Make heralds more "playable"

[Salek]

Quasiclasses are what making HG special for me. Retired my herald a while ago and started to play him again after paragon levels came in (2x demi now) - but I have to say:


Read this:

Oct 15, 2011 12:30:24 GMT Vichya said:

1. Give the special Herald AoE spells (Stinking Cloud, Cloudkill, Freezing Fog, Mind Fog, Acid Fog and Static Field) a chance not to be gusted. Casting those special clouds and all the others (Grease, Web, Evards, Creeping Doom and so on) takes a lot of time. Seeing 5-8 clouds being gusted by a single mob is extremely annoying, especially given that Heralds usually don't have the number of spell slots to just spam spells like a sorcerer.
[...]

and that:

Mar 12, 2012 16:15:32 GMT archmage said:

The biggest challenges I believe Heralds face after playing mine through the Hells and the Abyss.

1. Ramp up time, in order to do good damage a Herald has to allow some time for their clouds to start ticking.

[...]

leads to:

1. Make herald clouds (yes herald's not sorc's) harder to gust or ungustable by mobs

2. Heralds getting something like a temporal cloud autocaster for 2-3 stored clouds, no cooldown so clouds can easily recasted if gusted

3. Since heralds getting nothing from paragon levels besides of spell pen and foci give them some special spells with a boost to damage (being a specialists in conjuration and enchantment their orb damage is even lower than the one a normal sorcerer does. Yes, I am aware that only lore is counting for damage output.)

4. increase the DC of the maze spell for heralds. Crowd control is done easier using a turner or a pariah nowadays


Regards,
Salek

[Salek]

2 more ideas:

- make herald clouds huge

- mind fog does some additional psionic damage, fits the theme so to say

but then, might skip all those, another herald (not me though) joined the dark side and reincarnated into sorc

Cheers,
Salek

[chirality]

Meh, I gave up on 'em, reading all the stuff on the forums back then talked me out of it.

[desocupado]

Here a few suggestions:
1 - Owl's Insight (Druid level 5) could have the same effects of Legend lore when cast by heralds (+10 bonus to lore, +1 per 2 caster levels)
2 - Legendary Heralds get 2 extra known spells for levels 1/3/7 (these levels containing Orb spells) or one spell for each level (like a Sorcerer 38)
3 - No XP penalty for Monk/Paladin splash, regardless of subrace, would certainly help... (edit)

[condude1]

Maybe give them more damage types, I would recommend 2 out of the following three:

1. Give them Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning/Great Thunderclap (Fits the Herald of Storms theme, no?). This would also give them some good spammability, maybe even make chain lightning not break loot for them?

2. Give them Incendiary Cloud with Damage over Time, even after leaving the cloud (like fester, maybe damage 1/2s every round?)

3. Give them Cry of the Heavens as an epic spell (like Pariahs with their wall).

[desocupado]

Excluding orbs - Herald's Arcane+Druidic spells cover:

Acid - Vitriolic Ray [4] Vine Mine [5] Mestial Acid Arrow [2] Flurry of Fumes [2] Mestil Acid Breath [3] Vitirolic Sphere [5]Acid Fog [6]
Cold - Ice lance (3) Vine Mine [5] Snowball Swarm [2] Freezing Fog [5]
Electric - Vine Mine [5] Static Field [7] Storm of Vengeance [9]
Fire - Flame Arrow [3]
Sonic - (none)
Physical - Evaard's Black Tentacles [4] - Creeping Doom [7]
Exotic/ Special - Primal Vengeance [3] Bombardment [8] Rebuke [7] Cloud Kill [5] Horrid Wilting [8]
All elements - Elemental Swarm [9] - (almost forgot this one)

-This leaves about the following slots for Orbs:

• 3 "Level I" slots for Lesser Orbs (only Mage Armor is really necessary to help summons)
  
• 3 "Level IV" for Regular Orbs (only Evaard's is absolutely mandatory at this level)
  
• 1 "Level VII" for Greater orbs (Static Field and Rebuke are really hard to drop)
  

This list show that Fire and Sonic are their weakest Elementals (perhaps due overlapping with BFM/DSM?). Except for the occasional Elemental Swarm (which doesn't do THAT much damage)
Well, couldn't Firestorm count "storm" spell? Lightning and chain Lightning would be good as well. IGMS would be another sweet "storm" (I'm not overly serious about the last spells)

[hfb]

The single greatest fix Heralds need is a sprite that follow commands completely fixes Heralds, imho.

The other thing Heralds could use is parties that don't defend the soup from the mobs, but this is not a coding issue. ^_^