Deathknight v1.8 - Hybrid Necrotic Melee

[Mercane]

I didn't test very rigorously, but that was my first guess before I even posted here. Didn't seem to make a difference. Except that even with a larger amount of mana it'd flicker between 10 and 25 short of full.

[Razakai]

Might be an addon interaction issue with some of your other bits. When I'm on tonight I'll try recreating your character in dev mode and see if I can replicate the bug if I download those other addons.

[Frumple]

'nother tiny thing I'm not sure if desired -- you can drop ghouls through the necrowall, despite them blocking line of sight. Have to guess at where things are or abuse the inspect creature command to aim right (if you don't have telepathy, anyway), but it still works just fine. Still not exactly complaining about it, heh.

E: Also, uh. It's primarily aesthetic, but in ASCII, when your necrowall drops, if there's enough of them, it turns part of the map entirely black. To the point you can't tell what's under the stacked corpse explosion pools. Which may actually not be intended at all, considering corpse explosion says nothing in the tooltip about effecting the necrowall, heh.*

E2: Also, blighted summoning's magic stacking on top of necrowall's base magic is mildly silly. Seeing 180+ magic scores on the walls, ha, and that's still with both character levels and talent levels to go. Weirdly (and mildly unfortunately?), the wraiths aren't getting the double tap on magic from blighted summoning, though the ghouls and walls are (not that the ghouls are getting anything out of it by the spell save, but still.). Could be intentional (or at least desired), since doubling the wraith's magic stat might be a bit too much.

E4: Just want to state for the record that maxed out (5/5+blighted summoning) necrowall is just about ridiculous. I've currently watched it (plus a ghoul pack thrown over it) wipe out the entirety of one of those orc pride entry rooms. I've watched it wipe out almost the entirety of a multi-hued wyrm pack in a single casting, with no aid but the enervate aura. It regularly just straight up murders rares and rand bosses before it times out, with little to no aid from me, and almost nothing actually kills any of it. Not sure if it actually needs nerfing or anything, but it's pretty ruddy amazing from a carnage perspective. Basically the deathknight's 'nuke' button, possibly moreso than anything else it has access to. And I haven't even been soulforging it! I should try that, soon. It should be silly :3

*E3: Picture of the effect in action: That's from about two thirds of a 5/5 corpse wall collapsing, heh.

[Razakai]

I'll put a LoS check on CotG as that could get quite abusive with tracking and the like.

And Corpse Explosion is supposed to affect the wall, will clarify the tooltip. I'm not entirely sure if there's a way to make it so tile effects don't overlap though, so might have to just bear the irritating graphics.

I actually didn't intend for them to double dip on magic - your summons should just inherit your spellpower, so I need to tidy that up. Hopefully that'll bring wall back in line a little. They're intended to be very strong with Blighted Summoning, but Epidemic + that much magic is a little too strong, although I'm glad to see Blighted Summoning getting use. But nerfs are a lower priority than getting the Squire tree out.

[Frumple]

Hrm. Not even sure if this is a problem on your end or the base code, but duskwake is pretty close to entirely non-functional in the charred scar. I'm guessing it's because the lava floor tiles are preventing it from having a safe place to land, despite them being undamaging varieties? In any case, it takes your mana, puts you one tile closer to your target (if you're lucky -- sometimes it just displaces you sideways a few tiles or something equally random), and that's it. Unfortunate for that poor turn count, heh.

E: Ooh, what looks like something that's definitely unintended: You can bring necrowalls (and presumably other summons) with you when you leave a zone (or, y'know, an ambush :3). They keep their remaining lifespan and show up surrounding you whenever you enter the next map. Pretty easy to abuse to make walking into adventurer parties or orc ambushes significantly safer, aheh. Also lets you have multiple castings worth out on the field, which is just wonderfully silly

E2: Also, I'm either getting absurdly lucky or something is up with Endless Cycle and/or Soulforge. I've just left soulforge on for the first two levels of Rak'Shor pride and, though I'm not done entirely with the second, I've yet to see my soul count actually reduce. I'm getting soulforge effects, but the soul cost is seeming to be just flat waived, no % chance or nothin'. Only conjecture I could make outside of incredibly unlikely odds would be some kind of bug. Possibly due to having >10 souls?

[Razakai]

Charred Scar has a no_teleport flag in the zone, and Duskwake counts as one. Sorry!
As for the souls, can't replicate that - 13 souls and 5/5 endless cycle still has me consume them. Can you link your character?

edit: I made my own Deathknight and started playing and wow Ghouls are overpowered as hell. Ok these guys are getting a proper nerf in next patch, 3 ghouls shouldn't be able to solo Bill with no attacks from me.

http://te4.org/node/5372

v0.5
- Shackled Soul no longer causes loot displacement on activation
- You can only have a maximum of 3 Shackled Soul wraiths at a time
- Necrotic Wall no longer gains additional magic bonuses from Blighted Summoning
- Necrotic Wall has been reduced in length, duration and damage
- Necrotic Wall segments are removed on level change
- Soulforge: Call of the Grave ghouls have been slightly reduced in power
- Call of the Grave ghouls now gain a damage cap as per the Ghoul racial
- Call of the Grave ghouls are now far more aggressive
- Call of the Grave requires line of sight to use
- Clarified a number of tooltips

[Frumple]

Hrm. I can copy over the character dump -- it's got some addon stuff going on (chaotic races, primarily) that doesn't show, though, so if it's an addon problem that wouldn't help much. If someone can remind me what the important parts of the save file are ('cause I don't think either of us wants to mess around with a 35 meg compressed save folder, ha), can upload that somewhere, too.* An addon or two I messed with (that really shouldn't be causing problems in this case, heh, as it was mostly trying to tinker a bit with golems) gives me ol' version mismatch whatsit. Really should fix that at some point, but eh.

Here is the chardump uploaded to pastebin, in any case. Just... ignore the name. Was what was running on the playlist when I made the character.

*Actually, I think this is it? Should be the game.teag, desc.lua, and cur.png. Don't think you'd need anything else to check.

[Razakai]

Hrm. I can copy over the character dump -- it's got some addon stuff going on (chaotic races, primarily) that doesn't show, though, so if it's an addon problem that wouldn't help much. If someone can remind me what the important parts of the save file are ('cause I don't think either of us wants to mess around with a 35 meg compressed save folder, ha), can upload that somewhere, too.* An addon or two I messed with (that really shouldn't be causing problems in this case, heh, as it was mostly trying to tinker a bit with golems) gives me ol' version mismatch whatsit. Really should fix that at some point, but eh.

Here is the chardump uploaded to pastebin, in any case. Just... ignore the name. Was what was running on the playlist when I made the character.

*Actually, I think this is it? Should be the game.teag, desc.lua, and cur.png. Don't think you'd need anything else to check.

Thanks, will see if I can look around. It's probably some addon issue - the code for Soulburn's soul use is:

Code: Select all

		if not self.force_talent_ignore_ressources and not self.zero_resource_cost then
			self:incSoul(-souls)
		end
...
		if self:knowTalent(self.T_ENDLESS_CYCLE) then
			local chance = self:callTalent(self.T_ENDLESS_CYCLE, "getChance")
			if rng.percent(chance) then
				self:incSoul(souls)
			end
		end

So it's pretty straightforward. Can't imagine what could actually be interacting with it to cause that to break, unless some other addon is overriding a variable somewhere. So most likely, enjoy your free Soulforge on this character?

[Frumple]

Nah, I'll just turn it off

Rak'shor was actually the first time I'd done anything meaningful with soulforge except to occasionally extend the range of duskwake or test a few things, heh. It's not been terribly needed, just occasionally quite nice.

E: ... well, turn it off except for dealing with the doomed clone in the shadow crypt. Sweet zeus but fighting yourself is even more of a knightmare (aheh) than usual for a deathknight, yikes.

E2: Whoof, and there's a win. First time I've bothered to actually finish a game in a while, ahaha. Bit eased by a few addons (crucible and chaotic races, mostly), but even as fun as everything the DK brought to the table was, most of the win is attributable to how thoroughly eternal guard breaks normal difficulty over its knee. With Rime and Icebound Fortitude added on to that, the final fight was the first time I had taken substantial damage since around level 30, and even that didn't even get me to dip into the die_at stuff (that included an 800 point heroism ), heh. Wouldn't even have went that far down if I'd bothered to grind up a better shield or went with spectral shield instead of blighted summoning, and actually paid any attention whatsoever to my status resists. Still, I liked it. Love the counterplay icebound fortitude brings to the table (though I pretty intensely felt the lack of shield mastery or whatever that's called. Riposte?), the summons are great, and the actives are... there. I did eventually start actually using them, mostly necrotic strike, soul reaper, dark tide, and death vortex, mostly for what you'd expect one to use each for. Did use soulforge once in the final fight for a spot heal, but otherwise left it untouched after I noticed I had managed to somehow break it, ha.

Probably going roll out a clean install to clear up some old issues and dial back the addons a bit, see how well the class plays with clones (Dark Fae, via the faeries addon, and probably no other gameplay effecting ones). Try out a raw sword/board build instead of an ogre one.

[Razakai]

Nah, I'll just turn it off

E2: Whoof, and there's a win. First time I've bothered to actually finish a game in a while, ahaha. Bit eased by a few addons (crucible and chaotic races, mostly), but even as fun as everything the DK brought to the table was, most of the win is attributable to how thoroughly eternal guard breaks normal difficulty over its knee. With Rime and Icebound Fortitude added on to that, the final fight was the first time I had taken substantial damage since around level 30, and even that didn't even get me to dip into the die_at stuff (that included an 800 point heroism ), heh. Wouldn't even have went that far down if I'd bothered to grind up a better shield or went with spectral shield instead of blighted summoning, and actually paid any attention whatsoever to my status resists. Still, I liked it. Love the counterplay icebound fortitude brings to the table (though I pretty intensely felt the lack of shield mastery or whatever that's called. Riposte?), the summons are great, and the actives are... there. I did eventually start actually using them, mostly necrotic strike, soul reaper, dark tide, and death vortex, mostly for what you'd expect one to use each for. Did use soulforge once in the final fight for a spot heal, but otherwise left it untouched after I noticed I had managed to somehow break it, ha.

Probably going roll out a clean install to clear up some old issues and dial back the addons a bit, see how well the class plays with clones (Dark Fae, via the faeries addon, and probably no other gameplay effecting ones). Try out a raw sword/board build instead of an ogre one.

Thanks for the feedback! Glad to see the first winner. Aside from adding the Squire tree, I'll probably do some more balancing over the next few days. I hear what you say about the actives, I think how insanely powerful the summons are tends to overshadow them a little, so reducing their strength should help. I'm likely going to make shields a little weaker - reduce their strength on Necrotic Might skills (as offhand weapons should really be doing 50%) and compensate by buffing the damage slightly of some Frost skills. Might increase the damage cap on Icebound Fortitude to make it trivialize weaker damage slightly less.

And yeah, the lack of Riposte hurts - Rime's active is effectively a compensation for that, as it gives the 'counterattack' style damage buff in the form of resist reduction. Might buff that a little actually.

Is there anything else you felt was particularly good, effective, weak or unattractive?

[Frumple]

Oof, talent thoughts. You mean I have to think? Argh Incoming wall of text, then. You have been warned :V

Well, re: equipped shields, it didn't actually feel like they were overdone on the damage front -- most of my damage was coming from other sources, usually on-hit stuff and/or enshroud/hungering blade/soul rend, with the shield (counter) attacks mostly just serving as a medium of transfer. I wasn't actually using the necrotic might talents much at all until the very late game (and even then fairly sparingly), so its extra shield swing on use was barely utilized -- cutting its offhand hit another 25% is something I wouldn't even have noticed, heh. On the other hand, buffing frost more would definitely be noticed. I may have been getting the most use out of the on-melee/on-hit transfer, but icebound fortitude counters were still doing 200-250 damage per turn near the end, very consistently and often to basically everything on the screen ('cause everything was hitting me and eternal guard meant I had that sexy 100% counter up just about 100% of the time). And I guess the rime damage was there... since I had block on auto-use pretty much perpetually after level 30, I only got middling use out of that. Lot of the time I just wasn't adjacent to anything when block was used. Can't say anything about the last two talents in the tree... I never actually put points in them, heh.

Incidentally, please don't nerf the IBF counter transferring on-hit and whatnot. Feel free to tank the base damage from it to little or nothing, but being able to project a melee swing across the room did a hell of a lot to help with the relative weakness against ranged.

Taking the rest from the top...
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Necrotic Might: As noted, I didn't actually use this, much. Nearer to the end I was using soul reaper as the occasional duskwake-lite, in terms of gap closing, and necrotic strike just to do some more damage than the base attack would (though, in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have been -- iirc, slows get overwritten by the lowest being applied, so that may have actually been speeding up my enemies). Dark tide I popped on crowds relatively often, but it didn't really save me much effort, all told (because, as noted and having nothing to do with the balance of your class, eternal guard made me functionally invincible), just time. Grim harvest... I'm pretty sure I was getting use out of it -- the LUA errors before it was fixed were popping up constantly -- but I didn't really notice it that much. Thinking on it with hindsight, I do think it actually did a bit of a number in tandem with ogre's scarred-flesh thing to keep my inscriptions up, and it definitely was healing me, but... well, I was getting a lot of passive healing, so the latter was hard to notice, and I generally don't actually pay attention to my cooldowns at all, so that was working under the radar, too. I'm sure I was getting plenty of use out of it, I just wasn't playing attentively enough to note it
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Ghoul tree. Ghoul tree was lovely. First talent has good range, solid damage (often out-doing my necrotic might talents for initial damage, nevermind what the ghouls themselves managed afterwards, though to be fair the ghoul talent was at 5/5 and my NM ones... weren't.), excellent arrow-catching/distraction abilities. Really good, definitely on par with the core summoning talents of other classes. I'd say they were right about in line with warden hounds (which are bloody amazing) in terms of general utility. Life tap was thoroughly meh on 'em, though. If I were going to recommend anything done with them, it might be to up the cooldown a little. They were able to pretty much always be up which, on the one hand, was pretty great, but on the other hand, meant I always had fresh meatshields and a pretty much eternal corpse explosion heal going, which may have been a bad thing from a balance perspective. Or may not, heh. I'm not exactly the best at balancing stuff out.

Second talent, I, uh. Never noticed it doing anything. Ever. As near as I could tell the taunt never worked (which could have just been because I only put a single point in the thing, or it's scaling off a stat the ghouls don't have much or somethin'), and generally if something was going to chunk off enough of my health to get the jump-in to work, the ghouls were already dead and on cooldown. Honestly, I'd almost recommend it gets reworked to function independently of the summoned ghouls -- maybe have it pop up a ghoul defender (sword/board with shield wall or along those lines) on trigger instead of calling in one of your active ones, with a 10-15 turn cooldown and its own wide-range taunt.

Corpse explosion was ubiquitous and amazing. The damage was notable even without stacking (though that in part had to do with me rocking >100% darkness damage boost by the end ) and the healing was borderline ridiculous, being a 5-600 hundred point heal by the end game, if I stayed in the effect for the whole time -- functionally, due to ghoul talent cooldown and overlapping with the wall, I just had about 100-150 extra points of health regen for most of the latter half of the game. Which, uh. Probably a bit excessive, honestly. You could half the healing numbers on that thing and it would still be pretty powerful.

The wall I didn't invest in until fairly late, mostly due to mana concerns (it's definitely a bit expensive), but once I did it was, well. Pretty ridiculous, in the best of ways. Commented on it earlier, and that opinion didn't even remotely change after it got scaled back a bit. Massive health and damage mitigation -- even high peak stair guardians were having trouble killing segments, and I ended the final fight by trapping the blinky one between the wall, ghouls, and me -- significant damage with or without epidemic (though epidemic was just another notch in the murderwall, for all it occasionally spread to me), LoS shenanigans... it's just more or less the best wall-style spell currently in the game, and both an absolutely amazing crowd control talent and pretty brutal against single targets. I'm not actually sure what, if anything, I'd do with it if I were trying to tweak it, though. Maybe lower the resist and health a bit, or remove the LoS blocking. Possibly make it so you can't displace them, which still wouldn't do much to the overall power but at least would make them a little trickier to use. Maybe just straight up make its offensive capabilities entirely debuff inducing rather than damaging.
---
Desecration tree... I used hungering blade for the extra damage, and essence drain for spot heals/mana restores fairly often. Never really noticed the lifesteal component to HB -- didn't really feel like it lasted long enough to make a difference. Pale rider I never intentionally activated, and never needed. I don't think undying ever actually activated, 'cause I never dipped into the die_at. So, uh. Heh.
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Dread was pretty bloody great. Enervate is an incredibly solid debuff that did a lot to let me skimp on accuracy, and significantly magnified both my offense and defense (remember: reducing enemy's damage is roughly equivalent to increasing your resist all -- by the end of the game, enervate was functioning about on par with a maxed out thick skin, except even better). I'd almost suggest dropping the numbers by a point or two, really. Almost, heh. Shackle soul was solid, even before blighted summoning -- regular arrowcatchers and distractions when the ghouls weren't there, decent (if not awe inspriring) and pretty consistent damage, and one of the things I more regularly used to drag myself around when I got pinned, since they tended to be adjacent anyway. Virulent disease was existent, if only so-so by the end game due to its talent level. Vampiric Embrace... oof. Honestly, it was hard to tell exactly where all my healing (I'll mention that a bit more after I'm done with the talent breakdown) was coming from, but this was definitely a chunk of it, and good for that alone. I actually had the mana by the end to pretty comfortably use it even if you jacked the price up, and the range limitation was functionally nonexistent -- it might as well just be the necromancer's talent. Most fights either started inside the aura or ended up in it shortly. I think you mentioned something about making it a bit more consistent at some point? Doing something like vile life's first tier might be a good idea -- less healing, but in steadier amounts. If you want a nice bonus, let it effect allies inside your aura as well -- that would differentiate it fairly substantially from existent lifesteal talents. Death Vortex I did occasionally use on large crowds and/or stuff trying to get away from me (via soulforge... I'll talk more about souforge when I get to soulforge, heh), more as a "more win" button than actual need. Didn't really notice the damage too much, though by the end it was fairly substantial even with just a point in the talent.
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Soul tree... I went 4/5 on soul rend, obviously, and no further as that's more or less where the substantial bonuses (mostly the turn duration) stopped. A passive 6 turn stun, even on a 25% chance, is blatantly ridiculous, probably even without all the extra stuff it does. I'd almost certainly recommend dropping the stun duration a turn or two, and definitely making sure it can't reapply while the rend status (which I'd probably recommend leaving the duration as-is -- it's the stun that's egregious in duration, not the rest of it) is still in effect. It's a really nice talent -- very much solid damage, fragments generate reaper's shroud and shackle procs (along with being an easy source of triggering lifesteal and grim harvest activations). And, ah. Never actually used anything else in the tree. The dark fae I'm currently running is, though! Maybe more on that later. I'll admit I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when you nail a room with a soulforge'd devour and then hit everything with black mirrior.
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Frost tree... mentioned a bit about it above. Rime and Icebound Fortitude are amazing, and in tandem with the game-breaker that is eternal guard makes you functionally invincible. Well, invincible...er? This probably wouldn't hold true on higher difficulty levels, but on normal -- and, again, having nothing to actually do with the death knight talents -- eternal guard and a tier five shield with basically anything decent on it pretty much snaps the game in half, regardless of what class is using it. Turns you so close to unkillable you can afford to walk around with the functional 33% global speed penalty you get from keeping block up all the time. Rime's block boost and fortitude's damage mitigation makes that even more of a thing, and the IBF counter offsets the turn loss from keeping block up, somewhat. Disregarding unending block shenanigans, rime and IB were still quite nice (and significantly more in tune with sanity ) before I got the prodigy, and I actually took advantage of rime's damage feature pretty often -- it's really good for popping soul fragments, heh. Finally, they're both pretty good at spreading around the love that is slow (and... the other stuff) on melee hit, especially the counter. It was intensely satisfying to smack orc foomancers in the face with an 85% slow when they shot me with something, ha. If I were to do anything with the counters in particular, it would just be to limit them to the range of your necrotic aura.

The last two talents, well. Again, never actually put points in them. No idea how well they work out. They were tempting, but I always ended up with something else to put points into I wanted more, heh.
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Dusk, well, enshroud was a beast, and pretty much the entire reason cunning was my third maxed talent. The darkness penetration and damage buff was significant, the passive darkness damage great. Significant synergy with a staff using ogre, heh. Duskwake I put one point in... probably could have stood more, but honestly, the soulforge range boost means there's very little incentive to really put points into it. 1 soul for the extra range is pretty cheap, and the extension was enough to almost never want more. Night's Edge I stuck a point into... wanted to stick more, mostly for the damage boost to targets inside the shadows, but never managed to squeeze it in. Barely noticed the passive effect, though -- you generally don't really spread the shadows around enough for the extra hits to have anything to latch on to. That'd probably change if you used lightbane, but, well. I didn't Did try it for a little while, but at the point I dabbled with it a bit before respecing it was entirely too expensive to actually use regularly, plus I was under the impression (from the tooltip) that the shadow lightning effect was passive, which turned out to be a mistaken assumption and why I didn't bother with the talent afterwards. Also the duration was painfully low without investment, which ended up meaning no investment, heh. Looks good on paper, though.
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On to the generics... reaping, well. The first two talents are great -- spirit feed gives hella' saves and power, and a strong mana regen even capped at 5 souls (which is actually better from a psychological perspective -- I'm a lot more willing to use soulforge now that it doesn't immediately start chipping in to my spirit feed bonuses), and Reaper's Shroud is borderline silly -- passive shields all day every day, and fairly substantial ones at that. If it's possible, I'd actually recommend soul fragments not proc reaper's shroud. That's about half the approaching-silly of the talent, heh. Dark Simulacrum... I tried. Some. It never really gave me anything worth the effort, so I eventually forgot it existed. Really do think a soulforged one propagating the talent out to summons/allies would make it significantly more attractive. Shadow of Death... I think I did eventually sustain it, just 'cause I had the mana. It never popped. Bit of a shame, almost -- it sounds like a pretty neat talent.
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Soulforge talents... I never actually used soulburn, let's get that out of the way. No clue if it's decent. Its bonuses honestly didn't really appeal to me -- I never had trouble with cooldowns, my damage was easily sufficient without a spellpower boost (even a significant one), and a nice manasurge inscription plus the class's native mana restoration abilities made resource management very easy (though I did actually have to use said management tools, especially in combat with mana drainers). I'd almost suggest to have it attach burning hexes or somethin' to the attack(s) it empowers (maybe drop one or two of the other bonuses for it), something sexy like that. It looks powerful as is, but it's mostly an upgrade button rather than an evolve button, if that makes any sense. Very useful, but not really flashy. And flashy is nice, aheh.

The rest of the soulforge talents... I maxed out endless cycle, but that's almost entirely psychological rather than optimal -- I just don't like spending souls, and especially not when spirit feed relies on them. The other two were there, and the heal from soul tap was occasional useful, but I didn't put terribly many points into it and I never spammed soulforged abilities enough to find the global speed booster terribly attractive. I'll be seeing if I can get more out of it in this dark fae run, methinks. Soulforge in general I just didn't use much, though it was definitely useful when I did. Initially, it was because it ate into spirit feed, and I didn't like that even if I could easily afford the incremental reduction, later it was because of that odd bug making it feel just... unfair (though, to be actually fair, I was murdering everything at a rate and volume I probably wouldn't have been having substantial soul management issues even if I left soulforge on). I'm making a bit more use of it in this latest run, though I'm mostly just leaving it on to make sure my clones wreck appropriate havoc
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General observations... I was brain-breakingly tanky. Frankly too many shields, probably too much healing -- there were turns where I'd hit something and by the time everything was done and the corpse explosion was calculated in, I had healed like 700+ damage (about half my max health) in one go, on top of passive regeneration, damage shields, block, IBF's damage mitigation, whatever bucket of die_at I had sitting around, shadow of death (which never triggered), and conceivably a ghoul jumping in, too (though if that ever happened, I never noticed, heh). I'd definitely agree with trimming down vampiric embrace and making it more consistent rather than percentile based and chancy. I'd probably say reaper's shroud needs looking at -- as noted, making it not proc off soul fragments might be enough, if that's possible. It might not hurt to not have grim harvest heal at all... maybe have it give temporary and stacking (up to a point) die_at, instead? At least that way it wouldn't be getting boosted by healing modifier, and synergize better with undying and whatnot. IBF and Rime... I honestly don't know if you can actually do anything with them working off the same theme they currently have that's going to be not ridiculous in combination with someone using eternal guard. Largely I'd suggest not worrying about that one -- the balance issue there is on the base module's side, not so much yours, and stops being quite so ridiculous at higher difficulty levels anyway.

Damage wise, I got no complaints. It wasn't really on insane difficult levels of damage, but a consistent and mostly passive 1-2k in the end game was easily obtainable and handily assisted by the summons, copious debuffs, and general battlefield control. I like a more passive playstyle, so not having to constantly lean on actives to get things done is appealing, to boot, though I'm aware many folks prefer ubiquitous rather than tactical use of active abilities (not saying that's bad or anything, mind, just that I like something a bit more sparse on the button presses ).

... finally, I had fun. This was a fun class to play. It felt good to have the summons there and getting stuck in almost constantly, the aura and its effects let me feel like I always had a hand in the game even if I was just maneuvering or bumping things, and the actives I actually used were nicely "crunchy", most of the time -- it felt like I was actually doing something with them instead of just getting more damage and maybe a mild debuff. Soulforge helped a lot on that side of things even if I never used it much, heh. All the stuff happening from healing and shielding and shackle and whatnot also meant things felt pretty active even when all I was really doing was bumping into things -- somewhat akin to how arcane blades or certain warden builds feel, while having a very different focus and playstyle. So definite kudos overall.

Anyway, if your eyes haven't glazed over by now, hope that commentary helps some. I'm trying a no-ghoul run with a dark fae now, so if I don't end up distracted by something else and vanish into the night like I periodically do, there might be more to comment on later, heh.

[Razakai]

That's excellent feedback, thank you. My priority at the moment is getting the Squire tree up and running, as having it sit there with a big 'DO NOT USE BROKEN' is bugging me. Some thoughts after reading that...

- I agree entirely with the too tanky part. They're getting an overall nerf to pretty much every part of their healing and mitigation you mentioned. In particular Icebound Fortitude will cap at a lower amount of damage reduction, Vampiric Embrace will be a flat healing like Grim Harvest, Grim Harvest: Darkness will probably get some sort of offensive/utility effect rather than a heal, Corpse Explosion's heal will get lowered... maybe more.
- Ghouls are getting a bit of a nerf due to their high damage. I agree with the cooldown increase too. So rather than Life Tap (which I've noticed they don't actually use properly) they'll get some utility talent instead.
- I like the idea about Meat Shield summoning a ghoul. I didn't want to make it too much like Guardian Unity, but having the Deathknight block attacks by flash-raising a ghoul is pretty amusing and thematic so I like it. That means Corpse Explosion will get slightly more uptime, so might drop the duration there slightly.
- I'm just going to lob nerfs at that damn wall until it breaks. It's mostly intended to be a defensive/disabling thing rather than MURDERWALL so... yeah, I'll drop their melee damage to virtually 0 and have their damage just be their procs etc. Reduce the resists too.
- Hopefully Desecration will be more useful once the rest of their defences aren't quite as crazy. I imagine it'll probably be great on Nightmare+ though.
- I'll slightly drop Enervate's bonuses, but not too much - mostly the numb effect.
- Yeah, Soul tree's stun is a bit excessive. Probably get dropped to a 3 turn at max. I'm not too fussed about the rest of the tree being uncommonly used - it's basically there for people that want to play an offbeat magic/caster build and the like. Bit of a niche thing, like Chronomancers and Spacetime Folding.
- As I'm slightly reducing the damage Necrotic Might shield attacks do, I'll prob give Frost a slight damage boost. Should even out a bit. I'm quite happy with the tree as a whole.
- Lightbane's Shadow Lightning should be a passive proc? That's certainly the intent, if not there's definitely a bug.
- Yeah Reaper's Shroud is a little high. I still like the Soul Fragment interaction, so I'll just reduce the amount/increase the cooldown. Dark Simulacrum is a bit niche, but it's intended as just a silly fun talent so I'm not too fussed.
- Soulforge is going to get some looking at I think. Where possible I'd like to move more of talent's effects into their Soulforge, to make it feel more like a core mechanic rather than a superfluous bonus, and have more decisions about where you spend the souls. And yeah, Soulburn might get changes, the code is quite tricky though.

I'm glad you enjoyed it though! Still a lot more work for me to do, but I'm pretty much spending 100% of my free time on improving the class. I want this to be of the same quality as a proper class in the main game.

[HousePet]

Holy mountain of feedback Batman!

[stinkstink]

If only the rest of us addon devs were so lucky, huh?

[Frumple]

... it happens occasionally. Somewhere out there is a complete write up on every spell available to the main caster classes in Incursion still lingering around. And there's something like a few hundred of the things. It... took a little while to type up.

In other news, yeah, if lightbane's shadow lightning was working when the talent wasn't active, I wasn't able to notice it while I was testing it out. Entirely possible I just didn't pay enough attention or wasn't setting the tests up correctly, but it definitely seemed like it was only working when the main part of the talent was running.

Beyond that, I've now tried the soulforged devour soul into black mirror combo. It's... well, it's definitely more reasonable than I was expecting, which is to say it's kinda' disappointing

Black Mirror appears to need a clear adjacent space to create its reflection,* which means that it's close to useless in tight spaces or against packed in groups. Pretty usable against looser ones or things like your average dark crypt room, but also significantly more difficult to set up for a mass activation (i.e. you can't just hit all of them with a soulforged devour and the clone the lot via mirror). Still, it definitely seems to be otherwise working as advertised.

Also can report everything seems to be playing well with player clones, so far. They're pretty enthusiastic about using DK talents, don't seem to be generating LUA errors or odd behavior, and are otherwise working as you'd expect 'em to. Closest thing to something unusual is that the clones, naturally enough, have their own shackle pool, occasionally leading to >3 wraiths on the field (though whichever ones the clones generate inherit their significantly reduced damage, which is well and good), and they're not very aggressive about using soulforge unless you've got it active when the clones themselves are created. Which is pretty okay, really, but possibly something worth reporting (Enemy DKs would probably have the same problem, after all.).

*Not knowing that meant I spent a few tries thinking the talent just didn't work, heh -- it may warrant a tooltip clarification, since the DK's similar stuff (soul fragment spawning, primarily) doesn't work like that.