ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Problem: Because Chants are mutually exclusive, you want to invest in only one Chant and then use it for the entire game like it's a passive.
Problem: Chant of Light is bad.

Proposed Solution: Replace Chant of Light with a mastery passive that encourages investing into more than one Chant.

Holistic Chanting
Passive
Cooldown = 6
Your Chants blend rhythmically into one another, triggering one-time effects based on the previous Chant you were using.
Chant of Fortitude: Heal.
Chant of Fortress: Reduces the duration of all detrimental magical and mental effects by X turns.
Chant of Resistance: Reduces the cooldown of X Celestial talents by 2.
Effects will only trigger if you activate a Chant while another Chant is already sustained.

• Chant of Fortitude's heal runs off of spellpower and can crit.
• There is a cooldown to discourage activating a Chant and then immediately switching to a different Chant for more effects. If you switch to a Chant, you are committed to staying in it for 6 turns. This encourages investing into more than one chant so that you're not vulnerable during those 6 turns.
• The cooldown is synchronized with Chant cooldowns, so that you can perpetually cycle through all three Chants every 6 turns, unless Resistance's effect chooses Holistic Chanting and a Chant.
• All of these effects are ones that are not useful at the beginning of a fight, so you have to spend at least a few turns sitting on your initial Chant. If there were effects that were useful at the start of the fight, you would put only 1/5 into a Chant, autoexplore with it, and then immediately switch out at the start of every fight, which is counterintuitive.
• This is not meant to be an upgrade to the already strong Celestial classes, but a sidegrade. Going 5/5/5/5 into the entire Chant tree as opposed to just focusing on one Chant means you're spending up to 15 extra generic points that could have gone into Light or Harmony.

Mmmm.

I like the idea, but I also like the idea of there being an offensive chant.

How about a combination of the ideas? Harmony of Light, a passive that grants you more damage with Light/Fire(Fortitude), raises the damage you deal at high ranges(Fortress) and lowers your CDs(Resistance)?

Offensive benefits would be preferable but I can't think of any simple offensive effects that you wouldn't want to switch into immediately. Any buff that increases damage you're just going to want to pop as soon as something comes into view. That means that the optimal strategy is to put 1 point into one of the Chants, have it on while you're autoexploring, and then switch to a different Chant as soon as you see something. It seems counterintuitive to me that the Chant you want to have on while you walk around is the one that invest into least.

The idea of watching chants for bonuses makes a lot of sense, I think. Thematically, a Sun Paladin should want to chant the "glory of the sun". Not just focus on Light...

Unfortunately (for me), I haven't played enough Sun Paladins to form a good opinion on them. Much less what they could be improved by.

I'm not sure they need the current two damage resistance chants.
Another option is to just merge the deactivate bonus into the existing chants. But bare in mind that you can currently swap them instantly.

donkatsu wrote:Offensive benefits would be preferable but I can't think of any simple offensive effects that you wouldn't want to switch into immediately. Any buff that increases damage you're just going to want to pop as soon as something comes into view. That means that the optimal strategy is to put 1 point into one of the Chants, have it on while you're autoexploring, and then switch to a different Chant as soon as you see something. It seems counterintuitive to me that the Chant you want to have on while you walk around is the one that invest into least.

Tie the duration of the buff to the respective Chant's level, and the power of the buff to the passive.

Say, 2+TL. That fixes the one level issue.

This is an interesting idea. It makes Chants a potential 5/5/5/5 tree if done correctly, with extremely interesting and unique payoff...

I think that the light retaliation damage for each chant should be based on total points in the tree.

I love the Holistic Chanting idea! I don't think it needs any of these other changes. The original idea looks fine to me.

Taking into account Acrin and HousePet's suggestions...

Chant of Fortitude
Current effects, plus it heals you for X when you activate a different Chant.
Chants place other Chants on cooldown for 4 turns (like Moss).

Chant of Fortress
Current effects, except range is changed to 3 or more spaces away (maybe damage reduction increased slightly to compensate), plus it reduces the remaining duration of all detrimental magical and mental effects by (4-6) when you activate a different Chant.

Chant of Deflection
Reduces the damage enemies less than 3 spaces away deal by X%. Reduces the remaining duration of all detrimental physical effects by (4-6) when you activate a different Chant.

Chant of Light
Current effects, plus resist all equal to about half of what Chant of Resistance used to give. Increases all resistance penetration by X% for 6 turns when you activate a different Chant.

• The Moss cooldown mechanic replaces Holistic Chanting's cooldown.
• Going back to four chants, you need a cooldown of 4 instead of 6 to be able to seamlessly cycle through all four chants.
• Chant of Light was bad because its opportunity cost in defense was too high. Adding resist all mitigates that opportunity cost, while retaining Chant of Light's identity as "the offensive chant".
• Chant of Resistance was actually a bit too good at the high end, granting like 30% resist all. There were situations where Fortitude or Fortress were better, but those situations were too infrequent.
• Sun Paladins don't have any res pen and Anorithils only have res pen for 10 turns out of 30, so resistance penetration is a useful, but not mandatory, addition to their toolkit.
• Because resist penetration is a situational offensive stat, initiating combat with Chant of Light and instantly switching out is not always the optimal strategy.
• Base values on the switch bonuses should be high, because the penalty for going 1/5 in the talent is already 4 turns of crappy defense, don't need the switch bonus to be crappy too or else low levels of investment are penalized too harshly and Chants become an all-or-nothing investment.
• The cooldown reduction effect I suggested before was a bad idea, due to broken synergy with Suncloak, Flash of the Blade, and Timeless.
• Chant of Deflection's value should be the same as Fortress.
• Chant of Fortitude's heal should be able to crit and scale with spellpower.
• I do agree that at least one offensive Chant is desirable, to distinguish 5/5/5/5 Chants from 5/5/5/5 Light in function, even though the form is already different.

I still think there is too much overlap with damage mitigation all over the place.