5 hours ago
So there's currently.. what, five immunity pierces in the game? The 'ignores immunity, absorb, and reflect' effects.
And since they all have the effect of piercing immunity, absorb, and reflect, I'll just refer to those as 'immunities' here.
They're also at completely different power scales to eachother, requiring different investments for vastly different levels of effectiveness.
Dark Bard and Boxer currently get the best. Solblader's is close, but with the death of Flash of Light and the reduced usage of Solsphere in the other two stances, it's struggling - but at the same time, sphereless SBs deal vastly less light damage and will never encounter a PvP absorb or reflect.
For reference, DB's (Getting Into It) is a 2-rank passive that triggers if you hit into a Dark, Sound, or Fire immunity, which doesn't affect that damage instance but disables that immunity for the target for up to 3 rounds, inflicts lingering damage and battle rush, and inflicts confusion.
Boxer's (Gotthand) is a 1 rank passive to pierce blunt immunity that triggers at Sturm 4. It also lets you ignore blunt resistance.
SB's (Unerring Light) is a 1-rank innate that triggers when you are in holy aura - if you have holy aura, you pierce all Light immunities. I've.. heard it works on Lightning damage instead if you're using Divine Spark?
Verglas's (Winter's Bite) is a 4-rank 3m action that pierces immunities on a target within 3 range for 3 rounds, with an 8-round cooldown. Its 1-rank effect also disables resistances.
The Lizard is a 3m Stargraph effect, letting a targeted ally pierce immunities for the damage type of your starsign for 2 rounds, with a 6 round cooldown. It has a 1m refund if targeting yourself.
You can see a pretty firm gradient of usability here - Getting Into It, Gotthand, and Unerring Light literally only require playing your class (or playing it as intended, in SB's case) to be effective, and firmly counter the more abusive strategies against them. They can all achieve 100% or near-100% uptime with little difficulty, and are pretty much the ideal as far as immunity pierces go. Getting Into It is also always as beneficial for allies as it is the user, allowing, say, an allied fire mage to pierce a troublesome absorb. (Like Fire Elemental)
Which makes the Lizard's Boon being released after those three feel very strange, and very much a step back. It's a 2m investment (functionally 3m for basically any mage - we don't get action economy here) that barely achieves 30% uptime (1.7/6 turns is, uh, 28%.), has no benefits for astrology investment, and can be literally just waited out. I wouldn't be surprised if you could null rune it.
The ideal use-cases for Lizard's Boon are.. well, a lot of things. It's ostensibly a very flexible effect! You could use it on an earth mage to deal with the rampant earth reflects and absorbs in PVE, on a light mage to deal with YDKs, Wisps, Creepers, Shine Knighting, and Shine Knights, on a water mage to engage with goblins AT ALL, lightning mage for gremlins, verg to cover holes in winter's bite, I guess..??, and fire/ice mages to deal with summoner's 'counterplays' that obliterate your ability to play the game.
But you don't see it, because it's just.. very, very bad? 2m for 2 rounds is NOTHING. The cooldown also makes it completely unusable on allies, and it isn't super usable on allies to begin with because it aligns with your starsign, which is likely an element YOU'RE using.
Verglas's Winter's Bite is awful in a similar way - its on-paper effect is slightly better than the Lizard's Boon (jesus CHRIST), but it's a single-target 3m effect that only JUST crests 30% uptime (2.57/8 is 32%), is cleansable, requires your enemy to be in 3 range, and also eats 4 skill points from you for full effect - which is NECESSARY because the two feasible use-cases for it (yukionna and relei) are BOTH innate reflects that COMPLETELY wall you out of using ice, and are only covered by the 4-rank effect.
You generally don't see it because it's a miserable investment for little effect, and its one spicy use-case (nailing ice-weak opponents through their gear res, which is pretty niche) is a 1-point 1-skillslot investment.
Winter's Bite and Lizard's Boon kind of NEED an adjustment. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with increasing the duration and reducing (or getting rid of) the CDs to a point where you can achieve 100% uptime with them with maintenance. It turns battles against enemies with immunities into something you have to manage a status for, which.. is fine?? It'd put them on the same level as Getting Into It and Gotthand, which both require minimal investment for better effects.
Winter's Bite DOES want some deeper changes, though - it's single-target and cleansable, so even with CD reductions and a duration extension it could end up being useless into cleanses.
There's the possibility of making it 2m, so you can crane hop > winter's bite > verglas action, making it self-targeting like Lizard's Boon, or a mix of both (enemy targeting gets the resist/immunity pierce and a short cooldown, ally targeting gets a 1M refund but only gets the immunity pierce??)
Whatever the case, it does want to be competitive or equal with whatever The Lizard gets.
..... Nihilist Is There Too. I actually completely forgot it existed while writing this? It covers absorbs. ONLY. For a glove slot, it's miserably weak, and could stand to get like.. full immunity coverage + a 30+% elemental pierce effect or something? Like Idol, but it serves to save you from Resist! procs and 100% resist builds rather than help you get Weak! procs. Idk, it really needs looking at, whatever happens to it.
Anyway! I'm also curious about the design ethos behind immunities - right now resists and immunities are highly uninteractive, and whatever their intended purpose their actual effect on gameplay is to stop certain classes from interacting with certain content at all, including in some instances of PvP.
This is a part of why you just don't see earth mages anymore - earth magic is chiefly locked to mage, which wants an 'all-in' approach to spells because of how enchants work, but going all-in on earth magic is consent to your magic being reflected, immunity'd, absorbed (and also getting 100 base evade against it?) in virtually every corner of Korvara. Tie that to effects like Isenshi being a little cryptic and wanting more investment for its bonus effects than, say, Vydel's 'Blink And Shoot' approach that threatens any enemies standing within a 5x5 square of eachother, and you've got very little reason to touch it.
The Lizard was almost a solution to this, but fell DRAMATICALLY short.
And since they all have the effect of piercing immunity, absorb, and reflect, I'll just refer to those as 'immunities' here.
They're also at completely different power scales to eachother, requiring different investments for vastly different levels of effectiveness.
Dark Bard and Boxer currently get the best. Solblader's is close, but with the death of Flash of Light and the reduced usage of Solsphere in the other two stances, it's struggling - but at the same time, sphereless SBs deal vastly less light damage and will never encounter a PvP absorb or reflect.
For reference, DB's (Getting Into It) is a 2-rank passive that triggers if you hit into a Dark, Sound, or Fire immunity, which doesn't affect that damage instance but disables that immunity for the target for up to 3 rounds, inflicts lingering damage and battle rush, and inflicts confusion.
Boxer's (Gotthand) is a 1 rank passive to pierce blunt immunity that triggers at Sturm 4. It also lets you ignore blunt resistance.
SB's (Unerring Light) is a 1-rank innate that triggers when you are in holy aura - if you have holy aura, you pierce all Light immunities. I've.. heard it works on Lightning damage instead if you're using Divine Spark?
Verglas's (Winter's Bite) is a 4-rank 3m action that pierces immunities on a target within 3 range for 3 rounds, with an 8-round cooldown. Its 1-rank effect also disables resistances.
The Lizard is a 3m Stargraph effect, letting a targeted ally pierce immunities for the damage type of your starsign for 2 rounds, with a 6 round cooldown. It has a 1m refund if targeting yourself.
You can see a pretty firm gradient of usability here - Getting Into It, Gotthand, and Unerring Light literally only require playing your class (or playing it as intended, in SB's case) to be effective, and firmly counter the more abusive strategies against them. They can all achieve 100% or near-100% uptime with little difficulty, and are pretty much the ideal as far as immunity pierces go. Getting Into It is also always as beneficial for allies as it is the user, allowing, say, an allied fire mage to pierce a troublesome absorb. (Like Fire Elemental)
Which makes the Lizard's Boon being released after those three feel very strange, and very much a step back. It's a 2m investment (functionally 3m for basically any mage - we don't get action economy here) that barely achieves 30% uptime (1.7/6 turns is, uh, 28%.), has no benefits for astrology investment, and can be literally just waited out. I wouldn't be surprised if you could null rune it.
The ideal use-cases for Lizard's Boon are.. well, a lot of things. It's ostensibly a very flexible effect! You could use it on an earth mage to deal with the rampant earth reflects and absorbs in PVE, on a light mage to deal with YDKs, Wisps, Creepers, Shine Knighting, and Shine Knights, on a water mage to engage with goblins AT ALL, lightning mage for gremlins, verg to cover holes in winter's bite, I guess..??, and fire/ice mages to deal with summoner's 'counterplays' that obliterate your ability to play the game.
But you don't see it, because it's just.. very, very bad? 2m for 2 rounds is NOTHING. The cooldown also makes it completely unusable on allies, and it isn't super usable on allies to begin with because it aligns with your starsign, which is likely an element YOU'RE using.
Verglas's Winter's Bite is awful in a similar way - its on-paper effect is slightly better than the Lizard's Boon (jesus CHRIST), but it's a single-target 3m effect that only JUST crests 30% uptime (2.57/8 is 32%), is cleansable, requires your enemy to be in 3 range, and also eats 4 skill points from you for full effect - which is NECESSARY because the two feasible use-cases for it (yukionna and relei) are BOTH innate reflects that COMPLETELY wall you out of using ice, and are only covered by the 4-rank effect.
You generally don't see it because it's a miserable investment for little effect, and its one spicy use-case (nailing ice-weak opponents through their gear res, which is pretty niche) is a 1-point 1-skillslot investment.
Winter's Bite and Lizard's Boon kind of NEED an adjustment. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with increasing the duration and reducing (or getting rid of) the CDs to a point where you can achieve 100% uptime with them with maintenance. It turns battles against enemies with immunities into something you have to manage a status for, which.. is fine?? It'd put them on the same level as Getting Into It and Gotthand, which both require minimal investment for better effects.
Winter's Bite DOES want some deeper changes, though - it's single-target and cleansable, so even with CD reductions and a duration extension it could end up being useless into cleanses.
There's the possibility of making it 2m, so you can crane hop > winter's bite > verglas action, making it self-targeting like Lizard's Boon, or a mix of both (enemy targeting gets the resist/immunity pierce and a short cooldown, ally targeting gets a 1M refund but only gets the immunity pierce??)
Whatever the case, it does want to be competitive or equal with whatever The Lizard gets.
..... Nihilist Is There Too. I actually completely forgot it existed while writing this? It covers absorbs. ONLY. For a glove slot, it's miserably weak, and could stand to get like.. full immunity coverage + a 30+% elemental pierce effect or something? Like Idol, but it serves to save you from Resist! procs and 100% resist builds rather than help you get Weak! procs. Idk, it really needs looking at, whatever happens to it.
Anyway! I'm also curious about the design ethos behind immunities - right now resists and immunities are highly uninteractive, and whatever their intended purpose their actual effect on gameplay is to stop certain classes from interacting with certain content at all, including in some instances of PvP.
This is a part of why you just don't see earth mages anymore - earth magic is chiefly locked to mage, which wants an 'all-in' approach to spells because of how enchants work, but going all-in on earth magic is consent to your magic being reflected, immunity'd, absorbed (and also getting 100 base evade against it?) in virtually every corner of Korvara. Tie that to effects like Isenshi being a little cryptic and wanting more investment for its bonus effects than, say, Vydel's 'Blink And Shoot' approach that threatens any enemies standing within a 5x5 square of eachother, and you've got very little reason to touch it.
The Lizard was almost a solution to this, but fell DRAMATICALLY short.
