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 actually not the case for all timed instakills, because not all classes function mechanically the same way to achieve their instakills. Are you stating that bards require critical and well-planned timing to kill someone? As far as I'm aware and have seen done numerously is that a bard with little skill will just blank note and go straight into death song while everyone tries to kill/hold down the target. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, so I don't agree that their instant kill requires a lot of planning and pre-prep. It would also be foolish to not consider wrath and enigma to take into account power consumption. Pre-prep yes, but you have to fling your cards with precision as you only get 3 masks-then you have to reset it if your timed burst fails.
You're right, Judge actually has fewer requisites than Deathsong now that you mention it.
Also, not considering pre-pre is literally how combat is balanced. Pre-prep power costs isn't a concept I really agree with (What's really the point of them, especially on abilities that just do things faster/save command spam?) but that's how actual combatants measure it.
If you're doing Soulless with Inquisition, you really don't need Wrath or Enigma. They'd help for sure, but even if you are using them to help, they DO not come into power costing.
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.
I want to pipe in and say, if anyone thinks Absolve is a bad insta they're out of their minds. It is the easiest conditional insta to achieve in the game, competing with Gore. I know Shadowlight hasn't had an SD combatant in a while, but if you did, SDs and Celestines would (could) be a real threat on the field. Is it unfair that you need outside support to Absolve? No, I don't think so, because 50% mana is really easy to achieve in groups. Have your Aquas do EvenBlade, have a PB to bleedout your target and just smack them a few times. Idk.
Not that that matters, if Absolve is getting nuked. Restoring some 1v1 viability to Celestines is pretty important, given that's what guardians/wiccans are meant to do as far as overall combat balance. I think the current proposal will not only grant that, but also provide ez ego kills for Dreamweavers, Telepaths and Dramaturgists. It's a hell of a lot more than what Celestines can currently bring to the table, outside of tertiary skills. I wonder if Hod can get updated to also be an ego vitality type of skill; it would make the sorrow of those of us who are forced to take Highmagic over Lowmagic a little more palatable. That's me diverging off topic again though.
Afrit I think you're overestimating how much of an ally-oop this mechanic will be for dreamweavers etc. The ego damage will be applied when the stun ends, which after 4s should mean they're likely back on balance/eq/sip balance, and quite possibly sparkle/scroll/beast heal. So as soon as they take the burst ego damage they can shield/sip/etc.
As I'm looking at the mechanics it seems much better oriented towards combining with allies so you don't need as much holyfire to finish off the kill but the nature of a 3 balance sequence setup, not including any sort of holyfire build up, and the necessary ego damage to get someone to a dangerous level - in group fights doesn't strike me particularly strong.
I get the feeling that the skill was particularly designed to be a bit cumbersome in groups but hopefully viable solo or in smaller groups where the time-to-kill can reasonably be somewhat longer before it becomes weak when compared to focused damage, which seems appropriate.
Of course, this depends -entirely- on the speed of holyfire buildup and the amount of ego draining Celestines can reasonably achieve.
[Edit] - Perhaps an illustrative example is useful:
From the looks of it, Celestines won't be particularly good at nuking ego aside from the finishing move of inquisition.
If my group is able to focus someone's ego to set them up for an easy inquisition (read - not much holyfire building necessary) then my group is likely able to focus someone's ego down to close to 50%. In which case, why would I want to use a telegraphed buildup like heretic -> infidel [target knows to get out of dodge here] -> inquisition, when I could replace said Celestine with a dreamweaver and we'd be able to directly kill the target, plus we'd have even more ego draining.
If dreamweaver stacks aren't on-meta now, then the Celestine overhaul, as proposed, assuming reasonable holyfire building, probably won't move the needle.
Afrit I think you're overestimating how much of an ally-oop this mechanic will be for dreamweavers etc. The ego damage will be applied when the stun ends, which after 4s should mean they're likely back on balance/eq/sip balance, and quite possibly sparkle/scroll/beast heal. So as soon as they take the burst ego damage they can shield/sip/etc.
As I'm looking at the mechanics it seems much better oriented towards combining with allies so you don't need as much holyfire to finish off the kill but the nature of a 3 balance sequence setup, not including any sort of holyfire build up, and the necessary ego damage to get someone to a dangerous level - in group fights doesn't strike me particularly strong.
I get the feeling that the skill was particularly designed to be a bit cumbersome in groups but hopefully viable solo or in smaller groups where the time-to-kill can reasonably be somewhat longer before it becomes weak when compared to focused damage, which seems appropriate.
Of course, this depends -entirely- on the speed of holyfire buildup and the amount of ego draining Celestines can reasonably achieve.
[Edit] - Perhaps an illustrative example is useful:
From the looks of it, Celestines won't be particularly good at nuking ego aside from the finishing move of inquisition.
If my group is able to focus someone's ego to set them up for an easy inquisition (read - not much holyfire building necessary) then my group is likely able to focus someone's ego down to close to 50%. In which case, why would I want to use a telegraphed buildup like heretic -> infidel [target knows to get out of dodge here] -> inquisition, when I could replace said Celestine with a dreamweaver and we'd be able to directly kill the target, plus we'd have even more ego draining.
If dreamweaver stacks aren't on-meta now, then the Celestine overhaul, as proposed, assuming reasonable holyfire building, probably won't move the needle.
Dreamweavers, particularly aquachems, kind of are on meta solo right now, which is where some of the concern is coming from. I wouldn't be surprised if this rework was designed entirely around exploiting that already strong class.
And, it's far less telegraphed than it looks. Arguing that run or die mechanics force people to run is a really weird angle in my opinion. Someone running isn't great for your KDA but it's pretty good to be able to force someone out of the room in a fight.
Honestly I've come to the conclusion here that I'd probably want to have absolve rather than this new kill, but downplaying it is weird, it's pretty strong.
The ego damage from this, and the stun, will definitely lead to a lot of esleeps, if the inquisition doesn't finish them off outright because of the ego pressure. It's really a confirmed kill.
I think people are coming into this conversations with expectations that this is going to make their class as good as Bards and Monks. It isn't, and it really shouldn't be. Complaining about 3 balance setups from a class with 4(+) instakills already is absolutely wild when my own class doesn't have an actual viable instakill yet. Nevermind any instakill at all in primary or secondary.
Keeping the stun is really part of the problem with this whole set up. It's really confusing to me that this is being played as if it's a weak point or nothing.
Also what is our standpoint on kills having a condition when they fail? Because it seems to be creeping in as a feature these days. Is that going to be a universal thing or just jammed onto the odd kill.
I think people are coming into this conversations with expectations that this is going to make their class as good as Bards and Monks. It isn't, and it really shouldn't be. Complaining about 3 balance setups from a class with 4(+) instakills already is absolutely wild when my own class doesn't have an actual viable instakill yet. Nevermind any instakill at all in primary or secondary.
I am sorry to hear that. What class are you and I'll help put envoy reports up next round to help.
I've heard some really good suggestions from Celestines previously about how they want their class to look. I'm not seeing them in this thread. If you don't like the new ability, give input as to what you think would make your class better and viable? Ways of tapping more mana solo perhaps?
Afrit I think you're overestimating how much of an ally-oop this mechanic will be for dreamweavers etc. The ego damage will be applied when the stun ends, which after 4s should mean they're likely back on balance/eq/sip balance, and quite possibly sparkle/scroll/beast heal. So as soon as they take the burst ego damage they can shield/sip/etc.
As I'm looking at the mechanics it seems much better oriented towards combining with allies so you don't need as much holyfire to finish off the kill but the nature of a 3 balance sequence setup, not including any sort of holyfire build up, and the necessary ego damage to get someone to a dangerous level - in group fights doesn't strike me particularly strong.
I get the feeling that the skill was particularly designed to be a bit cumbersome in groups but hopefully viable solo or in smaller groups where the time-to-kill can reasonably be somewhat longer before it becomes weak when compared to focused damage, which seems appropriate.
Of course, this depends -entirely- on the speed of holyfire buildup and the amount of ego draining Celestines can reasonably achieve.
[Edit] - Perhaps an illustrative example is useful:
From the looks of it, Celestines won't be particularly good at nuking ego aside from the finishing move of inquisition.
If my group is able to focus someone's ego to set them up for an easy inquisition (read - not much holyfire building necessary) then my group is likely able to focus someone's ego down to close to 50%. In which case, why would I want to use a telegraphed buildup like heretic -> infidel [target knows to get out of dodge here] -> inquisition, when I could replace said Celestine with a dreamweaver and we'd be able to directly kill the target, plus we'd have even more ego draining.
If dreamweaver stacks aren't on-meta now, then the Celestine overhaul, as proposed, assuming reasonable holyfire building, probably won't move the needle.
Dreamweavers, particularly aquachems, kind of are on meta solo right now, which is where some of the concern is coming from. I wouldn't be surprised if this rework was designed entirely around exploiting that already strong class.
And, it's far less telegraphed than it looks. Arguing that run or die mechanics force people to run is a really weird angle in my opinion. Someone running isn't great for your KDA but it's pretty good to be able to force someone out of the room in a fight.
Honestly I've come to the conclusion here that I'd probably want to have absolve rather than this new kill, but downplaying it is weird, it's pretty strong.
The ego damage from this, and the stun, will definitely lead to a lot of esleeps, if the inquisition doesn't finish them off outright because of the ego pressure. It's really a confirmed kill.
I think people are coming into this conversations with expectations that this is going to make their class as good as Bards and Monks. It isn't, and it really shouldn't be. Complaining about 3 balance setups from a class with 4(+) instakills already is absolutely wild when my own class doesn't have an actual viable instakill yet. Nevermind any instakill at all in primary or secondary.
Keeping the stun is really part of the problem with this whole set up. It's really confusing to me that this is being played as if it's a weak point or nothing.
Also what is our standpoint on kills having a condition when they fail? Because it seems to be creeping in as a feature these days. Is that going to be a universal thing or just jammed onto the odd kill.
That will only be three standard kill routes. 4 is an outright imbalance. Also, which class do you play that doesn't have a viable instakill?
As previously explained, what we are trying to do is bring something with synergy to Celest. The idea behind the new skillset is that it will be strong enough to have a viable 1v1 route and also be able to participate in group combat with a number of possible options for synergy. Another thing we would like to rehash again is that this, at this stage, is just an idea which we are getting feedback for. A number of the responses in this thread sound like they are been made assuming this is 100% how it is going to be upon release. We would like to reaffirm that this is not necessarily the case, and this rework will likely go through a number of iterations between now and its release.
A number of you have raised concerns that failing the Inquisition kill method takes a large portion of ego and will be a bit on the strong side. We can work around this once we begin the testing phase of the proposed rework, and if it does indeed turn out to be too strong in terms of enabling other instakills, we can look at options to mitigate that strength, and we can revisit that in the future if we need to execute a plan to change this.
In relation to the points raised about Tertiary kill paths; While tertiary kill paths are skill counted as viable kill paths for a certain class, we are not of the belief that this should be reliant or tied to a skill in your primary skills or skill path. Celestines in recent times are quite capable of conducting meteor and judgement kills quite easily without the need for Inquisition. As such, there should be little to no impact on these tertiary kill paths by removing the long stun from Inquisition.
@Esano In terms of symbol evoking the respective classes mark, this is definitely something we can do for both during this rework. We are unsure at this stage about what will happen with regards to Nihilists and Necro Warriors, however it is likely to be something that will have to be pushed through in a reporting phase.
TLDR: It's good design to have one or more skills in Celestialism that depend on the tertiary skill chosen. It will then allow the admin to buff one tert without impacting the others. This should make balancing across different specializations far easier and also allow the admin to ideally make each specialization attractive.
Long version:
This is more of an abstract point, but since you're looking for ideas and suggestions while still in the design phase, I have a thought. Astro Celestine can make a pretty good go of it as things stand, and will likely remain strong after the proposed adjustments. While these changes are likely to bring all of the specs above a certain minimum threshold of viability, I'd just like to ask:
Is it possible for skillsets to be designed to have certain skills that unlock for specific specializations? I believe Chemwoods and mages have this to some degree with rune/mote imbues etc. Just from a design perspective, having a skill slot which has a different effect depending on the specialization that you choose could significantly help to make each specialization equally attractive, which I think players would appreciate.
Here's a quick albeit unambitious implementation example. I've tried to limit the scope of this suggestion but there's of course plenty to play with if more complicated mechanics are on the table (like modifying the soulless timer, etc). They'd certainly need more consideration in terms of the balance implications, but the general idea is to make it so the tertiary skill is more interwoven into the class mechanic, with the benefit of being able to have large buffs to the terts that are relatively weaker, with small buffs to the terts that are already quite strong.
Skill name: Purify Theme: Adding a purifying element to a specific tertiary skill.
Tarot - dreamer is then a pretty simple inquisition assist debuff. Hard for me to suggest strong buffs to tarot since it's already amazing for groups: Dreamer tarot now does additional ego damage + holyfire (possibly reduced mana drain)
Astro - becomes better at directly pressuring health & ego vitals, but ultimately the skillset doesn't need much help: Sun rays do holyfire and ego damage.
Healing - gets a bonus to bursting the target if they've invested some time in building aurawarp: Cauterize deals holyfire and ego damage - as with normal cauterize this scales with aurawarp. <- The more I think about this the more this idea is bad... Spending time working on aurawarp which isn't particularly viable anyway is just inefficient and nobody would realistically use this skill as proposed. Alternate idea: Added skill which does a large burst of holyfire but only works if your soul is 'pure' at 100% empathy (or whatever the healer currency was) and takes you down to ??% (50, 0?). The important idea being that it gives healers a powerful one shot bomb that should only be realistically doable once in a fight, but which can be recharged faster if they actively heal allies. Probably would require some sort of gating mechanic so a group of healer Celestines can't just nuke someone.
Of course, this is with the assumption that the numbers on all of the skills would be tweaked such that none of the specs have a braindead easy path to overwhelming ego curing/stacking holyfire for kills.
It feels like newer skills all have instakill mechanics that reward failure. For example, failing an aoe timequake (10 power) will apply timeechoes (normally 3 power on a single target) to all affected enemies. In that sense, if there are more than 3 enemies in a room it is actually preferable to start with a failed timequake in order to put a 3 power 2 minute affliction on all personal enemies within the room, as it would take more power (and balances) to put timeechoes on each person individually.
It is the same with this skill. 26-35 Holy Fire does 40% current ego damage while 36-50 holyfire does 55% current ego damage. This means that if the target has less than 83% max ego, then 26 holy fire (a third of maximum, ostensibly an easy threshold to reach based on existing leveled afflictions) will put them in ego kill range for mindburst, climax, and eternalsleep.
If ego damage must be a part of HolyFire, then HolyFire must be treated the same as Timewarp and Tempinsaity for instakill purposes with middling ego damage before 50 and exponentially increased ego damage above 50. Something like:
One big concern I think that should be considered is one that the institute has shown, wherein a class with a very good kill path that doesn't rely on their tert at all to achieve it can be a real beast in combination with the healing skillset. I do not have any real solid suggestions on this, but it's something to keep in mind.
Celestines not having aeon without picking a tert that allows it might be enough of a balance, but felt like bringing it up to consider at least.
TLDR: It's good design to have one or more skills in Celestialism that depend on the tertiary skill chosen. It will then allow the admin to buff one tert without impacting the others. This should make balancing across different specializations far easier and also allow the admin to ideally make each specialization attractive.
Long version:
This is more of an abstract point, but since you're looking for ideas and suggestions while still in the design phase, I have a thought. Astro Celestine can make a pretty good go of it as things stand, and will likely remain strong after the proposed adjustments. While these changes are likely to bring all of the specs above a certain minimum threshold of viability, I'd just like to ask:
Is it possible for skillsets to be designed to have certain skills that unlock for specific specializations? I believe Chemwoods and mages have this to some degree with rune/mote imbues etc. Just from a design perspective, having a skill slot which has a different effect depending on the specialization that you choose could significantly help to make each specialization equally attractive, which I think players would appreciate.
Here's a quick albeit unambitious implementation example. I've tried to limit the scope of this suggestion but there's of course plenty to play with if more complicated mechanics are on the table (like modifying the soulless timer, etc). They'd certainly need more consideration in terms of the balance implications, but the general idea is to make it so the tertiary skill is more interwoven into the class mechanic, with the benefit of being able to have large buffs to the terts that are relatively weaker, with small buffs to the terts that are already quite strong.
Skill name: Purify Theme: Adding a purifying element to a specific tertiary skill.
Tarot - dreamer is then a pretty simple inquisition assist debuff. Hard for me to suggest strong buffs to tarot since it's already amazing for groups: Dreamer tarot now does additional ego damage + holyfire (possibly reduced mana drain)
Astro - becomes better at directly pressuring health & ego vitals, but ultimately the skillset doesn't need much help: Sun rays do holyfire and ego damage.
Healing - gets a bonus to bursting the target if they've invested some time in building aurawarp: Cauterize deals holyfire and ego damage - as with normal cauterize this scales with aurawarp. <- The more I think about this the more this idea is bad... Spending time working on aurawarp which isn't particularly viable anyway is just inefficient and nobody would realistically use this skill as proposed. Alternate idea: Added skill which does a large burst of holyfire but only works if your soul is 'pure' at 100% empathy (or whatever the healer currency was) and takes you down to ??% (50, 0?). The important idea being that it gives healers a powerful one shot bomb that should only be realistically doable once in a fight, but which can be recharged faster if they actively heal allies. Probably would require some sort of gating mechanic so a group of healer Celestines can't just nuke someone.
Of course, this is with the assumption that the numbers on all of the skills would be tweaked such that none of the specs have a braindead easy path to overwhelming ego curing/stacking holyfire for kills.
Differences between tert/secondary skills generally come down to classes not having the tools to use some abilities in shared toolkits. It's not really a flavour thing that is intentional or anything, it's just that not having it would harm the class or disrupt their flow.
Warriors generally get an affliction or something similar on their weapon attacks. The mote and rune thing is because chemwoods do not have melds, and no one really uses motes as they exist (because they suck hard) so... Most of these suggestions are bad, would just result in more balancing concerns and would almost certainly not be applied evenly or fairly.
Chems are really the perfect example of why this kind of design is really not great.
I'd be extremely, extremely disappointed if anything like any of these mechanics gets implemented, but hey, at least I wouldn't have to fight it.
The fact is, I still don't really know why Celestines HAVE to be viable in groups and 1v1s. That's not really a sentiment that goes into any other class, and it's been said out in the open that whoever is making balancing decisions just doesn't want some classes to be viable, so... Why for Celestines?
"The fact is, I still don't really know why Celestines HAVE to be viable in groups and 1v1s. That's not really a sentiment that goes into any other class, and it's been said out in the open that whoever is making balancing decisions just doesn't want some classes to be viable, so... Why for Celestines?"
Then the question would be akin as to why for Moondancers? Why for Nihilists? Why for Institute? Why for Shadowdancers? Or why for warrior specs? As to why they have to be viable regardless if it's one or the other? Classes aren't given special treatment over the other. Concerns raised about the other classes were considered, this is no exception.
Comments
Also, not considering pre-pre is literally how combat is balanced. Pre-prep power costs isn't a concept I really agree with (What's really the point of them, especially on abilities that just do things faster/save command spam?) but that's how actual combatants measure it.
If you're doing Soulless with Inquisition, you really don't need Wrath or Enigma. They'd help for sure, but even if you are using them to help, they DO not come into power costing.
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.
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.
As I'm looking at the mechanics it seems much better oriented towards combining with allies so you don't need as much holyfire to finish off the kill but the nature of a 3 balance sequence setup, not including any sort of holyfire build up, and the necessary ego damage to get someone to a dangerous level - in group fights doesn't strike me particularly strong.
I get the feeling that the skill was particularly designed to be a bit cumbersome in groups but hopefully viable solo or in smaller groups where the time-to-kill can reasonably be somewhat longer before it becomes weak when compared to focused damage, which seems appropriate.
Of course, this depends -entirely- on the speed of holyfire buildup and the amount of ego draining Celestines can reasonably achieve.
[Edit] - Perhaps an illustrative example is useful:
From the looks of it, Celestines won't be particularly good at nuking ego aside from the finishing move of inquisition.
If my group is able to focus someone's ego to set them up for an easy inquisition (read - not much holyfire building necessary) then my group is likely able to focus someone's ego down to close to 50%. In which case, why would I want to use a telegraphed buildup like heretic -> infidel [target knows to get out of dodge here] -> inquisition, when I could replace said Celestine with a dreamweaver and we'd be able to directly kill the target, plus we'd have even more ego draining.
If dreamweaver stacks aren't on-meta now, then the Celestine overhaul, as proposed, assuming reasonable holyfire building, probably won't move the needle.
And, it's far less telegraphed than it looks. Arguing that run or die mechanics force people to run is a really weird angle in my opinion. Someone running isn't great for your KDA but it's pretty good to be able to force someone out of the room in a fight.
Honestly I've come to the conclusion here that I'd probably want to have absolve rather than this new kill, but downplaying it is weird, it's pretty strong.
The ego damage from this, and the stun, will definitely lead to a lot of esleeps, if the inquisition doesn't finish them off outright because of the ego pressure. It's really a confirmed kill.
I think people are coming into this conversations with expectations that this is going to make their class as good as Bards and Monks. It isn't, and it really shouldn't be. Complaining about 3 balance setups from a class with 4(+) instakills already is absolutely wild when my own class doesn't have an actual viable instakill yet. Nevermind any instakill at all in primary or secondary.
Keeping the stun is really part of the problem with this whole set up. It's really confusing to me that this is being played as if it's a weak point or nothing.
Also what is our standpoint on kills having a condition when they fail? Because it seems to be creeping in as a feature these days. Is that going to be a universal thing or just jammed onto the odd kill.
Related:
I've heard some really good suggestions from Celestines previously about how they want their class to look. I'm not seeing them in this thread. If you don't like the new ability, give input as to what you think would make your class better and viable? Ways of tapping more mana solo perhaps?
A number of you have raised concerns that failing the Inquisition kill method takes a large portion of ego and will be a bit on the strong side. We can work around this once we begin the testing phase of the proposed rework, and if it does indeed turn out to be too strong in terms of enabling other instakills, we can look at options to mitigate that strength, and we can revisit that in the future if we need to execute a plan to change this.
In relation to the points raised about Tertiary kill paths; While tertiary kill paths are skill counted as viable kill paths for a certain class, we are not of the belief that this should be reliant or tied to a skill in your primary skills or skill path. Celestines in recent times are quite capable of conducting meteor and judgement kills quite easily without the need for Inquisition. As such, there should be little to no impact on these tertiary kill paths by removing the long stun from Inquisition.
@Esano
In terms of symbol evoking the respective classes mark, this is definitely something we can do for both during this rework. We are unsure at this stage about what will happen with regards to Nihilists and Necro Warriors, however it is likely to be something that will have to be pushed through in a reporting phase.
Is it possible for skillsets to be designed to have certain skills that unlock for specific specializations? I believe Chemwoods and mages have this to some degree with rune/mote imbues etc. Just from a design perspective, having a skill slot which has a different effect depending on the specialization that you choose could significantly help to make each specialization equally attractive, which I think players would appreciate.
Here's a quick albeit unambitious implementation example. I've tried to limit the scope of this suggestion but there's of course plenty to play with if more complicated mechanics are on the table (like modifying the soulless timer, etc). They'd certainly need more consideration in terms of the balance implications, but the general idea is to make it so the tertiary skill is more interwoven into the class mechanic, with the benefit of being able to have large buffs to the terts that are relatively weaker, with small buffs to the terts that are already quite strong.
Skill name: Purify
Theme: Adding a purifying element to a specific tertiary skill.
Tarot - dreamer is then a pretty simple inquisition assist debuff. Hard for me to suggest strong buffs to tarot since it's already amazing for groups:
Dreamer tarot now does additional ego damage + holyfire (possibly reduced mana drain)
Astro - becomes better at directly pressuring health & ego vitals, but ultimately the skillset doesn't need much help:
Sun rays do holyfire and ego damage.
Healing - gets a bonus to bursting the target if they've invested some time in building aurawarp:
Cauterize deals holyfire and ego damage - as with normal cauterize this scales with aurawarp. <- The more I think about this the more this idea is bad... Spending time working on aurawarp which isn't particularly viable anyway is just inefficient and nobody would realistically use this skill as proposed.
Alternate idea:
Added skill which does a large burst of holyfire but only works if your soul is 'pure' at 100% empathy (or whatever the healer currency was) and takes you down to ??% (50, 0?). The important idea being that it gives healers a powerful one shot bomb that should only be realistically doable once in a fight, but which can be recharged faster if they actively heal allies. Probably would require some sort of gating mechanic so a group of healer Celestines can't just nuke someone.
Of course, this is with the assumption that the numbers on all of the skills would be tweaked such that none of the specs have a braindead easy path to overwhelming ego curing/stacking holyfire for kills.
Celestines not having aeon without picking a tert that allows it might be enough of a balance, but felt like bringing it up to consider at least.
Differences between tert/secondary skills generally come down to classes not having the tools to use some abilities in shared toolkits. It's not really a flavour thing that is intentional or anything, it's just that not having it would harm the class or disrupt their flow.
Warriors generally get an affliction or something similar on their weapon attacks.
The mote and rune thing is because chemwoods do not have melds, and no one really uses motes as they exist (because they suck hard) so... Most of these suggestions are bad, would just result in more balancing concerns and would almost certainly not be applied evenly or fairly.
Chems are really the perfect example of why this kind of design is really not great.
I'd be extremely, extremely disappointed if anything like any of these mechanics gets implemented, but hey, at least I wouldn't have to fight it.
The fact is, I still don't really know why Celestines HAVE to be viable in groups and 1v1s. That's not really a sentiment that goes into any other class, and it's been said out in the open that whoever is making balancing decisions just doesn't want some classes to be viable, so... Why for Celestines?
Then the question would be akin as to why for Moondancers? Why for Nihilists? Why for Institute? Why for Shadowdancers? Or why for warrior specs? As to why they have to be viable regardless if it's one or the other? Classes aren't given special treatment over the other. Concerns raised about the other classes were considered, this is no exception.