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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2013 3:45:40 GMT
Can explain when -ASF will be useful at all then? It's the only other "bonus" of sorc that I didn't mention in addition to +1greater ruin which is again...not that useful unless you can promise Greater Ruin will suddenly become great in other areas with the same dc as it is now. Asmo shield is by far the best choice for sorc in the mod at the moment which has no ASF and even with XR items I don't see that changing, and using armor other than a robe cripples EV. And it's not that hard to find a decent caster shield similar to UR-Ward with the -ASF untouched.
So Great Cha I+II,spellpen+greater spell pen, ArmorSkin + greater ruin isn't an alternative suggestion even though it's different because it still has greater ruin in it? Can give sorc +1 dodge ac instead of greater ruin in the above suggestion and I would still prefer it.
Ok, subs don't have to have the same number of feats. I thought the idea was to make the relative power of XR subraces relatively similar for at the very least the five of the most important classes in the module, and at the moment it's not. I'm not convinced Greater Ruinx2 + -ASF + Armor Skin is nearly as useful as a Great X feat + other cool bonus like +1 dc to wiz/cleric spells or -pens for druid..
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Post by FunkySwerve on Apr 10, 2013 4:19:26 GMT
Can explain when -ASF will be useful at all then? I've already made clear that most of its value will be realized in the future. It will naturally rise just by virtue of our efforts to make -ASF more valuable (which is also, of course, why we still let ASF rand down). As I already told you, we're likely to raise the GR dc in the future. We're waiting until PL areas drop because we need to see some playtest on it, as instakillers are a pain to balance. As I also already told you. Why you would assume otherwise after that conversation is beyond me. No need to get upset or snarky. I'm simply pointing out that the path you're attempting to navigate is absurdly difficult compared to the alternative. Your strategy for doing so - grossly oversimplifying things - is not a winning one for the person you're attempting to persuade. Obviously Great Cha etc. was a suggestion. It's ALSO obviously one I've already rejected. Do you expect me to change my mind if you just repeat it enough times? I said suggest something ELSE. Else, as in, something you haven't already suggested. I've already clearly expressed a dislike for the current special, so it's not like this is a heavy lift. Funky
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2013 4:31:25 GMT
The problem with other suggestions is that there are none other that fit what I want. The reason is because standard feats sorcs take in epic lvl/lls are only Great Cha + Spell Foci/Spell Pen + Extra Spell feats (which is what giving them "Great Cha" stat instead would allow them to take). Extra Spell, Great Cha, SpellPen/Spell Foci are already established as out of the question. That leaves nothing else (so sorcs are stuck at being at a feat disadvantage to: wiz, druid, cleric, theurge, turner). So sorcs deserve to be tied to Greater Ruin instead of having the flexibility to choose either Greater Ruin or possibly an Extra Spell feat? I would rather have the latter because then people can choose to reconsider taking Greater Ruin when and if it becomes more useful. All of the other caster subby has this choice but sorcerer does not.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Apr 10, 2013 4:47:42 GMT
The problem with other suggestions is that there are none other that fit what I want. The reason is because standard feats sorcs take in epic lvl/lls are only Great Cha + Spell Foci/Spell Pen + Extra Spell feats (which is what giving them "Great Cha" stat instead would allow them to take). Extra Spell, Great Cha, SpellPen/Spell Foci are already established as out of the question. That leaves nothing else (so sorcs are stuck at being at a feat disadvantage to: wiz, druid, cleric, theurge, turner). So sorcs deserve to be tied to Greater Ruin instead of having the flexibility to choose either Greater Ruin or possibly an Extra Spell feat? I would rather have the latter because then people can choose to reconsider taking Greater Ruin when and if it becomes more useful. All of the other caster subby has this choice but sorcerer does not. See, now THERE'S an argument, from build diversity. The problem is, you're using it to argue for LESS subrace diversity. The Greater feats on the other subs were a bit of a cop-out, because I couldn't think of other options I preferred. Failing other sorcerer suggestions, you could persuade me to change them, if you could think of a suitably balanced and flavored combination of edits, and thereby redress the imbalance you perceive. As it stands now, it seems like your gripe is that GR is a terrible feat, not worthy of being counted as an epic. The problem with that is that, if you look at the build forums, all the builds updated within the last year take Ruin anyway. But then, Yojimbo already pointed that out: Are those complaining about the Sorc XR not noticing it gets Epic Spell Penetration? The 3 Epic feats the Sorc XR gets are: Epic Spell Penetration, Greater Ruin, and Armor Skin. Armor Skin has minimal usage but can anyone tell me their Sorc won't take GR or Epic Spell Penetration? Both these feats occupy the same feat slots Great Charisma would take so changing from those to Great Feats changes next to nothing other than more CHA early on. That makes it very hard to see much of a problem here, though your point about being 'forced' to take it is well-received. Funky
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Post by KnightErrant on Apr 10, 2013 5:08:20 GMT
A few more ideas I had for Sorc sub specials...
Able to take Discipline as a class skill (maybe just starting at level 41. Able to take Tumble as a class skill. +1 DC and/or SP to a spell ? maybe Enervate, Combust or Melfs Acid Arrow ? Ability to encase opponent once per day in Resin, similar to the Ice Prisons used by casters in Elysium ?
KE.
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Post by Yojimbo on Apr 10, 2013 5:09:34 GMT
I am saying I don't see why so much fuss over it since the complaint is generally a not enough feats until I saw someone mention that they actually don't take GR on a Sorcerer due to more limited feat options I figured that most did take it like most other casters. I would have to go look through the Sorcerer build forums to see how many take GR and how many don't. It is a very powerful and useful ability and if the race retains its bonus +1 use meaning 2-3 uses for a Sorcerer why would the person not end up dropping the GR feat into a build with a bonus like that. I hear what people are asking for but unless a better bonus is added to make not having GR more sensible then getting Epic Spell Penetration and Greater Ruin is just as powerful as getting Great Charisma I & II. The Extra Spell Known feats are an excellent idea though Funky has stated that implementation of them at creation is complex enough to make it rather unfeasible option. I wish most the classes were not receiving Great feats but I would rather it than the pigeon hole of focused Foci because having the races with same or similar feats you get a bland cookie cutter variety in the subs it makes all the races feel the same. The other unfortunate complication is epic feats for a Sorcerer are limited. Top picks would be Greater Ruin, Great Charisma, Epic Spell Penetration, Epic Spell Foci, and Extra Spell Known(HGE only). Trailing behind those top picks are Hellball and Automatic Still Spell with in a very distant, at present, option of Automatic Silent Spell. With those feat options having more or less eliminated Extra Spell Known and avoiding pigeon holing eliminating Foci you are left with Epic Spell Penetration(which it has), Great Charisma, and Greater Ruin(which it currently has). The only alternative I think which would result in minimal to no real difference is swap the Greater Ruin for Great Charisma I and leaving II to be picked up in the build.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2013 6:01:14 GMT
Greater Ruin isn't a terrible feat but it's more newbie friendly for players who don't know how to deal with certain (all trash) mobs - they can just cast Greater Ruin on it whereas more experienced players know how to deal with these mobs instead of using a panic button and would rather have a more useful feat. I would not recommend any of the current caster cleric, druid, wizard or sorcerer BUR builds posted on the forum at present for a build optimized for PL - most of them that take Greater Ruin have not considered the impact of paragon levels.
I would like to hear of a cleric, theurge, pariah, or wizard build that didn't take only spell focus/penetration/great X feats/(greater ruin for a more newb friendly build?) in epic/LLs? The problem exists for all of those other classes; that's why they already have Great Stat feats. Unless giving LSF/LSP is actually viable, then I could suggest some diversified feat distributions.
Therefore I can't suggest a different distribution of feats for the subs that doesn't greatly hurt diversity and that doesn't involve all of them getting at least one Great X stat, unless XR caster subs were limited to only one epic feat - in which case it would be much easier to suggest diverse subraces, but make them less powerful unless their specials were bumped in power accordingly.
Instead I can only offer non-feat sorcerer bonuses that would replace an epic feat. Maybe for sorc any channeled or temporary levels beyond 1 give them +1 more sp?
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Post by FunkySwerve on Apr 10, 2013 6:05:39 GMT
A few more ideas I had for Sorc sub specials... Able to take Discipline as a class skill (maybe just starting at level 41. Able to take Tumble as a class skill. I don't really see how these related to class or sub, though they seem decent enough balancewise. The pidgeonholing problem again, unless it's a spell that isn't normally used, so that it expands rather than contracts build options - like the Theurge poison bump. Niiice. The only problem I see here is gripes about power, given what the discussion over Ruin was. It couldn't affect anything non-Ruinable, so it would have to lack a save to be near Ruin in power, and disable for a healthy chunk of time - more than Maze, I suspect. Anyone else have thoughts on this? Funky
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Post by FunkySwerve on Apr 10, 2013 6:16:37 GMT
Greater Ruin isn't a terrible feat but it's more newbie friendly for players who don't know how to deal with certain (all trash) mobs - they can just cast Greater Ruin on it with a whereas more experienced players know how to deal with these mobs instead of using a panic button and would rather have a more useful feat. I would not recommend any of the current caster cleric, druid, wizard or sorcerer BUR builds posted on the forum at present for a build optimized for PL - most of them that take Greater Ruin have not considered the impact of paragon levels. Recency is why I pointed to builds modified in the last year. Your opinion seems to be in the minority, however, so you'll have to be more specific. If you're point is simply that increased SP and DC have provided other avenues for dealing with mobs previously best handled by Ruin, however, you're basing your opinion of it on a faulty model. Those areas aren't balanced for PLs - for obvious reasons, only the forthcoming areas will be. Trying to balance XR subs on that basis won't work. Out of curiosity, which of the recent build builders do you regard as newbies? I see a few less recent builds lacking ruin, in which experienced builders suggest taking ruin, but not the converse. Funky
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2013 6:34:27 GMT
I'm not sure how to respond to that question without being unkind. But I generally take most forum advice with a grain of salt.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Apr 10, 2013 6:40:22 GMT
[ But I generally take most forum advice with a grain of salt. As do I. I am especially wary of advice based on impugning unspecified builders for unspecified reasons. More seriously, just be more specific about your ruin workarounds, per the earlier part of my post. Funky
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2013 6:44:20 GMT
Okay. The main perk about ruin at the moment is that it ignores SR. Typical instakills on the module for many classes(my cleric, druid, sorc -pariah got even higher) are around 63 DC at the moment with PLs and Greater Ruin only has DC 65 for 2x a day (if you invest 50 ranks into spellcraft). The workaround is that: 1) you lower their sr 2) you cast the correct spell(s) to kill it (all ruinable mobs are installable in the module at the moment). That's all. The problem with Greater Ruin's perk of ignoring SR is that the trash mobs with high SR which ruin would be cool to use against (p2/3, fey in abyss, etc) have crazy fort already or shifters/druids kill them super easy (narzugon, aboleth, etc.)
If you want to make Greater Ruin really good in new areas you can always add in nasty mobs with low saves but something like 120 SR and make them immune to shifter instakills. That would be evil, but nice solution.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Apr 10, 2013 7:06:09 GMT
Okay. The main perk about ruin at the moment is that it ignores SR. Typical instakills on the module for many classes(my cleric, druid, sorc -pariah got even higher) are around 63 DC at the moment with PLs and Greater Ruin only has DC 65 for 2x a day (if you invest 50 ranks into spellcraft). The workaround is that: 1) you lower their sr 2) you cast the correct spell(s) to kill it (all ruinable mobs are installable in the module at the moment). That's all. The problem with Greater Ruin's perk of ignoring SR is that the trash mobs with high SR which ruin would be cool to use against (p2/3, fey in abyss, etc) have crazy fort already or shifters/druids kill them super easy (narzugon, aboleth, etc.) If you're point is simply that increased SP and DC have provided other avenues for dealing with mobs previously best handled by Ruin, however, you're basing your opinion of it on a faulty model. Those areas aren't balanced for PLs - for obvious reasons, only the forthcoming areas will be. Trying to balance XR subs on that basis won't work. Based on what you said above, Ruin should be just fine in PL areas. Setting that aside, then, what'd you think of the proposed resin casing? Funky
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Post by pete on Apr 10, 2013 15:27:48 GMT
IMO sorc sub looks great as it is
but on the subject of ruin - as long as there will be XR monsters that are vulnerable to it and not normal class abilities it will get used. the only problem with it I see is the save in XR areas, if you are only going to get 1-2 uses (in the hands of everything but the suggested sorc XR) then you want to be sure it will succeed, its not like a normal spell where you can cast again next round, so one possibility is scale the DC for paragon levels, another is to add specific critters to be targets of ruin (ie will fail the save and cannot be insta killed by any other means).
on to the resin casing idea - at the moment maze is not very popular (cant remember the last time I saw it) and it can remove some of the most powerful monsters in endgame areas, so in order to be better than that the resin ability would have to affect the same powerful party killing monsters as maze and either have a much higher save (than maze) or ignore SR or last for ages (which may result in parties having to wait for monsters to be freed before they can move to the next spawn, perhaps make a remove curse spell free the mob early or add a sim command to free them early to save on spell slots) or a combination of these in order to be better than maze.
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Post by shardelay on Apr 11, 2013 13:30:27 GMT
You place too much importance on columns. And labels. And labeled columns. Everything is a special. Hell, the Slinger subby had 63 listen in the skill column at one point. Isn't that special? Church lady sure as hell thinks so. And I bet someone's going to use that Intimidate to make some bizarre build anyway. Funky I bow down to well labeled columns. They own me. They rule me. The column is good. The column is great. It pleases The OCD. The only thing better than well labeled columns are columns with attractive borders and consistent colors. There is only one problem with columns. And that problem is the letter 'n'. Well labeled columns have been worth, literally, millions. And i mean literally in a literal sense. Literally. That is all.
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