U58 Preview 2: Acolyte of the Skin Warlock Archetype

[Steelstar]

Acolyte of the Skin is a new Warlock Archetype themed around Demonic power and transformation!

Feats and Features This Archetype Gets (that base Warlock does not):

• Alternate version of Fiend Pact - True Fiend Pact. Identical to regular Fiend pact except rather than Dark One's Luck, you gain the following feat when appropriate:
  
  • Fiendskin: Your skin has been grafted with demon skin, granting you some of its inherent defenses. You gain a +1 profane bonus to Fire Resistance per Warlock Level.
  
  
• (You still gain Hurl through Hell as your level 15 Special Ability.)
• Rather than gaining Blast and Pact dice per level, Acolytes of the Skin gain the following feats:
  
  • 1: Lesser Pact Attunement: +2d8 Blast Dice, +2d6 Pact Dice
  • 6: Pact Attunement: +2d8 Blast Dice, +2d6 Pact Dice
  • 12: Greater Pact Attunement: +2d8 Blast Dice, +2d6 Pact Dice
  • 18: Ultimate Pact Attunement: +2d8 Blast Dice, +2d6 Pact Dice
  
  
• These feats may also be taken as regular feats if you meet the minimum level prerequisites as long as you have the first - just like how Monk stance upgrades work.
• Gaining Blast Dice and Pact Dice from other methods (such as enhancement trees, feats, or destinies) still functions as before. This alternate progression is only for the dice that before were granted from gaining Warlock levels.

Feats and Features this Archetype DOES NOT Get (that base Warlock does):

• Acolytes of the Skin do not get bonus automatically inscribed spells as they level up.
• They also do not get inherent Blast or Pact Dice (see above).
• They also may not choose any other pacts other than the True Fiend Pact.

Past Life
Acolyte of the Skin: You gain +5 Fire Spell Power and +1 MRR.

Enhancement Trees:

This archetype gets the new Acolyte of the Skin tree in place of Enlightened Spirit! It retains the Tainted Scholar and Soul Eater trees.



Acolyte of the Skin Enhancement Tree:

• Core 1: Fiendish Form I: You gain +3% Fortification and +1 Fortitude Saves per Core ability.
• Core 3: Fiendish Form II: You gain +3 HP per Core Ability.
• Core 6: Fiendish Form III: You gain +3 Fire Resistance per Core ability.
• Core 12: Fiendish Form IV: You gain +3 MRR per Core Ability.
• Core 18: Fiendish Form V: You gain +3 PRR and Universal Spell Power per Core Ability.
• Core 20: Ultimate Fiendish Form: +4 Charisma, +20% Competence bonus to HP. You gain Spell Resistance equal to your Charisma score.

Tier 1:

• Resilience of Body: +2/4/6 PRR
• Guarded Mind: You are Immune to Fear.
• Power of the Fiend: Fire: You gain +3/6/10 Fire Spell Power and +1/2/4 Universal Spell Power.
• Dark Deals: +1/2/3 Spellcraft, Haggle and Concentration, rank 3: +1 Will saving throws
• Resilience of Soul: +2/4/6 MRR

Tier 2:

• Hellish Rebuke SLA
• Mindwrack: Your Eldritch Blast, Melee and ranged attacks reduce the Will saving throw of the target by -1 for 6 seconds. The effect stacks up to 4 times.
• Power of the Fiend: Fire: You gain +3/6/10 Fire Spell Power and +1/2/4 Universal Spell Power.
• Nightshield: You gain the effects of the Nightshield spell.
• Hellfire: You bypass 5/10/15 Fire Resistance with your spells.

Tier 3:

• Shape Stance: Beam Concentration. Eldritch Blast Shape: Transform your Eldritch Blast into a magical beam of Force dealing damage to all enemies in a straight line. While active, you have -1 Pact Damage die.
• Devil's Bulwark I: While in any armor, your Fiendskin now grants +1 Natural Armor per 2 Warlock Levels.
• Power of the Fiend: Fire: You gain +3/6/10 Fire Spell Power and +1/2/4 Universal Spell Power.
• Fiendish Glare: Beams of evil energies emerge from your eyes, dealing damage to all enemies in a wide cone. Enemies take 1d6 Evil damage plus the effects of your Eldritch Blast, and are Feared by your frightening visage. Shares a cooldown with Cleave. Cost: 6 spell points
• Ability Score: +1 Charisma

Tier 4:

• Drink Their Fear: Your Eldritch Blast deals double its Pact damage to enemies that are Feared.
• Devil's Bulwark II: (req Devil's Bulwark I) While in any armor, your Fiendskin now grants +1 Physical Resistance Rating per 2 Warlock Levels.
• Skin Adaptation: Your Fiendskin now grants Cold, Lightning, and Acid resistance in addition to its Fire Resistance.
• Luck of the Gambler: +1/2/3 to all saves.
• Ability Score: +1 Charisma

Tier 5:

• (this space intentionally left blank)
• Devil's Bulwark III: (req Devil's Bulwark II) While in any armor, your Fiendskin now grants +1 Magical Resistance Rating and Magic Resistance Rating Cap per 2 Warlock Levels.
• Fiendish Symbiosis: You call upon your fiendish patron, transforming into a Demon for 30 seconds. You gain +100% Fortification, heal from Fire damage, and gain Natural Armor equal to your Pact Dice. While in this form, you no longer Eldritch Blast, instead you lash out with demonic claws as a melee attack. Each strike deals your full Eldritch Blast damage on hit. Entering this form is so frightening that activating this ability causes nearby enemies to become Shaken. Cooldown: 3 minutes, lasts 30 seconds + 5 seconds per core ability.
• Glare of the Pit: Beams of evil energies emerge from your eyes, dealing damage to all enemies in a wide cone. Enemies take 4d6 Evil damage plus the effects of your Eldritch Blast, and are Feared by your frightening visage. Shares a cooldown with Great Cleave. Cost: 12 spell points
• Dark Lore: +1/2/3 Necromancy DCs

Known Issues:

• None of the visual effects for this tree have been set up
• Several icons are marked as placeholders

[Xezom]

Starting my testing and feedback. I'll edit and update this post as I get going:

First issue I've run into so far is that Beam Form only Slows you as if you are casting a normal spell on the first cast of it per cycle. So if you hold it down you chug... hard. It makes the run and gun feel very strange. Edit: upon further testing, it's inconsistent on which one it does it on Sometimes the third, sometimes the first.

On Beam Form, the beam width hit box is VERY narrow. If enemies are not directly behind each other it's highly unlikely to strike more than one. The range also seems slightly lower than standard Eldrich Blast.

Fiendish Glare also stays on after your first cast. Or at least the visual effect and this will no longer work (fear) at all after that point. It acts like a single target projectile after you cast it for the first time, very wonky and broken right now.

ON Glare of the Pit and Fiendish Glare: Do they have a save vs the Fear? If so, what type and what does the DC scale with? The ability says "may become feared" but doesn't say under what conditions. Currently Fiendish Glare is so busted it's hard to test DC scaling if it has one.

One Hour testing Edit and Feedback:

Glare of the Pit and Fiendish Glare work for the first time you cast ONE of them per game session. Once Cast, NEITHER of them will function apart from their damage. The Fear doesn't seem to be working even on the first cast. I would clarify if they Always fear or have a DC and how it scales. Very hard to test and give feedback when the two main abilities don't function. Also the abilities cost 0 in game rather than their listed amount.

Fiendish Symbiosis: Interesting, but the animation just seems wrong. It should mimic the Dragonborn's swiping animations not the blasting animation from other eldritch Blasts. Know it says visuals are no set up, hoping that includes the animation for the transformation cause its funky looking to melee with point blank blasts.

I'd personally widen the beam wideth as it's not very user friendly. It's like trying to kill enemies with nimbus of light style casting only. It's rough. Also it doesn't just stay on like the enhancement suggests. It still hits in cycles of threes, with teh chug happening on the third or first instance in the rotation. Change it to a solid Beam/Laser that periodically does damage with a wider hit box and we'll talk.

Otherwise the tree is fairly unremarkable IMHO. You are definitely more bulky in the defense department than most other Warlocks except that you don't get the Temp HP the ES gets which sorta offsets that. Not being able to use heavier Armor without spell failure hurts its bulk. With the two main fear abilities not functioning it's pretty lack luster even for Warlock standards. I'd make the fear effects a paralyzed with fear not a run away Fear. No helplessness, but having a melee transform while also having things run away from you in fear feels counter intuitive (provided it actually does that when the skills actually function).

I'm going to hang up my coat on testing this one. There are too many breaks to fairly test its capacity, and as an eldritch blaster that's damage focused it's new shape leaves much to be desired. You are better to stick to Chain. I'm going to give this a "I'll pass," for this go around. Sorry SSG, at least for me this was a swing and a miss. This Archtype needs to go back to the drawing board.

[Stravix]

[*]Fiendish Symbiosis: You call upon your fiendish patron, transforming into a Demon for 30 seconds. You gain +100% Fortification, heal from Fire damage, and gain Natural Armor equal to your Pact Dice. While in this form, you no longer Eldritch Blast, instead you lash out with demonic claws as a melee attack. Each strike deals your full Eldritch Blast damage on hit. Entering this form is so frightening that activating this ability causes nearby enemies to become Shaken. Cooldown: 3 minutes, lasts 30 seconds + 5 seconds per core ability.

I LOVE the way the duration on this is handled.

Gives the capstone more power for pure builds in an organic way.

[Lotoc]

Overall with a quick test I'd say I'm somewhat disappointed on the delivery so far.
the way I read beam I'd had imagined it'd be a continuous wide blast akin to a flamethrower rather than the standard pattern of blasts being fired out as shots. The beam is also fairly narrow and shorter range than a standard eldritch blast rather than the distance of the ray spells it seems to be an imitation of.
I'd say beam shape as it stands simply will be skipped over in favor of chain or cone in regular play.

On the transformation, I imagine the demon model is a visual that will be put in later and the demon will be rigged to do an actual attack animation to deliver the blasts? It's kind of disappointing that mechanically it's basically coneshape with much smaller area. The description is pretty misleading as it'll have you thinking you're actually making melee attacks when it's just spell hits in melee range - probably best to clarify that this is purely spell hits in the tooltip before someone goes building a melee acolyte thinking it will actually need to land melee attacks.

Overall the most interesting thing this archetype seems to be doing is moving pact/blast dice into a monk feat situation where you can get full progression as a multiclass at a feat cost, just there's not really a way to deliver on that possibility in this archetype.
If this feature was on regular warlock with enlightened spirit it'd be great for building a multiclass melee warlock utilizing the aura but for an archetype far more focused on being a blaster warlock and far less support of a melee multiclass build this fails to deliver.

If I were to make a suggestion it'd probably be to scrap beam shape and replace it with Blast Shape : Claw, adding your blast/pact damage on melee attacks at a spellpower scaling penalty (say 75% scaling) and rather than having the transformation replace your blast shape have it boost your shape's spellpower scaling by 25% while active

[Scrag]

Is shaken == fear in the context of this bonus damage here? If so, that tails in nicely with core 3 soul eater!

edit: Why all the +fire power if you cant convert the blast damage from force to fire? I mean the whole schtick here is fire fire fire, but blast damage cant be converted to fire? Either with an imbue or something else?

[dkyle]

How about adding a feature "Frozen with fear", where fear you inflict causes the mob to stand in place? As it stands, major parts of this archetype are fundamentally unusable.

[droid327]

Wow. Big wah-wah here on the main class mechanics...


Beam Shape: its not a channeled beam at all like it sounded, its just regular EBs that go in a line and penetrate. Its just IPS for Blast. Like IPS, it stops after you hit the targeted mob. Unlike IPS, you cant target yourself and reticle-fire for infinite passthrough, because the shots all go high without a hard target.

Transformation: doesnt actually add EBs to your melee attacks, just gives you a melee-range EB. It doesnt have the delay after the third shot, but it attacks slightly slower than a regular EB, so...its not that much of a DPS buff, especially considering the range penalty and the opportunity cost at T5

Glare: as others have said, buggy to where you cant even test it

Also, double Pact damage on fear doesnt seem to work with Shaken (ie from Soul Eater core), dunno if that's WAI or not but Shaken is classified as a Fear effect.\

Hellfire (T2) requires Warlock L4

Slimy Doom (Contagion) still uses its "must pass two saves or it reapplies" mechanic even though its a DOT now, which effectively makes it infinite duration

--------------------------

The one interesting part is the Feat based Blast and Pact Die progression, which has (afaict) exactly one interesting application: an 18 FvS/2 AotS Tiefling, who can basically just use Chain Shape as their default attack in a Fire/Light-based nuker build. That has some interesting possibilities, giving you the sustained AOE of Chain attacks with the burst damage of AoV FvS...

However, this mechanic would only be useful when splitting with a class that can support charisma casting, otherwise your blast DC will be unusable... support fire power, and ideally light and Alignment too... and actually offer something synergistic beyond what Warlock can do itself. Favored soul and sorcerer are the only other charisma casters, but fire savant wouldn't use chain shape even if they had it.

I'm not sure why an acolyte blaster would splash deep into another class either, since splashing casters is almost never worth it- so the feat based blast dice really only matter if you're splashing a little Warlock onto something else

[Baahb3]

The one interesting part is the Feat based Blast and Pact Die progression

I too have been trying to wrap my mind around this. I could not think of a build that would splash warlock to open up these feats because as you said, splitting caster classes is usually a death sentence.

Your FvS split is interesting but I still don't know if dedicating 3 feats to what would ultimately be a filler attack between regular spells would be worth it.

[SocratesBastardSon]

Conceptually the archetype is really interesting, but it looks like you're trying to make a tank. However, given how backloaded all of the defenses are, and the new blast forms slow your character, this isn't really a Fiend Pact variant, it should be called the Suicide Pact. It's a glass cannon. Granted it's tougher than, say, alchemist, but they get to stay at range and run around to avoid damage.

It needs Medium (or heavy) armor proficiency that removes ASF, and the +20% Competence bonus to max hit points currently unavailable until cap (really?) should go where every other class gets it, tier 5. Frankly, it ought to be a 25% bonus.

[LunaticFringe]

Given how common fire immunity is, should the skinnie have a immunity strip? Removing 15 points of FR won't help much against immune... and given the heavy fire bent, maybe this archetype should have a strip. It would certainly differentiate it from normal locks...

Edit: Maybe attach it to demon form. That would give demon form more oomph.

[Smokewolf]

I LOVE the way the duration on this is handled.

Gives the capstone more power for pure builds in an organic way.

Problem with a T5 melee ability (Fiendish Symbiosis) is that there is nothing (melee-wise) that comes during the characters enh-tree progression that builds up to it. Thus its just a flavor ability with no substance and a crappy cool-down. Someone would be a fool to make a build around this when the other Warlock trees are significantly better. (And that not really saying much)

[Lotoc]

Problem with a T5 melee ability (Fiendish Symbiosis) is that there is nothing (melee-wise) that comes during the characters enh-tree progression that builds up to it. Thus its just a flavor ability with no substance and a crappy cool-down. Someone would be a fool to make a build around this when the other Warlock trees are significantly better. (And that not really saying much)

You've kinda missed it, you don't need to and in fact it's worthless to build for melee with this archetype even in the transformation as it isn't actual melee attacks and instead point blank blasts, all the durability in this tree basically just serves to let you survive point blank blasting.

[Pandjed]

As many pointed ot, the eldritch stance doesn't fit the rest of the tree and feels like a worse cone.

Another idea: How about making the eldritch stance a melee stance with strikethrough (maybe even combinable with THF)? Add some more defensives in and we got a melee caster that doesn't burst like ES, but instead strikes. Make the demonform stronger, so that it feels like an extension or make demon form a major form instead, we got plenty of bears running around after all. Could also open up new cosmetic skins as a business model.

If this would be a melee centric tree that also has some ranged SLAs, I think this would feel better to play.

[Lotoc]

As many pointed ot, the eldritch stance doesn't fit the rest of the tree and feels like a worse cone.

Another idea: How about making the eldritch stance a melee stance with strikethrough (maybe even combinable with THF)? Add some more defensives in and we got a melee caster that doesn't burst like ES, but instead strikes. Make the demonform stronger, so that it feels like an extension or make demon form a major form instead, we got plenty of bears running around after all. Could also open up new cosmetic skins as a business model.

If this would be a melee centric tree that also has some ranged SLAs, I think this would feel better to play.

Ultimately I think one of the biggest problems with Acolyte of the Skin is it simply isn't doing anything that warlock doesn't already do, nor is it exploring alternative potentials of the class in any meaningful way.
It's really just ending up blastier warlock when the predominant way to build warlock is blaster anyway.
Thematically acolyte of the skin had room to be a genuine tank archetype for warlocks and I feel like it would have been much better received than this iteration. Instead it's less tanky than ES.
It could have been designed to support a melee playstyle, heck an unarmed (handwrap) warlock that manifests his pact as demonic claws would have been amazing in theming.
Honestly I'm pretty surprised that this archetype tree gets a 20% hp scaler rather than 15% or a scaler at all, this simply is not a melee tree. What little melee capacity warlock has is pretty much removed with this archetype it's just a bulky caster and it getting more than EKs and Vile Chemists is kind of a joke when it's going to play from range the majority of the time.

[NemesisAlien]

Sounds cool right? You get Yamato's main cannon and superman's eye beam.

Then you log in and realize it sounds too good to be true.

[Cadic]

First some feedback: Fear is a really really bad mechanic to saddle on this class. We generally NEVER want to fear enemies due to them running all over the darn place causing more aggro from other enemies, etc. If you are really stuck on fear here, then they need to stand in place. The fear is counter to nearly all of the abilities in the tree since they need the enemies gathered up in small spaces. (Both glares, the symbiosis, etc)

Bugs so far:
Symbiosis doesn't work at all. Just does some draconic burst animation, but no change to the eldritch blast other than being melee range only.

Skin adaption didn't seem to kick in until I logged out and back in.

Fiendish Glare, and Glare of the Pit only work once. As soon as you use one, the visual animation remains on until you log out and log back in. During the animation, the glares don't do damage, etc.

Eldritch Blast beam is very bad overall. The attack width is extremely narrow, and the range is smaller than regular. Why would we ever turn this on? It lowers our pact dice, and gives us a worse attack? Seems to work like precise shot where it won't past through the first enemy targeted as well, so you have to make sure to have the furthest enemy targeted. (Maybe this was more feedback than bug, but it seems really bad)

Skin adaptation talent doesn't seem to be doing anything. It might be always working right now as my enhancements to my resistances were good, but not raising when I take the enhancement.

T4 of the tree only requires 15 points in the tree instead of the normal 20.

[kpak01]

First some feedback: Fear is a really really bad mechanic to saddle on this class. We generally NEVER want to fear enemies due to them running all over the darn place causing more aggro from other enemies, etc. If you are really stuck on fear here, then they need to stand in place.

Agreed, but that's not even specific to this class. Cowered is great! They stand still. Shaken is good, as their saves and stuff are debuffed. "Panicked" or "Feared" or "Frightened", whatever you want to call it, where they run all over the place, is stupid and useless, for everyone everywhere.

[Cadic]

Ultimate pact dice are not being granted at level 18 to the Acolyte.

[Strimtom]

This tree is hard to evaluate, but conceptually it is very cool. I couldn't terst much since almost nothing worked on lamannia, so here is what I got:

• Pact attunement (feat) text says d6 for blast and d4 for pact instead of the proper numbers d8/d6
• Tree seems to be very melee oriented, but the beam is focused on long range penetration and being in the back line. Very counter intuitive.
• Beam thoughts: Beam is too narrow, and beam needs to have better height tolerance. Also, beam feels very out of place in the tree, that is heavy focused on melee damage. Beam should be a narrow cone imo, like the eye beam. Regardless it should not slow you.
• Eye beam attacks only works once, the visual never goes away, and I can't test anything else about it since they definitely don't work
• Skin adaptation doesn't work
• Shaken (which is a fear) doesn't proc drink their fear when it should
• Howl of terror would be great for this tree, maybe as T5 for SLA.
• Cores should at least be 4 or higher, 3 per core feels low considering they get no other powers for cores.

[dng242]

I like the idea here, but not the execution. There doesn't seem to be a good solid vision for what this is to be.

The bean hints at an eldritch bow user.
The Glares seem to say raging barbarian.
While the Fiendish Symbiosis is dark cleric melee.
And they don't really work well together.

I would recommend #1. Find a vision and go after it! Ideally something not already done in Warlock.

Perhaps build on the Glare and Symbiosis. Replace the ray with what effectively would be a short range (melee + 10m) semicircle attack blast shape (in the guise of the claw attack) (not sold on this exact attack method, but something demon esc). Allow that blast shape to count for as the aura for Enlighten spirit buffs (e.g. spiritual defense). Make Enlighten spirit available (obviously) and remove soul eater. That synergy makes more sense.
May need some more changes to be survivable at close range.

Make this a diving, moving, shifting demon that rips enemies apart up-close and personal (but with a little more range/difference than melee).

Not fully fleshed out, but it does have a clear direction that is different than what you can get now.