First Look: U41 Eldritch Knight

[Tuxedoman96]

I think that Tenser's was one of the reasons if not the de facto reason for going T5 in EK. Even with the CD increase, I don't foresee too great of a problem due to the sheer amount of spells wizards and sorcs get to work with (and the SLAs that they get that don't suffer the CD penalties from it). As a concession, maybe the Knight's Magic can have the Tenser's Transformation as one of the multi-selectors. That way you could choose between more DPS, more CC, or more melee/tankiness.

[leesun]

I wonder how an eldritch knight/kensei split would work out? would definitely go t5 kensei over eldritch knight. improved offhand shield and maybe knight's transformation for the bab.
with the spell critical in eltritch knight I'm also curious about ek/es split. will have to toy around later.

on an unrelated note, anyone have an idea when the pale master changes will come?

[cru121]

anyone have an idea when the pale master changes will come?

not in u41 said cordo in a live stream

[Coffey]

A noob question.

Metamagics spell bonuses apply to these "This damage scales with xxxx Spell Power"?
And these damage, use spell power crit % on criticals? (If they can crit).

Thanks in advance.

If youre referring to the spellsword imbues, they scale with spell power now, but do not benefit from metamagic spell power increases or spell power crit %. Spellsword imbues work the same as arcane archer imbues in that respect.

[mauriciomaster]

very good! but when are you going to upgrade the palemaster?

[Coffey]

very good! but when are you going to upgrade the palemaster?

I heard that they will soon after Sharn: City of Towers expansion release.

[TDarkchylde]

I like what I'm seeing so far, as someone who likes to run melee casters. However, Sorcs are really getting the short end of the stick here. They don't get the feats to dabble in melee, and without a CHA-to-damage option in the tree, they are that much farther behind Wizards, as well as melee Divines of all stripes, really.

The fact that Harper exists is a HUGE factor in this. A Wizard can go pure, put a few points into Harper for both KTA and INT-to-damage, still be a serviceable caster, as well as a surprisingly competent melee here.

Sorcs would either have to multiclass fairly deeply to leverage their casting stat that way, therefore gimping their casting (both DCs and spell levels/penetration) or gimp themselves both ways by trying to go pure AND try to keep BOTH their strength and charisma high, as well as devote some of their very limited feats toward melee.

Solution? Decouple the trees. Give Sorcs some extra goodies in the high cores to give them some parity with the capabilities already available to Wizards in the tree as proposed. Change a few things up to make each class's version a little bit more unique.

[Sho-sa]

A paraphrasing of what was said in the Wednesday livestream is that you could invalidate taking Harper by taking a Wizard splash if EK included both Int to hit and Int to damage. The subtext here is that obviously Harper is a paid tree, while EK is not.

C'mon, Devs.

Aren't we past the point where Harper is considered a pay tree?

Attainable from Favor in EStar account wide, thus making it a new player trap.

This was last year's model, quit trying to charge full price for it THIS YEAR.

INT/CHA to damage is a must for this tree at this point in the game.

Heck, put into a high Core if you are worried about splashes, but if left out, this tree is incomplete.


Replace the Tree position with a staggered reduction in cost to Quicken Metamagic feat. This suits the tree concept great, Sorcs aren't left out, Harper is still valid for KtA- everybody wins!

[Alcides]

This feedback is based on the design premise that you did not want this tree to become the defacto melee tree during the Wednesday interview with Cordovan.

Core 1: Eldritch Strike: Melee Cleave Attack. +1[w]. If this attack hits, your weapon also releases a blast of magical energy, dealing an additional 1 to 2 Force Damage per character level to all nearby foes.(Activation Cost: 0 SP Cooldown: 12 seconds)

This ability has a very long cooldown and should be reduced to 8 or 6 seconds. The force damage should scale with caster level not character level.

Core 2: Spellsword (you get all four of the following toggles, 5SP to activate). Passive: +1% doublestrike, +10 Universal Spell Power. You gain proficiency in Light Armor and Martial Weapons.

• Corrosive: Charge your equipped weapon with magical Acid, causing them to deal an addtional 1d6 (element) damage on hit. You gain an additional 1d6 every 3 (wizard/sorcerer) levels (at 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18). This damage scales with Acid Spell Power. While active, your Eldritch Strike deals 1-2 additional Acid damage per Character Level which scales with Acid Spell Power. While this is enabled, your weapon and shield attacks have Ghost Touch.
• Flaming: As above, with fire
• Frost: As above, with cold
• Shock: As above, with electric

The d6 elemental damage should probably scale by 1 for each odd caster level past 3. The d2 elemental damage should scale with caster level not character level.

Improved Mage Armor: (unchanged) Spell Like Ability: Mage Armor. (Activation Cost: 8/6/4 Spell Points). In addition, while you are under the effect of the Mage Armor spell, you gain a +3%/+6%/+10% Exceptional Bonus to Armor Class.

This enhancement is so brokenly overpowered for a tier 1 enhancement that it strains credulity. I would strongly recommend moving this up the tree or changing the Armor Class bonus to 3/6/10 PRR and split the Armor Class bonus across the 2 Knight's Transformation enhancements. Multiclass builds should have to work harder for AC than just splashing 1 class level. This is almost as bad as when splashing Paladin 2 gave charisma to saves before it was changed to scale at 2 + 3 * Paladin level.

Arcane Siphon: Melee Attack:+1/2/3[w]. On hit: Gain +10/20/30 Universal Spell Power for 20 seconds. 12 second cooldown.

This ability has a very long cooldown and really should be reduced to 8 or 6 seconds. I would also recommend moving this up to tier 3 since a lot of builds can benefit from 30 spell power.

Shield Striking: (unchanged) On Hit: +5%/+10%/+15% chance to proc an immediate Shield Bash attack with an equipped shield. Every six seconds while you have a shield equipped, you gain Temp HP equal to the enhancement bonus of your equipped shield.

This should give more temporary hit points than this. Consider changing this to the enhancement bonus to shield plus caster level for heroic and 3 times the enhancement bonus of the shield plus 3 times caster level at epic.

Eldritch Tempest: Activate: Perform a spinning melee attack, dealing weapon damage +5[W] to all nearby enemies and knocking them prone for 1 second. (Activation Cost: 50/40/30 Spell points. Cooldown: 60/45/30 seconds) If any foes are struck by Eldritch Tempest, your weapon also releases an explosion of magical force, dealing an additional 1d6 Force damage per character level to all nearby enemies. This additional force damage is affected by your spell power. (now 1AP per rank)

This ability has a very long cooldown and should be 24/18/12 seconds. The mana cost balances it against fighters and barbarians which have infinite melee damage. The force damage should scale with caster level not character level.

FAQ:

What's the deal with Knight's Transformation?
You'll probably notice that the cast range restrictions while Knight's Transformation is active are very similar to Epic Defensive Fighting. With the tree's focus on wading into melee range for combat, this is a tree where offensive spellcasting range can afford to be close-quarters; for that tradeoff, the Eldritch Knight gets a big boost to spellcasting AND weapon combat. If you have both this and Epic Defensive Fighting toggled on in the Epic levels, you do not suffer a further penalty to casting range, so they synergize well.

Why did you drop Permanent Tenser's out of this tree?
As we evaluated the existing tree's strengths and weaknesses, it occurred to us that if we wanted the role of Eldritch Knights to be "Character that excels at both Spells and Weapons", then Tenser's was counterproductive to that, as it increased your spell cooldowns dramatically. We put together Knight's Transformation to replace it.

Tenser's Transformation *IS* an integral part of several melee builds at higher level play. I think removing it from the tree is a good thing as it is a powerful spell that non arcane melee builds should have very limited access to. That being said, Knight's Transformation should reduce the penalties of Tenser's Transformation by half and Improved Knight's Transformation should remove all penalties of the spell. Tenser's Transformation is necessary to arcane melee caster builds due to the extra hit points, armor class, and base attack bonus. Being in melee requires a lot of hit points which was the design premise for Epic Defensive Fighting being added to the game in the first place.

[Alcides]

I like what I'm seeing so far, as someone who likes to run melee casters. However, Sorcs are really getting the short end of the stick here. They don't get the feats to dabble in melee, and without a CHA-to-damage option in the tree, they are that much farther behind Wizards, as well as melee Divines of all stripes, really.

The fact that Harper exists is a HUGE factor in this. A Wizard can go pure, put a few points into Harper for both KTA and INT-to-damage, still be a serviceable caster, as well as a surprisingly competent melee here.

Sorcs would either have to multiclass fairly deeply to leverage their casting stat that way, therefore gimping their casting (both DCs and spell levels/penetration) or gimp themselves both ways by trying to go pure AND try to keep BOTH their strength and charisma high, as well as devote some of their very limited feats toward melee.

Solution? Decouple the trees. Give Sorcs some extra goodies in the high cores to give them some parity with the capabilities already available to Wizards in the tree as proposed. Change a few things up to make each class's version a little bit more unique.

For 3 enhancement points, PDK sorcerers can get Charisma to hit and damage with several weapons. That would be at least 77 other points to play with. I think a single design is good enough since sorcerers cast faster and get more mana than wizards. Wizards get more metamagic feats, slower cast time, and less mana.

[akalin2012]

• Knight's Transformation: Toggle: While this is turned on, all your spells and SLAs that are affected by Metamagics have their range reduced to touch range. You cannot enable the Enlarge Metamagic while this is active. You gain +30 Universal Spell Power and +3% Spell Critical Damage. Your Base Attack Bonus equals your Character Level.

So... question about Knight's transformation. It says, and I quite "all your spells and SLAs that are affected by metamagics have their range reduced to touch range." Does this effect any spells which can be effected by metamagics, or only spells that are *actively* being affected by a metamagic? I.E. could I maintain the full range on ray spells/SLAs by choosing not to enable any metamagics on them (despite this being a large source of an SLA's viability)

[akalin2012]

For 3 enhancement points, PDK sorcerers can get Charisma to hit and damage with several weapons. That would be at least 77 other points to play with. I think a single design is good enough since sorcerers cast faster and get more mana than wizards. Wizards get more metamagic feats, slower cast time, and less mana.

Normally I'd agree with some sort of racial benefit, but keep in mind using PDK is a direct antithesis to being a pure sorc, as you must take a first level of fighter to have any access to PDK, even if you want to change it later, you must buy a +1 heart of wood to ever *not* have that fighter level. Plus, to be perfectly honest, I and quite a few others I speak with have a certain disdain for iconics. I mean, they're great if you actually lingering at epic levels, but... quite a few people don't...

[akalin2012]

Wizards get more metamagic feats, slower cast time, and less mana.

That seems like a good tradeoff when you consider they can also keep their caster levels and get their casting stat to attack *and* damage with minimal stat investment into Harper Agent, whereas sorcs would need to multiclass and thus sacrifice at least some of their spellcasting potential to reach the same level of melee acuity. That being said, this might be enough to *make up* for the metamagics, as honestly the EK tree seems to go out of it's way to be a disincentive to them what with reducing spells to touch range in what would seem to be it's core stance. Which is not to say that one couldn't cope with that anyway, but wizards will also be able to synergize their trees in ways that the Sorc doesn't seem able to. For example, taking the enhancement to be able to have better enchant DCs would synergize well with Vampire form (achievable with a bare min 11 points in PM) which also allows self healing for fleshy EKs, and at that, a splash into Archmage enough to get a respectable single target CC SLA to prevent being retaliated against in melee as much (like Otto's Resistable dance, an enchant AM SLA which I believe you can get as the second core, so 6 AP... maybe another 11 if you want hold person) This means that, even leaving as much as 58-63 AP to spend in the actual EK tree, you can have a decent single target CC, self healing/damage aura. What's more, for 12 AP in harper, you can get your int to damage (the to hit can be provided by EK and can be skipped in Harper) leaving at *least* 46 AP to spend in EK. So the Wizard class can get good CC abilities/stacking enchant DC bonuses, self regeneration/burst healing with death aura/NEB, more physical damage than a pure Sorc EK could achieve, and to top it all off that doesn't even cost them the capstone.

[Coffey]

If Spellsword would be made to disable melee damage completely when toggled on, int or cha to damage would not be an issue. OP Multiclassing would not be an issue. Increase the spellsword dice and enable spell power crits% and let the force be with you :P

[Skyrender]

I hope the tier 4 off-hand boost gets runearm and two-weapon options. To be honest, it wouldn't even need to be complicated. Just give the TWF option offhand attack chance and/or offhand doublestrike, maybe like a 10%/5% combo. Simply allowing you to use runearms like an artificer would be good, too.

[Alcides]

Normally I'd agree with some sort of racial benefit, but keep in mind using PDK is a direct antithesis to being a pure sorc, as you must take a first level of fighter to have any access to PDK, even if you want to change it later, you must buy a +1 heart of wood to ever *not* have that fighter level. Plus, to be perfectly honest, I and quite a few others I speak with have a certain disdain for iconics. I mean, they're great if you actually lingering at epic levels, but... quite a few people don't...

The first level of iconics are a design oversight as in my opinion they should be treated as an "iconic race" which starts at level 15 as they currently do since they are designed to start in Eveningstar. Or people should receive a character bound +1 heart of wood each time they create an iconic or ITR. That's a far cry from antithesis. A lot of people I know stay at cap or keep a few toons at cap, and have some for heroic/racial TRs. But to each their own I guess. The original conversation was about Charisma to Attack and Damage which there is an option available for Sorcerers. It's not as flexible as wizard, but one does exist.

[LordTigerDawn]

What's the deal with Knight's Transformation?

the Eldritch Knight gets a big boost to spellcasting AND weapon combat

You gain +30 Universal Spell Power and +3% Spell Critical Damage

---

Apparently your definition of big boost is significantly different than mine. Your missing a decimal place. With the decimal place boost, I would still probably not use it. Tenser's scrolls are too easy to use instead.

[Claver]

So... question about Knight's transformation. It says, and I quite "all your spells and SLAs that are affected by metamagics have their range reduced to touch range." Does this effect any spells which can be effected by metamagics, or only spells that are *actively* being affected by a metamagic? I.E. could I maintain the full range on ray spells/SLAs by choosing not to enable any metamagics on them (despite this being a large source of an SLA's viability)

See Below

Knights Transformation affects all spells and SLAs (*) that I have tested - not just those affected by metamagics. As the enhancement description is written, it could be confused to mean that if I don't have any metamagics toggled on a particular spell, I can cast that spell at normal range. Please consider changing the description to read "While this is turned on, all your spells and SLAs have their range reduced to touch range" for ease of understanding

[john0]

I think a cha to dmg would be good for sorc players, since wizards have harper tree for int (their main stat) to dmg.

maybe make the int/cha to hit on t2 while int/cha to dmg on t4

[SiliconScout]

...
Quick Draw reduces the time between casting and returning to your weapon attack chain.

Not sure if this has been brought up yet, really hoping it has but just in case it hasn't the 1 second delay you introduced has made Quick Draw pretty much less than useless it's actually a trap and wasted feat IMHO. Unless of course you are getting rid of it, or at least getting rid of it for the EK. It is a tiny bit faster sure but to run so deep in the tree, well by the time you get it I expect you shouldn't really need it any more.

If you have accounted for that please post because if you haven't then it honestly makes one wonder what the knowledge level is of the internal play testers. I am down to casual hours playing and visiting the forums maybe 2 times a week but even I am aware of the massive nerf that Quick Draw took.