Just reviewing the defs and comparing them to what other classes have:
alacrity is a passive 20% heal on a 16 second tick
switchfate is a chance of shrugging some damage to another target
Pastglimses is a passive 10 second cool down affliction shrug.
Looking at Knights these effects defensively wise seem fairly comparable other good Knight spec defensives.
EG compare to Night Knights who have a 10 second room based aff heal and a health sip from drink plus 2 damage resistance, its a pretty similar if different in style defensive set up.
With institute I think there's a bit of an issue with the stacking of too many anti affs types of defs when we add in the harmonics
Vs affs style classes the institute class is going to have:
Onyx 10 second dust shrug
emerald 10 second aff heal
sappire 10 second steam shrug
pastglimses 10 second aff shrug.
Plus the health heal and shrug as mentioned above.
That's three aff shrugs and an aff heal in every ten second window without any real cost. Add in tea on top which is on a much longer cooldown and access to healing auras should the institute go that way. As a comparative example as a Shadowdancer with drink and healing auras I'm super tanky vs afflictions. New institute with healing will make shadowdancers with healing look weak.
I remember how much complaint there was with monks having 1 aff shrug every center combo which is 1 aff shrug every roughly 15 seconds assuming the monk is attacking constantly. This is three plus a heal totally passively.
There isn't really any downside to going for the full affliction shrugging set up. We found that using sapphire ruby emerald and onyx in offence is strong enough to build timewarp solo in a reasonably short window with malefact gem spam and the long lasting power buffs.
Suggestion would be to extend the length of time of the gem shrugs to match tea this will still leave them in a position where they are still much stronger vs aff classes than anyone else in the game but not to an unreasonable extent.
Eg with the gems acting on a similar shrug time as tea the institute would still have 1 10 second aff shrug, 1 10 second passive aff heal and then 2 longer duration aff shrugs which is still much stronger than any other class atm.
New institute with healing will make shadowdancers with healing look weak.
Well, you can't be on top forever
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
If Emerald and Sapphire are used defensively, the Researcher isn't going to be killing anyone on their own. This is a fair tradeoff to me.
Alacrity is on a 16 second timer, meaning it's fairly unreliable. Switchfate already exists and it isn't going to mess with anyone.
Healing Researchers using Sapphire and Emerald defensively aren't going to be killing anyone; right now Cauterize is fairly unviable. Note that Shadowdancers with Healing can still kill people if they focus on offense, just like Researchers can.
Are the other two Researcher tertiaries Astrology (meteor) and Tarot (Soulless)? Those would be decent offence whilst still having awesome affliction protection. If someone's trying to stack dust afflictions on a Researcher then over 30s normal dust eating would cure 20 (1.5s dust balance), then pastglimpse, onyx and emerald would fire three times each, plus another shrug for a tea (?) so 30 cured/shrugged afflictions total. One steam affliction cured or shrugged per second, on average.
That seems a lot. Setting the rate you can outpace curing looks delicate to balance and a passive +50% puts the defence in a whole other league.
Having said that, I like the theme of the abilities and that they're pretty different to what else is out there.
Edit: I forgot allheale for another cure every 10s.
The proposed new Institute has also lost several strong affliction/attack dodging abilities from the current incarnation of Institute. Namely these are foresight, current insight, and current timelessbody.
I honestly believe that, as it stands, if you tried the exact same methods against an existing Institute you'd be further behind in your afflictions due to the nature of foresight more than anything. On a more important note, randomly stacking dust afflictions other than by collateral shouldn't be a strategy so I don't particularly see it as an issue. There's also Maligorn's point, which holds true, in that the Institute will not be using at least emerald or sapphire defensively if they are going to build timewarp, which they will need to do to reach any of their kill potentials. If you're not sure why or how this is, you should probably read through the skillsets a little more before considering that as an issue.
Are the other two Researcher tertiaries Astrology (meteor) and Tarot (Soulless)? Those would be decent offence whilst still having awesome affliction protection. If someone's trying to stack dust afflictions on a Researcher then over 30s normal dust eating would cure 20 (1.5s dust balance), then pastglimpse, onyx and emerald would fire three times each, plus another shrug for a tea (?) so 30 cured/shrugged afflictions total. One steam affliction cured or shrugged per second, on average.
That seems a lot. Setting the rate you can outpace curing looks delicate to balance and a passive +50% puts the defence in a whole other league.
Having said that, I like the theme of the abilities and that they're pretty different to what else is out there.
Edit: I forgot allheale for another cure every 10s.
Soulless has plenty of counters, and spheres can be removed by an opposing Astrologer, removed with (don't quote me here) Violet/Psiblade unlike Shadow Twists, or the damage can be heavily lowered with relatively common buffs/mitigation.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Cant really remove spheres in combat you can only kether them off out of combat.
Its a fair point but that sort of goes to meteor being a bit too strong as a stand alone anyway. (assuming you have enough buffs to make it a one shot, which is part of the issue as well. Low buffs=meteor is kind of useless, high buffs=its op.) I'd honestly like to see meteor changed or nerfed a little tad in general. Or altered in some way but thats another side topic really.
Just to update based on some recent changes from last night.
The build speed institute have solo currently is similar to pre-nerf illumanti solo with a brute force method(just as a straight compare, the brute force method is technically doable but not really going to be practical solo in that like illumanti it requires you to spam an active cast spell revelations/malefactgem/timewarp for a fair bit in order to build which can be countered with traditional shield spam or direct hinder on the caster. I recognise illumantis solo path is a bit iffy atm and not really viable solo but this examples just to give a bit of a rough example of what can be done.
While the brute force method isn't going to be really viable Institute currently an aeon soft lock combo that works well enough solo in building warp. Jist of it is I mix in active build from malefact gem while reapplying aeon and sticking them in it with malefact gem for a short while which lets the passives build to massive. So their solo path seems pretty viable atm while being able to have on a decent set of defensives to keep them going.
For terts I imagine that healer will be the preferable off spec for solo fights as it'll give institute additional steam effects and anti aff mechanics that'll help with their solo timewarp build while also giving some dam strong defensives to help them tank while building. Astro has meteor which has always been strong for any guardian with carcer and quickening anyway so can I see astro being a decent choice. Tarot may not bring a massive amount to play directly for solo but its always been strong for group utility anyway so seems a fair choice.
Group wise the institute passives stack in a fairly strong manner that we're currently looking into solutions for. Currently 2 institute passives will build to the kill level without any active involvement. With active involvement we achieved a kill build between 13-15 seconds the active build speed is fairly reasonable but I have issues with the passives themselves building to massive timewarp on their own without active involvement. There's been a few ideas to give more counter play such as a way to reset or remove the longer lasting passive build afflictions but currently still testing it.
It's shapping up pretty well, maybe not too far off being done with a few changes and tests I guess. Anyone who has a chance should jump on to test and give their feedback if you can please.
Cant really remove spheres in combat you can only kether them off out of combat.
If this is because of masochism, that's kinda messed up and needs to be fixed
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
That's the design isn't it? Kether lets people get rid of spheres out of combat (determined by masochism) whereas before they couldn't get rid of them.
If you could kether them off any time for just 4s balance the caster would just run out of power from expensive spheres and meteor would never get cast.
Does switching gems have a power cost or just balance?
No power cost, no balance cost either on switching. Popping up a new gem (if one is destroyed) requires a crystalspin though, so it does have a time cost there.
Oracle just had a change put in so you have to actively do stuff in order to keep Oracle on the target, instead of being able to just sit back and let it go, which is a good conceptual change (and as was pointed out, brings them more in line with other Guardians). So the counter to that now is, when oracle is put on you, try to time it out (delay them, leave the room, etc). Makes it more of a strategic interplay. Still have to see how it works in practice with the changes, but definitely a good step.
No power cost, no balance cost either on switching. Popping up a new gem (if one is destroyed) requires a crystalspin though, so it does have a time cost there.
Oracle just had a change put in so you have to actively do stuff in order to keep Oracle on the target, instead of being able to just sit back and let it go, which is a good conceptual change (and as was pointed out, brings them more in line with other Guardians). So the counter to that now is, when oracle is put on you, try to time it out (delay them, leave the room, etc). Makes it more of a strategic interplay. Still have to see how it works in practice with the changes, but definitely a good step.
Isn't Oracle the Institute version of Greywhispers? What does the Institute have to do to keep it on, and do the Illuminati have to do something comparable?
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Thank you to everyone that's tested so far! I encourage more people to hop in and test this week. I'm hoping that we can potentially release this into the game by the end of this week, so the more testing the better. If you need the server information, please reach out to me!
I've played on Orael's test server and it's a fun set of skills to use. Some thoughts:
Chronicloop is really good (similar to shadow twist?). For 2 power you get a 2 minute window to set up a burst of (up to) 5 steam afflictions, including aeon, with you having balance when it goes off. You have a lot of control over when this pops unless your opponent runs away and drinks poison. Insight adds timewarp to a timewarp effect for every 2 steam affs, so ruby's timewarp gets you more than halfway to massive timewarp by itself with 5 steam afflictions.
Teaming with any bard makes the bardic steam afflictions incurable under octave. The four bardic steam afflictions are in TimeEchoes (2/8s) & Sapphire's (1/10s) pool of ten afflictions, so easy to apply. With insight that's up to 4 incurable afflictions to help Insight add timewarp.
Or the Institute could use the 10p TimeQuake to hit all enemies with TimeEchoes to rapidly apply the bardic afflictions to everyone. That could be brutal. Countered by having your own bard to remove octave or everyone running?
Shockstone knocks off eq for 2s at no timewarp, for ~9s at max timewarp. It's linear, 7s at 49 (massive), ~5s at 31, ~3.5s at 15.
Severing crystals doesn't ever seem worth it. It takes 8s for 2 kether hits and gives the attacker a blast of timewarp each hit (11-20, with 50 being massive), when it only takes 2s and no power to spin a crystal back up. Other guardian ents cost power so targetting them is a useful strategy to knock the guardians back in their offense, e.g. illuminati ents die in 2 hits and cost 2 power (zero if they run back to Vortex) and 4s eq to resummon.
Gems can't be timed quite as tightly as ents. Well, they can but it takes more planning. They seem to fire 10s after activation so still timeable and you can set ruby (timewarp) to land just after sapphire (steam aff) to take advantage of extra timewarp from Insight. Timing sapphire (for the bonus timewarp from aeon) and ruby to fire in the 1s aeon window after a 5 aff Chronicloop would get you most of the way to massive timewarp and you'd still be on balance to either add an extra Timewarp to push them beyond hope or just Timequake. Not sure how fiddly that would be to do.
Harmonics and Aeonics has a really big PvP toolbox even before thinking about tertiaries.
Spire - 10p, takes 5s to take effect. Caster and Target must be in the same room at that time for it to work. Target becomes a crystalline spire and is unable to act for 10s. Anyone attacking the target will also turn into a spire for the remainder of the time. Everyone cures at the same time.
After some discussion on discord about the kethering topic, we've made some changes to crystalspinning.
Crystalspinning now costs 1p unless you're on Continuum or you have the corresponding crystal weapon. Crystals no longer consume charges, they'll last indefinitely. You can sever a specific crystal and drain 51 charges, or you can sever in general and drain 26 charges on up to 4 crystals.
There's a lot of passive aeon and time warp and steam afflictions have good synergy. Still just testing on myself with no timing or tricks I can set just ruby and sapphire to offensive, do insight, chronicloop, TimeEchoes and oracle then spam aeon whilst waiting for power and let the passives build to massive and beyond. What's the best defense? Seems you could just chase and continue with aeon delaying running. Pacifism dents their offense unless they focus that too. Does aeon slow shielding? I need to try that.
With the steam affs you need to focus the aeon but that takes 4s (1s aeon, 1.5 steam, 1.5 focus cost) balance rising to 4.5s as timewarp builds. Though there's power focus and beast focus which will hold it off a bit longer. Any other focuses? What am I missing?
I don't think you need emerald set to offensive at all though it's easy to flip if you find you do. Sapphire is probably needed unless you work out a good bomb with chronic loop. I'll try and find someone to test with but I think affliction kills won't happen with those shrugging and healing passives.
Insight is a literal steam-roller. To make it more manageable to defend you could knock a few timewarp points off each insight bonus or reduce the number of passives it boosts. It doesn't boost oracle but does boost the bonus gem harmonic affinity afflictions. Those would do as a small bonus without affinity. Boosting ruby is fine as that's a primary tool.
How much timewarp does the resonator crystal weapon add and what's it's balance cost to trigger? I don't know how to get to the lab to build a crystal weapon!
As a note, you don't need to focus aeon, it should always be curing first either way. I just double checked it to be sure but if you're finding that's not the case, please BUG it.
We've been pushing things to require aeon more to build, so it sounds like that's the direction it's going. Need to remember that when things go live and we start using this in earnest, curing and defense strategies will optimize, hindering will be a much bigger factor and the speed of which things build will slow down. We've seen it with the last few major changes that we've pushed out (deathmarks/demonmarks, twist/unravel etc). I imagine it'll be the same here.
I'm hesitant to do more to insight, we've already reduced it quite a bit. I think the big thing that gets overlooked is that it's caster based rather than target based. This means only timewarp dealt by the caster is boosted. This doesn't mean much 1v1, but it'll be more noticeable in groups. The big thing is that each institute would need to cast it to take advantage and other classes that build timewarp will never get to benefit from it.
At the same time, I'm aware there's going to be things that were missed during testing (and someone will inevitably say 'why didn't you catch that! It's so obvious!') or things will end up being a lot better or worse than I thought they would be. We can then make adjustments for those type of scenarios that come up.
The plan is to release the Hallifax report live tomorrow, so tonight will be the last opportunity to test it out.
We'll likely refrain from making any changes for a month or two after it's released to allow people to adjust and optimize both fighting with and fighting against it (barring something crazy strong going on).
Cant really remove spheres in combat you can only kether them off out of combat.
If this is because of masochism, that's kinda messed up and needs to be fixed
Yes that was the intentional design behind the report decision. You can not remove them with masochism up. The logic behind that decision was that it takes power to put the spheres on.( Well sometimes it takes power but you know what I mean.)
So you can hit and run building the spheres then its a short cast and pop dead if you have enough buffs.
Its a little bit why I think meteor is a tad too good but yea not an issue directly related to this report and its not massively op just a little bit too good for what it can do. I've got a half written report in the notes for when they open up again but its low on the to do list.
EDIT: Note another astrologer can remove spheres with masochism up or down, they are the only ones that can counter meteor build up just to clarify.
Comments
Crystalplex does not recognised shortened targets.
Eg crystalplex target sapphire maligorn offense =works perfect
crystalplex target sapphire mali offense = doesnt recognise a target.
The opening post has been edited with all changes thus far.
That seems a lot. Setting the rate you can outpace curing looks delicate to balance and a passive +50% puts the defence in a whole other league.
Having said that, I like the theme of the abilities and that they're pretty different to what else is out there.
Edit: I forgot allheale for another cure every 10s.
I honestly believe that, as it stands, if you tried the exact same methods against an existing Institute you'd be further behind in your afflictions due to the nature of foresight more than anything. On a more important note, randomly stacking dust afflictions other than by collateral shouldn't be a strategy so I don't particularly see it as an issue. There's also Maligorn's point, which holds true, in that the Institute will not be using at least emerald or sapphire defensively if they are going to build timewarp, which they will need to do to reach any of their kill potentials. If you're not sure why or how this is, you should probably read through the skillsets a little more before considering that as an issue.
Soulless has plenty of counters, and spheres can be removed by an opposing Astrologer, removed with (don't quote me here) Violet/Psiblade unlike Shadow Twists, or the damage can be heavily lowered with relatively common buffs/mitigation.
Its a fair point but that sort of goes to meteor being a bit too strong as a stand alone anyway. (assuming you have enough buffs to make it a one shot, which is part of the issue as well. Low buffs=meteor is kind of useless, high buffs=its op.) I'd honestly like to see meteor changed or nerfed a little tad in general. Or altered in some way but thats another side topic really.
Just to update based on some recent changes from last night.
The build speed institute have solo currently is similar to pre-nerf illumanti solo with a brute force method(just as a straight compare, the brute force method is technically doable but not really going to be practical solo in that like illumanti it requires you to spam an active cast spell revelations/malefactgem/timewarp for a fair bit in order to build which can be countered with traditional shield spam or direct hinder on the caster. I recognise illumantis solo path is a bit iffy atm and not really viable solo but this examples just to give a bit of a rough example of what can be done.
While the brute force method isn't going to be really viable Institute currently an aeon soft lock combo that works well enough solo in building warp. Jist of it is I mix in active build from malefact gem while reapplying aeon and sticking them in it with malefact gem for a short while which lets the passives build to massive. So their solo path seems pretty viable atm while being able to have on a decent set of defensives to keep them going.
For terts I imagine that healer will be the preferable off spec for solo fights as it'll give institute additional steam effects and anti aff mechanics that'll help with their solo timewarp build while also giving some dam strong defensives to help them tank while building. Astro has meteor which has always been strong for any guardian with carcer and quickening anyway so can I see astro being a decent choice. Tarot may not bring a massive amount to play directly for solo but its always been strong for group utility anyway so seems a fair choice.
Group wise the institute passives stack in a fairly strong manner that we're currently looking into solutions for. Currently 2 institute passives will build to the kill level without any active involvement. With active involvement we achieved a kill build between 13-15 seconds the active build speed is fairly reasonable but I have issues with the passives themselves building to massive timewarp on their own without active involvement. There's been a few ideas to give more counter play such as a way to reset or remove the longer lasting passive build afflictions but currently still testing it.
It's shapping up pretty well, maybe not too far off being done with a few changes and tests I guess. Anyone who has a chance should jump on to test and give their feedback if you can please.
If this is because of masochism, that's kinda messed up and needs to be fixed
If you could kether them off any time for just 4s balance the caster would just run out of power from expensive spheres and meteor would never get cast.
Does switching gems have a power cost or just balance?
Oracle is new, no Illuminati version.
Insight is like Badluck but lasts twice as long.
Spire - 10p, takes 5s to take effect. Caster and Target must be in the same room at that time for it to work. Target becomes a crystalline spire and is unable to act for 10s. Anyone attacking the target will also turn into a spire for the remainder of the time. Everyone cures at the same time.
~it's above the list of Harmonics skills?
Crystalspinning now costs 1p unless you're on Continuum or you have the corresponding crystal weapon.
Crystals no longer consume charges, they'll last indefinitely.
You can sever a specific crystal and drain 51 charges, or you can sever in general and drain 26 charges on up to 4 crystals.
With the steam affs you need to focus the aeon but that takes 4s (1s aeon, 1.5 steam, 1.5 focus cost) balance rising to 4.5s as timewarp builds. Though there's power focus and beast focus which will hold it off a bit longer. Any other focuses? What am I missing?
I don't think you need emerald set to offensive at all though it's easy to flip if you find you do. Sapphire is probably needed unless you work out a good bomb with chronic loop. I'll try and find someone to test with but I think affliction kills won't happen with those shrugging and healing passives.
Insight is a literal steam-roller. To make it more manageable to defend you could knock a few timewarp points off each insight bonus or reduce the number of passives it boosts. It doesn't boost oracle but does boost the bonus gem harmonic affinity afflictions. Those would do as a small bonus without affinity. Boosting ruby is fine as that's a primary tool.
How much timewarp does the resonator crystal weapon add and what's it's balance cost to trigger? I don't know how to get to the lab to build a crystal weapon!
We've been pushing things to require aeon more to build, so it sounds like that's the direction it's going. Need to remember that when things go live and we start using this in earnest, curing and defense strategies will optimize, hindering will be a much bigger factor and the speed of which things build will slow down. We've seen it with the last few major changes that we've pushed out (deathmarks/demonmarks, twist/unravel etc). I imagine it'll be the same here.
I'm hesitant to do more to insight, we've already reduced it quite a bit. I think the big thing that gets overlooked is that it's caster based rather than target based. This means only timewarp dealt by the caster is boosted. This doesn't mean much 1v1, but it'll be more noticeable in groups. The big thing is that each institute would need to cast it to take advantage and other classes that build timewarp will never get to benefit from it.
At the same time, I'm aware there's going to be things that were missed during testing (and someone will inevitably say 'why didn't you catch that! It's so obvious!') or things will end up being a lot better or worse than I thought they would be. We can then make adjustments for those type of scenarios that come up.
We'll likely refrain from making any changes for a month or two after it's released to allow people to adjust and optimize both fighting with and fighting against it (barring something crazy strong going on).
I'll leave this thread open for awhile for people to continue to comment on things either good or bad.
Yes that was the intentional design behind the report decision. You can not remove them with masochism up. The logic behind that decision was that it takes power to put the spheres on.( Well sometimes it takes power but you know what I mean.)
So you can hit and run building the spheres then its a short cast and pop dead if you have enough buffs.
Its a little bit why I think meteor is a tad too good but yea not an issue directly related to this report and its not massively op just a little bit too good for what it can do. I've got a half written report in the notes for when they open up again but its low on the to do list.
EDIT: Note another astrologer can remove spheres with masochism up or down, they are the only ones that can counter meteor build up just to clarify.
Know its been a while since it came out but first practical use we're seeing in a while so wanted to update any issues here.