Target assist is definitely not what he's asking for. It's utterly terrible. Pulling the screen around and aiming at random walls.
Edit: At least on console. I turned that off the very first time I logged onto test and have never tried it.
I can't speak for console because I don't play on one.
For PC I don't use it, but I turned it on for a moment to see how it worked, and it seems pretty straightforward: targeting area defaults to starting exactly where your current soft target is located - click to execute ability.
Was going to see if Blessing of Battle could get Astral Seal old buff.. For the next 10 seconds, whenever you or an ally damage the target you are healed. This effect may occur once every 5 seconds per ally.
Soothing Light - Look more like the warlocks new at will or are old Soothing Light? i just dont like that its looks like Cure Wounds
Healing Word - A small maximum hit points for 3 seconds. would help and make it more useful
Also do you think it would be a good idea to move Bastion of Health to Devout only? I just feel if we play DPS were stuck having this in a spot.
And have Exaltation move to Arbiter and give a Heal yourself and increase your damage dealt by 10 or 20 %, for 5 seconds.
Will Chains of Blazing Light get any power back? or reduce your threat with the targets hit?
Hope your days good i know you got a lot going on just some suggestions. Im looking foreword to playing with Conflagrate
mostly ur ar an arbiter player i guess. u still have boh to heal ur self. that beeing said its the healers job to heal u not ur own. as stated in the intent of the whole class rework.
if ur are soloing try using devo. if found it way better for solo play becuz what arbiter lacks is aoe and by far alot.
single target in dont know haven played group yet.
exalt would be a big damper in a fluid rota on arbiter.
what they have to work on is alot of of lackluster feats and class feateurs. on both ac and dc
possibly make bastion of health half the circle size so that you have to choose how much of the party you get to heal, or have it full size circles, centered on the arbiter (devout gets to aim the template instead) i'm a bit on the fence on either of those suggestions. Perhaps the full bastion of health heal is too strong for the arbiter no matter what the divine casting cost is, since he is a dps class not healer.
If you consider bastion of heal as a tier 3 healing spell, and word of healing as a tier 1 healing spell. Perhaps arbiter needs something in between.
Hey everyone! Sorry for the slow responses the last few days—spent the last few days burning down a pile of bugs and making as many adjustments as I could for this week's build. The big feat adjustments are going to have to wait for next week but this week will feature a number of bug fixes: heavy sun and repeated blessings will be getting fixed and primed divinity will be receiving a buff. None of those fixes mean that those feats may not be scraped or heavily reworked, but I did want to make sure they were in a working state for the coming week.
I know that's not much of a change for this week as far as cleric is concerned, and I apologize for that. A lot of my time this week was focused on more general bug fixing and some tanking adjustments. But cleric is absolutely still on my radar. We are currently focusing a lot of effort on ensuring that adjustments to tanking, enemy damage, companion healing, etc. are made such that healer and tank are absolutely necessary for group play.
My understanding on how cryptic does their preview testing - we have seen the occasional feat swap form one paragon to the next, but everything is pretty soft set and we are just testing the look and feel of stuff. There is no room or desire to replace half the character feats, smooth out leveling so one thing unlock every level. Placing the majority of stats into the combat rating robs us of an opportunity to adjust our character as we level.
While we normally go to preview much closer to release, and with much more of the designs locked in place, in this case, we will be making large adjustments still. Particularly with class features and feats, I will be heavily reworking a number of those powers.
I appreciate the response asterdahl - i really love the game and really hoping this isn't a repeat of the stronghold siege map. It's kinda like the aeon strife map that, err, couldn't. (i also believe the current pvp maps could be changed to be mini strife maps - it becomes incredibly easier to balance these things when environmental monsters are just a big a threat as players and must be dealt with)
i thought a neat way of handling stats that could leach away from the combat rating general buff from equipment.
at level 1 we get one point in all basic stats: defence, accuracy etc. I was thinking for each stat above 10, you get a +1 to a linked stat. str would be linked with power, so str 13 would give +3 to it. Every time you level you would get your level added as a bonus to all your stats. Level 2 would give +2 etc, by the time you got to level 80 it would add up to 3240 (80 time 81 divided by 2) points. Well under the level 80 target of 24000. This leaves lots of room to smooth out the growth curve versus the monster strength per zone per level
This means you could add some stat buffs to the feats as a way of adding some more depth to the feat choices. When we make our first feat choice, for example, we could choose the first row 1 feat as is and gain an accuracy buff, or pick the first row 2 and gain a combat advantage buff at the amount of 500 (since 500 in your systems gives 1%)
i'll have to have a look at 5th edition books to get some ideas since preliminary info only finds "basic" free stuff.
If you made it this far, i would also like to apologize for being grouchy the last few day. A cold was setting off my migraines and i didn't realize i was being far too critical and reactive. :P
I appreciate the response asterdahl - i really love the game and really hoping this isn't a repeat of the stronghold siege map. It's kinda like the aeon strife map that, err, couldn't. (i also believe the current pvp maps could be changed to be mini strife maps - it becomes incredibly easier to balance these things when environmental monsters are just a big a threat as players and must be dealt with)
i thought a neat way of handling stats that could leach away from the combat rating general buff from equipment.
at level 1 we get one point in all basic stats: defence, accuracy etc. I was thinking for each stat above 10, you get a +1 to a linked stat. str would be linked with power, so str 13 would give +3 to it. Every time you level you would get your level added as a bonus to all your stats. Level 2 would give +2 etc, by the time you got to level 80 it would add up to 3240 (80 time 81 divided by 2) points. Well under the level 80 target of 24000. This leaves lots of room to smooth out the growth curve versus the monster strength per zone per level
Make sure the stats, especially the Power bonus, are unique for all classes. So the Fighters/Barbies get Power from STR, Wizards INT, Ranger DEX, etc.
I'm no DnD player, but even I would think it's backwards to encourage Wizards or Warlocks sporting Strength because they want the Power bonus.
Each of the 6 stats need to be tied to a separate secondary stat.
normally it would be str for weapon damage, dex for ranged aim or finesse, int for arcane and wis for divine. However, since the game doesn't tell the difference about weapons other than physical or magical, when a cw adds points to in it will increase power. When a fighter raises str it will also increase power.
in practice you would get something like this: ability boost feats. When boosting your abilities, please pick 2 feats
(the boost here is subjective for example only - there are some crazy crossovers here)
strength series, numbered 1 to 6. increase combat advantage dex series, numbered 1 to 6. increase crit chance con series, numbered 1 to 6. increase health
general skills: crit chance, combat advantage, accuracy, avoidance, armor penetration, deflection. These are all the opposed roll skills.
feat boost 1 adds 2 points to your general skills, feat 2 adds 10, feat 3 adds 40, feat 4 adds 150 with the special rule that if a wizard uses a feat to boost int then 500 power is added. If cleric adds to wis then 500 power is added. if a fighter adds str than 500 power is added.
The 500 point power bonus must be triggered by the users class simply because that is how the game is designed.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
edited March 2019
Feedback: DC Gameplay.
I feel like a big part of why people may dislike the healer gameplay is right now there is too little to do. You wait for someone to lose hp and then you pump them up. My suggestion to help mitigate this is to make cleanse less of a gimmick and more of a pivotal mechanic. Enemies in dungeons should apply more negative statuses which are removable by cleanse and already existing mechanics like partial paralysis should be removable by it.
Also, I think a way to make more encounter powers useful (even if they are not used most of the time), is to make some encounter powers small, long duration buffs. For example, a party 5% recharge speed buff that lasts 10 minutes and does not stack. The support classes could use these at the start of the dungeon then switch them for something else, but they would have a use.
I feel like a big part of why people may dislike the healer gameplay is right now there is too little to do. You wait for someone to lose hp and then you pump them up. My suggestion to help mitigate this is to make cleanse less of a gimmick and more of a pivotal mechanic. Enemies in dungeons should apply more negative statuses which are removable by cleanse and already existing mechanics like partial paralysis should be removable by it.
To piggy-back here, this reminds me of why AC DC is a popular choice for Tomb of the Nine Gods. It's certainly not because players need one; it's mostly because players despise the annoyance of dealing with the ubiquitous paralysis debuff.
That's not to suggest that every dungeon needs an irritating debuff, because paralysis is in a class by itself there, but it goes to show how important debuff prevention and removal are to players if the negative status effects can't simply be ignored or reasonably healed through.
so i was looking through the 5th ed players handbook and i noticed a few fun things that would be appropriate for our dc's.
since we now have a divine power bar, i think it would be fun to use divine auras to represent our divine channeling powers. The easiest way to implement this is to have a toggle button that works as an on off switch. I originally was think we could use the 4th encounter power slot from cw - but then silly me that is the tab channel so yeah... lol however we have a special button given to us from the manycoins bank heist so it is possible.
for the arbiter disciple of radiance. toggling the aura on gives us Carona of light. This aura gradually consumes divinity (10 divinity per second?) and grants a combat advantage bonus to the party (probably while standing within range). In addition the arbiter deals extra at will damage - maybe at will generate double pips. consuming pips to regain divinity triggers a 20 or 30 second cd on activating aura again. After all, this all about using our ability to channel divine power.
for the devout disciple of life. Granted by your divine grace, you gain the ability to wear heavier armour. When you toggle your channeling power on you gain a healing pulse wave effect (the pnp version mentions healing up to 5 times your level, but no more healing affect than raising someone to half their hp max - i think that a great limit to the power. probably would need to be more than 5 times your level but the maximum effect to the heal is a good one) In addition, while this channeling is active the devout gains divine strike - which increase damage. They mention a d8 damage bonus which is relevant to us by saying add double weapon damage per hit, or something like that. 20 or 30 second cd on activating aura again.
hitting the tab key toggles the channeling off since we start to regain divinity by channeling
EDIT - i needed to cut this short to to family issues that came up. will come back to forums in a day or two.
Warding flare. this one gave me a couple of ideas.
upgrade searing light into a cone, or alternate upgrade to sunburst that removes knockback. Increases damage and also adds a crit chance and arm pen debuff.
Can sunburst be changed to "interrupt your target for 2 secs on hit" instead the knockback, the outcome is the same; by giving low level players a support when aggroed. Its feat can either increase base magnitud by 100 or give it a 3 secs less recharge if hitting more than 3 enemies.
i have suggestion about last changes of Astral Shield channeling. Now with a feat we can move as normaly while channeling. but if we choose another feat it makes us possibly to move slowly. maybe its a bug but we like most the Shield channeling.
can you please add slowly moving while channeling for normal channeling (without feats) only with Astral shield you cannot move. 1st feat makes us possibly to move slowly while channeling Astral Shield and 2nd feat makes us move with normal speed while chanelling by Tab.
"sometimes the world doesn't need another hero, sometimes what it needs is a monster"
Since my comment yesterday was deleted, and I didn't even edit it -_-, I'll make a quick summary of it. Typing on my tablet is too rough to redo the whole paragraph.
Asterdahl, when you're looking at feats please keep in mind that being too limiting does not actually encourage diverse playstyles or power usage.
If you want feats to modify powers, I think it should be either at least 2 at wills OR 3 at least 3 encounters, but never combinations to proc. This way everyone can find a power they prefer to use and fits in their rotations without feeling forced. Something along the lines of Feat 1 makes Bastion, HW, and Intercession add a 5% incoming healing bonus to targets healed for 5 seconds. Feat 2 makes sacred flame and scattering light add a 5% divinity Regen bonus for 5 seconds, no stacking. Playstyle choice: your heals heals are better if you have to use them quickly or your "downtime" can be used for utility to keep your divinty up. Depending on how you play, either choice could be good, and doesn't shackle you.
Alternatively, instead of modifying powers at all, feats could modify mechanics. Something like Feat 3 makes all heal powers cost 20 less divinity and converts all heals to HoTs. Feat 4 makes all heals cost 20 more divinity and increases mag by 30. Playstyle choice: do you want to be a maintenance healer or a clutch healer?
These are both defining, meaningful choices that allow us to build specific playstyles and rotations unique to us, which is what you said feats should be. And they don't force every power choice on our bar.
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alphastreamMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 209Arc User
Somehow I deleted my post, so here is a second attempt. I copied my IL 16,800 DC DO into preview and have the following feedback:
Conversion Abilities: This felt bad, like I'm being punished into choices that don't make sense. I prefer the live way of handling abilities. But, it's not the end of the world to me.
Feats: This also felt off. Both too simple with too few choices, and it felt like I was being forced into strategic choices I didn't want to use with far too obvious paths. It doesn't feel like D&D.
Boons: I like the concept, but it divorces the feeling of progress from the campaign and it robs the campaigns of potential flavor. Here too I felt like there were too few options and I was being forced into a structure that had no narrative or rewarding value - it was just shackles I had to deal with. Nothing about this says "D&D" to me. It's a very artificial system and more artificial than live. Tons of the choices I had to take were choices that didn't appeal to me and felt like numerical drudgery more than interesting choices. I would like to see campaigns be part of the obvious story of Boons, and for the choices to be more interesting and less stat-based. Meaningful choices.
Powers: Many of the DC powers that now have no damage seem unlikely to see much use, unless they are overly strong in some party interaction sense. A lot of the powers are hard to gauge, and the way that damage is described is confusing. I would suggest sitting down with a completely new player and thinking through how confusing this is, and redesigning it. I would encourage you to look at the design philosophy of Magic the Gathering, where card text is both simple (any new player can use it) and has a flexibility strategically that rewards an experienced player. Sure, gain 5 life is good always... but an experienced player knows that using it at a key moment has a strategic value. Similarly, text for powers could be more transparent and logical for any player, while having strategic interactions that are useful (not broken) and engaging.
Divinity: In play I did not find the new divinity to be particularly rewarding. It's okay, but the live concept of normal vs divine vs empowering is a really cool strategy that becomes really interesting for the experienced player. The radiant/judgment has some ability to replace it, but I don't like how it is designed with regards to feats and being a bit too obvious and inflexible.
Companions: I love the simplification of gear slots, bonding, and the use of runestones. I'm okay with companion-only gear. It helps to reduce the cost to new players, especially if we still have CTAs and other content (Merchant Prince, IG) providing access to companion gear. I do not like the idea that we are supposed to go from a goal of 5 legendary companions to 25 or whatever. That's nuts. The interaction between the colored powers, how they relate to class, and how they are set up all seems non-intuitive.
Playing in low challenge areas I ran quickly through an Acq Inc quest and a Dread Ring quest. Both were comparable in ease to live, which is good. In general, I want old content to be easy, if I'm supposed to go back and do it. All those weeklies, all the currency for a Stronghold, etc... if we are supposed to do all that, it needs to be fast and easy. Or, make it scale harder, but reduce mobs so it doesn't take up hours of time.
I ran through Soshenstar and fought a few mobs, finding it fine. It was a tiny bit harder, but still easy. Again, I'm on board with that. I have limited time.
I did a Barovia small HE (where the foes attack the caravan) and I had to run away and slot a healing power and then I could do it. Mixed feelings here. Soloing HEs in live feels a bit too easy, but I'm not looking to spend more time on this content, so I guess this is a good balance on challenge. But, I have no idea how this would play on my non-DC toons and whether they now have to group up for this. Hmm.
I ran the new content through Yawning Portal and a bit beyond and found it all very easy. Not sure if that's on purpose.
The Importance of It All Overall, Preview felt okay. Better than I expected, but fundamentally I didn't find the changes super engaging or rewarding. Not bad, but certainly not something that I would have wanted to see done. I would take Live over Preview in terms of gameplay, character depth, engagement, narrative value. I do support the idea of fixing the engine, but to me the changes feel like an alpha approach vs polished beta.
My max rank Guild is on a knife's edge with Mod 16. For many of them, this is make it or break it for the game. The more time taken to get it right, the better. Thank you.
Learn more about Dungeons & Dragons tabletop at Alphastream.org.
Feats: -Tier 1 -Remove at-will lock from both. Make priercing light crit the next encouter. Make lightspeed and 2extra pips on cast of the next encouter.
-Tier 2 -Tipping scales. Generate 0,5-1%ap per pip channeled. -Heavy sun Add magnitued and stun or daze effect.
-Tier 3 -Medicants judgement Add div cost -100
-Radiant swordbreaker extend PoD not geas.
-Tier 4 -Are meh but fine.
-Tier5 -Critical sun is fine. -Bruning patch Make it fill ur pips to max on daily use
Class Features. -TI encrease div gain to 50. -Foresight must go above crit cap -Inquisitors benediction... If the final feat is heal related it should either further reduce div cost of BoH or add heal perks to skills like PoD.
Encounters: -searing light make it a cone not a line. as far as im reading the wizards have the same issue with sudden storm
At-will´s: -make the strengthen themselfs. no one will want to expend pips for an empowered at will.
Moving at 50% speed while channeling should be a Paragon ability.
Feats -Tier 1 -Sacred Bastion Again remove at-will lock and encouter lock -Repeated blessing is ok but add a cleanse chance to it.
-Tier 2 -Enhanced Astral Shiels. it should enhance the effeckt of AS or give it a lingering effect -Exalt is fine
-Tier 3 -Reserved Divinty. Make this to a downgraded version version of the old Faithfull capstone -Saviors step Give flat dmg reduce while channeling.
-Tier 4 -Primed Divinty. Reduce delay to 3 sec. -Swift prayers. Move at 75% or full movement while channeling.
-Tier 5 -Anoited armes Take away dmg buff reduce ap cost by 50% but make AA go on cd for 15sec without reduce options. -Persistent Guardian Well meh but no idea.
Class Features:
Across the board these are a mess. -Divine Action double the amount of div.
-Deliverance gain 1% heal for each ally in 25'
-Hallowed guide meh but ok.
-Divine lore. 20% chance that ur aoe heals deal dmg for a half of their magnitued
Encounters: -Exaltation In fairness comared too the sw add a 5%dmg buff to exalt as an aura for duration of exalt. even skilled it would have a down time where the sw PoP virtually doesnt.
At-will´s: -Soothing light add 5 div gain per cast.
Lets haggle about theses ideas. i know some might be too strong but its my general idea how the Cleric would gain more fluid gameplay with having not beeing bound to very spesific powers or feal solely like a heal bot just wating for action.
In fairness comared too the sw add a 5%dmg buff to exalt as an aura for duration of exalt. even skilled it would have a down time where the sw PoP virtually doesnt.
This is something I've noticed too. I'm seeing buff powers in other classes that either have smaller cooldowns or better buffs. Asterdahl specifically said bts could only buff 2 damage types because otherwise it would be too powerful, but I'm seeing buffs in other classes that appear to buff all 3. And some that buff only 1. I think you want to distribute buffs more fairly, and I think that's fine, but y'all need to get on the same page to regulate this stuff.
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silvergryphMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 740Arc User
Somehow I deleted my post, so here is a second attempt. Companions: I love the simplification of gear slots, bonding, and the use of runestones. I'm okay with companion-only gear. It helps to reduce the cost to new players, especially if we still have CTAs and other content (Merchant Prince, IG) providing access to companion gear. I do not like the idea that we are supposed to go from a goal of 5 legendary companions to 25 or whatever. That's nuts. The interaction between the colored powers, how they relate to class, and how they are set up all seems non-intuitive.
You technically still only benefit from up to 5 Legendary companions at once with the new bolster mechanic. That's because the bonus is only from the 5 highest bolster bonuses in the same category as the summoned companion. For example, if you have a Beast summoned and you have 5 Legendary companions in the Beast category, you get the maximum bolster bonus. But, if you have a Fighter type companion summoned, those 5 Legendary Beast companions don't add to your bolster bonus. However, each of the slottable powers you get from companions is also affected by the level of the companion that unlocked it.
Absolutely amazing Searing Light changes As well as sun bursts pip changes. (now tipping scales feat must be cnanged, cuz as of now it has no use at all.) mayb make it pvp feat that does something ? Feels like we can AOE now.
P.S. - Now i could only wish if our piercing light feat could proc off sacred flame instead of lance of faight.
PLEASE reinstate the size of Hallowed Ground and Astral Shield. The current size of Hallowed Ground is smaller than most boss AoEs, and with the size of Astral Shield, it appears to only be meant for the tank. Any squishy trying to survive in AS could get accidentally backhanded by a mob they don't even have aggro from. The current size on live would allow for teammates to position themselves for combat advantage AND dodge to a position still with the shield. The size of the live Hallowed Ground would allow for positioning on larger battle grounds and accommodate protecting ranged squishies like rangers, warlocks and wizards. Please consider reverting the sizing of these two spells.
I started testing last night around midnight i think and got so engrossed in it i didnt stop till 5am - i hadn't done my dailies on live yet - i had a lot of fun testing things out - didn't feel like i was fighting the system at all. wow that was so unexpected for me XD
i love the new searing light. I love sunburst with the pips fixed and the reversion to 15 targets is awsome.
i loved it so much i wanted to suggest a feat choice at tier 1: i feel that piercing light and lightspeed should be combined into the same feat as a utility package. I thinking this choice would be completely balanced against heavy sun. I think it's really important to get this choice right out of the gate on arbiter since it changes so much about how you will want to play it,
Individually i hate piercing light and lightspeed, but combined i find it acceptable, probable even useful. If you look at it from the point of view of someone who would not want to use sunburst at all, or someone who wants to keep the knockback - i think it's a perfect place to make this choice. I hope it's a win win win for all players.
You might want tipping the scales to be a feat that activates for all dc's when they enter pvp. that doesnt seem to help devout at all. But what i really mean is i find this to be an awkward spell. It's kinda like being able to slot the same spell twice, if that makes any sense.
my current slot loadout is sunburst, daunting light (something) sacred flame and lance. For my 3rd slot, it will rotate between searing light and another single target spell as needed. I use this spot to load a fire or radiant spell to balance out my spell rotation to maximize my pip usage - i want to try to never eat pips and constantly deal damage by enhancing things.
I see one problem with the suggestion that someone made to remove the interaction with pips. There are times i would rather use the improved at will damage rather than eat the pips for more divinity. Since sunburst is not a divinity using spell i can always use it to deal out a lot of damage. when you enhance it, it hits pretty hard and its cd times nicely with the time it takes to generate pips using the at will. You can seamlessly flip back and forth between fire and radiance this way while you passively let your divinity recover a bit - eat some pips now and then to speed things up. In this scenario the enhanced at will damage is a benefit.
I mention this because there are times i dont want to eat the pips for divinity since it does not coincide with windows of opportunity for attacks against bosses. (fbi, cradle - a few others).
on dailies.
Hammer of fate seems to only do more damage than guardian when all three hits crit. There is no mention of ap return when something is killed by hammer. Since we have opposed rolls now - i believe this really reduces the value of hammer of fate. I'm not sure what to propose for fixing this simply adding in a feat to increase the crit chance for this daily wouldn't do much, due to the nature of opposed rolls - unless the dc really went out of their way to maximize their crit, in which case adding a crit boost for this spell would work. I dunno on this one. Perhaps a guaranteed 25 or 30% chance to crit no matter what your crit stat is for this daily as a feat choice?
i need to play devout more. I'm not even particularly sure what the desired damage output of the devout is for solo or group play sine all it feat choices are more about utility except for the one that increase exalt duration.
Let me preface this by saying I main a DC. I made that decision because I enjoy support roles, and candidly I am sad to see buff/support go as a (de facto) role. Regardless, I understand that what we have in Mod 15 is an out-of-control mess that is nearly impossible to balance or manage properly. Please reinstate some more group damage buffs for DC Devout path. Currently AA gives 3% and is the only group buff we have. I like the idea of needing to be near to apply it, but the bonus is just paltry compared to what other classes have (Warlock's PoP, even Barbie has a better shout than us).
Ideally, I would like to also see at more splat or positional buff, something that requires skill or timing to coordinate with others and / or in your rotation. I think a good opportunity would be to add back a 5% buff to Hallowed Ground daily (feel free to remove HoT and/or DR buff). Now that it's not spammable, it shouldn't be so out of control, and players would be forgoing using a damaging or healing daily. AA could be the heal / control removal / damage mitigation daily, balanced with a more offensive one.
Bonus points if we could please bring back the old visual. If you need to change the radius to make it happen please consider doing that. Shiny footprints are such an amazing thing to lose.
Or borrow from what Shrpedge "thefabricant" said and instate some long-duration buffs that are annoying to reapply (or even impossible mid-combat) that would help make it more meaningful to keep people alive. Buffs based on current HP %?
It would also be nice if we could have something to help with party cooldowns. Perhaps AS channeling could also tick down cooldowns for folks standing in it faster. This is still a big tradeoff, since AS is expensive and you are prevented from doing anything useful / dodging with it going.
In summary: give me stuff to do to support the team more than just waiting for them to make mistakes and topping them off. You've given other classes the means to do so, but taken it away from the class that was most known for it now. Make it hard to coordinate / limited in duration, but please reinstate some offensive buffs.
Yeah, the battle fury things sticks in my craw a little bit. I said some very regretful words to my friend when he told me what it did and to go look at it. He's been snickering at me since and building a gwf to main instead of dc specifically for that. You get to be the DPS AND have that buff? I mean, why tf wouldn't you play that. If ANY class is going to have buffs, cleric should sitting on at least an even slice of that pie, and right now we barely got to lick the spoon. Having a couple buffs, even small ones, would go a long way to fight the "boring" that goes with playing healer.
Edit: OMG, I just looked at PoP. What the absolute hamstering HAMSTER @Asterdahl! You tell us we can't even have a power that buffs all three damage types and is on the DPS path and the other is a hamstring modification to a DAILY of 3% for a few seconds, but battle fury and PoP are allowed to exist! One of them on a DPS class even? And one essentially always up? Now I'm seriously hamstering angry.
Post edited by kythelion#3210 on
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dread4moorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,154Arc User
Been mostly on Fighter feedback, tried to read through all 12 pages of Cleric comments so apologies if this is redundant.
Soloing campaign as arbiter feels pretty smooth. Does enough damage to clear content without much difficulty (except unbalanced areas/mobs such as Vankradoom/vampires).
Ran several T2 3:1:1 dungeons as both DPS and heals.
Held my own in DPS, but not topping the charts. It was okay. Healer path does it's job. Many powers such as healing word have a very long animation that leaves DC vulnerable. Coming from an ACDC, healer seems overly simplistic and unsatisfying. Unless your party is struggling, forcing you to play classic "watch the bars" style healer, pretty boring imho. Minor issue, Hallowed Grounds bland color change is ugly, distracting and indistinguishable from Astral Shield and the OP equivalent. Would a little color contrast hurt? Will keep trying it out and give it a chance.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
@kreatyve The spam filter ate my post. Any way you could approve it?
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kacsaneverMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 167Arc User
Feedback I see no aggro generated by heals. I have no problem with it, but wanna know if intended or just a mistake. I thought Divine Glow was meant to be the encounter to drop some aggro generated by healing, but in current state I can not even outaggro my comp with healing.
Three out of ten encounter for the DPS version are useless for DPS, the rest are sub-par.
could you please elaborate on that - i didn't really understand what you are trying to say.
edit: For example. I think chains of blazing light as a stun only effect is useless since many mobs have immunity to cc or partial immunity which renders it useless, It makes senses for a few minion with a spawn group (such as 1 wizard, 3 fighters and a golem - the golem being cc immune) but not for entire groups to have it, such as places like chult or another more recent zone.
thats why cc based encounters are no good. As a player you can't rely on them to work as advertised.
Oh btw, Asterdahl ... Asterdale... Astro yogurt (ahh how do you spell that name lol)
I figured out one of the things about the new system in general that was bothering me. Comparing the pnp game experience to the computer game experience, the live version follows the 3rd edition philosophy that every time you level you should gain something new but it uses the 4th edition philosophy of how to manage powers and damage, No problems so far.
With mod 16, we are moving closer to 5th edition, which as it turns out - tries to straddle 3rd edition and 4th edition by giving us some of our feat choices back that were missing from 4th.
Now it looks like all the boon choices we have available actually do a great job of presenting the choices in 5th. There are a few exceptions where it misses the mark - such as all the racial damages should only be a choice available to hunters.
now the problem that crops up in the game is the following. The 5th edition system is meant to present 20 levels of gameplay. We are trying to fill up 80 levels of space. There simply isn't enough material to draw us in and play more, earn that level - gain a new ability. There is too much of our characters strength wrapped up into our gear choices. While the combined rating does do a pretty good job of giving the players the stats they need, it doesn't feel like our character is growing in power through levelling. The feats that we would normally gain by leveling are instead being given to us as boon choices. While I understand you can't keep giving out powers and such to players, when you strip away our gear and look at our character stats, there isn't much left to look at.
Thats why it feels like i have so much trouble judging my characters strength. Our characters aren't actually a fully fledged thing until all our gear is added, when it should be our gear choices that add personality to our characters.
Comments
For PC I don't use it, but I turned it on for a moment to see how it worked, and it seems pretty straightforward: targeting area defaults to starting exactly where your current soft target is located - click to execute ability.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Was going to see if Blessing of Battle could get Astral Seal old buff.. For the next 10 seconds, whenever you or an ally damage the target you are healed. This effect may occur once every 5 seconds per ally.
Soothing Light - Look more like the warlocks new at will or are old Soothing Light? i just dont like that its looks like Cure Wounds
Healing Word - A small maximum hit points for 3 seconds. would help and make it more useful
Also do you think it would be a good idea to move Bastion of Health to Devout only? I just feel if we play DPS were stuck having this in a spot.
And have Exaltation move to Arbiter and give a Heal yourself and increase your damage dealt by 10 or 20 %, for 5 seconds.
Will Chains of Blazing Light get any power back? or reduce your threat with the targets hit?
Hope your days good i know you got a lot going on just some suggestions. Im looking foreword to playing with Conflagrate
mostly ur ar an arbiter player i guess. u still have boh to heal ur self. that beeing said its the healers job to heal u not ur own. as stated in the intent of the whole class rework.
if ur are soloing try using devo. if found it way better for solo play becuz what arbiter lacks is aoe and by far alot.
single target in dont know haven played group yet.
exalt would be a big damper in a fluid rota on arbiter.
what they have to work on is alot of of lackluster feats and class feateurs. on both ac and dc
If you consider bastion of heal as a tier 3 healing spell, and word of healing as a tier 1 healing spell. Perhaps arbiter needs something in between.
I know that's not much of a change for this week as far as cleric is concerned, and I apologize for that. A lot of my time this week was focused on more general bug fixing and some tanking adjustments. But cleric is absolutely still on my radar. We are currently focusing a lot of effort on ensuring that adjustments to tanking, enemy damage, companion healing, etc. are made such that healer and tank are absolutely necessary for group play.
While we normally go to preview much closer to release, and with much more of the designs locked in place, in this case, we will be making large adjustments still. Particularly with class features and feats, I will be heavily reworking a number of those powers.
i thought a neat way of handling stats that could leach away from the combat rating general buff from equipment.
at level 1 we get one point in all basic stats: defence, accuracy etc. I was thinking for each stat above 10, you get a +1 to a linked stat. str would be linked with power, so str 13 would give +3 to it. Every time you level you would get your level added as a bonus to all your stats. Level 2 would give +2 etc, by the time you got to level 80 it would add up to 3240 (80 time 81 divided by 2) points. Well under the level 80 target of 24000. This leaves lots of room to smooth out the growth curve versus the monster strength per zone per level
This means you could add some stat buffs to the feats as a way of adding some more depth to the feat choices. When we make our first feat choice, for example, we could choose the first row 1 feat as is and gain an accuracy buff, or pick the first row 2 and gain a combat advantage buff at the amount of 500 (since 500 in your systems gives 1%)
i'll have to have a look at 5th edition books to get some ideas since preliminary info only finds "basic" free stuff.
If you made it this far, i would also like to apologize for being grouchy the last few day. A cold was setting off my migraines and i didn't realize i was being far too critical and reactive. :P
thanks a bunch.
I'm no DnD player, but even I would think it's backwards to encourage Wizards or Warlocks sporting Strength because they want the Power bonus.
normally it would be str for weapon damage, dex for ranged aim or finesse, int for arcane and wis for divine. However, since the game doesn't tell the difference about weapons other than physical or magical, when a cw adds points to in it will increase power. When a fighter raises str it will also increase power.
in practice you would get something like this: ability boost feats. When boosting your abilities, please pick 2 feats
(the boost here is subjective for example only - there are some crazy crossovers here)
strength series, numbered 1 to 6. increase combat advantage
dex series, numbered 1 to 6. increase crit chance
con series, numbered 1 to 6. increase health
general skills: crit chance, combat advantage, accuracy, avoidance, armor penetration, deflection. These are all the opposed roll skills.
feat boost 1 adds 2 points to your general skills, feat 2 adds 10, feat 3 adds 40, feat 4 adds 150 with the special rule that if a wizard uses a feat to boost int then 500 power is added. If cleric adds to wis then 500 power is added. if a fighter adds str than 500 power is added.
The 500 point power bonus must be triggered by the users class simply because that is how the game is designed.
I feel like a big part of why people may dislike the healer gameplay is right now there is too little to do. You wait for someone to lose hp and then you pump them up. My suggestion to help mitigate this is to make cleanse less of a gimmick and more of a pivotal mechanic. Enemies in dungeons should apply more negative statuses which are removable by cleanse and already existing mechanics like partial paralysis should be removable by it.
Also, I think a way to make more encounter powers useful (even if they are not used most of the time), is to make some encounter powers small, long duration buffs. For example, a party 5% recharge speed buff that lasts 10 minutes and does not stack. The support classes could use these at the start of the dungeon then switch them for something else, but they would have a use.
That's not to suggest that every dungeon needs an irritating debuff, because paralysis is in a class by itself there, but it goes to show how important debuff prevention and removal are to players if the negative status effects can't simply be ignored or reasonably healed through.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
since we now have a divine power bar, i think it would be fun to use divine auras to represent our divine channeling powers. The easiest way to implement this is to have a toggle button that works as an on off switch. I originally was think we could use the 4th encounter power slot from cw - but then silly me that is the tab channel so yeah... lol however we have a special button given to us from the manycoins bank heist so it is possible.
for the arbiter
disciple of radiance.
toggling the aura on gives us Carona of light. This aura gradually consumes divinity (10 divinity per second?) and grants a combat advantage bonus to the party (probably while standing within range). In addition the arbiter deals extra at will damage - maybe at will generate double pips. consuming pips to regain divinity triggers a 20 or 30 second cd on activating aura again. After all, this all about using our ability to channel divine power.
for the devout
disciple of life.
Granted by your divine grace, you gain the ability to wear heavier armour. When you toggle your channeling power on you gain a healing pulse wave effect (the pnp version mentions healing up to 5 times your level, but no more healing affect than raising someone to half their hp max - i think that a great limit to the power. probably would need to be more than 5 times your level but the maximum effect to the heal is a good one) In addition, while this channeling is active the devout gains divine strike - which increase damage. They mention a d8 damage bonus which is relevant to us by saying add double weapon damage per hit, or something like that. 20 or 30 second cd on activating aura again.
hitting the tab key toggles the channeling off since we start to regain divinity by channeling
EDIT - i needed to cut this short to to family issues that came up. will come back to forums in a day or two.
Warding flare. this one gave me a couple of ideas.
upgrade searing light into a cone, or alternate upgrade to sunburst that removes knockback. Increases damage and also adds a crit chance and arm pen debuff.
thanks a bunch all
i have suggestion about last changes of Astral Shield channeling.
Now with a feat we can move as normaly while channeling. but if we choose another feat it makes us possibly to move slowly.
maybe its a bug but we like most the Shield channeling.
can you please add slowly moving while channeling for normal channeling (without feats)
only with Astral shield you cannot move. 1st feat makes us possibly to move slowly while channeling Astral Shield and 2nd feat makes us move with normal speed while chanelling by Tab.
Asterdahl, when you're looking at feats please keep in mind that being too limiting does not actually encourage diverse playstyles or power usage.
If you want feats to modify powers, I think it should be either at least 2 at wills OR 3 at least 3 encounters, but never combinations to proc. This way everyone can find a power they prefer to use and fits in their rotations without feeling forced. Something along the lines of Feat 1 makes Bastion, HW, and Intercession add a 5% incoming healing bonus to targets healed for 5 seconds. Feat 2 makes sacred flame and scattering light add a 5% divinity Regen bonus for 5 seconds, no stacking. Playstyle choice: your heals heals are better if you have to use them quickly or your "downtime" can be used for utility to keep your divinty up. Depending on how you play, either choice could be good, and doesn't shackle you.
Alternatively, instead of modifying powers at all, feats could modify mechanics. Something like Feat 3 makes all heal powers cost 20 less divinity and converts all heals to HoTs. Feat 4 makes all heals cost 20 more divinity and increases mag by 30. Playstyle choice: do you want to be a maintenance healer or a clutch healer?
These are both defining, meaningful choices that allow us to build specific playstyles and rotations unique to us, which is what you said feats should be. And they don't force every power choice on our bar.
I copied my IL 16,800 DC DO into preview and have the following feedback:
Conversion
Abilities: This felt bad, like I'm being punished into choices that don't make sense. I prefer the live way of handling abilities. But, it's not the end of the world to me.
Feats: This also felt off. Both too simple with too few choices, and it felt like I was being forced into strategic choices I didn't want to use with far too obvious paths. It doesn't feel like D&D.
Boons: I like the concept, but it divorces the feeling of progress from the campaign and it robs the campaigns of potential flavor. Here too I felt like there were too few options and I was being forced into a structure that had no narrative or rewarding value - it was just shackles I had to deal with. Nothing about this says "D&D" to me. It's a very artificial system and more artificial than live. Tons of the choices I had to take were choices that didn't appeal to me and felt like numerical drudgery more than interesting choices. I would like to see campaigns be part of the obvious story of Boons, and for the choices to be more interesting and less stat-based. Meaningful choices.
Powers: Many of the DC powers that now have no damage seem unlikely to see much use, unless they are overly strong in some party interaction sense. A lot of the powers are hard to gauge, and the way that damage is described is confusing. I would suggest sitting down with a completely new player and thinking through how confusing this is, and redesigning it. I would encourage you to look at the design philosophy of Magic the Gathering, where card text is both simple (any new player can use it) and has a flexibility strategically that rewards an experienced player. Sure, gain 5 life is good always... but an experienced player knows that using it at a key moment has a strategic value. Similarly, text for powers could be more transparent and logical for any player, while having strategic interactions that are useful (not broken) and engaging.
Divinity: In play I did not find the new divinity to be particularly rewarding. It's okay, but the live concept of normal vs divine vs empowering is a really cool strategy that becomes really interesting for the experienced player. The radiant/judgment has some ability to replace it, but I don't like how it is designed with regards to feats and being a bit too obvious and inflexible.
Companions: I love the simplification of gear slots, bonding, and the use of runestones. I'm okay with companion-only gear. It helps to reduce the cost to new players, especially if we still have CTAs and other content (Merchant Prince, IG) providing access to companion gear. I do not like the idea that we are supposed to go from a goal of 5 legendary companions to 25 or whatever. That's nuts. The interaction between the colored powers, how they relate to class, and how they are set up all seems non-intuitive.
Playing in low challenge areas
I ran quickly through an Acq Inc quest and a Dread Ring quest. Both were comparable in ease to live, which is good. In general, I want old content to be easy, if I'm supposed to go back and do it. All those weeklies, all the currency for a Stronghold, etc... if we are supposed to do all that, it needs to be fast and easy. Or, make it scale harder, but reduce mobs so it doesn't take up hours of time.
I ran through Soshenstar and fought a few mobs, finding it fine. It was a tiny bit harder, but still easy. Again, I'm on board with that. I have limited time.
I did a Barovia small HE (where the foes attack the caravan) and I had to run away and slot a healing power and then I could do it. Mixed feelings here. Soloing HEs in live feels a bit too easy, but I'm not looking to spend more time on this content, so I guess this is a good balance on challenge. But, I have no idea how this would play on my non-DC toons and whether they now have to group up for this. Hmm.
I ran the new content through Yawning Portal and a bit beyond and found it all very easy. Not sure if that's on purpose.
The Importance of It All
Overall, Preview felt okay. Better than I expected, but fundamentally I didn't find the changes super engaging or rewarding. Not bad, but certainly not something that I would have wanted to see done. I would take Live over Preview in terms of gameplay, character depth, engagement, narrative value. I do support the idea of fixing the engine, but to me the changes feel like an alpha approach vs polished beta.
My max rank Guild is on a knife's edge with Mod 16. For many of them, this is make it or break it for the game. The more time taken to get it right, the better. Thank you.
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Ill start with the arbiter:
Feats:
-Tier 1
-Remove at-will lock from both.
Make priercing light crit the next encouter.
Make lightspeed and 2extra pips on cast of the next encouter.
-Tier 2
-Tipping scales.
Generate 0,5-1%ap per pip channeled.
-Heavy sun
Add magnitued and stun or daze effect.
-Tier 3
-Medicants judgement
Add div cost -100
-Radiant swordbreaker
extend PoD not geas.
-Tier 4
-Are meh but fine.
-Tier5
-Critical sun is fine.
-Bruning patch
Make it fill ur pips to max on daily use
Class Features.
-TI encrease div gain to 50.
-Foresight must go above crit cap
-Inquisitors benediction...
If the final feat is heal related it should either further reduce div cost of BoH
or add heal perks to skills like PoD.
Encounters:
-searing light
make it a cone not a line. as far as im reading the wizards have the same issue with sudden storm
At-will´s:
-make the strengthen themselfs.
no one will want to expend pips for an empowered at will.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now to Devo
Moving at 50% speed while channeling should be a Paragon ability.
Feats
-Tier 1
-Sacred Bastion
Again remove at-will lock and encouter lock
-Repeated blessing is ok but add a cleanse chance to it.
-Tier 2
-Enhanced Astral Shiels.
it should enhance the effeckt of AS or give it a lingering effect
-Exalt is fine
-Tier 3
-Reserved Divinty.
Make this to a downgraded version version of the old Faithfull capstone
-Saviors step
Give flat dmg reduce while channeling.
-Tier 4
-Primed Divinty.
Reduce delay to 3 sec.
-Swift prayers.
Move at 75% or full movement while channeling.
-Tier 5
-Anoited armes
Take away dmg buff reduce ap cost by 50% but make AA go on cd for 15sec without reduce options.
-Persistent Guardian
Well meh but no idea.
Class Features:
Across the board these are a mess.
-Divine Action
double the amount of div.
-Deliverance
gain 1% heal for each ally in 25'
-Hallowed guide
meh but ok.
-Divine lore.
20% chance that ur aoe heals deal dmg for a half of their magnitued
Encounters:
-Exaltation
In fairness comared too the sw add a 5%dmg buff to exalt as an aura for duration of exalt.
even skilled it would have a down time where the sw PoP virtually doesnt.
At-will´s:
-Soothing light
add 5 div gain per cast.
Lets haggle about theses ideas. i know some might be too strong but its my general idea how the Cleric would gain more fluid gameplay with having not beeing bound to very spesific powers or feal solely like a heal bot just wating for action.
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As well as sun bursts pip changes. (now tipping scales feat must be cnanged, cuz as of now it has no use at all.) mayb make it pvp feat that does something ?
Feels like we can AOE now.
P.S. - Now i could only wish if our piercing light feat could proc off sacred flame instead of lance of faight.
i love the new searing light. I love sunburst with the pips fixed and the reversion to 15 targets is awsome.
i loved it so much i wanted to suggest a feat choice at tier 1: i feel that piercing light and lightspeed should be combined into the same feat as a utility package. I thinking this choice would be completely balanced against heavy sun. I think it's really important to get this choice right out of the gate on arbiter since it changes so much about how you will want to play it,
Individually i hate piercing light and lightspeed, but combined i find it acceptable, probable even useful. If you look at it from the point of view of someone who would not want to use sunburst at all, or someone who wants to keep the knockback - i think it's a perfect place to make this choice. I hope it's a win win win for all players.
You might want tipping the scales to be a feat that activates for all dc's when they enter pvp. that doesnt seem to help devout at all. But what i really mean is i find this to be an awkward spell. It's kinda like being able to slot the same spell twice, if that makes any sense.
my current slot loadout is sunburst, daunting light (something) sacred flame and lance. For my 3rd slot, it will rotate between searing light and another single target spell as needed. I use this spot to load a fire or radiant spell to balance out my spell rotation to maximize my pip usage - i want to try to never eat pips and constantly deal damage by enhancing things.
I see one problem with the suggestion that someone made to remove the interaction with pips. There are times i would rather use the improved at will damage rather than eat the pips for more divinity. Since sunburst is not a divinity using spell i can always use it to deal out a lot of damage. when you enhance it, it hits pretty hard and its cd times nicely with the time it takes to generate pips using the at will. You can seamlessly flip back and forth between fire and radiance this way while you passively let your divinity recover a bit - eat some pips now and then to speed things up. In this scenario the enhanced at will damage is a benefit.
I mention this because there are times i dont want to eat the pips for divinity since it does not coincide with windows of opportunity for attacks against bosses. (fbi, cradle - a few others).
on dailies.
Hammer of fate seems to only do more damage than guardian when all three hits crit. There is no mention of ap return when something is killed by hammer. Since we have opposed rolls now - i believe this really reduces the value of hammer of fate. I'm not sure what to propose for fixing this simply adding in a feat to increase the crit chance for this daily wouldn't do much, due to the nature of opposed rolls - unless the dc really went out of their way to maximize their crit, in which case adding a crit boost for this spell would work. I dunno on this one. Perhaps a guaranteed 25 or 30% chance to crit no matter what your crit stat is for this daily as a feat choice?
i need to play devout more. I'm not even particularly sure what the desired damage output of the devout is for solo or group play sine all it feat choices are more about utility except for the one that increase exalt duration.
Please reinstate some more group damage buffs for DC Devout path. Currently AA gives 3% and is the only group buff we have. I like the idea of needing to be near to apply it, but the bonus is just paltry compared to what other classes have (Warlock's PoP, even Barbie has a better shout than us).
Ideally, I would like to also see at more splat or positional buff, something that requires skill or timing to coordinate with others and / or in your rotation. I think a good opportunity would be to add back a 5% buff to Hallowed Ground daily (feel free to remove HoT and/or DR buff). Now that it's not spammable, it shouldn't be so out of control, and players would be forgoing using a damaging or healing daily. AA could be the heal / control removal / damage mitigation daily, balanced with a more offensive one.
Bonus points if we could please bring back the old visual. If you need to change the radius to make it happen please consider doing that. Shiny footprints are such an amazing thing to lose.
Or borrow from what Shrpedge "thefabricant" said and instate some long-duration buffs that are annoying to reapply (or even impossible mid-combat) that would help make it more meaningful to keep people alive. Buffs based on current HP %?
It would also be nice if we could have something to help with party cooldowns. Perhaps AS channeling could also tick down cooldowns for folks standing in it faster. This is still a big tradeoff, since AS is expensive and you are prevented from doing anything useful / dodging with it going.
In summary: give me stuff to do to support the team more than just waiting for them to make mistakes and topping them off. You've given other classes the means to do so, but taken it away from the class that was most known for it now. Make it hard to coordinate / limited in duration, but please reinstate some offensive buffs.
Edit: OMG, I just looked at PoP. What the absolute hamstering HAMSTER @Asterdahl! You tell us we can't even have a power that buffs all three damage types and is on the DPS path and the other is a hamstring modification to a DAILY of 3% for a few seconds, but battle fury and PoP are allowed to exist! One of them on a DPS class even? And one essentially always up? Now I'm seriously hamstering angry.
Soloing campaign as arbiter feels pretty smooth. Does enough damage to clear content without much difficulty (except unbalanced areas/mobs such as Vankradoom/vampires).
Ran several T2 3:1:1 dungeons as both DPS and heals.
Held my own in DPS, but not topping the charts. It was okay.
Healer path does it's job.
Many powers such as healing word have a very long animation that leaves DC vulnerable.
Coming from an ACDC, healer seems overly simplistic and unsatisfying. Unless your party is struggling, forcing you to play classic "watch the bars" style healer, pretty boring imho.
Minor issue, Hallowed Grounds bland color change is ugly, distracting and indistinguishable from Astral Shield and the OP equivalent. Would a little color contrast hurt?
Will keep trying it out and give it a chance.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
The spam filter ate my post. Any way you could approve it?
I see no aggro generated by heals. I have no problem with it, but wanna know if intended or just a mistake. I thought Divine Glow was meant to be the encounter to drop some aggro generated by healing, but in current state I can not even outaggro my comp with healing.
edit: For example. I think chains of blazing light as a stun only effect is useless since many mobs have immunity to cc or partial immunity which renders it useless, It makes senses for a few minion with a spawn group (such as 1 wizard, 3 fighters and a golem - the golem being cc immune) but not for entire groups to have it, such as places like chult or another more recent zone.
thats why cc based encounters are no good. As a player you can't rely on them to work as advertised.
I figured out one of the things about the new system in general that was bothering me. Comparing the pnp game experience to the computer game experience, the live version follows the 3rd edition philosophy that every time you level you should gain something new but it uses the 4th edition philosophy of how to manage powers and damage, No problems so far.
With mod 16, we are moving closer to 5th edition, which as it turns out - tries to straddle 3rd edition and 4th edition by giving us some of our feat choices back that were missing from 4th.
Now it looks like all the boon choices we have available actually do a great job of presenting the choices in 5th. There are a few exceptions where it misses the mark - such as all the racial damages should only be a choice available to hunters.
now the problem that crops up in the game is the following. The 5th edition system is meant to present 20 levels of gameplay. We are trying to fill up 80 levels of space. There simply isn't enough material to draw us in and play more, earn that level - gain a new ability. There is too much of our characters strength wrapped up into our gear choices. While the combined rating does do a pretty good job of giving the players the stats they need, it doesn't feel like our character is growing in power through levelling. The feats that we would normally gain by leveling are instead being given to us as boon choices. While I understand you can't keep giving out powers and such to players, when you strip away our gear and look at our character stats, there isn't much left to look at.
Thats why it feels like i have so much trouble judging my characters strength. Our characters aren't actually a fully fledged thing until all our gear is added, when it should be our gear choices that add personality to our characters.
Thanks a bunch.