Passive Node Ideas - Acolyte

Acolyte
, ,
39

Hey there Elvenchakra,

just for full tranparency. Shtrak, the person you replied to has passed away a month ago.
Just wanted to inform you, so you don’t wait for an answer for a more active discussion on this, since you replied with a question.

I don’t have any opinion on your particular suggestion but just felt the need to inform you about this, especially because he was a very well knwon and respected member of the community and I am 100% sure he would very gladly start a discussion with you about that suggestion you made.

40

I heard about them passing away, but didn’t notice that that was who had made that post :frowning: . Wasn’t necessarily expecting a response from them anyway; just wanted to continue the discussion about reaper form.

1 Like
41

Quoting myself, because I said a lot of this in another post; while I was talking about Reaper Form in specific, that thought holds true throughout:

Additionally, replacing Wands of the Fallen and Symbol of Decay with Melee-focused nodes would also help the feel of Harvest and Reap being proper melee skills, not gimmicks.

42

Agreed on Reap, other than being a very good movement skill, there is nothing you can do with it.

But did you just called Harvest a gimmick?!

Not sure what your definition of gimmick is, but Harvest is most certainly not one :smiling_imp:

43

Gimmick is probably the wrong word - but a skill unlike any other in the toolkit (i.e. the only Melee Skill for Acolyte, excepting Reap, which has it’s own problems), that is self-contained doesn’t feel right. Not being able to scale Melee Damage, and minimal Attack Speed or Movement speed within the generic mastery tree for Acolyte, and even Lich specifically, makes it feel wrong.
I’m all for having more Melee skills in Acolyte - I miss my old Deathknight days, and Dark Knight from FFXIV more recently - but it’s currently out of place.

Theory time: If Reaper Form had nodes to make it a skill that defaulted us to Low Life (perhaps as a trade off for no longer forcing us out except by being hit really hard…), and Reap became the default “Finisher Skill” for a Melee Reaper (gathered from it’s high-damage, high-leech on-hit effects from the current Reaper Form tree), then Harvest would need to fill the role of the middle-ground skill. While it has plenty of Critical Hit, damage versus Cursed Enemies (noting that tree needs reworked…) and even Health Recovery, it has minimal options for adding Increased Damage as an axis - beyond a couple affixes on a weapon, that are directly competing with any other method of dealing damage within Lich. (+Melee Necrotic/Physical Damage and %Increased Necrotic/Physical/Melee Damage; which, if I understand the way Harvest does Intelligence scaling correctly, you want %increasedMelee and %whicheverElementYouPicked)

And if Harvest wasn’t meant to be a middle-ground damaging skill, then what was? That skill would be missing (or Reap needs some serious reworking…) in order to make that build flow feel better. And yes, I tried some Harvest Lich builds - it feels amazingly fast, but erratic. It’s almost like it has two competing Finisher skills, a myriad of on-kill effects that don’t help with bosses, and too much leech to benefit from having low-life.

Probably not the right space for this rant, but anyway - let us have Deathknight Lich!

44

And how about +5% attack and cast speed per mastery point (max +40% from a 8 mastery points spent node) when recently casted a curse, for Warlock?

And how about add a Elemental Frailty curse, as Warlock curse skill, to reduce elemental/fire/cold/lightning resistances, for a level 10 Warlock mastery skill?

You know, Warlock needs more love.

(Can someone else also further suggest skills and nodes for Warlock be at game, please?)

45

Acolyte used to have Mark for Death as a skill with a skill tree but it wasn’t very interesting so they got rid of it. I’d be surprised if they added in a less powerful version of it.

Warlock needs to be created and released…

1 Like
46

Ok.
We need to brainstorm until devs create and release Warlock.
And we need devs to also create and release Falconer and Runemaster aswell.
Do you have some suggestions to share in regards of what active and passive skills Warlock should have, as an advanced mastery from Acolyte who relies on curses?

47

Yeah, that’s fair and given the description of the Warlock is that they’re curse-based, her having more curses is reasonable, I’d just think that they should be more interesting than Amp Damage (unless you can come up with an interesting tree for it).

48

With MP around the corner, I don’t think a curse focused mastery would feel as weak as pre 0.9.0. Being able to slowdown a boss, or to increase the damage it takes will be better the more player are in-game. If you’ve ever played Monster Hunter, think Hunting Horn : atrocious clear speed solo, but in a 3-4 squad, one buff can increase everyone’s damage by 25% (on top of what you were dealing yourself).

Aside from that, I could see a sort of gameplay for Warlock where you can stack different curses, but also stack the same curse on top of itself to improve its effect (like basic → minor → major → …) and use a purge-like ability that deal damage based on the number of curses/their tier for a big burst in damage. The flow of combat would be interesting as a nerfed boss would suddenly go back to its full power at the cost of you dealing serious damage.

2 Likes
49

Agreed.

50

I really like passives that offer alternate ways of playing and have multiple uses. One potential one that I think can be used in multiple ways is as follows:

Acolyte Passive, linked to “Mania of Mortality”/“Unnatural Preservation” (I think this could benefit all three classes and obviously fits with the theme of these passives):
(7/7) Death from Life - Immediately after using a potion, lose 10% of current health (per point); (5 point bonus) 35% of Potion Health Converted to Ward

This lets you nuke up to 70% of your health on a potion use and could enable many different playstyle benefits:

  • Low Life. One annoying thing about playing low life is you REALLY need to get some “Potion Health Converted to Ward” otherwise accidently running over potions hurt you. You can pick this up on equipment/idols and I’d usually aim for 50%+ to feel good. The 5 point bonus is on par with a T5 prefix roll making this passive not a full solution, but easing gearing requirements. The health damage is also helpful.

  • Hybrid Regen Based Vessel Of Strife. Vessel of strife regen builds can benefit off of this because it will give them a ward boost while allowing their regen to kick in on the life. Vessel of strife builds have great recovery when damage is large enough to remove both ward and health as you double dip on the regen; if the damage only removes most of your ward, they become more vulnerable as they lose the advantage. This lets you use potions in a tactical manner when you lose a lot of ward but not health.

  • Lich Build Damage Boost. This lets you use a potion to give you an on-demand damage boost. The ward gained could also better support the lich ward passives which I think are today heavily underutilized.

  • Death Seal Enabler. While the ward is completely useless here, this passive could allow you to basically set your health to a lower amount and be fairly tunable by how many passive points you invest in it. There is the deadlock passive in the Death Seal tree, but this gives an alternate way to play potentially letting you invest in other ways in the Death Seal tree. I think 7 passive points for saving the Death seal passives is probably a fair trade off.

  • Ward builds that rely on combat. There are some builds that rely on getting their survivability from combat (e.g. Sacrifice Skeleton Mages). They can be fairly squishy prior to engaging in combat like a boss fight. This node would give you a tactical potion to pre-buff you defenses before the boss.

  • Ethereal Revenant or Damage Based Procs - If you make the health loss count as “damage” you might be able to use it to reliably proc the Ethereal Revenant nodes and build around it. You could even link the passive to the Ethereal Revenant as an alternate build path to this passive.

51

Every boss Necromancer in every game, movie or anime has one thing in common…

A bone dragon.

Basically a massive epic creature with a limited duration and a really long CD something like 60 sec duration (long enough to make a difference in a single fight) and a 1hr CD (something that must be used tactically)

There’s a bazzilian ways to do this so I wont even get into suggesting how formulas and such would work. Could be total mana based, or could be more powerful based on total minion (accross all currently summoned) minions HP etc etc etc.

But Thematically every Necromancer of note needs a bone dragon. Plus the idea of having a huge dragon emerge from the ground (overlord style), fly in from the air or fall in like a meteor during a boss fight is way too cool not to ask for.

52

  • %physical of dot [warlock] is converted to ward

  • %dot damage [tag] leach to health

  • % movespeed gained per [N/10 stacks of dot] max 10% gain

  • 10-20% infernal shade, will become infernal wraith [Experimental]

  • 10-20% infernal shade, will become putrid wraith [Experimental]
    *** if player runs waithlord, converted infernal shade, becomes wraithlord

  • 3-8% for infernal shade to summon fire golems [hellfire exclusive]

  • +3 to cathonic fissure

  • +3 to infernal shade

  • chaos bolt auto fire for 8s on input [+80% mana cost per bolt] upon casting profane viel [5s cooldown], Experimental

  • +1 to soul feast, 100% of soul feast is converted to fire/ ice [Experimental]

53

“Seven Deadly Sins”
Curse Duration 7/7 points - 140% increased curse duration.
5 passives allocated - 1% chance on hit to apply a random Curse on Enemy.

“Necromancer’s Hex” - 5/5 points (no stat boost, just requires 5 points to unlock)
You can no longer cast spells except minion spells.
Your minions cannot be damaged.

“Necromancer’s Burden” - 5/5 points (no stat boost, just requires 5 points to unlock)
Your attack, cast, and movement speed attributes on gear no longer affect you, but affect your minions instead.

“Sisterhood United” - 1/1 point
All of your ailment chance is converted to the ailment damage type shared with your highest uncapped resistance.

Other instances are converted at 50% normal effectiveness.

“Give and Take” - 5/5 (Warlock)
Ailments of your highest ailement chance on hit have increased duration equal to 250% duration. (50% per point)
All other ailments have 250% reduced duration.

“Bleed the Rock” 10/10
Bleed chance on hit 300% for you and your minions (30% per level).
5/5 bonus - You and your minions deal no critical hits.

“Elder Knowledge” - 3/3 points
3% to all resistances per curse on enemy (1% per point).

54

Necromancer needs some love and diversity for builds.

Lets take inspiration in the Lethal Concentration unique:
% of your XX stats (not necessarily all stats, but nice selection) apply to your minions. Or certain type of minions. Or different stats to different minions to open up non standard builds.
This would also allow necromancer to stack stats beneficial for the character itself, not suck in survivability and damage, instead of just buffing minions by gear. This would lead to more active necromancer builds.

Minion type specialist nodes:
As long as you control only 1 family of minions (skeletons, mages, golems, wraiths, abomination and all their subclasses like archers, warriors, rogues, vanguards etc) you get massive buff for them and yourself.
Again, this would open up build options by giving us skill slots for our own spells and abilities and would lead to more active gameplay.

“Aspect nodes”:
You become impersonation of certain necromancy aspects, only one aspect node can be picked at any time.
Rough examples:
Avatar of Chill of Death: you are only able to deal cold damage and summon cold-based minions. Aura of Decay becomes cold skill, bone curse becomes cold skill, you and your minions deal XX more cold damage etc
Avatar of Restless Fury: you burn with the desire for vengeance of the fallen, XX skills become fire skills, you and your minions have permanent fire aura around you (scales), dread shade converted to fire, you can cast infernal shade on yourself (with minion buffing nodes) etc
Avatar of Undying: the dead under your command never stay dead for long and ressurect after XX seconds on their own, massively boosted health and defense capabilities, XX bonuses when using shield etc

Transcend Life:
Your mana pool becomes your health pool. While you have any mana, you cannot heal in any way. Your healing effects DO NOT convert to mana restore.
You transcended your physical form and became ethereal wraith. Your necrotic damage is massively boosted. All other forms of damage stats and ailments convert to necrotic and damned chance. You get XX damage reduction ( or physical damage reduction, being ghost and all that) and XX chance to dodge. XX chance to fear.

55

TBF, this already exists in the Warlock tree & the Lich tree (as long as the DoT has the spell tag which a few do, but obviously not the main ones).

These exist and even go up to +4!! :scream:

56

From my memory its only available on some slots like helmets and relics. And its a super rare or something, i dont have any of the shards in a reliable number. I think having them available as experiemental options woukd be great.

My build for duel split screen cathonic fissure needs a +10 to fissure. From my knowledege i can only get +6, as spine of mala does not function as i need it to.

57

Yes, that’s by design. Helm, chest & relic are all class-specific slots so they get class-specific prefixes. The +skill prefixes aren’t super rare, but there are a lot of class-specific prefixes that they are competing with.

Yeah, part of the challenge is dealing with the skill point scarcity. Some skills have ways round this by using uniques with either specific +skills or varying levels of generic +skills (eg, +Acolyte skills, +fire skills, +elemental skills, etc).

58

I think that Lich could use easier access to endurance, to better enable the wardless and reduced health play style encouraged by Death Seal, especially the Death Lock node. This is a bit of a wish-list from me based on my most recent character, but I think the nodes still have general application due to inherent bonuses for missing health and health-draining effects.

The italicized numbers are estimates based on what I’ve observed in other passive trees, if anyone reading would like to suggest adjustments, please feel free.

Stubborn Palpitations - Maximum 8 points. Located 30 points into the tree, where Death Seal is unlocked.
+2% Endurance per point, +40 Stun Avoidance per point.

The main intention here is to allow the player to compensate for inexact endurance affixes. If an acolyte has between 44%-58% endurance from equipment, this can let them reach 60% without overcapping excessively.
Stun avoidance is here to address a problem I’ve encountered using a endurance. The lower damage resistance of health above the endurance threshold can make it easy to clear in large chunks, making the acolyte easy to stun. Normally the usage of ward would reduce the need for stun avoidance, but someone relying on endurance likely doesn’t have much (if any) ward.

Calcified Heart - Prerequisite of 1 point in Stubborn Palpitations, Maximum of 8 points. Located 35 points into the tree (Elixir of Death, Symbol of Decay).
+6 Endurance Threshold per point, +20 armor per point.
At 5 points: Gain 5% of maximum health as endurance threshold.

This is intended to under perform slightly compared to Primalist Druid’s “Hideskin”, which is at the very end of their tree. Primalist has no ward support in their passive trees, while a Lich would have both options due to this node.
% of health gained as endurance threshold is a powerful effect, so it’s gated behind a minimum investment with a cap on the the total amount available.
I’m not certain what secondary effect would be best on this node, the armor is kind of arbitrary here.
One typical target point is 33% of a character’s health being inside the endurance threshold, to match the Deadlock node in Death Seal. Right now 5 points in this along with a top-rolled revenant plate (6% of health gained as endurance threshold) gets a character very close. I’m not sure if this is too convenient or character specific, but it’s not like 33% of health is a universal cap.

Edit: I forgot that the summaries / spoilers force everything into all-caps. Sorry, the post is long now but at least it isn’t shouting.

1 Like