U57 Preview 1: Imbue Overhaul

[thegreatcthulhu]

One solution that comes to mind regarding embodiment of law, is to make it a separate toggle. It's an EPIC feat that becomes pretty much worthless, and be extension makes Crusader that much worse. Have one exclusive heroic toggle, and if you pick Law or Chaos epic feat you get another, also exclusive epic toggle.

And yeah, it might not be a big deal for some, but that's a silly reason to justify a nerf. If it's not that great, maybe it should be buffed instead?

If you mean it's worthless now on live, I will agree with that sentiment. As someone else in another thread once said, it's basically a "eh, I dunno what else to take" martial feat.

@Lynn - Again, here's hoping you'll have time to liven things up in the next two previews.

[Dendrix]

Should negative spellpower take over governing Chaos and Evil damage instead of Light spellpower?

This would mean that the current spell power schema is:

• Light: also Good and lawful
• Negative: also evil and chaos
• Repair: also rust
• Force: also physical

No. I don't think that is a good idea, other than it looking "pretty" that negative affects more things and the numbers of things affected by light matches negative.
Negative is the match of Positive, not Light and there are a bunch of spells and abilities that it covers already (also poison)

For Warlocks that would be a major nerf. Warlocks currently need three types of spellpower: Light (and Alignment), Force and Pact-Elemental. Changing this would force warlocks to try to have to have 4 spell powers all at once and that's simply not possible, there aren't enough slots available. That's not a trade off of abilities - which is a good thing in many ways, it's a straight up reduction to their capabilities.
The Soul Eater tree needs Chaos (Light)
The Enlightened spirit tree needs Light spell power
The Tainted Scholar tree wants Force spell power (as it keys off your Eldritch Blast)
Your Eldritch Blast wants Force (or Evil) and Pact-Elemental
That's really 3 spell powers. Force, Pact-Elemental, Light. You can, kind of, dump force and go all in on light but even there some force is good.

Your proposed changes:
The Soul Eater tree: Negative
The Enlightened spirit: Light
The Tainted Scholar: Force
Your Eldritch Blast wants Force (or Light) and Pact-Elemental
That's 4 spell powers. dump force and go all in on light, that's still 3. It's too much to try gear up for, there aren't enough slots


I think proposing such a wide ranging change to a basic underlying system in the middle of a review process of other elements is, well the best description I can use for it is ambitious, a better description would be, foolish. If it's going to be done it needs to be examined and evaluated by itself. The distribution of alignment to light, negative and positive is an area that could be debated in some depth.

[ivorycoaster]

Here are some thoughts and concerns..

1) the scion is a huge source of damage, and in my case it is sonic damage on an elec EK. Inherently every EK build (even tiefling) deals with some pretty big immunity issues. Having synergy with electric and sonic is a subpar but functional workaround. With around 900 sonic spellpower the scion imbue is hitting for around 1k per hit on dummies. Taking the scion from 2d20 (2-40 dmg + spellpower) to 3d24 (3-24) and also losing versatility in the process is a pretty huge deal. This is of course specific to my build, but a 4 dice (4d32) increase would be more reasonable regardless.. (edit: this also benefits from the fatesinger tier 1 vulnerability, but again, that is only build specific)

The main issue with endgame content in the game right now is that caster, namely sorc, alch and druid, are far outperforming melee at every level, and this is in part due to built in immunity strips. Finding ways to work around immunity only closes that gap a little bit but it is also a big quality of life improvement regardless of comparison to other builds.

2) Warchanter is due for a cost decrease in it's tree. This is a great opportunity to do so. As mentioned by others, 3 AP for a 1d6 imbue is sub par compared to other similar imbues. To be perfectly honest, that entire line of enhancements could use some reduction in AP cost.

3) Tiefling and Scoundrel imbues are pretty much entirely losing their usefulness. If you are playing any build that would take any usefulness from these cores, it will be a difficult task to get a mob below 75% hp, only to receive a 1d4 dice. I think something along the lines of a racial 1d6 imbue for core 1, and a +1 dice for core 3 and 5, would make much more sense. Perhaps a tier 3 improvement to 1d8 would also be required to make these particular imbues relevant if still rarely used.


Just two cents based on the current structure based on preview one. Overall, I will say, this idea is fantastic. Hopefully it will also provide some reprieve from general ambient lag!

[Aelonwy]

I am not a fan of this change. I really do NOT enjoy exclusives and that is part of the reason I converted my AA (of many years mind you) into an Inquisitor in the first place. Let me explain. Other classes in other enhancement trees spend their AP and benefit from most or ALL of those enhancements simultaneously. AA feels like a ton of wasted Action Points because so many of the enhancements are already exclusive that you are only benefitting from half or less of those AP/enhancements at any one time. So? So now we are moving more enhancements/feats/classes in that direction? Really?! And this increases the joy and entertainment of the game? How?

Okay so currently my Inquisitor is 10 Paladin/10 Rogue Gnome with 42 AP in Inq, 19 in KotC, she has 14x 1d8 law dice and 2d6 Light, she took the Embodiment of Law feat (because I felt it was thematic) so 10 bane and 20 law dmg, and her sentient weapon had 2 piece Reverberation 4d6 + 1d6 per character epic level in sonic damage.

So you are telling me... my Inquisitor got nerfed from 14d8 law down to 8d8 law (almost half... this after Inquisitor has already suffered 7 nerfs in the past) AND my 2d6 light damage will be changed to 2 extra die damage? my epic feat won't do anything for me and my sentient weapon damage got nerfed all the way down to 1 extra die damage... so let me see... that's 8d8 from Inq + 2 die from KotC, +1 die from sentient weapon. So 11d8. Doesn't even bring me back to pre-nerf Inquisitor ONLY damage And I'm supposed to be happy with this? I'm supposed to do what? Suck it up buttercup! What exactly can I do to improve my character anywhere close to what she was before this massive cow from orbit nerf? This does not look like a recipe for keeping players. I don't know what you expected the response to be.

I already feel like feedback and time spent on Lammania is wasted. You guys never seem to listen. Please, please prove me wrong this time.

[TueNictGut]

Hey there,
Very ambitious changes and interesting project, i apreciate it!

Iam a fan of melee ninja and would like to propose some changes here both regarding the added life in t5 and regarding the imbue availability.
Atm. The ninja tree is in bad shape for melee and you need pure Monk to get the crit multiplyer from t6.
This way you cant multiclass and have no access to imbuedice at all.
The hp changes force you to spend 2 aditional ap for the added hp instead of integrating it into an existing t5 like for example in assassin.

A great solution, that would make melee ninja playable would be:

Change deadly striker to give crit multiplyer to all one handed melee weapons you are centered with
and add the 20% hp here too, maybe on the condition, that you have at least 2 melee weapon feats, if u want to buff melee more than ranged here

Otherwise or additionaly consider to add in some imbuedice in the ninja tree, maybe even in tier 5, which is most likely the baddest t5 in the game atm.

This would allow multiclassing for melee ninjas to get some imbue dice or disarm trap ability.
Ninja would still be a bad tree without any melee power but you could at least play it if u want to.

This way you would make melee ninia more playable while introducing your new system with just a few easy changes.


While you at it consider reducing the ap cost of no mercy from 6 to 3 ap in tier 4 to bring it on par with thief acrobat.


Thx for the great work and pls consider the proposed changes.

TueNichtGut

[droid327]

Warlock:

• (Enlightened Spirit Tier 4) 1d6 Light, Light spell power (ALSO APPLIES TO ELDRITCH BLASTS, no other toggle does this)

This is curious...

Right now a pure Warlock can do 6d6+10d4 base damage on EB. Add in another 2d6 from enhancements that require more than 4 levels of Lock, and you have 8d6+10d4=53 base damage

That means a /4 Lock who already does 2d6+2d4=12 dmg could approximate decent EB damage just from Imbue dice, since everything else would be the same for both builds.

That opens the possibility of something like a 16 DA/4 Lock, getting +2 die from Warpriest and +6 from DA to do 9d6=31.5 Light damage on their L4 Cone, which with Utterdark would be Evil+Light

So 43.5/53 = 82% of the Cone damage of a pure Lock for only /4 Levels, plus all the benefits of the Cleric spellbook up to L8, Domain, and DA defenses...

[Lynnabel]

Howdy folks, time for a Thursday Bugfix Roundup. Stay tuned till the end of the post for some spicy stuff, but first...

Bugs Fixed (and therefore do not need further reports):

• barb frenzy now scales correctly offensively
• celestial spirit now grants +3 dice instead of its proc
• EK stuff now scales correctly with dice and spellpower
• artificer imbue now correctly does electric damage
• elemental weapon spells now correctly apply their effects
• lighting the candle fixed - now deals 1d6 fire all the time, with an additional 1d6 force on crit
• dark apostate proc now scales correctly
• fixed pal imbue icon on tree
• pal imbue now reports with the combat log correctly
• Warpriest fire imbue now correctly deals damage
• Agility Engine and Unlock Potential have better icons, descriptions, and actually boost their imbue dice now
• Wiz, sorc, and alchemist dice from leveling now automatically update without needing you to log in and out again

Balance Stuff! (fun part!)

• Iced Edges is now just 1 rank and is no longer a prereq of the rest of the ice line, so you can skip the imbue if you want the other stuff
• Several ED abilities now have Imbue Dice:
  
  • The Crusade! buff in Divine Crusader now grants +1 dice
  • Ghost Touch in LD is now "Esoteric Touch" and grants both Ghost Touch and +1 Imbue Dice
  • Shared Mantle in PA now also grants +3 Imbue Dice while within the PA Mantle
• Scion of Arborea feat now grants +1 Imbue Dice
• Barbarian's Frenzy now only deals 1 damage to you on hit regardless of your dice

Other Stuff:

1. Don't stress about the spellpower shakeup, sometimes I just ask people questions to start a discussion - its not planned for this update, it really was just a "hmm I wonder what the players think" kind of thing, I promise.
2. I'm still looking at the Law/Chaos ED feats (remember, its been less than 24 hrs since the preview started :P) and have a few cool ideas but nothing concrete. If you've got a radical idea for these feats now's the time!

[Stravix]

This is curious...

Right now a pure Warlock can do 6d6+10d4 base damage on EB. Add in another 2d6 from enhancements that require more than 4 levels of Lock, and you have 8d6+10d4=53 base damage

That means a /4 Lock who already does 2d6+2d4=12 dmg could approximate decent EB damage just from Imbue dice, since everything else would be the same for both builds.

That opens the possibility of something like a 16 DA/4 Lock, getting +2 die from Warpriest and +6 from DA to do 9d6=31.5 Light damage on their L4 Cone, which with Utterdark would be Evil+Light

So 43.5/53 = 82% of the Cone damage of a pure Lock for only /4 Levels, plus all the benefits of the Cleric spellbook up to L8, Domain, and DA defenses...

That's... an interesting idea actually. Wonder how well that could work in other splits as well, as only 12 DA would be needed for that last die. Also opens up locks to extra scaling options...

[thegreatcthulhu]

Howdy folks, time for a Thursday Bugfix Roundup. Stay tuned till the end of the post for some spicy stuff, but first...

Bugs Fixed (and therefore do not need further reports):

• barb frenzy now scales correctly offensively and only does 1 hp per hit to self regardless of dice
• celestial spirit now grants +3 dice instead of its proc
• EK stuff now scales correctly with dice and spellpower
• artificer imbue now correctly does electric damage
• elemental weapon spells now correctly apply their effects
• lighting the candle fixed - now deals 1d6 fire all the time, with an additional 1d6 force on crit
• dark apostate proc now scales correctly
• fixed pal imbue icon on tree
• pal imbue now reports with the combat log correctly
• Warpriest fire imbue now correctly deals damage

Balance Stuff! (fun part!)

• Iced Edges is now just 1 rank and is no longer a prereq of the rest of the ice line, so you can skip the imbue if you want the other stuff
• Several ED abilities now have Imbue Dice:
  
  • The Crusade! buff in Divine Crusader now grants +1 dice
  • Ghost Touch in LD is now "Esoteric Touch" and grants both Ghost Touch and +1 Imbue Dice
  • Shared Mantle in PA now also grants +3 Imbue Dice while within the PA Mantle
  
  
• Scion of Arborea feat now grants +1 Imbue Dice

Other Stuff:

1. Don't stress about the spellpower shakeup, sometimes I just ask people questions to start a discussion - its not planned for this update, it really was just a "hmm I wonder what the players think" kind of thing, I promise.
2. I'm still looking at the Law/Chaos ED feats (remember, its been less than 24 hrs since the preview started :P) and have a few cool ideas but nothing concrete. If you've got a radical idea for these feats now's the time!

Spicey indeed, Crusade and Scion of Arborea changes will be making me itchy to try out preview 2... or whenever you apply these changes.


Crazy ideas for Law of the Divine -

1. Get rid of it and bring back Strikedown or some other kind of melee attack (you know that weird animation that plays when you hold block and use divine sacrifice with a 2 hander? That would be cool if that were a real ability). I've found it a bit odd that Crusader doesn't give another clicky ability versus Dreadnaught and Fury of The Wild :..(

2. Have it provide a significant enhancement to Smite Evil - (SMITE NOVA! )

3. Have it add lawful damage to Consecration that scales with fire spell power and also enhances the healing on consecration

4. Similar to Censure Demons, have it provide a chance to apply a different kind of debuff to the target on vorpal hit, based on their alignment (I.E. Lawful DOT for chaotic, stun for lawful and turn the enemies head into a pumpkin if they're neutral).

[droid327]

[*]I'm still looking at the Law/Chaos ED feats (remember, its been less than 24 hrs since the preview started :P) and have a few cool ideas but nothing concrete. If you've got a radical idea for these feats now's the time! [/LIST]

The radical idea might simply be "leave them as they are"

Just because you're streamlining proc damage into one system doesnt mean EVERY SINGLE source of proc damage is going to become part of the system

Things like Dripping and the acid proc on Dino weapons arent converting to Imbue die...I think the Embodiment feats could remain their own standalone procs too, especially since A) they're restricted to L28+ characters anyway, and B) DC interacts with Emb of Law in a way that cant easily be translated to the all-in-one Imbue system

I just cant think of any other way to preserve that 10d6 boost to your DPS, if you're not willing to simply give it +10 Imbue Dice

Speaking of which...there's a bit of fuzzy math involving the initial die step. Each imbue starts you off with 1 die, but that initial die doesnt transfer to other imbues. So anyone running two imbues right now is going to be 1 die short when you put them together. Can we make it where the initial imbue also gives +1 steps to other imbues?

[Lynnabel]

Law/Chaos ED Feat Musing:

Several thoughts in no particular order:

• We could just boost the damage on these feats considerably. Say 1d12 vs opposite alignment, 1d8 vs everyone else
• That would feel kind of bad though, it means you'd feel obligated to drop a flavorful melee/ranged scaling imbue for a different one based purely on DPS
• Its also kind of bad to have an obviously best Imbue out there.
• Counterpoint to the above, unlike other imbues, this one costs a Feat slot instead of just AP, so since its a higher cost doesn't that mean it should be better?
• What if these also gave bonus imbue dice if you match the alignment of the feat, say Embodiment of Law also granted +2 dice if you were lawful, even if you don't actually use it as your imbue. That would mean that there's some additional bonuses to vectoring alignment into your builds (since right now people tend to gravitate towards Neutral if available).
• That being said, its also very very late in the game to be giving an imbue. So following the previous thought, maybe these should simply grant you a bunch of stats if you're the matching alignment (and then some of those stats are imbue dice) and we forgo the actual imbue altogether?
• This would also mean that non-imbue characters can take these feats for the regular boost in DPS, and further encourage players to step out of True Neutral.

Lots to noodle on.

[Stravix]

Law/Chaos ED Feat Musing:

Several thoughts in no particular order:

• We could just boost the damage on these feats considerably. Say 1d12 vs opposite alignment, 1d8 vs everyone else
• That would feel kind of bad though, it means you'd feel obligated to drop a flavorful melee/ranged scaling imbue for a different one based purely on DPS
• Its also kind of bad to have an obviously best Imbue out there.
• Counterpoint to the above, unlike other imbues, this one costs a Feat slot instead of just AP, so since its a higher cost doesn't that mean it should be better?
• What if these also gave bonus imbue dice if you match the alignment of the feat, say Embodiment of Law also granted +2 dice if you were lawful, even if you don't actually use it as your imbue. That would mean that there's some additional bonuses to vectoring alignment into your builds (since right now people tend to gravitate towards Neutral if available).
• That being said, its also very very late in the game to be giving an imbue. So following the previous thought, maybe these should simply grant you a bunch of stats if you're the matching alignment (and then some of those stats are imbue dice) and we forgo the actual imbue altogether?
• This would also mean that non-imbue characters can take these feats for the regular boost in DPS, and further encourage players to step out of True Neutral.

Lots to noodle on.

I do like the bonuses to matching alignments, would give a reason to actually care about your alignment again, but would likely swing a bit too hard in the opposite way, I would think. That said, one thing that needs to happen is that each imbue you get after the first needs to add a dice alongside it.

If every imbue (after your first) came caked in with at least one die, it would make picking up imbues still worthwhile. For instance, if I wanted to make an inquisitor, the feat would do literally nothing for me, despite being perfectly flavored, and worse, if you were an EK, you would just never want to pick it up, as it would scale worse.

[Arlathen]

@Lynnabel,

Did you catch my post about the Scion Feats? To extremely summarise:

Suggestion:

• Please, please, PLEASE, let the Scion Feats add a 1D6 Imbue toggle of the appropriate element to the feat, scaling with the best of 200% Melee / 200% Ranged / 100% Spellpower.
• Also, please keep the addition of the +3 Imbue dice in the feat. This would put the basic Feat on similar dice to what it does now, but with new opportunities to scale with a few changes in gear and feats.

These are LEGENDARY Scion feats that we have to wait to get until level 30, so can we keep them a little bit special in what they do? Please?

Also: I will send you cookies, Lynn.

[SWCarter]

Warchanter is due for a cost decrease in it's tree. This is a great opportunity to do so. As mentioned by others, 3 AP for a 1d6 imbue is sub par compared to other similar imbues. To be perfectly honest, that entire line of enhancements could use some reduction in AP cost.

This. Warchanter is one of the most AP-demanding trees in the game - its imbue really shouldn't be a 3 AP investment. Resonant Arms in Swashbuckler is even worse and requires 6 AP today, so hopefully that will also be reduced as part of the change to make it an imbue.

[Lynnabel]

This. Warchanter is one of the most AP-demanding trees in the game - its imbue really shouldn't be a 3 AP investment. Resonant Arms in Swashbuckler is even worse and requires 6 AP today, so hopefully that will also be reduced as part of the change to make it an imbue.

Great news, both of these have already been changed to 1 rank enhancements!

[TueNictGut]

Hey there,
Very ambitious changes and interesting project, i apreciate it!
Sry for doublepost, just wanted to make sure the post doesnt slip through as i posted paralell to Lynnabel.

Iam a fan of melee ninja and would like to propose some changes here both regarding the added life in t5 and regarding the imbue availability.
Atm. The ninja tree is in bad shape for melee and you need pure Monk to get the crit multiplyer from t6.
This way you cant multiclass and only have access to imbuedice in the henshintree
The hp changes force you to spend 2 aditional ap for the added hp instead of integrating it into an existing t5 like for example in assassin.

A great solution, that would make melee ninja playable would be:

Change deadly striker to give crit multiplyer to all one handed melee weapons you are centered with
and add the 20% hp here too.

Otherwise or additionaly consider to add in some imbuedice in the ninja tree, maybe even in tier 5, which is most likely the baddest t5 in the game atm.

This would allow multiclassing for melee ninjas to get some imbue dice or disarm trap ability or haste boost etc.
Ninja would still be a bad tree without any melee power but you could at least play it if u want to.

This way you would make melee ninia more playable while introducing the new system with just a few easy changes.


While you at it consider reducing the ap cost of no mercy from 6 to 3 ap in tier 4 to bring it on par with thief acrobat.


Thx for the great work and pls consider the proposed changes.

TueNichtGut

[Lotoc]

Suggestion regarding imbues in general
make their base dice of each imbue 0dx but every imbue you take grants +1 imbue dice, this way putting a point in an imbue you wouldn't want to use just for accessing imbue dice for another you would want feels a lot less like a wasted point.

[thegreatcthulhu]

Law/Chaos ED Feat Musing:

Several thoughts in no particular order:

• We could just boost the damage on these feats considerably. Say 1d12 vs opposite alignment, 1d8 vs everyone else
• That would feel kind of bad though, it means you'd feel obligated to drop a flavorful melee/ranged scaling imbue for a different one based purely on DPS
• Its also kind of bad to have an obviously best Imbue out there.
• Counterpoint to the above, unlike other imbues, this one costs a Feat slot instead of just AP, so since its a higher cost doesn't that mean it should be better?
• What if these also gave bonus imbue dice if you match the alignment of the feat, say Embodiment of Law also granted +2 dice if you were lawful, even if you don't actually use it as your imbue. That would mean that there's some additional bonuses to vectoring alignment into your builds (since right now people tend to gravitate towards Neutral if available).
• That being said, its also very very late in the game to be giving an imbue. So following the previous thought, maybe these should simply grant you a bunch of stats if you're the matching alignment (and then some of those stats are imbue dice) and we forgo the actual imbue altogether?
• This would also mean that non-imbue characters can take these feats for the regular boost in DPS, and further encourage players to step out of True Neutral.

Lots to noodle on.

I'd say that those thoughts are headed in the right direction... you raised an interesting point about this; from testing it on Lam, it didn't seem to make much sense to have it equipped on a "Pure Paladin" who is by default not going to be using any imbue beyond likely Slayer of Evil.

Suddenly changing gears for another imbue (that was clearly better) seemed odd to me.

[Abilbo]

Currently the system works to allow you to choose 1 of 4 options to place on your weapon. Now the spell seems to add 1 imbue dice, and then 2 imbue dice with greater elemental weapons, but there is no base to the spell, meaning you have to be getting the imbue from somewhere else. If you are in the battle engineer tree, your only option is to add electric damage, and then adding further dice to that electric damage, which is all very good and all until you meet those mobs that are immune or healed by electric damage.

Also, is the character sheet supposed to accurately reflect the correct number in imbue dice you are getting? Example, I am a 20 artificer with 41 points in battle engineer, taking the 1d6 electric imbue, and then the T4 and T5 additional imbue dice. I also went into Draconic ED and chose the 3 extra imbue dice there as well, but on my character sheet, under general combat, it is showing 1 bonus imbue dice. This is confusing.

[Firebreed]

- I think it only makes sense for some Imbue Dice to be added to Shiradi (!) and Shadowdancer.

- Regarding the Chaos/Law feats, as long as they don't "force" you to replace the imbue you're using up to that point (because they are clearly better), I don't mind what they are; be it imbues/stats/stacking on-hit dmg/whatever.

- The spellpower/alignment possible change is very complicated and very delicate - I strongly urge you to be extra thorough during relevant discussions/decisions/research.

- It does seem that builds like Inquisitives and Warlocks will end up nerfed in the current build unless they invest in imbue dice elsewhere, which requires sacrificing other things. This to say that comparisons are better drawn without assuming heavy changes to builds.