ELEMENTAL AVATAR PGCC FEEDBACK

[Svrtr]

ELEMENTAL AVATAR

Requirements:

• Epic divine caster
• 24 spellcraft
• Ability to cast 9th level spells (note: Normally epic spells do not require this, but for balance concerns this will be required while testing on the PGCC)

Upon taking the feat and slotting it, you acquire a new 'stance' akin to dwarven defender. Upon activating it you are 'wreathed in elements' gain a plethora of bonus stats whose values vary and depend on your active elemental stream, and all of the caster's summons are dismissed (and continue to be while active).

• The stats are as follows:
  +4 shield AC (-air becomes 6, -earth becomes 2; Levels in monk negate the AC gain)
  +4 damage resistance (-air becomes 2, -earth becomes 6)
  +d6 damage dependent on element (-fire becomes d8, -water becomes d4)
  +2 regeneration (-fire becomes 1, -water becomes 4)

  • 2d4 damage per round in an AoE
  • -40 to hide and MS while active
  • This spell is currently exclusive with shapechange.

• This feat does not work with divine shield

• This feat does not work with defensive stance pending a new stance system to come with monk

DAMAGE ASSOCIATION WITH EACH ELEMENT:

Fire - Fire
Earth - Bludgeoning
Water - Cold
Air - Electric

DESIGN NOTES AND CONCERNS:

• The reason for shield AC is twofold:

  • One is to reduce too much AC bloat, with shield using shamans and magic vestment users only gaining 2 and 1 AC respectively and only with the air stream.
  • The other is to give a more competitive edge to dual wielders, 2h users, and zen archers who do not dip monk/vigilante

• The reason for shapeshifted form exclusivity is simple: Plantshape. While shenanigans could be pulled in general and would be
  bothersome, plantshape is an outlier. I hope to find a way to let at least monolith shape druids use this without being shapeshift exclusive, but such might need to wait for further down the line.

• The bonus 2d3 damage applies to fists, melee weapons, and bows all. Normally such damage increase effects cause the damage to be true damage, ie it ignores DI and DR, but thanks to some clever work by Zadi this damage respects DI and DR like normal.

• The stance mechanics of this uses a new system. It is a stance with boons akin to defensive stance on earthkin defender. Due both to this and worry about excessive regen stacking defensive stance does not work with this spell

• The damage on earth is bludgeoning. While it was initially going to be acid, ideas about what how strong or weak the DR combined with the thematics of earth and potential for an ooze stream with acid damage have made it bludgeoning. I am not certain on this remaining but this is what PGCC testing will start with.

[kirisin]

The aoe damage harms neutral characters in its current implimentation.
This could cause issues with a number of things regarding party combat as well as if you walk past town guards.
I might suggest this gets looked into.

[kirisin]

If you drop the stance by recasting it the VFX for the previous stream used remains.
For example, Cast Air stream avatar, and the cloud remains, Recast to drop the stance wait the time and change the stream it remains up, recast the new stream and both VFX show up.

[kirisin]

Regarding the damage from the aura
In my testing it seemed that people were takeing :
two ticks, one tick one tick, two ticks, one tick one tick repeating
Im not certain about the intended implimentation but thats what im seeing.

[stop bullying bards]

Feedback!
Unsure if intentional: After resting 24 seconds are needed, after pressing the ability to activate it. 3 tests had it not semi-through cooldown after ending/resting -- but would just start the 24 seconds after trying to start the ability

Currently VFX are stacking between changing streams without resting

The persistent VFX seem to be triggering the most recent Elemental Avatar's effects multiple times -- and is part of the reason for damage ticks working unintentionally:
Explained: If you cycle frost, water, air, fire -- when you go near something after using the fire stream, you will have 4 ticks of 2d4 damage happen a round instead of one.

From limited quick testing, fire and air felt great to use. Not sure about the numbers given to each of them yet, water felt underwhelming compared to the other three variants of it.

[ReverentBlade]

This is a death trap in end game PvE, if you're considering a battle cleric using a two-hander. Most PvE mobs have some sort of elemental resistance, so you're going to be doing not very much extra damage, but you're still going to pull aggro on the entire crowd and get obliterated. The AC and regen aren't going to help keep you alive compared to being behind conduit summons, especially if you're using Divine Shield anyway. The survivability factors need to be -much- more enticing to make me want to pick this up.

[kirisin]

Regarding the damage from the aura
In my testing it seemed that people were takeing :
two ticks, one tick one tick, two ticks, one tick one tick repeating
Im not certain about the intended implimentation but thats what im seeing.

Regarding this
Its most certainly from the dropping stance issue.
Its causeing double ticks for some reason.

[Svrtr]

This is a death trap in end game PvE, if you're considering a battle cleric using a two-hander. Most PvE mobs have some sort of elemental resistance, so you're going to be doing not very much extra damage, but you're still going to pull aggro on the entire crowd and get obliterated. The AC and regen aren't going to help keep you alive compared to being behind conduit summons, especially if you're using Divine Shield anyway. The survivability factors need to be -much- more enticing to make me want to pick this up.

Keep too in mind these are all undispellable buffs, and so while many rage against the problem of PvP, it does too need to be kept in mind. I am of the mind this is perhaps on the weaker side, but in part by design, as it is easier to start weak and buff than the opposite. First on my mind will likely be increasing the regen on water, but its not even been a couple hours.

[Acina]

Kenji, if you are reading this. Please let us Warpriest have this!

[Zanithar]

In reviewing the notes (not tested on PGCC), might I suggest that rather than restricting a feat make them counter toggles.

If you hit Divine Shield, toggle out of stance.
If you toggle the stance, remove Divine Shield.

It is a QoL thing related to ease of hitting emergency buttons. It accomplishes the same goal but enables a better degree of flexibility.

Also, my +1 for this on war priest, it seems like it is screams "add me to warpriest and seeker".

I have seen some rumblings in discord related to the stealth impacts particularly on Seeker. It may be worth considering this as part of the new Monk stance stuff. I would not go so far as to suggest that toggling stealth disables this and toggling this disables stealth but perhaps the ability to turn this type of behaviour on or off per character?

Anyway, love this idea. The implementation of epic spells specific to melee casters is awesome and it would be very cool to see more of it epic summons are really powerful and sacrificing them for melee capability on melee casters is something I am very much behind. For exisiting melee paths that exclude summons, it is worth pointing out their epic feats are VERY busy so adding this would bear a cost but that cost could also be extended if necessary for balance purposes.

Transmutation Wizards next please

[kirisin]

Dropping the stance still causes damage from the aura to apply.
however the other benefits seem to drop.

[hackymysak]

As previously mentioned dropping the stance to apply another seems to double up the damage ticks. Also the earth stream appears to do magical damage rather than bludgeoning according to the combat log.

[Dreams]

Why divine only? If Druids/Shamans can cast this, why not also add Wizard/Sorcerer?

[Svrtr]

Why divine only? If Druids/Shamans can cast this, why not also add Wizard/Sorcerer?

Put simply, one of the cornerstone design ideas of this feat to serve as a divine mirror to EMA. This feat combined with EMA would represent

5 dodge
5 armor
5 deflection
5 natural
6 shield

AC all undispellable along with DR and regen, and could become excessive. On top, divine casters as a whole are notably worse than arcane casters due to their spellbook, and this feat was designed with marital characters in mind for melee/unarmed/ranged and only SS can do that for arcane and is excessive in the eyes of many

[Naghast]

okay, so, instantly i love the spell, bc i hate summons, but one bit of feedback here is-

can the aura PLEASE be made party friendly

i don't want to keep chipping away on my friends by just being near them

[Zadi]

Hello there! I'm mostly responsible for the spell being bugged LMAO. It's been in the pipeline for a good few months now and right before going on PGCC i had to make a rewrite of the spell, so a lot of bugs i had tested for months ago i see are now back in. Keep the reports coming, and most of it should be fixed by the next time we push an update to the PGCC. If you have questions regarding stats/numbers, please refer them to Svrtr. Thank you

[Ithalan]

-double post-

[Ithalan]

Keep too in mind these are all undispellable buffs, and so while many rage against the problem of PvP, it does too need to be kept in mind. I am of the mind this is perhaps on the weaker side, but in part by design, as it is easier to start weak and buff than the opposite. First on my mind will likely be increasing the regen on water, but its not even been a couple hours.

Battle casters are usually loaded up with so many dispellable buffs already that EA not being so doesn't seem like it will make much of a difference to me. Dispels and Breaches getting through will continue to ruin the day of a battle caster regardless, and EA still being there afterward won't make any difference.

I do like the idea of Elemental Avatar as an alternative to defaulting to Planar Conduit, but right now it just feels way too anemic, especially offensively, in comparison. Some of the damage bonuses being outright useless depending on what your weapon is already enchanted with also felt a bit shitty, but not sure what can be done about that.

I'd also like if the persistent sound fx while EA is active could be toned down or removed. It was getting on my nerves after 10 minutes already, and I dread the idea of having to listen to it constantly for hours on end.

[Tarkus the dog]

I think that all the elemental types should give the same bonuses, or at the very least you should be able to choose the bonus you want without changing the elemental type. For example, air is easily the strongest overall- Water is great if you want PvE comfiness and earth is good if you're going for EDR. Fire kind of sucks in my opinion, it's just an extra 1 damage and when you compare that to having more ac, regen or more DR it makes sense. I'd personally be more inclined to take another element due to the mechanical bonuses even if I wanted to play a priest of Kossuth and I don't think that's fun.

[kirisin]

Hello there! I'm mostly responsible for the spell being bugged LMAO. It's been in the pipeline for a good few months now and right before going on PGCC i had to make a rewrite of the spell, so a lot of bugs i had tested for months ago i see are now back in. Keep the reports coming, and most of it should be fixed by the next time we push an update to the PGCC. If you have questions regarding stats/numbers, please refer them to Svrtr. Thank you

Hopefully there has veen some usefulness from this.

Overall noce work

[L I C E]

From my testing this seems massively underpowered. On something like a normal battle cleric planar conduit is still vastly superior, and on something like seeker you already have insane shield AC if you dip vig. On the seeker/rogue/ranger build which lacks shield AC, the +6 from air stream is nice, but the aura and the stealth malus plus the 1d6 elemental damage doesn't provide anything useful. In the case of seeker, vig dip is still superior and in the case of blceric, planar conduit is still vastly better.

I'd say maybe up the shield AC from 4 to 5 for fire and water, 7 for air, 3 for earth. Then it has a chance of competition. While I don't think you want this feat to replace vestment tower shields completely, ultimately it needs to be close or it is redundant. Blceric uses a vestment tower shield anyway in most cases and seeker can just vig dip for 9-10 shield AC anyway on DW builds, so it definitely needs an increase.

The aura itself draws aggro from NPCs you're fighting so if you're not being guardbotted you're never getting sneaks on a seeker. For bcleric, this is also pretty devastating if you're not tanked up. I would really only take this for the RP currently. Definitely needs a little buff and some QoL. Maybe something similar to ele strike instead of an AoE aura? Where every round your first melee hit will do some extra effect or whatever. Ironically though, this would be great for a tank build that doesn't need the AC or the damage, only the ability to keep aggro. That's just my thoughts. Cool spell and cool idea, but right now? Very weak.

[Svrtr]

FIRST BALANCE PASS

After internal and external discussion, the first balance pass will be the following pending when we can get it updated and pushed through (might not be til Monday but we'll see)

REGEN SCALING

• Scaling changed to 0/3/6

AURA DAMAGE

• Aura damage changed to 2d6
• Aura no longer harms allies nor neutral enemies (more a fix)

WATER STREAM CHANGES

• Water damage type changed to slashing
• Water aura now applies half its regen values to allies in the aura

FIRE STREAM CHANGES

• Fire damage bonus increased from d8 to d10
• Fire aura damage changed from 2d6 to 2d10

NOTES OF CONCERN

When compared to planar conduit, its fair to say this is weaker for solo PvE. However given the buff is undispellable, its likewise in my mind as of the writing ok for it to be weaker in PvE in exchange for having a bit more power in PvP. I am amenable to change, and don't intend to just ignore concerns, but must view this through the lens still of its potential in both PvE and PvP

[Thelight1]

Would it be possible for Elementalist specifically to get this on their spell list? Thematically, it fits them and it’s be a nice ability for them to have now that many of their summons are gone.

[Amnesy]

Would it be possible for Elementalist specifically to get this on their spell list? Thematically, it fits them and it’s be a nice ability for them to have now that many of their summons are gone.

Hello, as a melee/ranged combatant spell it is not for Elementalists, they will have something else coming to them in 2-3 batches.

[Dalrand]

I quite like this epic spell, though only complain is the VFX doesn't look great.
I'd love to use this for RPing with my fire priest and it's extra nice that I able to make a decent 2H build with 54AB and 51AC.