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It's a bit hard to equate the blasts we're getting with cantrips considering they're one action. With that, I'd expect them to be worse. The 2 action version aught to be better than just con to damage though. Hopefully we're just missing something
Permit me to be clearer, then. I feel like a kineticist who chooses to spend one, two, or three actions on dealing damage to a single enemy should be better at it than a caster who's attempting to do the same thing without spending resources, but not as good as a martial who's attempting to do the same thing without spending resources. I am prepared to be flexible about the details.
One thought? It might be that the +con is only a start. Feats that buff your two-action blast (in the style of the cleric feats that buff two-action heal/harm) may well be in the cards. So the folks that want to focus on blast would be able to take a stack of feats that buff their two-action blast, and the ones that want to spread out into more utility stuff use it early on for the +con damage, but eventually basically abandon it, because they have other two-action and three-action things to do, and it's just not worth it for them anymore.
It's for sure in a weird spot. You can't have the class deal as much damage as martials because you get all the cool elemental utility. You also can't deal as much damage as a caster with a full tank of gas since they have to spend resources (casters also have a lot more toys in their bag of tricks). Going to be interesting to see how the class ends up, but even if the damage is poor I'll still be playing it.
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I get the feeling that elemental weapon will be the kineticists meld into eidolon. Good for flavor, but mechanically lackluster and we'll have to wait for a class archetype or similar to really make that concept work.Oh gawd I severely hope not. I hope paizo learned from their mistake with meld Eidolon. How long has it been now? And STILL no synthesis?
After the Harrow Medium I don't trust Paizo to follow up on missed opportunities like that. If the synthesist comes out, great, but if it just never happens I won't be surprised.
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From Aaron shanks on Twitter;
"Hey Pathfinders, I am off for a long weekend, but we’ve provided PDFs of Rage of Elements to about 8 different media sources for exclusive previews, so keep your eyes open!"
Soon more goodies!
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Ooh. Come on, more previews. Hopefully some drop tomorrow - I want to see the rest of the impulse pages so badly.
Paizo mentioned that they'll be letting streamers know how much is appropriate to share; they'd like to avoid whole swathes of the books getting put out in full. Sounded like "sharing some of your favorite options".
That said, I'm really excited for even for overall impressions and summaries.
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I'd expect different streamers being given different sections they can preview. Probably have guidelines on what or how many pages they can actually show too.
I just really want to see base Kineticist Blasts and Feats that are element agnostic.
Was really hoping Nonat1 would do a livestream this week, but he already put out his schedule and nothing. Here's hoping somebody does.
So hard to be patient. Hopefully we get previews sooner rather than later, when shipping starts and people get their hands on pdfs these previews aren't going to be as big of a deal. So get em out soooon
What are the biggest concerns about the Kineticist 2.0 again?
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It's a little hard to gage what the biggest concerns are for the class. There's a lot of people who want different things from the class, from single target blasters with little utility to martials with elemental utility.
The main things that most people can agree on is that the damage is on the low side from what we know. How askew it is depends on who you ask, I'm sure there are some that think it's totally fine. But between action economy, straight numbers, limited damage types (not able to put runes or special materials on blasts as far as we know so far) I think it's a legit worry.
Other than that there's just a butt load we know little to nothing about. How blasts work, auras (the new gather power?), how getting new elements works, what you get from sticking to a single element, improvements to our of combat utility (skills?), composite impulses, proficiencies other than class DC, alternate damage types for elements (how to get them and what they apply to) and of course universal kineticist feats and element specific impulses.
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I just hope that the Geokineticist retains its wall-spam ability.
We playtested a level 18 scenario with 4 kineticists and "I can throw up Walls of Stone every round forever" was the most fun I had playing my character.
I just hope that the Geokineticist retains its wall-spam ability.
We playtested a level 18 scenario with 4 kineticists and "I can throw up Walls of Stone every round forever" was the most fun I had playing my character.
I didn't playtest at a high enough level to mess around with it but it does seem like it would be a ton of fun. It maaaay be slightly too strong, other wall impulses are three actions and overflow for the most part (in the water impulse slide we saw there was a wall of ice impulse that was three actions and overflow) but we'll see. I'd be surprised if wall of stone wasn't in there at all but I do expect it to be adjusted a bit
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As far as damage, we only really have Water to go on atm, and it's not a top tier damage element (I want to say they'd said something about some elements being better at direct damage than others?).
Their playtest analysis had a chart assigning different categories to different elements.
Water is a 2/4 at destruction, indicating that it's a "minor theme"
I'm curious how rigid these will be in practice. Like if I just want to kill things with ice and water and don't want to take healing impulses (water is 3/4 healing) is that something I can do or has Paizo decided I'm SoL?
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As far as damage, we only really have Water to go on atm, and it's not a top tier damage element (I want to say they'd said something about some elements being better at direct damage than others?).Their playtest analysis had a chart assigning different categories to different elements.
Water is a 2/4 at destruction, indicating that it's a "minor theme"
I'm curious how rigid these will be in practice. Like if I just want to kill things with ice and water and don't want to take healing impulses (water is 3/4 healing) is that something I can do or has Paizo decided I'm SoL?
We should jeep in mind that, when considering the data presented in those charts, it was only relevant to the Playtest version of the class. In that same blog post, Logan stated, "This was for the playtest version, so you’ll see some big alterations for the final as we differentiate the elements more, as mentioned above."
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Yeah absolutely, but it still potentially gives us some insight into the way Paizo is looking at different elements.
I'm hoping there's some pieces we don't know about yet. In the retrospective they mentioned the new gather power might have an extra bit to it, like maybe you get a blast at the same time or similar. Hopefully that's something.
As it is, impulses at max level are around 3 spell levels worth of damage behind a spell at the same level, and cost twice as many actions (and casters have a lot more options to choose from for a variety of situations). We don't really know much about blasts, but from what we've been able to suss out base blasts probably aren't going to be the focus of the class.
It could be that kineticist niche will be based more around all day utility and being good at dealing with a bunch of lowbies over a long adventuring day.
I also wonder if the bar for impulses has changed at all regarding other remaster changes, since RoE is supposed to be the first book printed with the Remaster in mind.
Like in the playtest impulses felt largely balanced around being cantrips, but with full refocusing now being an option from level 1 and comments from Paizo about making cantrips more dynamic and useful, the 'all day' staying power of a lot of casters seems to be going up at least a little bit.
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Wanna focus back on the hype. I'm super excited because Kinetecist allows for a wide variety of character concepts that you previously couldnt or could only maybe kind of do if you squint at it.
Partner is hoing to be playing a winter witch, and im going to be playing a weakened avatar/simulacrum of her patron. Unlimited control of wind and icy storm like abilities vs traditional casting feels like a good way to diffetentiate between a spirit of the winds, and something beseeching said spirit fot magic.
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Oh for sure I'm still overly excited, even though I have some worries. I play an elemental sorcerer now and I'm having a great time but I can't wait to start playing a real, completely elemental focused character.
We don't know how many impulses/feats the class gets at level one (I'm going to guess 3?) but a straight water kineticist at level one, without any equipment, could have a ranged attack, a melee attack, a heal, multiple aoe choices, good defensive reaction, a good amount of hit points and wiggle room on their ability scores. And probably some fun stuff like creating water and such. It's going to be amazing.
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Ruby Phoenix with four Avatars Kineticists here we go
At the very least, the psychic feels like it scratches the nova damage itch that the 1e kineticist had. If the PF 2e kineticist ends up being relegated to elemental alchemist in how its implemented, at least there's another class that fills the old niche.
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I just hope Kineticist has some build, any build, that can do very strong, constant damage. Even if it's to the sacrifice of literally everything else.
Like, I love the idea of being a controller Air Kineticist or a support-y Wood Kineticist just as much as the next guy, but ultimately these are things that actual spellcasters can already do. Meanwhile none of them can say "screw all that, I wanna point at things and make them explode" and focus entirely on damage to be actually competitive with martials.
It's totally fair that full casters with their lists of 600 spells with a million different effects can't dish out as much as martials. But that doesn't mean that every character focused on waving hands and throwing colored balls of magic should be shoehorned into utility first, damage second.
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I would hope that the Kineticist keying on damage over everything would at least be able to keep up in DPR against a regular martial with a bow.
I feel like its accuracy will end up being a problem for any kind of martial comparison, spellcaster progression meaning being two levels behind on proficiency increases and only having a magic item that is +1/+2 and a daily (which I'm assuming means more expensive too) instead of getting the regular accuracy runes on weapons, unless a lot of their damage turns out to basic saving throws things at which point the +1/+2 item matters less because as I recall from its mention at paizocon is for blast attacks so wouldn't effect DC but also half damage on a "miss" makes it harder for my dumbass to do theoretical comparisons there
Where kineticist should fit in dpr is pretty hotly debated for sure. I don't think people who expect a better blaster than a caster or single target damage of a martial will be happy with the class based on what we've seen. At will damage and utility has to come at a bit of a cost (and choosing between damage and utility is a slippery slope, imo).
Regardless, as others have said, this is a hype thread. I can't wait to see the final earth impulses, I totally fell in love with its ability to stack defenses.
But we know from that chart that they wanted to make fire good at healing.
Really confused by the "they wanted to make fire good at healing", the chart lists fire as one of the two elements that they specifically have healing listed as "not a thing" for. If the reasoning you think that they'd wanna add it is because of their "we want to differentiate elements more" line, wouldn't that suggest the opposite? What few options that are based around healing that snuck through would be removed.
But we know from that chart that they wanted to make fire good at healing.Really confused by the "they wanted to make fire good at healing", the chart lists fire as one of the two elements that they specifically have healing listed as "not a thing" for. If the reasoning you think that they'd wanna add it is because of their "we want to differentiate elements more" line, wouldn't that suggest the opposite? What few options that are based around healing that snuck through would be removed.That was me confusing what the chart said and what fire actually did before the chart. Meaning, that I had it switched. Thank you for catching my mistake.
Fire used to have anti-poison, anti-enchantment, and a revive. The playtest kept the revive, but changed it to be more about the damage. The chart then said that fire would not have healing.
My point stands that the base damage should not be affected by what the specific element can do. My point also stands that they were clearly following the chart. Although I regret making that silly mistake (its been so long since I read that blog).
Ahh, all g. That makes sense. Luckily, to my knowledge (though I might be 100% misremembering, as I honestly don't remember where I heard it) the basic blasts are being changed to do all the same amount. Most likely (or at least hopefully), the difference in how good at "destruction" something would be would be more along the lines of what impulses are available (so you'd be harder pressed to find straight-damage options in wood, with them instead most of the damage options being a lit less direct damage but having effects to balance it out).
I'm nearly positive the blasts still have different dice sizes/traits. There was a table for it "shown" at Paizocon when the book was lifted to the camera. Really blurry, but you could piece together what it was describing. Some blasts are going to do a d4, and others are going to do a d10. Maybe there's a basic blast that everyone comes with, that'd be cool, but I think the idea is that if you want higher damaging blasts you'd speck into more elements or find a way through feats.
Honestly d4 blasts are my worst Nightmare about what can happen to any element
I hate d4 with passionThey never feel good and rarely adequate
And those a*#@@&&s just don't Roll, they Land and Slide over the danged table
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That would be kinda disappointing if all the blasts are the same across each element. The most interesting part of them in the playtest was that they worked like weapons with differing traits and ranges. Maybe they'll differentiate through class feats.
It would be more disappointing if it turned out to be better to just pick up a shortbow and use that over your blast because your element was given a bad one.
That can still happen now, obviously, but at least they'll be equal in their mediocrity if it does.
Well, I suspect the kineticist will have standard caster weapon progression so I doubt you could easily replace blasts with a bow.
Given that "caster with shortbow" already beats every cantrip not named electric arc at most levels, their viability is going to rest on the blast accuracy item. If they start from a good baseline, that should be enough to beat d6 deadly d10. If their baseline is bad, even that might not salvage it.
Then again, if their ability to use one is softbanned by having to hold an element in hand, it's a moot point. Though it would be fairly embarrassing for caster with bow to beat out kineticist on both base attack damage and fancy effects. Especially if kineticist's better effects still require a reload to turn their class back on.
Hopefully we get more spoilers soon. Seems like a lot of people are having a hard time getting excited because we don't really know what kind of a role the class will play, and everyone is hoping for a different thing. Personally happy with at will aoe focus which is seems is the way the class is going. Am very curious about blasts though.
Maybe it's a little too optimistic but I think when the class comes out, most people who wanted the class to go in another direction won't be up in arms. Most of the community is pretty mature, with a few outliers. We might get a few posts of complaints but not like some of the issues that get debated around here ad nauseum. Once released I think people know you're not going to see big sweeping changes that change fundamentals of the class barring a remaster; people are discussing damage so much because at this point a lot of the class is theoretical.