U57 Preview 1: Imbue Overhaul

[Memnir]

Mostly for flavor. If people are truly dead set against this then it can get cut, but I have a fondness for downsides and wanted to at least gauge the temperature in the room before giving up on my dreams :P

Please.

[Lotoc]

Could one of the more meleeish scion feats like Aborea get bonus imbue dice?

[Duhboy]

Mostly for flavor. If people are truly dead set against this then it can get cut, but I have a fondness for downsides and wanted to at least gauge the temperature in the room before giving up on my dreams :P

If you're going to do this, then make the benefit worth the cost. Taking damage per on hit/ swing while doing a measly 30-something damage with a 350-400 melee power isn't a benefit. It's a waste.

[EinarMal]

Seems like you should standardize the dice across the different ways of getting the base imbue? Should they not all be 1d8? Some of the options seem bad compared to others to get the imbue toggle. That seems like a huge balance issue of this and kind of arbitrary.

[LilacDragon6]

Mostly for flavor. If people are truly dead set against this then it can get cut, but I have a fondness for downsides and wanted to at least gauge the temperature in the room before giving up on my dreams :P

This is a bad, terrible flavor. Like toothpaste and orange juice at the same time, it you add in a can of sardines.

Barbs will most likely be getting an HP trim with the other changes, they don't need this nerf as well.

[misterski]

Cleric:

• (Dark Apostate Tier 1) 1d6 Evil damage, evil spellpower
• (Warpriest Tier 4) 1d6 Fire damage, fire spellpower - replaces t4 active attack
• (Warpriest) Core 2, 4, 5 grant +1 Dice
• (Dark Apostate) Tiers 2, 3, 4 grant +1 Dice
• (Dark Apostate) Tier 5 grants +2 Dice
• (Dark Apostate) Core 3, 5, 6 grant +1 Dice

You forgot to mention the change to Wrathful Weapons: On Vorpal gain +3 imbue dice and changes Fires of Fury to light damage for 12 seconds.

[EinarMal]

The other huge elephant in the room on this is mobs that are healed from player elemental damage, and immunties.

Something really needs to be done about this.

1. Mobs don't heal from player damage
2. Remove immunity stripping from game
3. Change immunity to 30% energy absorption for mobs

So your spells or now imbues won't heal enemy mobs, and if a mob is fire immune they will work but with 30% drop in DPS meaning not totally useless.

[LightBear]

What about Bard Storm Singer's Lightning Strike?
It kinda is like an imbue isn't it?

[EinarMal]

What about Bard Storm Singer's Lightning Strike?
It kinda is like an imbue isn't it?

Not really this seems almost entirely for melee/ranged. I only see one in the list that works on spells.

[LightBear]

Mostly for flavor. If people are truly dead set against this then it can get cut, but I have a fondness for downsides and wanted to at least gauge the temperature in the room before giving up on my dreams :P

Just cut the tree in its entirety, or just the whole barbarian class.

[misterski]

What about Bard Storm Singer's Lightning Strike?
It kinda is like an imbue isn't it?

It's a proc effect not imbue-like.

[Rehmlah]

Pale Masters get a core enhancement option that adds negative energy damage on hit and negative levels on vorpal. Are there any thoughts on changing this to an imbue? It'd be neat if taking T4: Unholy Avatar also upgraded the imbue to let weapon hits strip negative energy immunity. Balance-wise, I don't know how this would affect EK/PM characters at cap (I tend to just reincarnate); it'd potentially allow them to skip an elemental spellpower, but I don't know if the defensive options in the cores would still be a better use of points.

[ZER0DIVISION]

Interesting change, but it seems to overcomplicate things and kill just as many build opportunities as it creates.

There's already plenty of existing synergies with some of these toggles, and now they're just going to be mutually exclusive from one another, losing out on some nice bonuses. Even if dice bonuses are global and enhance imbues across trees, there are other effects that don't. There's a lot of effects listed that I don't think should be considered 'imbue toggles' for the purpose of these changes, as it doesn't do anything but hurt some builds.

I know it's been mentioned already, but Embodiment of Law is pretty terrible now. As if Divine Crusader wasn't bad enough already, the change to Law of the Divine is awful. Before, it granted you the feat and gave you a pretty significant upgrade if you already had it. Now, all that extra damage is taken away and it doesn't grant you the feat anymore(at least the description no longer mentions it). Why take away such a significant ability with nothing to replace it?

[Lynnabel]

You forgot to mention the change to Wrathful Weapons: On Vorpal gain +3 imbue dice and changes Fires of Fury to light damage for 12 seconds.

Also I don't see the +1 dice in the core 5. May be a display bug.

You're right on the first account - edited - the second I am seeing some weirdness about and will investigate.

[byzantinebob]

Bonus Imbue Dice is kind of weird wording in the + tab. Does it include in the initial dice? Does it only include the extra ones on top of the first die? This could be cleared up by just making it "Total Imbue Dice" so it is completely clear.

[EinarMal]

Interesting change, but it seems to overcomplicate things and kill just as many build opportunities as it creates.

There's already plenty of existing synergies with some of these toggles, and now they're just going to be mutually exclusive from one another, losing out on some nice bonuses. Even if dice bonuses are global and enhance imbues across trees, there are other effects that don't. There's a lot of effects listed that I don't think should be considered 'imbue toggles' for the purpose of these changes, as it doesn't do anything but hurt some builds.

I know it's been mentioned already, but Embodiment of Law is pretty terrible now. As if Divine Crusader wasn't bad enough already, the change to Law of the Divine is awful. Before, it granted you the feat and gave you a pretty significant upgrade if you already had it. Now, all that extra damage is taken away and it doesn't grant you the feat anymore(at least the description no longer mentions it). Why take away such a significant ability with nothing to replace it?

It seems pretty unbalanced. As some types of damage are a lot better than others. If you were going for an "imbue" build, you are going to want Ranger/Elf for 1d8 Force (Ranged) or Barbarian (Melee) for 1d8 Bane all else equal as those things have higher dice and work on almost everything.

It is a bit unclear to me if scaling off of melee power will be balanced to scaling off of spell power as those numbers are scaled differently now.

[misterski]

You're right on the first account - edited - the second I am seeing some weirdness about and will investigate.

Sorry I misread it. Everything is fine with the imbue dice in the cores.

[Cruxader]

You're the 40th person to mention Embodiment of Law so yes, yes, I'll take a look at it.

You're right that the ES Major Form needs something to replace its 3d6. It can't become an Imbue because its a Major Form. It can grant +3 imbue dice, though. So before: 3d6 + 3d4 = 10.5 + 7.5 = 18 av light damage, after: 4d6 = 14 av light damage BUT it applies to attacks and blasts instead of just blasts and you can further increase this through feats/EDs/other trees/gear.

Directionally I think a lot of this update can be interesting, both for a melee survivability boost, and potentially for imbuement re-balancing *if done elegantly- treating the different imbuement caster classes differently in order to create some balance*.

My only question is do the designers and developers understand that there are fundamentally unbalanced designs atm between some of the classes, and even within the different imbuement classes?
For example Alchemists, which I love playing, are admittedly unusually OP compared to every class in the game right now, in several key ways including imbuements: several cores give +2 DCs, Evasion, Healing, Elemental dmg bypass, and Spell Crits -all in a single build, why would any end game caster chose any other class with so many tools available to Alchemists?

Conversely EK are interesting in concept but nobody really plays them at end game and has not for years because they are very Under powered at the moment.

The need to attract new players is great, though this should be at the entry levels while moderated at end game to avoid balance issues for advanced players that can take advantage of the fundamental design imbalances. Make it easy to on-board new while limiting the impacts of those at end game, while treating UP Imbuement classes differently than OP Imbuement classes is my recommendation. One imbuement each for alchemists yes, and then correspondingly amp up the imbuements for EKs, maybe even warlocks at this point, as well as DC casters who are badly nerfed by DW mobs and bosses (or create an AOE mass dispel magic spell that does not nerf the party? or perhaps break enchantment that simply dispells Mob DW as well to create some equivalent to elemental dmg bypass?) - augmenting the lower end caster classes at same time to achieve the desired balance and class options.

This pass could in theory address both the extremely OP Alchemist builds (making them more interesting by forcing more decisions in how to build instead of backing up the truck for their enhancement trees), as well as augmenting the very UP EK and DC-based builds by re-balancing Imbuements thoughtfully (limiting the former and augmenting the later to achieve that balance). I hope the Devs can achieve that desired and elusive balance with this update.

[ZER0DIVISION]

Should you maybe gain +1 imbue die for each imbue toggle you have? Not sure how abusable that would be, but some enhancement trees like Tempest get toggles but no additional dice, so if they have other imbues they want to use it's now kind of a waste compared to live where you can benefit from both.

[Wizard1406]

So this would give for my example with a toggle to Law: 14d8 Law + static 3d6 Fire = 17 dice at level 20 without items/filigrees.

Inquisitors are really nerfed for at least the heroic levels 12 to 20 running without another enhancement tree which gives additional dice.
12d8 Law dice become 7d8 Law dice.

Yes, why nerf inquistive *again*? The tree should retain the old imbue values.