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Mushidoz
 
PostPosted: Mon, Nov 13 2017, 0:27 AM 

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The purple dragon knight is a class that was changed into the Knight Commander here. It is a pretty cool class that offers its user between five auras they can use. They can only have 1 offensive and 1 defensive aura on them at a time.

Level 1:
Barricade of Swords: Defensive Aura: Barricade of Swords creates a damage shield around all allies within the aura and allows them to shrug off a minor amount of physical damage. The shields damage is 1d10 slashing damage, +2 per Knight Commander level, +1 per Charisma modifier, to a maximum of Knight Commander level. They also gain 5% damage immunity to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage, +1% per Charisma modifier, to a maximum of Knight Commander level.
Entreatment: Ability which can be used once per Knight Commander level. If they fail a Will save versus the Knight Commander's Taunt, the enemies change targets to instead attack the Knight Commander. Where used against other player characters, this feat simply causes the target to break their action queue and become flat-footed. Enemies failing their Will save are also inflicted with a -2 Attack Bonus penalty for five rounds.
Stand Down: This is an unlimited feat which allows the Knight Commander to dismiss all of their auras instantly.

Level 2: Bulwark of Vigilance: Offensive Aura: Upon entering this aura, enemies lose 8% movement speed per Knight Commander level, and receive a -5 Tumble penalty multiplied by their Charisma modifier, to a maximum of Knight Commander level. The Tumble decrease does not lower AC.

Level 3: Medicant: Defensive Aura: All allies within this aura gain +2 regeneration, which improves to +3 at 5th Knight Commander level. Allies also gain +5 Heal skill per Charisma modifier, to a maximum of Knight Commander level.

Level 4: Ordnance Support: Offensive Aura: All enemies within this aura suffer a 3% immunity decrease to acid/cold/fire/sonic/electricity per Knight Commander level. Additionally all enemies gain -2 penalty to their spell resistance per Charisma modifier, to a maximum of Knight Commander level.

Level 5:
Vehement Charge: Defensive Aura: All allies within this aura gain immunity to blindness, charm, confusion, deafness, fear, daze, sleep, slow and stun. Allies also gain 3% movement speed increase per Charisma modifier, to a maximum of Knight Commander level. This aura also inflicts a penalty of -10 discipline to all allies.
Shield Ally: Knight Commander can shield one ally within 20 foot, giving him +4 dodge AC, while doing so the Knight Commander receives -4 to his attack. This ability may be used unlimited times per day; the Knight Commander cannot use it on himself.

NOTE: You can only have one defensive and one offensive aura active at the same time. All defensive auras have a radius of 30 foot, while offensive auras have a radius of 10 foot. All auras are infinite use with an unlimited duration.


By taking a look at those, you can see there are three defensive auras, and two offensive ones. Having to choose between these is nice, as it gives its user a choice for their build or perhaps even their specialty. In theory, the more levels you have in that class, the better these auras get and the more versatility you can get from them. It works.. in theory.

There is however a problem I noticed in that one of the defensive auras is near useless and doesn't do what it should properly. The first aura you get, Barricade of Swords, is intended to give a damage return aura of 1d10 + up to 10 (depending on your class level and your charisma). That is incredibly powerful.. except, that damage counts as +0 when it comes to bypassing soak. What this means is that a single "Ghost Visage" will pretty much nullify that damage return, and most creatures on the server will also just ignore it right away. The damage return of that aura will thus pretty much only work against creatures that are Malarite level.. (for example, the minotaur shamans in Khem will absorb 25 damage if your weapon's not at least +1..)

I am trying out the class at the moment, out of curiosity, and I just can't understand why the concept of that class (which is very cool) is somehow hindered by this huge limitation on one of the auras. Why give the players a choice between 3 potential defensive auras if only two of them are part of the choice by default. Moreover, one of the auras is only accessible as level 5 (that's okay), and the other only achieves it potential when level 5 too - the end result is that if you go for Knight Commander, there is very little logical reason not to go level 5 in it...

---

What I'm getting at here, is that I really believe the first aura should have a bonus to allow it to bypass soak. Perhaps the damage it causes could be rebalanced then if it is judged too powerful now, but I do not see why it is so weak at the moment. Also, perhaps there could be some lax given to that class when it comes to reaching its peak? I mean, getting to level 5 in the class gives you an incredibly good aura.. so why do you also need to need to be level 5 in that class for all of your other auras to be at their best? Doesn't that limit the options a bit too much? Wouldn't it be perfectly fine if these bonuses would be reachable with charisma alone instead? Leveling into the class already gives you new auras, and investing in charisma can be a pain to some builds already.

Anyway.. possible solutions to fix Barricade of Swords:

- Automatically has a +1 to "enhancement" to bypass soak. This goes up by 1 for every charisma mod, up to +5. In return, it could lose the 5 dmg it gains from charisma bonus.

- Could deal other damage type than physical... but then it loses its flavour.

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maglorine
 
PostPosted: Mon, Nov 13 2017, 1:12 AM 

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I think this has been raised before and if I recall, the response was you cannot add enhancement to a physical damage shield.

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Mushidoz
 
PostPosted: Mon, Nov 13 2017, 1:58 AM 

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maglorine wrote:
I think this has been raised before and if I recall, the response was you cannot add enhancement to a physical damage shield.


That's a shame.. but then why not just change the damage type to something else? I mean, this is impractical as is since pretty much anything has soak (except from pvp.. and even then). It's not like the passive is any good that it warrants choosing this aura over the others either; at best it is a +10% resist.. if you are to take 100 damage (holy crap!) then you take 90 instead if fully maxed.. the regen aura's better, all the time, making this aura pointless in most cases.
------------------------------

This is how I would rebalance the class personally (changes in green):

Level 1:
Barricade of Swords: Defensive Aura: Barricade of Swords creates a damage shield around all allies within the aura and allows them to shrug off a minor amount of physical damage. The shields damage is 1d10 slashing damage, +2 per Knight Commander level, and gains +1 to for the purpose of bypassing damage resistance per Charisma modifier, to a maximum of +5. They also gain 5% damage immunity to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage, +1% per Charisma modifier, to a maximum of 5% level.

OR, if the resist bypassing cannot be produced with that shield..

Level 1:
Barricade of Swords: Defensive Aura: Barricade of Swords creates a damage shield around all allies within the aura and allows them to shrug off a minor amount of physical damage. The shields damage is 1d10 magical damage, +2 per Knight Commander level (removed a chunk here). They also gain 5% damage immunity to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage, +1% per Charisma modifier, to a maximum of 5%.

Entreatment: Unchanged.

Stand Down: Unchanged.

Level 2: Bulwark of Vigilance: Unchanged (This benefits casters mostly, so making it scale only off charisma would be a bad idea)

Level 3: Medicant: Defensive Aura: All allies within this aura gain +3 regeneration. Allies also gain +5 Heal skill per Charisma modifier, to a maximum of 25.

Level 4: Ordnance Support: Offensive Aura: All enemies within this aura suffer a 3% immunity decrease to acid/cold/fire/sonic/electricity per Knight Commander level. Additionally all enemies gain -2 penalty to their spell resistance per Charisma modifier, to a maximum of -10.

Level 5:
Vehement Charge: Unchanged.

Shield Ally: Unchanged.

NOTE: You can only have one defensive and one offensive aura active at the same time. All defensive auras have a radius of 30 foot, while offensive auras have a radius of 10 foot. All auras are infinite use with an unlimited duration.

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Gravemaskin
 
PostPosted: Mon, Nov 13 2017, 6:12 AM 

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Fairly sure they can't change it on a spell of that nature.

Either way barricade of swords can be pretty fantastic if you ever fight people/mobs without soak or DR <.< Most players tend to have no physical resistance or like.. 5 so it's still doing 11-20 return damage in most pvp situations. Your proposed change would make it 11-21 magic damage. or 16-25 physical with the enhancement bonus added so it's not the biggest boost. IF you're not using it because 11-20 is too low, you're not going to bother with 11-21 or 16-25. If it was 20-40 or something, then I can see lots of people using it for that purpose alone.

It stacks with damage shields.. no other thing does that on Amia. On my bard/kc I usually combine it with wounding whispers to get a pretty good one. (16-25 slashing damage and 26-31 sonic damage plus the 10% physical immunity to go with his stoneskin has given him the victory in more than one duel against other players) Works even better on sorc/wiz KC's. (slashing damage+acid/cold/fire from sheath and 10% physical immunity on top of premonitions mean they last longer. immunity is calculated first, then DR. Say you get hit by a crit for ...120 for instance. That's then reduced to 108, then 30 gets eaten by premo to bring it down to 78. that sort of stuff adds up. Be it high damage or low damage, combining 10% immunity with any form of DR means you get a lot of value out of it. (This is the part where your proposed change would nerf it, and afaik it's the main use area for the KC. Its certainly my bards, and I suspect that it'd make the ability see even less use, even with a slight damage bump.)

I mained a KC for quite some time and I can say that all the abilities do see use in various situations. (Try entreatment on a build with 50+ taunt xD Pissess off mages to no end)
Some are stronger than others, mainly ordnance support, vehement charge and medicant tend to be the more popular ones, but they're all useful tools with the right build. The class itself is one of the stronger prestige classes in terms of what you gain per level invested. If barricade of swords is going to get changed, I'd propose changing the immunity from scaling off of charisma to scaling off of discipline/X. It's one of the skill requirements for the class and it'd give nonmage KC's some loving and potentially make the skill more useful for them)

Also sidenote but medicant already gives +3 regen and 25 heal already if you grab all 5 KC levels and have 5 chamod.
Same with ordnance support, it caps at 15% acid/cold/fire/sonic/electricity vulnerability and -10 spell resist. (My bard kills firegiants with firedamage. 10/10 would ordnance support again)

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Amarice-Elaraliel
 
PostPosted: Mon, Nov 13 2017, 9:00 AM 

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This was all made intentional as it is.

This is a 5 Level maximum class. That means it is supposed to give you some cool support, but isn’t meant to turn you into a god.

And the auras are pretty great and helpful.

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KnightOfKelemvor
 
PostPosted: Mon, Nov 13 2017, 15:52 PM 

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As someone that played a KC for main over a year now I have to say that the barricade of swords is the aura I run like 90% of the time. The damage is a nice bonus but the damage immunity is really good on the right build, I notice the difference in damage taken pretty fast if I don't have that aura up.
I run a barbarion/KC with edr and all the damage reduction added up is quite a lot.
And I really like how it scales of charisma as it forces one to rethink the build around it.

If anything needs to be improved it's entreatment as that skill pretty much doesn't do anything. Even on a successful roll the monsters at most turns and looks at you and then goes back to beating there previous target...

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Raua
 
PostPosted: Mon, Nov 13 2017, 16:12 PM 

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I have to agree, Genevieve has a KC build where I had to specially allocate charisma in her stats for it to work, and overall the class is amazing. I wouldn't change a thing about it.

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Mushidoz
 
PostPosted: Tue, Nov 14 2017, 0:40 AM 

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The changes I suggested wouldn't touch the charisma investment though. It would only make it so that you are not 100% forced to go level 5 in the class all the time to make the auras worthwhile. It would still reward the charisma investment, it just wouldn't reward getting 5 levels in the class as much.

As for barricade of sword.. I guess it does soak up a little bit of damage, but I'm pretty sure the regen aura will end up covering more in the end (unless you have no AC or that you get critted for 100+ dmg..). My big problem though is more with the fact that any random X/soak Y dmg critter you encounter will just ignore the damage return aura entirely.

I like the class, I just think there is room to improvement with some of what I consider flaws that shouldn't be part of the class.

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KnightOfKelemvor
 
PostPosted: Tue, Nov 14 2017, 4:00 AM 

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Some more damage from BoS would be nice but I still think that entreatment is what should get fixed first and foremost.

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Mushidoz
 
PostPosted: Tue, Nov 14 2017, 12:06 PM 

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KnightOfKelemvor wrote:
Some more damage from BoS would be nice but I still think that entreatment is what should get fixed first and foremost.


Doesn't this cause flat-foot on those affected, as well as cancelling spell casting? I think it's fine..

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Raua
 
PostPosted: Tue, Nov 14 2017, 12:33 PM 

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Thing is, what you propose to change the damage type of barricade of swords to has quite a few mobs that resist it as well, though less players. Even if it was a common resistance, I don't see the point in changing it. furthermore, it is an unlimited use, permanent, undispellable aura that hase a rather large range. Giving it a damage type with the goal of it doing more damage and being less likely to be resisted by many mobs (and PCs) would create balance issues that didn't exist previously.

When it comes to the PvE application of entreatment, the issue with mobs eventually running back to fighting what they were originally the next turn has to do with the ai that we have for them, I'm afraid.

Overall, the class itself had a ton of perks to it that make it worth having for many different reasons. And if you have multille KCs in a party together? It gets pretty intense. Having motive to go to level five in KC is similar to having a reason to go to 5in master scout, or six in Shadowdancer- that's where the perks are, and relatively speaking, that's not a huge investment to make for a large amount of builds-- it's not hard to build with. I've seen Cleric/KCs, Sorc/Wiz/KCs, SD/KCs, Bard/KCs, Paladick/KCs Shifter/KCs, Even druid/KCs.-- point is, the class is versitile, and almost any class can find a use for it.

Dont get me wrong, input about improving the class is welcome, I simply disagree with your suggestions :)

Edit: phrasing and iPotato typos <.<

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Last edited by Raua on Tue, Nov 14 2017, 12:35 PM, edited 1 time in total.

 
      
KnightOfKelemvor
 
PostPosted: Tue, Nov 14 2017, 12:33 PM 

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Mushidoz wrote:
KnightOfKelemvor wrote:
Some more damage from BoS would be nice but I still think that entreatment is what should get fixed first and foremost.


Doesn't this cause flat-foot on those affected, as well as cancelling spell casting? I think it's fine..


I maybe should have clarified that I'm only talking about pve. For pvp it's a good tool. But as it's supposed to force mobs to focus the KC, wich it doesn't, I think it need some tweaking in how it function in pve.

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Mushidoz
 
PostPosted: Tue, Nov 14 2017, 22:19 PM 

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Raua wrote:
Thing is, what you propose to change the damage type of barricade of swords to has quite a few mobs that resist it as well, though less players. Even if it was a common resistance, I don't see the point in changing it. furthermore, it is an unlimited use, permanent, undispellable aura that hase a rather large range. Giving it a damage type with the goal of it doing more damage and being less likely to be resisted by many mobs (and PCs) would create balance issues that didn't exist previously.

When it comes to the PvE application of entreatment, the issue with mobs eventually running back to fighting what they were originally the next turn has to do with the ai that we have for them, I'm afraid.

Overall, the class itself had a ton of perks to it that make it worth having for many different reasons. And if you have multille KCs in a party together? It gets pretty intense. Having motive to go to level five in KC is similar to having a reason to go to 5in master scout, or six in Shadowdancer- that's where the perks are, and relatively speaking, that's not a huge investment to make for a large amount of builds-- it's not hard to build with. I've seen Cleric/KCs, Sorc/Wiz/KCs, SD/KCs, Bard/KCs, Paladick/KCs Shifter/KCs, Even druid/KCs.-- point is, the class is versitile, and almost any class can find a use for it.

Dont get me wrong, input about improving the class is welcome, I simply disagree with your suggestions :)

Edit: phrasing and iPotato typos <.<


I do not disagree that it's a great versatile class. My problem is mostly with

1 ) everything and their mother in pvm automatically has soak that will make the dmg return completely useless starting from the Khem minotaur and up

2 ) I think it's too heavy on the motivation to get level 5 in the class.


That's why the suggestions I made on the skills scaled more on the charisma side than on the KC levels instead. Getting a level in the class gives you a new aura to play with - that in itself is already incredible. It offers versatility, new bonuses, etc. Making it so that it auto buffs some of the other auras?.. Dunno, feel like charisma should cover that aspect of the class.

As for the barricade aura.. I mean, seriously, if a Khem minotaur makes it deal 0 dmg, then that aura automatically becomes a pvp thing against people who don't drink a ghostly potion or have a spell alike..... I was not trying to have it deal more damage a pop (on the contrary, my version deals 5 dmg less) but rather at least that it CAN deal the damage it's been intended/ designed to do.

Don't get me wrong here, I actually love the idea of that class and for the most part it's pretty spot on in its application.

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Naivatkal
 
PostPosted: Tue, Nov 14 2017, 22:53 PM 

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The point of classes is the more you take the better stuff you get.

There's no need to change Barricade, it's fine as is. It's supposed to be a damage boon early on, then the resistances are the important stuff later on. Adding more damage isn't important.

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PaladinOfSune
 
PostPosted: Wed, Nov 15 2017, 18:58 PM 

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While it's not possible to give enhancement to physical damage spells or abilities, the fact Barricade of Swords is affected by DR is intentional anyway.

  • It's an ability from a class which has a maximum of 5 levels - it's not meant to be a game changing ability, and certainly not on par with a "proper" damage shield like acid sheath
  • It stacks with other damage shields, which is something no "proper" damage shield does
  • It offers a damage resistance on top of the damage shield
  • The KC can freely change between the auras as strategy necessitates - if the enemies you're fighting have DR, use something else

An infinite duration, impossible-to-resist damage shield to everyone in a massive radius with a damage resistance buff on top of it is just not going to happen.

Even though the class hasn't really been touched since its introduction save a tweak or two, I think it's in a fine place other than Entreatment, which I agree needs fixing when used on mobs. The AI really doesn't play nice with it, unfortunately, and it might just have to get a rethink sometime down the line.

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InquisitorBiologos
 
PostPosted: Wed, Nov 15 2017, 21:53 PM 

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PaladinOfSune wrote:
Even though the class hasn't really been touched since its introduction save a tweak or two, I think it's in a fine place other than Entreatment, which I agree needs fixing when used on mobs. The AI really doesn't play nice with it, unfortunately, and it might just have to get a rethink sometime down the line.


I'm loving the KC class pretty much as it is as I use Medicant for +3 regen and the +25 heal skill on my healer tank.

That said whilst it is "only" a 5 level PRC so is Harper Scout and that seems quite powerful, also the KC requirements are quite high for any non Discipline/Feat class so I would suggest the class ~may~ have a little more room for a little more power for the full 5 levels to buff its support role without threatening those all to loved pvp monsters.

I'm thinking as I go here so keep in mind these are rough and ready ideas more to generate thought than as demands for change.

:arrow: BoS to give a boost to Taunt skill +5 per Charisma modifier per level of Knight Commander (the same formula as Medicant does for Heal)

:arrow: Make Entreaty unlimited use but on a cool down of 'X' with each level of Knight Commander reducing it a little.

:arrow: Give Vehement Charge a boost to Tumble skill (again using the Medicant forumla), as I understand the skill only ranks taken in the skill up to 30 provide AC benefits but the skill total is used to help avoid attacks when moving about. This would seem to therefor fit the skill thematically, you are easier to knockdown if hit but are a little harder to hit whilst moving potentially.


 
      
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