Let's make Exalted Angel Epic

[Frantik]

Exalted Angel – let’s make it EPIC

Before U66, there were a number of cringeworthy abilities in EA and the update has in my eyes not improved this Destiny. I think SSG may have some non-communicated plan to enhance EDs in the future through the expansion of levels 33-40 but I still feel that each ED should be Epic on its own. And Exalted Angel isn’t truly epic right now.

The idea is not to re-write EA but to enhance the existing SSG model, let’s work with what we have and make it attractive.

What needs to be addressed
- Fire damage isn’t good or reliable at higher levels
- the tier 3 mantle ability ; it went from OP to trash in one update
- tier 3 Noble Ability multi-selector is garbage
- Holy Fireball got badly nerfed and it’s weak sauce right now

What would I do to make EA Epic?
- change damage types: fire and light become Divine Fire and Divine Light which bypass all immunities (not resistance) for every ability in this ED

- keep cores as they are

- Stand and Be Judged: (a fervent prayer?) shorten the animation and show player pointing to the heavens

- Noble Affinity… this gets it’s own paragraph...

- the Sun Bolt SLA is trash; CD is 12 seconds, the AoH version CD is 6 seconds, and the basic spell CD is 3 seconds. It is also bugged as metamagics don’t work
- Flaming Sphere should never be here in the first place
- Mass Cure Moderate Wounds SLA is completely fine

Remove this trash version of Sun Bolt. Remove Flaming Sphere. Bring back Soundburst SLA and for third choice add Epic Improved Turning Feat (twice as good as heroic version).

- Angelic Soul. Hmmm. I guess there is no point in proposing to go back to AoE HoT but for 2 DP it is trash. Add +1 and -1 to saves plus a further +1/-1 per 4 epic/legendary levels.

- Delayed Judgement. Change damage to 25d20’s and double it in Legendary (31-40).

- Holy Fireball SLA. Make damage 1d8+8 Divine Fire and Divine Light and increase CD to 20 seconds.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

 

[J1NG]

J1NG, all my respects. I generally take HEIGHTEN and add to all SLAs with saving throws... GCS is a primary example, as Heighten gains an effective +4 DCs. A heightened AoH SLA would surely be recalculated as a lvl 9 spell if full FvS no?

I believe I see where the confusion is.

A spell is increased to a Level 9 spell by Heigthen (if you can cast Level 9 spells) but only for the DC calculation involved; the spell itself remains whatever level it was put under when it was created. In this case, Sun Bolt is Level 3, and if you are able to cast Level 9 spells, casting Sun Bolt with Heighten will only increase the DC to by 6, but not change it's Level as a spell, so against a Mantle found on enemies, it will simply do nothing. Whilst the Sun Bolt from EA will burn right through any standard Mantle on enemies as it's much higher level than the protection offered by the Mantle effect.

As for metas not working for the EA SLA, I am, hand on my heart, going by what is written on the DDO wiki page; I always take the Mass Cure Moderate Wounds SLA anyway, as a (bugged?) Sun Bolt with long CD doesnt really do it for me and Flaming Sphere, well its flaming sphere and the only time i ever used it was for soloing Inferno of the Damned many years ago. I will try to remember and test the EA Sun Bolt SLA soon and report back, and then perhaps be forced into reconsidering this option or not.

Unfortunately, the wiki can be edited by anyone, and sometimes players who are observing or testing something might get the observation or test wrong and erroneously apply it to the wiki.

J1NG

 

[Lazuli]

I believe I see where the confusion is.

A spell is increased to a Level 9 spell by Heigthen (if you can cast Level 9 spells) but only for the DC calculation involved; the spell itself remains whatever level it was put under when it was created. In this case, Sun Bolt is Level 3, and if you are able to cast Level 9 spells, casting Sun Bolt with Heighten will only increase the DC to by 6, but not change it's Level as a spell, so against a Mantle found on enemies, it will simply do nothing. Whilst the Sun Bolt from EA will burn right through any standard Mantle on enemies as it's much higher level than the protection offered by the Mantle effect.

Yes, this is a major departure from how the feat works in pnp (which actually increases the level of the spell), so it's normal for some people to get confused.

Rules in DDO can be very confusing, between all the deviations from the pnp game, its own internal inconsistencies, and the devs' obsession with changing them every few months.

 

[J1NG]

Are you certain that the AoV Sun Bolt does not have a save?
Good to know that metamagics work on EA Sun Bolt, I was also under the impression that it was bugged in that regard.

Quite certain.

And here we also have a perfect example of out of date information even for a tester that had kept tabs on this ability since it was released: Tests conducted just (most up to date) now suggest that the Save is missing on all three variants of Sun Bolt. Previously, it worked as described in my earlier post. And of course, all metamagics apply for all variants.

J1NG

 

[gurth83]

EA was "easy button" for casual players like me. Wings for movment mobility and heal aura for survivability. Right now not really know for whom this destiny dedicated is. I used it on my melee cleric, but spaming heal or light spells every 5 sec to keep fire/light aura during swinging weapon is annoying. Not really many spells with so low cooldown on top of that quicken is must for melee, so two spells are needed to rotate them. Option is close wound becase its fast wichout quicken and low cooldown, but still spaming it just to keep dmg aura...