Worst Enhancement Trees

[Bacab]

Have you ever hopped in a thread and had an idea what you were going to say and then as you read the thread, everything you were thinking was already said and probably more spelled out/thought you than you were capable of?

Also, as you go into it, you realize some of the things you said but didn't realize it bothered you as much as it did until you see it said?

That was this thread for me.

I literally agree with 99% of everything said here.

So i just want to add a couple of my thoughts. Hope these are as helpful as the things listed above.

Falconer made Warpriest kinda bad/redundant. The early DR in Warpriest at level 3 is helpful for a couple levels, but just getting Adamantine Heavy Armor sort of reduces how "special" the DR is. Many good chains/adventure packs have Addy Full Plate as a reward. Want to say Sorrowdusk/CO6 and the Carnival?

I think Warsoul is OK. When I do pure Favored Soul, I stay pure and I always am WF. I need the Crit stuff from Warsoul from C6 and T5. Divine Champion T5 from Warsoul should have Medium Armor, Mythril Body AND Adamantine Body. Everybody who has been here a long time KNOW that the most popular Warforged Favored Soul build was "Soul Survivor". It leveraged the 10 dr/adamantine + the addy body feats and the racial DR in Warforged. You could be walking around at level 20 with DR/15 ish with heavy investment (a feat and lots of AP). Back at 20 cap, that was really nice. Today, DR15 wouldn't matter that much when monster hit for so much more than they use to.

Thematically, Lord of Blades is all about Adamantine...so why should his chosen champion be forced into Mythril Body? I already "lose" a feat having to pick a body feat; at least let me pick the GOOD BODY feat.

To make War Priest and Warsoul a lot better: make Ameliorating Strike be treated like temporary Hit Points or reduce the self-healing penalty from it in reaper.

Also the ability "Radiant Flourish" (in both trees) where you swat a monster and get some light damage. Make this scale with Radiant Spell Power rather than Melee Power.

I would also like the Ability from T5 "Divine Power" allow 3 choices. +6 Strength OR Charisma OR Wisdom or even CON...the +6 STR is generally a waste because you would normally be using WIS or CHR to hit/dmg. Though I can see how this melee ability could possibly benefit spell casting too much? But its not like a DC caster is going T5 in War Priest or War Soul?

Also could allow the ability "Smite Weakness" which gives stacks of vulnerability...allow that to reduce a monster's Fortification.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

Kensei. Was powerful with the U31 rework because of the sheer amount of stats in it but was a badly designed tree. A huge amount of the power is in a small amount of the total enhancements, and there are several dead or overpriced enhancements and several very meh ones.



Power Surge's relative strength is significantly lower than it was years ago due to power creep, and was hard nerfed by not being an action boost anymore. Its charges cannot be regenerated in any way, meanwhile action boosts, smites, rages, spell points, charge-based battle-trances all can or are intended to be regenerated. Two of the potential 8 charges of this ability are tied to the kensei capstone, which is a problem detailed below.

There is enough doublestrike in the game that a pure fighter with kensei capstone can hit upwards of 115% passively, making the kensei capstone a complete waste for endgame builds.

Exotic Weapon Mastery is a double-dip on the Khopesh/Daxe/Bsword tax. Those weapons already cost a feat, and for fighter (the "weaponmaster" class) they additonally cost AP. This enhancement is not interesting and adds nothing. It merely eats space and AP.

2 AP per rank of +1 tactics and ABs is overpriced compared to the rest of the game.

Reed in the Wind is a seriously flawed ability. It requires three ranks to get meaningful value, and requires a feat to even select. It gives a big chunk of Dodge chance, but does not address possible Dodge cap issues, and only has a maximum 40% uptime. And it is always subject to failure via rolling a 1.

Athletic Mastery would be a good enhancement but it is locked behind a light armor-only enhancement and two feats.

Ascetic Training is overall pretty meh, the best effect available is restricted to light armor.

Shattering Strike is a really good enhancement but you gain the vast majority of its value from the first out of three available ranks.

Liquid Courage is a new player/heroic enhancement. It is not a bad thing for enhancements like this to exist, but given the overall lack of meaningful choices in this tree, this feels bad.

A Good Death has a long CD relative to its effect and scales poorly.

Deadly Strike has a long CD relative to its effect and has mid-tier scaling and the on-vorpal effect is extremely underwhelming.

Weapon Master is reasonably priced at 1 AP but is a bit underwhelming for a T5 enhancement and does not provide an additional damage benefit for two-handed weapons as one might expect based on every pre-requisite enhancement.

An overall problem with both fighter and kensei is the restriction of weapon types you are enabled to use in exchange for your power. Fighter and barbarian are balanced assuming the barbarian is raged and the fighter is using, more or less, one specific weapon type. When the situation calls for it the barbarian is not penalized for switching to a blunt weapon either in the stats that weapon will benefit from or the abilities they can use. Fighter and arcane archer are balanced assuming each class is using one specific weapon type but the arcane archer tree provides the means to overcome that disadvantage with different kinds of DR breaker stances. Since an enhancement tree that accentuates the supposed versatility of the fighter class does not exist, I would love to see these pointless and un-rewarding restrictions dropped (for the feats as well).

[Bagel99]

Have you ever hopped in a thread and had an idea what you were going to say and then as you read the thread, everything you were thinking was already said and probably more spelled out/thought you than you were capable of?

Also, as you go into it, you realize some of the things you said but didn't realize it bothered you as much as it did until you see it said?

That was this thread for me.

I literally agree with 99% of everything said here.

So i just want to add a couple of my thoughts. Hope these are as helpful as the things listed above.

Falconer made Warpriest kinda bad/redundant. The early DR in Warpriest at level 3 is helpful for a couple levels, but just getting Adamantine Heavy Armor sort of reduces how "special" the DR is. Many good chains/adventure packs have Addy Full Plate as a reward. Want to say Sorrowdusk/CO6 and the Carnival?

I think Warsoul is OK. When I do pure Favored Soul, I stay pure and I always am WF. I need the Crit stuff from Warsoul from C6 and T5. Divine Champion T5 from Warsoul should have Medium Armor, Mythril Body AND Adamantine Body. Everybody who has been here a long time KNOW that the most popular Warforged Favored Soul build was "Soul Survivor". It leveraged the 10 dr/adamantine + the addy body feats and the racial DR in Warforged. You could be walking around at level 20 with DR/15 ish with heavy investment (a feat and lots of AP). Back at 20 cap, that was really nice. Today, DR15 wouldn't matter that much when monster hit for so much more than they use to.

Thematically, Lord of Blades is all about Adamantine...so why should his chosen champion be forced into Mythril Body? I already "lose" a feat having to pick a body feat; at least let me pick the GOOD BODY feat.

To make War Priest and Warsoul a lot better: make Ameliorating Strike be treated like temporary Hit Points or reduce the self-healing penalty from it in reaper.

Also the ability "Radiant Flourish" (in both trees) where you swat a monster and get some light damage. Make this scale with Radiant Spell Power rather than Melee Power.

I would also like the Ability from T5 "Divine Power" allow 3 choices. +6 Strength OR Charisma OR Wisdom or even CON...the +6 STR is generally a waste because you would normally be using WIS or CHR to hit/dmg. Though I can see how this melee ability could possibly benefit spell casting too much? But its not like a DC caster is going T5 in War Priest or War Soul?

Also could allow the ability "Smite Weakness" which gives stacks of vulnerability...allow that to reduce a monster's Fortification.

Warpriest has a few glaring issues.
1. Its abilities use melee power/ spell power at random
2. Its T5 cleave has a charge mechanic making it tedious to use and therefore a waste even though its not overly powerful.
3. Its trying to be a party buffer/Healer/75% DPS all at once. It needs direction. As you stated above i believe it should have a form similar to old EKs that limits healing to touch range OR doubles spell cooldowns while in it. Thematically a Radiant Cleric would be healing, Warpriest melee and disciple is your casting dps/DC stuff. Kinda the three flavors your clerics come in but Warpriest is meh at all of them.
4. Its imbue update was a hefty nerf and BAB cap changes made divine power .... feel worse, especially as levels rise.

Suggestions:
Smite Foe be moved to T1 with a small upwards track to allow for Vulnerability stacks, Amel Strike and maybe something else.
Inflame to be removed, its a good idea but seems odd, warpriest is more melee focused and i dont think party buffing should be in here much but im open to keeping it if no other alternative arises.
Radiant Flourish should be changed to: Channel Divinity - Using your divine power you strike your foe with +3/4/5W and 1/2/3d6 Fire and Light Damage scaling with spellpower. 30/20/10sec cooldown. This would be an easy way to proc Domain offensive benefits like MP/Spellpower and fit thematically using a cleric core mechanic. It would also be the prerequisite to Divine Wrath
Divine Wrath would be changed to: You strike your foes for +5W and deal 1d6 Fire and Light damage per Religious Lore Feat also blinding your enemies briefly for 6 seconds. Scales with spellpower. 25 Second cooldown. Nice lil CC and damage tied to cleric level/ devotion. Less devoted classes would hinder its output.
Divine Power would be changed to +1W and 10 Melee Power as a T5, any melee would enjoy this. BUT it would require a major form toggle in t4.
Major Form Toggle - Divine Vessel - You channel your divine energy into your very being doubling the cooldown of your spells. You gain +5 to hit, +3 to saves and +30 spellpower. This would completely isolate T5 melee damage from shroud toggles on dark apostate and create a nice choice.
Imbue would be moved down to Core 3 (level 3 req) and would be 1d3 Fire/1d3 per imbue dice.
-5/ damage reduction would be moved to Core 3 (level 6) with some fortification instead of the PRR clicky.
Center track is fine, BUT T5 wrathful weapons would NO LONGER add imbue dice upon a vorpal but double your imbues damage to 1d6Fire/1d6Light for its duration.
Core 5 level 18 would be +1/+1 crit and threat on Warsoul 5% DS and would simply be range on Warpriest allowing for domains to matter and they get in core 4 the sacred HP bonus anyways.

I think this keeps it to the general melee formula, hinders casting ability for more melee stuff and you can still spell buff/ contribute. Other ways to aid in healing too would be Exalted aura and spells etc. Versatile here.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

Harper, yes, outdated. Nothing is worth taking besides KtA and Int to hit/damage. Maybe +3 skills and 20% HAmp (if you somehow spent 20 pts).

Harper Agent; the tree was released in a time when global trees were meant to be supporting trees; then we got Inquisitive and that philosophy got thrown out the window, making Harper the worst global tree by far.

Harper Agent is the worst of the worst. It has never had an update/revamp and doesn't even have a proper capstone. Players only use it for the INT to hit/damage/trance enhancements.

It would be a good supplemental tree for a lot of builds if they would modernize it.

Harper would be a pointless tree if not for Intelligence hit-to-damage.

1.) harper agent - it has int to-hit and damage, not much else. Bring it in line with other universal trees by giving it a clear purpose.

It is a good supplemental tree for a lot of builds right now. Specifically any build that wants to use int to hit/damage, with the trance enhancement as a nice bonus.

I am leery of any changes to Harpers because as-is its so good for that relatively low investment. I worry if they modify it they're going to move the useful bits into high tiers and wreck the whole thing.

Specifically regarding the battle-trance here: of the four variations of battle-trances that affect weapon using builds (KtA, Deadly Instinct, No Step Missed, and DM) only one gives a to-hit bonus. That also happens to be the only one that is accessible as a t1 enhancement. I think it would be good for overall balance to standardize whether trances give to-hit or not. Insightful accuracy does exist on gear, but it is pretty limited in slots and available pieces and maxes out at +11 which is equal to 32 of a stat which I believe is very easily exceeded even for a third stat these days.

[Fisto_Mk_I]

1. Archmage. One of the weakest and most outdated tree designs, when it should be one of the most iconic D&D playstyles

Provide very appealing if not mandatory for very viable and amusing 3PK Necro-Illusionist build PK SLA. This one enough to be good for me.

3. Ninja Spy. Just all over the place. All 3 monk trees could make the list but that one is the most pointless overall

Lolwut, really? Best in game ranged tree not enough good for you?! Remember, Shuri-monks builds still best ranged DD. And T5, if you go for pure monk, provide 25% HP bonus - very good and hard to obtain for ranged other ways.

[Paladin_of_Power]

1. Ninja. I tried playing it, with short swords, and it just stank. Too spendy, not enough effects. Switched to handwraps and its like the training wheels came off.
2. Archmage. Out of date, very AP pricey, needs more effects. Make magic missiles great.
3. Henshin needs more attention.
4. Acolyte of Skin, what a train wreck. Not what I expected, doesnt deliver and buggy too. Meh damage, form is not worth it.

[magaiti]

Lolwut, really? Best in game ranged tree not enough good for you?! Remember, Shuri-monks builds still best ranged DD. And T5, if you go for pure monk, provide 25% HP bonus - very good and hard to obtain for ranged other ways.

It's not the best ranged tree, it's a tree that sucks the least out of anything a monk 20 can have.

[magaiti]

Kensei.
A huge amount of the power is in a small amount of the total enhancements, and there are several dead or overpriced enhancements and several very meh ones.

This can be said about most trees, Kensai is not the worst offender by any means.

There is enough doublestrike in the game that a pure fighter with kensei capstone can hit upwards of 115% passively, making the kensei capstone a complete waste for endgame builds.

Any source of doublestrike has an opportunity cost. Build for 100%, save a destiny feat/gear slot/epic stance.

Shattering Strike is a really good enhancement but you gain the vast majority of its value from the first out of three available ranks.

This is true for many active abilities, more ranks only add extra weapon dice, which is a general design problem, not specific to Kensai.

[thegreatcthulhu]

Paladin Vanguard - Awful cooldowns, CC reliability tapers off too quickly in Epic/Legendary, boring passives and just too much focus on spamming standard weapon attacks. Honestly, I would rather see a viable caster tree for the Paladin class instead of trying to use this boring tree.

Agreed with others on Warpriest, Harper Agent and most of the archetypes.

[Bjond]

1. Archmage. 2. Warpriest. 3. Ninja Spy. 4. Occult Slayer.

It really depends on how you measure weakness. Looks to me like you're ONLY talking about T5 because other than Achmage, I've actually splashed the underlying classes specifically and ONLY to put points into Occult Slayer, Ninja Spy, and Warpriest/soul.

Barb+Occult Slayer is better defense than defender. That's very far from worthless or useless. Ninja Spy C3 is require'd for shuriken builds. Warpriest/soul is often taken purely for Divine Might. Even Archmage isn't ignored on Wizard Blasting builds the way AA once was on ranged builds.

You are right about the T5s, though. There's nothing in them compelling enough to go that deep. Warpriest/soul comes the closest, but the entire "favored weapon only" thing kills it for any build I've thought about doing with that tree -- particularly the lack of favored throwing weapons. Tiny tweak to make it fly would be to include an "any weapon is favored" bit in T4 or T5, move Divine Power to T4 to match T4 for EK's variant, and add a real DPS swat ability (ideally in T1 that is notched up in each tier so you don't have a sudden drastic change in play as you level up).

---

Back on the title topic, the most utterly pointless tree in game right now is the newest one: dark hunter. I've not played one, but I've worked up some on the builder. The problem is that Tempest, VKF, DWS, and HW gobble up all the AP and leave DH to starve. DH's problem is that it wastes too much early AP on the pet while the upper is so much worse than Tempest or DWS that punting DH is a no-brainer.

We did warn that DH was too weak in the Lammania forum, but it wasn't buffed up enough to be even a moderately interesting alternative.

[kmoustakas]

Feels like Archetypes have kinda slowed the pace of modernizing the older trees, even though those updates are largely successful. What are your top 4 existing trees in need of an update?

Mine are:

1. Archmage. One of the weakest and most outdated tree designs, when it should be one of the most iconic D&D playstyles

2. Warpriest. Same as above, it just fails to give a competitive melee package, with no real signature ability

3. Ninja Spy. Just all over the place. All 3 monk trees could make the list but that one is the most pointless overall

4. Occult Slayer. The other two barb trees are really strong, but OS has a builder spender system that really doesn't offer enough value right now

I have to disagree with two of those.

Warpriest definatelly isn't a top noch tree but splashing some points in it is great. I absolutely love ameliorating strike (the nerfhammer hit it hard) and enflame.

Occult slayer is AMAZING for tank builds. It gives an insane amount of hit points, unbeatable spell resistance and built in heals at will.

[Bacab]

Back on the title topic, the most utterly pointless tree in game right now is the newest one: dark hunter. I've not played one, but I've worked up some on the builder. The problem is that Tempest, VKF, DWS, and HW gobble up all the AP and leave DH to starve. DH's problem is that it wastes too much early AP on the pet while the upper is so much worse than Tempest or DWS that punting DH is a no-brainer.

We did warn that DH was too weak in the Lammania forum, but it wasn't buffed up enough to be even a moderately interesting alternative.

So it sounds like you make a Dark Hunter, but just basically go Tempest/DWS/VKF or even Falconry (if Aasimar or Scourge WIS based). And just do DH for the PL?
Though the trapper ability seems nice...hate losing regular cure spells (but I like the potion ones myself on Arty RM)

[Fauxknight]

Archmage is my number 1, no reason for it to really exist


Warpriest I actually used as a primary tree recently when playing a DA, since DA is a pretty terrible melee tree despite offering melee enhancements. The combo was less terrible than either tree would be on its own.

[elvesunited]

Lolwut, really? Best in game ranged tree not enough good for you?! Remember, Shuri-monks builds still best ranged DD. And T5, if you go for pure monk, provide 25% HP bonus - very good and hard to obtain for ranged other ways.

Personally I went with a fighter 8, monk 6, ranger 6 for my Kensei shuriken build and also got the 25% HP bonus plus additional hp for getting two weapon fighting feats for free. Getting to ninja spy tier 5 was just to much burn for me.

I agree, warpriest sucks. I just cant find any use for the tree, and my DA is melee/caster hybrid, which is saying something.

I've never done it myself, but I've seen some cleric spellcaster tanks out there that I'm pretty sure went heavy into warpriest.

Paladin Vanguard - Awful cooldowns, CC reliability tapers off too quickly in Epic/Legendary, boring passives and just too much focus on spamming standard weapon attacks. Honestly, I would rather see a viable caster tree for the Paladin class instead of trying to use this boring tree. s.

My Paladin Vanguard alt is doing pretty good at in mid-reapers at cap lately with his best defense shield and divinity bastard sword.
Though I did have to give up on tactics as the DC just wasn't there. ( shield rush still knocks down sometimes )

3. Harper agent. Lol, what are you even doing in this tree beyond taking KtA?

My artificer repeater build went 31 AP for the added intelligence and skills and core 5 into Harper. If you're an intelligence maxing weapon using build it's not bad. Wouldn't go Tier 5 in it of course.

[Aelonwy]

Archmage is so lame it being named Archmage is giggle-worthy.

No one has mentioned how boring/old the sorc trees are? Or is it that the class itself feels so strong they could almost go without trees and be okay?

Harper is so underutilized. Int to hit/dmg, Know the Angles that's it, that's all that has ever really been desired from this tree on any character I've ever had that has used it. It would have been neat to have had something in it that was quintessentially bard-like... the tree being named Harper, and the organization involving a lot of bards after all. I know there is some spellcasting support but nothing that says to me bard like a special song/whistle to strengthen the group or a music bonus or sonic anything. The closest bard-like ability is perhaps Heroic Companion but its an action boost, copy/paste of the halfling ability.

I don't have a barb but I understand from hubby/son a number of barbarian enhancements are just plain borked and do nothing.

The recent changes/cost rebalance to Radiant servant were an improvement, can't say I feel Divine Disciple came away improved exactly but I'll live with it. Although I feel apprehensive now about wanting Archmage fixed. So often that gets twisted to neutered here.

What about racial trees? Dwarf is just sad.

[jirksa]

Reacting:

• Warpriest - I actualy use this on many of my builds. Never as a main tree. I agree that it is meh as a main tree but I will argue that it is really good for tier 2/3/4 goodies
• Henshin mystic - HM is not that bad but definitely underwhelming, My main is 12 Fvs 6 monk Henshin mystic / warpriest hybrid and it is fun... not super power, but definitely capable
• Ninja spy - super bad because crit profile is improved at lvl 20 cap stone

My own list, from the most bad:

1. Ninja spy
2. Harper
3. Archmage
4. Arcanotechnician

[axel15810]

Warpriest is the one as a cleric player that bothers me the most.

There is zero pragmatic reason to use Warpriest as a main tree over Falconry. Warpriest needs a serious rework, it is not worth using as a main tree over Falconry in its current state for any melee cleric though it has some pretty good low hanging fruit in the first few tiers so a splash can be good.

Warpriest probably needs to be taken a different direction since making it a DPS melee tree is so difficult as it's hard to make it have good enough DPS to be worth using while also keeping it worse DPS than KotC and other melee trees to keep it balanced. I think a focus on debuffing could be an interesting niche to take it in. Currently the only reason to go tier 5 is in niche cases where you want to cheese content with Divine Intervention.

If it is to stay the same, I could talk all day about what changes are needed but for starters smite foe needs a shorter cooldown, divine might needs to be given a WIS option for trance (just like Warsoul) and implacable foe needs less restrictive range requirements - just make it a normal mass buff spell that lasts for 30 seconds.

To be honest I have pretty much given up years ago on this tree ever being good. I remember making a rant on youtube about this tree in 2014 that will hit the 10 year mark next year...and Warpriest is still bad after all this time.

[LurkingVeteran]

DDO balance is in a pretty decent spot compared to how it used to be, but a few things still really stand out as bad:

Many Universal trees are garbage beyond some T3 plash for a trance.
- Harper is just the worst.
- I really wish T5 Falconry was good for something because it's a cool tree, but it isn't. Last I heard, the DC on Falconry attacks were also crappy by end-game.

Ninja Spy - All special attacks are weak. TWF is not in a great spot.

Archmage - The definition of mediocre. Why is supremacy so random?

Other things that need a look:
- Monk Attacks - Complicated, buggy garbage. (it's not a tree but I'll bring it up anyway)
- Half of arcane spells that were ignored in the first "quick and dirty" spell pass for arcanes. When do we get the rest of the arcane spell pass?
- Summons generally and charms in epics. Why do we still have an outdated debuff (Epic Ward) on charm durations after L20, that also stacks multiplicatively with reaper debuffs? I think this is a left over from back when Epic was the extreme challenge mode and epic mobs were immune to death effects. You waste an SL9 slot on Dominate at L18-19, then you get to have fun in a few quests before an undocumented effect makes it useless. Stat damaging effects are in the same boat.

[Lotoc]

No one has mentioned how boring/old the sorc trees are? Or is it that the class itself feels so strong they could almost go without trees and be okay?

The thing about the sorc savant trees is they are strong except all that strength is in the cores. Once you're level 20 you may as well go 41 savant and t5 into something like EK or Falconry and be significantly more durable - Which is why a bunch of the EK benefits got locked to using eldritch strike to maintain them.
Savant trees do desperately need a (power neutral) redesign moving the power in the cores into the tree itself and ideally much of it into the t5s.

[mbartol]

It is a good supplemental tree for a lot of builds right now. Specifically any build that wants to use int to hit/damage, with the trance enhancement as a nice bonus.

I am leery of any changes to Harpers because as-is its so good for that relatively low investment. I worry if they modify it they're going to move the useful bits into high tiers and wreck the whole thing.

Truth.
However, now that the idea is planted, the corrupt-a-wish phase will follow.