Update 56 Preview 2: Dark Apostate Archetype

[Xezom]

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.

[*]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."

I believe that this was an attempt to help remedy that, but if we're being totally honest DA doesn't have a reliable way with dealing with MOST enemies by itself. (that is, not counting heavy investment in DD which takes away from the already AP hungry DA tree). As a side questino for lynnabel, Will that added damage scale with spell power?

I think a few tweaks to the tree/functional changes would help that out substantially. I know in this preview, Mighty Turning is not in game but is listed in the notes. That will help with Undead somewhat.

[droid327]

Vampirism from Scion of Shadowfell doesnt seem to work with the DA Inqui I was testing. If it ever works at all

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.

Alignment damage works on Undead just fine. DA imbues if you're melee or ranged, Pray for Mercy and Holy Smites etc. if you're caster. Plus Fire spells potentially, stacking Fire+Light is not tough to do.

Deific Vengeance also does double damage to Undead, though its single-target

[LittleLexi]

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.

A tier 5 ability that gives all your spells a spell vamp effect would fit this criteria. But that might be too strong, without giving something up. Maybe it only works vs cursed targets?

[Archfae]

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!

Thank you for making empower heal work with harm!

I also appreciate that you are trying to tie in apostate curse dice into caster builds too to better have synergy. It helps a bit with the overall feel of the tree, but I'm still kinda lost with the direction you are going?

I played the version on lamm at a few different heroic levels and then on a first life capped toon. What I found was that it was a very frustrating experience. I went drow (not an optimal choice but i wanted to see how the form looked on a non furry) took capstone and t5 in this tree, up to t4 in Divine Disciple, then dumped the rest in FDI.

What I found is that a lot of the casting experience is awkward. The nerfs to the alignment spells hit hard especially if you want to be thematic and use unholy blight. Instead I found myself using holy smite, divine wrath, energy burst, and celestial bombardment. The negative and evil spells and even the bane effects from this tree were just a drop in the bucket compared to the usual bread and butter. Unholy blight as it stands right now, I'd go so far as to say it has no place in spell selection at the moment.

I found myself toggling off the shadow form a lot and just using cure spells both because of the issue with negative energy healing, but even at low levels where it does work with a select subset of the inflict spells, I found myself turning it off. Healing amp is more plentiful. Positive spell power is more plentiful. And using positive energy spells works better for healing others as well. Ultimately, it just really failed to deliver on what I expected: I ended up not using form casting positive energy, light, holy/good spells, which isn't very evil priestess imo. I was pretty bummed about it.

The bestow curse into instakills worked better than I thought it would, but even then, it's just too slow to use on anything except super high fort mobs. Though being able to land bestow curse on despairs in high reaper is probably a pretty good boon.

I'm going to say it again, I really think this tree needs radically redesigned T5s and 18 / 20 cores to match with the debuffer identity. And maybe you can tie some really good T5 or capstone ability to the form so you are incentivized for using it? I still say a contagious or explosive curse like effect, where if you are in your form and cast the bestow curse spell it's an aoe centered on your target would be a pretty strong incentive. And most of all I really think there needs to be some sorta debuffing capacity for bosses (get rid of prr/mrr, reduce damage mob does, reduce to hit value by a meaningful %, increase dps, apply a low, etc.) would all be possibilities I'd like to see (though not all at once because that'd be op). Or if we you don't want to go the debuffer route, focus on something else and get rid of the debuffs. Ultimately, this tree is just too split between too many different things without actually meaningfully fulfilling any of them in either a flavor or power pov. (At least from my pov).

The most important thing I think I can convey is that shadow form HAS to be meaningful in ways that palemasters' undead forms aren't in order to compensate for the massive loss in utility, qol, and power from going neg healing over pos healing. Right now, I don't see any reason to use it, which absolutely sucks because the visual and theme is like exactly the aesthetic I'd want to play.

[Flopperjack]

[*]Removed 1 Curse Dice from t2, t3, and t4 curse upgrades, those dice are now in core 3, 18, and 20[*]

Please mighty Lynnabel, is there any way to put it back in the tiers? i really liked the tree and its build potential because it was like arcane archer in that you could get pretty good bang for just a few levels and would allow mixing the new pally and cleric archetypes to do holy blasphemy type damage theme. ( yes i know theres still some dice in the tiers but if comparing to arcane archer it feels a little sad having dice all over the tree)

[Heynone]

With Bane being prominent in the Dark Apostate tree and it being a debuff vs the fear condition I wonder if we could get something in the tree to add Scare to the cleric spell book? I know fear is not the most popular CC ability because it scatters enemies but it is still CC and works in a pinch.

Also, on the live servers at least, the text on bane implies it does not scale. Bless has a +1 to attack rolls and +1 vs fear per 5 caster levels max 5. Maybe bane already does this but if it doesn't would it be outside the scope of these changes to add some scaling on Bane?

[homepage9]

[*]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.

[/COLOR]

sorry, I havent see with xx% spell power, is this a mistake or just lost it?
no spell power it have no damage

[hit_fido]

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.

Dark Apostate has the entire line of inflict spells and harm for self healing, that's plenty good enough on top of letting you assume an undead form. Abyss Warlock and Palemasters get passive self heals but lack strong active self heals. Yes radiant servant at tier five allows you to have a combination of strong active self heals and passive self heals but I see that as a reasonable tradeoff for spending your tier 5 in a tree devoted to healing and defensive party assistance rather than damage/offensive play.

Actually Dark Apostate will become the only undead form that can go pure class and have such strong on-demand self heals, so it's on par with a warforged wizard or sorcerer as far as a combination of a resilient/resistant major form and self heal capability.

[Archfae]

Dark Apostate has the entire line of inflict spells and harm for self healing, that's plenty good enough on top of letting you assume an undead form. Abyss Warlock and Palemasters get passive self heals but lack strong active self heals. Yes radiant servant at tier five allows you to have a combination of strong active self heals and passive self heals but I see that as a reasonable tradeoff for spending your tier 5 in a tree devoted to healing and defensive party assistance rather than damage/offensive play.

Actually Dark Apostate will become the only undead form that can go pure class and have such strong on-demand self heals, so it's on par with a warforged wizard or sorcerer as far as a combination of a resilient/resistant major form and self heal capability.

I agree they don't need additional healing or spell vamp or anything like that. They need something shiny to make the undead form and this tree worth using / preferably along the debuff / curse theme. but...

Did you really forget that palemasters have necrotic energy burst lvl 4 spell? If that's not a strong, active self heal, I'm not sure what counts.

Also Dark Apostate doesn't exactly have some amazing offensive / damage play.

Lastly, undead form on a cleric isn't the same thing as undead form on classes that otherwise can't self heal. Going from strong positive heals to strong (awkward) negative heals has MUCH less value than going from no heals to strong negative heals. Tbh, in the current state, I'd even go so far as to say that toggling undead form on is a net loss in character power for a dark apostate (pure) cleric.

[Lynnabel]

sorry, I havent see with xx% spell power, is this a mistake or just lost it?
no spell power it have no damage

It scales with spellpower (evil damage = alignment = light spellpower)

[hit_fido]

I agree they don't need additional healing or spell vamp or anything like that. They need something shiny to make the undead form and this tree worth using / preferably along the debuff / curse theme. but...

Did you really forget that palemasters have necrotic energy burst lvl 4 spell? If that's not a strong, active self heal, I'm not sure what counts.

Also Dark Apostate doesn't exactly have some amazing offensive / damage play.

Lastly, undead form on a cleric isn't the same thing as undead form on classes that otherwise can't self heal. Going from strong positive heals to strong (awkward) negative heals has MUCH less value than going from no heals to strong negative heals. Tbh, in the current state, I'd even go so far as to say that toggling undead form on is a net loss in character power for a dark apostate (pure) cleric.

I don't consider NEB to be equivalent to the entire line of self healing/self restoratives that an undead cleric has - undead warlock would have great temp hp with brilliance and shining through too but it's not the same either.

Dark Apostate would have access to all the same domains and spells a cleric has so if it's weak it's mostly because cleric is weak in general. There's no point in creating a new tree just to duplicate the offensive nuke aspects of Divine Disciple. For most players who are after pure power/speed of completion I don't see any reason to use Dark Apostate instead of Divine Disciple, but then again I wouldn't see any reason to use a cleric instead of a sorcerer if your focus is clear/completion speed anyway. Having trees that are just ok or merely good power wise but offer some different flavor are fine. The idea of an undead form pure class cleric is just cool as far as I'm concerned. But I also agree with everyone else here asking for something with a little more punch around the theme of cursing and blasphemy. Maybe a negative version of divine punishment, or just more debilitating curses that can work as an aoe at higher tier - with the right ideas Dark Apostate could become the best offensive debuff tree...

[Archfae]

I don't consider NEB to be equivalent to the entire line of self healing/self restoratives that an undead cleric has - undead warlock would have great temp hp with brilliance and shining through too but it's not the same either.

Dark Apostate would have access to all the same domains and spells a cleric has so if it's weak it's mostly because cleric is weak in general. There's no point in creating a new tree just to duplicate the offensive nuke aspects of Divine Disciple. For most players who are after pure power/speed of completion I don't see any reason to use Dark Apostate instead of Divine Disciple, but then again I wouldn't see any reason to use a cleric instead of a sorcerer if your focus is clear/completion speed anyway. Having trees that are just ok or merely good power wise but offer some different flavor are fine. The idea of an undead form pure class cleric is just cool as far as I'm concerned. But I also agree with everyone else here asking for something with a little more punch around the theme of cursing and blasphemy. Maybe a negative version of divine punishment, or just more debilitating curses that can work as an aoe at higher tier - with the right ideas Dark Apostate could become the best offensive debuff tree...

The problem with this is that NEB has a 3.5 second cd (3 with very low hanging cdr). So yes, anytime you need a strong self heal, you have one. It'd be different if the cd was 10+ seconds. As it is both classes have access to full self healing anytime they need it, the undead cleric just has a better capability of healing other undead, while the wizard has healing over time.

[LurkingVeteran]

Vampirism from Scion of Shadowfell doesnt seem to work with the DA Inqui I was testing. If it ever works at all



Alignment damage works on Undead just fine. DA imbues if you're melee or ranged, Pray for Mercy and Holy Smites etc. if you're caster. Plus Fire spells potentially, stacking Fire+Light is not tough to do.

Deific Vengeance also does double damage to Undead, though its single-target

While the DA tree is a bit all over the place, I meant a negative speced caster cleric. These will not do great DPS with smites after the nerf. I don't think forcing a caster cleric to melee their way through undead quests would be fun. The point is that negative spells do not work on undead since they have no immunity break, and the second best way is is DD C5 Sunburst (which does double damage), but that means dropping the Dark C5 with +1 MCL to negative. I guess you could go secondary Fire instead on negative build, the spells are higher dice but there are some fire resistant undead.

[droid327]

I don't consider NEB to be equivalent to the entire line of self healing/self restoratives that an undead cleric has

Restoratives, yes...but Wizard can also just UMD scrolls to achieve almost all the same effect

Heals...how many do you actually need? Odds are you just have one self-heal (Heal/Harm) on your hotbar and you use that to fill up whenever you need a burst heal. That's what NEB is, too. Both builds have a strong active heal button, that's pretty comparable. Wiz's also does some AOE damage, which is nice. Wiz PM also has a strong HOT, which DA Cleric does not. That's a very effective, efficient and elegant design - Aura keeps you healed most of the time without having to babysit, and throw down a NEB whenever things get out of hand for a moment. Cleric's doesnt need a Master feat in Epic, thats probably about the only inherent disadvantage to PM.

I agree that Undead healing for Cleric is kind of a "hat on a hat"...DA isnt really adding much that non-DA Clerics cant already do. You're just paying a lot of AP to change the color, basically.

It needs some combination of: stronger melee/defensive support to be a proper hybrid-melee tree; better casting support to be a complement to DD; more unique mechanics, such as negative-healing goodies, and (and I feel I'm beating a dead horse here) better scaling for Pray for Mercy damage die so its actually relevant past like L12. Like seriously - Stormsinger gets additional scaling in its core for its new rider mechanic, why doesnt DA?

[hit_fido]

The problem with this is that NEB has a 3.5 second cd (3 with very low hanging cdr). So yes, anytime you need a strong self heal, you have one. It'd be different if the cd was 10+ seconds. As it is both classes have access to full self healing anytime they need it, the undead cleric just has a better capability of healing other undead, while the wizard has healing over time.

NEB self healing is supposedly still set to (d4+4) per 2 caster levels capped at CL:10, which is 5d4+20 (ave 32.5) at level 10. That places about equal to inflict critical wounds which is 4d6+18 (ave 32) at level 10 but scales up to max CL:20 for an average of 42. Even inflict serious averages 31.5 per cast at CL:15. Are my numbers correct? Has NEB self heal dice changed in the last couple of years?

It's not in the same ball park as what a cleric can do (and it shouldn't be). Of course I'm fine with it if you find it good enough for your game play. But the numbers say it's only comparable to the middle range of what cleric has and it's just one spell; at level 20 a cleric can cast two on-demand inflicts (serious, critical) that perform at the same level or 30% better than NEB. Then there's harm on top of that. Even inflict moderate averages to 21 at CL:15.

[LurkingVeteran]

NEB self healing is supposedly still set to (d4+4) per 2 caster levels capped at CL:10, which is 5d4+20 (ave 32.5) at level 10. That places about equal to inflict critical wounds which is 4d6+18 (ave 32) at level 10 but scales up to max CL:20 for an average of 42. Even inflict serious averages 31.5 per cast at CL:15. Are my numbers correct? Has NEB self heal dice changed in the last couple of years?

It's not in the same ball park as what a cleric can do (and it shouldn't be). Of course I'm fine with it if you find it good enough for your game play. But the numbers say it's only comparable to the middle range of what cleric has and it's just one spell; at level 20 a cleric can cast two on-demand inflicts (serious, critical) that perform at the same level or 30% better than NEB. Then there's harm on top of that. Even inflict moderate averages to 21 at CL:15.

You can get NEB caster level to at least 25 in epics, which empowered/maxed is probably slightly better than Heal (which has 50% spell power). However, if I understand it correctly, DA can now do twice that with Harm in T5. Not sure if that works on self though.

[droid327]

While the DA tree is a bit all over the place, I meant a negative speced caster cleric.

I dont think there is such a thing (or at least not intended to be such a thing) as a single-element Cleric. You're either Fire+Light or Neg+Light, or maybe Neg+Fire.

There simply isnt enough support for one element. Neg, as you mentioned, has no way to deal with immunes, plus T4/T5 DD is all Alignment. Light/Align doesnt have any really good higher-level nukes, so you gotta make use of the Fire nukes too. Fire doesnt have much enhancement support

In your hypothetical Neg-focused caster, you'd still want to build for Light spellpower for Holy Smite spell and SLA, or Unholy Blight SLA if you want to T5 DD in full Dark path. And, if you go full dark DD path for Neg casting, then you get all the Light spells with Transcend Darkness, so those are going to be in your rotation too - so there's your Sunburst and Sunbolt right there, no mixing paths required

[hit_fido]

Aura keeps you healed most of the time without having to babysit, and throw down a NEB whenever things get out of hand for a moment. Cleric's doesnt need a Master feat in Epic, thats probably about the only inherent disadvantage to PM.

If the argument is that NEB is completely adequate and functional for on-demand burst healing "whenever things get out of hand" and the aura is really just a convenience to avoid babysitting then a Dark Apostate has more than enough on-demand healing to be a very survivable build without throwing death aura into the mix, it's completely unnecessary. Abyss Warlock at least has the argument that without the aura, there would be zero self cast "healing" available, apart from a temp hp buffer. It sounds to me like a death aura on Dark Apostate is superfluous. Personally I'd rather not fill up an enhancement slot that could go to some other kind of thematic offensive curse/debuff idea.

[LurkingVeteran]

Imagine that you are stunned/petrified/held/drunk. Aura still keeps you alive while Heal/NEB does nothing. This is why having a passive heal like aura or stacked regen is so good if you care about not dying. You have something else babysitting your character.

[LurkingVeteran]

I dont think there is such a thing (or at least not intended to be such a thing) as a single-element Cleric. You're either Fire+Light or Neg+Light, or maybe Neg+Fire.

There simply isnt enough support for one element. Neg, as you mentioned, has no way to deal with immunes, plus T4/T5 DD is all Alignment. Light/Align doesnt have any really good higher-level nukes, so you gotta make use of the Fire nukes too. Fire doesnt have much enhancement support

In your hypothetical Neg-focused caster, you'd still want to build for Light spellpower for Holy Smite spell and SLA, or Unholy Blight SLA if you want to T5 DD in full Dark path. And, if you go full dark DD path for Neg casting, then you get all the Light spells with Transcend Darkness, so those are going to be in your rotation too - so there's your Sunburst and Sunbolt right there, no mixing paths required

Light DD actually has enough spells for a cheap pure light-based rotation that does somewhat decent damage and works on almost everything (except for L12-24 due to wonky MCL on smites). Neg also has a decent rotation that is slightly higher DPS but doesn't work on large chunks of the game and drains SP fast. Fire has strong burst damage, but has issues with immunities and doesn't have enough spells for a full rotation.

Assuming you want to stick to max two elements because gearing for three is even harder, then Light/Fire or Light/Force seems the obvious choice. Going Neg/Light is not as good now that the smites are nerfed, the base damage of light spells is pretty low, so undead quests and certain bosses are going to be a slog. Sunburst will at least get you through undead trash, but only if you are willing to sacrifice Dark C5. Neg/Fire actually might be better overall but there will still be some immunes that will cause you grief.

It gets even trickier if you want to gear for the Force spell power of Word of Balance, and weirdly, I think Destruction/Slay Livin? The biggest problem with DD is that their spells are spread over many different elements, and even the specs themselves have different spell powers (Neg/Bane/Evil damage is associated with Dark path, but is actually three different spell powers...). Light spec is the only one that can get by with one (and then you still probably want some Fire for Celestial Bombardment). In retrospect, the easiest way to play Dark spec cleric atm might be to splash 4 PM, or you will be stuck playing gear tetris.