Upcoming Wizard skill: Eldritch Mastery

[SaltedSalmon]

Why do you say petal storm is for tanks? That seems exactly untrue, since it scales the best with low enemy soak.

The spell description mentions "causing status ticks to go away faster.".
The main purpose of that right now is screwing over a enemy tank during a raid.

[NearNihil]

Would the acid arrow effect stack for multiple instances (like drained or chilled)? If it doesnt stack like that, I can see this arrow having the same drawback and the capstone not being very effective against certain targets (anyone with 1 acid soak)

I suppose that makes sense, if the target isn't dead yet after eating multiple of these they should be shortly. So, muliple instances should be a thing.

Specific comments:

I can't see any situation in which nexal smash is better than piercing Lance, which doesn't seem ideal. Piercing Lance is just a lot better for all soaks.

Piercing Lance damage is high, the effect is already very strong.

Lightning rod: just annoying to have this gated behind rng, since you only need it to proc once then I assume you're probably moving onto regular attacks. 6 ap/36 mp for an area skill is very high, though you do get a good amount of damage. Getting trolled by this skill eating all your mp and still not proccing would be frustrating.

Fireball: balance seems off compared to other aoe. 3 extra damage per target affected is okay, that comes out to a bit more than 10% extra damage assuming the ticks get used up, which incidentally won't actually happen for pure aoe kills. The mp cost is quite high.

Cold flash freeze: this seems underpowered for the cost. 5/20 aoe is about 1/10 of an actual aoe or less. And because max damage is so low even low soak will cut into the output significantly. The value is about 0.8 ap and 1.4 mp when compared to other options. Imo instead increase the aoe to like .. 10/50 or increase the base damage to 30.

I do have some broader thoughts too which I might come back to

Piercing Lance vs Nexal Smash: the reasoning was that the lance would taper off somewhat due to soaks, but looking at it again it's probably better to lower the lance's damage to 30, or to reduce its effect to ignoring 33% of soaks and resistances. Probably both.
Smash hitting for 30 to a 0 soak target in a fully forted stronghold is fine, I think, though I want to be careful of getting too close to the 71 HP threshold. Upping its base damage to 15 would hit 35 with forts, which turns into 37 with Fortify Spell.

Lightning Rod guaranteeing the effect is also fine I think. Master of the elements. Did lower the base damage to 30 to compensate it a bit though.

Fireball being costly is intended, and should probably have separate instances as with Acid Arrow above. Though AoE is RNG, it can potentially wipe out pet walls quite quickly similar to Archons and Doom Howlers, but is more intense and so you have to balance doing that and dealing more direct damage.

Flash Freeze: buffed damage to 30 as suggested.

It might be a bit regrettable to not have the right tree to abuse the Eldritch Mixing spells, but with Refunds now it should be fine.

As for the spells themselves:
Isn't Petal Storm a bit underpowered? Its supposed to be for tanks, but doing 3 attacks of 10 damage with a mundane damage type against a tank means you're 3 damage total. Only saving grace is that its the cheapest one, but is that even good enough...

Stone Lance is better than Nexal Smash, and fulfills the same niche.
Related to that: Nexal Smash is Impact. Aren't mundane damage types supposed to be bad against tanks? I guess that ship is sailing though, specially with Piercing's effect.

I think I'll change Petal Storm to 4x6 instead (keeping the above threshold thing in mind, in practise anyone with Fortify Spell is going to get 4x8. Bit better at stripping buffs, bit less two shotting Conduits.
See Stone Lance vs Nexal Smash above. Further, magical sources of mundane damage (or, really, any source of mundane damage) isn't intended to be bad against tanks. It's just that the damage types are easy to soak. The mundane spell capstones already provide some measure of bypassing them, but not enough to make the spell trees popular in any practical sense.


Thank you all for your feedback! I've started implementing the basics of the spells - they're quite different from what we have currently so it may take a bit. Stay tuned!

[SaltedSalmon]

I think I'll change Petal Storm to 4x6 instead (keeping the above threshold thing in mind, in practise anyone with Fortify Spell is going to get 4x8. Bit better at stripping buffs, bit less two shotting Conduits.
See Stone Lance vs Nexal Smash above. Further, magical sources of mundane damage (or, really, any source of mundane damage) isn't intended to be bad against tanks. It's just that the damage types are easy to soak. The mundane spell capstones already provide some measure of bypassing them, but not enough to make the spell trees popular in any practical sense.

No no, I'm not feeling that at all. Why would I pay 2 AP and 10 MP to progress someone 4 status ticks and deal 4 damage?
On that note there are classes that can kill Conduits with 4 AP, why shouldn't a Wizard be able to do so with 4 AP and 20 MP? I think they can already do so with maxxed out Thousand Lashes.

[NearNihil]

I think I'll change Petal Storm to 4x6 instead (keeping the above threshold thing in mind, in practise anyone with Fortify Spell is going to get 4x8. Bit better at stripping buffs, bit less two shotting Conduits.
See Stone Lance vs Nexal Smash above. Further, magical sources of mundane damage (or, really, any source of mundane damage) isn't intended to be bad against tanks. It's just that the damage types are easy to soak. The mundane spell capstones already provide some measure of bypassing them, but not enough to make the spell trees popular in any practical sense.

1) No no, I'm not feeling that at all. Why would I pay 2 AP and 10 MP to progress someone 4 status ticks and deal 4 damage?
2) On that note there are classes that can kill Conduits with 4 AP, why shouldn't a Wizard be able to do so with 4 AP and 20 MP? I think they can already do so with maxxed out Thousand Lashes.

1) Perhaps the damage could be disjointed from the tick thing, having it hit once for some 30-35 damage (so it's comparable, aside from soaks, to the other ones) and tick 4 times would probably be better. Good point.
2) Fair - my Wizard throws around 27 arcane damage with Earth Wail and all the bells and whistles (and it burns 5 points of MP on the target) which would turn out to be more costly MP wise to kill stuff but less so for AP. I'll have to revisit all of the damage numbers so they're worth considering for targets with not a lot of soak, especially considering not many damage bonuses apply.

[Klapaucius]

I liked the 3-x version of portal storm. Thematic with slashing to do good damage vs unarmored, excellent scaling and unique compared to the other skills. Also decent for killing tanks with status effects like agony curse. Great scaling with ally buffs.
However 4x attacks at 10 damage only needs +10 damage (so fortify spell +advocate buffs could easily do it) to just straight up one shot people. No-one should ever die in one button click except EM pariahs. 3x probably caps out a bit lower at max ~60 but typically achievable ~40.

[SignedName]

If Petal Storm is supposed to be anti-tank, you could buff it so it has higher armor degrade chance and reduces timed status effects by 1 minute/attack (to counteract activated effects like Master of the Flow and Defensive Stance).*

Nexal Smash seems pretty weak, and also counterintuitive gameplay-wise. It's supposed to smash through soak, but it's also a touch attack, meaning tank auras will smash the Wizard right back, and it only reaches its full power attacking a 10-soak target (which tanks don't natively have). This seems specifically tailored towards attacking zero-soak characters protected by Fortifications, but that effect would be actively hindered by the standard raiding action of attacking forts. Honestly, the best use-case would be solo-raiding microfactions, so I think the bonus is pretty problematic.

My suggestion for Impact would be Concussive Blast- auto-hit, ignores phasing. Simple, direct damage is in line with Impact, and covers the base of dealing with phasing-based tanks.

*though I feel like this should be a more general thing anyway, posted that in the suggestions forum

[NearNihil]

Alright, time to revisit the numbers.

As a baseline, let's take a T3 ranged attack charged with Eldritch Blast and Mystic Seeker. This makes it an attack dealing 27 HP worth of damage and draining 5 MP from the target, for 1 AP and 8 MP (relevant skills and spells are a full spell tree, Deep Spellcraft, Arcane Affinity, Fortify Spell, Magical Reserves). Clearly, the new spells should offer some sort of benefit over this baseline, because otherwise why bother. I would like to have these spells cost 2 AP, so they can be flashier and fancier than their regular counterparts, as well as about 12 MP (after Arcane Affinity). This puts them at double the AP cost and 1.5 times the MP cost, the benefit should be that soak matters less because you're throwing around more damage in one attack (for most of them, anyway), and there should be a secondary effect.

Proposal v3, changes marked with parentheses.

Piercing: Stone Lance

• Combat tree: Spell attack, +10% accuracy
• Cost: 2 AP, 16 MP (from 12)
• Damage: 40 (from 30)
• Special: Ignores a third of all soak and resistances, making it good against soaky targets.
• Inspiration: https://youtu.be/1gMv7PL04e8

Slashing: Petal Storm

• Combat tree: Autohit
• Cost: 2 AP, 14 MP (from 10)
• Damage: 3x 12 (from 4 x 6)
• Special: Hits 3 times per attack (from 4) hitting for 12 (from 6) damage each, causing status ticks to go away faster. Keep in mind, Fortify Spell ups this to 3 x 14. Additionally, removes 1 minute off all timed effects (including buffs and debuffs, with the exception of things like Zerg Flag).
• Inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhB6kZuGp14

Impact: Nexal Smash

• Combat tree: Touch (so melee or hand-to-hand), +10% accuracy
• Cost: 2 AP, 18 MP (from 14)
• Damage: Effectively 10-40 (from 10-30)
• Special: Deals 3 points of bonus damage for each point of soak on the target (including forts!), up to 15 (from 10) soak. 10 damage for a 0 soak target, (13 damage -1 for soak = 12) damage on a 1 soak target, up to (55 - 15 = 40) damage on a 15 soak target. On a 20 soak target it would be (55 - 20 = 35) damage. Additionally, this attack ignores auras.
• Inspiration: Blunt weapons in Mount & Blade, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQEx4nhhQ6w

Cold: Flash Freeze

• Combat tree: Spell attack, +10% accuracy
• Cost: 2 AP, 14 MP
• Damage: 30
• Special: Deals a 10/40 (from 5/20) AoE damage to non-faction targets other than the primary target.
• Inspiration: https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=596

Fire: Fireball

• Combat tree: AoE, 85% accuracy
• Cost: 8 AP, 24 MP
• Damage: 40/400
• Special: All affected targets are afflicted with the "on fire" status effect, a 1 fire damage/tick effect that lasts for 3 status ticks (multiple instances are possible). Effectively can't be soaked (as it is already at 1 damage), but can be resisted to 0 (IB). Further, if you cast this in a stronghold that isn't your own, it deals 25 points of damage to fortifications.
• Inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Gs8WTddI4, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jar1LTxxAeM

Electric: Lightning Rod

• Combat tree: Spell attack, +10% accuracy
• Cost: 2 AP, 16 MP (from 12)
• Damage: 40 (from 30)
• Special: Summons a rainstorm on the outside of the tile (regardless of whether the attack is a hit or miss), which increases all electric damage dealt by 20% (both inside and out). Also obscures vision like the mist effect does. Lasts 10 minutes.
• Inspiration: https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=898

Death: Seize Heart

• Combat tree: Touch, +10% accuracy
• Cost: 2 AP, 14 MP
• Damage: 35 (from 25)
• Special: Applies the "Heart Seized" status effect on the target, which works the same as Soul Fray (target dies if at lower than 15% HP). Combining this effect with Soul Fray makes a target die at 30% or lower HP. Lasts 10 (from 5) status ticks.
• Inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoZtHY0mbII

Acid: Acid Arrow

• Combat tree: Spell attack, +10% accuracy
• Cost: 2 AP, 14 MP
• Damage: 25
• Special: Applies the "burning acid" effect, dealing 3 (from 2) acid damage per tick for 10 status ticks. Can be soaked/resisted down, or resisted to 0 (WM). Can have multiple instances applied at the same time, theoretically up to 10 times (because the first instance will have expired).
• Inspiration: https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=2

Feedback is, as always, welcome.