astralInferno's Celestial Oddities (Class Pack)

[Syovere]

I've adjusted my plans for the altered trees, I think this'll work nicely.

"Cori" here has hilarious generation of Oncoming Disaster. With the dark spam I've got going on, along with cold damage, I think Elemental Surge and Armor of Shadows combined would give some very nice defenses. On top of the ton of shielding and healing available.

So far so good. And this time I managed to avoid killing myself with my own spells.

I have noticed though that it's very easy to run out of negative energy. Given how powerful the Disaster spells are, that's probably intended. Early on, though, the single-target Disaster just deletes bosses, seriously. Which was appreciated when Zoisla came calling.

[astralInferno]

rad!

I probably should increase negative gen a little bit, at least at low levels...
Disasters should absolutely Delete anything you point them at, at least early. >:3 that's why I went through so much effort to make them take buildup!

[Syovere]

Firmamancer started out pretty fun. Then the disasters started kicking in.

That's when it got really fun.

Considering the stunts I'm pulling with this build, I think you absolutely need to not increase the negative energy supply. You might need to nerf the Disasters considering the above picture, but I'm not really a balance expert.

A cooldown would probably cover it; a significant chunk of clearing the room of death was via layered tornadoes.

[Erenion]

So, I've finished my Insane run (Embers) and, as usual, it's time to dissect my character and give feedback.
https://te4.org/characters/199593/tome/ ... 9ab7d47579

I built a lightning based Firmamancer, and it felt ridiculously strong - until you encountered something you couldn't delete with three consecutive thunderstrike disasters.

Class Trees
Rainfall
Downpour seems like a good, reliable cold area attack. It has just the one downside that it hits you (and probably escorts) as well.
Drench was a sustain that I got early and pretty much had on the whole game. It reduces enemy resistance by 10/30%, depending on whether it spellshocks. This might be pretty good with Master of Disasters as well. AAD case (see below)
I never used Floodgate due to having Bleak Warning, but it seems decent.
Open the Heavens is a good instant disaster enabler in combat, but it's true power shines through with tracking. You can preemptively use it, then step around the corner and just open the fight with an instant disaster. if you have 0 fatigue or more than 100 neg. energy, a drem would be able to make especially effective use of this.

Misty Night
Cloud Thoughts was a nice early nuke, then became my "just use this for negative energy whenever it's up" skill. AAD case
Alone in the Mist is ridiculous against one single target. Just pin, blind and silence them, they pretty much can't fight back now.
Whispering Mists was a skill I never really used. One thing about this: Both Whispering Mists and Shadow in the Mist damage areas display as "darkness pin" damage in the log, despite having no way to pin.
Shadow in the Mist is pretty strong, especially when you get high crit chance. The fact that this triggers on every critical and has (as far as I can tell) no limit on how often it can trigger makes it a reliable source of extra damage.

Heavens
Genesis. Oh boy, here we go. This was my main single target damage skill for the entire game, and it's just ridiculously strong. It one shots bosses from level 3-15, and heavily damages them afterwards. By the time bosses could take this reliably (around Aeryn), I had the tools to fire this off three times in quick succession, making those fights rather quick as well (apart from the final fight.)
The other big strength of this skill is that it allows you to generate negative energy rather quickly via on_spell_hit spells. I had Mana Coil, Dùathedlen Heart and (lategame) Void Orb, leading to at least one additional spell per turn (on average.)
Revelations. I left this at 1/5, but it's a very reliable combo of Track (out of combat) and Barrier (in combat). The only detriment here is that it costs negative energy, so if you don't have a good setup for generating energy, it will delay your disaster spam.
Indignation was a neat buff I used for some boss fights, but generally ignored.
Blinding Presence is a slightly sadder copy of Thunderstorm with a display error and a problem with admitting its own critical impotence. Despite those, and being an AAD case, it's really good. Enemies without sufficient stealth detection/blind fighting will be left to miss you most of the time, and despite the fact that this talent cannot crit, it will still trigger on_spell_hits.

Gale
I almost never used Dynamo for the disaster. This talent has one big problem though (unless this is intended): it makes movement infusions grant you 30+ stacks of Impending Disaster and a ton of negative energy. There is no once per turn limit on the stacks, despite what the talent says.
Death-Dealing Journey is a solid dash. I never used it for the damage, just for the mobility. Same case as with Revelations and Indignation: it needs negative energy, so be careful with using it.
Freedom Lets Go. Oh no. This is the other absolutely overpowered part. With Adept, the cooldown on this goes down to 3 turns (probably 2 with Windtouched.) That means that you're purging a debuff from yourself pretty much at least once per turn, and stripping an enemy of a sustain or buff while doing it.
Careless Wind is neat. That's about it.

Dark Clouds (locked)
Omen: The other source of negative energy and Impending Disaster for my build. High talent levels here, combined with high scellcrit and spell_on_hit make Hymn Nocturnalist energy-neutral while also generating Disaster stacks.
The disaster itself has one big problem: it is unreliable right now. It does less single-target damage than Genesis and has worse area than Chorus. It would make up for this with being able to hit targets multiple times, but in the current version, it can miss a target entirely, even if there are only 2/3 viable targets.
Uneasy Skies is really good, although it feels like a passive, not a sustain.
Bleak Warning is a quick emergency button, and has the big advantage of being instant speed.
There's not much to say about Oncoming Night, it's just your run-of-the-mill resistance penetration capstone.

Thunderstorm (locked)
Chorus: The energy generation on this might not be the best, but the area damage from the disaster more than makes up for it. This was my second most commonly used skill (after Genesis), and it is just your bread and butter area skill.
Strom Singing was not that useful, even with Adept pushing the threshold down to 16%. But even then, Drench had usually already applied both of the debuffs to the target, so in retrospect, this talent is kind of useless.
Electric Crescendo was one of my "just use it when it is up" skills. It has no negative energy cost due to Genesis and does decent damage - if the target is wet, but you've got Drench for that.
Maestro of Storms: same as with Oncoming Night, but with a damage increase instead of a speed increase. While less useful, the damage increase still occurs reliably due to Drench.


Prodigies
The biggest contenders I can see are:
- Aether Permeation: You have a LOT of sustains, and you want to keep them.
- Master of Disasters: powers, and all the cross-tiers!
- Adept (yes.): You will spread yourself fairly thin on points, and Adept helps with that. In addition, you will hit a few rather nice breakpoints (radius 8 Chorus, 4 foes on Blinding Presence, 3 turn Freedom Lets Go.) It also helps with tinkers, if you have those.
- Range Amplification Device: Not recommended in the current version as it does not work with most spells (any marked AAD case above are especially heinous offenders.) Will be a rather nice choice when this is fixed.
- Arcane Amplification Drone: You don't deal arcane damage. But this doesn't matter. The drone is not just for use in combat, though. Its main use is to let you start combat with a disaster already charged (same as Open the Heavens.)


Tinkers?
Yes. Mana Coil is just perfect for a lightning build, even though you are spread very thin on generic points.


Thoughts
This class feels very strong, but fun to play. However, the disasters ended up feeling like my core damage spells and everything else was just "stuff I have to spam to get my disasters back."
If you invest in Genesis, the early game is no issue at all as long as you don't get overwhelmed by multiple rares at once.
The class has a bit of a midgame dip, but once you get over that (read: are able to use three disasters in a row with minimal turns in between) you become pretty strong again.

[astralInferno]

this is super useful, thank you!

[Erenion]

A few more small things I found by trying some more stuff:
- Stream of Life does not work on fire damage.
- Blizzard has a wrong description.
- If you cast a single-target disaster on an enemy in a wall adjacent to you, you will cast it on yourself. This has killed me 3 times so far.
- The area of the meteor disaster scales with talent level, but does not say this anywhere. This disaster is also horribly inconsistent in dealing its damage.

[astralInferno]

what about blizzard's description is wrong? I've checked but I can't see anything obvi-
OH THERE IT IS.

Ok noted.

Not sure what could be causing that third problem. Will try and investigate.

The fourth problem is probably just caused by meteors being meteors. I'll try to improve the description though!
Edit: Wait, it DOES mention that.

Thanks!

[astralInferno]

wanted to play an anorithil, so I put out a very minor update. This doesn't include any feedback I've gotten about balance unless I could change it in two seconds, and only the two fiddly things were tested, and not super strenuously.

1.1.9
-Divine Fire now applies Cleansing Flames.
-fixed typos in freedom lets go, meteorology
-probably fixed bug where drought/thunderstrike couldnt target foes in walls
-fixed Blizzard looking at the wrong feeder talent
-doubled vengeance neg gain. I should probably be subtler about this, but this is a bugfix patch, not a balance patch.
-fixed inaccuracy in blinding presence desc - there's a +1 in the code on how many people it hits that wasnt in the description.
-brush fire now cant hit friendlies, I hope
-fix stream of life probably

edit: started playing. ended up making an adventurer instead. got so annoyed at how much brush fire was lagging my pc that I put out a new patch.

1.1.10
-made brush fire not go off while resting or running. also made it go off less often (50% chance per turn), but buffed its damage (slightly less than doubled)
-the heavens fall now goes on cooldown when you run out of neg energy. resting/running still doesn't put it on cooldown.

[HSmage]

For radiant, is it supposed behaviour for inner reactor to crit with its regen, thus going over the maximum shield's value and shutting the skill down? Making it less of a sustain and more of a post-initiation battle cooldown? at high crit levels, it's shutting wayy too often, rendering already somewhat weak class...well, dead

[astralInferno]

oh man, no, that's not intended at all.

I've coded a fix for that to release next time I update the addon, but I'm not sure exactly when that'll be. Internal Reactor won't crit anymore, but it will take crit bonuses into account when determining its shield value, for a more consistent experience (and to avoid optimal gameplay of reusing it until it crits.)
Additionally, when it has a greater-than-max shield, it will now average out that shield's value with your max on any turn it's about to run out.

[astralInferno]

have I playtested this patch? no.
have I done my usual white-room bugtesting to check that this patch actually works? ...also no. I'm so tired, guys. it's either this or you don't get these bugfixes until 2022. hmu if things dont work.

1.2.3
-really shoulda made the firmamancer rework 1.2
-gonna pretend I did because writing 1.1.11 is dumb
-removed chance to crit from Internal Reactor. its Absorption now scales with crit.
-removed interaction with bigger shields causing Internal Reactor to just deactivate. when a bigger shield's duration drops below 2, internal reactor goes "my shield now", averages out its absorption, and sets duration to 5.
-renamed deprecated avalanche talent to make Oddities compatible with my own fallen meditant. oops.
-renamed drought/Hunger (talent 2) in the code for the same reason. this one Will have compatibility effects.
-(if you have the hunger talent, unlearn it before updating or this update Will break save compatibility. if you're doing a pre-update run you're - anyway.)
-sudden purge now hits the no-variance threshold earlier and buffs damage more after it.
-the Radiance tree is now only available at level 1 if you know Sickening Light
-trench strider's description no longer lies that life rating is +0. It now says +2, which should be correct.
-class icon for radiant courtesy of the wonderful mr frog!
-prayer actually takes a turn whoops
-made bleak warning (dark clouds 3) not call out Her
-misty night works with RAD
-Omen should now prioritise hitting all targets once
-things that passively do damage now warn you they wont crit

[HSmage]

Sudden purge spits lua error on skill mouseover (and just that, its normally usable). It's from radiants volatility tree.

tome-1.7.4-1625408024.png (212.33 KiB) Viewed 53171 times

[astralInferno]

whooops. can't BELIEVE I didn't notice that. and NO idea what I thought I was doing when I wrote that code.

...incidentally, that talent didn't work right either. It would never start getting boosted by con.

It now does, and I've smoothed out the scaling.

1.2.4
-fixed the sudden purge code that I fd up trying to make fancier. also fixed a lua error in the description which was the actual bug report.

[Syovere]

So, I didn't notice this earlier but the scaling of the health restore effect on Celestial / Strider's Replenishing Tides seems backwards.

[astralInferno]

That's odd, let me look into that...

(f.x stolen from zizzo: code diving)

...aha!
So, at a higher magic score, you'll see this - it starts scaling up again.

The healing scales from 9 at a low talent value to (4+1/5 of your spellpower) at a high value. Because of this, if your spellpower is low enough, it'll actually scale down over time.
(In fact, at ~33 magic, it won't scale at all and will just be a flat 9. o.o)
So *technically speaking*, this is working as intended, and if you're raising your magic and taking this talent late like I'd expect, it's Probably Fine. However, this is a Really Weird effect.

I'll add a note to my To Do list for next patch, I'll probably change the formula to start a bit lower and scale a bit harder.