Dark Apostate General Concept

[Noyabrina]

Apostate is no default melee or caster cleric with some special evil SLA. He doesn't need Aura of Negative like PM or Negative Energy Burst. Because Apostate - it's special mechanic of battle. You must be in melee range, making cleave damage to curse (Enhanced Curse III) all around and then use Prayer, Bless or Bane for buff/debuff and then Inflict Wound for damage/selfhealing. This is one position and we need ask developers to reveal this strategy. But not to become new divine PM. Apostate need new source of curses (and may be new types). He need some kind of Cleave for his tree. I prefer use Wood Elves, 3 levels of Paladin, Iconic Aasimar or PDK for two-handed favored weapon. Even if apostate can't kill anybody with negative or evil bust - he can use his weapon

[ariel7]

I think that the strongest perk to this game is being able to play in very unique ways. You have a paladin, for example. Some people make tanks, some two-handed melee toons, I've seen ranged ones.

I play Dark apostate very different that your idea. Bane (not at super close distance) smite, sun pillar, holy fireball, celestial bombardment, divine wrath, shard storm...I'll curse bosses or oranged-named opponents, sometimes I'll throw a prayer or a bless in there, but I play as a nuker and I love it.

Still, I'm a mostly I hope you get to play your character the way YOU want to, with one caveat. They already have a warpriest line for getting in there and so you already have plenty of room to add in some melee stuffs, even within a cleric tree.
Also, they have pushed away things like the radiant servant tree, so this is, indeed, different than a divine pale master. I think overall that I would rather see some attention paid to some other aspects of the game when there are viable options to add in some melee love with the existing tree that has smite foe, radiant flourish and ameliorating strike.

[Scrag]

[QUOTE=ariel7;6563333]I think that the strongest perk to this game is being able to play in very unique ways. You have a paladin, for example. Some people make tanks, some two-handed melee toons, I've seen ranged ones.
[/QOUTE]

I have two handed fighting, first two levels in fighter, human. I play solo a lot so I act pretty much as a self-buffer with a healbot, dual-wielding longswords and imbue all the things w/ falconry for +wis damage.

I will be using divine power for the +bab, but so far I just whack things with longswords and do pretty good with all the gobs of extra damage addons, with the occasional searing light.

It seems that the curse line in DA isn't so hot, so if someone knows how to make that work please let me know. I really like SLAs!

[Ereshkigal]

Yeah, I only see two viable options for the DA tree.

* Divine Disciple caster: DA can add shroud immunities, a Bane evil damage AOE, and and the 10 temp spellpoint on light/alignment crit are useful.

* for a melee/ranged build: I could see dipping into DA to get the zero spellpoint Curse and the imbues.



Potentially if you had a build with enough leftover points ( do those exist? ) you could go higher into the tree far enough to get the +250 hp to incap and the auto-heal 5 seconds after going incap.

but as far as dropping 41+ points into DA, I don't personally see the value.

[Scrag]

I am not going a full 41 points into DA; however:

I have 1 point in DD, 11 into falconry, and the rest in DA. Currently I am level 11.

I just got flamestrike and just run enlarge/empower/maximize on smite, searing, and flamestrike. I realized I have a summers ring on, but was not using any of the +fire/align crit!

I picked up the prayer sla from DA and mash it pretty often. Need to get my hands on some +impulse somewhere. In either case, prayer mops up well for only 12 sp, and nothing really lives through a flamestrike + prayer that cant be taken out by melee.

Running with a healbot (divine vitality is nice!), I have found that one ranged nuke from smite or flamestrike is sufficient to draw the enemies into melee where prayer and random two weapon fighting murders the leftovers. Prayer in general is beefy for just 12 sp of magical damage doom buff and debuff. I see a way forward from here to max out my capabilities, somewhere around 35 points into DA. I will be taking core 5 in DA. DD light core is where I am headed next to amplify my nukes and bane damage, though bane looks like i am stuck with slotting impulse.

It is a really slick hybrid that is easy to play, feels strong, and provides multiple solutions to problems.

p.s., turn undead doesnt have to be for turning undead. just mash that **** all the time for the bonuses from dark judgement and if you have it, war domain! 10 hp per curse bonus dice, 7 dice if you go pure, thats 70 hp to teammates and self from dark judgement!

[Careall]

Playing with DA a bit and figuring out what works and what doesn't (two lesser reincarnations later), it seems for Heroic progression that DA does a good job of taking a few hits while getting in close to debuff enemies. I then either continue with melee (painfully slow for anything but trash), or I jump back out of combat and throw some crowd control (Greater Color Spray is good).

A well-built DA isn't a glass cannon. Sure. A DD nuker is far more efficient, and a Warpriest is tankier, but I found the debuffing playstyle enjoyable. I don't care that Prayer + damage isn't killing everything; it sets up the kills for the party. Our monk is nailing the Stunning Fist and Jade Strike more often.

DA's Imbue could be ramped up a bit. It is 1D6 limited to the Favored Weapon and doesn't compare to the EK Spell Sword at 1D8 available to any weapon. When we add in how EK scales itself up with Spellpower within the tree, DA's melee capabilities are left in the dust. Do they need to be equal? No. But the DA imbue is really weak. I don't think the debuffs come close to the same power level. I finally settled on Aureon and using a quarterstaff, which seems better than most other favored weapons. A Vulkoor-worshiping Drow DA using the Feydark Shadowblades would probably be a solid combination.

Meanwhile, Divine Disciple is the Cleric DPS winner. This leaves DA filling a party support role that isn't a [primary] healer or tank like RS and Warpriest. I'd even go so far as to say DA isn't great at crowd control, but it can be decent.

So far, it's been a fun build. I took it to level 20 in Hardcore, and I am now trying some things out in Epics. We'll see how that goes.

[Scrag]

When we add in how EK scales itself up with Spellpower within the tree, DA's melee capabilities are left in the dust. Do they need to be equal? No. But the DA imbue is really weak.

I originally found the curse dice to be pretty tame, but once i hit t5 curse dice, it just goes crazy.

I am 90% sure pray for mercy is what is driving the doubling of curse dice damage. In heroics, 350-400 evil damage per hit on cursed enemies. t5 enhanced curse curses things on crit. my crit profile is 16-20. things _die_. i think with 2hf and cleave/great cleave for melee when things close that somehow survive nuke opening, it will just be stupid.

Recommendation on best way to nab strikethrough w/ diety, as a human? Paladin 3 grants me greatsword as favored weapon, but then i lose 1 dice and enhanced shadowform.

If I go with pal3, what would i 16 da, 1 fighter? Is there any other way i can get a favored two handed weapon as a human?

[DaviMOC]

Its a bit unfair to compare with EKs imbue. Its the strongest one and in general an EK brings less to the table than the DA so its supposed to be stronger indeed.

You can go staffs until epics for the axion of faith and go from there either gsword, mauls or stay on staves.

I would trade cleave/gcleave for whrilwind. Its better, got low CD and enabling it would give extra dodge that is always welcome but its more expensive feat wise specially if you're planning on using power atack and it also only arrives later.( you can get cleave at lvl 1 as a human)

[Scrag]

Its a bit unfair to compare with EKs imbue. Its the strongest one and in general an EK brings less to the table than the DA so its supposed to be stronger indeed.

You can go staffs until epics for the axion of faith and go from there either gsword, mauls or stay on staves.

I would trade cleave/gcleave for whrilwind. Its better, got low CD and enabling it would give extra dodge that is always welcome but its more expensive feat wise specially if you're planning on using power atack and it also only arrives later.( you can get cleave at lvl 1 as a human)

Mauls seem fun, but not a lot of options. Is precision an OK change for power attack?