[Reference] Soul Sight Crystal Damage Scaling

rjc9000

The Soul Sight Crystal is a new artifact which came out with the Sword of Chult expansion.

Because things don't make sense in this game, I checked what scales with the damage buff and what doesn't. I only bothered to check relevant/skills or abilities on each class, though there are a few things I was curious about and checked those.

More info is on the Google Sheets thing that I put down my notes on.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iJtrPjcIQ5OgNUP8ah8rt3Ah0UfZz6bluCMckbbdPWI/edit?usp=sharing

Generally, anything which scales with things like the Air Archon will scale with this.

I would guess that this hasn't changed since I tried it out on 12.5 preview, though I've been confined in the insane asylum known as "college" during the Mod release time, so I haven't been personally able to try it out on live. Also, Bugtober fixing can make things subject to change.

araxelven

Great work! I guess this should make this artifact one of the better ones to use as an active?

rjc9000

I would personally use it as an active on any DPS class due to the artifact working very well with the speed burn metagame.

rockstargfu

Great stuff, thanks for the heads up, its first on my list when MoD drops, bye bye Wheel

rjc9000

rockstargfu said:

Great stuff, thanks for the heads up, its first on my list when MoD drops, bye bye Wheel

Just remember feeders aren't worth anything in 12.5...

thefabricant

I do not feel physically or metaphorically harmed.

rockstargfu

Ya i bought some feeders for my pallies stuff to mythic his artifacts last dbl RP before mod change. That change will increase AD to Mythoc pretty drasticaly

Unknown

This content has been removed.

jonkoca

Thanx from me too, my soul shard should go mythic today. And yes, leveling new artifacts is now a huge pain in the rear.

jaime4312

Thank you very much yet again for helping us mortals with your testing and knowledge! @rjc9000 - sama xD

nihlocke

Today I came across a gwf with this little Soul Sight Crystal and she was dealing insane amounts of damage. I was about to write a post about it, but i guess i don't need to anymore.

So, what are we looking at?

Use: The target takes 50% additional damage from your attacks for 10 seconds.

Now, what does this mean? Should we read this as:

1) "the target takes 50% more damage from your attacks for 10 seconds", aka a DEBUFF, and as such with the usual hard cap of 300% and additive with other debuffs

or

2) "you deal 50% more damage to the target for 10 seconds" aka a BUFF, and as such with no cap and multiplicative with all our other damage multipliers (archons, class buff, etc)

?

By the phrasing it looks more like a debuff, which would kind of limit its usefulness. If it is a buff then it would give the Fire buff for the Wheel of Elements a run for its money, if not destroying it completely.

Any clue abuot what we are dealing with?

(sorry if it looks like i'm stalking you. I swear it just happens you write all the interesting stuff)

rjc9000

It should be read as "you place a 50% damage buff on the target of choice for 10 seconds".*

*Some powers may be unaffected by this buff. If your powers do not, please consult Cryptic Game Development Team Corp.

nihlocke

Which means it scales with all our multipliers. That's nuts.

New best single target Artifact confirmed?

rjc9000

nihlocke#5890 said:

Which means it scales with all our multipliers. That's nuts.

New best single target Artifact confirmed?

Probably, assuming you can burn the boss or force a phase shift within the 10 seconds of Soul Sight.

nihlocke

Well, even it takes, let's say, three minutes and thus 3 artifact activations, wouldn't 30 seconds of that massive multiplier outweight the dmg increase from one minute and a half of Fire buff from Wheel of the Elements? Or does the +30% fire buff scale in the same exact way?

rjc9000

Wheel of Elements Fire takes 30% of your initial hit and creates an addition hit of Fire damage. Technically, on a 1000 damage hit, whether it would be a 1.3x buff ala ITF or it's a % proc like it is now probably won't make a difference, as your total damage on that hit would equal 1300 (If it was a buff ala Longstriders, then 1000*1.3 = 1300. As it stands now, you deal your 1000 damage and you add another 300 damage as Fire damage).

However, due to Cryptic's weird programming, there are some subtle differences. Wheel: Fire is a proc, so means that any external damage procs won't work for it. So, if you play a CW, then there's very little reason to use Wheel Fire over Soul Sight, since a majority of your DPS won't activate Wheel Fire (Courage, Storm Spell, Assailant, Creeping Death/Warped Magics, Weapon Enchantment Procs, etc.).

Soul Sight Crystal generally doesn't suffer from this issue... except for the weird circumstances that I noted in the spreadsheet.

---

Now, to answer your question about considering uptime, the way I would (weirdly) explain it is that we should be looking at effective uptime of each buff during the fight. This is because NW is a game all about timing, and using the right things at the right times makes more of a difference above all else.

Wheel:Fire is a weaker "buff" of 30% whereas Soul Sight is 50%. However, Wheel: Fire lasts 30 seconds and Soul Sight lasts 10 seconds. Depending on the fight at hand and the class you're looking at, you may wish to use different artifacts for the situation.

So, if we're fighting the FBI Dragon Turtle, and after 10secs of fighting, the team can force the boss to shift mechanics. So, can you figure out why would I suggest the Soul Sight Crystal over Wheel?

In this short period of fight time, we only get 10 seconds to do DPS before the boss runs away. Though Wheel: Fire has extra uptime, that extra uptime won't do us much good if 20 seconds out of the 30 second uptime is spent waiting for the boss to stop doing its mechanic. Thus, I choose the artifact with the stronger buff to match the effective fight uptime.

Note that I don't think I explained this very well, so anybody who understands what I'm trying to say is free to explain this better than me.

nihlocke

That was perfectly clear, thanks. I didn't even take into consideration that the Fire buff could not work on some abilities. Also i didn't really know that the +30% damage didn't affect weapon enchantment procs.

And i didn't think about the fact that not all bosses are tank and spank and/or have different phases, so we can't just say "this is better all the time".

Did you also do the same kind of analysis on the Wheel of the Elements artifact before? This whole thing is getting interesting, so i'd like to read more.

rjc9000

I never needed to, it's not like Wheel had much competition beforehand. I only thought about this since I spent a lot of testing time waiting for the crystal to recharge.

By "phases", I usually mean "you're forced to do a mechanic and you can't fight the boss".

For example, during eSP's Nostura (boss3) fight, there is a time where she says "I grow tired of this". Then, she turns invincible and your team needs to kill the tentacles that spawn, so you can enter the portals, so you can kill the fire spawns so you don't get one shotted. During this time, you can technically damage Nostura, but you'd be best off focusing on finishing the mechanic, and regrouping before trying to poke her. You can technically skip this mechanic, if you're able to one round her before she does her Planar Prominence, but if you kill her after the mechanic appears, she glitches and gives no loot (or, you just die, which means you have to try again). You would basically have one shot to one round her.

So, depending on your team's strategy, you may wish to use Wheel if you want the SP loot, or the Soul Sight Crystal if your plan is to 1 round the boss.

Another example would be in FBI's Manticore (boss 1) fight. If you whittle the boss down to a certain % of HP, then the manticore flies away and you're forced to wait for ~20 sec while the boss drops an unavoidable avalanche on you. So, back when helping some PC players practice FBI speedruns, we would normally wait a few second to chip the boss' HP a bit, then once we knew all the buffs were lined up, we let loose our burst DPS and hoped we could burn the manticore before he ran away. If I had the Soul Sight Crystal then, I would have waited to use it when the DC buffs went up so I could make the best use of the Soul Sight Crystal.

You'll have to experiment with each fight and boss in the game, know your team, and intuitively figure out how your build would most benefit from either artifact.

santralafax

Question: If there are multiple enemies available, how does the Crystal pick the target? The first one you attack? I've just started using it, and most of the bosses have adds. Don't want to apply to an add...

rjc9000

There's a cursor in the middle of your screen, looks like a circle with a dot in the middle.



In that screenshot, it turned red when I pointed it towards the training dummy.

You gotta point that cursor towards the enemy you plan to rekt.