Warding flare.. whats the fix to use it in game?

silverkelt

after my initial testing on these way back when they gave them to us, its clearly come to pass, this skill just isnt useful. (and not to sound too arrogant, because basically alot of people said the same.. I just gave my thoughts at the time.. )

500% of weapon damage, on a legendary symbol, will net you protection slightly over 7k. This is ridiculous skill with zero use in game. All three lines(divine and empowered) in the skill has zero use at all.

Its no where enough, ever to warrant slotting the skill and using it, I cant think of a fix the actual base of this skill, that would warrant slotting it, without it adding both a increase of protection and/or a buff/debuff or unique protection item instead.

First off, this is what I would do.

Change it from 500% from weapon to a flat 10% of hit points. Divine mod adds a stack to all ALLIES (not just one), (up to three) and change from target to party. Empowered will consume non used stacks and convert them to a dps increase of your part instead

Per rank, increase by .5 and dps buff duration of 1 second %. Total you can achieve per stack is 11.5% and a additional 1 second, 2, 3 and 4 to the consumable buff.

New version based on 100k in hitpoints , would net you this at max rank.

100,000 hit points + non empowered = 11,500 additional hit points.
first stack = another 11500
second = another 11500
Third = another 11500
Total protection = 46,000
consume empowered , will take unconsumed stacks and convert protected hit-points to a pure dps buff of 50% value of feat. So if it has a 11.5% * 4/2 total stacks would if not used increase dps by 23% total.

What this change does.

It will add a dynamic process to a underwhelming skill. Leave as is, and its extremely useful for all pve and pvp purposes as a massive protection to your allies (still not worth slotting most of the time btw) but the true beauty here is that the DC would decide if its time to convert that protection to DPS straight buff.

Of course if a stack is consumed , as it would be alot of times on tanks.. then they dont get thier stack back, just those who are not consumed would get a total 4 second buff (when ranked) increase.

This skill, I would think would be less useful still then DG, but of more use then at current Ashield.. which is only powerful in empowered mode and of little use to the game as it stand right now. (outsdide of pvp)

I dont think this is a perfect solution to the skill, the damage is underwhelming compared to just hitting DG all the time and boosting your team doing that.. But I think this at least layers a dynamic process to a skill, that has little to no value to the game as it currently stands.

What is your thoughts? how can we tinker, what would your proposal be?

This skill needs a total reboot and I would like to add a dynamic layer to it, just like other items, when its time to consume, stack and play with divinity vs empowered modes.

tyrtallow

This encounter has only ever been useful in PvP for me, and even then you needed to have other DR buffs up to make it viable.

Atm I'm not too bothered that its underperforming, but like Geas this power should at least be a potential 1-point wonder. Working off your idea, my idea:
-Normal version should negate damage based off a portion of the caster's current HP. Levels improve range and duration
-Empowered version further increases flare range and duration to a grand total of 60% or so uptime without recovery (ideally the encounter should have 80% or so uptime max, with bonuses from stats/gear/class buffs)
-Divine version negates around 20% or so of incoming damage for one instance (maximum stacks at a time: 2). This is flat out damage negation, not a DR buff so it ignores the DR limit

Change Pros:
-We need more 1 point wonders.
-This makes it a great alternative to Astral Shield - it's basically the version you'd use if you needed some way to raise people's DR through divinity, because you want to spend those empower stacks on something else. It will also have its own quirks (ignores DR limit, has a stack limit, normal version works off your current HP, longer cooldown/lower uptime than AS) so you can't outright say it can fully replace AS and vice versa. Might still have to tweak it a bit.

Change Cons:
-Will affect the usefulness of Exaltation. Still, this would be a good excuse to tweak that encounter anyway.
-Might need to buff Divine AS a bit to account for the change. Also a perfect excuse to do that.

free2pay

No. Just get rid of Geas and Warding Flare. They are either very ill thought out or just reeks of incompetence. I hate to use such strong words but it is what it is. Replace them with the iconic CLERIC power Blade Barrier and Freedom of Movement and I'll gladly forget the entire mod 6 debacle.

silverkelt

Frankly, I suggested in the strongest words originally how poor they were thought of, and how they ignored feedback entirely.

However, we both know thats not going to happen, the best I can hope for is maybe we get 1 out of the 2 of them to ACTUALLY do something in game that is semi-useful.

Gaes is only useful in a extremely small amount of cases , using it totally gimps your build with a much more powerful skill.. It has some applications in pvp, especially in certain 1 vs 2 .. locking out the arch nemesis cw ..

but its more of a matter of a delay then anything else.