U57 Preview 1: Imbue Overhaul

[kpak01]

Druid:

• (Automatically granted when you choose Fire or Water Elemental Form) 1d6 Fire or Cold, elemental form locked, spellpower scaling
• Elemental Forms now grant a flat +3 Dice (requires 11 druid)

What does "elemental form locked" mean? If someone routinely uses multiple elemental forms, they should not turn an imbue on, because it will prevent them from changing their form?

What does "flat +3 Dice" mean? The "flat" makes it sound like it violates your whole point of being able to get bonuses from different place. Shouldn't it just be +3 dice?

[Aelonwy]

/exactly

Maybe replace the missing 6 dice damage in Law on your side +2 dice, Improved Law +3, Greater Law +4? If that's not possible, maybe reduce the load time from 5s down to 1s in No Holds Barred?

Right now, it sounds like a 6 dice nerf for capped inquisitives...

They have the Crossbow Adept enhancements in the Inquisitive Tree they could add the necessary damage back in those enhancements which already require you to have a light or heavy crossbow equipped.

I think the rationale is that Inquisitives can get those dices back from their class trees now that they are more widely available. *snip*

A solution to this would be to increase RP scaling for inquisitive imbue or increase the base dice to compensate for the loss.

Well the rationale doesn't make sense. I have already shown how even with dice from my current class trees it is not making up for the huge nerf to the face of my character.

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!

But the biggest RED FLAG issue is that they aren't even discussing this with us.

[SpardaX]

When I use Turn Undead in game the combat chat states Contact with the divine has granted you temporary hitpoints, yet I do not actually receive any temporary hitpoints.

My experience was, I gained +10 Temps per "Bonus Imbue Dice". I had +8 at the time, 5 out of DA (not including the actual Imbue itself, since it doesn't count as a "bonus" dice), T2, T3, T4, and Core 3 and 5 and 3 out of Warpriest, Core 2, 4 and 5.

And I gained 80 Temps.

[Stravix]

A solution to this would be to increase RP scaling for inquisitive imbue or increase the base dice to compensate for the loss.

This, honestly, is the right answer. Keep inquisitive with a lower +dice as we currently see, but boost their RP scaling to compensate. That way inquisitives can keep similar damage, while not making them simply the best +dice source for other imbues.

[enkka1]

No idea whats this is about but I guess more dps is always nice though didn't know it was needed.

[Smokewolf]

@Lynnabel

Please consider adding "Force" to the list of Wizard / Sorcerer selectable damage Imbues. My justification is that Wizards and some Sorcs do use a fair amount of Force based spells so it would make sense that this be an optional Imbue selection as well.

Smoke

[Stoner81]

I don't know if ignoring the comments on the Inquisitive changes is intentional or not. But there are enough of us saying it that I think you need to address it Lynnabel.

Is the nerf to Inquisitive dice intentional and if so what is the logic behind it? Please stop ignoring the people asking about it.

Thanks.

+1

Why in the 9 Hells is Inquisitive being NERFED HARD YET AGAIN! Leave it alone for gods sake! Utterly moronic change!

Stoner81.

[plant_power]

Feats:

• (Scion of the Feywild - Legendary Feat) +3 Dice
• (Scion of the Plane of Earth - Legendary Feat) +3 Dice
• (Scion of the Plane of Fire - Legendary Feat) +3 Dice
• (Scion of the Plane of Water - Legendary Feat) +3 Dice
• (Scion of the Plane of Air - Legendary Feat) +3 Dice

I noticed when I was on Lamannia that this replaces the current 2d20 elemental damage that scales with spell power. A few comments:

1. Confirm that this is intended? It's not made clear in the OP.

2. Please take a look at the math. Even if your imbue is a d8, this is a numerical nerf. 2d20 damage is on average 21 base damage per hit, while 3d8 (best case) is only 13.5 base damage per hit. To roughly break even on a d8 imbue, these feats need to give 5 dice.

3. As an arcane archer player even 5 dice would hurt. Currently I get my 2d20 damage regardless of imbue, so if I'm helping out the party with paralyzing I still get some scaling dps added from scion. After the change, imbue dice do absolutely nothing for me if I'm in a non-damaging imbue, and removing damaging effects for imbue dice ends up costing me damage in a lot of situations while giving nothing in return (like even letting imbue dice add to the DCs of arcane archer imbues would be a nice compensation).

[droid327]

This, honestly, is the right answer. Keep inquisitive with a lower +dice as we currently see, but boost their RP scaling to compensate. That way inquisitives can keep similar damage, while not making them simply the best +dice source for other imbues.

Or give them a T5 that restores full Dshot benefit

[Lotoc]

+1

Why in the 9 Hells is Inquisitive being NERFED HARD YET AGAIN! Leave it alone for gods sake! Utterly moronic change!

Stoner81.

it's honestly rather obvious with a bit of thinking.
Inquisitive on live is overloaded with dice, which means with the imbue system going forward for an imbue focused character no matter what weapon/combat style you're going for 41 points in inquisitive will outperform anything actually relevant to your build, like how vistani is so strong even 2hf barbarians go 41 points vistani to optimize dps or horizon walker t5 is so strong that most every ranged build (including throwers and crossbow builds) will ignore their own t5 just for the extra ranged power.
Inquisitive should absolutely have their scaling per dice boosted back up to 200% RP rather than the 150% it is currently at so that per dice Inq is stronger to compensate for the loss of overall dice, but it shouldn't just be the defacto best +imbue tree.

[Lynnabel]

1. Shadar-Kai: Please make this a 1d8 to mirror the other two racial imbues, as the current patch notes are actually a downgrade from the current 1d6 this does on live.
2. Music Box - Swashbuckler: Passive: While Swashbuckling with a Rune Arm in your off hand, your Rune Arm Weapon Imbue deals an additional 1d6 Sonic damage. Would this just get changed to +1 imbue dice? This would probably be the best option for synergy with the changes to both Battle Engineer and Swashbuckler.

I like both of these, good idea on Music Box. Shadarkai can indeed sustain a bit of a boost since its on Sneak Attack vs on Attack.

This, honestly, is the right answer. Keep inquisitive with a lower +dice as we currently see, but boost their RP scaling to compensate. That way inquisitives can keep similar damage, while not making them simply the best +dice source for other imbues.

it's honestly rather obvious with a bit of thinking.
Inquisitive on live is overloaded with dice, which means with the imbue system going forward for an imbue focused character no matter what weapon/combat style you're going for 41 points in inquisitive will outperform anything actually relevant to your build, like how vistani is so strong even 2hf barbarians go 41 points vistani to optimize dps or horizon walker t5 is so strong that most every ranged build (including throwers and crossbow builds) will ignore their own t5 just for the extra ranged power.
Inquisitive should absolutely have their scaling per dice boosted back up to 200% RP rather than the 150% it is currently at so that per dice Inq is stronger to compensate for the loss of overall dice, but it shouldn't just be the defacto best +imbue tree.

Pretty spot-on analysis. This kind of shift might indeed end up being the right answer. As many many people have pointed out, if Inq becomes the single best tree for gaining imbue dice, its going to cause a ton of problems for builds as it will become optimal to be an inquisitive for the Dice while you forgo the rest of the tree. The great news is... this kind of balance is exactly what this system is designed for. Inq needs to be stronger without changing anything else? No big deal, their base imbue can just become better. It can remain completely silod from the rest of the game AND we can retain the dice synergies we want to keep.

In practice the combat text doesn't say it is doing Bane damage. Rather it states that it does Light damage.

Yep - wrong material on the damage type. And you're right that the tooltip is using some earlier verbiage. Originally these were called Sheathes, fun fact!

But the biggest RED FLAG issue is that they aren't even discussing this with us.

I can only do so much at a time. I promise I'm not ignoring you. The nature of feedback means that if I spend my time replying to literally every single post with "I am not ignoring you" then all the discussion would grind to a halt. You can trust that I read every post in the feedback threads and that I'm taking it to heart.

Speaking of which, I've got an update on Divine Crusader's much-beloved law damage going out shortly, stand by as I do some formatting :P

[Ordinary]

So my end game 20 Monk build does not gain an Imbue being Shintao based. I used to use the Snake Bite 3 piece set to gain the 12d6 poison damage, but with that changing to +1d6 imbue dice the set bonus is now completely useless to me.

i also used to take Embodiment of Order and Chaos for their additional damage. Overall my builder spit out that I would get a total of 5 imbue dice for the cost of 2 feats, one of which would have to be toggled off (just giving +1 Imbue dice).

Overall, this made me swap out Embodiment/Chaos/Snake Bite from my final build for a big loss in dps for no real return if I was to keep them. (Build in a .ddocp file available on request, note that the U57 version of the builder releases tonight (UK time)).

[Lynnabel]

Alrighty, lets get into Divine Crusader. As many of you have pointed out, and I quote, "don't mess with the law damage rargh" - so I'm simply going to not mess with the law damage and call it a day.

So, with that in mind:
Law of the Divine: (t5 DC) You gain the Embodiment of Law feat if you didn't have it already. If you did have it, you now deal 1d6 Law damage on hit per Epic/Legendary level scaling with 200% of the higher of Melee or Ranged Power. (you'll notice this is pretty much the same as before, except...)
Bring Down Wrath: (t5 DC) On a critical hit, you apply 1 stack of Vulnerability and 1 stack of Armor Piercing. In addition, your shield is now considered a Favored Weapon for the purposes of your Divine Crusader Destiny Mantle, and now Doublestrikes at 50% of the rate of your main hand Doublestrike as if it were an offhand weapon. - This is a relatively small change, we're moving the on-hit debuffs over a step from Law of the Divine over to Bring Down Wrath. This is for 2 reasons: 1 is to make sure that each t5 has something for you even if you are not a shield user, and the other is so that we can decouple the debuffs from requiring the feat.

And in Fury, Scarred by Chaos is remaining exactly the same.

So, tldr, Law damage is back, huzzah! Onwards to part 2:

What is still changing is the actual Law and Chaos ED Feats. We've got a pretty unique opportunity here to change them from badly-scaling small procs into something relatively unique, so...

Embodiment of Law: +2% doublestrike and doubleshot. If you are lawful, you also gain +2 imbue dice

Harbinger of Chaos: +3 PRR and MRR. if you are chaotic, you also gain +2 imbue dice

We hope very much that these feats encourage players to step out of the True Neutral experience a bit. We want to offer incentives for alignment to mean more in character building and these feats are an excellent place to try that kind of design out. You won't need to actually be the listed alignment to take the feats, just to get the imbue dice, so if you just want doublestrike or some PRR feel free to snag em as you level up.

Anyway, thank you all for your feedback so far! We can't wait to show you this and all of the other changes we're making during the next preview.

[Stravix]

Alrighty, lets get into Divine Crusader. As many of you have pointed out, and I quote, "don't mess with the law damage rargh" - so I'm simply going to not mess with the law damage and call it a day.

So, with that in mind:
Law of the Divine: (t5 DC) You gain the Embodiment of Law feat if you didn't have it already. If you did have it, you now deal 1d6 Law damage on hit per Epic/Legendary level scaling with 200% of the higher of Melee or Ranged Power. (you'll notice this is pretty much the same as before, except...)
Bring Down Wrath: (t5 DC) On a critical hit, you apply 1 stack of Vulnerability and 1 stack of Armor Piercing. In addition, your shield is now considered a Favored Weapon for the purposes of your Divine Crusader Destiny Mantle, and now Doublestrikes at 50% of the rate of your main hand Doublestrike as if it were an offhand weapon. - This is a relatively small change, we're moving the on-hit debuffs over a step from Law of the Divine over to Bring Down Wrath. This is for 2 reasons: 1 is to make sure that each t5 has something for you even if you are not a shield user, and the other is so that we can decouple the debuffs from requiring the feat.

And in Fury, Scarred by Chaos is remaining exactly the same.

So, tldr, Law damage is back, huzzah! Onwards to part 2:

What is still changing is the actual Law and Chaos ED Feats. We've got a pretty unique opportunity here to change them from badly-scaling small procs into something relatively unique, so...

Embodiment of Law: +2% doublestrike and doubleshot. If you are lawful, you also gain +2 imbue dice

Harbinger of Chaos: +3 PRR and MRR. if you are chaotic, you also gain +2 imbue dice

We hope very much that these feats encourage players to step out of the True Neutral experience a bit. We want to offer incentives for alignment to mean more in character building and these feats are an excellent place to try that kind of design out. You won't need to actually be the listed alignment to take the feats, just to get the imbue dice, so if you just want doublestrike or some PRR feel free to snag em as you level up.

Anyway, thank you all for your feedback so far! We can't wait to show you this and all of the other changes we're making during the next preview.

Honestly, like it, but I have to ask, why is lawful giving you a chance at something, and chaotic giving you a consistent bonus? It feels like the doublestrike/shot chance would jive better with chaotic, and the consistent defenses of PRR/MRR would be perfect for lawful.

[Lynnabel]

Honestly, like it, but I have to ask, why is lawful giving you a chance at something, and chaotic giving you a consistent bonus? It feels like the doublestrike/shot chance would jive better with chaotic, and the consistent defenses of PRR/MRR would be perfect for lawful.

Yep, can't argue with that. Consider them swapped!

[droid327]

Inquisitive should absolutely have their scaling per dice boosted back up to 200% RP rather than the 150% it is currently at so that per dice Inq is stronger to compensate for the loss of overall dice, but it shouldn't just be the defacto best +imbue tree.

It'd need to be 300% to match the slope of the line for 12d8 @ 150%. But even then, you're a constant 27 damage behind...

54(0.015r + 1) = 27(0.03r + 1) + 27, where 12d8 = 45 and 6d8 = 27

But what if Inqui die were loaded? Then you could achieve basically the same damage curve without needing the extra die

6(d8+4) would give you 51 average, which is a lot closer to 12d8=54, and then you could leave the RP scaling as-is

"But wouldnt that just make additional die from other trees too powerful then?"

Not really, since usually you're pairing Inqui with something like EK or VC that scales on spellpower, and that scales much higher already:

d8@600 SP = 4.5*7 = 31.5 per die
d8+4@150 RP = 8.5 * 4 = 34 per die

So its pretty close for practical values of SP and RP. You can choose whichever imbue (loaded Inqui on RP, or regular Spellpower imbue) happens to be better for your specific numbers, but its not going to be a case where there's always a far-and-away BIS

Plus, 54 -> 51 is still a slight nerf going in, too

[boredGamer]

No idea whats this is about but I guess more dps is always nice though didn't know it was needed.

Yeah - what is the point of this? The stated design goal is: With Update 57 we are embarking on a series of global overhauls that aim to streamline and shake up the game and bring new cohesion across multiple builds.

"Shaking stuff up" is rather arbitrary. Just do a rand() to the DB for all values, it will shake things up, I guess?

"new cohension" - how does this bring new cohesion? I don't really get how this does that, or why we're doing this.

That said, cool I guess?

[droid327]

Alrighty, lets get into Divine Crusader. As many of you have pointed out, and I quote, "don't mess with the law damage rargh" - so I'm simply going to not mess with the law damage and call it a day.

So, with that in mind:
Law of the Divine: (t5 DC) You gain the Embodiment of Law feat if you didn't have it already. If you did have it, you now deal 1d6 Law damage on hit per Epic/Legendary level scaling with 200% of the higher of Melee or Ranged Power. (you'll notice this is pretty much the same as before, except...)
Bring Down Wrath: (t5 DC) On a critical hit, you apply 1 stack of Vulnerability and 1 stack of Armor Piercing. In addition, your shield is now considered a Favored Weapon for the purposes of your Divine Crusader Destiny Mantle, and now Doublestrikes at 50% of the rate of your main hand Doublestrike as if it were an offhand weapon. - This is a relatively small change, we're moving the on-hit debuffs over a step from Law of the Divine over to Bring Down Wrath. This is for 2 reasons: 1 is to make sure that each t5 has something for you even if you are not a shield user, and the other is so that we can decouple the debuffs from requiring the feat.

And in Fury, Scarred by Chaos is remaining exactly the same.

So, tldr, Law damage is back, huzzah! Onwards to part 2:

What is still changing is the actual Law and Chaos ED Feats. We've got a pretty unique opportunity here to change them from badly-scaling small procs into something relatively unique, so...

Embodiment of Law: +2% doublestrike and doubleshot. If you are lawful, you also gain +2 imbue dice

Harbinger of Chaos: +3 PRR and MRR. if you are chaotic, you also gain +2 imbue dice

We hope very much that these feats encourage players to step out of the True Neutral experience a bit. We want to offer incentives for alignment to mean more in character building and these feats are an excellent place to try that kind of design out. You won't need to actually be the listed alignment to take the feats, just to get the imbue dice, so if you just want doublestrike or some PRR feel free to snag em as you level up.

Anyway, thank you all for your feedback so far! We can't wait to show you this and all of the other changes we're making during the next preview.

This looks much more palatable!

Since Law of the Divine is getting some of its benefit exported, could you reduce the cost from 2 DP to 1? Otherwise, you're increasing the cost to existing Divine Crusaders just to maintain what they already have

[Lynnabel]

Yeah - what is the point of this? The stated design goal is: With Update 57 we are embarking on a series of global overhauls that aim to streamline and shake up the game and bring new cohesion across multiple builds.

"Shaking stuff up" is rather arbitrary. Just do a rand() to the DB for all values, it will shake things up, I guess?

"new cohension" - how does this bring new cohesion? I don't really get how this does that, or why we're doing this.

That said, cool I guess?

Shake stuff up = a ton of things in the game are now much more viable to build around, meaning players can focus on those now, which means more build variety

Streamline = a ton of things in the game use shared, trackable stats instead of narrow and arbitrary ones that are only used for that one thing

So we're trying to build a system that elevates a ton of new builds while letting those builds gain power from shared sources.

This looks much more palatable!

Since Law of the Divine is getting some of its benefit exported, could you reduce the cost from 2 DP to 1? Otherwise, you're increasing the cost to existing Divine Crusaders just to maintain what they already have

Sure, seems reasonable to me.

[helpfulguy1234]

Is the barbarian taking damage per dice staying in?

This is extremely crippling in higher skull content, and melees already are not doing great.