Patch 4.0 General Priest & Priest of Woedica Questions

[bell88]

Some questions/comments that I feel it would be good to get some player and also developer input on :

 

1) Is it intended that Woedicans have no PL8 'Symbol of Woedica' spell and no PL9 'Incarnate' spell. If yes, is there a lore reason as to why? (I assume not given that we know that the Strangler is a thing). If no, I feel it would be good to correct these omissions and inconsistencies before the patch goes live next week. My assumption is that the Woedica tree was added to the game 'as-is' (without there being time to check for consistency with the other priest skill trees). Even Gaun gets a symbol spell (Eothas) and presumably the lashing vine is meant to serve as their version of the incarnate.

 

2) On the topic of the PL9 'Incarnate' spell, could this spell please get a balancing pass. Of course there are many abilities that one could wish to balance in a game of this complexity, but its disappointing that single class priests have such a rough time at PL9. Fixing this single spell would help a lot. At present, the incarnate summons are generally weak (particularly Wael's - a shame given that many might start a Wael play-through for Forgotten Sanctum). It would be good to remove the -5PL malus from the spell and balance the summons' damage and penetration to be consistent with other PL9 summons (cf the chanter's dragon and animated weapon summons). As an aside, the same remains true for the PL9 druid spell 'Aspect of Galawain' which remains heavily under-powered and is particularly relevant given the summoning focus of the Ancient subclass in patch 4.0.

 

3) Is it intended that priests of any deity can cast PL9 spells corresponding to other deities. It seems very odd for e.g. Eothasians to have access to 'Revenge of Skaen'. It would be interesting to hear from the team whether this was intended and again if there is a lore reason as to why.

 

Thanks

 

 

 

 

[thelee]

#1 seems like a massive oversight.

[thelee]

#1 seems like a massive oversight.

 

thinking about it a little, while I'm not sure there's a lore-specific reason, from a gameplay perspective Woedicans get a completely unique AL9 spell (which literally no other priest does) - everyone else gets a deity-specific spell that any other priest could pick up. It could be that the "cost" for this, is to give up a unique Symbol spell at AL8, and give up Incarnate at AL9.

[bell88]

Thanks for the replies. I think this (^) is a good point balance-wise. The Woedicans already get several powerful unique spells so it would make some sense from that perspective. However my feeling is that this likely wasn't a conscious balance decision but an accidental omission. (Since we know the Priest of Woedica was originally intended to make it into the launch version at some point, maybe this skill tree was consistent with an earlier version of the Priest skills before they added the symbol spells and incarnates to the game).

 

I'd personally really love to see them add a Woedica Symbol and Incarnate spell (particularly because I think the Strangler is a great concept and would be amazing to see them design). I also think it would just make everything more consistent. Maybe I'm obsessed with symmetry but I do feel it does take major tools away from a single class Woedica priest to omit these skills - and especially coupled with the lack of unique dialogue choices they have is a bit of a shame.

 

On the topic of balance, a lot of the writs are very strong, I think AL7 writ of sorcery and AL9 writ of mending should be switched for example!

 

(Also worth noting that the fact that other priests can't pick up the AL9 Woedica spell is also inconsistent on some level. If they are really running with the idea that all priests get access to all deity AL9 spells, they should let everyone pick up writ of mending and I imagine this would have been the behaviour had the Woedica priest class released simultaneously with the others. I can't remember offhand if Pull of Rymrgand was added to all priest skill trees at AL9 after Beast of Winter? I seem to vaguely remember it not being in Xoti's options. In general - I don't really understand the design decision they made that I discuss in bullet 3 above, namely allowing priests to have access to other deity AL9 skills. It just seems somewhat bizarre).

Edited December 12, 2018 by bell88

[thelee]

(Also worth noting that the fact that other priests can't pick up the AL9 Woedica spell is also inconsistent on some level. If they are really running with the idea that all priests get access to all deity AL9 spells, they should let everyone pick up writ of mending and I imagine this would have been the behaviour had the Woedica priest class released simultaneously with the others. I can't remember offhand if Pull of Rymrgand was added to all priest skill trees at AL9 after Beast of Winter? I seem to vaguely remember it not being in Xoti's options. In general - I don't really understand the design decision they made that I discuss in bullet 3 above, namely allowing priests to have access to other deity AL9 skills. It just seems somewhat bizarre).

 

Other priests do get Pull of Rymrgand.

 

Re: the design decision for how AL9 priest spells work, I'm pretty sure it's more of a cost-benefit analysis. Very few players (relatively) will get all the way to AL9, so it's probably not worth investing a lot in developing a crapton of AL9 spells. On top of that, priests are structured to get bonus spells, and that means by default you have to define N AL9 spells, where N is roughly equivalent to the number of priest subclasses, on top of whatever "base" AL9 spells... all for something that even for the relatively few players who do get AL9 spells, they'll only be able to cast one of in any given encounter (unless they raise the level cap, which is highly unlikely). Basically all other spellcasters similarly taper off on the number of spells they get as you get into higher ALs, for similar reasons. (This was also true in the last few IE-style games that JE Sawyer had a hand in, which was PoE1 and Icewind Dale 2; IIRC particularly in IWD2 I think there were only two non-subclass-specific level 9 priest spells.) So anyway, it seems like a compromise to get priest subclasses a unique AL9 spell, give priests general spell selection diversity at AL9, but also not waste a lot of highly-expensive payroll on something that will see little play.

 

Even if what I said is true (Woedica getting unique AL9 needing to be balanced out), losing Incarnate still feels like an oversight. No priest subclass actively removes spells from the priest spell tree. Probably like you said they didn't quite think it all the way through when dropping in the Woedica subclass and don't have the time to create a unique Incarnate. Though at the very least they could use the Skaen incarnate (since the two deities are so closely aligned). They did that for Xoti (she uses the Eothas incarnate since Gaun is just an aspect of Eothas).

 

EDIT: from a lore perspective, PoE1 was all about restoring Woedica, and lorewise Woedica is the Exiled Queen or the Queen That Was, so it could make sense that there's no active incarnate of Woedica because she's out of power. Though Deadfire kind of drops that aspect of Woedica IMO since she's in all the deity sequences and no one seems to care or notice whether or not she is or isn't in power.

Edited December 12, 2018 by thelee