How do people feel about the Radiance tree?

[Atarlost]

Even if you can live without rush it provides more utility than the radiance tree.

[Furey]

I can only speak to insane difficulty which is what I play, but for me the radiance tree is a no-brainer. People seem to be leaving out the most powerful features of the tree in this discussion:

Firstly, here is my insane winner:

http://te4.org/characters/110965/tome/c ... 28a71a2008

Again, some of this analysis only holds for higher difficulties:
1. Rush - totally not needed. PoTS gives you everything rush does when coupled with movement infusions, and you don't have the cat points to open it. Mind you, this is with a Shalore, and the racial speed boost overwrites blinding speed. If I was playing Sun Paladin without Shalore, or without Eden's Guile, then yes, blinding speed is worth the cat point by itself, but nothing else in that tree is needed at all.

2. Radiance: 4/5
I had 1.50 mastery from the cloak Radiance. Appropriately enough. At 4/5 points in radiance you get range 8 light radiance, which is nice, but not an argument for opening the skill. It also gives 79% blindness immunity. That's right. Innate blindness immunity. Now this may not matter on normal mode, but I cannot stress how important immunities are on insane.

3. Illumination: 1/5
Reduces invisibility and stealth by 54. This is insanely good, but not the reason this skill is so overpowered. As mentioned above, you can get invis detection from a rogue escort. No, the second line of this skill is why this power is so insanely good. Defense reduced by 18 and negates all evasion bonuses from being invisible or unseen. *even* if you can't detect them with a crazy hi invis/stealth, they don't get the 50% miss chance benefit. That's so insanely wonderful, since this build does not stack dex, you will have issues with hitting things late game, except that this lowers their defense just by standing next to you. I wish I had more points to put into it.

4. Searing sight: 1/5
Underwhelming damage of course. I would have like to get to 4 points for the daze chance, but didn't have the points.

5. Judgement: 3/5
I just wanted to play around with this. The healing is quite nice for large groups, but you don't really need it, so in retrospect I would have been better served with these 3 points somewhere else, maybe searing sight to get to 4 for the daze chance, or even more illumination for the excellent benefits it gives.

Finally, some points on stats: As a melee combatant magic user, you need to max Str. Str affects physpower, which affects every single swing of your weapon. Obviously magic, and cunning for crit. This leaves Dex as a 4th stat, which can get it to respectable levels, but endgame insane, you will need something else for reliable hitting of high defense mobs. The rush tree gives you the accuracy skill, but that costs stamina, has a cooldown, and lasts only 2 turns at one point. Radiance lasts always. My insane demonologist winner (who is built statwise exactly like a sun paladin) had less than 50% chance to hit Argoniel in the last fight. Radiance would have been oh so wonderful to have)

Just my 2 cents, and probably irrelevant for normal mode, but on insane difficulty, the radiance tree is excellent.

Cheers,
Furey

[Mex]

Radiance is a pretty garbage tree in general, even though Furey claims it's good they only go 4/1/1/3?. Spending a category point for 80% blind resist is a bad investment. Judgement is a contender for one of the worst spells in the game, with a 25 turn cd it does 1/2 damage of a 3cd beam spell.

A category point spent in Combat Techniques gives you access to Rush (a 1 pointer), Precise Strikes and Perfect Strike, which improve your chance to hit, crit and also give you the extremely high acc bonuses, which are very significant. Blinding Speed is also essential on any non-Shalore.

[Mankeli]

I agree with Mex, Radiance is a pretty bad tree IMO. I would put some points in it if it didn't need a cat point...but it does.

The light radius increase of radiance doesn't even stack with your normal light radius which is just weird.

[Radon26]

"The light radius increase of radiance doesn't even stack with your normal light radius which is just weird."
while i don't disagree about it being strange... you can easily get 11-13 lite without the umbraphage.
18 with umbraphage.
26 with umbraphage AND radiance? + if it stacks in one direction shouldn't it also in the other?
so have a 26 range aura the hits every enemy every turn... that would get wild.

add PoTL to it, and if you are careful none can catch you off guard.

[Mankeli]

"The light radius increase of radiance doesn't even stack with your normal light radius which is just weird."
while i don't disagree about it being strange... you can easily get 11-13 lite without the umbraphage.
18 with umbraphage.
26 with umbraphage AND radiance? + if it stacks in one direction shouldn't it also in the other?
so have a 26 range aura the hits every enemy every turn... that would get wild.

add PoTL to it, and if you are careful none can catch you off guard.

No, the skill explicitly says that the effects are limited to your radiance aura, not light radius. So making light effects stack would have zero effect on Searing Light. You wouldn't care if you have 18 or 26 light radius -your sight radius won't be that high anyways.

(Of course the skill description can be wrong, I don't have a character that could test this easily right now)

[Radon26]

i know it doesn't stack. it was "what if". but i guess i should have written it more clearly.
also, currently (or the last time i checked) lite radius overrides the vision radius.
unless its a skill that is limited by vision radius, and not just being seen (like shadow strike apparently is) the vision radius doesn,t mean anything.

[Mankeli]

And I was saying that the "what if" has no relevance if the conditions I laid out hold true.

However, according to wiki light radius does or has overwritten the sight radius just like you said. So you could see farther with radiance and normal lite stacking even if you could not damage the monster.

BTW, This game is so confusing, think about this: A Sun Pally can have two different light radii that do not stack. Then it has vision range that limits the infravision range but not light radius if light radius is bigger than vision range. The latter is true even when the dungeon you are in is naturally litten. But that's not all, your infravision range from items does not stack with the "infravision" you get from survival/heightened senses (if you unlock survival which I wouldn't do an a non-cornac probably). Oh, and then you can have telepathy too. Telepathy works through walls and in magical darkness. But apparently not trough undiggable walls? Infravision does not work in magical darkness. But infravision does let you see items.

So yeah, pretty complicated, assuming my info is still up to date.

[DaltonRaccoon]

I agree on both sides of the argument: The radiance tree has some amazing passives that make dipping a few points worthwhile, but it's not worth maxing out because the abilities scale horribly.

My two cents:
Radiance: 5/5 for light range, near immunity to blindness, never need a lite again. Hope you get a lite with lots of useful abilities like Wintertide or something.
Illumination: 1/5 because you get an enormous see invisible, see hidden, defense reduction, and you deny defense and accuracy bonuses to invisible enemies. A real one point wonder, but never more than one point because the scaling is pathetic.
Searing Sight: 1/5 The daze is useless because the enemies take damage every round, so the daze gets broken. The damage is also useless because it's never more than a few points. The only reason I put a point here is because I already have Radiance and Illumination, so essentially this one point is just there to break through bone shields and whatnot.
Judgement: 0/5 nope nope nope

It sounds like the Radiance tree could use some scaling to make its abilities all worth some investing, and not just a bunch of questionable one point wonders.

[HousePet]

I had heard of Judgement nuking whole rooms when it was in testing. It doesn't appear to have been nerfed since.
The damage on it looks low, but its a radius 1 burst on every visible enemy. So in a filled corridor its 3 times the base damage.
9 times in a monster pit. Would be hilarious in the post Dreadfell Ambush.

[DaltonRaccoon]

I had heard of Judgement nuking whole rooms when it was in testing. It doesn't appear to have been nerfed since.
The damage on it looks low, but its a radius 1 burst on every visible enemy. So in a filled corridor its 3 times the base damage.
9 times in a monster pit. Would be hilarious in the post Dreadfell Ambush.

I hadn't thought of that.

Though Searing Sight being anything above 1/5 remains a valid concern. There's NOTHING to gain from that increased daze chance. And Illumination continues to scale poorly, making the first point amazing and anything else wasteful.

[Radon26]

9 times in a monster pit

once against a boss.

let me repeat.
if you want to kill masses, brandish/retribution are nukers too, as well as is flash of blades.
that doesn't mean you "can't" get another one, but really, it is not much help against a boss.
you ARE going to take either guardian or crusader, or both if you are an ogre.
this skill, in my opinion at least, doesn't justify getting this category.

[malboro_urchin]

9 times in a monster pit

once against a boss.

let me repeat.
if you want to kill masses, brandish/retribution are nukers too, as well as is flash of blades.
that doesn't mean you "can't" get another one, but really, it is not much help against a boss.
you ARE going to take either guardian or crusader, or both if you are an ogre.
this skill, in my opinion at least, doesn't justify getting this category.

Agreed, especially since Judgment costs minimum a cat point and 4 skill points, and beyond that, it only attacks enemies in your radiance, requiring investment therein for range, and is a nuke spell, deriving its damage from skill point investment moreso than gear

[Mankeli]

9 times in a monster pit

once against a boss.

let me repeat.
if you want to kill masses, brandish/retribution are nukers too, as well as is flash of blades.
that doesn't mean you "can't" get another one, but really, it is not much help against a boss.
you ARE going to take either guardian or crusader, or both if you are an ogre.
this skill, in my opinion at least, doesn't justify getting this category.

Yeah, this^.

On normal, there are other skills that already inflict ok AoE, on insane, fighting monsters 1:1 is highly preferable. Killing trash monsters more effectively just means that the trash just got even trashier.

[HousePet]

I wouldn't rely on Retribution to mass nuke for me. Too fiddly.
Brandish is good.
I don't see a problem with Judgement being a good mass nuke/heal but not good against lone bosses.
Nobody has said it is good against single targets, or that the category is good for that reason.