection from alignment tier 5 buff icons are the same as the elemental ones - this makes it hard to tell which are which. Beyond that, if you had both this and prot elements, itd be even more confusing.

* The dodge/incorp values are stuck at 5%. Still no idea how this is supposed to scale.

* The red shimmer effect of the shadow form disappears when crossing into a new instance. Have to retoggle form off then on to get it back. This is aesthetically part of what makes the form cool - please fix this! Want to reiterate that this is a really cool cosmetic effect, and one of the main reasons I want this tree to feel fun to play so I can run it.

* No healing for pretty much anything

* Prayer is self target so feels off, would be nice to be able to target enemies with it too.

* Doom does not work on red names, so feels like it has little use here

* All the single target inflict spells are touch range, it would be nice if these could be moved to standard or at the very least the short range.

* The capstone and T5s need some work (see my earlier post about juice). Right now, there's very little compelling reason to take either compared to either FDI or divine disciple.

* I'm not sure how the PL will work, but if the neg healing amp works like it has in the past where it increases incoming negative energy damage on non-undead toons, please fix this or change to some other benefit. TBH, +10/20/30 negative/evil spellpower would probably be sufficient here. Or if you really want to introduce some grind, +1/2/3 necro dcs (but please don't do that).

* I still feel like the entire melee / dark apostate dice angle on this tree is off. There's just not enough enhancement points where if you were running a melee dps toon on a cleric you'd want to go into this tree. Warpriest would be your primary (41 points there), falconry for wis focus would be secondary (20+ points there), then you'd probably want vistani for 11, leaving you with ~9 points to splash in here for melee stuff. It's not like palemaster / ek in wizard where undead form ALLOWS you to heal. Clerics without undead form already can self heal. I would prefer the fourth column of enhancements focusing on melee be taken out and replaced with something that's thematic for a debuffer, personally.

* This brings up another thing. The lamm live version is different than the release notes so maybe it differs on the dev / test servers. But right now, this is an expensive tree all things considered, and I was forced to take things that I just straight up didn't feel great about taking. Largely this is due to the turn undead enhancements and melee line enhancements.

* I really don't think the protection from alignment spell is good in it's place here. It just feels like wasted design space to me. If prot elements / alignment worked differently where it blocked damage after other reductions and scaled better, it would be worth giving up a T5 sla for. But as it is, it feels like a sad waste where something cooler could be added.

Again, I'm going to make a plea that you give this tree some extra love and finishing touches to really polish it. I'd love to run this, but right now it doesn't fulfill the flavor fantasy or the power fantasy that I have in mind when playing it. The curse wielding debuffer / dark priest design space is so rich and could be an absolutely awesome, fun tree.

[cru121]

Add Apostate's Curse extra dice to the feat Enhanced Elemental Dice.

[Kasinata]

previously i had reported the bug that the Mass inflict spells do not Self heal (many months ago relating to multiclass wiz-cleric on live servers) (mass inflict still heals others, just not self)
this is still true in Lammania now, and the dark apostate brings this up big time.

tier 5 benediction - does not double harm's dmg - it Stops its self healing for specifically hit points, it still heals ability dmg, but no longer hit points.
if i dont take this tier5 enchantment it works fine

only the single target inflict spells work to self heal, (and this includes the boon of undeath items which i tested to today which indeed worked)

i hope its ok to submit this here


unholyblight, does not damage evil enemies, of coarse originally it never could anyways and was basically an angel killing spell.
right now,

holy smite followed by orders wrath will likely become the dominant spells
holy smite receives its full dmg against the most monsters of the 4 alignments spells, its a shorter list to say what it doesn't effect.
orders wrath essentially Stuns (though it calls it dazing but it can not be broken), and can stun-lock chaotic enemies, including orcs, ghouls, shadows, giants, eveningstar-drow aside from just demons etc.. that's quite a lot of the game...stun-locking is way more powerful than purely dmg, or dmg and slowing etc. especially to stun without any spell resistance on a will save of an evocation spell (typically the weakest save playing of the easiest dc to max out), it works reliably, easily with a low dc requirements and is clearly the most powerful spell in the set in this regard.
i don't know if this has been mentioned before, but
the animation for Orders Wrath is visually very glaring and distracting, its the most unhappy animation of any spell and i know of a few players who don't like it being used around them for this reason. i hope one day it can be given a better nicer animation, more gentle on the eyes

out the choices listed in the articles here - to make do full dmg regardless of alignment - id pick orders wrath and chaos hammer combo over holy or unholy on their own, why? because then id have 2 spells instead of 1 which did full dmg, and therefore can likely cast 2 if not 3 at full dmg in any situation

I'm unsure about prayer, it seams the spells bonuses are too low compared to everything else happening, and for this reason i often missed it out on melee cleric builds after mid heroic level, similarly i never found bane to be much use.
The new damage isn't great, but, i can kinda make it ok but only because i copied maximum radiance/alignment dmg, crit gear on a toon with 3 morninglord pl
prayer and bane sla ability share cooldowns with the actual spells, no double casting these like I do other sla+spell combos (searing light etc)
also should we get an aoe curse to cast?
good news though bane and prayer do make nice little aoe evil dmg spell though so is definitely something to work on, especially since being independent of the alignment spell set of unholy blight etc. they work equally against all enemies
so far the best i can do is soundburst to stun, curse and then cast with two x2 multipliers to get 1600dmg crits at lvl 19

to be honest i wonder if id just leave holy smite and unholy blight alone and work on the bane and prayer combo instead as a source of evil damage

i love the evil dmg to weapon, and i love the idea of a divine spell sword. thanks
visually the Apostate's Curse looks nice, but.. i can override it by equipping a cosmetic. should it appear over a cosmetic? or not? I don't know, but just now a cosmetic overrides the visuals

[Kasinata]

* The red shimmer effect of the shadow form disappears when crossing into a new instance. Have to retoggle form off then on to get it back. This is aesthetically part of what makes the form cool - please fix this! Want to reiterate that this is a really cool cosmetic effect, and one of the main reasons I want this tree to feel fun to play so I can run it.

this is also true for the palemasters vampire form, the red disappears and only reappears by recasting the form

[cru121]

In shadow form, your character loses its shadow. Your weapon's shadow remains.

[Ereshkigal]

Tier 3:

• Pray for Mercy: Your Prayer-like spells (Bless, Bane, Prayer) now resonate with Evil energies, dealing 1d6 Evil damage per Caster Level to all enemies. This damage is doubled against enemies that are Cursed.

Am I understanding that this causes these spells to become AOE damage spells? If so, then will that damage be effected by Maximize / Empower or no?

Thanks

[Kayem]

I'm going to preface this post with my history with the game, as I believe I bring a different perspective than many of the people here.


My History with the game

I played this game way back in the day, shortly after it went F2P, hadn't heard of it before then. At the time it was a lot closer to 3.5 than it is now, and also a _lot_ harder to do some kinds of builds. This was before enhancement trees were designed like talent trees in other MMO's. Despite this, I was still able to make a melee FvS that was not only effective, but often times could overcome the DR of enemies that my party members using more meta builds could not.

I stopped playing in the end because my friends started moving back to other games, and MMO's alone is just not fun for me. I started playing a bit again around Feywild cause Feydark Illusionist interested me, though I stopped again because I noticed that despite some builds being easier to make, Eldritch Knight existing at all, something didn't feel right. I recently started playing again because build ideas started to come into my head again and this game has so so so much potential for creative character building.

I have never been to level cap, and have never gotten into this min/max rush that has seemed to existed way back in the day when everyone was telling me Khopesh was the only viable weapon. I make no claims that my words come from the mind of greatness, or are super knowledgeable about the meta of the game, or even how many of the mechanics work in the game. I only bring to the table what I've seen or heard.

Dark Apostate as a theme

Dark Apostate. I love the idea. I'm very big on the meaning of stories and mythology, and it's relations to psychology. There's a Jungian concept called 'Integrating your Shadow', which is the idea that there is a darkness inside of all of us, but that we can't just hide from it, or suppress it, because then it will come out in spite and resentment. You also don't want to just indulge in your 'shadow' because then you'll just be an awful person. The goal is to come to terms with your shadow, understand it, and integrate it into your life. Why couldn't it apply to deities? This is something that i've always felt was a part of Cleric to begin with, because it DID have spells like Inflict Wounds, or Unholy Blight. So the idea of playing a cleric that represents your deities shadow is super cool. Now, obviously, the name doesn't imply it, it implies that you're an apostate, but I can at least pretend otherwise in RP.

What the idea behind the archetype does is present a really cool opportunity to be that dark cleric without attempting to force it, for example, going a certain amount of wizard to get the pale master enhancements. This is great as it opens up a lot of other options. For example, what if you wanted to be a balancer of light and shadow. The DD tree has some of that, sure, but thinking about an Dark Apostate/ Paladin Multiclass also seems awesome in concept.

While it's theoretically been possible to make a negative energy cleric/wizard multiclass for a while, there's something lacking in the theme. The feeling is delving into twisted arcane magics in order to do it, rather than using the dark power of a god. So, all in all, I really like the idea of Dark Cleric.

Dark Apostate mechanics

With that said, I noticed something about the current iteration of the Apostate tree. it's bonus damage to melee scales off Spell Power. This brought to my attention that I missed that everything in Warpriest scaled off melee power. With that in place. What this means is that with Dark Apostate in it's current form, it gives even less of a reason to take the Warpriest tree seriously if you want to be a melee cleric. I will get further into that when I get deeper on Warpriest. With these enhancements, Dark Apostate has a built in boost to being a hybrid melee/caster, now I don't know how much total support it has, as I said I'm not an expert on all the game's inner workings and meta builds, but it's far easier to get behind hitting things and casting spells when your melee hits and spells scale off the same things.

This means that while there may be other significant investments that need to be made to turn it 'melee', thematically, if you're casting a spell, and something runs up to you, can can follow it up with a melee hit that doesn't feel useless, since you are getting that scaling.

I am not convinced that tying it to favored weapons is necessary. Alternatively, the curse does say that it twists the favored weapons, which flavor is a good reason to hold onto something. I've become disinterested in the idea of favored weapons outside of Favored Soul as it feels like it's completely consumed Cleric and Paladin to a certain extent. What was once just an interesting bonus+limitation to Favored Soul has become the total identity of all divine classes, which is very annoying. If it must stay, however, than I wonder why not just make most of these melee benefits part of the Warpriest mainline, and then have a skill in this tree that would convert that to evil damage and add the vulnerability to the t5 of those mainline warpriest ones?

I really love the idea of making Bane and Prayer something used a bit more offensively. It gives me fun thematic feelings, but also, casting spells like Bane seems like a bit of a waste normally when the videos I see people just constantly blow up groups of enemies. Also it makes more sense for them to focus more on cursing enemies than blessing their allies, and while it still does that, the extra focus on that is cool. I'm not really going to discuss actual balance here, because as I said, I don't know the game's meta, and balance is a numbers game for the most part. Dark Apostate brings some really cool ideas and seemingly fun ways of dealing out darkness.



This actually brings me to another point, related but not directly about Dark Apostate:

Warpriest

I'm extremely disappointed that the chance for changes to Warpriest was essentially shut down by a few people on the forums complaining that their primary nuking was being nerfed at the same time. I find it difficult to take most of the feedback from that first thread seriously since so much of it seemed like an emotional reaction to being nerfed. I do not know all the details in the game, but for example, their primary complaint about the idea of moving fire spell power to Warpriest was... That there aren't alternatives to fire damage as a nuker cleric? Why was the feedback, 'Why are you doing this, Fire is the only useful magic for clerics' instead of, 'Oh okay, well we will need new spells to synergize properly with this tree then, as currently there aren't many options outside of fire'?

That said, I do have thoughts on Warpriest, which was a very contentious topic in the previous thread:

Warpriest as a theme

Moving onto a surprisingly contentious topic in a thread about something unrelated is Warpriest. The first thing I would actually say to the theme of warpriest is, "What would a Cleric be doing in War?" For this I largely come to how I've seen spellcasters in general be used in warfare in tales. We have ancient tales of Irish Bards singing to call storms in against druids. We also have tales of Druids summoning up storms to wreck the ships of invaders. I've read stories of magic systems that made it so that the primary purpose of a spellcaster on the battlefield was to ward their armies against enemy spellcasters. This meant that spellcasters spent much of the fighting rooting out other spellcasters. This is realistic, as we literally field tanks and snipers to deal with enemy tanks and snipers in real life.

So what would a Cleric be doing on the battlefield? It would likely be providing support both moral and divine to their armies. Some things in Warpriest already does that like Ameliorating strike. However, this actually means that a Warpriest would do... Exactly what a Paladin does with the auras, as that was the point of Paladin to begin with.

So then our real question is, if we're going to separate the idea of a paladin from a melee cleric, what is it that they do? Paladin already fills the role of both thematically being an inspiring and supporting force on a battlefield, and a primary melee attacker. Favored Soul with it's special Deity Feats and extra ties with favored weapon gets to also be a very melee focused War Soul. Of course, a lot of that flavor has been lost by adding Favored Weapons to Cleric and Paladin. This leads me to believe that there is a significant gap in Divine Spellcasters for a proper melee/spellcaster hybrid. Cleric could fill this role excellently, or Favored Soul could as well, but I think that we need to separate Warpriest from War Soul more.

In my opinion, this could be done by exemplifying the differences between Cleric and FvS. Perhaps, Warpriest should fight like a member of their religion, whereas War Souls should fight like an avatar of their deity. For example, religions in medieval times were stongly influenced by their culture and needs of their civilization. Rome would have needed to have their Clerics fill a very different role than the Danes on a Viking.

Maybe Warpriest should lean more towards the nature of their religion rather than favored weapon. There are several reasons for this, first is that I believe that Favored Weapons should have stayed a Favored Soul thing. It is literally one of the big features that separates them from a Cleric. To go along with this is that the thematic of a FvS is that they are like an avatar of their deity in some ways, so it would make sense for them to fight like their deity. Second, again speaking thematically, it allows for more separation between Cleric and Favored Soul, and between Warpriest and War Soul. Third, with the current iteration of things, other melee domains are irrelevant because of the importance of the benefits of Holy Sword, yet at the same time, the level 5 War Domain feat is completely superfluous if you're just going to be using a Favored Weapon anyway.

Alternatively, rather than that, make the Warpriest tree focus a bit more on using things that would be useful on a battlefield, area control is essential, so something like Blade Barrier would be a cool SLA, I'm sure that the min/maxers among us will say it's a garbage spell, but that can be changed with number tweaking. But just to give an idea of what a Warpriest could entail thematically.

A Cleric is on the battlefield, he's blessed his comrades and cursed his enemies, he has been providing healing support. However, he hears cries of anguish nearby, a group of soldiers led by a Dark Apostate has broken the lines. The Warpriest rushes over and separates the Dark Apostate from his allies with a Blade Barrier and then engages in an epic duel. The Dark Apostate has twisted his deities powers and strikes with evil and malice, the Warpriest however is more experienced in battle, channeling the benevolence of his deity, his strikes release light, healing allies and warding off evil. The Dark Apostate sustains itself with it's own twisted powers, so they cannot bring this battle to a close on martial might alone. The Dark Apostate steps close with a twisted touch, seeking to obliterate his opponent while the Warpriest says a prayer to his deity and as the Dark Apostate's spell goes off, light and flames burst from the warpriest, flames of righteous fury engulf him as he supplicates further to his god, who grants a powerful pillar of fire (Or frost, or lightning, or any other Domain-based spell) from the heavens to engulf the Dark Apostate.

It's a small thematic idea to illustrate how a Warpriest would differ from a Paladin on the battlefield, as otherwise they fill the same role in war. A cleric must be hybrid thematically, or you're actually just a Paladin.

Warpriest Mechanics

There's a lot of talk about the viability of things in one way or another, for example something I've seen stated a lot is that the biggest problem is that Favored Weapons are actually just bad. This is a problem in two parts, one is actual class design, and the other is itemization. From a class design perspective, the fact that you're limited to a specific weapon for all of the most important Warpriest skills means that you're forced to use a subpar weapon, requiring an extra feat (knights training) for some to be viable, or just being screwed. From an itemization standpoint, being similar to D&D 3.5 in terms of weapon design means that they either have to move away from that, or intentionally make specific 'viable' items with the favored tag. Both of these don't feel good.

This is partially why I keep saying throughout this post that I do not think that Paladins and Clerics should be tied to favored weapons in the way that Favored Souls are. It is added design complexity where none is required, and it takes away from the flavor of Favored Soul.

So I actually agree that Warpriest should have more spellcasting than it currently does, though perhaps not necessarily being the fire-smiter tree. We have an entire class devoted to being a divine melee support, there's no reason to think that Warpriest should fill the exact same role.

An overarching problem, with relevancy to Dark Apostate

Going back to the fact that Dark Apostate's bonus melee damage scales with spellpower, but Wrathful Weapons scales with melee power, we come back to itemization. There's something I've noticed watching people play games and go into great detail talking about builds, and feedback from the previous thread. The idea that there's no way to make a proper hybrid because the itemization is not there. I do not know myself if this is true, but I will work on the assumption that it is true.

When I see people play Eldritch Knight, which is considered an actual hybrid build, I find that many, many of them just use their melee attacks and talk about the spellblade dice being almost all of their damage. I very rarely see anyone using any CC spells, and sometimes see people using damaging spells, usually with specific builds, such as a feydark sorcerer using Greater Color Spray, or Offhand Versatility procs and then critting with a spell.

Eldritch Knight seems to have a lot of encouragement to cast spells in the tree, but it seems that in the end, you still have to either choose to gear for melee attacks, or gear for spellcasting. Some of the reason for this is that there is a significant feat investment into either of these paths. Any points I put in SWF for example, is a feat not put in a metamagic (unless wizard) or spell focus for DC's or spell penetration and the like, and vice versa. So there's already a big barrier to hybrid play right there.

This is where my suggestion lies, trees that are supposed to be hybrid should probably synergies with common feats in the game that allow for hybrid play more. For Warpriest, for example, why not have a t5 that says, 'A portion Maximize Spell adds melee and ranged power'? Now obviously that's not something I've deeply thought about the balance implications of, but that can always be tuned. It is however, an example. If I have to, at least according to the people I've come across, put every single feat, and every single item towards Spells in order to have the appropriate DC's to overcome saving throws so my spells can actually do damage, I'm not going to waste my time hitting something with my weapon. If I have to put many feats and gear up to have enough hit to hit enemies reliably with my melee attacks, I'm not going to bother casting any spells that will probably get saved against and do less damage than my melee hits. I don't actually think it's a problem that can be solved with itemization, because all that will do is make it so that either the hybrid sucks, or you have to specifically itemize for it in every piece of content.

I bring this up here because it is a thing that could affect Dark Apostate. You're giving us spell-power scaling damage on our melees, cool, but, is it going to actually do anything? Or will players just end up ignoring those enhancements like many ignore most of Warpriest, and focus on the caster stuff?

All in all, I do like Dark Apostate, and I do like the evil damage on hit part of it, too. But I wonder if there are better ways of giving them that, without forcing them to use supposedly subpar weapons, or not using it at all.

[Lynnabel]

Howdy friends, happy Wednesday! Time for a bugfix and design change roundup!

• New T2: When you use Turn Undead, you and allies you control gain +3/6/10 Temporary HP per Apostate's Curse bonus dice.
• Cursed Words moves to T3 in place of Dark Consumption, and gains "Curse also now deals 6d6 Bane damage per Dark Apostate dice to Undead."
• Dark Judgement goes to T4: When you critically hit with a Negative or Alignment spell, you gain 3/6/10 Sacred Temporary SP
• Removed 1 Curse Dice from t2, t3, and t4 curse upgrades, those dice are now in core 3, 18, and 20
• return to dusk no longer damages you when you are not undead
• fixed a variety of min level problems in DD that should hopefully prevent the AP from counting backwards
• fixed a variety of prereq problems in DD
• harm now benefits from empower heal metamagic

Thanks for the feedback so far!

[Kza]

Howdy friends, happy Wednesday! Time for a bugfix and design change roundup!

• New T2: When you use Turn Undead, you and allies you control gain +3/6/10 Temporary HP per Apostate's Curse bonus dice.
• Cursed Words moves to T3 in place of Dark Consumption, and gains "Curse also now deals 6d6 Bane damage per Dark Apostate dice to Undead."
• Dark Judgement goes to T4: When you critically hit with a Negative or Alignment spell, you gain 3/6/10 Sacred Temporary SP
• Removed 1 Curse Dice from t2, t3, and t4 curse upgrades, those dice are now in core 3, 18, and 20
• return to dusk no longer damages you when you are not undead
• fixed a variety of min level problems in DD that should hopefully prevent the AP from counting backwards
• fixed a variety of prereq problems in DD
• harm now benefits from empower heal metamagic

Thanks for the feedback so far!

Plz just enlighten why wis to hit and damage went away? Was it bad for falcon tree and all would stop use it? (I had done that, and happily so because this is a way way funnier tree!!!!!) Plz consider bring it back!

[nobodynobody1426]

Howdy friends, happy Wednesday! Time for a bugfix and design change roundup!

• New T2: When you use Turn Undead, you and allies you control gain +3/6/10 Temporary HP per Apostate's Curse bonus dice.
• Cursed Words moves to T3 in place of Dark Consumption, and gains "Curse also now deals 6d6 Bane damage per Dark Apostate dice to Undead."
• Dark Judgement goes to T4: When you critically hit with a Negative or Alignment spell, you gain 3/6/10 Sacred Temporary SP
• Removed 1 Curse Dice from t2, t3, and t4 curse upgrades, those dice are now in core 3, 18, and 20
• return to dusk no longer damages you when you are not undead
• fixed a variety of min level problems in DD that should hopefully prevent the AP from counting backwards
• fixed a variety of prereq problems in DD
• harm now benefits from empower heal metamagic

Thanks for the feedback so far!

Come on, no level 8 Greater Holy Smite / Orders Wrath / etc..?

[droid327]

Is this a caster tree or a melee tree? It doesnt really do enough of either to be either - and especially without WIS to hit/dmg now, its not really a hybrid tree either. Seems like it has the same problem as some EDs, where there's just not enough to spend your points on if you only have one focus or the other...ironically, it seems like it might have the most synergy with an Inqui or HW build

That's especially prevalent in the T5s...+1 DC and +5% crit is OK, but if you're a caster you're going to T5 DD, plain and simple, since you get the same thing plus more. Harm is just not going to scale enough for Epic play, even at 200% Spellpower. 200 damage to a single target that isnt Neg-immune (and not even an SLA) is not worth burning your T5 on. Maybe should include Mass Harm SLA?

And if you're melee/ranged, you get +2 die and curse/vuln on hit. Which is nice for Undead since it hits them for 6d6 Bane per die on crit, but otherwise that's not going to move the needle - I'd rather take Warpriest T5s over that, and Warpriest T5 is a dumpster fire. Probably going to splash /6 Barb or something and take that T5, and only treat Apostate as a splash tree for imbue, undead traits and some core defenses

Prot from Elem for light/align has a very limited window of utility between L12 when you get it and somewhere in Epic when it blocks like half a spell, so that's kind of a junk enhancement for everyone

I repeat my feedback from Preview 1 that 1d6/clvl on Pray for Mercy is trash-tier damage, on what should be a build-defining mechanic. It needs to scale its base die somehow. I playtested it a bunch at various levels between 15 and 30, and it just...it just sucks, its never worth the button push over other options

Shouldnt Benediction be called Malediction, considering what it does? Its definitely not a blessing...

Chaos Domain (or Law), True Neutral caster gets a big synergy with DD....take the Order's Wrath SLA, Balance of Power, and you have 2 AOE Alignment SLAs that do full damage against everyone.

[LittleLexi]

Howdy friends, happy Wednesday! Time for a bugfix and design change roundup!

[LIST]
...[*]Dark Judgement goes to T4: When you critically hit with a Negative or Alignment spell, you gain 3/6/10 Sacred Temporary SP


Thanks for the feedback so far!

I think it would fit the theme of the tree more if this ability worked like the Twisted Talisman, where you sacrfice some HP for SP. Allowing this to work on others(The granting SP part) would be neat too; particularly since it looks like Divine Disciple is losing its Channel Divinity: Divine Vitality effect? That is something that really should be in Radiant Servant anyway. It's not like there isn't room for it.

This tree still has some ways to go; both in terms of power and fulfilling its flavor. And yet, its still probably the most well done of the Archetypes thus far. I hope you guys take the time to do these right, instead of rushing them for the next update- then leaving them untouched for years. An oft repeated pattern regrettably.

Thanks for making Harm work with Empower Heal.

[droid327]

Just a design philosophy thought...

Pale Master is so great for Wizards because it gives them self healing where they otherwise have none natively (barring toasters). Additionally, it gives them passive self healing, as well as an active burst heal, which is nice because it doesnt interrupt your flow of combat as much, or require you to babysit as closely.

Clerics already self-heal amazingly well. This is something important to recognize. DA isnt really adding anything in that regard by making it Negative. There are a few advantages, but also some meaningful penalties to being Neg based for heals.

Radiant Servant, which DA replaces, also has Aura, which gives passive heals, which is probably the marquee skill of that tree.

I'd suggest that DA have some method of giving passive self-heals. I feel that'd really improve the playstyle for DAs.

Maybe that's a HOT rider when you cast a Prayer-type spell (a negative version of Vigor, eg). Maybe that's a negative healing curse (a la Monk) when you Curse a mob. Maybe that's just a Negative version of the Divine Healing skill from RS.

[Xezom]

Howdy friends, happy Wednesday! Time for a bugfix and design change roundup!

• New T2: When you use Turn Undead, you and allies you control gain +3/6/10 Temporary HP per Apostate's Curse bonus dice.
• Cursed Words moves to T3 in place of Dark Consumption, and gains "Curse also now deals 6d6 Bane damage per Dark Apostate dice to Undead."
• Dark Judgement goes to T4: When you critically hit with a Negative or Alignment spell, you gain 3/6/10 Sacred Temporary SP
• Removed 1 Curse Dice from t2, t3, and t4 curse upgrades, those dice are now in core 3, 18, and 20
• return to dusk no longer damages you when you are not undead
• harm now benefits from empower heal metamagic

Thanks for the feedback so far!

The more I play the tree, the more I actually like that the tree doesn't have any nuke abilities and more relies on the procs off of non-damaging abilities. Gets away from the SLA or don't use feel. However because it has no real offense SLA's I feel like if you're going to make this change, Cursed Words should do Evil damage not Bane (for theme and spellpower scaling reasons) and should effect all targets not just undead. At least then it'd be worth investing in the DA Dice line as a caster. Be totally fine if you reduced the damage down from 6d6 per dice even as that would be a bit overbearing for its ability to hit everything. 3d6 perhaps?

Harm modifications are still just not compelling enough to make them worth investing in T5 unless Harm is an SLA plain and simple. Consider another debuff in place of Benediction or a modification to existing Debuffs. The T5's as is are so disconnected from the rest of the tree (save for Ultimate heresy and Ward of Shadow).

It's starting to feel like this tree is trying to do too many things. The tree, to me, is in line with a debuffing, chip damage, defensive caster with some self healing option. The addidion of the Curse dealing damage is awesome, but to undead only makes it pretty niche especially when (if you are keeping mighty turning) you can just outright destroy undead anyway. I get that you won't destroy all undead via Mighty Turning, but if the on curse proc works like the Pray for Mercy, you're only going to get one hit of it per fight anyway.

[LurkingVeteran]

Here's another way to look at it so we're all sure we're on the same page.

Before:
Against Good enemies: 0
Against Neutral enemies: 1d6+4
Against Evil Outsider enemies: 2d6+8

With T5 DD:
Against Good enemies: 1d6+4
Against Neutral enemies: 1d6+4
Against Evil Outsider enemies: 2d6+8

Thinking some more about this: smite damage is a bit mediocre on non-outsiders now, and with the MCL cap of 10 it's going to be terrible in high heroics. Maybe MCL could be improved, or give them some higher-level smites like some other poster suggested.

[Xezom]

[/LIST]

Am I understanding that this causes these spells to become AOE damage spells? If so, then will that damage be effected by Maximize / Empower or no?

Thanks

How it works is a proc on cast. So no, you cannot maximize or Empower them. Additionally, if the enemy is already under the effect of these spells they are not damaged again should you cast it on them again.

That seconds part I believe is a bug since the animation plays as if it should but no damage occurs.

[LurkingVeteran]

Another comment: Dark Apostate does not seem to have a good way of dealing with Undead except to pick up Sunburst from the DD core. However, that precludes them picking the +1 MCL to neg spells. Not sure how to best solve this, could e.g. make holy smite do double damage on undead instead of outsiders? That takes away a bit from the light DD Sunburst option though.