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Welcome to the Bad Days at Hemomancy, what can I do for ya?
Wizard copers, you're not alone. We're joining you at the local Arcane Bar too!
We'll start by addressing what causes this thread to be made in the first place. In September of 2023. Hemomancers receive their first real nerf that really made them buckle under the weight. While Auto-Quicken II was removed. Hemomancers could live without it for they have haste. They took away Planar Conduits, and Hellball from Hemomancer and it really hurt their damage output potential. Then they increased our Red Harvest's cooldown timer. Making the gameplay of Hemomancer far more difficult than it already had to be. As the player that made Comprehending the Hemomancer Guide that you could find on wiki-class. It is already a staggering challenge to play this class with sound mind.
But truthfully if you were going to play a hemomancer, you wouldn't have sound mind to begin with. Not with a class that have sweeping changes.
When I originally made my Noble Kobold Hemomancer before this september update. I remembered being declined the feat-change, and I had to hold off until I get another minor award to remake the kobold. I had to level from 18-19~ down to 3, then level all the way up to 25 until stopping to see if further crazy changes would occur.
Truthfully it landed on the money.
Crazy changes did in fact, occur.
Even now, as time of writing this. I have to plan for third remake of the same noble kobold. Of the same class. Because the DMs will not offer re-statting. Because the DMs will not offer feat-changes. So only solution is to remake the character again to adapt to new changes.
So what are the biggest outliners that really change compared to September Hemomancer change?
The March Hemomancers change brought us:
One less Level 7 Known Spell.
Global Focus base cost increase.
New spells that might not really be all that appealing. While we also receive some additions to our spellbook that do look better (Like Irongut.)
Red Harvest's AC lowered, meaning that all hemomancers will get their full AC amount at 24 hard Charisma rather than 26.
Themed discounts. Which is barely going to be taken advantage of as Hemomancers don't really take more than one or two spells on this list.
Signature Spells to become feat. Currently the fact that spell components are not consumed when casting these Signature Feats is actually a bug!
So effectively, Hemomancers are in very, very, very rough shape.
Whatsnot with the current Casters receiving the beatdown, harsher and harsher. Hemomancers always had it kind of bad for long time, with no ability to actually do proper summoning outside of conducting necromancy or using blood homunculus. They're immensely reliant on using darkness spell if they're hoping to do solo contents. And or dependent on a mundane to protect them so they could contribute..
Or they just won't be able to because their spell repertoire would be countered just because they're innate caster, and they can't do anything if they go into an area where enemy outright shrugs off your attacks.
Not only do Hemomancers also have to manage their focus, they also have to play around with spell components. While the change allowed the Hemomancers a chance to save up spell component at certain levels. They're still subjected to the agonizing pain especially since they have to cast large volume of these spells.
So without solid summons, Hemomancers should be capable of putting more damage casting. But instead, compared to Warlock. They do worse than Warlocks damage-wise.
Hemomancers doesn't have any kind of advantage over warlocks for most part, save for the fact that they could cast two different spells twenty time before running out of focus whereas Warlock would have to Eld-Blast after using a pact spell as it goes on cooldown.
It's really frustrating how most of new thematic spells that Hemomancers got is situational, or outright useless damage-wise. Like Transmute Blood looked good on paper until you realize that the damages are also halved. Blood Locust deals relatively low bleed damage for what is practically 7th level spell. (Hell it averages to half a damage compared to Withering Ray.) And it also cost spell components to cast!? REALLY?!
Lot of these new spells look appealing but their damage output is subpar, weak, or just lamer compared to even lower level spellslots. And even if you nerf Withering Ray again. It'll still be preferred to something situational where I can't use it against undeads, golems, slimes, etc.
It's very frustrating considering that there's no workaround, and you're in unfortunate twist.
Regardless there's also some issues like Withering Ray is supposed to cost .75 additional focus. But it still cost 1.0. Like it felt like this balance was kind of rushed, and penned in a hurry.
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