Under the mountain and not riding it (aka what to expect [?] in Undermountain)

Firstly, any unintentional consequence is deeply regrettable due to implications caused by the evil half of House Clegane. Secondly, this logic doesn't apply to people burning Harry Potter books at Hong Lim Park and those violating the Protection from Harassment Act 2014 in the name of equal gender rights. Seriously, it makes you wonder whether the philosophies of Mencius and Han Fei should be considered outdated. Ironically, less than 10% of the American population most likely never heard of Mencius while possibly 90% of the Singaporean population would just dismiss Han Fei as just another man from China. To be honest, John L'Otter would like to use Chinaman instead as a form of satire, but he's highly doubtful those river otters from Punggol to Clarke Quay would appreciate the kind of humour they'd otherwise enjoy if it's from the Baron of Jewtown.

So what is this post all about?

It's about Undermountain, but John isn't gonna try predicting stuff from A to Z. If he can do that, Mistwalker would have already hired him, Sakagucci Hironobu would have become his boss, and Singapore would have become famous without the help of Kevin Kwan Kong, Mr Ken Chow, Gemminerva Chan, and the Brits.

Anticipation: Cryptic better not mess this up like Mod 6

Let's be honest. Elemental Evil was a disaster. Adding the boons only after its release was like attempting damage control post-Fukushima. Yes, the boons were quite good, but surely they should have been added in the mod and NOT after it. Nuking the gear system to ground zero was disastrous, catering to the non-casual gamer fanbase was effectively an A-bomb coming down. We're not talking about the Dark Souls series where something like this could be made possible.

And therein lies the irony. Mod 6 was most likely intended by Cryptic to be that mod where streamlining in the name of better gameplay experience was to be done. Sadly, the devs failed to level up on that count. Fast forward to Undermountain and we may be now seeing a previous failure becoming a blessing in disguise. Albeit it took a whopping 9 mods for them to get it right. So much for the XP.

70+10=80

The level cap has increased by 10 levels. This is both a case of simple maths equation like 23 billion minus 8 billion and real news. Going from 70 to 80 would point to the question of whether the Primal gear should be considered level 80 or staying at level 70. Imagine the scenario where your Primal gear is now unusable because you're at level 70 stuck with a set of level 80 gear. This means you can't equip any gear beyond your current level just like why not every guy is capable of dating Bonnie-Clyde Loo, Kim Taeser-yeon, Katie-Middleton Leung, and Daisy Ridley-Scott.

Is this even possible? Well, John doubts Cryptic would be that dumb after that massive Titanic called Elemental Evil where crazy cultists actually prevailed over the mods.

Another situation would be every level 70 character automatically promoted to level 80. It's what John would call a 50-50 scenario for a reason. Traditionally, the game would experience heavy player traffic during the early months of the new mod release. This was due to the majority of the gamers already well-equipped enough to enter the new campaign zone straight away. Assuming the devs would be out to address this issue due to the resultant lag, this could mean redirecting some of the player traffic to the new campaign servers, hence alleviating the overall server load. Of course, this is provided that Cryptic is willing to invest time and resources into the first 2-3 months of the new mod release, after which the server load would gradually ease back to the original server sources. But if Cryptic is to do things like all the while, it means all level 70 characters would be auto-promoted to 80. In this scenario...

To be honest, John L'Otter does complain every now and then like a river otter.

Seals exchange: 3 Braves for 1 Crown

The exchange rate for seals should be clear by now. In a bid to address a bottleneck situation involving end-game gear (i.e. there's nothing much one can do in creating gear higher than the end-game level even if you happen to be Jewish), seals exchange would always be employed as the best way to phase out outdated gear in order to make room for new dungeon seals gear. You don't need to have the memory of an elephant to know that. A memory span of a vindictive sea otter would be good enough (something like this fellow).

While nothing has been said, be mentally prepared for Jared Jewish Sears to say something about it. This is not to say a 3 for 1 exchange is 100% ready to be done. Rather, it's a matter of high probability. After all, the law of mathematics dictates that 100%-90%=10%.

404

We all know what 404 means. In Neverwinter, there's a guild called 404 Italians Not Found. Until recently, Khaleesi Emilia's status was 404. Two stats are now officially executed by Ilyn Payne: Lifesteal and Recovery. The logic behind this was very simple: Lifesteal, if not high enough, is too damned useless. When high enough (i.e. beyond 10% minus the 4K modifier caused by Rampaging Madness at max stacks), it can easily break the game like some white dude coming back from who-knows-where.

Recovery is worse in the broken factor department once combined with a maxed out Endless Assault feat. It's like American eagles and Russian bears laying waste to orcish terrorists.

It's a no-brainer. The devs' decision to execute Lifesteal and Recovery was justified unless proven otherwise. Going by how much the gameplay would be affected tactically, there's no reason for John to assume the theoretical coming into conflict with the practical like what one would expect from communism.

However, there has to be a replacement. One defensive replacement for Lifesteal and one offensive replacement for Recovery. Given that no one actually enjoyed slotting Silvery enchantments into the offensive slot (unless you're a gifted strategist named Emiya Kiritsugu), the new set of offensive stats should give the gamers something to think about. As for Lifesteal... well, here's a Ctrl-Print Screen of the new set of main stats from the official site.

Out of the new stats set, four of them are new: Critical Avoidance, Awareness, and Accuracy. Out of the existent ones, Combat Advantage Bonus is the only one not applicable to any offensive enchantment slot. This means the possible replacements for Lifesteal should be Critical Avoidance and Awareness while the only possible replacement for Recovery would be Accuracy.

Now that we managed to get the Silvery enchantment part out of the way, let's see which stat befits the image of darkness and the night.

Critical Avoidance: Makes decent sense. The Dark enchantment is synonymous with assassination (i.e. Armor Penetration), stealth and swiftness (i.e. Movement), and vampiric capability (i.e. Lifesteal). Critical Avoidance, in the Dark enchantment context, means the ability to dodge critical attacks due to additional tactical cover.

Awareness: Also makes decent sense. Awareness isn't just about saying no when your horny boyfriend/husband decides to turn violent. We're also talking about the ability to sense danger coming while circumstantially blindsided. There's a very good reason why the baddest fighters in Faerûn are a renegade drow named Drizzt Do'Urden and a nihilistic human called Artemis Entreri. It's called symbolism associated with ethnicity and profession, as racist as this may sound.

So which one is the more possible choice? Assuming that Awareness is the defensive counterpart to Combat Advantage Bonus (i.e. your source of CA damage mitigation), it's very likely it would remain a non-enchantment stat. On first glance, using this as Lifesteal's replacement is a good idea. However, Combat Advantage damage isn't something that kicks in as often as one may like. After all, this is a F2P MMO, not the latest Dark Souls game plus a four-fifth naked run.

This leaves one other stat and no other choice. So yeah, it should be Critical Avoidance. Anything apart from it and the game would most likely get stuck with a redundant defensive enchantment type.

As for the offensive slot for Silvery enchantment, it's evident that we're looking at Accuracy.

A more strategic feel?

The strategic factor is shown clearly in the defensive department. Deflect and Critical Strike are now capped at 50%. Don't ask John what's going to happen if the numbers go beyond that. Maybe they'll be wasted, but maybe they'll be converted to Awareness and Critical Severity respectively. John hopes it will be the latter case. After all, John is more of an Oda Nobunaga and less of an Albert Einstein.

Either way, a need to balance things out seems to be the key factor for the Undermountain delving. John's personal suggestion would be either mixing Defense with Deflect or Critical Avoidance (assuming that's the replacement for Lifesteal). That's if you're running as a healer or dps. If you're a tank, it should be more practical to focus on Deflect and Critical Avoidance (which in turn could make Fighter tanking more challenging depending on how the changes are going to be done).

Offense wise, Accuracy should be something waiting to be looked at for tanks. For the dps, it should be the same logic: Either a Crit-Power build or an Arpen-Power build. Unless the devs screw this up terribly hard, dps paragon classes should have a higher base Accuracy while tanks and healers should have a higher base Power.

Note: One tactical factor which gamers should consider is whether the individual desires a single-target damage build or an AoE damage build. Accuracy is very likely to be more vital for the former since a low Accuracy rate for any AoE damage build would be effectively a case of anti-science.

Total Recall?

Okay, this is the last part and Jared Jewish Sears said that the class system is going to move away from the 4th edition rulebook. Or something like that.

So let's make an assumption that they're moving towards the 5th edition rulebook, with or without the inclusion of Unearthed Arcana (seriously, those wizards from the coast would do well to replace the official 5th ed Ranger with the UA version since we're way past the days where Rangers were considered crap in PC games like Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights). So for this part, John is going to list the possible paragon class names for each class. Again, please note that Undermountain delving involves the 5th ed rulebook instead of the 4th. So don't be surprised if names like Divine Oracle and Iron Vanguard goes MIA.

Paladin:
Tank-Oath of the Crown
Healer-Oath of Devotion

Cleric:
Healer-Domain of Life
DPS-Domain of Light

Fighter:
Tank-Cavalier
DPS-Champion

Barbarian:
Tank-Path of the Ancestral Guardian
DPS-Path of the Berserker

Warlock:
Healer-The Undying
DPS-The Fiend

Ranger:
DPS 1-Gloom Stalker
DPS 2-Horizon Walker

Rogue:
DPS 1-Thief
DPS2-Swashbuckler

Wizard:
DPS 1-School of Abjuration
DPS 2-School of Evocation


A/N: It's very likely that the Ranger would no longer have the whole ranged or melee specialist option. Originally intended to make the Ranger versatile, it resulted in the combat tree being brutally knackered in the dps dept. While this makes the combat HR into a good option as a buff-debuff-dps hybrid, it seems that lfg requests for this type of build remain very few. Simply put, the Ranger could very likely become a tactical generalist in terms of the dps. If so, then at least that'd make the Ranger a better balanced option in the raid dps.