Celestial/Light… what's the big deal?

[Delmuir]

So, I'm not sure I understand the mechanics of this game well enough (a big criticism that I have… but another time) to understand why so many people talk about this escort-optioned tree as such a big deal. To me, it seems like a waste of a category point and a bunch of generic points, especially with mages… I don't get it but I'm probably wrong. Can someone tell me why I'm wrong?

1. The tree comes in at .8 so it's underpowered anyway and I'm not putting two category points into it.

2. Healing light is a crap heal, especially with Arcane Reconstruction available… more so, I can't fathom putting points into more than one heal. Along the same vein, Barrier is a garbage damage shield… costs a turn to use and is weaker than a decent rune.

3. Providence. I've literally never had call to use this ability with a mage.

4. Bathe in Light… this seems to be the skill that everyone falls over themselves to praise but I don't get it. Sure, the healing bonus gives you a way to cure escorts but I find careful play allows me to save all of them, the majority of the time, and almost always seven or so.

I don't really understand the benefit of the healing mod because as a mage, I'm pretty much never healing as I almost always have a shield up. I just don't heal very often so this benefit seems a bit weak.

The damage shield refresh also seems weird… it's only useful when a shield is about to expire and it only resets to two. It doesn't add two to the duration (which would make this skill less irritating) but rather resets it to two IF it's at two or less. If I cast it one turn then my turn usually expires and shield goes down. Thus, I have to waste a turn to cast it get back two turns on the shield, thus netting me ONE turn, not two, all while taking damage.

Clearly, I'm not understanding how to use this but as fast as I can tell, this entire tree is a waste and none of my best mages have ever used it.

However, I want to understand.

Is it a style of play? Is there some synergy I'm not understanding? Some hidden feature? Some function that I'm misunderstanding?

I just don't get it.

[grayswandir]

The first 3 spells in the light tree can crit. So if you get a high enough critmod, they become quite strong.
Healing Mod is useful because of the 'Arcane Shield' talent.
Bathe in Light can give a very large healmod increase when it crits.

[Davion Fuxa]

Celestial/Light couples well with many character build types - and that doesn't just include Mages. Specifically looking at everything:

Healing Light - For characters that may be lacking in hit point replenishment, this is a great talent. Some specific builds that come to mind are those using the Undead Race, Shadowblade Class, or Chronomancer Meta-Classes. As grayswandir pointed out it can also have some great properties with the Aegis category due to Arcane Shield found on Archmages and Arcane Blades.

Barrier - The Damage Shield produced will last for a total of 10 turns while Barrier itself only goes on cooldown for 15 turns. More experienced players will sometimes put Barrier on Autocast when no enemies are visible. This results in the player generally almost always having a Damage Shield on before starting an engagement. Outside of that, if you need to keep yourself alive its another button to press.

Bathe in Light - It can be useful for healing escorts and providing a nice healing mod to give you a big health boost but it does more then that. Buffering your Damage Shield that still has plenty of absorption left can allow you to potentially stave off a huge burst of damage you suspect is coming while it can also 'add' to the amount of absorption that your current Damage Shield can provide. The utility granted from Bathe in Light is tremendous, even if the effects might seem to come off as a bit weak.

Providence - Perhaps the weakest of the talents, Providence nonetheless can be helpful if you perhaps want to remove a negative status effect that is afflicting your character. This use to be a bigger issue in the past specifically for undead characters - although I believe this talent has weakened considerably over time since Runes can now do well to help out with that.

[Delmuir]

Thanks for the replies…

I guess that helps…

[donkatsu]

Shield value from a rune or Bone Armour = Base shielding value * (1+Shielding)
Shield value from Arcane Reconstruction or Healing Light = Base healing value * Healmod * Crit Multipler * Arcane Shield * (1+Shielding)

It's just a matter of multiplicative stacking. Because the shielding from heals has so many multipliers, if you boost each of those multipliers, the final value goes up much, much higher than any shielding you could possibly get from, say, a rune. I'd say about 3 times stronger. It's a powerful build (one of the few that can clear the highest difficulty), but you have to actually build for it. If you ignore heal mod and crit multiplier then yeah, it'll seem weak. By the same token if you ignore Magic and Willpower for Strength and Dexterity, you'll wonder why people bother casting spells instead of bashing everything with an axe.

Barrier IS kind of crap, only really useful for the early game or for autocast when no enemies are visible.

Bathe in Light is just a better Healing Light and I've already discussed why Healing Light is good.

One Providence is like five Wild infusions. One Wild infusion is useful. What does that make Providence?

[Delmuir]

Now it's starting to make sense…

So essentially you're saying that the shield that is activated from the shielding sustain will, if it it crits and has a very good healing mod, produce a better shield than a rune could?

I was not aware of this… not that the game makes that easy to understand…

Of course, I wasn't aware that a heal could critical… because obviously, I don't pay that much attention.

Thanks for the help.

[donkatsu]

Yeah, it's not always obvious what can crit and what can't.

[Sradac]

providence is amazing especially for undead characters. The heal dosent matter, the status removal does

[Plak]

Providence is good enough to make the tree worth it on non-mages, and Bathe In Light is strong enough to be useful with mediocre spellpower as well. Status is one of the most dangerous things in the game (along with burst damage), and Providence is one of the very few ways to heal several status effects with one cast. If healing a single status effect is worth a very valuable inscription slot, Providence can definitely be worth a cat point and some generics for builds that can afford it. Bathe in Light is so strong now that characters with mediocre spellpower can probably use it as well, though I haven't tried it.

[Mex]

So, I'm not sure I understand the mechanics of this game well enough (a big criticism that I have… but another time) to understand why so many people talk about this escort-optioned tree as such a big deal. To me, it seems like a waste of a category point and a bunch of generic points, especially with mages… I don't get it but I'm probably wrong. Can someone tell me why I'm wrong?

It's wise to assume that you would be getting this instead of another inscription slot, so let's see what it offers. Already in value it gives a heal, a shield, a wild and another shield/regen.

1. The tree comes in at .8 so it's underpowered anyway and I'm not putting two category points into it.

Investing further category points into an unlocked tree provides a marginal benefit regardless. Discrediting it because it comes in at 0.8 is pointless, because you have to objectively look at how strong the skill is. Providence for example only suffers 2 turns from being at 0.8 instead of 1.3 iirc.

2. Healing light is a crap heal, especially with Arcane Reconstruction available… more so, I can't fathom putting points into more than one heal. Along the same vein, Barrier is a garbage damage shield… costs a turn to use and is weaker than a decent rune.

Healing Light was recently nerfed and it is a crap heal compared to Arcane Reconstruction... However, it costs no mana, has a shorter cooldown and can be used if for some reason Arcane Reconstruction isn't up. You can just have 1 point in it if you don't want to invest more and it would still be good to have as a situational spell.

3. Providence. I've literally never had call to use this ability with a mage.

This is better than a wild a lot of the time, if your build doesn't have Draconic Will and you are picking up Celestial/Light then you would be very unwise to not take this. It lasts a long time as well.

4. Bathe in Light… this seems to be the skill that everyone falls over themselves to praise but I don't get it. Sure, the healing bonus gives you a way to cure escorts but I find careful play allows me to save all of them, the majority of the time, and almost always seven or so.

I don't really understand the benefit of the healing mod because as a mage, I'm pretty much never healing as I almost always have a shield up. I just don't heal very often so this benefit seems a bit weak.

This has been addressed sufficiently I think.

The damage shield refresh also seems weird… it's only useful when a shield is about to expire and it only resets to two. It doesn't add two to the duration (which would make this skill less irritating) but rather resets it to two IF it's at two or less. If I cast it one turn then my turn usually expires and shield goes down. Thus, I have to waste a turn to cast it get back two turns on the shield, thus netting me ONE turn, not two, all while taking damage.

Clearly, I'm not understanding how to use this but as fast as I can tell, this entire tree is a waste and none of my best mages have ever used it.

However, I want to understand.

Is it a style of play? Is there some synergy I'm not understanding? Some hidden feature? Some function that I'm misunderstanding?

A decent amount of things in ToMe are a bit counter intuitive, such as healmod being extremely strong for Archmage, Girdle of Preservation for example extremely powerful for being a Tier 1 artifact, there are other things as well.

I just don't get it.

Hopefully that clears things up. Celestial/Light is ridiculous and I wouldn't be surprised if it was nerfed further or the ability to gain it changed in some manner. Then again it's a more convoluted version of Unstoppable at higher difficulties for Archmage (and Arcane Blade I guess), so that has to be considered too.

[Delmuir]

So, I made a higher/archmage with a wildfire build (a boring build but a surefire winner) and used the celestial light tree… beat normal as per usual.

It all makes sense knowing that the heal spells can critical and it's been useful. I use to always trade out the heal inscription for a shield rune and skip temporal if it was a good enough shield… I didn't do that this time. Rather, I essentially wandered around with a useless inscription slot for the bulk of the game.

Was Celestial light worth it? Honestly, no. The mages are so strong anyway that this just feels over-powered and using Bathe in Light (although I only got 90% crit) just seemed unfair. It makes sense that it would be one of the few builds that can beat the higher difficulty levels.

On normal though… I think it's pretty unnecessary. The only mage build that I think needs it is an unorthodox build such as a lightning or melee/light build (which I love honestly but it's not strong enough and needs to get lucky on gear).

Thanks for all of the help in understanding how it works though… your efforts were much appreciated.

[Omega Blue]

My $0.02

The thing is you are only thinking from your level of knowledge and skill. There are a whole lot of newbies and less experienced players who are struggling to get their first win. So yes, there are some builds and combinations that are stronger than others, there's nothing surprising there. If you get bored with them, don't use these combinations. You have the choice.

Give yourself a challenge by trying out some weird, waste product builds. Or handicap yourself by not using all the points. Or not using any artifacts. Etc. But don't take away other people's choices just because you don't need them.

[cctobias]

Also its resource is essentially "free", positive energy is kind of weird. Getting max positive doesn't stop you from cast anything from Light in fact it is generating resource that other anorithil/pally talents could use.

So its almost like casting an arcane reconstruction that gave you mana. (Except you have no speders)

[Delmuir]

My $0.02

The thing is you are only thinking from your level of knowledge and skill. There are a whole lot of newbies and less experienced players who are struggling to get their first win. So yes, there are some builds and combinations that are stronger than others, there's nothing surprising there. If you get bored with them, don't use these combinations. You have the choice.

Give yourself a challenge by trying out some weird, waste product builds. Or handicap yourself by not using all the points. Or not using any artifacts. Etc. But don't take away other people's choices just because you don't need them.

I don't understand this reply.

I'm certainly not suggesting that other players not be able to have access to the category. This question was asked because I didn't understand the mechanics of how to use the category such that it justified the praise. Thanks to the feedback, I now do understand it.

I DO play with different builds and styles… that's part of the fun of the game.

[cctobias]

My $0.02

The thing is you are only thinking from your level of knowledge and skill. There are a whole lot of newbies and less experienced players who are struggling to get their first win. So yes, there are some builds and combinations that are stronger than others, there's nothing surprising there. If you get bored with them, don't use these combinations. You have the choice.

Give yourself a challenge by trying out some weird, waste product builds. Or handicap yourself by not using all the points. Or not using any artifacts. Etc. But don't take away other people's choices just because you don't need them.

I don't understand this reply.

I'm certainly not suggesting that other players not be able to have access to the category. This question was asked because I didn't understand the mechanics of how to use the category such that it justified the praise. Thanks to the feedback, I now do understand it.

I DO play with different builds and styles… that's part of the fun of the game.

I didn't really understand that response either but to give you a straight up numeric idea of what useful about the line for some builds I can give the following example:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=42310

In that guide I specifcy a Shadowblade build which makes heavy use of Light, which I list as required for the build.

Now I also advise taking Temporal which has a shield as well so lets compare the two shields, for the my winner character at or near end of game with about 90 spellpower:

Temporal Shield (5 points)
25 mana
instant
CD 18
shields for about 500
CAN'T CRIT
5+ talent turns

Barrier (5 points)
no real cost
1 turn
CD 15
shields for about 1100 on crit (considering stealth)
10 turns


Now Time shield is obviously better in an emergency simply because its instant, but on this build in particular you can get over double the shield amount from barrier. Barrier is way better for preshielding a fight. And having both together is very very nice because of duration and because you want one to start and one for emergency.

Now for bathe in the Light that character will shield to roughly 3.5k to 4k total shield due to crit and heal mod. Also a level 3 Healing light can basically heal that character to full. Would Arcane reconstruction heal more? Yes but without the sustain that shields that is just overhealing that does nothing.

Using crits and the Light tree that build can tank 1 or 2 overpowered multi-hued wyrms on Nightmare (lvl ~110). Without it the SB only have a single sheild that is half as effective and you have to use a cat point to get it (although essence of speed is good enough that you probably want that tree anyway). I am ignoring displacement shield here as that is a simply a chance to avoid damage and not a true shield even if it works with Aegis line.

So any stealth based Shadowblade can radically change their survivability using this tree. Even Rogue (with stealth) with mediocre spell power could have something like a 500+ strong shield not even using BitL. Add in the fact a class like Shadowblade that goes melee can be very fast and the small turn duration on the BitL shield starts to make more sense with enough speed boosts, a melee Shadowblade can maybe get 4 or 5 "rounds" of attacks out of the 2 turn super shield of BitL (+45% global(temporal) + 40% attack(momentum) speed + 40% global (blinding speed)). Then they can save Time Shield for emergency if they need to retreat. And they get a heal which they normally have abosolutely no access to other than inscriptions.

So the Line itself can make the following inscriptions unecessary or less necessary:
1) shield rune
2) heal/regen infusion
3) wild infusion (not really entirely since these are instant, but providence does remove a lot more conditions)

And with the right synergy (crits and good spellpower) the shield and heal will be stronger.

So you can definitely get far more for the cat point when compared to inscriptions. You have 1 to 3 comparison there for function and they are stronger. However getting this does take more generics in the case of the build I linked I you are gonna want more than 10 extra generic points.

Now on a low SP character with terrible crits this is not nearly as favorable. But the numbers given for the particular case I am talking about in that build are quite strong and supplement the holes in that particular class very well. The line itself is still very nice on AM but has quite some overlap and its main draw is mostly BitL which admittedly looks rather weak at first blush. I am still not even entirely sure why it gives you so much shield on that build but I can state for a fact you can get well over 3K total shield when it ends when using it on that build and with the right stats you can get over 4k.