Divine Synergy

[ImWithThisGuy]

Hello everyone!

I've been doing some thinking about the fairly recent Divine Synergy ability granted by 21 paladin. I rolled up a character with the idea, and I'm a little curious what others think of it. As far as my own experience.. I would have to say I find it pretty terrible! I'll be honest, I don't PvP much if at all, and I fully recognize the power it is capable of; being able to save a round (or half round, technically) and get both casts simultaneously. However, I've noticed that it also gives several very large weaknesses.

First among all is how quickly turn undead uses are used. While you have Divine Synergy, it spends both turn undead uses for each half. At best, most paladins will get 6 total uses of Divine Synergy. Its faster, absolutely, but it also runs out faster. Any Paladin that has access to it will have less total time of active ability than a paladin that doesn't have access to it. In PvE especially, this is a huge drag. And in PvP, it's highly punishable.

Furthermore, a paladin without Divine Synergy will simply haste up, and spend only a tiny bit more time getting it going. (half a round at that point) They then have a total of 12+ uses of whichever they choose, as needed, on demand. Needless to say, that's double! Most of the time, Divine Shield is far more important that Divine Might, and getting twice as many uses is a painful comparison. Once you account for the regenerating Turn Undead uses, they ironically have more Divine Synergy than a 21 paladin does.

But its more than that as well, because in order to get the Synergy, you sacrifice many class levels of other feat classes like CoT or Fighter. As a pretty straight-forward melee character, taking 21 paladin levels leaves very, very little feat room. Once you consider that 3 of their 7-8 pre epic feats are spent on power attack, divine shield, and divine might, I would argue that they suffer more than the rewards offer.

But I want to know what the community thinks; Is it too scary to consider any changes/buffs to Divine Synergy? If not, what changes would be reasonable? As far as myself, I would say that giving Extra Turning to any paladin with 21 or more levels is a good start to this, because it represents a hard cap, while still giving a few extra uses. That, and/or maybe a toggle command to turn it on or off, so you're not forced to eat through all your uses at once. I'm not sure how I feel about making Synergy only cost 1 turn undead per use, so I'll leave that discussion to the community.

Also, I think I like the name "Divine Augmentation" much more than "Divine Synergy".

[Dr. B]

That, and/or maybe a toggle command to turn it on or off, so you're not forced to eat through all your uses at once.

This is the way.

Also, give it to high level Blackguards too.

[a shrouded figure]

I have to agree with this feedback. I would comment tho that if it goes to blackguards, I would recommend starting with (and potentially tuning from here) synergy at 19 blackguard. It’s a really powerful ability and black guards are already highly rewarded for going to 16, I don’t personally think this should be a free benefit to every blackguard on the server.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

As far as I'm concerned, this is an ability that can use the bard song refresh treatment. Yes that makes it better in pve (so what, its not nearly the most powerful pve thing a player can have) but it makes no difference in pvp at all.

[AstralUniverse]

When this change went live I thought it's nice but I was thinking that out of the assumption that you only use 1 turn undead charge to cast both shield and might now. That, in my honest opinion, should be how it works. Blackguard should get it at lvl 11.