First Look: U43 Pale Master

[reywas]

I like the changes in general, but I find two negatives:

1- The SLAS. They are many, many APs for more than mediocre damage. They need to see their cost drastically reduced or improved. Or exchanged for true spells. It doesn't matter if they now accept metamagic, the damage of these SLAs is not competitive and they cost 9 APs!

2- Tier 5 is bad, really bad. The three SLAs are bad. The reanimate ally is cool thematically, but using it on a partner is really complicating his life more than anything else. Nowadays, all players and their cats use resurrection scrolls. The same goes for Dark Discorporation; thematically it is cool, but I will not use it for the same reason that I do not use it with warlock. A SLA interrupted if the character casts is a no-no. The main defense of a caster is the CC and the pale master healing is offensive too.

Agreed, all of this. Not to mention, Dark Discorporation will provide this same incorporeality as standing wraith/core incorporeality, making it further useless. And with the procing on 50%, in the heat of battle, it is far to easy to accidentally swing and turn it off. It just makes for a really bad T5. This should be lower tier thing, or make it stack and not broken on cast. Or combine it with an Ascendant Step type feature. That would make a great T5. I can't stress this enough, Dark Discorporation is a very lackluster T5 as it stands.

Very few modern trees have gaps in the enhancement map and Palemasters with this iteration still have two. Please consider a) making the SLAs a static 2 AP, 1 rank and filling the gaps between. Burst can be moved down to T4, with Harm added as the top of the line at T5 (or FoD or another Necrotic spell). Dark Discorporation, as it stands, can be added in T2 in that line. In Dark Discorporation's place in T5, either an SLA like FoD (The Necromancer Enhancement tree should really be getting this if Warlocks do, unless this is planned for Archmage,
plus an easy add as it already exists) or a +Neg Crit Chance/Dmg ability, either passive or a burst ability. AP wise, that makes 10AP for 5 SLAs instead of 9 for 3, and fills in the gaps in the map.

As for Animate Ally, I love the flavor, I do, but how about it applies the lesser form of your current shroud? Only one other raise option puts a debuff and that is reincarnated, which is normally ignorable. 20% attack speed loss is something no one wants, even with the 20% bump in damage. Mathematically, it will always be worse. I guarantee you, people will avoid using animate ally as it stands, especially since everyone uses UMD raise/resurrection.

Alternatively, you can change the numbers on Zombie a bit. A 10-15% speed loss with 20% damage buff is a net gain and is therefore far more tantalizing for both melee PMs as a form in comparison to Wraith or Vamp and as an animate. Or change the numbers on Animate Ally to be dirt cheap, low cooldown, a budget resurrection.

[lppmor]

Horrid Wilting's dice is currently 1d3+3 untyped. This is way too bad after the spell pass. I doubt anyone uses it now.
I'd rather see it changed to 1d6+8 negative. One more nice spell added to Pale Master.

[Fenrinnus]

As someone who has loved the idea of a true negative energy focused cleric and wants to have Divine Disciple Dark actually be a relevant cleric choice, I'm looking at all of this and thinking "Please sir, may I have some too?"

[gabbe92]

i'd love to see a spellsword toggle for negative damage instead of elemental damage somehow added to this tree or ek. maybe exclusive for vampire/lich so wraith isn't outperforming the other forms too much?

[PublicEnemy]

i'd love to see a spellsword toggle for negative damage instead of elemental damage somehow added to this tree or ek. maybe exclusive for vampire/lich so wraith isn't outperforming the other forms too much?

+1 agreed, nice idea and a nice way to further improve the synergy between the two.

[Ulfo]

Horrid Wilting's dice is currently 1d3+3 untyped. This is way too bad after the spell pass. I doubt anyone uses it now.
I'd rather see it changed to 1d6+8 negative. One more nice spell added to Pale Master.

So, you just wanna same spell as Negative Energy Burst but with slightly lesser ( for sorc much lesser ) damage output and lesser SP cost? Why?

[thedip]

There are a lot of nice changes, but the tier 5 enhancements were always underwhelming and, for me, this has not changed. For my melee based PM I will probably switch to EK.

[Cadveen]

There are a lot of nice changes, but the tier 5 enhancements were always underwhelming and, for me, this has not changed. For my melee based PM I will probably switch to EK.

Agreed. They just need to add a SLA for each shroud for flavor. Move dark dis to the vamp shroud.

Maybe in the dark disc slot after others are created add create Wall of Bone. Can be used to block doors or incoming projectiles damage. Can be damaged and destroyed but healed by negative energy.

Shadowstep-in dungeon teleport

[Arch-Necromancer]

I do not like the forced 50% positive healing without any drawbacks.

I think someone suggested to make a multiselector for "Negative Energy Adept", and include the positive healing as a CHOICE here.

That way you would have to give up on some negative healing for positive. So that would be a nice solution to this positive healing argument we have here.

Or this:

Maybe compromise by giving a toggle as I previously suggested...

Toggle on to become only half undead and receive 50% positive healing but lose 50% negative healing and receive no penalty from light damage. Then remove the enhancement that removes the penalty from light damage.
Toggle off to become full undead and receive 0% positive healing but gain 100% negative healing effects, and receive penalty damage from light damage (dependant on form). Vamp 400%, Lich/Zombie/Wraith 200%.

Or you could even have the first option only give 75% negative healing effects instead of 50%.

This is easier to accept as far as lore and probably appeases everyone and gives them a choice to play the way they want.

I also do not like the complete removal of light damage penalty. It should be only 50% reduction, but some penalty should still stay. Vampires should also get extra light damage penalty. Zombies could get a 10% movement speed penalty (these could be removed by tier 5 upgrade of forms) to discourage splash abuse. You already nerfed the wraith so you may as well these two.


I am concerned about the multiclass abuse of low level accessibility of forms.

There was a good balance reason why you could not take vampire form untill wizard level 6 and wraith until wizard level 12 and why level 3 zombie had a charisma penalty to punish warlock and sorcerer wizard splashing.

I would make it so that activating warlock pact switches you out of the form so you cannot benefit from both warlock pacts and undead features. Same could be done for animal forms. Only the warlock form should allow warlock pacts. Nerf the warlock!


The cooldowns on necrotic SLAs should be reduced. They are too long for them to be useful.

I don't like the removal of HP cost and the introduction of SP for SLAs. Wizard has small SP pool and these SLAs actually made SP management easier. Repalcing HP with SP introduced another SP drainer with no counterweight solution to the SP drain. How about giving us some way to conserve SP? Like something that would give temporary SP on taking or avoiding damage?

I would also suggest adding a Level Drain immunity to the last core (as an addition to Deathblock). It really would make no significant difference, but could come in handy in some rare cases while being switched out of form. And it makes sense and gives flavor...

[Rull]

I am concerned about the multiclass abuse of low level accessibility of forms.

I am excited to see if finally some multiclassing will be done with forms.

Currently you very occasionally see a /1 wizard for the free feat but that's about it for splashing. a few levels of EK has been tried in a couple of builds but I want more options.

[HungarianRhapsody]

I do not like the forced 50% positive healing without any drawbacks.

If you think that people should be forced to pay AP for an enhancement to do that and should have a penalty to negative healing, feel free to leave a couple of AP unspent and don't put on a Negative Healing Amp item so that you can have that penalty for yourself.

[SynalonEtuul]

If you think that people should be forced to pay AP for an enhancement to do that and should have a penalty to negative healing, feel free to leave a couple of AP unspent and don't put on a Negative Healing Amp item so that you can have that penalty for yourself.

We play a co-operative online game. What other people do with their characters matters. As an abstract example, I don't want overpowered enhancements introduced that would trivialise most content. If I advocated against introducing such an enhancement, and someone replied that I could just not take it, I would regard them as having misunderstood the nature of an MMO. It's never fun to intentionally gimp yourself, and this is especially true in multiplayer games.

[HungarianRhapsody]

We play a co-operative online game. What other people do with their characters matters. As an abstract example, I don't want overpowered enhancements introduced that would trivialise most content. If I advocated against introducing such an enhancement, and someone replied that I could just not take it, I would regard them as having misunderstood the nature of an MMO. It's never fun to intentionally gimp yourself, and this is especially true in multiplayer games.

So this isn't about you thinking that PMs shouldn't have access to those things.

It's about you wanting to force other players to not have those things. Which kind of sucks.

Adding 50% positive healing isn't going to trivialize content. And that's what the most people in this thread are whining about.

[Rull]

We play a co-operative online game. What other people do with their characters matters. As an abstract example, I don't want overpowered enhancements introduced that would trivialise most content. If I advocated against introducing such an enhancement, and someone replied that I could just not take it, I would regard them as having misunderstood the nature of an MMO. It's never fun to intentionally gimp yourself, and this is especially true in multiplayer games.

Lol, yeah. It's weird this discussion even pops up every time in a serious thread about balance.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Lol, yeah. It's weird this discussion even pops up every time in a serious thread about balance.

If people say, "I think this is too strong and I think it would unbalance the game," then that would be about balance.

When people say, "Pale Masters shouldn't have this because they're undead and that's not how undead are supposed to work," then it isn't about balance. And the big majority of the complaints about the positive healing have said that they just don't like it and haven't said a single thing about "too strong" or "this would unbalance the game".

[PublicEnemy]

If people say, "I think this is too strong and I think it would unbalance the game," then that would be about balance.

When people say, "Pale Masters shouldn't have this because they're undead and that's not how undead are supposed to work," then it isn't about balance. And the big majority of the complaints about the positive healing have said that they just don't like it and haven't said a single thing about "too strong" or "this would unbalance the game".

And that is exactly why it is here to stay (which is good)

[Varr]

And that is exactly why it is here to stay (which is good)

Or is it bad?

Yea it's bad.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Or is it bad?

Yea it's bad.

Do you think that Pale Masters are suddenly going to start dominating content because of that 50% positive healing?

That seems kind of unlikely.

[HungarianRhapsody]

I will say that these changes will get me to do another Pale Master life again. Might finally do that Gnome life.

[Varr]

Do you think that Pale Masters are suddenly going to start dominating content because of that 50% positive healing?

That seems kind of unlikely.

Nah, already totally dominating.