Update 56 Preview 2: Stormsinger Archetype

[Lynnabel]

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

Changes from Base Class

Feats and Abilities:
Stormsingers gain the following feats:

• Magical Training (1)

Stormsingers do not gain the following feats:

• Improved Inspire Courage +1
• Improved Inspire Courage +2
• Improved Inspire Courage +3
• Ballad Melody: Greatness
• Inspiration Melody: Heroics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Tree: Stormsinger
Replaces Swashbuckler

Themes: Lightning and sonic damage, thunder, offensive spellcasting

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

Core Abilities

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tier 1:

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

Tier 2:

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

Tier 3:

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

Tier 4:

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

Tier 5:

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

Spellsinger Notes:

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

Bugfixes from last Lamannia:

• taking t5 horn of thunder no longer breaks everything
• reverberate now does initial damage on tic
• SLAs in stormsinger no longer share cooldowns
• reverberate is now properly a sonic spell not a cold spell

Bugs that have been fixed from last Lamannia but are not reflected in this preview:

• Snowball Swarm SLA now properly functions

[QuantumFX]

Stormsingers do not gain the following feats:

• Improved Inspire Courage +1
• Improved Inspire Courage +2
• Improved Inspire Courage +3
• Ballad Melody: Greatness
• Inspiration Melody: Heroics

Please put them back as enhancements in the level 12/18/20 cores of the Warchanter tree. The ballad is literally the only thing that Warchanter does, and it would be nice to have a second melee bard option that doesn't involve Swashbuckler.

[Lynnabel]

Please put them back as enhancements in the level 12/18/20 cores of the Warchanter tree. The ballad is literally the only thing that Warchanter does, and it would be nice to have a second melee bard option that doesn't involve Swashbuckler.

The base Ballad is still there. These feats are upgrades to the Ballad. You'll still be able to use the Warchanter stuff but you'll be granting less attack/damage/spellpower etc numerically. Plus, if we take things away just to add them back in, then they aren't taken away.

[Pandjed]

Please put them back as enhancements in the level 12/18/20 cores of the Warchanter tree. The ballad is literally the only thing that Warchanter does, and it would be nice to have a second melee bard option that doesn't involve Swashbuckler.

You know, that you still have the ballad and the aria?

Ah, to be clear, the base Aria and Bardic Inspiration are staying - the listed feats are the upgrades for them.

You would just lose out of the following on tick:

• +3 music bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, and saving throws versus fear
• +4 Music Bonus to Armor Class, +4% Music Bonus to Dodge, and a +4 Music bonus to all saves
• +20 Temporary Hit Points (or [double in epics] your charisma score via enhancement by warchanter), +3 Physical Resistance Rating, an +10 Healing Amplification

These are some drawbacks, but especially melee bards should be discouraged to go stormsinger, as this archetype is supposed to be a caster bard.

[Tanky]

[*]taking t5 horn of thunder no longer breaks everything

Still does. Can only put 1 point into it in the Stormsinger tree, then it locks out putting any more points into it.

[Caarb]

Can we get an enhancement called "lightning strikes twice" that allows the lightning to proc off lightning spells - i think this will scale better in epic levels

[QuantumFX]

The base Ballad is still there. These feats are upgrades to the Ballad. You'll still be able to use the Warchanter stuff but you'll be granting less attack/damage/spellpower etc numerically. Plus, if we take things away just to add them back in, then they aren't taken away.

No one's asking you to "Just put them back in", I'm suggesting putting them out of reach of the caster builds.

You would just lose out of the following on tick:

• +3 music bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, and saving throws versus fear
• +4 Music Bonus to Armor Class, +4% Music Bonus to Dodge, and a +4 Music bonus to all saves
• +20 Temporary Hit Points (or [double in epics] your charisma score via enhancement by warchanter), +3 Physical Resistance Rating, an +10 Healing Amplification

Which only diminishes Warchanter, my original point.

[gorocz]

No one's asking you to "Just put them back in", I'm suggesting putting them out of reach of the caster builds.


Which only diminishes Warchanter, my original point.

You know you can still play normal Bard for melee Warchanter, right? That remains unchanged (in fact, allowing you to take healing SLAs in spellsinger may make it better, if you have the points to spare). Playing the archetype that removes your melee tree and replaces it with a caster tree should indeed make you highly consider playing it as a caster build, not as a melee.

[QuantumFX]

You know you can still play normal Bard for melee Warchanter, right?

You know you can say nothing, right? Normal bard doesn't have a lightning strike weapon song.

[Erofen]

You know, that you still have the ballad and the aria?


You would just lose out of the following on tick:

• +3 music bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, and saving throws versus fear
• +4 Music Bonus to Armor Class, +4% Music Bonus to Dodge, and a +4 Music bonus to all saves
• +20 Temporary Hit Points (or [double in epics] your charisma score via enhancement by warchanter), +3 Physical Resistance Rating, an +10 Healing Amplification

These are some drawbacks, but especially melee bards should be discouraged to go stormsinger, as this archetype is supposed to be a caster bard.

Why the shoulds and supposed tos? Is this game not about playing a bunch of different ways?

Also, why are you removing the temp hp, dodge, and saves from an already squishy caster? If you are trying to penalize melee with this archetype, please find another way.

[R1ncewind]

I know is not related to this tree specifically, but you already mention that archetypes allow you to also make some changes in the other trees of a class.
So.. could you plz lower the cost of the spellsinger tree? is way WAY to costly. lots of the inspiration melody effects that cost 2 points could be lowered to 1. I wouldnt mind if you think you need to remove the 1 more lvl of bard for balancing from them.

[Archfae]

This looks pretty fun, but I'd never play it outside of trs due to how annoying songs work in this game. We need a mass song buff option especially for raids. Right now, people use tumble cancelling to try to get around the annoying amount of time spent singing, but it is still super annoying.

Can we please have an option to mass sing - just have it take a charge for each ally hit with a song in the aoe around the caster? Or have it affect everyone near the caster and automatically take 6 charges in a quest and 12 charges in a raid. Until there's a quality of life buff to singing, I'd rather play literally anything else, which sucks because I actually LOVE bard both in pnp and in ddo (aside from this).

As an aside, the song that gives melee/ranged lightning strike procs - can we get more info about this? What spellpower scaling is used? Can it proc the 5 second stun effect from the capstone? What caster level is used for say a level 32 barbarian who gets my song? What's the % proc chance for a melee/ranged attack is it 20%? Is there an icd? Is there an icd per character who has the song buff? It's really hard to test this stuff because you can't do it by yourself on lamm, but all of these things drastically affect the balance of the tree/subclass.

Also just a suggestion, but maybe we could have the stormrage spell as an sla in one of the missing spots? I feel like thematically it makes a ton of sense for someone who's singing the storm's songs so-to-speak to be able to control wind/storms well enough to block arrows. If it's a balance concern, maybe just give it a long cd. Though if you aren't opposed to creating new effects, a wind wall sla would be even cooler.

Appreciate any answers to these. Again, I can't emphasize enough how much the mass songs buff option is needed for QOL.

[cru121]

Lightning strike (or Storm Strike! as the combat log calls it) deals less damage than expected.
I have observed hits for 251, 270, 339. This is for CL25 spells for a capstone stormsinger, i.e. 25x (1d6+6) = 237.5 before spell power.
My electric spell power was around 280.

Master the Acoustics (Fatesinger) does not increase the damage of Reverberate.


Instead of Magical Training at level one, Stormsinger could receive Mental Toughness at 18 and IMT at 20. This is when the heavy nukes start being useful. (Or MT at 12, IMT at 18 and Epic Mental Toughness at Stormsinger Bard 20). Such bards could probably give up Suggestion Song, Freedom Song, and Mass Suggestion song.

[Archfae]

Lightning strike (or Storm Strike! as the combat log calls it) deals less damage than expected.
I have observed hits for 251, 270, 339. This is for CL25 spells for a capstone stormsinger, i.e. 25x (1d6+6) = 237.5 before spell power.
My electric spell power was around 280.

Master the Acoustics (Fatesinger) does not increase the damage of Reverberate.


Instead of Magical Training at level one, Stormsinger could receive Mental Toughness at 18 and IMT at 20. This is when the heavy nukes start being useful. (Or MT at 12, IMT at 18 and Epic Mental Toughness at Stormsinger Bard 20). Such bards could probably give up Suggestion Song, Freedom Song, and Mass Suggestion song.

That just looks like the spellpower and crit aren't affecting it?

[Eladriel_ca]

Why are you removing the ballad buffs from this tree? One of The Bard’s key abilities is to sing songs and buff the party. What are you adding in place of removing these buffs? Are you removing the paladin’s ability to lay on hands or reduce its effectiveness in any way? How about diminishing the effect of the clerics ability to turn undead or can’t cast healing spells?

If you are intending it just to be a spellcaster then why not just add a sonic sorcerer tree? Sorry but taking away from something that is core to a bard is not really a bard anymore is it?

Oh and I haven’t read the other class change posts on cleric or paladin fully so maybe you are removing or diminishing their core abilities too. That would be silly also

[dogsoldier]

...
Bugfixes from last Lamannia:

• taking t5 horn of thunder no longer breaks everything
• reverberate now does initial damage on tic
• SLAs in stormsinger no longer share cooldowns
• reverberate is now properly a sonic spell not a cold spell

...

Horn seems to be working properly, and that is a nice upgrade for Reverberate.

I am still seeing shared cooldowns, at least with Snowball Swarm from Stormsinger, and Shout from Spellsinger.

[dogsoldier]

The Stormsinger T5s Cost is ends in an odd value. If you go T5 Stormsinger, and take all of the goodies, you end up with 42 points spent in the tree (with the capstone). The only reasonable way to get to 41 points spent in the tree is to leave out the T5 for crit chance, which feels bad. Most trees can get to 41 points spent without sacrificing the best abilities.

Consider reducing the cost of the +1 Evocation DC from 2 AP to 1 AP in T5.

[Zeklijan]

This looks pretty fun, but I'd never play it outside of trs due to how annoying songs work in this game. We need a mass song buff option especially for raids. Right now, people use tumble cancelling to try to get around the annoying amount of time spent singing, but it is still super annoying.

Can we please have an option to mass sing - just have it take a charge for each ally hit with a song in the aoe around the caster? Or have it affect everyone near the caster and automatically take 6 charges in a quest and 12 charges in a raid. Until there's a quality of life buff to singing, I'd rather play literally anything else, which sucks because I actually LOVE bard both in pnp and in ddo (aside from this).

As an aside, the song that gives melee/ranged lightning strike procs - can we get more info about this? What spellpower scaling is used? Can it proc the 5 second stun effect from the capstone? What caster level is used for say a level 32 barbarian who gets my song? What's the % proc chance for a melee/ranged attack is it 20%? Is there an icd? Is there an icd per character who has the song buff? It's really hard to test this stuff because you can't do it by yourself on lamm, but all of these things drastically affect the balance of the tree/subclass.

Also just a suggestion, but maybe we could have the stormrage spell as an sla in one of the missing spots? I feel like thematically it makes a ton of sense for someone who's singing the storm's songs so-to-speak to be able to control wind/storms well enough to block arrows. If it's a balance concern, maybe just give it a long cd. Though if you aren't opposed to creating new effects, a wind wall sla would be even cooler.

Appreciate any answers to these. Again, I can't emphasize enough how much the mass songs buff option is needed for QOL.

I'm 100% on this, it takes way too long to buff everyone in raids. People start running off after I finished singing for my 3rd ally..

[SpardaX]

The base Ballad is still there. These feats are upgrades to the Ballad. You'll still be able to use the Warchanter stuff but you'll be granting less attack/damage/spellpower etc numerically. Plus, if we take things away just to add them back in, then they aren't taken away.

I and someone else in the Preview 1 Forum asked this, but I never saw a response.

What does this mean for Warchanter Lv 12 Core, exactly?

All it does for a Stormsinger is +10 HP? Or will the Charisma score Temp HP still kick in, even if you don't have the greatness feat it builds on?

If it still kicks in, great. If it doesn't, then maybe something needs to be added for Stormsinger's copy of Warchanter. +10 HP seems not great for a lv 12 Core.

[SpardaX]

This looks pretty fun, but I'd never play it outside of trs due to how annoying songs work in this game. We need a mass song buff option especially for raids. Right now, people use tumble cancelling to try to get around the annoying amount of time spent singing, but it is still super annoying.

Can we please have an option to mass sing - just have it take a charge for each ally hit with a song in the aoe around the caster? Or have it affect everyone near the caster and automatically take 6 charges in a quest and 12 charges in a raid. Until there's a quality of life buff to singing, I'd rather play literally anything else, which sucks because I actually LOVE bard both in pnp and in ddo (aside from this).

As an aside, the song that gives melee/ranged lightning strike procs - can we get more info about this? What spellpower scaling is used? Can it proc the 5 second stun effect from the capstone? What caster level is used for say a level 32 barbarian who gets my song? What's the % proc chance for a melee/ranged attack is it 20%? Is there an icd? Is there an icd per character who has the song buff? It's really hard to test this stuff because you can't do it by yourself on lamm, but all of these things drastically affect the balance of the tree/subclass.

Also just a suggestion, but maybe we could have the stormrage spell as an sla in one of the missing spots? I feel like thematically it makes a ton of sense for someone who's singing the storm's songs so-to-speak to be able to control wind/storms well enough to block arrows. If it's a balance concern, maybe just give it a long cd. Though if you aren't opposed to creating new effects, a wind wall sla would be even cooler.

Appreciate any answers to these. Again, I can't emphasize enough how much the mass songs buff option is needed for QOL.

While I agree with you sort of, I also feel the need to remind you that our current system IS literally the way it is due to a VAST QOL improvement on Bard Songs. The Aria exists for this reason.