Update 66 Preview 1 - Epic Destiny Refresh

[Lazuli]

Great idea! This will be in for Preview 2. Thank you!

Thank you!

Any word in the feedback given about there is a single ED that helps casters without immunity bypass and that works with the warlock's EB? Is expanding this only option not worthy of being considered a desirable change?

 

[Cyberdine (YezakGai)]

Gonna try to breath some positivity into this thread before I ship on out of it.

I remain optimistic that in time, some way some how, that there will be an explanation of why the EA healing aura is now gone. As almost all of the other things, like dragon breath, got touched on by Tonquin. As well as other GREAT changes communicated to us.

Tonquin is good. I have faith in Tonquin. I choose to believe Tonquin is being told what he can and can't respond to, and for whatever reason EA healing aura is on that list. Or at least this perspective calms down my impulse to shout at the devs for not talking about it, and ignoring it blatantly.

The EA healing aura didn't make the game. No it doesn't make sense to the majority of us that it's gone. But if your fun was entirely based off EA's healing mantle, or using that single ability as a crutch, that's kind of a "house built on the sand" type deal. Which isn't wrong or right. Just is what is what it is. I for one never used it until I made my bubble/healer support arti quite recently.

Go listen to some Bob Marley.

 

[FVSHasBeenEvenMoreGutted]

tonquin, i am going to restate what i said earlier, please remove the max caster level on the spells in the epic destinies. it makes no sense that abilities that require level 20 have a max caster level of 20 (and dont do it to just the epic strikes, do it to all the spells)

 

[Toprak]

Howdy SSG Devs.

For Machrotechnic, please consider the following adjustment:

• Strike Drive - T4 - Blast and Dissonance drive uses the highest of Evocation OR Sunder bonuses for determining its overall DC.
  • I think this change would allow melee artificers to get some better efficacy out of this ability.

 

[Thar]

The Exalted Angel tree also focuses on turn undead, why not make the epic moment grant you the ability to turn any type of creature for 20 seconds with some arbitrarily large bonus to it so it lands consistently.

nice, can it be ANY creature including guildies???

 

[DBZ]

Like the old judgement bombs take out raid teams full of pms

 

[Rincewind]

I'm not sure if this is going to be taken into consideration, but having the druid ED Primal Avatar being just a caster tree hurt the class and other hybrids builds, Especially considering that this tree and draconic are the only trees with Imbue dices on them and both are way too week for physical and hybrids builds...I don't think Draconic should be a hybrid tree but Primal should be, in a perfect world a few things could be added to it besides adding melee and range power hell you could even add 1 imbue dice per core ( consider the amount of SA dices that Shadow Dancer gives for example) after the first one you could also make some changes like.. the mantle could work as the one in fate singer, a different version of evergreen that gives Temp Hp on hit while using the mantle, a multi selector for "Nature's Reach" called "Nature's Strength" that give you melee and range power, and reduce cost for quickening. The T5 could take some more work but I can give some ideas too, but with some small changes the tree could benefit a lot of hybrids build or imbue builds that could use the love.

 

[Lazuli]

nice, can it be ANY creature including guildies???

And if you have Mighty Turning, does everyone die?

Bring deathward

 

[jotmon]

Exalted Angel

• Angelic Form is now: "Casting a Fire, Light, or Positive spell causes a flaming blade barrier ring to erupt around you. Enemies entering or leaving the ring take 1d6 Fire and 1d6 Light damage per caster level, and allies entering or leaving the ring are healed for 1d6 plus 1 per caster level in positive energy (this healing and damage has a short cooldown to prevent weirdness). The flaming ring lasts for 5 seconds per spell cast, but subsequent casts extend the duration by 5 seconds each up to a maximum of 30 seconds."

This is a BS change
Its not a healing aura form, its a walking bladebarrier version of consecrated ground.
no self healing and now aoe damage with some fuky cooldown timer to screw players over on in/out healing....
Now players are going to have to move in/out of the moving BB to benefit from the heals

this planned change makes the destiny form worthless to me..

 

[Lazuli]

Exalted Angel

• Angelic Form is now: "Casting a Fire, Light, or Positive spell causes a flaming blade barrier ring to erupt around you. Enemies entering or leaving the ring take 1d6 Fire and 1d6 Light damage per caster level, and allies entering or leaving the ring are healed for 1d6 plus 1 per caster level in positive energy (this healing and damage has a short cooldown to prevent weirdness). The flaming ring lasts for 5 seconds per spell cast, but subsequent casts extend the duration by 5 seconds each up to a maximum of 30 seconds."

This is a BS change
Its not a healing aura form, its a walking bladebarrier version of consecrated ground.
no self healing and now aoe damage with some fuky cooldown timer to screw players over on in/out healing....
Now players are going to have to move in/out of the moving BB to benefit from the heals

this planned change makes the destiny form worthless to me..

Tonquin has made a modification to this, but has not updated the OP.

In any case, many people still don't like the modification because the aura healing has disappeared. Half of the posts on this topic are complaints against this change.

In general, the changes to caster EDs are bad. The melee EDs have some good changes, but it seems that even though the OP says Sentinel has no changes, it does have changes (and not good ones).

 

[PURPLETIMB]

I remain optimistic that in time, some way some how, that there will be an explanation of why the EA healing aura is now gone.

I too wish the devs would give a simple explanation of their thinking on the Holy Presence nerf, but I completely understand it.

Holy Presence trivializes most easier content. It's not good design to enable whole parties to be able to completely ignore their HP bars because one player in the group has a permanent aura on.

Just like everyone else I have used and enjoyed having automatic healing with no requirement to spend spell points, plat, or any amount of conscious thought. It has allowed my group to easily complete low skull quests without ever casting a heal. But I understand the devs wanting a party to have to consider how they will be healed and not just have any one character of any class have a magic button that makes healing unnecessary.

 

[DBZ]

Like blood tribute available to barbs at level 2

 

[Lazuli]

Holy Presence trivializes most easier content. It's not good design to enable whole parties to be able to completely ignore their HP bars because one player in the group has a permanent aura on.

I have never seen high difficulties be trivialized by the aura. And low difficulties are not trivialized by the aura, but by being easy.

 

[Falkor]

The exalted angel stance would benefit being changed from LIGHT damage to ALIGNMENT damage.

Exalted angel is the divine caster tree. We have dark apostates. What are they supposed to use? Not all divine casters are light casters.

 

[droid327]

Holy Presence trivializes most easier content. It's not good design to enable whole parties to be able to completely ignore their HP bars because one player in the group has a permanent aura on.

Easy content is already trivialized. You're not talking about the difference between success and failure for a given quest. You'll succeed either way. You're talking about a QOL difference, automating the heal process so you can focus on other gameplay. And you're giving up the ability to run in another mantle, or spend in another destiny, that might provide more actual power and not just QOL.

In other words, losing the aura wont make content any harder, it'll just make it more work to complete. There's a huge and very important difference between the two.

 

[Matuse]

The exalted angel stance would benefit being changed from LIGHT damage to ALIGNMENT damage.

Exalted angel is the divine caster tree. We have dark apostates. What are they supposed to use? Not all divine casters are light casters.

Dark Apostates doing negative pewpew would go for Magus, which got improved a lot.

 

[Edrein]

Primal Avatar​

Note: this entire tree's adjusted state is not in this preview! These changes are entirely about the tree's Epic Strikes.

• Carrion Swarm DOT damage bug fixed to actually be 1d6+1 per 2 character levels.
• Carrion Swarm gains a saving throw interval to remove the dot.

I'm not sure I like the addition of a saving throw, unless this is also finally being 'fixed' to no longer be overwritten by other players and track each spellcast individually.

As it stands this change overall feels like a nerf to Carrion Swarm rather than a QoL/update to this strike in particular.

 

[Ellisaria]

I'm not sure if this is going to be taken into consideration, but having the druid ED Primal Avatar being just a caster tree hurt the class and other hybrids builds, Especially considering that this tree and draconic are the only trees with Imbue dices on them and both are way too week for physical and hybrids builds...I don't think Draconic should be a hybrid tree but Primal should be, in a perfect world a few things could be added to it besides adding melee and range power hell you could even add 1 imbue dice per core ( consider the amount of SA dices that Shadow Dancer gives for example) after the first one you could also make some changes like.. the mantle could work as the one in fate singer, a different version of evergreen that gives Temp Hp on hit while using the mantle, a multi selector for "Nature's Reach" called "Nature's Strength" that give you melee and range power, and reduce cost for quickening. The T5 could take some more work but I can give some ideas too, but with some small changes the tree could benefit a lot of hybrids build or imbue builds that could use the love.

I think primal should remain more caster-focused. Hybrids that do more phys + imbues would probably be better served with a tree that offered some melee/ranged power too. I was hoping that when they did that big imbue overhaul, the next ED that came out would be physical (applying to both ranged and melees) and imbue focused. Dice in cores, few in the tree, big handful in the moment maybe even an imbue toggle in T1 where you could pick from a small list of options since you have see quite a bit more access to imbue dice even though not every class has/gets them. Then imbues got scaled back significantly and hybrids got hit especially hard by the caster penalties + spell power dice scaling + reduced spell power applied to their imbues. Still hoping for some of that to get revisited, still hoping to see an imbue-focused destiny

 

[Ellisaria]

The exalted angel stance would benefit being changed from LIGHT damage to ALIGNMENT damage.

Exalted angel is the divine caster tree. We have dark apostates. What are they supposed to use? Not all divine casters are light casters.

They're 'supposed' to use the new Magus, of course!

 

[glass_jaws]

Tonquin, I know this has been mentioned a lot in this thread, but can we get some clarification on max caster level on Epic Strikes? Is it intended to be uncapped for some, and capped for others? Also are some epic strikes supposed to be 3rd level spells where others are leveled at much higher? (This really makes a difference vs liches, etc that block spells below level 6).

Personally it seems these values should be consistent across all the epic strikes.

Edit: Looks like earlier in the thread Tonquin said he would modify all epic strikes to be level 9 so ignore that last question. Leaving it there for now so it doesn't look like I'm trying to hide asking it.