U57 Preview 2: Imbue Overhaul

[Xezom]

The Jaded change from preview one is definitely a good change. Glad to see that went in.

Still would argue that Pure AA needs something in it's T5 to compensate for it losing it's identity as a top tier imbue tree, and from a CC archer standpoint I'd love to see the Imbue system overhaul give the non-damaging imbues some love as well. I know that those of us that play full CC/Efffect archers are few and far between but we are out here. I wouldn't put any power in the lower tiers of the tree at all so it's not abusable to anyone other than true AAs tho. The idea would be to define and sharpen their identity as king of Imbues for pure AAs. RuneBow would be a prime candidate as far as places to add some spice. Also while we're on the topic, I'd love if the Capstone allowed you to choose between 4 Dex and 4 Wisdom.

As long as your redoing stuff in the Elf Arcane Archer tree for the imbues, could all the cores be redone to match the progression of every other tree in the game; it's so silly that one has to respec their character in epic levels if they want the later cores on an Elf AA build. The entire level progression of the Elf AA cores that follows some old school design concept feels so out of place with the existence of universal trees.

See this one I disagree with. Part of the drawback of playing a free AA Splash (or off class AA) is that the progression is slower. You get way more firepower with this system overhaul by having access to AA, it should be gated. Granted, those secondary Imbues only work with Bows, it's still a very powerful additional tree for anyone building Imbue dice. I agree that it's sorta goofy to have to respec in your epic levels to adjust your heroic points, but for the extra power you get, I personally feel like it's a fair trade. If Elf/H-Elf AA had no drawbacks, it'd be the undisputed king of Imbues beating even the Default AA given it'll have access to the Imbue dice from other Class trees that True Ranger AA simply will not have without multiclassing. At endgame, E-AA will still be superior to ranger AA when played with any other class with decent Imbue dice (Silver Flame dark Apostate Arcane Archers are going to be kinda gross), so I personally don't feel that it's wrong to make it take some extra time to reach that point.

[Jarlaxis]

Copied a Favored Soul WS build over to test things. Favored weapon is Longbow, tried to turn on the toggle and it said "wrong weapon type" since there are SF levels as well tried handwraps. The toggle acts like an attack and doesn't stay on. Swapped back to longbow and again "wrong weapon type"

[Zeklijan]

Destinies:

• Shiradi Champion mantle gains 1d77 per 7 bonus dice - this is not an imbue toggle BUT gains benefits from your imbue dice!
• Draconic Tier 3 now grants +1/2/3 Dice
• 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

What type of bonuses are Crusade, Esoteric Touch and Shared Mantle's dice bonus? Do they stack with the draconic extra dice or no?

[Lynnabel]

Copied a Favored Soul WS build over to test things. Favored weapon is Longbow, tried to turn on the toggle and it said "wrong weapon type" since there are SF levels as well tried handwraps. The toggle acts like an attack and doesn't stay on. Swapped back to longbow and again "wrong weapon type"

Great catch, now fixed.

What type of bonuses are Crusade, Esoteric Touch and Shared Mantle's dice bonus? Do they stack with the draconic extra dice or no?

They have no type, so they should stack with everything.

[Cableman]

Testing with my enlightened spirit warlock ( level 30 )

Should be getting 4d6 imbue light damage on each melee strike and eldritch aura strike.

The imbue damage is not applying at all.

I'm only seeing the imbue light damage apply to Eldritch Burst and Spirit Blast. It doesn't work on the aura or your basic blast. It also seemed like spell power wasn't affecting the imbue die, with 10d6, I was sometimes seeing damage in the 20's and 30's on the training dummy.

[ivorycoaster]

Shared Mantle and the tier 3 draconic epic destiny enhancement do not stack. is this WAI?

[Lynnabel]

Shared Mantle and the tier 3 draconic epic destiny enhancement do not stack. is this WAI?

Actually it turns out that the Draconic enhancement is currently nonfuctional - now fixed internally! Great catch, thank you.

[Xezom]

Bugs for DA Warlock Dilly

Bless and Prayer do not proc the Warlock Dilly Imbue for the added fire damage on hit. Doesn't matter if it's SLA Prayer or spell book. Neither work. Tested all of the "offensive" pray for Mercy Spells at level 7 with pray for mercy point taken and Warlock Dilly Imbue active.

[Lynnabel]

I'm only seeing the imbue light damage apply to Eldritch Burst and Spirit Blast. It doesn't work on the aura or your basic blast. It also seemed like spell power wasn't affecting the imbue die, with 10d6, I was sometimes seeing damage in the 20's and 30's on the training dummy.

Investigating!

Update: I think I've gotten this fixed. Thank you!

[rabidfox]

See this one I disagree with. Part of the drawback of playing a free AA Splash (or off class AA) is that the progression is slower. You get way more firepower with this system overhaul by having access to AA, it should be gated. Granted, those secondary Imbues only work with Bows, it's still a very powerful additional tree for anyone building Imbue dice. I agree that it's sorta goofy to have to respec in your epic levels to adjust your heroic points, but for the extra power you get, I personally feel like it's a fair trade. If Elf/H-Elf AA had no drawbacks, it'd be the undisputed king of Imbues beating even the Default AA given it'll have access to the Imbue dice from other Class trees that True Ranger AA simply will not have without multiclassing. At endgame, E-AA will still be superior to ranger AA when played with any other class with decent Imbue dice (Silver Flame dark Apostate Arcane Archers are going to be kinda gross), so I personally don't feel that it's wrong to make it take some extra time to reach that point.

We have universal trees. It just silly that anything related to heroic trees requires epic levels to take. It's an outdate design model.

[Monkey_Archer]

Fighter stuff is actually in the other thread, check it out!

Kensei are currently glass cannon dps builds, and nothing more... and they aren't even the top melee dps build...

I don't understand or support nerfing their dps this hard and justifying it with a bit of self healing. lol

[Firebreed]

Glad to see more people bringing up Arcane Archer in this preview, despite the fact that Lynn clearly hasn't been interested in discussing it in either thread (no hard feelings).

In one last attempt to generate discussion around it, I'll quote my post regarding AA from the previous thread:

Arcane Archer has been lacking as a tree for some time now, being strictly inferior to DWS and HW, especially on higher levels. To my surprise, given that it is the de-facto imbue tree along with Eldritch Knight, nothing really changed for it (besides Force Arrows being d8s instead of d6s). Would you consider any of the following:
1) Making its imbues scale with Ranged Power?
2) Adding some dice in the cores (they are considred quite weak as is)?
3) Merging (probably partially) the T5 +2 Imbue Dice/Improved Elemental Arrows multiselector into one option?

For those asking about the non-damage imbues, nothing changed for them either. They currently do not interact with Imbue Dice.

[Xezom]

We have universal trees. It just silly that anything related to heroic trees requires epic levels to take. It's an outdate design model.

I get that. But none of the universal trees are identical copies of a tree you get from a dedicated class either. Elf/H-elf AA is unique in that it poaches a class tree, and with racial completion is essentially free. Given it's unique in doing that, I don't feel it's unreasonable to give it a unique drawback. I agreed in my original post that having to respec in epics for heroic points is wonky but without it, it would need some other gating or drawback.

Glad to see more people bringing up Arcane Archer in this preview, despite the fact that Lynn clearly hasn't been interested in discussing it in either thread (no hard feelings).

In one last attempt to generate discussion around it, I'll quote my post regarding AA from the previous thread:



For those asking about the non-damage imbues, nothing changed for them either. They currently do not interact with Imbue Dice.

Yeah I would love if they would do something for the non-damaging imbues. I, personally, like that the AA damage imbues scale with spell power. Its just unfortunate that in Epics the shiradi Stay Good/Strong/Loud/Toxic (Which is coincidentally a great description for the forums on any given day) only scale with range power if you are using a bow to proc it. Wish it would scale with the better of Melee/Ranged OR Spell power regardless of the source. Would make spell power stacking AA scale better in Epics. As it is, stacking spell power for AA isn't that great in Epics because your procs from EDs are all based on ranged power. Which I suppose is why you're suggesting changing the AA imbues to Ranged power for continuity purposes. Hunt's End and Arrow of Slaying are still the Bread and Butter combo, even after the Multishot neutering of it back with the bow overhaul.

[Lynnabel]

Kensei are currently glass cannon dps builds, and nothing more... and they aren't even the top melee dps build...

I don't understand or support nerfing their dps this hard and justifying it with a bit of self healing. lol

Forgive me, but, just so we're all on the same page, what exactly is nerfing fighter's DPS with this overhaul?

[Monkey_Archer]

Forgive me, but, just so we're all on the same page, what exactly is nerfing fighter's DPS with this overhaul?

Removal of Law/Chaos feats is a direct nerf. Buffing literally everything else with a bare minimum of 100 damage per swing if not higher is a proxy nerf.

I completely understand the even larger proxy nerf to EK builds, they have a lot more going for them and the EDF removal is a big part of that.

Fighter has nothing going for them other than dps, so putting them down to B+ tier dps makes no sense to me. Rogues, barbs, likely now paladins, and probably still EK are all going to be higher dps then kensei now in my estimation.

Of course you can splash 1 paladin level or be drow I guess...

[jackatthekilns]

I have noticed that Artificer Elemental Weapons does not seem to add the imbue dice. I was playing a male warforged artificer using the Inquisitive tree. Law on your side was active. While Elemental weapons was active, I never did more than 4 law damage and often did 1 point of damage which would indicate only one die was being rolled

[Lynnabel]

Removal of Law/Chaos feats is a direct nerf. Buffing literally everything else with a bare minimum of 100 damage per swing if not higher is a proxy nerf.

I completely understand the even larger proxy nerf to EK builds, they have a lot more going for them and the EDF removal is a big part of that.

Fighter has nothing going for them other than dps, so putting them down to B+ tier dps makes no sense to me. Rogues, barbs, likely now paladins, and probably still EK are all going to be higher dps then kensei now in my estimation.

Of course you can splash 1 paladin level or be drow I guess...

The law/chaos stuff is interesting, lets get into it.

Chaos one is pretty easy for us to math out - the 2d20 chaos damage scaling with melee power (and 1d20 bane damage, also scaling) is pretty unlikely to be less DPS than 2% doublestrike or doubleshot. Well, I suppose if you were capped on Doublestrike, then yes, the feat will do nothing for you, so if that's the case then yes you're losing that DPS.

The law one is more complex at first blush but in practice it does end up being a buff. Given that the 12d6 Law damage is staying right where it was before in Divine Crusader (and from my understanding, players tended to take this feat specifically for that synergy) then you are in fact not losing any DPS since the proc is the same as before. You will gain some PRR and MRR though which is fun.

I bring all this up because our intention was absolutely not to make these feats (or by proxy Fighters) worse in any way. So if there's anything you can think of that could make things more equitable let me know.

[Monkey_Archer]

The law/chaos stuff is interesting, lets get into it.

Chaos one is pretty easy for us to math out - the 2d20 chaos damage scaling with melee power (and 1d20 bane damage, also scaling) is pretty unlikely to be less DPS than 2% doublestrike or doubleshot. Well, I suppose if you were capped on Doublestrike, then yes, the feat will do nothing for you, so if that's the case then yes you're losing that DPS.

The law one is more complex at first blush but in practice it does end up being a buff. Given that the 12d6 Law damage is staying right where it was before in Divine Crusader (and from my understanding, players tended to take this feat specifically for that synergy) then you are in fact not losing any DPS since the proc is the same as before. You will gain some PRR and MRR though which is fun.

Well, this issue really is just pure fighters. 18/1/1 can still splash for an imbue and abuse vistani.

I'd say the real issue is actually the kensei capstone. While its nice to be able to easily cap doublestrike, its not enough actual dps to justify a pure build (which yes, goes against the new chaos feat as well). Perhaps if you don't want to give fighters and imbue at lower levels, the capstone would be a good place for one? or something else

[Tanky]

The Embodiment of Law and Harbinger of Chaos are great changes and flavor.

(Enhanced Elemental Dice - Destiny Feat) +1 Dice

In comparison, the mechanics with this feat are a bit lacking. I understand the tradeoff with choosing a Lawful or Chaotic alignment, as you're now affected by things you weren't affected by before. But this ED feat is also only available at level 31. Maybe add a little something something to it.

Also, what did you decide with splitting out Alignment damage into Light/Good and Negative/Evil? I thought that was a great flavor change, though it does have some downstream effects. Namely, Utterdark Blast in Tainted Scholar. If you do go ahead with splitting out that damage, consider adding a multiselector for a Good version of Utterdark Blast.

[Lynnabel]

I have noticed that Artificer Elemental Weapons does not seem to add the imbue dice. I was playing a male warforged artificer using the Inquisitive tree. Law on your side was active. While Elemental weapons was active, I never did more than 4 law damage and often did 1 point of damage which would indicate only one die was being rolled

These spells appear to be granting the bonus dice to your weapon :P whoopsie! Should be fixed, thank you.