Theorycrafting Thoughts On New Classes (Patch 4.0 Beta)

[Boeroer]

Ring of Focused Flame works with Imbue: Fireball by the way.

[Boeroer]

Nick’s looking into it; he said they want these spells to scale like normal spells.

Great! Must have missed that. 

[Gregorovich]

So, the arcane archer is my next playthrough

[AndreaColombo]

You didn’t miss it; it was a PM exchange shortly after the first beta patch landed No idea whether plans have changed since then as I haven’t heard anything else about it, though.

[Archaven]

 

One question about Bellower Chanter. Did I understand right that invocations grant PL bonus when they are casted with extra phrases, but max amount of phrases is stll capped by cost of the most expensive invocation? And actually we have downgraded base chanter until PL3.

 

Nope! It's not extra phrases that grants bonus to PL. It's the already stored phrases that grants the bonus.

 

If you cast a PL 5 invocation (with 7 phrases stored) you get a 'based on 7 PL bonus' of some kind.

 

 

question to chanter lover. is this really a good subclass addition? is this what most chanter player like this?

[Enoch]

 

 

One question about Bellower Chanter. Did I understand right that invocations grant PL bonus when they are casted with extra phrases, but max amount of phrases is stll capped by cost of the most expensive invocation? And actually we have downgraded base chanter until PL3.

 

Nope! It's not extra phrases that grants bonus to PL. It's the already stored phrases that grants the bonus.

 

If you cast a PL 5 invocation (with 7 phrases stored) you get a 'based on 7 PL bonus' of some kind.

 

 

question to chanter lover. is this really a good subclass addition? is this what most chanter player like this?

 

I posted earlier in the thread that I don't see much reason to be a fan.  Given that PL boosts don't do much for summoning or buffing invocations (only duration) and only help the debuff/disable invocations a little bit (duration and a small +ACC), this is mostly about the direct-damage invocations.  (Damaging and Healing Phrases would also get a boost, but the duration is so short that this didn't seem like a signficant consideration.)  And there is already a subclass built to excel at those. 

 

I can see the case where, if you're using the Singing Scimitar, you can open combat with a high-level empowered Invocation and immediately follow it with another high-level PL-boosted Invocation. (When I tested a 6-Phrase invoc, I got +3 Chanter PL for a short while.)  Situationally, that can be a combat-ender.  But the sacrifices are significant-- giving up both Chant AoE and the ability to chain lower-level invocations (many of which remain very useful throughout the game, like Hel Hyraf and Killers Froze) hurts.  The more frequent Invocs of a Skald and the flexibility of a Troub or base-Chanter both seem far more valuable. 

Edited December 6, 2018 by Enoch

[MaxQuest]

question to chanter lover. is this really a good subclass addition? is this what most chanter player like this?

Belower can get bonus PL. This shifts him towards stuff that benefits most from this, mostly damage-dealing stuff.

He gets -50% chants aoe (or radius?) penalty. So it's not chants.

And if single-classed he would get trumped by troubadour, who can use invocations twice as often.

 

So it looks like belower is quite inclined towards multi-classing with spell damage dealers, like fire priest and especially evoker. You throw an invocation, gain PL bonus and proceed to casting evocation stuff. It's like mini-empower.

 

The ugly thing though is that:

- you get +0.5 PL by phrase count consumed, rounded down. Using a 3-phrase invocation... is meh. You want to use your highest-even-cost stuff for the bonus.

- the PL bonus doesn't stack with itself. So no Sasha's Singing Scimitar shenanigans.

- all your phrases will be consumed when you cast an invocation. So belower requires a higher level of supervision.

 

P.S. I think that PL bonus should be rounded up, to be more worthwhile..

Edited December 6, 2018 by MaxQuest

[Enoch]

 

question to chanter lover. is this really a good subclass addition? is this what most chanter player like this?

Belower can get bonus PL. This shifts him towards stuff that benefits most from this, mostly damage-dealing stuff.

He gets -50% chants aoe (or radius?) penalty. So it's not chants.

And if single-classed he would get trumped by troubadour, who can use invocations twice as often.

 

So it looks like belower is quite inclined towards multi-classing with spell damage dealers, like fire priest and especially evoker. You throw an invocation, gain PL bonus and proceed to casting evocation stuff. It's like mini-empower.

 

The ugly thing though is that:

- you get +0.5 PL by phrase count consumed, rounded down. Using a 3-phrase invocation... is meh. You want to use your highest-even-cost stuff for the bonus.

- the PL bonus doesn't stack with itself. So no Sasha's Singing Scimitar shenanigans.

- all your phrases will be consumed when you cast an invocation. So belower requires a higher level of supervision.

 

P.S. I think that PL bonus should be rounded up, to be more worthwhile..

 

The bonus PL is Chanter PL.  I don't think it would effect Wiz or Priest spells.  (It definitely doesn't affect Monk fists.)

[MaxQuest]

The bonus PL is Chanter PL.  I don't think it would effect Wiz or Priest spells.  (It definitely doesn't affect Monk fists.)

I thought it's just the name of status effect - so the player knew where it came from.

If that bonus PL affects only chants and invocations... then what's the point of this subclass? (provided that its only +0.5 PL per phrase consumed)

[Frog Man]

 

Furyshaper is mentioned only a few times, so it seems to be offtop;

 

Anyway, I remember Boeroer mentioning too low ACC of the fear ward. So, I have just checked it and it seems, that it scales with character level: it had 84 ACC 30 base plus 54 from the level (19th level Multi-barb) Actually that seems to be a good thing.

Yeah I reported that in beta 4.0.0.0018 (right when it came out, Furyshaper was the first thing I tested). I got a response that they'll look into it and now it seems with 4.0.0.0025 they fixed that issue.

 

Like they did with Tactician's Interrupt-based refund of Discipline.

 

The wards are damn squishy and the debuff from a destroyed Ward is hefty, but the effects are damn nice. Remember that it's still a full-fledged Barb!

I didn't really play with this subclass (only tinkered around a bit), but I guess Furyshaper could become my new favorite Barb subclass.

Going to include a Fury Shaper / Priest of ??? in my upcoming forgotten sanctum run. He’ll be buffing accuracy and then dropping fear totem (once my wizards had the chance to debuff the enemy), then jumping into melee to smash heads. Off tank/ support jack of all trades.

 

Considering going fist dps with him for flavor. Tribal shaman kind of dude.

Edited December 6, 2018 by Frog Man

[guildwriter]

I thought it's just the name of status effect - so the player knew where it came from.

If that bonus PL affects only chants and invocations... then what's the point of this subclass? (provided that its only +0.5 PL per phrase consumed)

 

Feels like Obsidian is playing it too safe these days.  A lot of the subclass design for the new DLC reminds me of the Deck of Many Things items: some interesting bonuses with hefty penalties that make the overall benefits situational but more often marginal at best.  And I'm not saying that subclasses have to be a straight upgrade.  More that the bonuses often are not strong enough to create an alternate attractive playstyle.

Edited December 6, 2018 by guildwriter

[thelee]

 

The bonus PL is Chanter PL.  I don't think it would effect Wiz or Priest spells.  (It definitely doesn't affect Monk fists.)

I thought it's just the name of status effect - so the player knew where it came from.

If that bonus PL affects only chants and invocations... then what's the point of this subclass? (provided that its only +0.5 PL per phrase consumed)

 

 

Can anyone in beta branch comment on this being generic PL or chanter-specific PL bonus?

 

Having it be chanter-specific PL is dumb but frankly not outside the realm of possibility of something that Obsidian might do, misunderstanding that e.g. chants don't have any PL scaling.

[Enoch]

 

 

The bonus PL is Chanter PL.  I don't think it would effect Wiz or Priest spells.  (It definitely doesn't affect Monk fists.)

I thought it's just the name of status effect - so the player knew where it came from.

If that bonus PL affects only chants and invocations... then what's the point of this subclass? (provided that its only +0.5 PL per phrase consumed)

 

 

Can anyone in beta branch comment on this being generic PL or chanter-specific PL bonus?

 

Having it be chanter-specific PL is dumb but frankly not outside the realm of possibility of something that Obsidian might do, misunderstanding that e.g. chants don't have any PL scaling.

 

I don't have the save to look at again, but it definitely was stated as Chanter PL, and the Cantor merc I made didn't see her Transcendent Suffering improve.  This was on the initial Beta build. 

 

There certainly does seem to be a tendency for them to assume that a PL boost makes everything better, without thinking about what precise things it improves and what it doesn't.

[Sobric]

What monk subclass works well with the summoned fists? Helwaker?

[Franknstein]

So, let's say one wanted to bring to Eora the most painful DoT's ever, what would work best: a SC Ancient Druid, all about PL stacking, or an Ancient Druid/Helwalker multiclass with caped Might and over 30 Intellect?

[Boeroer]

Little update on the Arcane Archer:

 

- Driving Flight and other additional jumps now properly trigger multiple imbue spells from one shot (Fire in the Hole and Watershaper's Focus are nice with this)

- AoE from weapons does not trigger imbue spells anymore.

 

So far, so good.

Edited December 6, 2018 by Boeroer

[zealotstim]

Debonair seems good for a ranged rogue build, since you could negate the penalty pretty easily by standing close behind allies for cowardice and already don't engage from range. At that point it's all upside.

[NCarver]

They don't seem to scale with PL (at least not ACC or PEN - dmg is hard to check since PL adds base damage and you can only determine that with many dmg rolls if there's no tooltip like in this case). But I just saw a dmg roll of 6.1 for Missiles which usually only have 6 base damage. So maybe PL affects the dmg roll.

 

The spells' ACC scales with Arcana and other ACC buffs of the ranger - which leads to very high numbers - for a spell I mean. Easy to land them. Especially in case of Imbue:Eora that's pretty neat. It's cool if you as a Ranger can cast this spell and the Wizard can do other stuff then.

 

Also the attack speed and recovery are that of the weapon, not the spells - also good in most cases.

 

The low (non-scaling) PEN is really really bad though.

 

When investigating this, I'm seeing that all of the Imbue spells are each benefiting from Power Level scaling in some way. If you have an example you could share, then I could dig further and see if perhaps there is a hidden issue here.

 

I will note that I plan to change the default scaling for Imbue: Missiles so that it adds additional missiles for higher power levels. This type of scaling seems to better fit with what is expected and this should be updated in a future build.

 

I'll list here each imbue spell and what you should be seeing from scaling (in case that helps to see the results) - You can test each of these by either comparing a low level ranger to a higher level one using the ability, or by Empowering these abilities and comparing results in the combat log.

 

Imbue: Missiles - Projectile Count / Damage / Penetration

Imbue: Web - Accuracy / Duration

Imbue: Fireball - Accuracy / Damage / Penetration

Imbue: Eora - Accuracy / Duration

Imbue: Death - Accuracy / Damage / Penetration

 

As always, thank you for the continued support, please let us know how things go as you continue to try out the new content.

 

-Nick

[guildwriter]

So, let's say one wanted to bring to Eora the most painful DoT's ever, what would work best: a SC Ancient Druid, all about PL stacking, or an Ancient Druid/Helwalker multiclass with caped Might and over 30 Intellect?

 

So assuming equal Might and Intellect for both classes:

 

(I used a wiki for the attribute numbers, not sure if they are still correct)

 

A SC Ancient Druid gets +2PL over the MC.  That amounts to +10% Damage, +10% Duration, +1 Pen, and +2 Accuracy.

A MC Ancient/Helwalker gets +10 Might and +10 Intellect.  That amounts to +30% Damage, +50% duration, and +100% to Area of Effect size.

 

If the MC can land the DoT and doesn't need to worry about Pen, their damage will blow the SC out of the water.  The thing is that this is a narrow evaluation of the two classes and doesn't count other factors like other spells you might use or access to PL 8 and 9 for Druid which has some good stuff in there.  

[Odd Hermit]

My thoughts thus far:

Blood Mage is something I will be trying out with Paladin, will probably be my MC for next playthrough since Paladin is still way better as MC than custom.

Bellower sounds like a great idea but the mechanics don't accomplish what it's going for at all. As is I see no reason to use it. You want to use your +PL on a good invocation, but you just dumped your phrases to get that+PL ??? I think their chants should be more potent as well if the range is going to be so severely reduced.

I'm liking the idea of an Ancient/Tactician as an alternative to Chanter for summoning. Previously the Chanter was the only class that could adequately fill the fodder spam role.

Arcane Archer seems to have potential but I'm just not interested in rangers in PoE still.

Psion sounds nice in theory but the focus gen #s are much too low to bother trying.

Debonair seems super gimmicky and you get adequate charm without the limitations and penalties elsewhere. The penalties just outweigh the benefits too heavily here.

 

Have no interest in the others.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Odd Hermit

[brasilgringo]

 

So, let's say one wanted to bring to Eora the most painful DoT's ever, what would work best: a SC Ancient Druid, all about PL stacking, or an Ancient Druid/Helwalker multiclass with caped Might and over 30 Intellect?

 

So assuming equal Might and Intellect for both classes:

 

(I used a wiki for the attribute numbers, not sure if they are still correct)

 

A SC Ancient Druid gets +2PL over the MC.  That amounts to +10% Damage, +10% Duration, +1 Pen, and +2 Accuracy.

A MC Ancient/Helwalker gets +10 Might and +10 Intellect.  That amounts to +30% Damage, +50% duration, and +100% to Area of Effect size.

 

If the MC can land the DoT and doesn't need to worry about Pen, their damage will blow the SC out of the water.  The thing is that this is a narrow evaluation of the two classes and doesn't count other factors like other spells you might use or access to PL 8 and 9 for Druid which has some good stuff in there.  

 

 

Does using spell-shaping to make the AOE smaller benefit from the original intellect-boosted AOE radius?  That is, if I shrink down the AOE radius as small as possible using spell shaping, but my "normal" AOE radius is already being made much bigger due to +10 intellect and things like Ring of Overseeing, do I get even more bonus from shrinking it down using spell-shaping?

[TheWeaver]

 

The bonus PL is Chanter PL.  I don't think it would effect Wiz or Priest spells.  (It definitely doesn't affect Monk fists.)

I thought it's just the name of status effect - so the player knew where it came from.

If that bonus PL affects only chants and invocations... then what's the point of this subclass? (provided that its only +0.5 PL per phrase consumed)

 

 

Very much this.   I made the same assumption you did that this must be a mini-Ascension kind of deal that might have some benefit to a multi-class chanter.  But if the only thing it impacts is Chanter PL and the only real benefit you can get from that is with Invocations, but you lose all your phrases and thus can't cast anything before the duration runs out (outside the use of one specific item), then... I'm sorry, what was the point again, I dozed off.

[guildwriter]

Does using spell-shaping to make the AOE smaller benefit from the original intellect-boosted AOE radius?  That is, if I shrink down the AOE radius as small as possible using spell shaping, but my "normal" AOE radius is already being made much bigger due to +10 intellect and things like Ring of Overseeing, do I get even more bonus from shrinking it down using spell-shaping?

 

There are only three selections when using spell shaping: smaller, normal, and larger.  You don't get a PL bonus per meter shrunk or anything like that (that would be a little strong and give an outsized benefit to int).

[Boeroer]

 

They don't seem to scale with PL (at least not ACC or PEN - dmg is hard to check since PL adds base damage and you can only determine that with many dmg rolls if there's no tooltip like in this case). But I just saw a dmg roll of 6.1 for Missiles which usually only have 6 base damage. So maybe PL affects the dmg roll.

 

The spells' ACC scales with Arcana and other ACC buffs of the ranger - which leads to very high numbers - for a spell I mean. Easy to land them. Especially in case of Imbue:Eora that's pretty neat. It's cool if you as a Ranger can cast this spell and the Wizard can do other stuff then.

 

Also the attack speed and recovery are that of the weapon, not the spells - also good in most cases.

 

The low (non-scaling) PEN is really really bad though.

 

When investigating this, I'm seeing that all of the Imbue spells are each benefiting from Power Level scaling in some way. If you have an example you could share, then I could dig further and see if perhaps there is a hidden issue here.

 

I will note that I plan to change the default scaling for Imbue: Missiles so that it adds additional missiles for higher power levels. This type of scaling seems to better fit with what is expected and this should be updated in a future build.

 

I'll list here each imbue spell and what you should be seeing from scaling (in case that helps to see the results) - You can test each of these by either comparing a low level ranger to a higher level one using the ability, or by Empowering these abilities and comparing results in the combat log.

 

Imbue: Missiles - Projectile Count / Damage / Penetration

Imbue: Web - Accuracy / Duration

Imbue: Fireball - Accuracy / Damage / Penetration

Imbue: Eora - Accuracy / Duration

Imbue: Death - Accuracy / Damage / Penetration

 

As always, thank you for the continued support, please let us know how things go as you continue to try out the new content.

 

-Nick

 

I just discovered that they don't scale if I add the class+subclass to an existing character via console (in my case monk) and then add the abilites manually. I can't empower them then and I guess that's also the reason why they didn't scale with Power Level. When I create an Arcane Archer it seems to work properly (well somehow - good point about the missiles).

 

Sorry for the confusion. But so far I had no issues with PL scaling on abilites that I added via console. and since I always start testing out stuff with the console (so much quicker than going through the char creation every time)... 

 

That my also have been the reason why the Wards of my first Furyshaper test weren't scaling (but now they do even when using the console for "char creation").

 

Thanks Nick for the info by the way!

Edited December 7, 2018 by Boeroer

[Sifjar]

That Blood Mage's Blood Sacrifice restores random spell level of known spells or just random? I mean if for example i multi BM and just pick spells from leveling without using spellbook. Will i narrow changes to restore spell level to the one i really need. For example melee wizard. It doent need many spells to buff up and you can probaly pick those with levels.