UPDATE 58 PREVIEW 1 - Blightcaster Druid

[Madja]

This looks super awesome. I love poison builds. A lot of enemies are immune to poison, though. Any chance we can get something like alchemist has to make enemies vulnerable to poison?

EDIT: My bad I'm blind

[Zeklijan]

BUG: In Hive Master Form I only have 25% Concealment instead of the listed 50% while under the effects of SHIFTER RAGE [Wisdom Version]

This bug is on live, if you use 50% displacement while raging, the 25% from rage overrides your 50% for some reason. It's not specific to the form.

This looks super awesome. I love poison builds. A lot of enemies are immune to poison, though. Any chance we can get something like alchemist has to make enemies vulnerable to poison?

You can find the ability named Everything Decays from T5 Blight, that removes immunities to poison and acid.

[Zeklijan]

Spell range for all the new thorn spells don't work as intended, some of them don't deal damage at all.

Biting Acid Imbue does not apply it's damage.

All the new spells don't trigger the Primal Avatar Thorn Mantle damage.

Elemental Forms Legendary Feat is not applied to hive/thorn elementals.

Elemental Toughness does not work with Hive/Thorn.

[KrypticSouls]

Seems like a fair subclass. Seasons Herald needs to be replaced though, can't use a tree if you don't have any spells or the elemental forms to match it.

[Lotoc]

Seems like a fair subclass. Seasons Herald needs to be replaced though, can't use a tree if you don't have any spells or the elemental forms to match it.

Season's herald actually does have benefits for Acid, and force/physical spells. The only thing that doesn't actually function in season's herald for blightcaster is "Druid level 17 or above: Changing into Fire Elemental form now grants you a brief version of the Anger of the Noon Day Sun effect. Changing into Water Elemental Form grants you a similar version of Icy Mantle. This is not affected by metamagics."
You'll be in summer for the thorn spells as it boosts force spells and in winter for the acid spells as it boosts acid/earth spells.
It is actually very strong as your subtree for a blightcaster and it's also a source of +1CL/MCL from early cores.

[Zeklijan]

The only thing that doesn't actually function in season's herald for blightcaster is "Druid level 17 or above: Changing into Fire Elemental form now grants you a brief version of the Anger of the Noon Day Sun effect. Changing into Water Elemental Form grants you a similar version of Icy Mantle.

Much like the Doom Wolf gets a multiselector for acid spellpower and absorption instead of cold in Nature's warrior, I could see this enhancement also getting a multiselector for Hive/Thorn elementals.

[Lotoc]

Much like the Doom Wolf gets a multiselector for acid spellpower and absorption instead of cold in Nature's warrior, I could see this enhancement also getting a multiselector for Hive/Thorn elementals.

I mean it doesn't exactly need it, Blightcaster's blight with capstone is somewhat equal to the debuffs those two effects apply and it has immunity strip in it's own t5s. The tree upto t4 supports blightcaster incredibly well honestly and by having the t5 be pretty much inferior for a blightcaster it pretty much solves the problem that occured with stormsinger where it became "Oh, I can just go spellsinger with this archetype and just be a generally better caster bard without changing my playstyle at all."
Or the way many did DA which was "I don't feel like playing the actual class so all my points will go into DD and feydark and I'll just play light/fire nuker"

[Fisto_Mk_I]

When was this nerfed? I never had an acid caster so I thought it was still there.

It was Artifact all time in individual items pages and tooltips, just was incorrect Exceptional in summary page (may be it was correct in Lammania tests). Corrected now.

[shmagmhar]

giant rat ! giant rat ! we want giant undead rat the bleeds ozzes when struck !

[Madja]

You can find the ability named Everything Decays from T5 Blight, that removes immunities to poison and acid.

Cheers. That'll teach me to open my eyes more

[MasterKernel]

Several thoughts :
1) The absence of healing spells is crucial. Why choose Blightcaster Druid over a Sorc in that case ? Poison-based Druid ? But Poison is like the worst type of damage, at least for now...
2) Quite bad spells selection. DDO doesn't have much of a good Acid-based spells in the first place, but something like Acid Rain/Cloud Kill etc. are generally hated by everyone. Even if you'll buff them, those spells create some sort of a "mist" which makes difficult to see anything on the screen.
(I've had an Acid Sorc life once... the fastest imaginable way to learn new English swear words. XD )
3) The Enhancements tree is strange (and uninspiring). Add Poison damage to already unused spells ? Add Acid-based Spells/SLAs but [almost] no passive enhancements to make them better ? Incompatibility between Blightcaster and Season's Herald trees but a player have both at the same time ?
Core 6 is still +2 WIS, while other casters got their +4. :-(

Overall :
1) I think you had to create new Acid spells instead of the Piercing ones and replace all of the Acid rain/mist nonsense with them.
2) A character using DOTs is useless in DDO. Nobody are going to wait till your DOTs would kill an enemy. Everyone plays as if it is a Diablo-like hack&slash RPG : run-pew-pew-pew-run-repeat. Why create such an archetype in the first place ? It'll be a way too boring to play - anyone from the group would kill everything faster then you and you don't even have heals to contribute something for the group.

[Zeklijan]

Hive elemental form does not grant it's bonus to Acid caster level. It correctly provides it for poison only.

The new thorn spells are not affected by Draconic Incarnation Core 3's Eschew Material. (It will still consume material)
The new thorn spells are not affected by the bonus to caster level from season herald's Child of Summer.

Option to train your pet is still enabled at the trainers despite not having a pet for Blight Druids.

Murder of Crows' "Murder in your Eye" Doesn't apply it's additional piercing damage on blind targets despite having a raven summoned.

[Scrag]

1) I think you had to create new Acid spells instead of the Piercing ones and replace all of the Acid rain/mist nonsense with them.
2) A character using DOTs is useless in DDO. Nobody are going to wait till your DOTs would kill an enemy.

Wrong forum, but... I took acid rain on my sorc because on paper it looks good. On a solo sorc its terrible. By the time i cast it on something at distance, its there for 1 tick of damage and they are out. That leaves me with trying to spam it in melee range which is just a horrible solution to my cold-proof enemy problem.

Frankly, my cold sorc does more damage even highly resisted than it does with notable crit chance and acid rain.

I need to check out the acidness in blightcaster, but if it is more of the same dot, thats going to be frustrating. Same with poison. I need to kill things hard and fast, or live through getting the snot pounded out of me, and this doesnt seem to fall into the getting pounded on category of play...

[EnragedBears]

1) Thorn Lance - need spell components - even though I have have Draconic I & II - that should remove the need for any spell components
2) Everything Decays rank 3 - do NOT remove Acid and Poison Immunity - tested in quest Grim and Baret on reaper 1

[SocratesBastardSon]

Even though I don't know how it plays yet, I really love the idea.

Without getting bogged down in specifics, in general Disease and Poison spells are woefully underpowered. This archetype would be the perfect platform for giving them a boost, and the changes to Contagion are a move in the right direction. But like before, the problem is they just don't scale well, and it looks like Contagion still suffers from that drawback. DC bonuses are good, AOE effects are welcome, but I suspect that's not going to be enough to make them worthwhile beyond the early game.

How about a Druid version of Warlock's Dark Discorporation? Instead of turning into bats the caster turns into a cloud of insects. You could even use the insect swarms from Borderlands as a model.

[Xezom]

So this tree has some good potential. It needs A LOT of bug fixing and spell tweaking though. The Thorn spells are painful to use due to their single target nature and tendency to crash into the ground, hit doors that are already open, not tracking, etc. I covered most of that in my first review.

Death Eater is a strong ability. Especially solo. When you get in a party, especially with other nukes or large parties, it gets a little less OP but is still a strong ability to have. The reduction in healing capacity makes sense thematically, and Death Eater definitely makes up for the loss in solo. It also makes you have to be more of a proactive healer, instead of a reactive healer as you are down to using HoT's rather than emergency heals. I'm a fan of DoT and Hot characters so I'm not bothered by either of these. I think DDO has room to grow when it comes to players learning to play with different styles all around. Active HoT healing is something DDO does not have much of, so this is a sort of baby step into that. Active HoT healing vs reactive healing are two completely different beasts, and arguably it takes more skill to be a HoT healer than a reactive healer. My opinion, again not everyone will agree.

The immunity strip is wompy. Sometimes it seemed to work, but most of the time it didn't.

The damage profiles of the thorn spells is a little odd too. Some of the spells, like Splinterbolt, are resisted as you would expect, while others like Thorn Bloom and Thorn Strike hit for normal damage despite the combat log showing that they all do piercing damage.

Funny enough, I thoroughly enjoyed the DOT build a lot. It's by no means a clear speed master, but on bosses which as just HP Meat bags it's pretty handy and can shuck out a good amount. You have so many DoT's at your disposal that they string of numbers becomes pretty nutty once you get them stacked up there. It's definitely a nice change from just the blow them up, run, blow them up, run, repeat. DoT characters in almost every game face that issue, but considering that this is the first real tree o double down on the potential fantasy of a DoT character, it's actually very solid. DoT is not everyone's style so there will be some disagreement here, but from someone who has been dying for some good DoT characters in DDO, I have to say that this tree scratches that itch.



My suggestions after three days of playing (Mind you I played both a Legendary reincarnated character, and started a level 7 toon as well):

1) Bug Fix Bug Fix Bug Fix. I know it has an insect elemental form, but the play doesn't need to be THAT buggy.

2) The hit box and tracking issues of the thorn spells MUST be fixed before release or thorn knight it's going to be borderline unusable (especially without the poison strip working properly). The inconsistent target hitting is painful to try to deal with.

3) Interactions with the various epic destinies is hit and miss. The Thorn spells don't qualify for the PA Mantle, and only sometimes seems to for the draconic (Poison dragon). Maybe I missed it but seems to be inconsistent.

4) Add a T5 that alters its power based on your form kinda like the pale master. Whether it's damage aura, DC modifiers, buffs, etc. just something that makes your elemental/wolf choice feel more impactful with t5.

Other than that I don't have a lot of negative to say about the tree and the set up. I like the theme and the feel of the character and don't even mind the more single target nature of the thorn spells (til later when you get the kick butt Grasping Thorns). There is a lot of area coverage options so you don't ever really feel like you're that single target even though most thorn and poison spells are naturally single target (can be made less so by points in the tree).

I'm looking forward to seeing what things actually look like when the VFX's are completed as right now they are pretty basic, but we know they're not finished. I'm hoping along with that will come some spell adjusting to make the Thorn spells more user friendly.

I'll break my ratings into 2 sections based on the Builds I did:

Thorn Caster
Theme: 9/10
Unique Playstyle: 5/10 (pretty standard cast and run)
Durability/Solo-ability: 9/10
Party Friendly: 8/10
Functionality: 3/10 (Lots of work needs done here. Tons of bugs and spell hitting issues.)
Look/Aesthetic: 3/10 (I know that the FX's are not finished, so this is once that i know will improve. As is it's very bland looking)
Epic Destiny Synergy: 9/10 (Works decently well with Primal Avatar, Draconic Incarnation, or Magus depending on what augmented damage type you take in T5 and your overall goals. See notes above tho.
Late Game Gearing: 8/10 (Surprisingly there is a good amount of gear that works well for physical/poison casters. Morgrave Staves are great)

DoT Caster
Theme: 9/10
Unique Playstyle: 8/10 (Very very active on keeping DoTs going on bosses, the tag along and a little painful clear speed but to be expected)
Durability/Solo-ability: 7/10 (surprisingly not as bad as you'd think for a DoT character. Easy leveling, but not the fastest thing in the world)
Party Friendly: Both 9/10 and 3/10. (9/10 on bosses for the DoT power that rips through their HP pools safely and consistently, 3/10 for the clear speed and because you cause A LOT of screen noise).
Functionality: 7/10 (fix the immunity strip and we'll be in good shape here, otherwise most everything else functions great with the DoTs)
Look/Aesthetic: 3/10 (I know that the FX's are not finished, so this is once that i know will improve. As is it's very bland looking)
Epic Destiny Synergy: 9/10 (Works decently well with Primal Avatar or Draconic Incarnation. I took Draconic for the poison DoT from the Mantle to add more DoT power, worked amazing)
Late Game Gearing: 8/10 (Still a good amount of gear for DoT since its basically just regular caster gear. Conjuration and negative/poison spell power is an odd mix tho)

Those are my thoughts. Looking forward to the next preview to see how things improve. Thanks for the opportunity to test this out!
Xezom

[btolson]

The Horn/Hive forms should have some form-specific spells to differentiate them a bit more, and contrast against the regular druid form spells.
Some ideas:

Poison Presence: requires a Hive form; enemies near you are poisoned by the toxicity you exude, suffering 1d3/level poison damage every 3 seconds and having their move and attack speed slowed by 10%.

Thorny Growths: requires a Thorn form; You regularly sprout thorny vines from your body. Enemies that attempt to attack you in melee must make a strength check or be snared for 4 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once per 6 seconds.


Flowing Swarm: requires a Hive form; you rush forward (wings ability), passing through enemies in your path, who suffer 1d4 acid damage and 1d4 poison damage per caster level and also affected by "Clinging Drones" for 12 seconds if they fail a fortitude save. Clinging Drones: You cannot benefit from incorporeality, concealment or invisibility, and your MRR is reduced by 10. Cooldown 15 seconds.

Steadfast Roots: requires a Thorn form; You sink your roots deep into the ground to gain offensive and defensive power. For the next 12 seconds, you cannot move (or suffer move speed -100, depending on what's implementable), you suffer dodge -100, you gain 50% resistance to all physical damage, and you gain poison and force spellpower equal to 10 times your caster level.


The goal is to foster different playstyles between the forms, where the Hive form emphasizes mobility vs your enemies and the Thorn form is more about endurance and hard hits.

One more pair of contrasting abilities would be good, but I'm out of concrete ideas atm.

[Lotoc]

Will the blightcaster elemental forms work with the legendary elemental forms feat?
The feat seems it'll heavily bias thornknight form as thorn is innately physical/poison while swarm is acid/poison.
while the feat grants bonuses to acid (making thorn knight actually better with acid spells than swarm would be) it doesn't currently boost anything offered in the thornknight's specialties of poison or physical spells for a swarm form to take advantage of.
It may be for the best not to include blightcaster forms in this feat or to treat both forms as technically earth elementals so it will benefit cold/air/fire spells only.
On another note, it probably makes sense to give the thorn spells the Earth elemental tag for things such as earth savant or season's herald. I believe the thorn spells currently aren't properly tagged as physical spells or such for the season's herald season bonuses.

[Caarb]

Seems like a fair subclass. Seasons Herald needs to be replaced though, can't use a tree if you don't have any spells or the elemental forms to match it.

Not replaced - updated.
Add Spring (move all healing to this season)
Add Autumn/fall this is the season for decay stuff

Theres not much negative synergy here.
I would remove vigor spells and replace them with negative versions
Add negative version of regenerate
Add negative healing to forms

[FuzzyDuck81]

About the only thing I'm not as keen about for this is that the immunity stripping comes via the enhancement tree rather than a shiny new level 9 spell, so it'll be trickier to adapt my fire elemental falconry build & make it lean more heavily into the spellcasting role than the melee side, however everything decays simultaneously stripping 2 types of damage immunities from a target rather than just the one will have some really tasty possibilities including opening up more multiclassing options - for example, you could mix in a few levels of GOO or abyss pact warlock with some soul eater enhancements & the right gear, (possibly make them tiefling too & use magus destiny) & that would give you a character that, while not the strongest individual build, would act as a fantastic debuffer for raid groups.