NEW U58 Archetype Review + Bonus new build for DDO

[@dbroccoliman]

I'm excited to have the option to grab traps and TWF on a few character builds. This being free for everyone really opens up some more FTP friendly builds.

[@durrutimachado284]

Thanks for the vid! All the hype for the new archetypes!

[@NonstopNoah]

I'm excited to see the builds you come up with 👍

[@TheCnstgrad]

I am excited for the new content, but is anyone else nervous about the QA and testing cycle on this?

[@Esper320]

Yeah cant wait to see what shit show happens this time. Maybe theyll bring duping back

[@drizzo4669]

Nervous? Nahhh. I expect issues but nothing they cant fix.

[@natjitrustrik2158]

SSG certainly isn't nervous at all about QA or testing given their track record

[@UchihaKat]

Your enthusiasm for this game is so infectious. Now I'm really looking forward to your builds and to trying these out!

[@davidprice6002]

Tnx ST, very interesting update coming

[@peterkottke2570]

I tested Skin of the Acolyte and it seems to fall into the category of cool but impractical. The beams are mostly single target that occasionally hit a second target and occasionally fire off to the ceiling. They're not better than the shapes of the other enhancement tree and barely better than the standard eldritch attack. The glare attacks range are fairly short and break the attack chain with their animation. ( quicken seems to have no effect ) And the demon form requires hug melee range and doesn't offer nearly enough defensive buffs to justify getting that close to enemies If trying to attack an enemy that was feared you might as well give up and wait until the fear wears off or you can use beams again. I'm not sure pumping the numbers can fix this. The beams, glares, and demon form all have different fighting ranges. What player does a character that is constantly changing the the range they fight at? Besides all they are functional less useful than the eldritch shapes used by other trees.

[@SetUSMC]

Returning to DDO after 10 years. Just found your channel, great content. Thanks

[@anaalvensleben789]

Thank you for all you do Strimtom. This is why I'm o your patreon :)

[@Troka-O.Boy07]

mate, unless they make the epic eldritch blast and epic pact dice not require 12 levels of warlock. that firebuff build is straight up copium. Also, the fiendish glare abilities probably needs some extra range. considering its only like 1/3 of the range of eldritch blast cone, which is like supposed to be like, you know,,, short range

[@Strimtom]

how is full room dust/ooze/ashing while fully buffing copium?

[@Troka-O.Boy07]

if you're gonna be the only one doing something, that's always gonna be good. so I can't value debuffing that much. and you don't have many CC possibilities like a normal bard. I can't say much in the healing department, only thing I know off healers is that should be a semi tank but now you made me wonder how you're gonna fit all those debuffs at once.

[@4DCResinSmoker]

I can 100% confirm that the Warlock AToS is complete and utter shite. I ran with a few earlier today, and it was comical how bad they are.

[@jguitarz1]

Rolled a Scourge pure Ranger Dark Hunter and dipped into Vistani and up to Improved Scourge Weapons in Scourge racial tree and I must say by far the most fun knife fighter build I've yet to play besides Vile Vistani Shardi 18Alc/1Rog/1barb Int dmg.

[@shinon748]

Looking forward to the new ranger Solo Play. Like you said this could make for a really fun tempest build.

[@okamihikuro1401]

Can't wait to try that bard of yours. Thank you for the review!

[@Strimtom]

I'm still refining the idea, so I hope to have a good build for you once it comes out

[@okamihikuro1401]

@@Strimtom Awesome! Will go my missing bard lives with an op build.

[@glass_jaws]

One thing to note is Blighted breath doesn't require wolf form. I was testing it with caster version and using the acid imbue to change the damage to acid.

[@UchihaKat]

Does blighted breath (and even the winter wolf cold breath) count as breath weapons for the purposes of DI breath weapon buffs?

[@glass_jaws]

I didn't check on this Lam but winter wolf breath did previously. I considered a dragonborn with it as well to get the CC effect there, and the DI CC.

[@CD-lc4ir]

Will you be posting the build on the DDO forums for the Bard at the end of the video?

[@NickJamNG]

Wait wait wait. Warlock feats work like the Monk feats? What the hell? Has anyone made a 18 Sorc, 2 Wlk build for all the elemental SLAs and spells + chain blast of the same element? Fire or Air Sorc with the matching pact sounds insane.

[@micheleladisa820]

thank you for the build

[@RodrigoAlgorta]

The beam looks horrible, I would never pick that shape over chain or the cone.

[@samfrostinjapan]

I was hoping the blighted druid wolf form would still have the movement speed and continue using stunning dcs for the slide. Much less excited to play it now, but it's probably fine balance-wise.

[@Strimtom]

The necromancy DCs seemed weird at first, but there are so many necromancy items I found the gearing not to be too bad, but it does mean that this class isn't reliant on a trance to work which is neat.

[@SupaDanteX]

I'm curious what your thoughts are on the Acolyte of the Skin's forum posts. A lot of people saying the beam doesn't need more damage, but it needs to be wider and longer. A lot of people saying the melee devil T5 is cool but just doesn't work / make sense (You dont make a spellcaster and then suddenly expect it to play well in melee) A lot of people saying the gazes need to be paralyzing fear and not "Oh god run away" fear, especially due to the above 2 points of: Beam not going far enough and Devil form being very close melee range. I don't think I've seen anyone comment that the numbers were too low. If anything, i think I saw someone comment that the beam doing 125% spell power now vs the other shapes doing 100%, means it actually does more damage. But that it's so hard to aim and hit things with an arrow sized but short range and slow moving beam, that it just doesn't work.

[@Strimtom]

It's a good thing I didn't claim the beam needs more damage then. Because I agree with forum posters who want the beam to have better targeting and think the damage is fine. The T5 doesn't work because there is no payoff. The idea of jumping in melee as a big hulking demon is the payoff for the tree, but it being bad means there is no payoff, which is why I said they should make the form do shitloads of damage and then it will make you want to use melee for the duration and have to think about your play. The gaze fear slow monsters, but a lot of the people posting on the forums didn't log into the game and probably wouldn't know that from not testing it. I want the range of the glares increased, which was feedback I provided to the devs, but I also wanted the T5 glare to have parity with the other T5 eldritch blast abilities, which seems fair. Warlock is my favourite class. I spent 15 hours testing out acolyte of the skin, and I think it needs more damage in it's special abilities and more defense in it's passives, because they are strictly worse than the alternative of just ignoring the tree, which was my feedback and hopefully the devs see it.

[@witchdoctorwill1796]

"Fixed later". We'll see.

[@serpentsaurus7969]

So incredibly excited to play the plague wolf druid! I'm very happy to hear that it's good. Thank you Strim!

[@bobsvencner9070]

Hey Strimtom. Did you ever get around to posting the new Buff Bard build guide? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

[@Strimtom]

Not yet! it's in the works

[@bobsvencner9070]

@@Strimtom OK. Thanks for replying. Looking forward to seeing it! Thanks for all your amazing content. I appreciate you.

[@BruceWayne-jx8dz]

At 22:40 you mentioned you can add a freezing item to your eldritch blasts. Which ability are you referring to? Thanks.

[@Strimtom]

Crown of snow: ddowiki.com/page/Item:Legendary_Crown_of_Snow#:~:text=Fire%20Shield%20(Cold)%3A%20You,against%20Fire%20Shield%20(Hot).&text=Spell%20Focus%20Mastery%20%2B4%3A%20%2B,the%20DC%20of%20all%20spells. The bitter blade: ddowiki.com/page/Item:The_Bitter_Blade Icehorn on a dinosaur bone weapon: ddowiki.com/page/Dinosaur_Bone_crafting#Weapons

[@BruceWayne-jx8dz]

@@Strimtom ahh, don't have fables pack yet. but echo of wave i can farm on heroic since its DC 35 for heroic lives with warlock blasting. thanks for the info

[@Tyranthraxus78]

Ranger and Druid look great! 🎉

[@Dulkh4n]

Ranger has a lot of problem the t5 is bad, and a lot of the core are half supported or are not compatible with the other 2 rangers trees.. I mean in heroic you can play anything but after that I don't see this going places in end game but as a 2 or 3th tree to put points into it.

[@mitchmaupin8323]

Dark hunter hunting halflings

[@chrismcguinness5405]

Cheers!

[@RodrigoAlgorta]

You need at least 4 levels of this dark ranger to access tier 4 enhancements unless they don't respect normal rules for accesing tiers of class enhancements.

[@patricklinford689]

Hey Strim, last I heard "Drink Their Fear" from AotS does not work off of "No Worse Fate" from SE. Do you know if this is fixed? Or is "Drink Their Fear" intended to only work of some fear effects and not all fear effects?

[@Strimtom]

It doesn't work on shaken, it only works on true fears, like howl of terror, fear, or the eye beams.

[@roguedexx938]

2levels of Acolyte with Sacred Fist or Dark Apostate…?

[@xhypeinferno8883]

Still not seeing competence hp for dark hunter which is unfortunate

[@Sielumies]

Do you think dark apostate with Vol deity and vistani tree + falconry wis based dmg would work?

[@Strimtom]

Vistani knife fighter basically works with everything and that was honestly my first attempt. It works well, but the main issue is that you end up not using too much of the dark apostate abilities at that point. As I said, it works well, but it's just like... regular vistani cleric lol

[@Jackapacka]

in acolyte of the skin, dose the mele form base it’s damage off of strength or cha?

[@peterkottke2570]

It's not really melee. It's a melee range eldritch blast attack.

[@navarone4031]

they did bad the ranger archetype.

[@theCombatWombat-1]

Strim, for the Buff Bard - why did you take 6 FvS if you’re only using the tree up to lvl 2? What’s does 6 net you as apposed to 2 (and putting those 4 FvS levels elsewhere)?

[@SupaDanteX]

I would be guessing one of, or some combination of: A: A third level spell B: The divine special ability depending on what deity he took C: Close wounds is fantastic as a 2 sp SLA. But it's issue is that it heals 1d4+Caster level (Max 5). Or I think in DDO it heals 1d3+1+Caster level (Max 5). So if you want close wounds to not be absolutely trash, you need at least 5 levels. It's fast and cheap, but it's drawback for being fast and cheap is that it heals next to nothing. So you would want to push it to it's (very small) limit. I don't know for sure. But if I had to guess, I would think he went to lv 5 for C, and then thought "Ok, whats better for me here. Lv 3 Lock. Lv 13 Bard. Or lv 6 FvS. Lv 3 lock really does nothing. So the choice comes down to 13 Bard vs 6 FvS. Now honestly, I would probably have went with 13 bard between those 2. But maybe he has other plans.

[@SupaDanteX]

Like on any other healing spell it probably doesn't sound like much. But the difference between a lv 2 close wounds doing 1d3+3 and a lv 5 close wounds doing 1d3+6 is 4-6 vs 7-9. That's like a 1.6x increase. Factor in Spell Power and Heal Amp, and the difference would be his rough 90 heals would be rough 55~ heals.

[@theCombatWombat-1]

@@SupaDanteX probably B and C - didn’t consider the caster lvls of Close Wound. Do SLAs scale off of class or character lvl? Going Sov Host will net the super heal at lvl 6 which would be worth it.

[@SupaDanteX]

@@theCombatWombat-1 SLAs scale off class level just like regular spells. They get free metamagic, but other than that, an SLA gained from a class is no different than a regular spell. Just usually with a different base spell point cost and cool down of course.

[@Strimtom]

I'm still refining the build but I took 5 favoured soul for maximizing the curing power of close wounds for ez team support, and then I was left with 1 more level that could go to any class. I chose favoured soul while testing for the special heal from sovereign host, but I think 13 bard will be the final play since you get 5th level spells. Still testing it out.

[@cirian6485]

Blightcaster is strong, just not as strong as normal Cold caster druid. (Fair enough, cold caster druid is probably the current strongest build in the game so new builds probably shouldnt be expected to be stronger than this.) The other two archetypes are cool, have excellent ideas, but are struggling for a few important changes. If those changes come then we will be golden, but considering the absolute and complete silence of the devs in regards to feedback this time around, its difficult to trust these changes WILL come, and so the archetypes are just going to fall a little flat most likely. I am hoping I am wrong and the devs will have these archetypes just nicely tuned up by release but not holding my breath.

[@commanderstarstrider7176]

No evasion sucks. Better to avoid all damage with evasion than guaranteed 1/2 damage sometimes (1/4 damage if u make saves) It’s not as good as improved evasion. U can’t evade in medium armor either. We will still need to cross class rogue but at least will save the skill points. Medium armor is trash.

[@hoock3r]

not getting 12 warlock levels = No epic eldritch blast feat and No epic pact dice = big damage loss

[@SupaDanteX]

Maybe, but I think adding these feats is for people who aren't making the eldritch blast their primary thing that they do. Like how Strimtom built a BUFF build around it. Not a DPS build.

[@carpathian677]

It's just not doing it for me....I'll stick to sorc lol

[@4DCResinSmoker]

Hot-garbage!!! AToS is just a flavor Tree with no synergy with other trees. Never mind that the Blast attack isn't practical being single target and rather difficult to control. Dark-Hunter is basicly a Ranger tree for those who normally splash Rogue. However, being that Evasion got removed, it's stupid to play a trapper.

[@peterkottke2570]

As a pure artificer is one of my alts and he doesn't get evasion until level 26 I tell you that there are very few traps that can't be disarmed without evasion.

[@4DCResinSmoker]

Evasion isn't just about trap avoidance but spell avoidance as well.

[@Strimtom]

You should try magic resistance rating. It's pretty good against spells.

[@4DCResinSmoker]

@@Strimtom AToS is a noob-trap posing as an enhancement tree.

[@Cytl-bu3nq]

@@4DCResinSmoker could be too that you aren't playing it right and are just being an ass for the sake of being an ass.

[@KroMagnum4]

Very nice. Naw it's not overpowered at all so shush yo moff!

[@Ihatezidiotz]

been gone for a while. can you make any of these archetypes without having to make a new char? or can you access the enh. tree with an existing char?

[@SupaDanteX]

Archtypes are basically being treated as a new class, that heavily overlaps with an existing class, and can't be multiclassed with itself. So yes, you technically can make any of these archtypes with an existing character. You would just need to take levels in the archtype class. But you can't multiclass warlock with warlock for example. An Acolyte of the Skin IS a warlock. If you had a pre-existing warlock, you would need to burn a heart of reincarnation, and then at level 1 it would ask you if you want to be a Vanilla Warlock (just called Warlock) or an Acolyte of the Skin Warlock. Once the choice is made, you can't change it without using another heart.

[@SupaDanteX]

If this explanation doesn't answer your question, or you can't follow it, ask a more specific follow up question and I'd be happy to answer it for you.

[@Ihatezidiotz]

@@SupaDanteX Thanks very much. didnt think of the multi class angle, but I tend to make pure classes usually. I have a tempest ranger at 17 or so, and would love it I could just add dark ranger tree to it. :) Guess I may need to buy a couple more char slots.. hehe.

[@SupaDanteX]

@@Ihatezidiotz Yup so in that case, sadly you'd have to burn a LR heart and then choose dark ranger at lv 1.