Lightning Hammer / Thunder Hammer spell type bug
Small bug I observed:
The "Lightning Hammer"/"Thunder Hammer" SLAs do not bypass the Mantle of Invulnerability effect on enemies like Lich Avengers, Lich Lords, etc. This is likely because they are coded as level 4 divine spells, like "Chaos Hammer". Please type these SLAs as high level arcane spells.
About the "Converter" ability
Also, a request about an ability from the Renegade Mastermaker tree:
Converter is a very interesting ability that is marred by bad implementation:
- it has a cooldown of 3 minutes and duration of 3 minutes
- it can easily expire in the middle of combat when you're trying to heal your target
- it requires continual attention in order to be relied upon for questing
- it fails to apply if the target is out of line-of-sight
- but the 3 minute cooldown is still consumed, meaning the Artificer might not be able to repair any non-WF allies
- the buff persists through rest and quest exit
- not necessarily bad, but very confusing
So here is my very simple proposed fix: Make Converter work like the "Crown of Summer" buff from T5 of the Season's Herald tree or perhaps the "Crown of Retribution" buff from T4 of the Angel of Vengeance tree:
- activation cooldown of 6 seconds
- only one target can have this buff from the Artificer at a time
- it enables the target to receive healing from Repair spells while active
- it adds a visual effect to the target (same as current visual effect)
I mention this here, b/c
I think this is one of the more interesting things you can do with an Artificer and I would love to see it get fixed and somehow become part of the Macrotechnic tree, allowing the user to flex into a spot-healing role. It's a super useful ability that occasionally enables you to save a tank during a raid, or support the party through a particularly difficult encounter on high-reaper, etc. And I believe the ability is currently underused by the player base due to implementation details--not the idea itself.
An Macrotechnic enhancement that unlocks Converter for wizards/sorcerers would be very cool (e.g. 1 destiny point at tier 2 to unlock Converter ability, or improve existing Converter by adding 20% repair amp to the target).
About the Macrotechnic mantle
IMO, too many spots in the tree are tied to the mantle specifically, in a strict chain. I think this would be the only place in any destiny tree where more than one ability is linked by a hard pre-req. Even in cases like "Attune the Arcane" and "Inevitable" from Draconic Incarnation, where the abilities are effectively dependent on one another, they are still not linked in a hard pre-req chain.
In my opinion, destiny mantles should probably not have more than a single other ability in the tree that augments them, though there is precedent in Fatesinger where 3 other items in the tree enhance the mantle. But in the case of Fatesinger, those additional benefits are bonus effects on top of other benefits
if the mantle is active and they are not hard pre-reqs.
Some of the mantle defenses are nice, but that is a huge investment for those benefits and I honestly can't see many cases where that much investment would be warranted. I would prefer if one or two of these mantle enhancements were removed to make room for more interesting interactions, like the "Converter" ability I proposed above. They also should not be chained together as pre-reqs. If one of the abilities can't stand on its own without being a pre-req for a higher tier enhancement, then it probably just needs to be made more interesting in the first place.