U58 Preview 3: Acolyte of the Skin Warlock Archetype

[KookieKobold]

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. This scales with 125% Spell Power. 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

What's Changed Since Preview 2:

• Bugfixes and implementation! This means that not a lot changed design-wise, but a lot more things should now be functional. Now's the time for more fine-tuning when it comes to design choices, so feedback is appreciated!

Known Issues:

• Visual Effects for this tree only function on Human (both Male and Female) characters.
  
• Animations for Demon Form only work on Human Male characters.
• Several icons are marked as placeholders

[cru121]

Without testing anything... Introducing the Beam at 125% in the same release that nerfs all other AoE shapes to 100%... Looks bad imho. Maybe find another way how to increase its damage if needed.

[LurkingVeteran]

Without testing anything... Introducing the Beam at 125% in the same release that nerfs all other AoE shapes to 100%... Looks bad imho. Maybe find another way how to increase its damage if needed.

The other shapes were not nerfed since the base damage was increased. Further, single target is now 130%, upgradeable to 150%.

Otherwise I agree with the poster above, that if this is still not a cool looking (preferably wide) beam, please redo it.

[Hephaestas]

...I thought we were trying to get away from all the different over-scaling of warlock blast shapes? Rather see further changes or ability to up the dice.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

@Kookie

Does the blastshape feel good to you?

[Xezom]

So did some testing with this, and I have to say... it's doesn't feel much better than when most of the stuff was broken.

Having enemies run away from you in fear from your Glare abilities is horrible. I still VERY HIGHLY recommend making the glares paralyze with fear, otherwise they're going to remain pretty useless as well. They're pretty short range and cause things to flee from you, which is good for getting things off of you, but horrible for making use of your transformation and the double pact damage on feared enemies. Right now there is anti-synergy with itself. While you are potentially doubling your pact damage, you are making it a lot harder on yourself to hit enemies.

Beam is still terrible. It doesn't look as horrid with the removed force ball, but it still isn't a very highly functional shape to use. Even at 125% it is too unreliable to justify using it because of it's targeting and hit box. I'm pretty sure you could boost it to 200% and it would still be a marginal choice. The issue is not in the power of the shape, it's in the function. No amount of number tweaking will fix bad function. It just might make the bad function tolerable for the times when it DOES work well (which is few and far between). Beam just needs scrapped and replaced. I would rather see a melee Eldritch Blast put in. Paired with the two fear glares paralyzing things in fear it would at least have good synergy with itself and it's transformation.

Sadly, this tree didn't improve very much even with the function changes. It's just missing the mark in all the important places. It acts bulky, but isn't. It acts like it has high damage, but it doesn't. It uses a mechanic that is often times unwelcome in parties (fear),anti-synergistic with itself (shortening it's own range while making things run away from it), and useless on major bosses (Shaken works on bosses but you can easily get that from the Soul eater tree on hit and not need to use the fear casts in this tree).

[xaxaeb]

@Kookie

Does the blastshape feel good to you?

I mean.... devs nerfed IPS cuz "it was too OP", so what do you think?

I don't hate the fear effects as much as everyone else seems to, you can use the gazes as easy, short-CD crowd control and it feels fine to me. If you try to use them like cleaves, to do damage on cooldown, then yeah it doesn't work. Related: you never want to gaze while you're demoning out, which is pretty weird from a flavor perspective. Maybe the gazes should daze if you're in demon form, and fear otherwise?

Fear is horrible because the mob will run away from the group (tough luck melees). And when it comes back - chances are that it will bring a lot of friends with it..... tough luck everybody.

[droid327]

...I thought we were trying to get away from all the different over-scaling of warlock blast shapes? Rather see further changes or ability to up the dice.

Yeah, agree - normalizing Cone and Chain so that you picked them for their geometry, not their damage scaling, was a good thing. Then they immediately turn around and make the same mistake with Beam.

Fix its AOE so that its situationally useful, dont try to reward people for using a shape you know is subpar.

[Firebreed]

Beam being too narrow, slowing you, and having horrible height tolerance are deal breakers guys. More spellpower scaling won't change that.

Based on the lack of changes I would kindly ask you to read the feedback in Lamannia 2 and this thread once more.

[ianflaer]

Beam being too narrow, slowing you, and having horrible height tolerance are deal breakers guys. More spellpower scaling won't change that.

Based on the lack of changes I would kindly ask you to read the feedback in Lamannia 2 and this thread once more.

I completely agree. . . i mean "tell me you know the beam shape is bad without saying it is bad" vertical tolerance is absolutely a MUST fix, the slow down is ridiculous. why give me a pile of drawbacks so I can use what is objectively the worst blast shape in the game? why would I ever want that? tell you what, make the beam move as fast as a lightning bolt or arrow and remove the slow down and I think it might be ok, the vertical tolerance would still suck but it MIGHT be worth using . .. maybe

[Duhboy]

As a blaster replacement for ES it's still missing the imbue toggle to make it a viable replacement on that aspect. An extra +25% to the ray blast isn't going to match let alone surpass the imbue from ES given how it scales with imbue die which isn't that hard to acquire.

[Axcarth]

If this is the evil version of ES, why there is no Imbue Stance: Evil? I really think this should be somewhere in the tree in order to, you know, give imbues some space on the class and a little more flavor.

[Targal]

Want to have wings 24/7

[cmecu]

As a blaster replacement for ES it's still missing the imbue toggle to make it a viable replacement on that aspect. An extra +25% to the ray blast isn't going to match let alone surpass the imbue from ES given how it scales with imbue die which isn't that hard to acquire.

I was thinking of that too. One thing that comes to mind if wanting imbue.. is possibly Teifling Race, because you can use Toggle from their Core Bloodhunt. You will do more damage was the monsters health goes down to 75, 50, 25 percent.

I still am disappointed that gutted tiefling core the way they did and made it an imbue thing. But maybe it would be ideal with pitfiend ... They really should give this Archetype Howl of Terror. Makes no sense not to have that. Its pretty lackluster so far.

[Duhboy]

I was thinking of that too. One thing that comes to mind if wanting imbue.. is possibly Teifling Race, because you can use Toggle from their Core Bloodhunt. You will do more damage was the monsters health goes down to 75, 50, 25 percent.

I still am disappointed that gutted tiefling core the way they did and made it an imbue thing. But maybe it would be ideal with pitfiend ... They really should give this Archetype Howl of Terror. Makes no sense not to have that. Its pretty lackluster so far.

I've tested the tiefling imbue to see if it would work on EB let alone from the skin-lock on Lamannia when it was up. It doesn't.

[newmart]

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. This scales with 125% Spell Power. While active, you have -1 Pact Damage die.

I don't understand these calculations... Raise spell power scaling and removing a die? Why not 100% spellpower without die penality?

[cmecu]

I didnt see Howl Of Terror... Did I miss it somewhere? How can you be a Pit Fiend , Fire Warlock, and not have Howl of Terror any more?

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

Playtesting this was literally the worst class I've ever tried in ddo. Worse even than the undead negative energy warlock that presently holds that title.

you've gutted and killed the warlock class so much over the years, introducing this broken archetype is like
offering fresh lime to put on an open wound.

just un-nerf warlocks, give us back the old shining through and make this new archetype something actually fun and effective.

I have a friend who used to play with me, big whale, the kind you want playing,
he won't play ddo anymore bc of how warlocks were ruined. he used to main one and left saying he'd not come back unless they were fixed.
Now he gives his money to another mmo, I won't say which but it is very sad.
You guys really need to listen to the player feedback
and stop listening to whoever it is recommending you 'balance' classes.

'balancing' really should only be done in a gym during yoga class.

[Nickodeamous]

Playtesting this was literally the worst class I've ever tried in ddo. Worse even than the undead negative energy warlock that presently holds that title.

you've gutted and killed the warlock class so much over the years, introducing this broken archetype is like
offering fresh lime to put on an open wound.

just un-nerf warlocks, give us back the old shining through and make this new archetype something actually fun and effective.

I have a friend who used to play with me, big whale, the kind you want playing,
he won't play ddo anymore bc of how warlocks were ruined. he used to main one and left saying he'd not come back unless they were fixed.
Now he gives his money to another mmo, I won't say which but it is very sad.
You guys really need to listen to the player feedback
and stop listening to whoever it is recommending you 'balance' classes.

'balancing' really should only be done in a gym during yoga class.

Nailed it.

I decided to get a few PLs from this archetype, and let me tell you, it has been sooo painful. DPS is atrocious now with cone, and the beam is just doesn't hit correctly...ever. Warlock used to be fun. We need to undue the scaling that happened to the different blasts. Its horrendous compared to any other spellcaster.

Nic

[LurkingVeteran]

Nailed it.

I decided to get a few PLs from this archetype, and let me tell you, it has been sooo painful. DPS is atrocious now with cone, and the beam is just doesn't hit correctly...ever. Warlock used to be fun. We need to undue the scaling that happened to the different blasts. Its horrendous compared to any other spellcaster.

Nic

Since they upped the dice on ED, the damage of cone should mathematically speaking be nearly identical. If the damage of cone is lower now than before, maybe it is because you are investing in the AotS tree instead of the pact dice from TS? Judging from reports, they should definitely improve the beam stance to hit better though. Have you tried turning off auto targeting in options? It's terrible for line-based attacks. Lag is another major issue...