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FC.31.20160914.0328b.2 - Sorcery Changes
kaiserin
Posts: 3,222 Cryptic Developer
UI Changes
Power Changes
New Effect: Mystified
New Effect: Jinxed
New Power: Enchanter
New Power: Magician's Dust
New Power: Spellcaster
New Power: Banish
New Power: Soul Beam
New Power: Star Barrage
Skarn's Bane
Sigils
Sigil of Arcane Runes
New Power: Living Fire
Vala's Light
Pillar of Poz
Illumination
Eldritch Blast
Pyromancer's Blades
New Power: Pyromancer's Blades (name pending)
Invocation of Storm Calling
Arcane Vitality
Palliate
Threat Wipes
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Bug
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Suggestion
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Please stay on topic in this PTS thread. We use bug reports from this thread to decide whether a PTS build is ready to go live, and so we need to make sure we're seeing everything in it. Please do discuss the changes, but if you find yourself writing about something that isn't specific to what's on PTS, then that should probably go here: http://forum.arcgames.com/championsonline/categories/gameplay-bugs1.
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- Added Slotted Passive and Toggle Form categories to the power window.
- Merged the Sorcery powertrees into one tree.
Power Changes
New Effect: Mystified
- Decreases the cost of Sorcery, Celestial, Darkness and Infernal powers briefly. Stacks up to 3 times.
- Note: Powers have not been tagged yet for this effect to work.
New Effect: Jinxed
- Reduces damage and snares enemies briefly. When this effect expires enemies are knocked down.
New Power: Enchanter
- Passive
- Increases Magic, Dimensional and Toxic damage. Gives Magic, Dimensional and Toxic resistance.
New Power: Magician's Dust
- Placate and cone Threat Wipe.
New Power: Spellcaster
- Form
- Applies a stack of Ensorcelled whenever you apply a Curse or a Enchantment.
- Like other forms, this form cannot be used with other form buffs.
- Scales off of intelligence.
New Power: Banish
- Paralyzes target.
New Power: Soul Beam
- Note: This power is still being worked on.
- Single target magic damage. Will gain additional damage if your target is affected by a Curse and if you are affected by an Enchantment.
New Power: Star Barrage
- Note: This power is still being worked on.
- Ranged AoE damage. Will have a chance to apply Mystified.
- New Advantage: Light Everlasting. If fully maintained applies a heal over time to allies nearby your target.
Skarn's Bane
- Damage changed to flat rate from escalating.
- Removed Bane effect.
- Applies Hexed after a full maintain.
- New Advantage: Chaos Magic. Chance to apply Bane every hit.
- New Advantage: Mystical. Gives a chance to apply Mystified to you.
Sigils
- Increased Sigil HP.
- Added Inner Peace advantage to sigils.
Sigil of Arcane Runes
- Changed to magic damage.
New Power: Living Fire
- Fire version of Arcane Runes.
Vala's Light
- Increased radius on Vala's Light to 25ft
- Slightly increased heal amount.
- Increased cost to account for changes.
- Increased the heal over time on the advantage.
- Added a 3 second cooldown to the power to prevent it from being spammable.
Pillar of Poz
- Increased cooldown to 10 seconds.
- Moved the knock on this power to an advantage.
- Reduced damage.
- When used this power now leaves behind a 15' symbol for 10 seconds that heals allies within it.
- New Advantage: Immense Power. Knocks targets back.
- New Advantage: Dilemma. Applies Jinxed to targets.
- New Advantage: Contempt. Applies/Refreshes Furious on you.
- New Advantage: Mystical. Gives Pillar of Poz a chance to apply Mystified to you.
Illumination
- Changed the Illumination buff and debuff to be a flat effect instead of gaining bonuses through ranks.
- Illumination buff is now classed as an Enchantment, while the debuff is considered a Curse.
- Illumination now has a duration of 20 seconds.
- The Illumination power is now innately an area effect and directly heals allies a small amount.
- The Illumination power now has a cooldown of 5 seconds.
- The Brilliance advantage now applies Detect to friendly targets, increasing their perception briefly.
Eldritch Blast
- Removed root.
- Can now apply Mystified, which reduces the cost of Sorcery, Infernal, Darkness and Celestial powers briefly.
- Sorceror's Whim advantage: No longer adds bonus damage. Now applies a root instead.
- New Advantage: CHant. Refreshes the duration of Hexed on the target.
- New Advantage: Blinding Light. Fully charging the power applies Illumination on you and nearby allies.
Pyromancer's Blades
- Renamed to Warlock's Blades
- Now deals Magic damage.
New Power: Pyromancer's Blades (name pending)
- Fire version.
Invocation of Storm Calling
- Changed to magic damage.
- Adjusted cost for new effects.
- Now deals damage while maintaining.
- Removed repel effect.
- If fully maintained applies Jinxed.
- New Advantage: Strong Winds. Repels targets away from you.
- New Advantage: Electrify. Chance to appy Negative Ions.
- New Advantage: Light up the Sky. Applies Illuminated to targets on full maintain.
- New Advantage: Mystical. Gives a chance to apply Mystified to you.
- Note: We will likely make a electric variant for the Electricity framework.
Arcane Vitality
- New Advantage: Mystical. Gives a chance to apply Mystified to you.
Palliate
- Absolve Advantage: Threat wipe will only work on yourself now and cannot be used on other players.
- Threat wipe has a 50ft radius and can affect up to 5 targets.
- This effect will work even if you use the heal on another target.
- Puts all other threat wipes on cooldown.
Threat Wipes
- Single target threat wipes now have a range of 100ft.
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Suggestion
Your suggestion
Please stay on topic in this PTS thread. We use bug reports from this thread to decide whether a PTS build is ready to go live, and so we need to make sure we're seeing everything in it. Please do discuss the changes, but if you find yourself writing about something that isn't specific to what's on PTS, then that should probably go here: http://forum.arcgames.com/championsonline/categories/gameplay-bugs1.
Posts that do not specifically pertain to the current PTS patch will be removed.
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Comments
- Absolve plays smoke bomb animation/VFX.
- Mend doesn't scale with heal bonuses.
- The AoE part of Star Barrage can not hit objects until you have hit them with some other power first (just like arc of ruin and eruption)
Adding Furious to sorcery feels is a bit to much. THe set is already filled with HoTs and little buffs, is a bit to strong an affect to add to every other set in my opinion.
The illumination (the power) changes are very invasive, and adding a mediocre heal doesn't really make up for that. If the power is being changed like this it should pack a much bigger punch. Also without heal bonus scaling and with the short duration, the power changed from a strong tool for healers, to only being useful for dps or tanks (players that have the bosses targeted anyway) to throw on bosses for some higher place on the scoreboards.
The low duration makes it very hard to keep up in some bigger more spread out fights, chasing people to get into 50 feet to do a weak heal and place a 2% heal bonus on them is not worth it at all. The only reason celestial players still want to get this power now, is for the conduit interactions.
Suggestion for illumination:
- Give the illumination power 100 feet range
- Change mend so it has a (high) chance to proc only when healing someone that is affected with illumination.
- Add back heal bonus scaling to mend.
With the cooldown added to Vala's Light, the power is not very useful anymore in my opinion. With a cooldown it only works as a secondary heal, but it's not good enough to spend the power/adv points on if you already have another heal. The HoT is nice, but it requires a long charge, so again not really useful in the fast paced content we have now.
The dps on Soul Beam is a bit low, this is on a build that can do 5k with most other ranged sets (over 6k with PA, fire, telekinesis and telepathy).
Though I will finishing farming Anniversary Gifts.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
-Ogre
I've geared a Grimore AT similarly to my current toon on PTS and found that Skarn's damage has been reduced by 50-60% from its current max damage output, and to get to that you've got to forego all advantages. I know that it now stacks Hexed, a DR debuff which may be useful for bosses, but that has no effect on the average mob - you're going to make everyday life very difficult for that AT, as it doesn't have much else apart from Skarn's in the locker.
I can see that you'd like to have lots of different advantages within the Sorcery set but for this AT, few of the changes make any sense. For example:
Ensorcelled - applies or Refreshes Focus. The Grimoire has Concentration as a Form.
Ensorcelled - Bonus Damage for Melee and Bleed Effects. The Grimoire has no Melee attacks, and Bleed is only possible as part of the Chaos Magic advantage, which has a 20% chance to apply one of 9 different debuffs - that's something like a 1.2% chance per tick.
Addition of the Inner Peace self-heal adv and Contempt (similar) to Pillar of Poz are nice to have, but not really necessary for a hybrid healer AT.
Mystified - reduces power cost by 0.05%, and can stack up to 3 times. Gee flamin whizz. The Grimoire has no Energy Unlock and still needs AoPM and CoAP to be viable. This is of no help whatsoever.
Eldritch Blast / Sorceror's Whim ADV - applies Manipulator. Why? The Grimoire now only has Root as an Advantage, now it's been taken off Eldritch Bolts by default. No point buffing Confuse/Hold/Disables the AT doesn't have.
Sigils of the Primal Storm -
Good things:
Illumination - this is nice, but it should stack. Short duration, but it should definitely stack. Is it worth having this is a separate power any more, though?
"There is only one way to support a PFF tank: Send Cyrone lots of money weekly... because he's the only one to successfully be a true PFF Tank." - chuckwolf
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Kaiserin is adding magical variants of non magic damage type abilitues, to give the set better synergy. We're getting magic explosive runes, magic electric runes, and magic swords. We're also keeping the elemental variants, but under the more thematic sets.
Soul Beam: Currently underpowered and overly expensive for what it does. Very cool animation though.
Suggestion: Increase the damage and possibly decrease the cost somewhat. It looks like it was cloned from Celestial Conduit, giving it pretty high (but ultimately unsustainable) tap-spam damage, but extremely underwhelming maintained damage. Trimming out the double-hit and increasing the damage per tick would be ideal.
Star Barrage: Also very cool, but...also very expensive. The cost-reduction buff effect is a neat idea, but...it plays kinda poorly.
Bug: Rank 2 and Rank 3 cost 3 advantage points instead of the normal 2.
Invocation of Storm's Calling: It's good to see this is finally a viable aoe. Unfortunately, all of its "utility" advantages are going to get passed by for rank 2/rank 3.
Suggestion: Several things, actually:
1) Make the Negative Ions effect baseline. Synergy is great, after all.
2) Reduce the cost of Strong Winds to 1 point. As a primary AoE, R2/R3 is too important and this optional (but highly useful) utility advantage is going to get skipped because it's not worth the tradeoff in...really any case.
Spellcaster: It's nice to see a true offensive form for sorcery, however it's very much a crosspower-unfriendly one due to the limited way in which it can be activated.
Suggestion: Add the application of Fear, Deadly Poison, Clinging Flames, Negative Ions, and Chilled to its lineup of what it considers "curses." There's some serious cross-power, magic-themed synergy opportunities that it would be a shame to pass by.
Enchanter: It's nice to see a true offensive passive for sorcery.
Suggestion: Similar to Spellcaster, add Fire, Cold, and Electrical to its lineup of affected damage types. These would open the way for several different magic-themed builds that make use of the classic fire, ice, and lightning "spells."
Illumination: This power is is pretty bad all around now. The bonus to healing is still bad, the instant, up-front healing is a nice idea, but it's too weak to make the power desirable over other instant heals, and the debuff is a lot less useful since it has a significantly shorter duration. Finally, its short buff duration makes it too clunky to use with Ascension's advantage.
Several suggestions related to this power:
1) Remove the dependency Ascension's Judgment advantage has on Illumination.
2) Change Celestial Conduit to always chain to additional targets as though they were affected by Illumination
3) Change Illumination's target-friend effect to be a decent 10 second HoT that affects up to 5 allies including the primary target.
4) Change Illumination's target-foe effect to be a 10 second damage over time effect that affects up to 5 enemies including the primary target.
- - -
Additional suggestions based on these changes:
1) Currently, Eldritch Shield's Imbue With Power advantage has no interaction with the new offensive passive. As the "sorcery" shield, it probably should.
2) Sorcery could still use a proper energy unlock. The "X energy every 3 seconds for 6 seconds" model would work well with something like, "applying a debuff gives you energy that scales with your intelligence or presence, which ever is higher, but is also affected by your recovery." By working with debuffs in general, it makes it not just useful for sorcery, but also opens the doors for a lot of other "off" builds that traditionally have to rely on molecular self-assembly. Another trigger option would be "charging or maintaining a power at least halfway." (But then, it partially overrides Overdrive)
Can't test now -- but will be testing these with my current magic builds after the weekend. I do have one off the cuff suggestion...
New Power: Enchanter
Passive
Increases Magic, Dimensional and Toxic damage. Gives Magic, Dimensional and Toxic resistance.
New Effect: Mystified
Decreases the cost of Sorcery, Celestial, Darkness and Infernal powers briefly. Stacks up to 3 times.
Note: Powers have not been tagged yet for this effect to work.
For these powers consider changing the effected damage types to Paranormal and Toxic.
Paranormal damage includes: Darkness, Dimensional Damage, Ego Damage & Magic Damage.
This would make both new options more cross build (i.e Freeform) friendly. While still keeping in theme.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
If it didn't have a cooldown, I'd consider the powers roughly equal; for healing maintains tend to be more useful than charges, and the energy is high enough that you need to think about energy management, which you mostly don't for arcane vitality. With the cooldown, it's not even close.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
Tried it in battle station while right in the middle of my targets, so it should have hit me. Nothing.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
I can make a proper Magic DPS now~!
YES!
Please tell me the users who own those powers will get FREE RETCONS so i can I can replace those two with their new variations!
Because my Fire Shaman will have now 2 Magic-dealing powers
Still no ADV to make Sigils being summoned around the Target?
I fail to see how this would be OP
The problem is, The Tempest AT has this as an option (not that anyone actually use it)
Urg... consider Vala's Light is one of the worst heals in the game, the cooldown will hurt this power even more
thats a really bad idea giving it a CD, Maintain Heals are already superior and more practical
TOXIC!? This feels out of Place!
Don't say Circe of Arcane power is, because Boot to the Head
Only INT?
Why not EGO or PRE?
I thought the point of NERFING INT was to encourage the use of other stats
Suggestion: Please make Spellcaster Form scale with either INT or PRE
There are many thematic spellcasters who are also HEALERS ingame
Do you want to be a ~MAGIC~HEALER~
Passive
Increases Magic, Dimensional and Toxic damage. Gives Magic, Dimensional and Toxic resistance.
so , different to Paranormal damage , which is magic, dimensional and Ego.
this to take into acct the poisons form the bestial powers?
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Hmm, Toxic Damage, eh? I'm assuming to fit Infernal abilities here and there. Seems an odd choice.
Honestly, I like these changes. Larger AoE and a little extra healing. I would have preferred it being a faster power, but a stronger one is good too. I'm going to miss spamming it, but I'm sure it'll be fine. We can give the "faster" attributes to a new heal later on. Perhaps for something within Technology? *Wink wink, nudge nudge*
Hmm, honestly, I feel like Pillar of Poz should Stun instead of Knock. That's just me though. A small AoE Symbol which heals allies does sound interesting though.
Hmm, so Illumination is now shorter, innately AoE, on a 5 second cooldown, and is a flat effect. I dunno, don't think these changes make Illumination any better off, but we'll have to test to see. The Brilliance advantage seems fitting. Personally, I had a hard time justifying using Illumination because of how little it did. I still think the power is a mild one, but it was originally meant to synergize with other powers. Something of which is only capitalized on by a small peck of Celestial abilities. And even in that instance, the Illumination synergies are woefully clunky and bugged.
Suggestion: I'd like to think that these Illumination changes will be good, but at this point, I would say leave Illumination where it is and work on its synergies. Things that consume or utilize it for different benefits. Also, that idea would make for a perfect condition for a Celestial Energy Unlock later.
Getting an Electric Version out is rather necessary considering that this ability is an option for the Tempest AT. With an Electric Version, there won't be any need for the Electrify Advantage. What I would suggest for the Electric AoE is that it innately has the ability to Consume Negative Ions for additional damage/arcing lightning to another target, and then an advantage with a chance to not consume.
Previously, I felt the power was rather underused as a whole, probably because it felt like an incredibly underwhelming and long-cast Charged AoE. Damage being dealt while Maintaining sounds really good for it.
Hmm, okay. So using Absolve on a nearby friendly target will drop your own threat instead of theirs now. But is the Threat Wipe AoE centered around the target or for self? Pretty glad that it won't affect others anymore... or shouldn't.
And I will always be @DZPlayer122.
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Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Illumination's duration has been reduced three times now? It's part of a set that hasn't been touched in this update and is quite important for the Celestial set synergies...
Skarn's Bane...oh dear. The changes to this power seem to both reduce its usefulness and invalidate Hex of Suffering?
It feels like this update will add a lot of shiny new powers but force a lot of in set interactions...I'll reserve my full judgement for when I have time to test but for now...I'll just frown at these changes.
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Since Vala's light requires a full charge (yes it can be tapped but the full charge heals for a lot more) to get the most out of it, the cooldown seems unnecessary. Unless the increase healing makes up for it
Remove and cooldown and add an inverted version of the charge lockout from gigabolt to Vala's light (meaning a few seconds lockout when tapped, no lockout when charged >75%). Also make the adv work on taps.
Bug (old one, but since illumination is being changed now):
Illumination can not be canceled by blocking.
THIS will work better
Just KILL the cooldown please,
Vala's Light DOES NOT Deserve to have a cooldown, especially since your target can be DEAD before you fully charge it!
... WELL CRAP!
So Skarn's Bane is now Useless? I don't like where this is going
and i really dont like see OLD powers getting nerfed for the new ones
OH YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING ME NOW!
30 Mins became 5 Mins and now it becomes 20 seconds!?
So Skarn's Bane is now Useless? I don't like where this is going
It's not useless, but... I tested it on my maxed-out Grimoire (full set of JG) and the damage reduction is around 40-50% on the base attack from current, plus around 50-100 per tick for the removal of Bane. Old build regularly hit 1500 on the final tick of SB (2000+ on a critical) and now it doesn't get much higher than 800 base damage.
I don't see the justification for it. Other powers in the same Tier in other power sets can easily do as much damage when the character is geared to that level.
I've got no problem with it applying and refreshing Hexed but it does mean that Hex of Suffering is a little redundant - that should probably root the target (which is currently an advantage).
Mystified remains pointless. The Grimoire Spec tree allows me to reduce the cost of my Heals and Single Target attacks by 21%. Mystified, stacked, is 0.15% reduction.
Base damage on Pillar of Poz has dropped by 15% and you now have to spend adv points to get it to knock foes back. Which makes the base power superfluous.
I kinda see this . . . but it really will leave Grimoires screwed for DPS.
The CD on Vala's Light make a suboptimal heal less attractive. I use it on a couple toons, but this change would definitely make me shift to a different heal, like Arcane Vitality.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
- While these changes will affect the Grimoire, it is in no way the focus of the changes. As the post title states we are looking at the Sorcery set as a whole. Keep this is mind when giving feedback.
- The Grimoire may see changes in future patches to adapt the archetype to the changes.
- While the original design of the sorcery sets was to focus on different types of elements, this never really came to be. Instead of continuing down that path we're merging the sets and shifting the focus to simply magic themed.
- Tiers are something we've started enforcing, and will continue to do so as we go through powersets. Just because there exists a low tier power now that is capable of doing high tier damage doesn't mean it will always be that way. The tier placement of the current Sorcery powers are unlikely to change.
- Power cost is unlikely to change much as it's calculated based on output.
- As always, please keep on topic. If you have questions about things unrelated to Sorcery start a new thread.
Damage changed to flat rate from escalating.
Removed Bane effect.
Applies Hexed after a full maintain.
New Advantage: Chaos Magic. Chance to apply Bane every hit.
New Advantage: Mystical. Gives a chance to apply Mystified to you.
I liked the most recent version of Skarn's as it was. It provided a host of useful debuffs that made it synergize well in team play. I don't really understand the reasoning here. Skarn's was fine as it was and powers on the same tier (and lower) do much more damage than Skarn's ever could.
Vala's Light
Increased radius on Vala's Light to 25ft
Slightly increased heal amount.
Increased cost to account for changes.
Increased the heal over time on the advantage.
Added a 3 second cooldown to the power to prevent it from being spammable.
Vala's light is currently a supremely sub-optimal choice for healing. I don't see these changes improving that. Especially the cool down. The charge time should be greatly reduced instead. As targets frequently die before the power finishes charging. There's a reason you hardly see anyone using Vala's. I'm sure data mining will reveal it's not a heal that's frequently chosen.
Pillar of Poz
Increased cooldown to 10 seconds.
Moved the knock on this power to an advantage.
Reduced damage.
When used this power now leaves behind a 15' symbol for 10 seconds that heals allies within it.
New Advantage: Immense Power. Knocks targets back.
New Advantage: Dilemma. Applies Jinxed to targets.
New Advantage: Contempt. Applies/Refreshes Furious on you.
New Advantage: Mystical. Gives Pillar of Poz a chance to apply Mystified to you.
Why does this apply furious? That seems a bit weird. The other changes are intriguing however. Poz seems like it will have more synergy potential within the set. This is good.
In general the Sorcery, Celestial, Darkness and Infernal synergies make sense to me. As these powers all live in the same "tree". Much like Martial Arts or Mentalist synergies. As far as infernal goes.. I've always viewed that set thematically as curses and poisons. You could even argue it as being potentially alchemy (poisons & potions) themed. I still think having Sorcery interact more broadly with Paranormal and Elemental damage types is the way to go.
2: Illumination got reduced AND given a CD? please tell me you're going to buff it's effect to be more than tiny...also you do realize this change basically neuters celestial conduit's aoe potential, right?
3: adding a CD to vala's light to help "balance" the other buffs... that's not going to help, the problem with it.. and charge heals in general.. is that they are simply too slow, often not reaching the target until they are already dead.. hence why maintain heals are kinda the way to go.
4: If you want to keep soul beam a T3 power.. you are going to need to up the damage output....by quite a bit.... think higher than skarns [and remember skarns is an AoE so its damage atm is ok enoughs]
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Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
I think it's up to the developers to sing a chorus of "Accentuate the Positive", if needed. I am not going to ignore a 50% reduction in the efficacy of this ATs primary AoE attack on the basis that you'll kludge up a fix later on. It's nice to have new stuff, but you can't expect players to look past negative impacts on characters they have spent a substantial amount of time (and money) playing, when the positive impacts (if any) are out of sight.
In any case - looking at the new stuff - the new passive (Enchanter) makes the issues even more plain. It's clearly set up to compensate for a lowering of base attack damage (giving me 74% additional damage boost at R3), but the fact that it affects Dimensional and Toxic as well makes almost all the Magic powers the poor relation. The Toxic set does more damage and has clearer, simpler, synergies in stacks of Poison/Deadly Poison, and all of the Celestial/Dimensional attacks have significantly better base effects (Rebuke's heal, Expulse's KB) and advantages (Vengeance's Stun). The Magic attacks don't really cut it - the damage reduction on Skarn's is OTT, the changes to Invocation of the Storm distinctly weak, and apart from Eldritch Bolts they're definitely the poor relation.
I'm glad that you've amended the description of Ensorcelled, as it wasn't right - it's more of a Concentration, with stacks built by building Curses and Enchantments (presumably this is why Bane has been removed from Skarn's to prevent the stacks building too quickly?). I would prefer it, though, if it buffed damage less and also had a healing buff component - a form for versatile characters, which I think will be welcome with the recent changes to enemy groups.
A few specific thoughts:
Spellcaster
This form is very interesting in how it functions. I like that it is deeply rooted in the set it exists in, and it is basically like Aspect of the Infernal in that regard. However it seems just a bit more... quirky? In the Infernal Set there's a bunch of stuff that applies poison - it's hard to throw a stone into that set and not hit a power that does so. With Sorcery I actually had to build a network of powers to build and maintain stacks. It's not hugely more complex or difficult to do ( and it certainly makes the set fun to build with ) but I think it's just enough that it might warrant a bit extra on this form. My suggestion would be to make it so that it increases Healing in an amount equal to what it increases Melee, making this a sort of hybrid dps/healing form, that focuses on dps. Also make it scale off Presence/Int.
Enchanter
Well this is a rather boring straight play on a sorcery passive. I'd love to see a bonus to healing, similar to what Seraphim has. I'm sure you can see the pattern here... Sorcery as a hybrid dps/healing thing.
Soul Beam
This power probably isn't finished so I won't comment on its gameplay other than to say that I like that it does a constant amount rather than ramping. The beam needs to be bigger. And heart shaped! ... okay maybe just bigger.
Star Barrage
Well I couldn't rank it to 3 since the advantage costs are bugged but having seen the power at rank 2 I think I can safely say the vfx need to be brighter bigger and more sparklepony. Like just double the number of glowy dots shooting out of my hand.
Pillar of Poz
This power is very neat now. Love the ground glyph thingy, and the furious, and Mystical. The way I'm using it on PTS isn't even as an attack, it's just a self-buffer. It's great when the utility of a power can be shifted around that much, taking its utility from dpsing completely over to buffing.
Vala's Light
( following values are on kagami, she's not a healer )
Arcane Vitality does 364 hps.
Vala's Light with advantage does 1059 healing on a full charge. That takes 2.5 seconds to get out, so it's 423 hps. At this point it looks like it's better than AV. However, this is only if I don't re-cast it for 10 seconds to let every tic of the advantage get out - so that would actually decrease the hps to 84.
So if I spam Vala's Light I'm going to get one out every 5 seconds ( my cdr lowered the cd to 2.4 ), so I'll get 5 tics of the advantage putting the total heal at 819. One of those is coming out every 5 seconds, so the hps is 163. On live, in regards to HPS, Vala's is competitive with Arcane Vitality, and in fact out performs it in some ways. Now, Vala's can no longer be considered as a main aoe heal... or really anything, its not even a good part of some sort of heal rotation.
For funsies I calculated the HPS of Vala's if you tap it. 40.
That is a huge nerf...and what... all so I can't spam the power in front of people who don't like the visuals?
If the cooldown is going to stay then there needs to be something to fill the gap. As the numbers show, Vala's total healing needs to effectively be at least doubled in order to remain a valid choice, and I think the entirety of that increase needs to be added as over-time healing that is baked into the power itself rather than added as an advantage.
If we increase the heal-over-time of Light Everlasting by 350% and then bake it into the power so a player can take rank 3, and spam it we end up with a hps of 362. This would put it about even with Arcane Vitality in terms of sheer numbers, though of course in many people's eyes Arcane Vitality would still be the easier power to use - this would return us to the meta that exists between these two powers on live. Personally I think the HPS for Vala's actually needs to be higher than AV, but I would be satisfied with the powers at least maintaining the balance they have on live.
Invocation of Storm Calling
Strong Winds feels like it should be a 1 pt advantage...maybe Light Up The Sky and Mystical too.
Eldritch Blast
Blinding light seems like it will be neat once it works. Also Chant isn't refreshing Hexed.
ERMAGERD MA MOBILITAH
I like powers where I can move while using them... I understand if you don't add any since sorcery in works generally involves someone standing in place while slinging all sorts of madness and sparklepony around, but I just thought I would put that out there o3o
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
42 40s, LTSer.
Also the thing about spellcasters standing in place being thematic is something I literally typed in the thing you quoted. I bolded it for you so that you don't miss it when you go to read a second time. It's literally the majority of what you quoted. Amazing, you're in such a hurry to disagree with me that you don't realize that you're just repeating something I said. Incredibly.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
- - -
Anyway, moving on:
Bug: Soul Beam can be assigned various point-of-origin nodes (hand, fist, head, chest) but does not properly fire from the head or chest. I meant to mention this in my original post in this thread, but forgot about it.
Banish: the hold seems...honestly.. unbreakable via damage [I've gone ballistic on it with a PA dps monster build and the dummy inside died before it broke] with the trade off being that the target only takes half damage....as much as I like this idea, something is going to need to be changed or this is going to be abused beyond belief...
Member of Paragon Dawn: Because some people like friendly helpful communities.
Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
42 40s, LTSer.
- Updated Soul Beam's damage and cost values.
- Updated Soul Beam's FX.
- Added Storm Summoner power to the Electricity framework. (Still being worked on) This power has received new FX to better match the set.
Suggestion for Mystify: Why can't the bonus be applied to all powers instead of only those in select frameworks? Infernal in particular doesn't even make much sense.
Storm Summoner: This is exactly the kind of power I'm happy to see for the Electricity framework, and while I know it's brand new, it needs some work. As is now, it's extremely weak and underwhelming. Still, I love the idea of an alternate, less-energy-hungry AoE for Lightning users.
Suggestion 1: Either the damage needs to be greatly increased or the ticks need to be reduced to 0.5 seconds--reducing the per-tick cost accordingly. Currently, Lightning Storm outperforms it both in terms of damage per tick and the rate at which ticks happen. While LS should be better overall since it's such a massive energy hog, Storm Summoner in its current form is something nobody will really end up taking due to how weak it is in comparison.
Suggestion 2: It's going to need some sort of Negative Ion interaction if it's going to be usable with Ionic Reverberation and other abilities within the framework. That interaction doesn't need to be anything fancy and could even be copy-pasted over from Lightning Storm (X% chance to arc to another target, no consumption) but it does need to have this if it's going to work properly with the Electrical framework.
Eldritch Blast: I just wanted to point out that the blinding light advantage, when it gets fixed, will (in theory) actually a better way to apply illuminated than the core Celestial spell the effect is derived from. Just something to think about. However, first of all:
Bug: The Blinding Light advantage doesn't seem to work. At all. It isn't applying Illuminated to either my targets or myself.
Comparing it to other pbAoE.
Invocation of Storm Calling = 341 per 1 second
Lead tempest = 372 per 0.5 seconds (and has double the range)
Huricane does 138-305 x2 per 0.5 seconds (no selfroot)
Epidemic = 273-555 per 0.5 seconds (poison stacks and no selfroot)
Quicksand = 267-554 per 0.5 seconds (no one uses this one for a reason)
Now of course invocation does the last hit, that does an AoE on all targets. But that is not nearly going to double it's overall damage. The energy cost on the other hand is overly low, the activation is high but the maintained cost is silly low. So I would rather have the power be a bit more competitive with other similar powers, and get a somewhat significant energy cost.