Update 66 Preview 1 - Epic Destiny Refresh

[Elminster]

Quick Cutter is still fairly useless overall.

>The primary reason being you have to apply some kind of debuff and then apply the DoT and then stack said DoT...ain't nobody got time for that. Especially in higher Reapers where the objective is to neutralize quickly(no pun intended).

>The dodge component of quick cutter might as well not exist. At cap especially, people have dozens of excess +dodge % just laying around. What we need is Max Dodge Cap and Max Dex Bonus. If you give us these two (MDC+MDB) and trash the actual +dodge %, this part will actually become useful.

>The DoT isn't as great as you think it is. You guys probably did your calculations and surmised well it does like a thousand odd damage per tick (0,2,4..12 second intervals) after applying full stacks. Firstly, it's not a lot of damage, second, by the time you actually oil them up i.e Quick Cutter #1, Quick Cutter #2, then another Quick cutter to apply the DoTs (or more depending upon) either 1 of 2 things have happened.. #1 someone else killed the mob. #2 you're dead.

Slow Cutter has always been useless due to inherent flaws demonstrated in actual gameplay. The reason why Adrenaline is so popular is it's usefulness during live action gameplay and not based upon "paper calculations". For instance in terms of pure # crunching Adrenaline is only 5% or less of overall DPS under 6 party "normal" conditions. Now why does everyone grab it? Because it can quickly take out that Doom Reaper consistently mitigating risk for the entire party. In a word, Adrenaline is useful and QC just plain isn't (no matter how you window dress it).

 

[Falkor]

Removing the heal aura from exalted angel is also bad for grouping.

Blaster casters don't need it. Melee who takes it are seriously gimping their DPS.

My caster does more damager in draconic, but I enjoy using exalted for the healing aura b/c it helps out my party when pugging.

The self-heal is nice, but not necessary. If they remove the healing aura, then some of my builds lose the passive 'group-support' the heals provide.

As I see it, removing the healing aura hurts

1. Players who don't have strong builds that need the self-heals to make it through content.
2. Players who have strong builds that want to provide group assist with passive healing.

And it does not in anyway impact top tier, end-game builds.

This is a change that only hurts the player base, and does no good. And there is zero explanation for it.

This is the type of change that is posted to Lam that the players point out as really bad ... and if its implemented anyways will be used to point out why the devs don't listen.

 

[RobShow]

Magus of the Eclipse​

Magus is the first of the trees to get a more significant overhaul to its structure. The big goal here was to provide more traditional spellcasters a way to better utilize the whole tree. We also wanted to significantly boost the damage of the Epic Strikes to make them a more attractive choice for damaging spellcasters.

• Moon Lance and Gloom Spear now deal 1d8+8 damage per caster level
• Chill Aura is now multiselected with: "Flash of the Eclipse: While in your Magus of the Eclipse Destiny Mantle, your Cold and Negative spells have a chance to blast your target for an additional 1d6+6 damage per character level of the same type as the spell used, as well as applying one stack of Shattermantle. Each element can only strike once every 5 seconds, tracked separately."
• Share the Light now requires Chill Aura as a prereq
• Null Magic Streik is now multiselected with Share the Light and moves down in the tree to Tier 3
• New Tier 4 where Null Magic Strike was: "Lunar Studies: While in your Magus of the Eclipse Destiny Mantle, you gain Spell Resistance, Magic Resistance Rating, and Magic Resistance Rating Cap equal to 3 times the number of Metamagic feats you've acquired."
• Grand Summoner moves to multiselect with New Tier 4 Lunar Studies, and is now part of the Destiny Mantle
• New Tier 1 where Grand Summoner was: "Moontouched: +2/4/6 Magic Resistance Rating. Rank 3: +5 Negative, Cold, Force, and Universal Spell Power"
• Lunar Imbuement is now: "Casting Moon Lance or Gloom Spear grants you +5 Negative, Cold, Force, and Universal Spell Power for 12 seconds, and these spells apply 5 stacks of Vulnerability to the enemy struck."
• All Core abilities now grant +1 Spell Penetration each
• Core 4 now grants +3 Spell Pen (which is still total of 7 across all 4 cores + 3 from core 4, but is now spread out a bit and easier to access)
• Lunar Power is now: "+10 Negative, Cold, Force, and Universal spell power. Your Moon Lance and Gloom Spear spells now deal 1d12+16 damage to enemies with 0 or less Spell Resistance."
• AP costs of several abilities have been adjusted to try to get this tree closer to the goal of 60-ish AP for all abilities like other Destiny Trees. It's still below other trees, but now the margin is less severe.

big goal here was to provide more traditional spellcasters a way to better utilize the whole tree.
1 > I Lost Null Magic Strike!

• Grand Summoner moves to multiselect with New Tier 4 Lunar Studies, and is now part of the Destiny Mantle
  2 > Locked on tree tier 4 to gain nothing!
  BTW... Why Chill Aura dont work on PET?
  
  
  
• AP costs of several abilities have been adjusted to try to get this tree closer to the goal of 60-ish AP for all abilities like other Destiny Trees. It's still below other trees, but now the margin is less severe.
  
  3> If I keep the same build I lose some skill because the points are insufficient.
  This tree is worse than the current one, cancel it! Leave it as it is!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

 

[DBZ]

Completely kills new players leveling the ones that really need the boost that already struggle check

Then 60 percent more nerfs on top of the 33 nerf check yes insta killers for the win cc will be coming last

If its warded and then maybe a heal or toss a rez done so much fun can you still make zombie shiradis or bring them back

Great team for itr rxp 1 tank 3 ranged 1 pm done

 

[Cetus]

Fury of the Wild​

Most of the adjustments here center on the tree's Epic Strikes. We wanted to boost Quick Cut to make it a more attractive choice versus Adrenaline.

• Adrenaline's cooldown has been adjusted to 9 seconds

​

This bothers me. Why is it being extended? Can you please leave it at 8 seconds and make both boulder's might and fast&furious all on an 8 second cooldown as well, just so it syncs up with adrenaline? It would be a nice improvement to the quality of the attack rotation.

 

[Ying]

This bothers me. Why is it being extended? Can you please leave it at 8 seconds and make both boulder's might and fast&furious all on an 8 second cooldown as well, just so it syncs up with adrenaline? It would be a nice improvement to the quality of the attack rotation.

Agreed. The game needs more alignment on cooldowns that can be chained together. For example, Reaper Boosts have a 40 second cooldown. Action Boosts are 30 seconds. No reason why they can't both be 30 seconds. Having a bunch of disparate cooldowns is just unnecessary micromanagement that doesn't add to the fun factor.

 

[Beast]

Removing the heal aura from exalted angel is also bad for grouping.

Blaster casters don't need it. Melee who takes it are seriously gimping their DPS.

My caster does more damager in draconic, but I enjoy using exalted for the healing aura b/c it helps out my party when pugging.

The self-heal is nice, but not necessary. If they remove the healing aura, then some of my builds lose the passive 'group-support' the heals provide.

As I see it, removing the healing aura hurts

1. Players who don't have strong builds that need the self-heals to make it through content.
2. Players who have strong builds that want to provide group assist with passive healing.

And it does not in anyway impact top tier, end-game builds.

This is a change that only hurts the player base, and does no good. And there is zero explanation for it.

This is the type of change that is posted to Lam that the players point out as really bad ... and if its implemented anyways will be used to point out why the devs don't listen.

You as many are not the only one concerned about the utility and usage of said aura.
I hope (but hoping in this game is bad for health) that someone will read and rethink, or make a multiselector. heal as is now, or damage\whatever will be

 

[Ying]

I didn't even look at all of that yet, I dislike having to take X to get Y when X is something I have zero interest in.

Agreed.

Specific to the Unyeilding Sentinel tree:

Strength of Vitality (T5 Unyeilding) should not have a Hardened (T4) as a prequisite, because SoV does not require the mantle in order to gain a benefit. It receives a bonus benefit if the mantle is in use.

Same goes for Hardened 3/3. It has a base benefit, and then an additional benefit if the mantle is in use.

Both of those prereqs need to be eliminated.

 

[Shear-buckler]

You as many are not the only one concerned about the utility and usage of said aura.
I hope (but hoping in this game is bad for health) that someone will read and rethink, or make a multiselector. heal as is now, or damage\whatever will be

Multi-selector but heal version of the aura applies a non-stacking buff that heals over time for a few tics.

 

[Jeronimo]

Lol your are joking right. Only down side of caster in r10 is you are limited by mana. There not as many melee players going ham in r10 as casters. And ones that are like myself are with well built toons with maxed or a good bit of passed lifes and reaper points. Same point in raids. It a bit different in high r raids. You can't just go ham or you be a soul stone quick. With the exception of a few melee builds that are very good. Caster and range>>> over melee in terms of power.
tell me last time you saw a melee post a reaper carry group ( soloed for hands in chest or carry a gulldie to cap. Very rearly but all the time on casters and thrower ranged builds. So get out of here with o.p. melee nonsense

No, melee meta builds rule the high reaper end game. Casters don't even come close in R7+.

 

[Jeronimo]

This is a change that only hurts the player base, and does no good. And there is zero explanation for it.

This is the type of change that is posted to Lam that the players point out as really bad ... and if its implemented anyways will be used to point out why the devs don't listen.

This! ^^^

The Devs should really explain what their thought process is behind the changes.

 

[The Narc]

Somehow my skeletal knight takes damage from negative now, think Magus broke him.
Summoned skelly, Death aura slowly killed him lmao :ROFLMAO:

Oh, if that is true you can bet that one wont be getting fixed anytime soon, atleast not without having some coincidental break to some other more important ability.

 

[4slight]

Oh, if that is true you can bet that one wont be getting fixed anytime soon, atleast not without having some coincidental break to some other more important ability.

I'm curious what broke it in the first place, seems like they might be doing something with negative healing behind the scenes.. I did submit a bug report btw.
oh, maybe it's to do with the alchemist 'make friend undead' spell "Death Salve" that they 'fixed' in the preview lol
>Death Salve now correctly turns your allies Undead

 

[DBZ]

They don't even know mass frog is broken with out working spell pen or embolden working

Only thousands of bug reports on that alone over how many years now

 

[Elminster]

This bothers me. Why is it being extended? Can you please leave it at 8 seconds and make both boulder's might and fast&furious all on an 8 second cooldown as well, just so it syncs up with adrenaline? It would be a nice improvement to the quality of the attack rotation.

This. Please.

 

[Shear-buckler]

This bothers me. Why is it being extended? Can you please leave it at 8 seconds and make both boulder's might and fast&furious all on an 8 second cooldown as well, just so it syncs up with adrenaline? It would be a nice improvement to the quality of the attack rotation.

That makes sense. Drop the cooldown and reduce the bonus damage.

 

[Wini]

• New t5 to replace Greater Shadowform: Unholy Feeding: On kill, you gain 6 temp HP per sneak attack dice. You also gain +10 Force and Universal Spell Power and are immune to Pressure Plates and Bear Traps.

​

With 40 SA dice, this is +240 temporal HP. This doesn't feel useful playing reaper quests at all, can you replace this with something useful like +5 dddge and max dodge cap or +5 melee power?

 

[Thau of Blackmoore]

BUG with EA Flame blade barrier: Does not activate with Blade Barrier

The changes to EA are really horrible

 

[CBDunk]

The UI changes to make it clear what abilities are Mantles/Strikes/Moments and which modify Mantles/Strikes are all great improvements.

Unfortunately, I'm less impressed with the actual changes to effects. Since the changeover from the old ED system I've tried out different combinations of all the trees and established some clear favorites; DI Energy Vortex, PA Carrion Swarm, and EA Angelic Soul are all near the top of the list. I'm guessing that means they are popular with others too and thus SSG has data showing they are used more than other options... presumably leading to this 'nuke it from orbit' approach to 'balance'.

A better way of balancing things is to make more of the OTHER options viable. Decrease the best options slightly if you must, but reducing all of the 'Epic' abilities down to levels at or below 'Heroic' turns them into just clutter for the action bars. There are some decent improvements here and there in the list of changes (e.g. temp HP on kill for Shadowdancers), but NOTHING which made me sit up and say... 'oh, I can make a good solid build with that'.

Side note: For the handful of people with anti-feather fall 'issues'... maybe have a gameplay setting that swaps the default behavior; so by default they'd fall normally, but they could switch to feather fall at any time (assuming they have an active FF effect) by blocking.

 

[CBDunk]

With 40 SA dice, this is +240 temporal HP. This doesn't feel useful playing reaper quests at all, can you replace this with something useful like +5 dddge and max dodge cap or +5 melee power?

If this refreshes on every kill, as it seems to state, then I disagree. Sure, 6 temp HP per SA die is not a lot, but if you are continuously taking damage then those temp HP are effectively being multiplied by the number of kills you make.