U78 Lamannia Arcane Trickster Preview

[Underflow]

Also Mixed being a T3 and not a T4 means Wiz and Clr dont have to give up L9 spells like they would with WM

I'm not the greatest fan of either Cleric or Wizard as Negative Energy builds.

Cleric really, really wants Inflict Critical Wounds, Mass, thus demanding 15 levels. However, it lacks the ability to bypass Negative Energy and thus loses a ton of power splashing 4 Wizard. Not enough levels to grab Mixed Magics.

Wizard, on the other hand, lacks good AOE Negative Energy options. Their best Negative Energy nuke is unironically Negative Energy Burst, and with their Epic Strike being heavily incentivized to go Gloomspear (for fat damage), they have significant issues with clearspeed.

Meanwhile, Alchemist doesn't really lose much dropping Admixture Harm (since the damage is way worse than Inflict Critical Admixture), has basically infinite MCL with Apothecary T5 and a core 5 and capstone that is bugged anyway (their bonus crit damage with Negative spells doesn't work), and thus can multiclass heavily to try and get more punch for their spells. It helps that their 6th level spells suck too.

I was running Alch 12/Wiz 4/WM 4 before, and the difference between it and the potential new spread of Alch 13/Wiz 4/AT 3:

Gain:

• Trapping
• Lockpicking
• Evasion
• 10-13 more AP (I took crit damage)
• +1 Class level in whatever you want
• 10 USP from Core 1/2, 10 USP when using a staff or orb
• 4 less cost for Quicken (irrelevant past 20)
• +6 MRR cap
• Essentially infinite DC Fine Dust trip

Lose:

• 9-12% Spell Critical Damage
• 10 USP from Core 2
• Wild Surge bonus damage
• Access to Savant trees for additional Spell Power/CL

Basically, that's the big divide i can think of between Wild Mage and Arcane Trickster for a Mixed Magics Splash. Do you have enough AP to justify grabbing the bonus spell critical damage, or do you just want a fast and dirty 12 AP Mixed Magics?

It gets even worse for Fire, Cold, Acid, Electric and Sonic spellcasters, as they'd want the +2 CL from Savant, which they'd lose from AT. Mechanic and Thief-Acrobat are basically worthless for casters, and the AT tree is of limited use, but Savant gives raw CL so sometimes that's just better.

 

[zandoe]

Just strange that you have made a single really powerful Archtype that is Dragonlord and lost of flavor ones. Ying here bothers to write the obvious observations down. Read them?

 

[Veldrina]

A few ideas that could be flavorful and improve the scaling.

add a trance of a new type that uses force spell power instead of melee power with all melee attacks (or adds some of force spell power to melee power but I like this less)
Target: a large scaling on melee power that also comes from spell. Exact multiplier (eg 50% of spell power converted to melee power could be tuned)

add an enhancement that makes all spell use item bonus to disable device for spell DC instead of regular spell DC bonus from items
Target: make spells usable without having to hear for spells. And with a very high DC despite the low spell levels.

Add a way to trigger SLA casts on melee attacks: when you crit in melee, your magic hand casts a SLA that is not on cool down, and puts it on cool down. the cast power is exactly as if cast by the character.

 

[Raedier]

I'd like for all of the multiselectors in the arcane trickster tree (except for the cores) to just be take 1, get all.

Give us better core SLA's please. And forgive me if i didn't see quick draw in the tree but it should probably be there somewhere.

Class trance and inherent int to hit/damage would go a long way.

 

[Shear-buckler]

Sad to see this flavour fluff be the only archetype for the year.

 

[justin credible]

But it really should get Dispel Magic and Greater Dispel Magic on its spell list, to help AOE dispel Shields. Picking mobs off 1 at a time with the Mage Hand is not an effective solution vs MM immunity

think this is why they gave them scorching ray and fire seeds

 

[Necrodancer]

• Arms of the Trickster Multi Selector:
  • Trickster Trick - Imbue Toggle: Your weapon attacks do 1d4+1 force damage. Scales with spell power.
  • Trickster's Blade - Imbue Toggle: Your weapon attacks do 1d4+1 force damage. Scales with 200% melee power.
  • Trickster's Bolt - Imbue Toggle: Your weapon attacks do 1d4+1 force damage. Scales with 200% ranged power.

Why would anyone would ever pick the spell power options? Have you people learned a freaking nothing? It's much easier to gear for melee and let melee power (doubled) deal force damage than going spell power and suck at everything.

This is already something that should have been in the EK tree since way too many mobs have elemental resistances (acid stance being the least resisted).

I'm Not Half Bad... Multi Selector:

(2 AP):

• With a Blade - +1 competence bonus to critical thread range and damage multiplier with melee weapons and 15% competence bonus to max hit points.
• With a Bolt - +1 competence bonus to critical thread range and damage multiplier with ranged weapons and a +10% to Dodge Bypass.
• With a Spell - +20 Universal spell power, +2 spell penetration and +5% crit chance with all spells.

Do these 2 things look even remotely balanced between each other??? Are you people freaking serious? Best if I stop here, what even is the point in talking to you?

 

[Svirfneblin]

So… the Imbue doesn’t work with the neato spells?

Why not?

 

[Yamani]

Tier 3:

• Mage Hand - Meddle with Reality: Any creature you target with mage hand Slap or Eye Poke is no longer immune to sneak attacks, their fortification is reduced by 25% and their will saves are reduced by 4. The creature type changes to fey for purposes of immunities. This lasts 30 seconds. This can apply to bosses. Passive: Gain 30 Spell Points. Requires previous mage hand enhancement.

So just a few questions about this ability:
1. Will this count towards the status of being a favored enemy: Fey?
1a. If this does count for FE: Fey, will the original typing still count as well?

 

[pirotessa]

If youre going to keep thief acrobat as one of their 3 trees, you need to give them a way to get defensive roll to take advantage of that bonus in the tree as nothing here really synergies with the quarterstaff aspects. Otherwise why not remove acrobat and let them keep assassin?

 

[pirotessa]

Ranged search is also needed for ranged disable. If you have to run close enough to search the traps you wont need ranged disable to disable them..

 

[DBZ]

Another amazing arch type never to be seen at cap

Golf clap

 

[Mokune]

Another amazing arch type never to be seen at cap

Golf clap

You don't know how high I can fly...

 

[Ying]

Give us better core SLA's please.

The devs don't read minds. Suggest specific replacements if you don't like the current options. Each core has a spell choice from a different bucket: Artificer, Bard, Sorc/Wiz, Druid, FvS/Cleric, Alchemist, etc.

 

[Mokune]

The devs don't read minds. Suggest specific replacements if you don't like the current options. Each core has a spell choice from a different bucket: Artificer, Bard, Sorc/Wiz, Druid, FvS/Cleric, Alchemist, etc.

For general purpose leveling play there are some competitive choices in the cores.

 

[Ying]

For general purpose leveling play there are some competitive choices in the cores.

Yeah, it's functional aside from the things I pointed out. For R1 leveling a past life with a quarterstaff or as inquis, the archetype is fine. But that's true of all archetypes I think. I'd like to see it be more viable in Legendary content without it being just yet another dagger/kukri build.

 

[Torc]

Every other specific spellpower past life is 5 per. The only one that is 3 per is USP. Gear doesn't have lower force spellpower compared to other spell damage types, so let's keep it consistent here. And out of all the spellpower types, force is the weakest. It only scales with the Vulnerability debuff, while all other spellpower types scale with both Ash and Vulnerability.

Because it's paired with a DC bonus which is more significant than the other spell power past live perk combos. The Ash mechanic is an interesting point though it strikes me maybe fixing how force damage and MMR interact might be a better way of addressing that for many different reasons

Why arcane trickster only have acess to 4th level of spells? Arcane trickster from dnd 3.5 could reach 9th level of spells btw

Because the archtype system is more similar to current D&D edition's sub classes. We also couldn't exactly do what the old prestige class did technically anyway which was increase "your arcane" casting table progression when classes were combined. It's a bit odd but DDO has been around to long we have multi editions of material to draw off of.

Not-at-my-computer-yet question: does Ambush work fully with AOEs, or is it first-target-hit only?

All targets in the AOE take the ambush. It's 100% spammable you just can't use it on DOTTY things like wall of fire or lantern archon.

 

[Rull]

Because it's paired with a DC bonus which is more significant than the other spell power past live perk combos. The Ash mechanic is an interesting point though it strikes me maybe fixing how force damage and MMR interact might be a better way of addressing that for many different reasons

That is going to make a lot of difference for the viability of this archetype at cap.
I recommend you decide that early. All power-level related feedback is going to be useless if such huge factors can still change.

As you can see:

Qstaves are ~10% behind damage compared to those.
...
Qstaves are pretty much relegated to past life leveling when playing monk/rogue.

with a preview like this you are already in the territory of "This should be 10% stronger, otherwise it's never going to see play" or "That should be 5% weaker, otherwise it will overshadow all current builds"... so off-handedly saying "oh, by the way, we are still thinking of maybe doubling it's power, if we feel like it, maybe not" is a tad bit weird.

It's not just 35% Ash, it's also 10% ooze, 10% shattered device and 10% taint the aura (not mentioning the more exotic ones)

 

[rabidfox]

The Ash mechanic is an interesting point though it strikes me maybe fixing how force damage and MMR interact might be a better way of addressing that for many different reasons

Yes, please. Been wanting that for ages. Force is great for leveling, meh at high levels when people have MRR debuffs and force stops scaling; especially in organized groups & raids. If it worked like every other spell type with MRR then that'd be great.

 

[droid327]

The Ash mechanic is an interesting point though it strikes me maybe fixing how force damage and MMR interact might be a better way of addressing that for many different reasons

I don't see how being vaccinated should make a difference either way...

But yeah if Force could benefit from -MRR while still ignoring +MRR, that would turn a penalty into a nice bonus for Force casting and return it back to its original design intent

Even better if it could work different for players so MRR mitigates Force damage (even at 50%) because that's a huge vulnerability right now