Dark Apostate Feedback and Suggestions

[Amideus]

So this is going to be long and details. Recently I have been using my past lives to expand my interests in this game. I used to play exclusively unarmed monk focused builds and I really stuck with that for the last 15 years. With Dark Apostate I was very excited. I always loved the idea of shadowy divine casters using darker magics. For background on this I am a mid tier player, I do mostly Elite solos, I have very little reaper points and about 30 total past lives between heroic, iconic, racial, and epic. I do not have completionist yet.

The Dark Apostate has introduced one of the coolest new visual effects in this game in a VERY long time. The Shroud form looks absolutely amazing. That is the most praise I am going to give this archetype now. The enchancement line is MASSIVELY undertuned, lacks a clear direction, has a lot of major flaws or issues, and just feels really really barren when compared to nearly every other enhancement line in the game. It's almost like someone reached back into 2014 and pulled out a dusty enhancement line and rebranded it.

Enhanced Shadowform - Stacking incorp and concealment is kind of nice. It suppliments not having blur as a divine caster. But needing it to stack up over the last 4 cores is just awful. The higher your level gets the weaker the benefit, and eventually once you start doing reaper the bypass will completely remove this bonus rendering it meaningless. Aside from that, the vast majority of the cores grant Apostate Dice which only scales with your imbue toggle or the temp HP from turning if you take that. Compare this to Pale Master where they get the full benefit of their form right away at the same place DA gets their initial form, and their subsequent cores enhance their form and style greatly. I know that you want this to be its own thing, but it's essentially a Cleric Pale Master, and so any look at this enhancement line has to be compared to the benefits that you get from Pale Master.

My suggestion is to entirely rework these cores. Give Shadowform flat incorp and concealment of whatever percentage feels right, and remove the scaling percentage from the other cores. In their place offer more bonuses. Light and negative spell power, multi-selector cores that lets you further enhance your form with defensive or offensive stats. Offer more HP and PRR/MRR for the melee focused builds, offer some kind of procs, offer higher DCs to necromancy. Undead augmentation is a perfect enhancement to pull from. The tree seems like it's a hybrid of caster focused and melee focused bonuses so make it FEEL like it. And make the Shadowform feel as epic as it looks. Because right now it's just a weaker version of Vamp Shroud and doesn't even stack with it.

You can keep the Imbue dice and the no saves for Curses. Those are fine. Honestly the no saves on curses is the best part of the cores but it doesn't have any spell pen so at higher levels and against some enemies the save doesn't even come into play. And it's so deep in the tree it's not worth a splash just to be a debuffer. If this really is so powerful, move it later in the tree to make the pure DA more powerful.

Pray for Mercy - This ability is just so weak. It does the least amount of damage out of any spell that cleric has. The scaling is terrible. 1d4 per level is crappy no matter who you are. And the SLAs are SUCH LONG COOLDOWNS. It's neat that the damage is doubled on cursed enemies, but that either seems to not be applying properly or it ONLY applies to specifically Bestow Curse itself which comes from your spell book, the SLA, and the proc from the imbue. I learned this used to be higher on testing and I just have zero idea why this would EVER have been nerfed. It's just SO WEAK. And it's even worse with the loss of the Negetive Energy Blast SLA from the trees. This aside from the imbue seems to be the primary function of the DA for identity and damage and it just NEVER feels like it's worth using. I could just ignore this entirely and take the SLAs just for the debuffs. The damage is honestly just a hiderance since I want to debuff at the start of a fight but that generates all aggro on me from the damage proc.

My suggestion is buff the damage. At least this should go back to being a 1d6 base and a 1d8 from the T5. This is of course a bare minimum change that still leaves the damage feeling like complete garbage. My suggestion would be to make this scale in damage with imbue dice in addition to spellpower. It would give caster focused DAs a reason for the imbue dice benefits from the cores. It would also buff the melee DA that weave the Bane and Bless into their rotation. And it would let you focus on the Imbue bonuses in later trees. It makes the primary gimmick of the DA feel like it's a focus rather than some kind of afterthought.


Apostate's Curse The damage on this imbue feels pretty low too, and it's really upsetting on top of this because it brings up a whole new issue with being a Gish styled tree. The Curse Imbue obviously wants the class to have a melee route in addition to the spell route. That's fine. What's not fine is how utterly weak this route is and how restrictive it gets. First, the imbue dice scaling is low. It's lower than every other imbue scaling including the Sacred Fist imbue and Eldritch Knight. It does the least damage, has the most restrictions, and really just feels overall confusing. First, the imbue only works on your favored weapons. As a cleric you get 1. This by itself should make this do more damage. It's highly restritive and requires you to multiclass to gain access to more favored weapons or wait for the ED to get it which just never a good sign. Secondly, the way the curse tree scales effects is more frustrating. As a melee you want to take the fighting style feats, and you need to focus on increasing your damage and your crits. But as a cleric you can't do that. You'd have to either splash fighter levels for bonus feats or just go without. Because you ALSO want metamagic feats since the dice scales with spellpower and you're wanting to weave in bless/bane/prayer. Wizards get free metamagic feats, allowing them to get BOTH feats without restricting themselves if they want to focus entirely on EK. This is yet another instance where the enhancement tree is just worse than the sam kind of benefits out of Wizard. This class should feel unique and powerful. Lean into what makes it special, not limit the benefits to just be bad Wizard.

My suggestion is to remove the Favored Weapon restriction, and instead grant a BENEFIT for favored weapons. Give crit threat to combo with the curse proc. Give increasing bonuses when using a favored weapon. Less hard restrictions, more conditional benefits. And buff the dice or the scaling. It's very weak for a class that actively sucks for the melee damage. It's super weird that Sacred Fist does both twice the damage with their imbue and SIGNIFICANTLY more damage with their raw hits. And no, the Pray for Mercy damage every 15 seconds isn't making up for that...

Benediction Harm scales off 2x Spellpower now. That alone is fine for the healing portion but then this weird thing is added to it. It can now kill enemies. That's cool, let's try it out... oh wait it doesn't get METAMAGIC! You allow it to scale but then it can't get any benefit from Empower, Maximize, or Intensify at ALL.

Make this T5 into a SLA that does the same thing. It's now a Spell Like Ability that can scale with Metamagic for spellpower and also give the 2x spellpower scaling and kill requirement. This fixes the weak single target damage without having to be Death Domain, and it makes the enhancement line feel better.


Cursed Words This used to be a Channel Divinity for aoe curse. Give this back. This SLA currently SUCKS. You need an AOE curse to double your evil damage. The crit proc from imbue is extremely unreliable, and the caster focused versions just get nothing. With the SLAs being on such long cooldowns we need a way to aoe curse. If the damage isn't going to be doubled from the debuffs with Bane/Bless/Prayer then this should 100% be back to an aoe ability. Especially with how utterly trash the damage to undead is. Seriously it's doing like 200 damage at level 26. By comparison my evil damage is 600-700 from bane and bless.


Overall I was really excited to play this archetype. I thought FINALLY here's a style of caster I can really relate to. I was LOVING the visual design of the form it's just epic. But then the rest of the enhancement line is super taxed for it... Just why? Why is this SO UNGODLY WEAK? It's not even good enough for heroics. The other trees just do better. Like it works, but it works in a way that you have to MAKE it work. In fact I didn't even swap to that tree until level 8. It was just that much worse than everything else.

I really don't want to have to wait 3-5 years while other things are fixed before this gets revisted. I would really like to see these archetypes get proper support. They are the first new major interesting thing to this game and I really would like to see them succeed. This is the one MMO I constantly find myself coming back to and that I don't mind continuing to support with a VIP sub, but it HAS TO BE SUPPORTED. And that starts by listening to player feedback and properly updating and patching thigns in a timely manner.

[Nugaot]

First of all, I agree with you on just about everything here. Dark Apostate is by far THE coolest archetype, and I've had a lot of fun with a variety of undead Cleric builds since it came out. But the actual fact is that most of those builds worked in spite of being Dark Apostate, not because of it. I really want DA to be a debuffer, and it just falls so short of the mark. Applying curse via the imbue is highly unreliable, and desperately wants a way to apply curse to a group of enemies. Notable that Blight Caster got AOE Poison Spell that strips immunity, while DA is left without any immunity breaking. Devs have stated in the past they would like to move away from element immunity stripping in favor of greater multi-elemental versatility for casters, which is a move I'd generally support, but it seems like DA has kinda just gotten shafted here. Martial DA is incredibly feat starved and AP starved, and it's not like Warpriest is much better than DA. The first preview version was much better in many respects. I strongly enjoy the ways it distinguishes itself from Pale Master. Using mass inflict spells has been super fun and different from the passive + burst healing style of death aura + NEB. Having no save debuffs helps sell it as a dedicated debuffer, but it's not nearly enough to carry that role. I'd rather keep the single target no save version where it is, but putting the AOE version back in T5 makes sense. It's also kind of funny from a flavor perspective that the Pale Master can reanimated his allies as undead and have them benefit from his negative energy healing, but the Dark Apostate Cleric cannot. Doubtful that we'll see any major balance changes to DA at this point though, maybe in another 17 years, when we're Spelljamming at level 60. (the totes forrealsies permanent cap this time guys, we swear!)

[Amideus]

First of all, I agree with you on just about everything here. Dark Apostate is by far THE coolest archetype, and I've had a lot of fun with a variety of undead Cleric builds since it came out. But the actual fact is that most of those builds worked in spite of being Dark Apostate, not because of it. I really want DA to be a debuffer, and it just falls so short of the mark. Applying curse via the imbue is highly unreliable, and desperately wants a way to apply curse to a group of enemies. Notable that Blight Caster got AOE Poison Spell that strips immunity, while DA is left without any immunity breaking. Devs have stated in the past they would like to move away from element immunity stripping in favor of greater multi-elemental versatility for casters, which is a move I'd generally support, but it seems like DA has kinda just gotten shafted here. Martial DA is incredibly feat starved and AP starved, and it's not like Warpriest is much better than DA. The first preview version was much better in many respects. I strongly enjoy the ways it distinguishes itself from Pale Master. Using mass inflict spells has been super fun and different from the passive + burst healing style of death aura + NEB. Having no save debuffs helps sell it as a dedicated debuffer, but it's not nearly enough to carry that role. I'd rather keep the single target no save version where it is, but putting the AOE version back in T5 makes sense. It's also kind of funny from a flavor perspective that the Pale Master can reanimated his allies as undead and have them benefit from his negative energy healing, but the Dark Apostate Cleric cannot. Doubtful that we'll see any major balance changes to DA at this point though, maybe in another 17 years, when we're Spelljamming at level 60. (the totes forrealsies permanent cap this time guys, we swear!)

This pretty much echoes my sentiments exactly. There are some pretty neat things in the tree but almost no identity to the tree itself. The temporary spell points on crit and the no save on debuffs are the only two things that I feel they got right here.

I think that they should give DA another unique debuff to add to the tree. That would give them a REASON to be a debuffer in that tree. Something no one else can bring would set them apart.

I think they should buff the damage. Every other caster does twice that damage. There's no reason why we have to sit here with 5 buttons to try and get some evil aoe damage that adds up to HALF what the other casters can do. It's so much work and investment for no payoff.

The mass inflict is the coolest part, but it's neg damage. That's where the evil damage is supposed to come into play. Evil would be your way around this. They added turning effects when turning just generally sucks. I have a TON of enhanced turning and you know how many undead I can turn in ER1? 1 if I am lucky. That's a lot of enhancements, gear bonuses, and feats to dump into something that doesn't work. If we still had the aoe curse the turn based parts of that tree would make sense. You turn for aoe curse to buff your damage and debuff the enemies while granting Temp HP to everyone would RULE. Now it's just, why is this here again? There's no incentive anymore to use turn at all, so the temp HP is just dead in the water and so are the turning buffs.

With the single target inflict spells being touch range it's even worse for the full caster based DA.

Personally I think the best route forward is to cut half the enhancements and rework them. But I think you are right, we won't see any real changes to the archetype at all. it's almost as if their goal these days is to run this game into the ground so it will finally die. All I see on the forums for these testing responses are "This is too weak, fix this, let's work on this" and their response is to go into the exact OPPOSITE direction of the feedback, and then the release stuff is junk.

You don't need to make the new F2P archetypes broken meta defining overpowered, but you do need to make them INTERESTING to play and feel strong and good. That will bring in players and make them stay.

[Ereshkigal]

So this is going to be long and details. Recently I have been using my past lives to expand my interests in this game. I used to play exclusively unarmed monk focused builds and I really stuck with that for the last 15 years. With Dark Apostate I was very excited. I always loved the idea of shadowy divine casters using darker magics. For background on this I am a mid tier player, I do mostly Elite solos, I have very little reaper points and about 30 total past lives between heroic, iconic, racial, and epic. I do not have completionist yet.

The Dark Apostate has introduced one of the coolest new visual effects in this game in a VERY long time. The Shroud form looks absolutely amazing. That is the most praise I am going to give this archetype now. The enchancement line is MASSIVELY undertuned, lacks a clear direction, has a lot of major flaws or issues, and just feels really really barren when compared to nearly every other enhancement line in the game. It's almost like someone reached back into 2014 and pulled out a dusty enhancement line and rebranded it.

Enhanced Shadowform - Stacking incorp and concealment is kind of nice. It suppliments not having blur as a divine caster. But needing it to stack up over the last 4 cores is just awful. The higher your level gets the weaker the benefit, and eventually once you start doing reaper the bypass will completely remove this bonus rendering it meaningless. Aside from that, the vast majority of the cores grant Apostate Dice which only scales with your imbue toggle or the temp HP from turning if you take that. Compare this to Pale Master where they get the full benefit of their form right away at the same place DA gets their initial form, and their subsequent cores enhance their form and style greatly. I know that you want this to be its own thing, but it's essentially a Cleric Pale Master, and so any look at this enhancement line has to be compared to the benefits that you get from Pale Master.

My suggestion is to entirely rework these cores. Give Shadowform flat incorp and concealment of whatever percentage feels right, and remove the scaling percentage from the other cores. In their place offer more bonuses. Light and negative spell power, multi-selector cores that lets you further enhance your form with defensive or offensive stats. Offer more HP and PRR/MRR for the melee focused builds, offer some kind of procs, offer higher DCs to necromancy. Undead augmentation is a perfect enhancement to pull from. The tree seems like it's a hybrid of caster focused and melee focused bonuses so make it FEEL like it. And make the Shadowform feel as epic as it looks. Because right now it's just a weaker version of Vamp Shroud and doesn't even stack with it.

You can keep the Imbue dice and the no saves for Curses. Those are fine. Honestly the no saves on curses is the best part of the cores but it doesn't have any spell pen so at higher levels and against some enemies the save doesn't even come into play. And it's so deep in the tree it's not worth a splash just to be a debuffer. If this really is so powerful, move it later in the tree to make the pure DA more powerful.

Pray for Mercy - This ability is just so weak. It does the least amount of damage out of any spell that cleric has. The scaling is terrible. 1d4 per level is crappy no matter who you are. And the SLAs are SUCH LONG COOLDOWNS. It's neat that the damage is doubled on cursed enemies, but that either seems to not be applying properly or it ONLY applies to specifically Bestow Curse itself which comes from your spell book, the SLA, and the proc from the imbue. I learned this used to be higher on testing and I just have zero idea why this would EVER have been nerfed. It's just SO WEAK. And it's even worse with the loss of the Negetive Energy Blast SLA from the trees. This aside from the imbue seems to be the primary function of the DA for identity and damage and it just NEVER feels like it's worth using. I could just ignore this entirely and take the SLAs just for the debuffs. The damage is honestly just a hiderance since I want to debuff at the start of a fight but that generates all aggro on me from the damage proc.

My suggestion is buff the damage. At least this should go back to being a 1d6 base and a 1d8 from the T5. This is of course a bare minimum change that still leaves the damage feeling like complete garbage. My suggestion would be to make this scale in damage with imbue dice in addition to spellpower. It would give caster focused DAs a reason for the imbue dice benefits from the cores. It would also buff the melee DA that weave the Bane and Bless into their rotation. And it would let you focus on the Imbue bonuses in later trees. It makes the primary gimmick of the DA feel like it's a focus rather than some kind of afterthought.


Apostate's Curse The damage on this imbue feels pretty low too, and it's really upsetting on top of this because it brings up a whole new issue with being a Gish styled tree. The Curse Imbue obviously wants the class to have a melee route in addition to the spell route. That's fine. What's not fine is how utterly weak this route is and how restrictive it gets. First, the imbue dice scaling is low. It's lower than every other imbue scaling including the Sacred Fist imbue and Eldritch Knight. It does the least damage, has the most restrictions, and really just feels overall confusing. First, the imbue only works on your favored weapons. As a cleric you get 1. This by itself should make this do more damage. It's highly restritive and requires you to multiclass to gain access to more favored weapons or wait for the ED to get it which just never a good sign. Secondly, the way the curse tree scales effects is more frustrating. As a melee you want to take the fighting style feats, and you need to focus on increasing your damage and your crits. But as a cleric you can't do that. You'd have to either splash fighter levels for bonus feats or just go without. Because you ALSO want metamagic feats since the dice scales with spellpower and you're wanting to weave in bless/bane/prayer. Wizards get free metamagic feats, allowing them to get BOTH feats without restricting themselves if they want to focus entirely on EK. This is yet another instance where the enhancement tree is just worse than the sam kind of benefits out of Wizard. This class should feel unique and powerful. Lean into what makes it special, not limit the benefits to just be bad Wizard.

My suggestion is to remove the Favored Weapon restriction, and instead grant a BENEFIT for favored weapons. Give crit threat to combo with the curse proc. Give increasing bonuses when using a favored weapon. Less hard restrictions, more conditional benefits. And buff the dice or the scaling. It's very weak for a class that actively sucks for the melee damage. It's super weird that Sacred Fist does both twice the damage with their imbue and SIGNIFICANTLY more damage with their raw hits. And no, the Pray for Mercy damage every 15 seconds isn't making up for that...

Benediction Harm scales off 2x Spellpower now. That alone is fine for the healing portion but then this weird thing is added to it. It can now kill enemies. That's cool, let's try it out... oh wait it doesn't get METAMAGIC! You allow it to scale but then it can't get any benefit from Empower, Maximize, or Intensify at ALL.

Make this T5 into a SLA that does the same thing. It's now a Spell Like Ability that can scale with Metamagic for spellpower and also give the 2x spellpower scaling and kill requirement. This fixes the weak single target damage without having to be Death Domain, and it makes the enhancement line feel better.


Cursed Words This used to be a Channel Divinity for aoe curse. Give this back. This SLA currently SUCKS. You need an AOE curse to double your evil damage. The crit proc from imbue is extremely unreliable, and the caster focused versions just get nothing. With the SLAs being on such long cooldowns we need a way to aoe curse. If the damage isn't going to be doubled from the debuffs with Bane/Bless/Prayer then this should 100% be back to an aoe ability. Especially with how utterly trash the damage to undead is. Seriously it's doing like 200 damage at level 26. By comparison my evil damage is 600-700 from bane and bless.


Overall I was really excited to play this archetype. I thought FINALLY here's a style of caster I can really relate to. I was LOVING the visual design of the form it's just epic. But then the rest of the enhancement line is super taxed for it... Just why? Why is this SO UNGODLY WEAK? It's not even good enough for heroics. The other trees just do better. Like it works, but it works in a way that you have to MAKE it work. In fact I didn't even swap to that tree until level 8. It was just that much worse than everything else.

I really don't want to have to wait 3-5 years while other things are fixed before this gets revisted. I would really like to see these archetypes get proper support. They are the first new major interesting thing to this game and I really would like to see them succeed. This is the one MMO I constantly find myself coming back to and that I don't mind continuing to support with a VIP sub, but it HAS TO BE SUPPORTED. And that starts by listening to player feedback and properly updating and patching thigns in a timely manner.

Eh, I've done what now... 36 racial lives with the Dark Apostate? I started sometime in September of last year iirc.

I've only been going to 20 then TRing, but I run with:

32 points in DA tree.
* The cores are very helpful in leveling
* Bane could use a boost, but for 4 spellpoints it's a decent ranged AOE that scales with light spellpower.
* the +10 universal spell power is good.
* I skip Prayer because it's self-centered and costs 12 spellpoints
* Dark Rewards is amazing. the 10 temp spellpoints every time Holy Smite or Bane crits means you have it most of the time.
* +2 Wisdom for DC's
* Blessing of the Shadow for +150 incap combined with Return to Dusk to heal you 5 seconds after being incapped is amazing.
* Benediction makes Harm much more powerful.
* Shadows of death gives +5 light/alignment crit chance.

Then 27 points into DD tree.
* These cores are less useful to me than the DA cores, as I only use the +5 spellpower from each core.
* Mostly this tree is for the Holy Smite SLA and the light spellpower / light crit chance, + WIS, and cheaper Quicken.

Falconry for speed boost and +WIS. Maybe 1 point each into Warpriest and Fey dark for the + SPELLPOWER

Grab Sun domain for searing light, sunbeam and sunburst.

So, I don't see the problem people are having with DA.

The neg shroud benefits, the enhanced harm spell, nearly constant temp spellpoints, 3 AOE SLA's, two of which that use less spellpoints than that temp boosts to your main spell crit chance, the increased incap and auto-heal while incapped. What's not to like?

I mean unless you don't like casting Holy smite + Bane for a net cost of 1 spellpoint then doing it again in a couple seconds... While I do think bane could use a slight boost, it's pretty good considering you can almost cast it for free.

[Amideus]

Eh, I've done what now... 36 racial lives with the Dark Apostate? I started sometime in September of last year iirc.

I've only been going to 20 then TRing, but I run with:

32 points in DA tree.
* The cores are very helpful in leveling
* Bane could use a boost, but for 4 spellpoints it's a decent ranged AOE that scales with light spellpower.
* the +10 universal spell power is good.
* I skip Prayer because it's self-centered and costs 12 spellpoints
* Dark Rewards is amazing. the 10 temp spellpoints every time Holy Smite or Bane crits means you have it most of the time.
* +2 Wisdom for DC's
* Blessing of the Shadow for +150 incap combined with Return to Dusk to heal you 5 seconds after being incapped is amazing.
* Benediction makes Harm much more powerful.
* Shadows of death gives +5 light/alignment crit chance.

Then 27 points into DD tree.
* These cores are less useful to me than the DA cores, as I only use the +5 spellpower from each core.
* Mostly this tree is for the Holy Smite SLA and the light spellpower / light crit chance, + WIS, and cheaper Quicken.

Falconry for speed boost and +WIS. Maybe 1 point each into Warpriest and Fey dark for the + SPELLPOWER

Grab Sun domain for searing light, sunbeam and sunburst.

So, I don't see the problem people are having with DA.

The neg shroud benefits, the enhanced harm spell, nearly constant temp spellpoints, 3 AOE SLA's, two of which that use less spellpoints than that temp boosts to your main spell crit chance, the increased incap and auto-heal while incapped. What's not to like?

I mean unless you don't like casting Holy smite + Bane for a net cost of 1 spellpoint then doing it again in a couple seconds... While I do think bane could use a slight boost, it's pretty good considering you can almost cast it for free.

The cores are not great. It doesn't stack with any other sources, and you can get it all from gear. I find it highly suspect that it's "great for leveling" considering I never once got touched at all during heroics by any physical attacks to begin with. No that like I avoided it, that stuff was dead before it could. And not from anything in that tree.

The bane damage is a pretty bad aoe. Yes it's 4 spellpoints. It's an SLA. That's like saying the Necrotic Ray from Death Domain is a great nuke because it's only 6 spellpoints. It's SLA. The trade off for that is the cooldown. And since the bane cooldown is like 12 seconds and it doesn't do as much damage as the other spells, it falls short of every other SLA. No other SLA gets taxed like that. SLA spells are supposed to be better, not worse.

The 10 universal spellpower is only for orbs and staves, restricting you from getting it if you want to say use a shield. Something a lot of clerics like to do. In fact there are cleric specific shields you CANNOT use and get the benefit of the universal spellpower. It's also not some unique benefit. Other caster enhancement trees get the EXACT same node. Like Archmage.

The first time I ever proced Dark Rewards was in epics, I dropped down and was immediately killed while incap and never got the proc. This happened 3 more times. It's probably fine if you're doing heroics. But when it matters it's totally useless. It's proced 7 times so far this life, and I've gotten healed by it 2 times. And a big deal is that when I did get the heal I was immediately smacked right back down instantly...

Benediction only makes harm a better self heal. Without the metamagic to enhance it, the damage is pretty subpar. If they would let metamagic work on it the class might actually have a nuker option. Especially if they made it into SLA.


The big deal here is that your entire support of this class is that it works "fine" in heroics. I could run around as the WORST build in the game and breeze through heroic lives. 1-20 is not a metric of viability. Especially when you compare them. I can "do" 1-20 on a DA. I can ANNIHILATE it on a Pale Master. It's not even remotely close to the same experience. In fact most of my time spent leveling in heroics was in the Divine Disciple tree casting their SLAs and spells because they were just better.

[Ereshkigal]

The cores are not great. It doesn't stack with any other sources, and you can get it all from gear. I find it highly suspect that it's "great for leveling" considering I never once got touched at all during heroics by any physical attacks to begin with. No that like I avoided it, that stuff was dead before it could. And not from anything in that tree.

It stacks with Shadowform (Tier 2 Shadowdancer mantle) + Depths of Darkness (tier 3)

The bane damage is a pretty bad aoe. Yes it's 4 spellpoints. It's an SLA. That's like saying the Necrotic Ray from Death Domain is a great nuke because it's only 6 spellpoints. It's SLA. The trade off for that is the cooldown. And since the bane cooldown is like 12 seconds and it doesn't do as much damage as the other spells, it falls short of every other SLA. No other SLA gets taxed like that. SLA spells are supposed to be better, not worse.

Again, It agree it could use a buff, but it is still useful on a DA/DD caster build that wants a 3rd AOE that is super cheap, can usually be cast with temp spellpoints, and whose damage isn't resisted by much. Core 4 removes the saving throw for 1/2 damage, Tier 3 Pray for Mercy means cursed enemies take double damage, and Tier 5 Shadows of Death upgrades the damage from 1d4 to 1d6. I disagree that it is a bad spell, it's just not the best spell, but a DA/DD has 2 other light/alignment AOEs in heroics, so they don't need Bane to be amazing to be useful.

The 10 universal spellpower is only for orbs and staves, restricting you from getting it if you want to say use a shield. Something a lot of clerics like to do. In fact there are cleric specific shields you CANNOT use and get the benefit of the universal spellpower. It's also not some unique benefit. Other caster enhancement trees get the EXACT same node. Like Archmage.

The fact that other trees have the same benefit doesn't make it a bad benefit. Also the 10 temporary spellpoints on any light/alignment crit is far more useful than the 10 spellpower.

The first time I ever proced Dark Rewards was in epics, I dropped down and was immediately killed while incap and never got the proc. This happened 3 more times. It's probably fine if you're doing heroics. But when it matters it's totally useless. It's proced 7 times so far this life, and I've gotten healed by it 2 times. And a big deal is that when I did get the heal I was immediately smacked right back down instantly...

I think you're talking about Blessing of the Shadow / Return to Dusk ( Dark Rewards is the temporary spellpoints on crit ) -- For epics you definitely need more than 150 hp incap buffer to be useful - but there are ways to get more if that's something you wanted to do, but you'd need some high negative amp to make the heal be enough to overcome some extreme incaps. As far as I know you can get extend the unconsciousness range to 400 -- 500 if you want to mess with a 90 second buff, but that seems situational at best.

Benediction only makes harm a better self heal. Without the metamagic to enhance it, the damage is pretty subpar. If they would let metamagic work on it the class might actually have a nuker option. Especially if they made it into SLA.

I was talking about for neg healing. the 2x spellpower scaling makes it much more useful. It's not that I never use it as damage - because I do - if i'm cycling everything else and all are on a cooldown and I'm fighting a boss, I throw it into the mix, but mostly it's just far more useful for neg healing, especially helpful in low reaper.

The big deal here is that your entire support of this class is that it works "fine" in heroics. I could run around as the WORST build in the game and breeze through heroic lives. 1-20 is not a metric of viability. Especially when you compare them. I can "do" 1-20 on a DA. I can ANNIHILATE it on a Pale Master. It's not even remotely close to the same experience. In fact most of my time spent leveling in heroics was in the Divine Disciple tree casting their SLAs and spells because they were just better.

I disagree. I think DA/DD is mildly superior to a palemaster. I do breeze through heroics, and as a result only have 6 more racial lives to complete after starting in September on a new server with a new character.

----

I sounds like I won't change your mind -- and I'm not really trying to do that. But I am posting an opposing viewpoint, because I disagree mostly with yours, and want folks that are reading this to realize that other folks do oppose the negative view of DA.

Bane could use a boost either in higher damage, or by giving DA back the AOE curse SLA, but it's still a useful spell as it stands.

Other than that, DA is an amazing complementary tree to use with DD, and makes heroic leveling a breeze even when starting out with poor gear. The only time the build doesn't breeze through content is prior to level 3, and it takes very little time to get there.

[Amideus]

I sounds like I won't change your mind -- and I'm not really trying to do that. But I am posting an opposing viewpoint, because I disagree mostly with yours, and want folks that are reading this to realize that other folks do oppose the negative view of DA.

It's fine to have a differing opinion, but this feels more like an apologist response than actual valid discussion. It feels more like you're just here to undermine me and argue with me than to provide benefit.

I mean just look through the responses to the first and second previews for this class. I didn't even check them until AFTER my discussions with you and it's almost a mirror of what I am saying for 11 pages or more. And it's nothing but "This is a cool thematic style of tree, but it falls short in the performance category. And the way the tree is presented leaves a lot to be desired." Over and over and over again. And what was the result from all that feedback?

A nerf to the damage of the tree. Really? It's just hyper frustrating to check this archetype out, come to the conclusion that it feels under tuned, check the forums for advice and find the same thing. Check the preview feedback and find the same thing. And then find out that despite that feedback it was nerfed. It just inspires little to no confidence in seeing something good come from this. And that's really frustrating because I like this game but every time I try something new it's always just disappointing and weak. And that makes me not want to keep playing a game I have supported for 15 years.

[Amideus]

It stacks with Shadowform (Tier 2 Shadowdancer mantle) + Depths of Darkness (tier 3)

Shadowform stacks with it, not the other way around. Shadowform from Shadowdancer stacks with everything. You wouldn't say that "Blue is a stacking concealment" because it's clearly not stacking. And you wouldn't say that it stacks with Shadowform, because that's just obvious and incredibly misleading.

Again, It agree it could use a buff, but it is still useful on a DA/DD caster build that wants a 3rd AOE that is super cheap, can usually be cast with temp spellpoints, and whose damage isn't resisted by much. Core 4 removes the saving throw for 1/2 damage, Tier 3 Pray for Mercy means cursed enemies take double damage, and Tier 5 Shadows of Death upgrades the damage from 1d4 to 1d6. I disagree that it is a bad spell, it's just not the best spell, but a DA/DD has 2 other light/alignment AOEs in heroics, so they don't need Bane to be amazing to be useful.

It's not that bane is a bad spell, it's that Pray for Mercy doesn't do any damage. If we were just talking about Bane being worth casting for the DA, well then sure it's a debuff with no save. We're not talking about Bane as a spell. We're talking about Pray for Mercy damage and damage dice. The damage on THAT ENHANCEMENT is far too long and is not worth the AP investment into it. Which leaves the question of why there is a T3 and T5 enhancement dedicated to something that is extremely weak. That enhancement needs to be buffed and do more damage. 20-120 damage is trash.

The fact that other trees have the same benefit doesn't make it a bad benefit. Also the 10 temporary spellpoints on any light/alignment crit is far more useful than the 10 spellpower.

I didn't say it was a bad benefit. My point is this entire endeavor is that the DA tree is bad, lacks individuality, and lacks direction. You tried to point out the spellpower as a benefit. My point is not that everything in the enhancement tree is a negative, but that the enhancement tree as a whole does far less than other classes. So saying that there is this T1 enhancement that is nice as if it's a counter to that makes no sense. Because lots of other classes get that too. It is the bare minimum for the caster enhancement line.

I think you're talking about Blessing of the Shadow / Return to Dusk ( Dark Rewards is the temporary spellpoints on crit ) -- For epics you definitely need more than 150 hp incap buffer to be useful - but there are ways to get more if that's something you wanted to do, but you'd need some high negative amp to make the heal be enough to overcome some extreme incaps. As far as I know you can get extend the unconsciousness range to 400 -- 500 if you want to mess with a 90 second buff, but that seems situational at best.

Yes I am talking about that, and the issue isn't the incap. The issue is that displacement does nothing at end game, because reaper bypasses it, and they also can still SEE YOU AND STILL HIT YOU. So I sit there on the ground for 5 full seconds getting hit in the face unable to do anything about it. So what then is the point? Even if I reached the 500 incap range you are talking about, that wouldn't stop me from getting hit in the face 3-4 times for 200 damage. Unless someone is going to heal me then all it's doing is the increased incap range, which is honestly pretty much not going to matter most of the time for a backline character.

I was talking about for neg healing. the 2x spellpower scaling makes it much more useful. It's not that I never use it as damage - because I do - if i'm cycling everything else and all are on a cooldown and I'm fighting a boss, I throw it into the mix, but mostly it's just far more useful for neg healing, especially helpful in low reaper.

Yes, that's repeating the same thing I said. I don't take issue with Harm being good for healing at 2x spellpower. If it was JUST that, there wouldn't be a conversation here. It's that second part they added in. That part about it killing people. The fact they went that step to say that it can now be used for damage, but then did not give it empower/maximize/intensify metamagic is just confusing. And really not worth a T5 capstone in comparison. Super important part of a T5 is that you give up everything else to get it. So what you are giving up has to be considered. And this just ain't it.

Look at the T5 in DD and compare it to DA. They even get the exact same 5% crit, but instead of adding 40 to the maximum range of Pray, it's adding +2 caster and max caster level to ALL SPELLS of that school. Which is WAY BETTER. Like infinitely better. DD is doing a better job at what DA wants to do and you don't seem to recognize that.

I disagree. I think DA/DD is mildly superior to a palemaster. I do breeze through heroics, and as a result only have 6 more racial lives to complete after starting in September on a new server with a new character.

You are in the EXTREME minority on this one. Have seen a ton of people saying PM and PM/EK is just better than DA at everything DA wants to do. The only thing DA is better at is the visual of that form. And if this truly is your opinion, there isn't a point to us discussing further. Because we aren't even playing the same game.


The end result is that DA is poorly implemented and needs some love. That the forum response to BOTH previews and the testing was pretty much ignored. That the direct that was taken in response to that feedback was in the opposite direction. It's the same result that we saw with Sacred Fist. It's getting really frustrating to keep watching what little is left of this community give detailed and reasonable feedback throughout the lifetime of the testing only to see them make changes actively against that feedback and release something subpar.

Sacred Fist testing hit, there was tons of feedback on SF needing a battle trance and asking about Improved Martial Arts feat for epic not requiring 12 monk levels. Zero changes and feedback completely ignored. Not even like a "Hey, this is an interesting concept but we are deciding not to go that route because" no just instead nothing but PAGES of that feedback being ignored.

Dark Apostate comes around, same thing. "The damage scaling feels a bit weak and the identity feels off" next change "Hey why did you remove the aoe curse, now this feels way worse!" nerfed damage, ignored feedback. It's really hard to keep wanting to defend these decisions when they just don't even LISTEN to the feedback.

Honestly don't even know why I bother posting here in the feedback channel. Like it will change anything. Like it will make them wake up and listen to the community, or that it will save the game from the slow demise it's stuck in. I want this game to be around for another decade because I love it. But I can't see myself wanting to stick around if the state of the game remains the same, with changes being asked for only make 7 years down the road while active community feedback is ignored wholesale.

[Onyxia2019]

I rather enjoyed playing a DA although if you go into it thinking it is a melee based class, you will be disappointed.
If Apostates Curse was better or at least scaled better that would be a different story. Played as a caster is were the fun is.
You can be a plate wearing slinger of spells. Casting mass inflict spells that heal you while damaging the enemy is just fun.
Grad SLA's from the divine disciple tree and virtually never run out of spell points.

I run with a static group and was the "tank" so to speak for low reapers throughout heroics.
For a really fun time partner up with a pale master and you can end big fights with full HP much of the time.

One thing I did learn early was not to play a DA like a standard cleric which was hard for me since I prefer the cleric/paladin classes.
I had to basically toss those playbooks out the window and play to the DA's strength and then it became fun.

[Ereshkigal]

Shadowform stacks with it, not the other way around. Shadowform from Shadowdancer stacks with everything. You wouldn't say that "Blue is a stacking concealment" because it's clearly not stacking. And you wouldn't say that it stacks with Shadowform, because that's just obvious and incredibly misleading.

They stack. I see what you're saying, but I feel like you're splitting hairs, and the way you're saying it can be misleading to some folks. For me when someone says something stacks with nothing - that also means nothing stacks with it. But -- as I said, I do see the distinction you're making now that you've explained it.

It's not that bane is a bad spell, it's that Pray for Mercy doesn't do any damage. If we were just talking about Bane being worth casting for the DA, well then sure it's a debuff with no save. We're not talking about Bane as a spell. We're talking about Pray for Mercy damage and damage dice. The damage on THAT ENHANCEMENT is far too long and is not worth the AP investment into it. Which leaves the question of why there is a T3 and T5 enhancement dedicated to something that is extremely weak. That enhancement needs to be buffed and do more damage. 20-120 damage is trash.

I find Bane useful. I don't need Bane at all to play well, but proper usage of such a cheap spell can easily make up for the recent nerf to Holy Smite. That's what I look at it for, and for 4 spellpoints, I find it satisfactory. Yes, if you compare it to other SLAs it is inferior, and by that logic could use a boost. But, it's not an other SLA, and viewing it in an isolated fashion isn't reality. Viewed in use combined with sunburst and holy smite, it's yet another aoe that not only fires off for cheap, but also activates your temporary 10 spellpoints nearly all of the time. Even if you only used it to activate those temp spellpoints when another spell failed to trigger it, that alone makes it a useful spell - but it also does no-save aoe evil damage that can be doubled with a previous curse - so it's good.

I didn't say it was a bad benefit. My point is this entire endeavor is that the DA tree is bad, lacks individuality, and lacks direction. You tried to point out the spellpower as a benefit. My point is not that everything in the enhancement tree is a negative, but that the enhancement tree as a whole does far less than other classes. So saying that there is this T1 enhancement that is nice as if it's a counter to that makes no sense. Because lots of other classes get that too. It is the bare minimum for the caster enhancement line.

Well, I don't think DA is bad, because it does have valid uses. I agree, at first glance, it can seem like it is confused, and is trying to be too many things, but I believe DA was designed to be a tree that would compliment another tree - not one that you can dump 50 points in and stand mostly alone.

If I were creating it, I probably would not have made it this way - and I think it suffers greatly if you compare it to other trees that were not designed that way, but then you're comparing apples and oranges. It's a tree designed to work in support of other trees, and as such it shouldn't be looked at by itself, but rather how it can improve another tree.
[/quote]

Yes I am talking about that, and the issue isn't the incap. The issue is that displacement does nothing at end game, because reaper bypasses it, and they also can still SEE YOU AND STILL HIT YOU. So I sit there on the ground for 5 full seconds getting hit in the face unable to do anything about it. So what then is the point? Even if I reached the 500 incap range you are talking about, that wouldn't stop me from getting hit in the face 3-4 times for 200 damage. Unless someone is going to heal me then all it's doing is the increased incap range, which is honestly pretty much not going to matter most of the time for a backline character.

If you're talking about high reaper then I agree, but if you're on the TR grind running low reapers I know it can be useful & time saving, especially in pugs. Personally I find R10 an unpleasant and mildy boring experience, because it's all just too orderly in my experience. However, I suppose that might change once I get all the completionists feats and some really nice gear, but as it stands I have to play too conservatively in R10s for it to be enjoyable, so that might be coloring my opinion a bit too. To restate, I do agree with you that in endgame this feature might not be worth the points, but in that case just don't put any points in it. Not every feature needs to be useful in end-game to be considered useful. [/quote]

Yes, that's repeating the same thing I said. I don't take issue with Harm being good for healing at 2x spellpower. If it was JUST that, there wouldn't be a conversation here. It's that second part they added in. That part about it killing people. The fact they went that step to say that it can now be used for damage, but then did not give it empower/maximize/intensify metamagic is just confusing. And really not worth a T5 capstone in comparison. Super important part of a T5 is that you give up everything else to get it. So what you are giving up has to be considered. And this just ain't it.

So just pretend that second part isn't there? Who cares? If the first part is useful then it's useful. a DD/DA buld really doesn't need another single-target damage SLA spell anyway, and certainly not one that doesn't scale with light spellpower, that's just complicating the geair tetris for no good reason. DA isn't a negative damage caster, it's a supplemental tree for a light/alignment caster.

Look at the T5 in DD and compare it to DA. They even get the exact same 5% crit, but instead of adding 40 to the maximum range of Pray, it's adding +2 caster and max caster level to ALL SPELLS of that school. Which is WAY BETTER. Like infinitely better. DD is doing a better job at what DA wants to do and you don't seem to recognize that.

Look closer at the Tier 5 DD and compare it to DA. The +2 maximum caster level is only for Acceptance(+ to Fire, Cold, Electric, Acid, or Force.) It does not apply to Condemnation(+ to Light, Negative, or Alignment Spells) Also, it's just a flat +5% to crit damage (not crit chance). DD only gives an additional 2% crit chance from the tier 5 "Smiting V." DA can give you a higher total crit chance with light spellpower. DD Tier 5 is not superior. I'll take 5% crit chance and more guarantee of temp spellpoints on crit over 2% crit chance and a completely un-noticeable 5% bonus to crit damage any day.

You are in the EXTREME minority on this one. Have seen a ton of people saying PM and PM/EK is just better than DA at everything DA wants to do. The only thing DA is better at is the visual of that form. And if this truly is your opinion, there isn't a point to us discussing further. Because we aren't even playing the same game.

DA isn't anything like PM really. People expecting DA to be like PM are, of course, going to be disappointed. DA shines as a boost for a DD light/alignment caster. PM doesn't do that at all. So, no, PM isn't better at doing what DA does. These folks want DA to do be doing something that it cannot do.

Also, being in the minority doesn't mean I'm wrong. I think people aren't looking at DA for what it is. They're looking at it for what they want it to be, and judging it against a standard that it was not designed for.

The end result is that DA is poorly implemented and needs some love. That the forum response to BOTH previews and the testing was pretty much ignored. That the direct that was taken in response to that feedback was in the opposite direction. It's the same result that we saw with Sacred Fist. It's getting really frustrating to keep watching what little is left of this community give detailed and reasonable feedback throughout the lifetime of the testing only to see them make changes actively against that feedback and release something subpar.

Sacred Fist testing hit, there was tons of feedback on SF needing a battle trance and asking about Improved Martial Arts feat for epic not requiring 12 monk levels. Zero changes and feedback completely ignored. Not even like a "Hey, this is an interesting concept but we are deciding not to go that route because" no just instead nothing but PAGES of that feedback being ignored.

Dark Apostate comes around, same thing. "The damage scaling feels a bit weak and the identity feels off" next change "Hey why did you remove the aoe curse, now this feels way worse!" nerfed damage, ignored feedback. It's really hard to keep wanting to defend these decisions when they just don't even LISTEN to the feedback.

Honestly don't even know why I bother posting here in the feedback channel. Like it will change anything. Like it will make them wake up and listen to the community, or that it will save the game from the slow demise it's stuck in. I want this game to be around for another decade because I love it. But I can't see myself wanting to stick around if the state of the game remains the same, with changes being asked for only make 7 years down the road while active community feedback is ignored wholesale.

Honestly I'd love to see the AOE curse brought back. Why? Because it would make the DA build insanely overpowered, and insanely overpowered things are a ton of fun. But it doesn't need that feature to be viable. Not at all. I feel like SSG ignored that feedback because it wasn't relevant to what they were trying to do, which was to make a tree that could support another tree - not one that would be supported by another tree. They didn't really say that though, which is a failing on that part.

I love DA. When used to enhance a DD build with some extra immunities and survivablility combined with some extra aoe damage to offset the recent nerf to Holy Smite, and to get loads of temporary spellpoints with which your loads of cheap to cast SLAs can be spammed wildly - DA is pretty amazing.

I cannot speak to how well the Imbues work to enhance a melee build, because i've been having too much fun playing 36 heroic lives of the DA / DD caster. It's just a blast going through low reapers nuking things as though you were a sorcerer than can heal.

I think you should continue posting in feeback. I do believe SSG reads them. I think they take voices into account. I do wish they would do a better job of explaining their goals - or maybe explaining what they intended to accomplish when doing certain things. I realize that part of the fun of "new things" is the trials and the discovery, but I do understand why people saw a cleric with a shroud and got excited because they made a fairly natural assumption that this would be something akin to a "Divine Pale Master" -- but Dark Apostate is absolutely nothing like Pale Master, and SSG could've explained their thought process a bit better and mitigated much disappointment in my opinion.

[hit_fido]

Dark Apostate is good enough for me to be choosing the archetype over plain cleric and dipping into the enhancement tree, but not good enough to use it as the main tree.

The biggest missed opportunity was to build out the cool design of a curse-based caster by providing some kind of AOE-based curse to pair with Pray for Mercy/Bane. Look at, for example, how Blightcaster's Out Break and Poison of the Hydra are able to upgrade existing spells to affect multiple enemies. Clearly the tech is there for it.

That is how Cursed Words should have worked instead of the current implementation: instead of damaging undead (why would an undead-damaging attack be thematic for a Dark Apostate anyway?), Cursed Words should upgrade Bestow Curse to affect the target plus some number of nearby enemies. The level 12 core should then be downgraded from no-fail curses to something like a +2 DC check for your curse spells. Now you have an AOE curse that demands some investment into your Necromancy DCs to maximize your two punch combo of AOE curse followed by Pray For Mercy for double damage. Now maybe the tier 5 is attractive enough versus Divine Disciple to go into for Shadows of Death so you can upgrade your double damage potential from 2d4 to 2d6 per CL.

Aside from that they need to fix the Incorporeality and Concealment stacking, at least if they were meant to stack with other sources as I thought some dev had stated.

I don't know much about the imbue stuff, to judge whether it's really weak or not. Keep in mind it's one of the fewer imbues that scale off spell power. Maybe the imbue should add +2 bonus dice against cursed enemies, which would again build up the theme of a curse-based caster and create synergies with Cursed Words, Bane/Prayer, and the curse-on-crit imbue enhancement.

[Amideus]

Dark Apostate is good enough for me to be choosing the archetype over plain cleric and dipping into the enhancement tree, but not good enough to use it as the main tree.

The biggest missed opportunity was to build out the cool design of a curse-based caster by providing some kind of AOE-based curse to pair with Pray for Mercy/Bane. Look at, for example, how Blightcaster's Out Break and Poison of the Hydra are able to upgrade existing spells to affect multiple enemies. Clearly the tech is there for it.

That is how Cursed Words should have worked instead of the current implementation: instead of damaging undead (why would an undead-damaging attack be thematic for a Dark Apostate anyway?), Cursed Words should upgrade Bestow Curse to affect the target plus some number of nearby enemies. The level 12 core should then be downgraded from no-fail curses to something like a +2 DC check for your curse spells. Now you have an AOE curse that demands some investment into your Necromancy DCs to maximize your two punch combo of AOE curse followed by Pray For Mercy for double damage. Now maybe the tier 5 is attractive enough versus Divine Disciple to go into for Shadows of Death so you can upgrade your double damage potential from 2d4 to 2d6 per CL.

Aside from that they need to fix the Incorporeality and Concealment stacking, at least if they were meant to stack with other sources as I thought some dev had stated.

I don't know much about the imbue stuff, to judge whether it's really weak or not. Keep in mind it's one of the fewer imbues that scale off spell power. Maybe the imbue should add +2 bonus dice against cursed enemies, which would again build up the theme of a curse-based caster and create synergies with Cursed Words, Bane/Prayer, and the curse-on-crit imbue enhancement.

Just as an FYI, the SLA for Bestow Curse WAS an aoe Bestow Curse as a Channel Divinity originally during testing and they intentionally removed it for whatever unknown and unstated reason despite the waves of feedback saying how bad that change was.

I disagree with downgrading the no save core. That's actually one of the only good things in the entire tree and makes the class feel reasonable as a concept. There's no reason to remove the save part, other comparable end game abilities don't have saves on them either. It's perfectly fine.

The concealment and incorp was stated as stacking with other sources, that it was bugged in testing. It was never fixed and we got a bugged release. But the incorp and conceal still feels bad with how reaper works. Even if it stacked, having skull negate it just doesn't feel great. And undoing the negatives or reaper as a counterbalance to reaper being harder is just an undermining to how reaper works to begin with.

We have another imbue based tree that scales off Spellpower in the form of EK, which is an incredibly strong tree that is very good, but it scales a lot better than the pitiful imbue support in DA. That's the problem with DA. You have a half melee imbue half debuff caster in a tree and neither are supported well enough to work. And melee clerics aren't exactly doing great to begin with that giving them access to DA imbue is going to enhance their playstyle.