Another thread about Anorithil variety

[parcel]

Anorithils have some annoying aspects. Their primary resource drains, their portals require a premeditated setup, they have low mobility, the light tree is almost as helpful to non-celestials through escorts as it is to celestials themselves, and many talents are kind of meh for their restricted range. The locked trees, in particular, are not so great, with the overall effect being that the class tends to focus on crit procs with corona + hymn of shadows for damage, with this being a pretty steep investment. I'd like to see some changes based on my experience with the class, that still give the anorithil that feel of playing creatively within a relatively restricted range of gameplay styles. One idea that I'm toying with is to add new locked trees, but with a tad of a twist to play off the idea that anorithil builds are restricted in range and variety, and that they work with both of the celestial extremes. To that end, give them two class-specific locked trees, keeping circles as an option as well, but with a mild twist. The two new trees correspond to more potent takes on light and dark respectively and should be thought of as two 'halves' of the same tree. That is, each tree costs a cat point but only contains two talents, which are meant in part to help sidegrades away from the usual anorithil buildup of class talents.

Tentatively, on the light side:


Birthing Disk:
1. Accretion: Instant sustain: regenerate X per turn while active, taking Y*turns unavoidable damage when deactivated. The damage on deactivation can crit.
2. Whitefire: Sustain: every turn in which you have an effect or cast a spell gaining positive, you pay X*2^t life and a random celestial talent has its cooldown reduced by Y. t is initially 0, increases by a constant every time the cooldown effect takes place, and decreases to zero gradually over time. At level 5, you can select a celestial talent when activating the sustain. If it is on cooldown then there is an extra chance that this will be the target of the cooldown effect.

On the dark side:

Dark Fate:
1. Shadowspace: Sustain. You can't move, but there are now X random portals in radius Y within line of sight, the pattern being regenerated every T turns. At level 3 any circle effects initiated when this sustain is on will always be recentered on you when you move. At level 5 you will automatically give a mind blast at reduced talent level when jumping. Any teleportation, blink, or active which moves your location other than the jump spell breaks this sustain automatically.
2. Destination: Active. Target one of your jumpgates to have it explode in a radius one ball, dealing X darkness damage that drains magical and psychic resources to temporarily reduce max encumbrance on the foe and restore a small amount of negative energy to yourself. The effect is magnified at increasing talent level, and cooldown reduced.

This proposal is of course probably not balanced and is definitely not carefully defined and closely quantified, so feel free to rip away with criticisms and come up with something more workable, more creative, and more fitting.

[Theyleon]

Am I reading it right that Accretion is basically guaranteed death if you forget about it and leave it on for too long? That doesn't sound like anything anyone would want to actually use. And what is it regenerating? Health, positive energy, negative energy?

[parcel]

Health, possibly limited so that the amount is no more than necessary to give max health when other effects are accounted for. The effect may be fiddly to some extent, but this could be offset by a very clear indication of the base damage that you are facing as you run the sustain. If you get knocked out as an anorithil and can't act while taking damage repeatedly, then well:

a) you are probably already screwed without the help of the talent, and
b) it's your own damn fault for going out of commission as an anorithil. Next to psionics you have some of the best potential around for rolling off negative status.

Part of the idea of instant sustains in general is that they are battle talents, and you are supposed to want to deactivate them when the strategic moment is right.

[kyuubee]

i wouldn't definitely use any talent which can kill me if there is any alternative so on anorithil i would simply skip that talent