U62 Preview 2 Balance Refresh

[Teh_Troll]

So . . . can Tempest Capstone get it's 25% off-DS back? That nerf was not needed.

 

[Spook]

and a str/dex multiselector?

 

[Requiro]

I am in utter disbelief. No way you're actually nerfing AA. The enhancement cost reductions are almost irrelevant, as all those things with the exception of Force Arrows would not be used even if they were a single AP (let alone two) due to how weak they are. AA is the weakest of the 3 Bow trees. If you go forward with the 25% nerf (which is massive btw), compensation should be a no-brainer for AA and maybe even EK.



This is not true. Runebow works as advertised and fully stacks with items' enhancement bonuses. It's the first Core of the tree that is mostly useless. Although I agree that "Improved Elemental Arrows" is a prime candidate for rework/buff.



These do need adjusting for sure, hope they don't miss them.

Yes - they nerf AA. I guess they still think that AA is OP. AP changes are fine, but almost noone cares if they nerf that tree by 25%.

This is the generalized balance portion of U62, containing buffs and adjustments across many places. For this pass, we focused on more AP cost reductions in a few high-cost trees, Alchemist enhancement trees, and balancing the Imbue system for spellpower scaling imbues.

Monk Class

• Monk combo builders now deal +10% damage, and their alignment based builders deal +15% damage
• Monk Finishers now deal +30% damage
• Touch of Death now deals +30% damage
• Touch of Despair now scales with the highest of Dex/Wis and uses Assassinate DCs to determine its DC

Stormsinger

• Stormsinger's metamagic costs are now set to the standard AP cost for metamagic enhancements (2AP each)

Across the Board

• Spellpower scaling imbues have been standardized: They are all now 1d8 damage per imbue dice and all now scale with 75% spell power instead of 100%
  • Affects:
    • Eldritch Knight
    • Arcane Archer
    • Warchanter
    • Warpriest/Warsoul
    • Artificer
    • Dark Apostate
    • Druid Elemental Forms
    • Blightcaster
    • Vile Chemist

Arcane Archer (both Elf and Ranger)

• Force Arrows is now 1 rank 2AP (uses the 3rd rank bonuses)
• True Strike is now 1 rank 2AP (uses 3rd rank bonuses)
• Inferno Shot is now 1 rank 2AP (uses the 3rd rank bonuses)
• Shattermantle Shot is now 1 rank 2AP (uses the 3rd rank bonuses)
• Dispelling Shot is now 1 rank 2AP (uses 3rd rank bonuses)
  • in total this saves 11AP since Force Arrows and Dispelling Shot were 3ranks/2AP!

Kensei

• Tactics is now 1AP per rank
• Weapon Focus vertical line and the Exotic Focus enhancement are now 1AP
  • in total this saves 8AP!

Dwarf

• Shield Mastery cost reduced to 1AP/rank (this also affects human's Fighting Style multiselector)

Purple Dragon Knight

• Sniper is now +1/2/3d6 Ranged Sneak Attack Dice and +2/4/6 Point Blank Shot distance, and now costs 1AP/rank (this also affects human's Fighting Style multiselector)

Vile Chemist

• Core 1 is now: +1 Reflex save. Each core ability you take in this tree beyond the first grants +5 PRR
• Cores 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 now grant +5 Poison Spell Power, 2% dodge, and 2% dodge cap while in Orchidium instead of their original Orchidium boosts
• Core 3 is now Hidden Blades I and grants +5 Universal Spell Power, +3% Doublestrike and Doubleshot, and +1 Imbue Dice
• Core 4 is now Hidden Blades II and grants +5 Universal Spell Power, +3% Doublestrike and Doubleshot, and +1 Imbue Dice, as well as granting you full Base Attack Bonus
• Core 5 is now Hidden Blades III and grants +5 Universal Spell Power, +3% Doublestrike and Doubleshot, and +1 Imbue Dice, as well as a +1 Competence Bonus to Critical Multiplier with all Simple weapons
• Core 6 (Venom's Grip) now grants: +4 Intelligence, +10 Universal Spell Power, +3% Doublestrike and Doubleshot, and +2 Imbue Dice
• Willful Ambition is now Swift Ambition and boosts Reflex saving throws
• New Tier 4: Simple Thrown Mastery: If you have Simple Thrown Expertise, you now use the higher of your Intelligence and Dexterity to determine how much Doubleshot you gain from that feat.
• Sapping Ambition which was very buggy is gone and is now Brushed Aside: You gain the Defensive Roll feat.

Apothecary

• Core 1 is now: +1 Will save. Each core ability you take in this tree beyond the first grants +5 pos/neg spell power
• Cores 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 now grant 2% Pos and Neg spell crit damage while in Verdanite instead of their original Verdanite boosts
• Core 6 now grants +2 Transmutation DCs passively without requiring Verdanite
• Tier 5 Master Apothecary now grants an additional +1 Spell Penetration (since this bonus was removed from Core 3)
• New Tier 4: Apothecary's Satchel: 1 rank 2AP: You gain +5% Magical Efficiency (since this bonus was removed from Core 4)
• Energy of the Scholar rank 3 is now 100 SP

Bombardier

• Core 1 is now: +1 Fortitude save. Each core ability you take in this tree beyond the first grants +5 fire/cold/acid/electric/poison spell power and +1 Burning Ambition Dice
• Cores 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 now grant +2% Fire, Cold, Electric, Acid, and Poison Spell Critical Damage instead of their original Pyrite boosts
• Core 6 now grants +2 Conjuration DCs passively without requiring Pyrite
• Cores 3, 4, 5 no longer grant burning ambition dice inconsistently and now just grant +1 each as per the text of core 1
• Cores 3, 4, and 5 now grant +3 caster levels each BUT now require you to take different elements each time
• Swift Ambition is now Holistic Ambition and grants Fortitude saving throws
• Rapid Condensation SLA is gone
• There are now 3 Vial SLAs in tiers 1, 2, and 3, you must take a different Vial element each time

If you like these kinds of changes and would like to see more of them, please let us know! And if you have your own suggestions as to what should be adjusted, please feel free to let us know about those as well!

I waited a long time to see if any of these changes would apply to AA, and I lived to see it...
Super nerf in the form of -25% imbue damage. Just great.... Noone care about AP cost reduction, with this nerf...

As I see, there are still people in the SSG team who consider AA to be OP.

If you really want it not to look like a pure nerf then do it:


Cores:
1 - every Core granted +1 stacking enhancement bonus and +1 doubleshot when using BOW only
2,3,4,5 - Multiselector like Pale Master for 2nd Imbues to choice from (all bonuses stacking, only for Bow user):
- Your arrows deal bludgeoning damage
- Your arrows deal slashing damage
- Your arrows deal +4 dmg for FE
- Your arrows bypass all metallic damage reduction
- Your arrows bypass all alignment based damage reduction
- Your arrows bypass 10% fortification bonus
- Your arrows gain +1 stacking enhancements bonus
- Your arrows gain destruction ability

And additional bonuses to Cores:
2 - +10 Universal Spell Power
3 - +1 Imbues Dice
4 - Equipped bows gains a +1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage Multiplier.
5 - +1 Imbues Dice
6 - +4 Dexterity, +20% Doubleshot, +1 Imbues Dice

Elemental Arrows Line
Tier 1 - No more multiselector, 1 AP all avaiable elemental damage
Tier 2,3,4 - 2AP for +2 Imbue Dice
Tier 5 - No more multiselector, 1 AP cost, both bonuses

Rest:
Dispeling, Force Arrow, Inferno Shot, Shattermantle Shot - 1 rank, 2AP cost
True strike, Runebow, Final Strike, - 1 AP cost, 1 rank

Soul Magic - 1 rank, 1AP cost - 10% chance to cast "Minor Mnemonic Aid" on you
Moonbow - 1 rank, 1 AP cost, increase chance from Soul Magic to 20% and cast "Lesser Mnemonic Aid" on you insted "Minor Mnemonic Aid"

 

[Lotoc]

Even better, they get 1,5x modifier to both main and off-hand.
No one who endlessly complains about the +[W] moving from levels to weapons seem to know about this...

They don't it seems, playing a razorclaw right now and gaining 1 damage per 2 str on character sheet.
Handwraps are strong enough without making stuff up tbh.

The elemental imbues that scale with spell power already work with threat reduction. The issue, is that they work with SPELL threat reduction, but never mention that anywhere.

While I was playing my imbue build for a while (before macrotechnic) I was grabbing the discipline feat and the caster threat reduction in Magus of the Eclipse and no matter how much I was dominating the kills and doing damage I didnt pull aggro.

Edit: I haven't been playing my imbue for a while because too many other builds are better even when I push the imbues to the limit. It was fun and I was looking forward to using it to get legendary TRs (assuming that they would eventually happen), but these nerfs are making that look more and more unlikely.

Threat is largely only an issue in raids as intimidate itself generates more threat than trash mobs have HP, on imbue builds I've ran I've tried taking the threat reduction in SD or Fatesinger and running an occulation augment all of which apply universal threat reduction and still easily overaggrod on raid bosses.
The devs, hell severlin himself, have admitted that in the code imbues are simply missing anything to modify their threat values.

Taking a tree that offers no damage to an imbue build can easily explain not having threat issues also.

 

[CBDunk]

I would 100% play an alch healer (at least for a little bit) if we could quicken the admixture vials. This would be a great future (hopefully) small QOL adjustment. but as it stands, by the time I finish the animation, there is no living player for the heal vial to hit

I agree. The animation and throw time make it non-viable as a way to react to a character in trouble.

The only time to date that I've had an Alchemist be a viable healer was in a a group where all the other characters were undead... and I wasn't really TRYING to heal them. I was just spamming the 'Curative Admixture: Harm' and Inflict SLAs to kill things... and incidentally healing everyone at the same time. I'd just keep the tank targeted and thus could hit them and everyone else near the enemies with the AoE. Even that started to become non-viable towards end game as the negative damage was plenty to keep people healed, but falling well behind what was needed to take out groups of enemies.

In theory, you could do the same with 'Curative Admixture: Heal' and Cure SLAs, except that you'd be doing zero damage unless the enemies were undead. Still a workable healer if you are ok not doing much of anything else.

 

[mastarhax0r]

Bombardier

• Core 1 is now: +1 Fortitude save. Each core ability you take in this tree beyond the first grants +5 fire/cold/acid/electric/poison spell power and +1 Burning Ambition Dice
• Cores 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 now grant +2% Fire, Cold, Electric, Acid, and Poison Spell Critical Damage instead of their original Pyrite boosts
• Core 6 now grants +2 Conjuration DCs passively without requiring Pyrite
• Cores 3, 4, 5 no longer grant burning ambition dice inconsistently and now just grant +1 each as per the text of core 1
• Cores 3, 4, and 5 now grant +3 caster levels each BUT now require you to take different elements each time
• Swift Ambition is now Holistic Ambition and grants Fortitude saving throws
• Rapid Condensation SLA is gone
• There are now 3 Vial SLAs in tiers 1, 2, and 3, you must take a different Vial element each time

Dear developers.
Old Core 5 gave: While in Pyrite Reaction, you gain +1 Conjuration DC.
Now it gives 0 DC.
-1 Conjuration DC total.
It would be nice to know if this was an oversight or DC was removed intentionally.
Thanks.

 

[Nickodeamous]

+1. Agreed. Character sheet is showing me 1 dmg for every wis modifier. 1 for 1.

 

[Shear-buckler]

You can easily test in game and see that it's not 1.5x STR mod or any other stat mod for that reason. It's 1x.

That is a recent change in that case.

 

[Venatori d' Argonnessen]

It was a display error about 1 year ago, but it never granted the 1.5 stat multiplier. It was very easy to test with the old ed's with the fury moment cause that granted the whole thf line. The number on the character sheet went way up, but the actual damage you were doing stayed the same

 

[Shear-buckler]

It was a display error about 1 year ago, but it never granted the 1.5 stat multiplier. It was very easy to test with the old ed's with the fury moment cause that granted the whole thf line. The number on the character sheet went way up, but the actual damage you were doing stayed the same

It goes back longer than that. 4-2 years ago it affected damage. Its not related to having thf feats.

 

[Shear-buckler]

It was a display error about 1 year ago, but it never granted the 1.5 stat multiplier. It was very easy to test with the old ed's with the fury moment cause that granted the whole thf line. The number on the character sheet went way up, but the actual damage you were doing stayed the same

It goes back longer than that. 4-2 years ago it affected damage. Its not related to having thf feats.

 

[Venatori d' Argonnessen]

Sorry I meant the display error was fixed about a year ago

 

[Nandos]

I like that the some of the Vile Chemist bonuses aren't going to be so back loaded any more.

Dwarf

• Shield Mastery cost reduced to 1AP/rank (this also affects human's Fighting Style multiselector)

Please don't forget to make sure Purple Dragon Knights also get this AP reduction.

 

[Tsutti]

They don't it seems, playing a razorclaw right now and gaining 1 damage per 2 str on character sheet.
Handwraps are strong enough without making stuff up tbh.


Threat is largely only an issue in raids as intimidate itself generates more threat than trash mobs have HP, on imbue builds I've ran I've tried taking the threat reduction in SD or Fatesinger and running an occulation augment all of which apply universal threat reduction and still easily overaggrod on raid bosses.
The devs, hell severlin himself, have admitted that in the code imbues are simply missing anything to modify their threat values.

Taking a tree that offers no damage to an imbue build can easily explain not having threat issues also.

It seems to me that spell threat reduction does work, but you can't reasonably get enough to really do anything unless you take the Discipline feat and sacrifice a destiny just to grab -60% from Magus. Then you can run Stealth Strike on Epic Quiver of Alacrity and the Occultation augment which seems to finally work, at -95% spell threat.

 

[Svirfneblin]

Additionally for Warlock ES, can we finally adjust Celestial Spirit so that necrolocks can benefit from it when in shroud? It has never made sense that every ES eligible Warlock can use this fully with the exception of Abyss. Yes its a side effect of how major forms interact but it seems to be an unintentional one. I dont see any reason why the devs wanted this one type of warlock to not benefit from this method of feather falling, knockback, and floaties - when the other pacts can use their full kits without penalty.

They should just add another imbue toggle to tainted scholar so everyone can use it, along with some imbue dice since TS is the Blaster tree. Abyss warlocks already have it rough with their pact immunities.

 

[Blaster]

Kensei

• Tactics is now 1AP per rank
• Weapon Focus vertical line and the Exotic Focus enhancement are now 1AP
  • in total this saves 8AP!

@Torc This is a good start, but would it be possible to remove the requirements for Tier One: Reed in the Wind (requires Dodge), Tier Two: Improved Dodge (requires Dodge + either wearing no armor or light armor), and Tier Three: Athletic Mastery (requires Mobility, Improved Dodge + wearing no armor or light armor).

Fighters who wear heavy armor could really benefit from the added +3% dodge, +3 max dodge cap, -3 armor check penalty that Improved Dodge and Athletic Mastery would provide, as well as the temporary 9% insight bonus that Reed in the Wind could provide (depending on dodge cap or perhaps make the attack ignore cap).

Additionally I wouldn't mind seeing the charge/recharge on Tier Four: Opportunity Attack removed and replaced with a standard cooldown. 10% chance to recharge the current two-charge pool it has may have been more viable under the old doublestrike system, but since that system was overhauled the whole charge/recharge aspect of it is not as appealing. Opportunity Attack already has a cooldown, so would it be possible just to keep that and remove the two-charge pool?

The additional +20 melee power that Opportunity Attack provides for six seconds (on top of it's +3W base damage) helps boost the damage output of scaling abilities within the tree like Tier Five: A Good Death (Melee) and Tier Five: Deadly Strike (on vorpal), so having that always available when it is off cooldown rather than requiring it being both off cooldown and having at least one charge in its pool would be a big help.

 

[mikarddo]

Stormsinger

• Stormsinger's metamagic costs are now set to the standard AP cost for metamagic enhancements (2AP each)

I obviously do understand the reasoning behind this change but please consider the Stormsingers are nowhere near the top of the heap right now. In fact, after the R7+ nerf to caster damage Stormsingers are probably below the median. The main speciality of Stormsingers was the ability to keep going (for a caster) due to cheap meta-magics. With a 6 ap nerf Stormsingers will become outright weak. Nerfing things that are not OP is just not wise - nerf the OP stuff instead.

Thus, unless the intention actually is to make Stormsingers weak - please reconsider or add something else to the Stormsinger tree.

 

[I dont Like gimps]

Frankly i dont quite understand why of all trees kensei is to receive a buff .... its one of the best trees to exist and its not like u had 50 pts into it by mandate (like in acrobat for say but gosh i love this tree)... ftr get such high Tacticals anyway so giving him 3 dcs more for free makes no sense

To me the buffs just seem misplaced and warpriest/soul shouldve been benefactor of such for say or other underperforming treees

 

[Scrag]

The elemental imbues that scale with spell power already work with threat reduction. The issue, is that they work with SPELL threat reduction, but never mention that anywhere.

While I was playing my imbue build for a while (before macrotechnic) I was grabbing the discipline feat and the caster threat reduction in Magus of the Eclipse and no matter how much I was dominating the kills and doing damage I didnt pull aggro.

This is frustrating. I picked up ranged diversion, thinking this is what would work.

Looking at mystic diversion, considering gear tetris at cap, you are stuck trying to pull it in from archmage 1, shadowdancer, fatesinger, or exalted angel.

That is a lot of varied not-ideal places to get it from for someone shooting a pewpewpew or swinging a big piece of metal. :/

 

[Ying]

Kensei remains the only martial class that doesn't have an imbue.