Dark Priest v3.1.1 aka Fear the Darkane Magicks

[echo42]

I personally don't mind just the damage penalty, it was the damage penalty + speed reduction + mana drain that made it too much of a hassle in its original form.

[nsrr]

A humble suggestion:
1."Arcane Weapon / Arcane Repulsion" seems like a one-point-wonder to me.
2. Arcane melee build suggests me to take Spell / Aether with 1/1/1/5, because first two talents are aoe friendly-fire things (therefore needing 5 in Spellcraft), and the Aether Avatar is plain useless with melee orientation of Dark Priest.

So, may be you should consider giving Arcane Repulsion something like "at level 5 you can use "Arcane Weapon" talents in Aether Avatar form"... Well, it must be well tested, because it may become a little overpowered. But may not)

P.S.: Or, perhaps, Arcane Repulsion could give scaling arcane resistance - that will be tricky, but surely grant another reason to actually use that Spell / Aether first and second skills.

Those are some interesting suggestions. I actually gave Dark Priests the Arcane and Aether trees as a way to deal some non-Darkness damage and also to facilitate a more caster-focused build. However, now that I have added Dark and Malediction, you can make a caster-focused build without touching Arcane or Aether. I would really like it there was an Arcane melee build in there somewhere, I'm just not sure quite how I want to do that.

You've certainly given me something to think about, thanks for your feedback!

Humble and Life Manipulation are both use speed: standard. presumably they should be weapon/spell respectively?

The invisibility damage penalty seems to still be there on aura of unlight. iirc you said you wanted to get rid of it? it's crippling. (I mean, I oneshot celia by doing over 2k damage with blunt thrust, so I guess I could eat the penalty, but...)

Yup, I must have neglected to define speeds for those talents; I'll get that fixed.

I had thought about removing the damage penalty from Unseen when I first started coding the Unlight tree, but, up until then, I had never really played with Invisibility. After I did, I found it to be a lot more powerful than I had expected. So, I left the penalty in, starting a bit higher than standard Invisibility, and scaling down to about 35%. Unseen is meant to be primarily defensive, after all, and you can deactivate it any time you want.

However... after having time to do some more in-depth play testing, I found that once you get to the mid-game, when you are frequently faced with packs of mobs, the Dark Priest needs all the defense they can get, and having to turn off Aura of Unlight/Unseen to deal decent damage can leave you really vulnerable. It's not quite so bad if you're running a caster build with Unhealing, Dark and Malediction (since the damage penalty doesn't affect unhealing and can be reduced for Dark spells), but it really is crippling to a melee build.

I'm still hesitant to remove it completely, but it could probably stand to be reduced significantly without making it too unbalanced, considering the other costs associated with it.

[astralInferno]

That's fair.

I did find one use for Arcane. Thanks to Arcanum I bought Magical Combat in Angolwen, so now I have a 60% chance to Manathrust on hit.

(I need to update my Arcane Combat mod for all the new bolts and beams you've added)

[maanur]

About arcane melee build.

The damage output was tremendous... Empower Staff, combined with arcane-element-staff and some arcane damage increasing artifacts lead to enormous damage per hit, especially with Blink Strike and Humble.
The main downside - lack of defensive and controlling tactics. Pure damage with pure aether :/
Didn't take Spell / Aether though, instead took Spell / Meta. Well, damage became even greater, but...

I was overconfident to open every vault in Dreadfell, and that was really challenging!
So, my dark priest was finally slain by his own inner demon, or what was that copy named...

Spell / Arcane was good at 5/3/3/1. Sometimes you really need those nukes.
Well, now I think about taking Spell / Unhealing instead, but I'm not sure what's better yet.

[nsrr]

(I need to update my Arcane Combat mod for all the new bolts and beams you've added)

And I need to update 'Embers with All Races' for all the races you've added to your pack! (Seriously, you're like an add-on-making machine!)

About arcane melee build.

The damage output was tremendous... Empower Staff, combined with arcane-element-staff and some arcane damage increasing artifacts lead to enormous damage per hit, especially with Blink Strike and Humble.
The main downside - lack of defensive and controlling tactics. Pure damage with pure aether :/
Didn't take Spell / Aether though, instead took Spell / Meta. Well, damage became even greater, but...

I was overconfident to open every vault in Dreadfell, and that was really challenging!
So, my dark priest was finally slain by his own inner demon, or what was that copy named...

Spell / Arcane was good at 5/3/3/1. Sometimes you really need those nukes.
Well, now I think about taking Spell / Unhealing instead, but I'm not sure what's better yet.

Unhealing is pretty good, but the damage/unheals start to fall off if you're not investing in Darkness Damage and/or Healing Mod gear, so I'm not sure it would work well with an Arcane build. I would recommend Spell/Dark, instead, for a couple of reasons. One, Malign Darkness grants you passive Spell Crit, which benefits essentially all of your talents, including on-hit procs. Two, Darkest Dread is really useful against most rares and bosses, even if you're not going for a Darkness build, and is something that every Dark Priest should probably pick up at some point.

I've been considering your suggestions regarding Arcane, though, and I'm working on an update that will add in some of the types of synergies you suggested. Arcane Combat spells will be usable, and have their cool downs reduced by half, while Aether Avatar is active (likely with 5 points in Empower Staff, rather than Arcane Repulsion, because I have another buff in mind for that; see below). This will probably be absurdly powerful, damage-wise, but by activating Aether Avatar you are giving up a lot of your defensive capability, so I don't think that will be too much of an issue. Of course, you could add some powerful defense into that mix by putting 5 points (4? I'm not sure if that bonus is raw or effective level) into Pure Aether and unlocking Aegis. That would take two category points and a decent amount of class and generic investment, so I think that's more than fair.

On top of that, Arcane Repulsion will grant a scaling number of Arcane Wards (each of which completely blocks one 'hit' of Arcane damage), for a scaling duration, when cast. This will allow tactical use of Arcane Repulsion to enable you to cast those AoE friendly-fire spells without fear of zapping yourself, even if you cast them point-blank. That should provide plenty of reason to invest more in Arcane Repulsion, if that's the build you're going for.

[astralInferno]

Aww, thanks. You're p productive yourself.

(Any chance you could have the kruk races have a self.krukcopy attribute or something? Currently, Undead heritage lists every race twice because of the kruk ones.)

[nsrr]

Version 3.1.0 is now up. Still not on Steam :/

Added some synergy between Arcane Combat and Aether, thanks to maanur's helpful suggestions. It will now be possible, with investment, to cast Arcane Combat spells while in Aether Avatar form. I had intended to tie this to a talent in Arcane Combat, probably Empower Staff. However this proved to be more than a little difficult. The way that talents are tagged for use in Aether Avatar form is pretty straight forward, but they way it is actually implimented is not so simple. The best solution was to piggy-back on the Aegis use unlock. Five (effective) levels of Pure Aether will allow you to cast Arcane Combat spells while Aether Avatar is active. Additionally, thier cooldown will be reduced by half while in Aether Avatar form. The description for Pure Aether will reflect this, if you are playing a Dark Priest. (Now that I think about it, I should change this so that the altered description will be visible to any player who knows Spell/Arcane Combat, for the sake of Adventurers.)

Additionally, Arcane Repulsion now grants a scaling number of Arcane Wards when cast, each fulling blocking one source of Arcane damage (it is the same Ward effect you might get from a torque or staff or shield ego), that will last for a scaling number of turns. This should afford the Dark Priest some protection from Aether Beam and Aether Breach friendly fire.

Made a few more tweaks to Unlight. Aura of Unlight will now generate charges based on the number of tiles unlit, up to a cap that scales with talent level. This was how I had originally planned it to work, but I trouble with the implementation. Now that this is working as intended, Dark Pulse has been reworked, again. The Spooked effect from the spell will now Daze enemies, rather than Pin them, and the spell once again requires Shadow charges to cast and no longer generates charges.

Changelog:
v3.1.0

[Spell/Arcane Weapon]
Spells can now be cast while in Aether Avatar form, if you have 5 (effective) levels in Pure Aether and Pure Aether is active when you cast Aether Avatar. Additionally, the cooldown of Arcane Combat spells will be halved while in Aether Avatar form.

[Arcane Repulsion]
Will now grant a scaling number of Arcane Wards that last for a scaling number of turns when cast.

[Aura of Unlight]
Now generates charges based on the number of tiles unlit, up to 3 per turn at raw level 5 or above.
Removed attack and movement speed penalty from the Unseen effect.
Reduced damage penalty from the Unseen effect.
Increased max scaling of the invisibility power from the Unseen effect.

[Shadow Pulse]
Once again has a Shadow Charge cost, and no longer generates Shadow Charges.
The Spooked effect will now Daze, rather than Pin.

[maanur]

Not certain this being a bug, but...
I've just fought Zigurants, and one of them was Dark Priest.

[nsrr]

Not certain this being a bug, but...
I've just fought Zigurants, and one of them was Dark Priest.

Hmm... taking a quick look, I'm guessing it has to do with a tag that I hadn't noticed before, which is missing from the Dark Priest subclass definition. It defines a 'power source', which I'm guessing is factored when creating the patrols. I believe adding this line

Code: Select all

power_source = {technique=true, arcane=true},

should take care of the problem.

Thanks for the report!

There's a problem with the super-load for altering the invisibility shaders for the Unseen effect that I need to fix, too. That might take a little tinkering, but when I get it worked out I will update the subclass definition, too, so you won't see any Dark Priests in Zigur patrols (I think).

[maanur]

I absolutely love this addon.

If you get a bit bored while grinding... And, especially, if you still think, that Girdle of Calm Waters is a good piece of gear for your belt slot...
Just turn this one on. I guarantee, you'll be surprised!

Thank you, nsrr. Still patiently waiting for fixes, mentioned above.

[Chronosplit]

Not certain this being a bug, but...
I've just fought Zigurants, and one of them was Dark Priest.

Wait a minute, an idea: a Dark Priest is essentially a healer who's seen too much. Of course we are talking magic here so with antimagic a Dark Priest itself obviously isn't a good class idea, but surely the healers at Zigur aren't completely immune to turning to this dark god though tainting or otherwise?

[nsrr]

I absolutely love this addon.

If you get a bit bored while grinding... And, especially, if you still think, that Girdle of Calm Waters is a good piece of gear for your belt slot...
Just turn this one on. I guarantee, you'll be surprised!

Thank you, nsrr. Still patiently waiting for fixes, mentioned above.

Thanks for the continued appreciation, and the patience!

I took a bit of a break from working on this to update another addon, and then forces beyond my control (i.e. 'life') prevented me from having the time and energy to get back to this. A little encouragement goes a long way, though, and I'm pleased to say that I've just finished an update that implements the fixes mentioned, and a couple other tweaks.


...
v 3.1.1
[General]
Cleaned up a few descriptions, and made Shadow Charge costs and scaling a bit more obvious in talent descriptions.

Fixed the super-load that made the Invisibility shading less severe when Unseen is in effect. It will now properly allow all other shading to occur and layer, as it is meant to.

Added a 'power source' definition to Dark Priest birth, which should (may?) prevent them from spawing in Zigur patrols (I'm not totally sure about this, as I have heard of Archmages, Alchemists, and other arcane-users appearing in Zigur patrols anyway, and it would be impossible to fully test due to RNG).

[Shadow Slip]
Fixed a bug that prevented the talent from functioning properly.

[Shadow Pulse]
Reduced cool down considerably, reduced daze duration.
Damage from this spell will now ignore a portion of the damage penalty from being Unseen, scaling with talent level.

[nsrr]

Also, thanks to advice from HousePet, I was able to resolve the issue that was preventing me from uploading to the Steam Workshop. The latest version of Dark Priest is, once again, available on Steam. Enjoy!

[kemott11]

After getting Humble (the one that increases armour hardiness) I can't auto explore anymore, it just rests forever. Anybody else has this bug?

[nsrr]

I don't recall encountering that issue, but I haven't run a Dark Priest in a while myself. I'll try to take a look if I get a chance. Are you using any addons that would affect resting (such as Faster Run Rest Explore or Improved Rest Auto)?