ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Celestial/Light is a fantastic tree, let's be perfectly clear. Many characters rely on getting an Anorithil or Seer escort for some kind of burst healing. Some people grab Healing Light straight up, and some grab the entire tree, but does anyone ever grab Bathe in Light?

Now, Bathe in Light has two very distinct, important, and valuable uses.

1. You autocast it when no enemies are around so you begin every fight with full positive.
2. You can heal escorts.

As far as one-point-wonders go, it actually gets a lot of use! But, ignoring #2, since that's mostly tangential, is its primary use really good for the game? I don't really think that was its intended use, and it kind of negates the resource management Sun Palarithils have baked in.

I believe the problem is that Bathe in Light does too many things, and thus its power needs to be spread thin over many unsatisfying effects vs few satisfying effects.

- The healing is low
- The healing mod is low and hard to justify when you really need it because it takes a turn that you could've just used to heal in the first place
- The terrain illumination is lame because it's stopped by walls

So I have a proposal: make it a passive!

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Bathe in Light

Whenever you use an ability or attack that targets an enemy, you have a chance to activate Bathe in Light. This chance is 100% at 0% Positive and X% at 100% Positive. This generates in aura around your character for Y turns that has the following effects:

- Heals friendly units per turn
- Increases healing mod for all friendly units inside
- All overflow healing (from any source) is converted into Positive

If you would proc Bathe in Light again while it is running, all of the healing left by the previous effect will be applied to all valid targets at once, and the duration will be reset.

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Notes:

- It's an aura, not a PBAOE that stays where it's generated
- Attack, 1 proc chance; Shield Pummel, 1 proc chance; Firebeam hitting 5 enemies, 1 proc chance
- It could illuminate the area as well if those thematics were important
- Assuming both the healing done and the duration increases with levels, this ability scales dramatically

So, thoughts? Is Bathe in Light fine the way it is? Does it just need buffs in its current state? Is this rework terrible? Or do you LOVE IT?

One big effect would be that it'd deal a heavy blow to Undead Celestials, who wouldn't be able avoid it on their way to Barrier and Providence.

Now, making it a sustain would be a different story. To that I'd say "sure, why not!"

Another reason against it being passive is the anorithil invisibility talent

jotwebe wrote:One big effect would be that it'd deal a heavy blow to Undead Celestials, who wouldn't be able avoid it on their way to Barrier and Providence.

Now, making it a sustain would be a different story. To that I'd say "sure, why not!"

A good point.

I guess I would say is it necessary that it hurts undead? It seems sort of wishy-washy inconsistent, since Healing Light just down the lane heals undead just fine.

I was a bit loathe to make it a sustain because Sun Pallies are already really sustain heavy (I don't know Anorithils very well). Between a chant, Weapon of Light, Shield of Light, Retribution, and Second Life, that's already a lot of sustains. And since there's no way to increase Positive with stats, there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

aristalis wrote:Another reason against it being passive is the anorithil invisibility talent

Could you explain why it's a problem? Is it because of the light source? If so, I'll note that the proposed version doesn't actually illuminate anything (but I mentioned it could if it was important).

Just make it a really cheap sustain.

10's not too bad for its effect. After all, it notably heals enemies in its radius...

SageAcrin wrote:Just make it a really cheap sustain.

10's not too bad for its effect. After all, it notably heals enemies in its radius...

The proposed version only heals friendly units, like Turtle Grand Arrival.

My point is that it's easy to tweak the details of, if it's considered too powerful to be a cheap sustain, for whatever reason.

Another alternative would be to just make it instant cast. That solves most of it's issues and is still probably not overpowered. I'd lower the positive energy gains from it in that case though.

A sustained proc sounds fun if the numbers are balanced though. I like the idea.

DragonMasterHawk wrote:but does anyone ever grab Bathe in Light?

It may be weak, but it is the only way of on-demand NPC healing, available to undead. Btw, undead Sun Paladins can use one-point version to trigger lasting Shield of Light proc and everyone, who can get Harmony, can abuse combo with Healing Nexus for Fungus-like burst heals. Your proposal would deprecate those fields of use without bringing much to the table - positive energy is cheap even for Sun Paladins and may actually be rogue for Anathorils, using Darkest Light. Sure, the talent is underwhelming now, but better scaling of granted healmod without changing rest of mechanics would fix it for Sun Paladins and make much more attractive for everyone else.

PS Sure, making it instant cast would work as well.

Mmm.

Yeah, and a common form of Positive building is setting Bathe in Light to autocast when no enemies are around(as it's less risky than setting a heal, barrier or status cure to it). (While the passive/sustain version would do that, it would be questionable for undeads to ever use, and way more automatic/good at it.)

Probably the best answer is to up the healmod a little and just make it an Instant, yeah.

This only makes sense if the tedious positive / negative energy drain component is retained. I don't understand, to be truthful, why TOME has retained an element of simple tedium for anorithils - it's pretty common for players to simply put one or two of their abilities on autocast to avoid *tedium*, as the slow out-of-combat drain can always be avoided that way. It adds no balance at all to the class, but it does add overhead - especially for player unfamiliar with autocast.

I actually like the talent the way it is now.
It could be slightly more powerful though.
Don't like the idea of making it instant. That card seems to be played too often.

ohioastro wrote:This only makes sense if the tedious positive / negative energy drain component is retained. I don't understand, to be truthful, why TOME has retained an element of simple tedium for anorithils - it's pretty common for players to simply put one or two of their abilities on autocast to avoid *tedium*, as the slow out-of-combat drain can always be avoided that way. It adds no balance at all to the class, but it does add overhead - especially for player unfamiliar with autocast.

I'd just like to second this, again. Some other classes also have tedious mechanics but this is the only tedious mechanic I can think of which has nothing interesting about it.

Actually the tedium is mostly a matter of positive (and negative) energy mechanics. As it is, there really isn't much point in making it decay, as that'll merely get the least vital positive energey-producing talent set on autouse and make it effectively regenerating.

I recall there being an addon to turn off pos energy decay, and I don't think it massively changed the Celestials' difficulty.

So if positive and negative energy did not decay (and even regenerated when resting) that would be that taken care of, combat would be only minutely affected, and we could think of something interesting for Bathe in Light.

Myself, I'd like to see it reduce light, heightened senses and infravision radius to 2 for anyone in the AoE, since they're blinded by the glare. Upped heal mod and healing scaling strongly by distance from the caster, scaling radius with talent.

HousePet wrote: Don't like the idea of making it instant. That card seems to be played too often.

Oh, you want weirder ideas. I've got those too.

Don't change anything about it on base. Instead, add the following; Have it try to apply a two turn Damage Shield on everything in its radius every turn it's active, for the same defense value as its healing, on the living. For undead, don't let them get the barrier, and have it additionally produce a Burning effect for three turns, that does the healing damage/3 each turn.

This doubles the damage mitigation...both for you, and for your enemies. It's in the same category as Barrier, so this still makes its role secondary(Good, as Celestial/Light is already a strong category). And it's a lot more fun, and you can always cancel a Damage Shield so there's no possible downside to the change. And it's a more interesting thing to use against large crowds of undead, as it does vaguely noticeable damage then.