Update 57 Official Release Notes

[Oxarhamar]

what I am referring to is multiple people who don't run difficult content, based on my interactions with them, in the u57 preview forums, habitually complaining that the inquis was being nerfed, to the point the devs felt the need to appease them; first with higher scaling and then also with a higher dice damage. that discussion, which is now easily proven to not have been worthwhile as i repeatedly tried to bring up, derailed the conversation from more reasonable feedback such as sets that feature imbue dice and their general lack of versatility and synergy. i am specifically mentioning that instance.

Yeah sounds like that’s something that was important for them

I don’t like how the dice works on pure Artifcer

who knows if it will get further adjustments, be nerfed after some time or be another system that is released then ignored

[NemesisAlien]

Playing around with an 18 Wiz EK / 2 Arti Inquisitor build. That gives him a choice of 1d6 Law from Inquis and 4 1d8 elemental Imbues from EK to work with. Definitely has the flexibility on damage type that Arti lacks.

At level 32, he has 26 bonus dice. (7 Inquis, 7 EK, 6 Filigrees, 3 Scion of Earth, and 3 Draconic Destiny.) With 500 Fire/Acid spell power, the EK imbues are typically doing over 1000 damage each shot and occasionally upwards of 2500. Less with Cold and Electric b/c lower spell power. Even the Law damage is 500ish and occasionally over 1200. Times 2 for Inquis double shooting.

Probably would be better with 18 Wiz and 2 Rog with some points in Assassin (1d8 Poison imbue and 3 extra dice for 9 AP), but I don't want to LR him to convert the Arti levels to Rogue yet. 3 dice is probably worth losing Runearm use though...

I thought inqusi only works for xbows? Now it works with other weapons?

[misterski]

I thought inqusi only works for xbows? Now it works with other weapons?

No, it still only works with non-repeating xbows, at least that's what the imbue description says.

[Lotoc]

EK (tying tree to Eldritch strike due to overall perceived imbue power) (HP pass and imbue pass)

This was more a change to prevent savant sorcs geting what is ultimately an overall stronger tier 5 while giving up very little because savant trees are desperately in need of a rework when all the power is in the cores.

[elvesunited]

that's pretty awesome. And then a fully metad sorcerer comes along and kills the whole pack of 10 mobs after you have killed a couple of them with single target attacks

My main concern with the imbue dice is that it does seem possible to use them to create an uber-inquisitive. That may not measure up to a fully metad sorcerer but that's not the point. Last year when Shiradi Champion ( and we warned that would happen ) was over-powered, it allowed the rebirth of the Shiradi mage. Then many months later the nerf came it outright killed the shiradi mage builds. The stacking imbue dice allow for potential "inbue" multi-class builds. ( time will tell how viable ) But will history repeat and they get nerf nuked from orbit as well?

[ismikes]

Our group noticed a lot of banding during tonight's session. FYI

[DRoark]

To the people who are complaining about "unwanted/unasked-for changes"... please explain how SSG is supposed to fix the lag problems without making any changes? I think you need to demonstrate at least a small bit of flexibility here.

We didn't realize updating code and fixing bugs required a new Imbue system and changing the whole game. Twice. Thanks for explaining that. )

[GottDDO]

I know this won't affect a lot of people that frequent these forums, as most of you probably are in guilds with nice buffs, but can we greatly increase the city regen, so those of us without those buffs don't have to visit a tavern every time we log in?

[Bjond]

not laughing [..] make a Frankenstein's monster to take advantage of every stacking

--- As ordered one insane Inquisitive [..] = 22 dice [before gear & epics]

You want a repeater for 50% more Imbue DPS in heroics and 100% more in epics compared to dual xbow. Just gotta get the right imbue to scale with it (arti gets 1d6 electric @ 1x SP, which is "ok". Sonic or Light would be best for SP.)

[NemesisAlien]

So where do we check how much dice we got? And/Or if we get the dice to stack?

[elvesunited]

You want a repeater for 50% more Imbue DPS in heroics and 100% more in epics compared to dual xbow. Just gotta get the right imbue to scale with it (arti gets 1d6 electric @ 1x SP, which is "ok". Sonic or Light would be best for SP.)

hmm, I thought the fire rate between dual x-bows and a repeater wasn't that far apart in bolts per second because it takes longer to reload a repeater than a normal crossbow with repeater's extra clip helping that bridge that gap.

That said though you will lose imbue dice.

Pure Battle Engineer nets 5 dice. ( 1 base + 4 imbue )

Alchemist 12 / ranger 3 / artificer 5 would net about 15 dice plus the start die. ( also losing +1 comp to critical multiplier )

But inquisitive being a universal tree gives a lot more flexibility allowing it to get up to 22 dice.

[Coffey]

So where do we check how much dice we got? And/Or if we get the dice to stack?

Its on the character sheet "+" tab under General Combat at the bottom.

[Hunviking]

hmm, I thought the fire rate between dual x-bows and a repeater wasn't that far apart in bolts per second because it takes longer to reload a repeater than a normal crossbow with repeater's extra clip helping that bridge that gap.

That said though you will lose imbue dice.

Pure Battle Engineer nets 5 dice. ( 1 base + 4 imbue )

Alchemist 12 / ranger 3 / artificer 5 would net about 15 dice plus the start die. ( also losing +1 comp to critical multiplier )

But inquisitive being a universal tree gives a lot more flexibility allowing it to get up to 22 dice.

Prism stance in Shiradi gives extra boost every 7 dice, so 21 imbue dice is nice to have.

[Bjond]

hmm, I thought the fire rate between dual x-bows and a repeater wasn't that

Ah, yes, you're right. I was thinking only of the natural bolts/anim difference. IIRC, dual is 75 a/m and repeater is 50 a/m. So, rounds per minute ends up 150 for INQ and 200 for repeater or +33% for repeater. OTH, shuri and thrower are both 86/m with typical shuri builds at DS 4~5x and VKF 3~4x or to normalize them for comparison: 344 (+130%) and 258 (+78%) respectively, discounting their DS+100 bursts.

Sounds like shuri would be great for an imbue build. So much so that a couple years ago I actually made and played one based on EK/monk. The DPS was very playable -- better than INQ -- but still nowhere near as nice as a DWS build. HE+Sniper is a monstrously large chunk of a top ranged's DPS -- roughly 1/3 of it. You'd need to stack imbues up to something like 90d6 to start to be in the realm of a real ranged dps build.

HE+Sniper is pretty much why Bow & Throw are so far ahead of other ranged. The other aspects can be replicated numerically in xbows, but not that part. It's due primarily to xbows still firing multiple bolts instead of using the "damage doubling" style for double-shot and partly to internal CDs on proc rates for shiradi chance procs artificially curbing xbow's rates.

I highly recommend reading Capone's U53 Ranged DPS post.

[elvesunited]

Ah, yes, you're right. I was thinking only of the natural bolts/anim difference. IIRC, dual is 75 a/m and repeater is 50 a/m. So, rounds per minute ends up 150 for INQ and 200 for repeater or +33% for repeater. OTH, shuri and thrower are both 86/m with typical shuri builds at DS 4~5x and VKF 3~4x or to normalize them for comparison: 344 (+130%) and 258 (+78%) respectively, discounting their DS+100 bursts.

Sounds like shuri would be great for an imbue build. So much so that a couple years ago I actually made and played one based on EK/monk. The DPS was very playable -- better than INQ -- but still nowhere near as nice as a DWS build. HE+Sniper is a monstrously large chunk of a top ranged's DPS -- roughly 1/3 of it. You'd need to stack imbues up to something like 90d6 to start to be in the realm of a real ranged dps build.

HE+Sniper is pretty much why Bow & Throw are so far ahead of other ranged. The other aspects can be replicated numerically in xbows, but not that part. It's due primarily to xbows still firing multiple bolts instead of using the "damage doubling" style for double-shot and partly to internal CDs on proc rates for shiradi chance procs artificially curbing xbow's rates.

I highly recommend reading Capone's U53 Ranged DPS post.

Inquistive also gives a significant boost to alacrity at Tier 5 ( level 12 )

A few other thoughts on shuriken imbue

1) Inquisitive also unless I am mistaken is the only tree that provides +200% ranged power for imbues. ( as well as the highest die ) Those that rely on spellpower are competitive with that but may be difficult to find. Arcane archer has them but I'd be hesitant to rely on an exploit ( not working as intended ) that may not longer work.
2) I would not want my imbue type to be poison, cold or fire without a bypass.
3) Sacrificing competence bonus to critical range or multiplier would be a bad move.
4) For any shuriken build I'd be looking at monk 6 for ten thousand stars and ranger 6 for sniper shot

The best I can do and keep all the above would be 8 Dice of imbue.
If I'm willing to lose the crit multiplier then I can pump it up about 11 dice.

And that would be at 100% of ranged power or using spellpower.

[Bjond]

at 100% of ranged power or using spellpower.

SP is pretty similar to 2xRP and another reason for using shuriken in that old build: very easy to craft up a set of OH Kamas to get a full zStack on SP without sacrificing any of the usual ranged DPS gear. It could swap elements to avoid immunities, too -- just flip in a different Kama.

But, yeah, all your other points are why imbue builds are not viable compared to non-imbue. Imbues are nice enough that if you can get some for "free", do it. It's just not worth sacrificing physical DPS even on what would seem to be a "made for imbues" tree like EK.

OTH, my INQ build for HC would get a nice DPS boost from the new imbues. It had PM/EK underpinnings for survive. Like all INQ builds these days, it was amazing sub-cap, but at-cap it could never challenge a real ranged build for a DPS spot. INQ really shines in HC where 99~100% of the play is sub-cap.

In order to "fix" INQ for at-cap DPS, Shoot Later would need a CD<=HE (like sniper shot) and either HE would need to work on both bolts or INQ would need to be put on the same damage doubling system as other builds (same thing for repeaters). Those two might not make INQ a top DPS, but it would be right in there with the top ones.

[rabidfox]

Was on airship, used the ship's tele to send me someplace else (can't recall where), load screen followed by being back on the airship. Then I noticed the 'recovering from failed teleport' in the log... bravo, first time I've had it recover without needing to reboot the game in as long as I remember.