Craftable Drain Bolt (X Only)

[Raptress]

I like Drain Bolt. I really do. But since it's a repeating bolt spell, that means that when it's used, it's replacing Prime Bolt. This is all well and good, but Prime Bolt can be teched, and Drain Bolt cannot, therefore making Prime Bolt better to use by a fair margin, even when taking into account the healing of Drain Bolt.

My suggestion therefore, is to add another quest after Drain Bolt X that rewards the player with a formula to craft a techable Drain Bolt X. The formula and spell would be attuned, to prevent anyone who hasn't done the quests from getting the spell. The quest could be centered around gaining true mastery of Drain Bolt, and thereby learning to craft your own version of it.

To keep Drain Bolt from totally outranking Prime Bolt, perhaps Drain Bolt should not qualify for Primal Damage, but it would be nice to be able to put Accuracy and the techs like Romp, Gale, Pierce, and Critical Damage on it. Generally, Romp on my Prime Bolt V adds about 150 damage (and at 35%, it goes off quite a lot), which is the major reason that I do not use Drain Bolt as much as I would like. I am also told that things like Romp do not add to health drain, so having those techs shouldn't overpower the healing.

[Dragonboy]

So far I have done the Drain Bolt quests up to VIII and frankly when I compare them to (Improved) Prime Bolt in combination with any breeze it is useless and unless Drain Bolt X is a whole lot better then VIII I doubt I will ever use it.

Apart from the above statement I think that the whole Drain Bolt spell should either:
- Be remade into a more powerfull ability on a low timer
- The quest should give out formula's.
- Place the formula's in the loot tables of ALL tiers.

Why shouldn't a low level player be allowed to benifit from a self-crafted spell.

Agree with the attuning part though.

[Frith-Rae]

Frithy rates this with two talons up! Any of it...really..

[Raptress]

So far I have done the Drain Bolt quests up to VIII and frankly when I compare them to (Improved) Prime Bolt in combination with any breeze it is useless and unless Drain Bolt X is a whole lot better then VIII I doubt I will ever use it.

Drain Bolt's really not that bad if you really look at it. It fires much faster than Prime Bolt does, so the average damage compared with an unteched Improved Prime Bolt V is pretty close. And the healing, small as it may look, does add up. I found it useful to essentially have another HoT while I'm out AoE hunting (which is what caster dragons are built for, imo) and playing the "outlast them until Spiked Scales and AoEs on long cooldowns kill them" game. I found that my health was on average a bit higher at the end of a fight when I was using Drain Bolt than when I was using Prime Bolt.

As I said in my first post, the only reason I see any need for a change to Drain Bolt is because Romp hits so hard and so often on my Prime Bolt that fights with Drain Bolt last significantly longer, and a fight with a caster dragon already lasts far longer than for a melee dragon. Accuracy would also be of benefit.

Stacking a Breeze on top of Prime Bolt in your example isn't really fair, by the way, as you could stack that Breeze with Drain Bolt as well. :3 Besides that, I'm assuming you're level 100, so using Drain Bolt VIII is obviously not going to stack up with Imp. Prime Bolt V.

[Dragonboy]

It is just my opinion, but perhaps I like to see fights end quickly I dont know.

The thing I didn't agree on was that you want a formula only for the highest levels, which would be a little unfair to the lvl 10-99 true casters in the game. This I do not agree with, giving the Beginner / Journeyman / Expert formula's as (additional) quest reward and if possible making the spell attuned no matter what after you craft it teched or unteched would be fine by me.

[Raptress]

Well.. I only asked for the highest level because otherwise that leaves the devs having to make ten separate formulas, and I thought it kind of fit into a "having true mastery of the spell" sort of thing. It'd be better than not having it be techable at all, right?

If the devs want to make all ten formulas, that's fine by me. I was thinking of the most reasonably doable suggestion when I made my post. I would just like to be able to tech it at all, even if it's only the last one. What I was not saying was that I didn't want anyone but the highest level characters to get this spell techable.

[Dragonboy]

The "true mastery of the spell" does sound interesting that is true.

[Guaran]

Just adjust it so that the damage done goes up, but the healing amount stays about the same.

I'll admit, the questline for drain bolt was very fun, but I don't even have it hotkeyed (not after experimenting with it all day after completing the quests)

Although I do admit that being able to tech it would help. (but how much?) If it could be teched with Spirit Damage...

Perhaps some drag and drop-on techs could be made for spells, that work even on scribed spells with room (open tech slot), and works on Drain Bolt as well. This is how Withered Bane works now, can be applied even to scribed spells with an open tech slot.