Does the ardent make your head hurt?
- Thread starter RangerWickett
- Start date
Nahat Anoj
First Post
I played an ardent in an epic level game a little while back, and while I enjoyed it, I must admit that I pretty much only spammed one power over and over.
While others will disagree, I'd like to see ardents get an Essentials style treatment that distills there various powers into basically upgraded versions of a few low-level powers. If you're going to spam one power over and over, it might be better to just focus design efforts on various ways to use that power.
And I agree, some of the augments and higher level at-wills left me scratching my head, either because they didn't fit conceptually or because they were not as good as lower level versions.
Another thing I didn't like about the ardent was that there was no way way to augment their heal. Things like spending power points to do more healing, a stronger buff, etc.
I'd also like ardents and battleminds to be folded in to the same class - I feel like they have a lot of thematic overlap. I'm thinking of having a generic battlemind class, with a defender and leader build.
While others will disagree, I'd like to see ardents get an Essentials style treatment that distills there various powers into basically upgraded versions of a few low-level powers. If you're going to spam one power over and over, it might be better to just focus design efforts on various ways to use that power.
And I agree, some of the augments and higher level at-wills left me scratching my head, either because they didn't fit conceptually or because they were not as good as lower level versions.Another thing I didn't like about the ardent was that there was no way way to augment their heal. Things like spending power points to do more healing, a stronger buff, etc.
I'd also like ardents and battleminds to be folded in to the same class - I feel like they have a lot of thematic overlap. I'm thinking of having a generic battlemind class, with a defender and leader build.
Hybred Psionic classes can be neat.
I've posted my idea for an Ardent/Blackguard here before. It has tons of flexiblity, between augmenting your 2 ardent at atwills, using fickle servant and domain feats to turn Virteous strike into a template for essentially atwill three or four powers at-wills, two uses of dread smite encounter power which can be combined with any of the above, plus one ardent daily power and two Paladin daily powers, plus getting to use the Blackguard striker features most of the time and the mantle of elation while in plate. Of plus the best of Paladin and Ardent utilities, changelings trick 1/ent and disguise atwill. Maybe a skill power via feat too.
For example you could have atwill Falling Sky three levels of augmentation, Revealing Strike three levels of augmentation, Virteous strike sun, Virteous Love, Virteous Sea, Virteous Arcane. Then dump Dread smite on your pick for cewl combos. That just without taking chameleon.
See psionic stuff can be nifty.
I've posted my idea for an Ardent/Blackguard here before. It has tons of flexiblity, between augmenting your 2 ardent at atwills, using fickle servant and domain feats to turn Virteous strike into a template for essentially atwill three or four powers at-wills, two uses of dread smite encounter power which can be combined with any of the above, plus one ardent daily power and two Paladin daily powers, plus getting to use the Blackguard striker features most of the time and the mantle of elation while in plate. Of plus the best of Paladin and Ardent utilities, changelings trick 1/ent and disguise atwill. Maybe a skill power via feat too.
For example you could have atwill Falling Sky three levels of augmentation, Revealing Strike three levels of augmentation, Virteous strike sun, Virteous Love, Virteous Sea, Virteous Arcane. Then dump Dread smite on your pick for cewl combos. That just without taking chameleon.
See psionic stuff can be nifty.
I ran a Human hybrid Ardent|Bard for about 8 paragon levels.
He was ok and in fact, his personal survivability was through the roof (and the other PCs could face much greater numbers of and higher level foes with the tons of THPs he handed out), but combat was very repetitive.
After playing him, I have come to the conclusion that psionics was WotC's first cut at Essentials. In other words, creating very simple PCs with simple powers. In the case of psionic PCs, having a single At Will power with two augmentations is like having 3 powers, but on the character sheet as 1 power. And since most of the augmentations are often not useful for the current round, it doesn't take much to select an At Will power.
This means that the character sheet is smaller and the PC is a bit easier to play.
However, between this and a Psion PC in our group, none of us could ever find a better higher level At Will power. The first level At Will powers are about as good as it gets. There might be one or two exceptions to this, but that's the general rule. The design of psionic PCs are screwed up a little in this respect.
He was ok and in fact, his personal survivability was through the roof (and the other PCs could face much greater numbers of and higher level foes with the tons of THPs he handed out), but combat was very repetitive.
After playing him, I have come to the conclusion that psionics was WotC's first cut at Essentials. In other words, creating very simple PCs with simple powers. In the case of psionic PCs, having a single At Will power with two augmentations is like having 3 powers, but on the character sheet as 1 power. And since most of the augmentations are often not useful for the current round, it doesn't take much to select an At Will power.
This means that the character sheet is smaller and the PC is a bit easier to play.
However, between this and a Psion PC in our group, none of us could ever find a better higher level At Will power. The first level At Will powers are about as good as it gets. There might be one or two exceptions to this, but that's the general rule. The design of psionic PCs are screwed up a little in this respect.
