SF Alternate Advancement and changes to current.

[Garlin1]

General Alternate Advancement Changes

The Class Alternate Advancement tree (EXP02, Kingdom of Sky) no longer requires you to put points into the attributes before putting points into the abilities. All of the Class Alternate Advancement lines excluding the "Endlines" now can be increased to 10 points. The first Alternate Advancement will grant 4 Stamina and the primary stat for the class. The primary stats for classes are:

• Fighter: Strength
• Scout: Agility
• Mage: Intelligence
• Priest: Wisdom

Most percentage based Alternate Advancements will grant the same amount at 10 as they currently do at 8, however, those two points will no longer need to be spent in the attribute AA. Damage, heals and procs will improve to beyond their current strength with the additional points.

Sentinel's Fate increases the Alternate Advancement cap from 200 to 250. Each "Class" (Warrior, Brawler, Enchanter) has received 6 new Alternate Advancements, 5 that lead up to a final "Endline." Each "Subclass" (Guardian, Monk, Illusionist) has received 7 new Alternate Advancements, 6 that lead up to a new "Endline" for a total of 20 new points in each of those two trees. Players can also spend 10 of these points into the existing Shadows tree.

The Class Advancements can have 8 points spent per ability. The "Endline" has two ranks at two points per rank. It is unlocked with 16 points spend in the Sentinel's Fate AAs in the Class Tree.

The Subclass Advancements can have 5 points spent per ability. The "Endline" has one rank at two points per rank. It is unlocked with 10 points spend in the Sentinel's Fate AAs in the Subclass Tree.

New Alternate Advancements

Please understand that these are the current versions of the new AAs. All of these abilities are subject to change. Please feel free to post any and all feedback.

Summoners

• Aptitude of the Theurgist: Improves base spell damage.
• Cabalist's Aura: Grants the scout pet a chance to flurry.
• Perceptor's Defense: Adds a damage reduction to Unflinching Servant.
• Animist's Aptitude: Reduces the resistibility and increases accuracy to the pet.
• Focused Minion: Increases spell double attack of the mage pet.
• Elemental Toxicity: The summoner grants an encounter proc to their entire group. If the group member is not a fighter, this also detaunts.

Necromancer

• Spirit of the Underworld: Adds a strength component to Teachings of the Underworld.
• Minion's Adeptness: Impoves the base damage, healing and taunts of the pet.
• Minion's Soulstealing: Grants a new spell/CA to the pet.
• Noxious Debilitation: Increases mitigation reduction of the Necromancer's spells.
• Consuming Vitality: Adds a group heal component to Consumption.
• Noxious Barrier: Grants a three trigger stoneskin to the pet.
• Accelerated Decay: The necromancer's damage over time abilities have greatly reduced durations and gain more triggers for a short duration.

[Garlin1]

for those curious, Elemental Toxicity is a  short term buff.

[Xalmat]

Accelerated Decay is a permanent buff that you can toggle off at any time. It costs 10% HP every 6 seconds to maintain.

[Eriol]

Any chance of getting the images like you did for the conjuror side Xalmat?  While the summaries here are OK, the conjuror images showed a lot more in your thread.  We can obviously look there for the "common" AAs, but the class-specifics are a mystery.

[Arkinon]

Accelerated Decay: The necromancer's damage over time abilities have greatly reduced durations and gain more triggers for a short duration.

This has been change to adds two addictional Ticks for the same spell duration. Howvever because of the nerf to the spell it really only applies to Pandemic and Soulrot (since bloodcoil is cast as soon as its back up) and as such we wont see much DPS gain from it. Yes I tested it with expert spells both solo and instances and especially since we take damage from it while its on if you combine this with the other abilities that take our heath and we cant even generate enough healing procs to keep ourselves up so again we must rely on our group healers even more.

Spirit of the Underworld: Adds a strength component to Teachings of the Underworld.

This is also getting changed to add other stats as well not just strength

Here are a few things I noticed that I didnt like. Items that have abilities that apply to the pet still arent stacking correctly. Vamperisim is treated like all of our other dumbfire pets and is getting killed faily often by AOE spells in the new xpack especially if cast on the MT Im still tesing this but it seems this will remain a situational spell at best. Hearts dont have any boost to them so they are obsolete by 90 for the most part. Pets do much less damage than the mythical pet did even at the master lvl. Pets overall damage seems lower then they did for TSO. Scout pets are now the pet to use doing 300-500dps on average better than mage pets during solo ans instance runs at expert and master. Tank pets has issues holding aggro but is still the better solo option for surviveabilty. Accelerated Decay Has in my opinion gone from a decent ability to complete crap.This needs to have the health detriment removed to be truly usefull.

Things im not sure about

LB seems seriously underpowered. I did see a gain in the damage output at 90 I went from 12.5k aveage per tick to 16.5k damage per tick but the mobs have So many hitpoints in the instances that it barely added anything to my overall DPS. Im sure this will get better however with more lvl appropriate instace and raid gear so before I give any final jusdgement ill have to see how this improves when the xpack goes live since more than half my gear was from the lvl 80 Raid zones.

The things I liked.

AA line that increases our base damage. Consumption and the nice little heal for the group. The timer on Undead Horde has been reduced but they are still killed by AOE damage. we are getting a couple of nice group/raid AA abilities/buffs but they still need to be improved to make us viable. and the pet stoneskin was nice for surviveability especially while solo.

If I had to pick one thing that really made me angry however its this....

Conjys are getting a High damage DOT similar to LB on a 3 min timer with all the gains from gear, stats and spell boosters with no detriment to casting. Yes it does less damage per cast compared to LB it can be casted much more often, doesnt reqire a dedicated healer and can be augmented by other factors to increase its potential. While our LB remains unchanged with little to no boost to our overall DPS in this Xpack. What I think (in my opinion) is that Conjys will now be the raid summoner of choice given what they will bring to a raid compared to necros that are extremly dependant on others to maximize our DPS. Lord knows Conjys needed a boost as well but I think this is cause for concern for the necro class. we are no where near where we should be even with the few benefits we have coming this Xpack where Conjys are getting a Huge boost to DPS and raid utility.

Edited some spelling issues

[Maliclipse]

Today Acc Decay only takes 5% life. A little help but not that much.

[Xalmat]

Eriol wrote:

Any chance of getting the images like you did for the conjuror side Xalmat?  While the summaries here are OK, the conjuror images showed a lot more in your thread.  We can obviously look there for the "common" AAs, but the class-specifics are a mystery.

I would but my necro is only level 42. I recommend contacting another necro to do it.

[Dorsan]

Any health cost to accelerated decay has to go. The ability will give us very little especially compared to conj endline and it makes absolutely no sense for it to drain our health. If its in current weak state it should siply become a passive buff without any health cost.

[Garlin1]

I see what they did.  Its Vampirism 2.0.  Except they got it all backwards this time!

[Deveryn]

Dorsan@Nagafen wrote:

Any health cost to accelerated decay has to go. The ability will give us very little especially compared to conj endline and it makes absolutely no sense for it to drain our health. If its in current weak state it should siply become a passive buff without any health cost.

Weak state? Have you actually seen a DPS comparison? Decay, used on a dummy added 1700dps. Elemental Blast only adds another 972dps on a 175k hit. Someone was lucky enough to score 400k on an actual named fight. That's about 2222. I imagine Decay would perform at that level or better in a group or raid situation. It looks to me like things are about even. You have to be more cautious with the Blast. Having that kind of damage go through the pet can be very dangerous. Remember they have no real hate control. When they die, you're next on the list and you won't last very long.

[Arkinon]

You are the only necro saying this on beta and im not really sure how your getting your informantion. But For those of us that actually did some testing on Beta in real instances with real groups instead of just hanginig around the forums and a training dummy. AC is not hitting for anything near that in groups im in. it was nerfed considerably and now only applies 2 additional ticks to our Dots. Seeing as how we recast BC as soon as it its up it has little to no effect on this spell so that leaves Panedemic and soulrot. and the 2 extra ticks dont amount to much in overall ZW DPS. Pandemic was getting resisted like crazy on multiple mob encounters and was being removed on a lot of fights. I only saw a 300-500 dps gain using this ability in instances. On the dummy it is closer to 1k DPS for me but Dummys dont resist. EB is hitting upwards of 200k plus on fights and is on a 3 min timer. Most instance runs Conjys are being able to cast this on every pull if they have any kind of reuse. In ZW its Adding MUCH more than 900 DPS. Try closer to 2-3k depending on gear. So ya I would say from a personal perspective that is no where near equal compared to what we have coming down the pipe. Practical application trumps the dummy any day.

[Dorsan]

And lets just not forget that Conjurors don't need any extra healer attention for the added DPS. Then why should we?

[Deveryn]

Dorsan@Nagafen wrote:

And lets just not forget that Conjurors don't need any extra healer attention for the added DPS. Then why should we?

I kept myself going, when it was ticking 10% and still hurt less than a choker. 5% should be easy.

[Dorsan]

Deveryn wrote:

Dorsan@Nagafen wrote:

And lets just not forget that Conjurors don't need any extra healer attention for the added DPS. Then why should we?

I kept myself going, when it was ticking 10% and still hurt less than a choker. 5% should be easy.

This here is the point:   .

And this here are you:  @

Not even close.

[Deveryn]

Yeah, whatever. I get your point. Continue crying.