Imbue With Power and the Radiant Archetype

breadandcircuses · April 2016

I'm new to Champions Online, and having made a Radiant character to get my feet wet I've discovered something about the Advantages for Eldritch Shield: Imbue With Power is either non-functional (if it's supposed to work with your active Auras, which was my original interpretation since it referred to them in the description) or refers to Passive abilities a Radiant has no means of obtaining (if it refers to the actual Passives available to other Archetypes, though I didn't actually see any Archetype possessing Aura of Arcane Clarity). Working off of the assumption that it's the latter, and Imbue With Power Advantage is meant to work with Passives rather than Auras, my suggestion is twofold:

#1: Change the description to reflect that your slotted Auras have no impact on the Advantage by updating it as follows:

Imbue with Power
Adds a different effect to your shield based on which ~~Aura~~ Passive you have ~~active~~ slotted:
+ Aura of Arcane Clarity: Your shield now returns more energy during a block, scaling with your Intelligence.
+ Aura of Primal Majesty: Your shield now has a chance to strike your attacker with a bolt of lightning.
+ Aura of Ebon Destruction: Your shield now has a chance to Fear your attackers.
+ Aura of Radiant Protection: Your shield now has a chance to place a Heal over Time on you.

I chose the Legacy Aura for my character in part based on the desired Imbue With Power effect, found that it did not actually work, then did some looking to try and figure out why. Well, it turns out that there used to be Auras that actually did stuff (other than look awesome), and that the Radiant doesn't have any of them. Speaking of which...

#2: Add an effect for the Seraphim Passive. Since the Auras don't actually do anything to Imbue With Power, it doesn't make sense that an entry-level Archetype intended to get players familiar with the game has something that simply doesn't work at all with that Archetype. While I understand that Freeform is the priority (and it really does look like a great selling point*), the Archetypes themselves should at least work with their own abilities. Something like one of the following might fit the theme:

+ Seraphim: Your shield now grants damage absorption during a block, scaling with your Presence.
+ Seraphim: Your shield now grants a portion of its damage reduction to your allies (within range of your Seraphim Passive).
+ Seraphim: Your shield now has a chance to smite your attacker with divine retribution (with Dimensional damage).
+ Seraphim: Your shield now has a chance to cleanse debuffs or DoTs.
+ Seraphim: Your shield now has a chance to Disorient your attacker.
+ Seraphim: Your shield now has a chance to Fear your attacker.
+ Seraphim: Your shield now has a chance to Knock your attacker.
+ Seraphim: Your shield now has a chance to Stun your attacker.
+ Seraphim: Your shield now has a chance to apply a lingering Shield (magnitude comparable to the total of the HoT applied by Aura of Radiant Protection).

So, there's my little drop in the Suggestion Box; thanks for reading.

(*albeit a rather pricey one to go for piecemeal, considering you would also need to purchase the Archetypes individually to unlock additional powers to go with your Freeform character slots)

kallethen · April 2016

The Radiant AT is a bit of an odd duck in a way with how it mixes the Sorcery and Celestial powersets. Still, I love the AT dearly. I do recall some people citing the shield's advantage incompatibility as a complaint when the AT was introduced. However, I'm not sure I agree that we should change it to work with Seraphim, as that is a Celestial powerset while Eldritch Shield is Sorcery (and you'll note that all the "Aura of [Sorcery Theme]" passives are Sorcery).

EDIT: I do agree that the advantage's description could be updated to more blatantly say that it means the Sorcery passive "Auras" and not the visual costume auras. Originally, all those legacy auras were the visual effect of various passives in CO. When they put in the costume aura system, they stripped the visual effects from the passives and made them into the legacy auras.

breadandcircuses · April 2016

kallethen said:
The Radiant AT is a bit of an odd duck in a way with how it mixes the Sorcery and Celestial powersets. Still, I love the AT dearly. I do recall some people citing the shield's advantage incompatibility as a complaint when the AT was introduced. However, I'm not sure I agree that we should change it to work with Seraphim, as that is a Celestial powerset while Eldritch Shield is Sorcery (and you'll note that all the "Aura of [Sorcery Theme]" passives are Sorcery).

EDIT: I do agree that the advantage's description could be updated to more blatantly say that it means the Sorcery passive "Auras" and not the visual costume auras. Originally, all those legacy auras were the visual effect of various passives in CO. When they put in the costume aura system, they stripped the visual effects from the passives and made them into the legacy auras.

Fair point; how about instead adding a Celestial Shield (maybe taking the Scutum Fidei for visual inspiration?) to round (triangle?) out the Celestial powerset, with one of the suggested Advantages? That would solve the incompatability issue for The Radiant and provide Freeform with a better variety of powers. Further, it would also allow for new Celestial Passives to be added to that Advantage as they are introduced... like something more avengingly angelic.

roughbearmattach · April 2016

It's weird how Celestial, Bestial, and Infernal power sets do not have in-set block enhancers. Granted, neither do Archery, Munitions, or Martial Arts weapon sets. Even reskinning some existing blocks with a new name and tagged as being in-set would be good enough, like :Sword Parry" instead of parry.

The Celestial block could mirror the Darkness one: provide healing to the hero and inflict some damage to the attacker.

riverocean · April 2016

Most of those sorcery advantages aren't really that good. You're usually better off ranking your block up to rank 3 over taking the advantage.

pantagruel01 · April 2016

The arcane shield advantage should probably be turned into four advantages (or else arcane shield turned into four powers) -- something like "Imbue with Arcane Power", "Imbue with Ebon Power", "Imbue with Primal Power","Imbue with Radiant Power". I doubt anyone would take the Arcane variant, any of the other three might have its uses.

kallethen · April 2016

I wouldn't mind seeing Celestial get it's own block replacer, especially since Darkness has one.

breadandcircuses · April 2016

kallethen said:
I wouldn't mind seeing Celestial get it's own block replacer, especially since Darkness has one.

Honestly, the biggest reason for the suggestion is that The Radiant is a Silver Archetype and has something you can build into for absolutely no benefit. There's a difference between offering a sub-optimal Archetype as a free sample and including build options that specifically do not work. I don't mean having a minimal benefit, or making no "real" impact on gameplay... literally nothing comes of purchasing that Advantage if you are The Radiant.

Hrm, that's only half true; you are actually worse off for having purchased Imbue With Power because you have 2 less Advantage Points than someone who did not...

I rather like The Radiant and Champions overall, but as a new player I found the misleading description and Advantage incompatability were sort of grating. On the plus side, this Forum does offer the Suggestion Box as a means of communicating such things. Thanks to the staff for that one. Seriously.

Imbue With Power and the Radiant Archetype

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