Best Of

Not gonna lie, I am definitely enjoying seeing sargassum and random sea life on the highways - and being able to use trailblaze on them since they are natural terrain now.

Optional plot to keep flooded highways forever pls? <<

The idea for HolyFire looks fun. From the outside, currently Celestines look like they've got a load of neat tricks but they seem power hungry and are best for killing people in group fights who miss the Judgement, Heretic, Meteor or Soulless warning lines or are hindered by others. Meteor is very doable solo. Meteors are awesome. Soulless isn't great. Maybe speed up Soulless?

Holy Light looks like a pain to manage - strong effects but hard to gather. Chunky additional power costs seem a reasonable swap to balance. At the moment Heretic/Infidel/Inquisition is just annoying to fight against because of the invisible windows, meaning you've just got to run till it wears off because you can't see when to counter. So it's great that Celestines are getting looked at and tidied up with a viable kill path.

How strong it is will depend on the timings for Heretic, how fast building HolyFire is, and then interactions with the 50% egokills.

Meteor and soulless are both available to other classes and should be balanced around being achievable for all classes, not only achievable through inquisition.

I am also concerned about the ego drain. It seems a bit different to every other levelled aff to have that on failure, but so is the heretic requirement. But I'm not sure why it is ego, and there don't seem to be any justifications that can't be copied over to the toadcurse or wrack lines. Do warriors do enough bleeding to make a three-move mana instakill too easy?

I assume it's not just "die or nothing" because of the heretic requirement and the subsequent loss of all holyfire when inquisition ends, but it's very weird that it's set up to help an entire different class (or two, with dramaturgy bards) pull off an instakill when you fail, because there's no way someone won't cure up before you can drop another inqui on them.

There is no ego drain amount given for 71-74 Holy Fire. I assume it's 80%, so you can reach maximum HolyFire and avoid unlucky smokes from screwing you. Then again, the holyfire is checked after the stun, so you can just touch up the holyfire during that period.

Regarding holylight, I think some of the holylight moves need to be very expensive. HolyBeing probably deserves an 8p cost, but 2p per holylight isn't universal - RighteousArms could just be free like all of the other weapon things.

Regarding RighteousArms, if you want this to be more useful for guardians than warriors you need to make sure that the symbol attack matches the weapon attack. That's part of the problem nihilists have - a warrior can do deathmarks, plus a dust modifier aff (or two) or stun, plus possible deathblade plague affs every balance. Nihilists can't, and demonmarks/crunch don't make up the difference. Both nihilists and celestines probably need the option to symbol evoke, doing deathmarks/holyfire plus an aff, and the pact/pledge pools looked over to ensure there is a dust or spiritual aff available to everyone.

Is CelestialRay expected to be useful for solo inquisitions? It's important to understand the power costs and affliction durations expected.

Brawrur said:

Also Chogan, basically every killpath is negated by walking out of the room (or using alternate movement.) Like, it's not unique that your class can't force people to stay in the room and die to you, and nothing should be balanced around this being the case.

One thing you're forgetting is that all Celestine's timed instakills have two components 1) You can't do anything after it begins and/or 2) You can't leave the room either.

So yes, a knight certainly has issues keeping someone from walking away. But if the target DOES walk away while they're ready for an instakill, you can just leave and initiate the kill. If you walk out of a room while Soulless is active, then it automatically fails, the Celestine has to invest time (at least 28 seconds, but realistically more), and power because to get to the point where Soulless can even reliably be used, you have to invest 35p. 12p for inquisition, 8p for enigma, and 5p for wrath.

So yes, certainly movement creep is an issue for everyone, but the whole *point* of Celestines is stopping that movement at critical, well planned times. You shouldn't be able to do it without fail, every single time and you shouldn't be able to do it ANYtime, but when you've laid the groundwork, you should be able to do it somewhat reliably.

This is a volunteer coding project that has been taken on by a volunteer, it isn't something that I'm committing myself to do. When it comes to volunteers doing volunteer projects, we want them to work on something they are genuinely interested in doing so it's more likely it gets completed. Celestines have been on the starmap at this point for a few years and this was a project this volunteer was interested in undertaking so we gave it a greenlight. This is a project that we are aiming for them to complete before taking on bigger projects. Maybe those larger projects will involve more things you want to see done, but we need to take the first step and the first step is allowing them to complete this project first. I've signed off on the proposal because I think it accomplishes some of the goals we want to see for Celestines (and Celest) such as more synergy between classes to bring them up to par with synergy seen in other orgs. 

I understand that you, Brawrur, don't feel this is the best use of resources, but continuing to harp on it is neither constructive or useful. If you want to be constructive, please do so, but leave out the extraneous commentary that does not really relate to this project. 

Any further posts that are not directly related to feedback on the proposal here will be deleted because it's simply a waste of our time at this point. You've said your piece, what you want is not in the cards at this time, it's time to move on.

Sulwh said:

Celestines already have multiple viable killpaths: Judgment, Absolve, Inquisition (it is an instakill in the same sense that toad curse is one - the person that is being inquisitioned should die unless mistakes happen or they are rescued), Meteor (especially with the new wondercenser), Cauterise, and Soulless (but let's be real, why would you ever use it when Judgment is Soulless but a thousand times better?). They have tools to hamper someone and keep them in the room for meteor: carcer, shieldstun, web. If the meteor is timed well and you are able to drop the meteor immediately before the opponent uses balance/equilibrium, then shieldstun/web has a great chance of lasting until the meteor falls.

Absolve is already an amazing pressuring tool even though it is not viable for solo kills (there are other killpaths for solo: judgment and meteor). If there is a Celestine in a group, then you have to watch your mana usage for clotting. The Nihilism equivalent, Wrack, at least requires the target to be bound or paralyzed. Absolve only requires 50% mana.

I think it is neat that class reworks are being done, but I do not understand the rationale in removing 2 conditional viable group instakills and replacing it with, on paper, an extremely strong killpath.

1. The thing about Absolve is that while yes, it is a killsteal move-it is only that. A Celestine can't reliably pull it off without a Tk mage/Nekotai and wiccans to a lesser degree meaning that they having to reach outside their org to achieve the method as Celest typically don't have TK mages. They are predominantly dreamweavers or runists to a lesser degree. Also, Wrack is nowhere -near- as equivalent as absolve. Wrack may have an extra requirement, but it can be pulled off without help because of the way Nihilists are set up greatly for success even with the recent upgrade they received in the last two or three years. You can't amissio/powersink your way to absolve with afflictions that cure at the speed of light that is given actively ~4s or passively at ~8s with the angel. So the removal of absolve makes sense to me here.

2. Tools to hamper like carcer/web/shieldstun/tower(fall) card are negligble because of some artifacts make those tools lolzy irrelevant. Understandably they're not meant to be 100% inescapable which is correct, but they can also use a much-needed upgrade in proc rates in blocking escape to allow them more use for necessity.

3. My concern is the reduction in stun duration because for balance reasons, the new mech -has- to take into account of Soulless and Meteor kills. I get the impression that this new suite of affs MIGHT be good for cauterize, but I don't know. However, I think the stun needs to be at least 6 or 7s which is still a reduction from what it is now, but it should be baby steps in duration reduction to see how viable it is to pull off those two. It is already bad that you can't do anything while Soulless is being channeled, but also within that time and stun, the angel will only pull off one set of affs-which if wrathed, that's literally only 2 afflictions (within the current 8s) and that won't be enough to "hamper" in the current meta of how simple it is to walk out of anything short of a crux, pfifth or a climax stun. At 4s, it's a simple cure a possible aff that prevents movement and it's a reset or a reset and forced to go for <25% ego or max holyfire to be slain.

Talkan said:

Furies said:

Thank you all for the feedback so far.

@Talkan

What we are trying to do here is shift the focus for the Celestine kill route back to Celestialism and away from tertiary abilities, as these should be the primary kill methods for the class. The idea behind the 6p for CELESTIALRAY isn't to stack afflictions, it's to assist in the generation of HolyFire. The concept is that there is just enough time between Inquisition starting and finishing to use CELESTIALRAY as a means to secure more HolyFire and execute the kill condition.

I guess I'm confused about why moving kill routes away from tertiaries is a net positive for the class. Meteor and Soulless are really fun kill routes to achieve. Moving the class away from those doesn't seem like it's inherently better.

The only Celestines I've seen in recent months on Shadowlight have complained about how terrible Absolve is, so I feel like a viable instakill in the guild primary to work towards sounds like a great idea. (Or is it usually in the secondary? Institute gets it in Aeonics but I guess that's kind of their main stick.) Likewise, even in groups (admittedly we might not be the best coordinated at times) I know that I see people living through inquisition stun and running after coming out the other end so I would venture that a kill condition stuck onto the end would be preferable than just a stun/def strip. Certainly, going by deathsights Meteor (super popular all round) and Soulless (less popular? I think I've seen it once) have been done more outside of inquisition than because of it. In my opinion the fact that Meteor and Soulless being the fun kill routes that stand out in your memory is a sign of the lack of flourish in Celestineism itself. Come back and throw space rocks at people with @Azula and friends in the meantime, it still works - and rocks!