Warpriest U57 ... It needs help.

[Bagel99]

Hey Lyn, i know you were open to feedback and i think the Warpriest changes need gone over and possibly a second look. Currently we are getting a Fire Imbue with i think a total of 7d6 Imbue damage in the tree and on crit turns to light damage. No changes to the tree other than the HP being placed into divine bastion for the most part and a filler melee/ ranged attack being removed to place the toggle into the tree. I think Warpriest being an old tree to begin with needs some love and would benefit from a few tasteful tweaks, especially considering we are losing an extremely appealing t5 in old wrathful weapons, which when using swf or 2hf tends to help you clean house and feels like a Divinity fueled boon. I will try and systematically go over each aspect i find beneficial to design and others i find that detract from that Warpriest feel many are looking for.

1. Focus of Warpriest
Having played and created a couple of very versatile and successful builds using 14Clr/6Ftr and 20DA i found two very glaring issues with the tree as a whole. These issues while not crippling hurt the feel of the build in general. I found that smite foe was the ONLY melee attack that you would find worth using and ONLY with Ameliorating strike. The other attacks felt gutless and a point sink, offered extremely small chances (with no DC or quantifiable chance for effect shown) to have non class beneficial effects proc, Divine Vessel ...... i want to love this attack, i think it would be amazing BUT its useless with its stacking criteria even at cap. Safe to say the attacks seldom used any of the trees core features. Secondly Inflame while i love its attraction falls into the second problem, short term buff clickers. Inflame, Sanctuary and Sacred touch (although a passive buff it rarely works unless you are Radiant Savant with Aura) dont really benefit the party or yourself all too much and only come into effect when your in a boss fight, for the 20 seconds they last .... Inflame for its cooldown and point investment hurts when you could splash 3 fighter and use those 6 points to pick up Stalwart defense and grab a good chunk of its benefits passively or simply use the new Divine desciple cores to gather defenses and saves WITH spellpower constanly. The tree lacks small passive buffs and honestly it lacks its flavor.

2. Suggestions
1. Smite Foe needs to be changed to deal (Cleave) +1[W] 1-2 Light/ 1-2 Fire Damage per character level scaling with 100% Spellpower. Simple AOE entry into the melee tree allowing for a synergistic attack. It Can keep its 12 second cooldown as it fits inline with EKs core 1 cleave.
2. Favored weapons up the tree should simply be +1/+1 To hit and damage with Favored weapons and +1 Imbue Dice (We lose the spellpower here and thats ok, its to allow the cores to show their value and to allow Divine Disciple and other trees to have attractive spellpower options. Cant have an all in one tree)
3. Wrathful Weapons will remain the same as U57s suggested patch as far as the +3/+3 Hit and Damage, +3 Imbue dice. (Drop the fire to light conversion, toggle needs to be changed as far as its damage. Will be a similar split effect like Lighting the Candle with a tweak.
4. Core 2 (Level 3) Divine Vessel - Toggle your melee attacks now deal 1d4 Fire/1d4 Light damage scaling with 100% Spellpower. Your a vessel and here is your damage from your Deity. Seems simple, seems fair, and is again synergistic with the rest of the tree.
5. Inflame/Sanctuary (Multi Selector) will be moved to Core 3 (Level 6) - (Inflame) Empowered by your Deity, you and those around you gain +2 to Hit/ Damage and +2 to Saves. OR (Sanctuary) Blessed by your Deity you and those around you gain DR -5/, +5PRR and +2 to all Saves. Defensive Option instead.
6. Divine Vessel (The attack) -> Righteous Fury +5[W] 1-4 Fire, 1-4 Light per character level in an AOE burst, has a 33% chance to blind enemies on hit no save for 6 seconds. Cooldown 30 Seconds Costs 40 Spell Points and 1 Turn attempt (2AP), provides a healthy amount of AOE and combines previous filler attacks into the tree for 2 good solid attacks & provides additional needed investment for turns. Secondly it also is a trade off for turn buffs from domains and most importantly if splashed with Dark Apostate you may run out of enough turn attempts that you dont raise yourself. things to juggle and keep in mind. Side note, the Icon for this attack could be a Morningstar with a Holy aura and red background being swung to match Smite Foe.
7. In the tree to fill in for lack of attack slots and Inflame now being a core passive buff you can add in an SLA for Shield of Faith Mass with an additional +10 MRR while under the effects similar to EKs tree and for war priest flavor add in Beacon of the Divine T3, Defender of the Righteous T4 leading up to Divine Bastion with arrows. These would give extra threat in Defender +5PRR/+25% Threat Gen per point (3 total) and Beacon would give you +5 Light/Fire Spell power and +25% Threat gen per point (3 total). As a Beacon your Holy Prescence becomes more pronounced and you are hard to miss, similarly defender etc follows a similar path.
8. Double strike would be moved to over to the 2nd column of T4 and remain unchanged.
9. Divine intervention ... needs to be removed. ITs clunky, not taken and seldom is enough to save someone at higher difficulties. I think it should be removed period, maybe replaced by a Mass Vigor esk SLA or maybe an upgraded version of Stalwart Pact? Seems more useful with similar effects.
10. Core 4 Blur should be removed as a passive ability, seems with the added changed above it would add too much addition defense for no investment. Should be whichever Core 3 you didnt pick placed here + the Sacred% HP.
11. Core 5. Haste is ok, but idk if its thematic here but good for War soul. Maybe change this to Battle-hardened for 50 HP and DR -5/ + the other goodies standard AC goodies.
12. Core 6, no changes good stuff here. Will no longer need the additional text for Divine Vessel (Now Righteous Fury) although could add more Turn Attempts for Righteous fury if that route is taken.
13. Divine Power -> +6 Sacred bonus to strength +10 Melee Power/Ranged Power BAB = Character Level (2AP)
14. Cores no longer give Imbue dice on 2,4,5 as previous. Plenty of additional bonuses to PRR and threat gen, and 7d4/7d4 fulltime on toggle with sources in Dark Apostate and or other classes/ Gear fits inline with the 10d6 on Vorp.

Let me know your thoughts on this as im excited for u57 but sad to see Warpriest brought down and not fixed with the Imbue pass.

[DRoark]

Agreed, Warpriest is a little behind the times, but TBH they haven't paid much attention to that tree in awhile, where the +Die went in U57, and most feedback.
When players have to MC an out-of-class Archetype in hamsterwheel (#5?), to be close to a thrown-together spam toon, it really hurts the classic builds in DDO.

Clerics still waiting for them to eventually drop the Turn Undead HD mechanic, and make it a DC like everything else in the game (like EIN for Undead, basically).

[Bagel99]

Agreed, Warpriest is a little behind the times, but TBH they haven't paid much attention to that tree in awhile, where the +Die went in U57, and most feedback.
When players have to MC an out-of-class Archetype in hamsterwheel (#5?), to be close to a thrown-together spam toon, it really hurts the classic builds in DDO.

Clerics still waiting for them to eventually drop the Turn Undead HD mechanic, and make it a DC like everything else in the game (like EIN for Undead, basically).

Yeah ... even if i had to somehow devote my time to make these changes to make it appealing to many i would, i love the Warpriest tree and seeing how its been made worse with U57 i really am frustrated. Its just going to be the Melee Dark Apostate T5 option now ... as the light damage is gone and replaced with fire. and 10d6 on Vorp ... which was sustainable is down to 3d6 .... its very very sad to see. Especially when its my favorite class. I love playing my WF warpriests and using it as my majority class. 14Clr/6ftr is a fun one with stalwart goodies and feat space. I just feel like Imbues were a great idea but implemented very poorly. They Should have been added to a set of feats to make it easily available to all classes for such an impactful core mechanic.

I would love for it to be a DC, would be cool if it was scaled by pack size. DC = 19 + Ability Mod WIS/CHA + Bonuses + Necromancy DCs + -1 DC per enemy. Makes sense to not be turned as easily if the undead presence is strong. Turns could also be changed with a niche Archetype to Mass Charm (Convert) Enemies to your Deity's call and to fight for the cause with something like this.

[droid327]

Like some of these, don't like others...here's what I think about WP:

- If its a melee tree, it needs to stand alone as a melee tree. Which means it provides and uses melee power, not spell power. If it's a hybrid caster melee tree, then it needs to provide wis to hit/dmg and trance like FvS does. Can't have a str/cha based wis caster, or handcuff it to 20+ points in a premium tree. It's fine if it's up a bit though, like T3 hit T4 dmg to make it costlier as an alt for falcon.

- Handcuffing it to war domain for crit bonus is too restrictive too, needs to have +1/+1 built in, or maybe +0/+2 so war domain still has value, as well as certain other splashes that'd make it interesting. And in the T5 and core 4, not back loaded all the way to the core 5.

- Inflame needs to be something on par with Haste Boost, considering it's a unique ability. I'd say +30 hamp (becomes namp/ramp) and Xd6 healing on hit, 0.25 sec cd, for you and party. That'd be a meaningful defensive bubble that'd let you and your party go HAM briefly, which feels appropriately Warpriesty and actually lives up to its name

- The T5 active attack needs to be build-defining, and I think it needs to be torn down and rebuilt entirely. I'd recommend bringing back Confront: a double tap frontal aoe with +3W +2/+2 crit, 3 sec CD, consumes a Turn. Powerful, but limited, and encourages you to build around Turns, which sets it apart from other melee builds and makes it more Clerical. Also provides the needed aoe for a build that focuses mostly on one-handed Favored weapons. Plus CaF used to just be fun, and that'd make people want to play WP

More fine tuning is necessary within the tree but I think those core changes would put the tree in a good place and restore one of the more highly-desired classic melee builds

[Firebreed]

I don't know much about Clerics, but it's clear that Warpriest needs work. It's old and it shows.
My 2 cents are that a) it should get a WIS trance, just like FvS, and b) that it should support tank builds, as currently there's no Cleric tree that does that, forcing you to multiclass.
I'm sure the rest of you have already outlined anything else that needs to be adjusted.