07-15-2015, 04:51 AM
Today I'll be focusing on just two of them though.
Spirit Pain.
And Enma's Summons.
Spirit Pain is capable of completely shutting down builds that heavily rely on using basic attack in some shape or form, and can even win fights in and of itself because of this. It's hard to avoid losing to this if you're in the group most affected by it if the map gods decide to throw you too far apart to stop it from happening soon enough (of course this applies to a lot of things). Personally I'd suggest--
1. Reducing its HP regen/damage on proc to perhaps 5 per rank. Not only having your attack redirected to yourself, but also giving the enemy HP and taking the same amount in damage is a lot, especially for how long the spell lasts.
2. Leaving it as is, and bumping it to a C rank, as it can benefit from High Speed Divine Words--meaning it's often that it'll be used without any time to react to it at all beyond preemptively silencing them, but unfortunately not even that is an absolute counter anymore (hi screaming tomes).
3. Reducing its duration. Not as huge a change, but it'd require more upkeep (or upkeep at -all-) if it was docked down to 3-4 rounds as opposed to the current -7-, which generally encapsulates entire fights 90% of the time.
In the other corner, we have Enma's Summons, perhaps now one of the worst invocations in the game. At first it was lackluster because it was easy to resist the damage from it with Dark resistance, thus making its 100-hp threshold a bit less meaningful. With the advent of the Black Beast Slayer stamp insuring nearly everyone will resist it at least somewhat, it become even less appealing, combined with the fact Dark resistance became increasingly more common/desired with the addition of Hexer. Then Evasion happened. I could keep going on about how easy it is to avoid this spell, and the fact that Hexer is typically strained for SP and slots as it is, but, hopefully it's clear enough why it's so undesirable to use.
Enma's Summons 'purpose' I can assume is to guarantee an incap on weak enemies, but unfortunately unless you're running Hexer/Evoker -and- your enemy is at critical hp (far below 100, to insure whatever dark resist or damage reductions they have won't mitigate it), odds are they'll survive the spell. To make this somewhat less common, it could--
1. Not do dark damage, instead deal a unique type of damage. It'll still be lackluster against most forms of DR, though.
2. Ignore Evasion. This would make it somewhat more viable for dealing damage for Hexers that can't get past Evasion.
3. Have a percentage based threshhold on top of its standard 100. Or just make it percentage based. Somewhere around 20-25% would make it about the same for most people, or less lethal even, but it'd make it viable against those with extremely high HP, and offer a reason to use it if nothing else.
4. Do something entirely different all together. Make it a status effect that insta-kills those who qualify as targets after a certain number of rounds.
I'll note that I've literally never seen -anyone- use this spell after a week or so of Hexer's release. Not to say that means UU = UP, but, there's probably a reason for it. I mean I could go rant about the Priest invocations that aren't that great, but, this thread isn't for that.
Spirit Pain.
And Enma's Summons.
Spirit Pain is capable of completely shutting down builds that heavily rely on using basic attack in some shape or form, and can even win fights in and of itself because of this. It's hard to avoid losing to this if you're in the group most affected by it if the map gods decide to throw you too far apart to stop it from happening soon enough (of course this applies to a lot of things). Personally I'd suggest--
1. Reducing its HP regen/damage on proc to perhaps 5 per rank. Not only having your attack redirected to yourself, but also giving the enemy HP and taking the same amount in damage is a lot, especially for how long the spell lasts.
2. Leaving it as is, and bumping it to a C rank, as it can benefit from High Speed Divine Words--meaning it's often that it'll be used without any time to react to it at all beyond preemptively silencing them, but unfortunately not even that is an absolute counter anymore (hi screaming tomes).
3. Reducing its duration. Not as huge a change, but it'd require more upkeep (or upkeep at -all-) if it was docked down to 3-4 rounds as opposed to the current -7-, which generally encapsulates entire fights 90% of the time.
In the other corner, we have Enma's Summons, perhaps now one of the worst invocations in the game. At first it was lackluster because it was easy to resist the damage from it with Dark resistance, thus making its 100-hp threshold a bit less meaningful. With the advent of the Black Beast Slayer stamp insuring nearly everyone will resist it at least somewhat, it become even less appealing, combined with the fact Dark resistance became increasingly more common/desired with the addition of Hexer. Then Evasion happened. I could keep going on about how easy it is to avoid this spell, and the fact that Hexer is typically strained for SP and slots as it is, but, hopefully it's clear enough why it's so undesirable to use.
Enma's Summons 'purpose' I can assume is to guarantee an incap on weak enemies, but unfortunately unless you're running Hexer/Evoker -and- your enemy is at critical hp (far below 100, to insure whatever dark resist or damage reductions they have won't mitigate it), odds are they'll survive the spell. To make this somewhat less common, it could--
1. Not do dark damage, instead deal a unique type of damage. It'll still be lackluster against most forms of DR, though.
2. Ignore Evasion. This would make it somewhat more viable for dealing damage for Hexers that can't get past Evasion.
3. Have a percentage based threshhold on top of its standard 100. Or just make it percentage based. Somewhere around 20-25% would make it about the same for most people, or less lethal even, but it'd make it viable against those with extremely high HP, and offer a reason to use it if nothing else.
4. Do something entirely different all together. Make it a status effect that insta-kills those who qualify as targets after a certain number of rounds.
I'll note that I've literally never seen -anyone- use this spell after a week or so of Hexer's release. Not to say that means UU = UP, but, there's probably a reason for it. I mean I could go rant about the Priest invocations that aren't that great, but, this thread isn't for that.
![[-]](https://neus-projects.net/forums/images/collapse.png)
