Dragonmarks usefulness in builds

[Jodro]

Hello everyone,

With the release of new dragonmarks in dnd, I was curious to try some ddo builds that can get significantly boosted by using them and/or depend on them. But tbh I really can't find a way that happens. The most useful seems to be mark of storm air savant that is basically a nice addition of having the greater mark randomly thunderstruck opponents around you. The passage one in some builds is kinda useful, but again not something that really affect the gameplay. Mark of storm could be very good with dragon disciple, but scales with the wrong stat, same for mark of scribing and illusion based melee sorc (uses intelligence in gnomes).

So do you have any build suggestions or ideas that make the marks game changers or at least very useful?

 

[Synalon]

I am no builder like some of the creative minds on this forum. However, the Dwarf dragonmark seems quite viable or even extremely useful.

The Mark of Warding eventually gets you Radiant Forcefield as an SLA with a 1-minute cooldown. Great if you're a tank or even just a tanky DPS.

The other dragonmarks seem hampered by their limited uses. The Halfling one for example might be pretty good if it just granted you cure light, cure serious, and heal as infinite-use SLAs. I imagine some people can make it work for levelling but at endgame you're gonna run out of charges. The system needs a revamp, really, as they are a cool concept.

 

[Shear-buckler]

A dragonmark universal tree would allow dragonmarks to be very strong with high investment. A feat and some racial points is never going to allow dragonmarks the power they should have.

 

[Underflow]

Half Elf Dragonmark of the Storm is a funny gimmick that can help out non-Druid Electricity casters. At 30+ Concentration, their buff is permanent, with a duration longer than the cooldown. 25 Electric Spellpower isn't an insubstantial amount, and the Call Lightning Storm clicky is actually pretty good.

Mark of Finding is lockpicking for Human Bards, Favored Souls, Paladins and Warlocks. Use-Impaired, but it's not like it costs much if RAP. (Horc has Lock Bash which is infinitely better).

Mark of Travel has dimension door, which greatly improves recall speed. Teleport isn't half bad either, it saves money in the long term and reduces your UMD requirement.

Mark of Shadow is kinda just bad.

Mark of Healing used to be good, but there's just so much healing floating around now it does nothing.

Mark of Making is like Healing but only useful to Artificers. Bad.

Mark of the Sentinel is also bad.

Mark of Scribing has non-charged SLAs, but their SLAs are bad so it doesn't matter.

And Warding has Radiant Forcefield, yeah. Personally I don't consider it worthwhile.

 

[PaleFox]

A Human Dark Disciple of Protection Domain with Dragonmark of Sentinel could work on a tank build.

Anywy, Primal Avatar as ED to give more oomph to the lessor dragonmark with Weathering the Elements.
Use DD's Ward of Shadow to cover more bases.



Perhaps a Dwarf Dark Disciple with Mark of Warding, but don't know if those SLAs for Radiant Forcefield are on the same timer.

 

[Honkin]

Dragonmark of Passage is fantastic on casters that don’t normally get DDoor. Fastest Blightcaster life I ever did.

 

[PaleFox]

I have to add, Dragon Marks used to be a bit of flavor as surely your dire needed APs could be better spend elsewhere.
But now with racial actionpoints to spend after many a racial reincarnation, it becomes viable options.

Still, with the needed feat spend... tempting but not sure about the rate on return.

 

[l_remmie]

None of the dragonmarks are worth the feat and the AP.

That some are less bad than others.
The mark of passage with the ddoor and teleport can really provide some quality of life for a newer player without UMD etc.

 

[waysider]

I am no builder like some of the creative minds on this forum. However, the Dwarf dragonmark seems quite viable or even extremely useful.

The Mark of Warding eventually gets you Radiant Forcefield as an SLA with a 1-minute cooldown. Great if you're a tank or even just a tanky DPS.

The other dragonmarks seem hampered by their limited uses. The Halfling one for example might be pretty good if it just granted you cure light, cure serious, and heal as infinite-use SLAs. I imagine some people can make it work for levelling but at endgame you're gonna run out of charges. The system needs a revamp, really, as they are a cool concept.

I use the halfling dragonmark on several toons (rogues mostly). Yeah, once you're up in the destinies there's many sources of healing, but it's quite useful levelling. I rarely run out and start thinking about shrines, it's much more a "can't hit the buttton fast enough" when it doesn't save me.

 

[waysider]

None of the dragonmarks are worth the feat and the AP.

That some are less bad than others.
The mark of passage with the ddoor and teleport can really provide some quality of life for a newer player without UMD etc.

I used Passage on an OS barb. Provided excellent QoL, especially while soloing.


I see builds on the boards taking Toughness multiple times. 36 less hp for a useful clickie seem like some people might find it a tradeoff they'd want. Having a lot of racial AP definitely chances the value proposition.

 

[l_remmie]

I used Passage on an OS barb. Provided excellent QoL, especially while soloing.


I see builds on the boards taking Toughness multiple times. 36 less hp for a useful clickie seem like some people might find it a tradeoff they'd want. Having a lot of racial AP definitely chances the value proposition.

True, still costs a feat though and you have to play an old dragonmark race.

I do admit If i had all racial AP past lives and played a human fighter/barbarian/paladin i would take that ddoor dragonmark every time.

 

[axel15810]

I've never used them myself, but Dwarf dragonmark is very good for tanks. Human obviously for ddoor is very handy for leveling.

Those are the main two I see people use. I don't know if too many others are worth it, probably not except maybe in some niche cases.

 

[Enoach]

much like many of the feat options these add features that are not always accessible for a class, or they fill in holes needed.

For example I ran an alchemist life as part of a static group, as the one picked to be the parties main source of healing I supplemented "bottle healing" with Halfling Dragonmarks - Advantage was access to appropriate metamagics. The purpose of the marks was to add a quick single target heal to fill in where "bottle healing" and wand/scroll healing was not sufficient.

With the change from a progressive Feat (least, lesser, greater) system to a Single Feat with Racial AP, it has made them more accessible with the trade-off.

The questions of any feat should be 1) does the feature add to the build? 2) does it allow access to a feature I want in my build and can afford the trade-off?

 

[unbongwah]

The main drawback to the Dragonmarks IMO is the AP tax. If you haven't got a lot of bonus APs, there's an opportunity cost for investing in them instead of e.g. more DPS from other trees.

That said, some of them are still situationally useful; and you can always swap them with Fred.

Warding is good for tanks, Passage is a QoL improvement for a lot of builds, Shadow is mostly for Displacement on a first-life / Hardcore toon, Making provides a boost to crafting which stacks with Artificer levels, Healing can make heroic leveling easier, Finding is for the treasure boost which stacks with other loot bonuses (presuming your party actually waits for the chest-blessing animation to finish), Storm can be a nice perk for CHA lightning casters like sorcerer or warlock, Scribing is...not that useful tbh but thematic for an Illusionist Archmage or something. Sentinel is the only one I'm not sure what its use case is, unless you are a big fan of Chimera's Fang.

 

[Seppi Pearlsmith]

I had a wizard with mark of making summoning an iron defender. It was fun. Useless but fun!

 

[Qrvar]

I find it very difficult to justify the feat and AP tax most of the time. The dragonmarks have nice flavor, but as with most old / outdated mechanics, there are just better options around these days.

 

[Jodro]

Noted.
So overall unless you are air savant, dwarf tank or human that want to unlock things or ddoor beyond their class they have nothing really important. We need more suggestions to fix em.
Thanks a lot everyone.

 

[Bjond]

Dragonmarks are worthless: few charges, costs feat and racial, not amenable to strategic use, and extremely low-value effects.

Low charges puts you in constant conservation mode -- saving for IF/WHEN rather than using. This means it costs a high-value button (or two) that would be better spent on abilities that you do use.

Costing a feat is so HUGE that it removes them from consideration until AFTER primary feats have been acquired, which means there's never any space for them. Racial on top of feat cost means only completionists might consider them unless there's nothing else of value to buy enroute to a high-value racial.

Not strategic means you can't plan your uses, which is the kind of ability where low charge count isn't a hindrance. DDoor is about the only one that fits as at most it's a couple times in a quest.

Then there's the actual effects, which is mostly nonsensical fluff. Heal is nice, but low charges means you can't count on it -- constant conserve mode. Same thing for dwarf bubbles.

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I never saw the point of dragonmarks until I watched the Eberron lore video. The way they figured into the political machinations make them sound impactful. The DDO implementation is very poor wrt. lore; no one would care about anyone that had a DDO mark, much less fight to control them.

But, DDO's fluffy marks are rather a good thing for DDO. If they were strong enough to fight over, they'd become must-have character-defining features, which would tilt balance very heavily toward racial completionist and classes with extra feats.

 

[Shear-buckler]

Dragonmarks are worthless: few charges, costs feat and racial, not amenable to strategic use, and extremely low-value effects.

Low charges puts you in constant conservation mode -- saving for IF/WHEN rather than using. This means it costs a high-value button (or two) that would be better spent on abilities that you do use.

Costing a feat is so HUGE that it removes them from consideration until AFTER primary feats have been acquired, which means there's never any space for them. Racial on top of feat cost means only completionists might consider them unless there's nothing else of value to buy enroute to a high-value racial.

Not strategic means you can't plan your uses, which is the kind of ability where low charge count isn't a hindrance. DDoor is about the only one that fits as at most it's a couple times in a quest.

Then there's the actual effects, which is mostly nonsensical fluff. Heal is nice, but low charges means you can't count on it -- constant conserve mode. Same thing for dwarf bubbles.

---

I never saw the point of dragonmarks until I watched the Eberron lore video. The way they figured into the political machinations make them sound impactful. The DDO implementation is very poor wrt. lore; no one would care about anyone that had a DDO mark, much less fight to control them.

But, DDO's fluffy marks are rather a good thing for DDO. If they were strong enough to fight over, they'd become must-have character-defining features, which would tilt balance very heavily toward racial completionist and classes with extra feats.

Yeah pretty much, but a feat is not very costly. If they were actually good they would, as you say, be must-have. The best way to balance it is through a universal tree. That way there would a significant trade-off for an investment in dragonmarks.

 

[Bjond]

Yeah pretty much, but a feat is not very costly. If they were actually good they would, as you say, be must-have. The best way to balance it is through a universal tree. That way there would a significant trade-off for an investment in dragonmarks.

A dragonmark universal would be a fantastic year-of-the-dragon feature. Get rid of the feat requirement, though. Not sure which builds you're using, but I'm almost always extremely short on feat slots, even for fighter builds. There are always a lot of feats I want, but have no space to take (and those all come before dragonmarks).