U78 Lamannia Arcane Trickster Preview

[Rull]

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.

I disagree it would be great. It would be boring. I like force being different; it does scale on spellpower but not on MRR reductions. That, if designed well, allows for it to be pushed slightly higher than other magical damage types.

I like how Force is good for some things and not for others. Uniformity is killing for a game like this.

Just... keep it in mind when you design something based on force damage and balance accordingly.

 

[droid327]

I like how Force is good for some things and not for others. Uniformity is killing for a game like this.

The problem there is what do you use when you can't use force? Supporting a second element means you can't support your first fully, and you're worse off than single element casters

 

[nickvannuchi]

This class has 2 magic missiles, 2 chain missiles, 2 force missiles, and disintegrate SLA. The damage will be absurd, and few time to melee if builded to be a Shiradi. This class seems to be a full force caster.

 

[DBZ]

This class has 2 magic missiles, 2 chain missiles, 2 force missiles, and disintegrate SLA. The damage will be absurd, and few time to melee if builded to be a Shiradi. This class seems to be a full force caster.

Hilarious sure sure

 

[Rull]

The problem there is what do you use when you can't use force? Supporting a second element means you can't support your first fully, and you're worse off than single element casters

Ultimately, that's for the player to decide. Maybe they just shouldn't use a force build if their goal is to raid or group at endgame.

As for the game designer: they should ask themselves if it's smart to make (yet another) archetype that isn't good at raiding or groups at endgame.

Personally, I probably wouldn't use Force as only damage type if that wasn't my intention (I'd probably let the sneak damage be physical damage and make them scale on PRR debuffs instead, while still using impulse items)

But I wouldn't impulsively change how force damage works, limiting the game's depth for future design, and tipping the balance of each and every spell and ability that currently uses Force as damage type in the process. I may hope that they are designed and balanced with how force damage works in mind, lol.

 

[Torc]

Consider punctuation. This reads like it occasionally grants deflect arrow at random when I suspect you meant that it grants the deflect arrow feat.

BTW, if you want to add a cool "fluffy" feature, have the hand actually catch the projectiles instead of deflecting -- I'd love to catch one of the flying skulls in 2H2H and see it in inventory.

Consider increasing the die to d6 or d8. Force is already one of the worst imbue types because it isn't multiplied by as many debuffs as other imbues.

Imbue-heavy trees will be stacked. That's OK from a damage standpoint, but strong imbue builds are already mostly unusable due to negative threat being non-functional on imbues.

The cheap-trick fix is to change the imbue bonus to sneak dice, which do have a functional negative threat.

Or (my favorite, but more work) fix negative threat so it applies to the entire damage line based on the damage source: ranged for shot/throw, spell for cast, melee for swing.

Imbue aggro reduction is getting looked at. It might be less complicated than we first thought, but still tricky to fix.

Wait. Does this mean you can use this ability to strip Negative Energy Immunity from golems now?

All you had to do was poke a golem, and go "You a fey nao!~ :3" to them, and they just... comply?

You're telling me that this is the source of the fabled, long-sought functional negative energy bypass? In a rogue tree meant to spec force?!?

Depends on what you mean by Negative Energy. In it's current form it will not change "Damage" settings. This would allow you to Finger of Death or Energy Drain a golem but it's damage vulnerabilities wouldn't change for Necrotic Blast. You could stun a fire elemental but it's fire immunity would still apply unless changed by another effect. It's mostly a Death/CC enabler.

 

[rabidfox]

Imbue aggro reduction is getting looked at. It might be less complicated than we first thought, but still tricky to fix.

Does that include other procs like mantles/dripping effects/etc.? I can't recall, but I thought those had the same issue when it came to agro.

 

[Torc]

Does that include other procs like mantles/dripping effects/etc.? I can't recall, but I thought those had the same issue when it came to agro.

Not sure yet.

 

[droid327]

Combat Casting is a prereq for Mobile Casting, yet is a complete feat tax

Considering its an AT bonus feat and potentially useful in this build (since its mobile and spammy) can we look at decoupling those so you can just take Mobile by itself? The build is already feat-needy even if you're *not* playing it as a hybrid, let alone if you are

 

[drjoans]

Not sure yet.

Just want to say I love seeing the activity of @Torc , @Tolero , and @SteelStar on the forums upon clicking the staff tracker today. Thanks yall for showing up!

 

[Dulkhan]

Imbue aggro reduction is getting looked at. It might be less complicated than we first thought, but still tricky to fix.

Still doesnt change the fact that force damage is the worst kind of damage so the dice should be higher

 

[droid327]

Leveling a pure caster AT is going to be an awful experience...

You dont get your build-defining skill till L8, so you're probably stuck leveling 1-7 as a gimpy TA with no THF feats (wont have the STR). The tree itself doesnt really provide any useful attack, it just provides support, so you're really dependent on other trees to actually shape your gameplay.

And you wont get your first native AOE attack (Chain Missile) until L11, meaning you're stuck with the Core 3 SLA at 10s CD. And even then, you're having to single-target MM-immunes anyway

A single-target caster is just awful

-------------------------

I really think the 100% scaling SP in the capstone is too limiting. The class itself is not complete enough, it kinda assumes you're bringing in something from multiclassing, but the 100% scaling is too valuable in Epic to keep your added damage relevant, and that requires 20 AT. 50% scaling on Ambush is not worth giving up 8 levels in another caster class (and thus their top-tier spells), so its kind of a catch-22. If you're going to gimp yourself to mid- and low-tier spells and SLAs, then you need that 100% scaling to make up for the lost damage.

I think swap it into the T5, similar to how DA gets 200% Harm scaling in T5. That's still requiring a major tradeoff, but gives you much more flexibility to multiclass to help you actually do something in the game, and make use of the marvelous Mixed Magics mechanic

 

[Dragavon]

No idea why they are creating an archetype based on a subclass from 5th edition.

New things that have been added to DDO has always been based on the latest DnD edition.

 

[Cernunan]

Does magical ambush apply to warlock EB

 

[Torc]

Does magical ambush apply to warlock EB

Not the enlightened aura but all other blast types should work.

 

[woq]

A Force vulnerability given selectively to archmages and arcane tricksters might be better than having it interact with MRR to keep its unique status as a different kind of damage type.

Problem: Force is a weak damage type for a large number of endgame situations due to it being hard to scale like other types.
Problem 2: making it the same as every other element when it comes to MRR would dumb down and uniform the game in a way that isn't necessarily a good thing and narrows design space.

Solution: add an alternative, force specific way to scale the damage up. Force vulnerability would be one way to do this. This force vulnerability could be slow or expensive to stack and go all the way up to higher than normal numbers if necessary. There are many ways to go about it. I've been an advocate to making it more like other types because -MRR debuffing is so prevalent and such a key part about play at levels 31 and up, but perhaps there are better ways to go about it as Rull alluded to.

 

[Dom]

A Force vulnerability given selectively to archmages and arcane tricksters might be better than having it interact with MRR to keep its unique status as a different kind of damage type.

Problem: Force is a weak damage type for a large number of endgame situations due to it being hard to scale like other types.
Problem 2: making it the same as every other element when it comes to MRR would dumb down and uniform the game in a way that isn't necessarily a good thing and narrows design space.

Solution: add an alternative, force specific way to scale the damage up. Force vulnerability would be one way to do this. This force vulnerability could be slow or expensive to stack and go all the way up to higher than normal numbers if necessary. There are many ways to go about it. I've been an advocate to making it more like other types because -MRR debuffing is so prevalent and such a key part about play at levels 31 and up, but perhaps there are better ways to go about it as Rull alluded to.

Or add both. The real problem with force damage from spells is the actual base damage of the spells. You can have juiced spell power, crit chance and crit multiplier numbers and still do a tenth of the damage of any other spell in the game.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

Personally, I'd like to see the ambush damage reduced and the base force spell damage increased by the difference. It seems to me that it will be impossible to balance missile spells for non-Arcane trickster builds in the future otherwise.

 

[Shall]

Here's a few quick thoughts.

I like bringing back the damage rider on multi hit spells niche. Nearly all of the spells except fire seeds iirc are classified as spell level 4 or lower in their source class spellbooks though so there are a few raid bosses with mantle of invulnerability that would basically shut down the tree's damage design. Could spirit blades be reworked from an epic feat that's rarely if ever taken to a high level wizard/sorc spell then added to the archetype somewhere for a option to use in this admittedly uncommon case? It would also give archmages a stronger force damage spell to use at higher levels.

Can presto be made to count as trap the soul with respect to the shadowdancer 4th core's debuff or could trap the soul be added to the capstone as like a steal soul sla or something for synergy with the destiny core.

Last and I admit I am thinking more of a cool theme than balance, but could the an extra hand enhancement or a multi selector in the same spot have the hand throw a second projectile stacking with simple thrown expertise, like how advanced ninja training stacks with shuriken expertise.

 

[woq]

Or add both. The real problem with force damage from spells is the actual base damage of the spells. You can have juiced spell power, crit chance and crit multiplier numbers and still do a tenth of the damage of any other spell in the game.

That comes down to numbers. Base dmg, mrr, vulnerability - you can do 100 dmg with so many combinations of the 3. 100 dmg, 0 mrr, 0 vuln. 50 dmg 100 vuln. Etc etc. It's just a numbers balance game, and you don't *need* all 3 to balance it in a reasonable way. Force vulnerability could go very high (think similar numbers to the Poison vulnerability of Ninja Spy) - but only on single targets or with high investment / setup / conditions. Obviously having an easy access to wide 100% force vuln would be silly, but just to paint a picture...

For example, Arcane Tricksters get a (thing) that makes your force spells apply force vulnerability, up to 20%, in their lvl 18 core and Archmages get it in their lvl 12 core. Additionally they get access to a Symbol of Force spell to make everything within it take five stacks of force vulnerability per second that stacks up to 50% (so at 10 seconds you'd reach maximum power). This obviously having the conditions of the CD on the symbol spell and reliant on the enemy staying on the symbol to reap that stacking benefit. You could also require using a channeled spell doing your best palpatine expression for the super high numbers, so you can't just kite and jump and all that to get max benefit - it'd be conditional, comes down to balancing it right.

It's still not going to be as good as something like high sonic damage with harmonic resonance and ash + ooze + shattered device, but it'd be less bad - and it'd be different.