[Rendar]

Innovator is a really strong trait, and I won't lie that I have to use it on a few characters because Ruler is Skill Slot Hell (53 skill slots), and Druid is Skill Slot Hell (57 skill slots)...

The thing that is, currently, becoming kind of an issue is Cabal mechs nabbing it so that they have a close to 100% chance to Always have Cabal Mind activate and reduce their spell cooldowns by one. Every single turn.

Can Innovator just be changed to makes all skills cost 0 Skill Slots, rather than.. giving 99 skill slots, and your Max stays whatever it would be post stats (SKI/5+GUI/5+WIL/10+LVL/6... or was it 10? idr)

[Trexmaster]

If you decide that you're going to have nothing but spells then you deserve the (almost) 100% chance to lower cooldowns.

For what you have to sacrifice to achieve the 99% chance for 1-turn c/d reduction I'd say it's more than fair. Especially if they're sacrificing both of their accessory slots to avoid running Spell Thief.

How is it an issue? I'm genuinely curious why you think so.

[Autumn]

You could also make it so that CCM applies to the amount of skills equipped instead if you want to target that specifically. The main gripe I have with it is that it feels like in order to maximize the effectiveness of the trait you are required to go Innovator to do it, and that's a bad thing for the balancing of this trait imo.

As a general trait, without 99 skill slots you're probably looking at like, a 20-40% chance, 50-60% chance maybe if you do an Engineer or Ruler setup to reduce the cooldown of your spells. It's a nice bonus really but nothing that'd constitute needing nerfs even with healing.

For Innovator? Well for the absolutely staggering price of 80 Aptitude on a race with only 2 base (4 base is required to get the additional +1 to all stats) you can have a near guaranteed chance of triggering the effect, especially if you're a spellthief and/or healer where you can trigger the passive twice during those spell cooldowns.

It's not a good dynamic to have imo, Innovator wins so hard above not having it that you feel obligated to run it, sacrificing your stats for the probably unbalanced gimmick.

[Rendar]

If you decide that you're going to have nothing but spells then you deserve the (almost) 100% chance to lower cooldowns.

For what you have to sacrifice to achieve the 99% chance for 1-turn c/d reduction I'd say it's more than fair. Especially if they're sacrificing both of their accessory slots to avoid running Spell Thief.

How is it an issue? I'm genuinely curious why you think so.

This is explicitly a case of Healing Cooldowns  + ST + Cabal. Wherein the Cabal Mech just dumps SKI as a whole to be a Heal Bot (har har).

They outclass Elves, by virtue of just being able to Heal More, and the spells that notably have a cooldown that is worth reducing are almost always healing spells. Dropping skill allows for Innovator to slot 30 points from SKI to Apt. Even if they apply a minimal amount of skills to their character (Mass, ST shenanigans, etc).. a 90% chance for All Your Spell Cooldowns Going Down By One every turn is insane. I've seen it in a number of events thusfar (mostly Brittus events), and it's genuinely something that most events just.. can't deal with.

I know 'Pacifist Healers ruin events, here's an example build of my 500 hp graft' is always looming in the background, but revives on loop + more-or-less infinite HP makes it awful. Hell, we had one in a 4v4 pvp match earlier that ended up Die Harding near to their allies and Phoenix > Malmelo'd their entire team back to 50% HP, and then hit them with Mass > Graft > Healing Discharge the turn right after to get them the rest of the way up.

Then they did it again 2-3 turns later. I understand we're in the Hyper Offense Meta of people dealing 1200 damage in one turn because of damage mod stacking, but this specific combination of ST + Cabal is allowing basically every single healing spell to be looped with next to zero thought because they come off of cooldown that fast.

For reference, the ST/Priest allows for...

Graft is normally 4 turns (now 2 turns)
Malmelo is normally 7 turns (Now 4 turns, 3 turns IF pacifist)
Phoenix (Stolen) is 7 rounds, (now 4 turns, 3 turns if pacifist)
Healing Discharge (Stolen) 6 rounds (Now 3 turns)

Figured I'd build one just to see how Nutty it is.



125 SWA, 46 Phys DR, 48% Magic DR (With an extra 10% Spell DR ontop), Stolen Spells have More Power to them (Health increase by 10).
Guarding is possible. 72 Light Attack

Hymnta
COMC (Can sub out for something else, but this covers 3 GOOD resistances, and covers your weakness)
Dark Shield (+3 Def, 30% Dark DR)
Church Faithful Booties
Heron Feather
Crucifix


A graft is coming out every 2 turns. For 255HP. If an ally is adjacent? That's 382. Every 2 turns. Malmelo on themself heals for 249hp. On a 1000 hp ally? 276. If adjacent? 414 HP.

This is a genuinely insane racial, and pacifist healers (who don't care about hit/ski to begin with) can just... Slot it in. Free of charge. This exact same build as an elf would get about 40 extra on all of their heals, but be dealing with almost double the cooldown length on every single heal spell.

Edit: Changed a singular stat and lost 1 point of light attack. Crucify me.

[Trexmaster]

I wouldn't call having to buy 80 APT free. The build in question does nothing but heal and lacks the status resist to reliably prevent interference/silence landing on them. If those weaknesses aren't exploited then yeah it's gonna look OP.

The only thing it has going for it that makes it stand out from Elf is being able to spam revives faster, but if you're having to pick your team up repeatedly Badly Beaten will catch up quickly. Arguably after the 2nd revive the boon of being able to put your allies back up starts to fall off since they'll only have one action more often than not.

In events I can see how it'd be overbearing since most mobs rely entirely on beating you to death, and if they're able to punch through a pacifist healer they'll absolutely molly whop any other team composition. So most event runners wouldn't want to build their mobs to counter them, lest they slaughter everyone else.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of how the racial is designed. Without Innovator you can't plan around it, and can rarely benefit from the cooldown reduction it provides. It really feels like it was designed solely to be used with Innovator. If I were to advocate for a change to Chronicling Cabal Memory, it'd be to make its cooldown reduction a static -1 per X slots empty, max of 2 rounds (and not stack with other sources of cooldown reduction). Whether or not it'd be so absurd a number required it'd still need Innovator to cap, I don't know.

I think what we need to more be looking at is the absurd damage numbers. Because the alternative to having effective healers is everyone building around bursting the other team out of existence before they can act, like the good old days.

Adjusting either side has to come with some compromise from both, not simply axing one and leaving the other to feast.

I don't doubt the coming update will likely shake things up anyway in terms of options, if not addressing this very trait. I just don't want more things gutted into uselessness when players finally get more options when building their characters. I'd consider this a side-grade to the traditional pacifist healer, faster revivals in exchange for far less status resist and lower healing output in a single turn (meaning more risk of having your party put into the dirt again before you can top them off).

[Fern]

I kind of agree with Trex. There's been someone running this build and the problems they usually run into are either their teammates dying instantly over and over because of the current damage meta, or them getting jumped and dying very fast despite building tank. I know people were hyping this sort of build a lot when the racial first came but in practice right now it's not that good.

If your team is very uncoordinated or happens to have no ways to work around a healer you'll absolutely get owned but there's usually at least one or two people with very high damage in every team comp (at least in the Vale) so if they're paying attention they SHOULD be able to do something.

Most recent example I can remember is when Aureate Lighbearer (the Cabal ST/Priest) was teamed up with Toko (Ghost/SB) and Aidan (Evo/ST) and even with Aidan having a Malmelo that could complement the main healer, Aidan and Toko were getting nearly one rounded and having Badly Beaten stacked up. Granted, they were both dodgies, but that's the kind of situation I've seen happen with that particular build a lot besides them getting hard focused and exploding.

And I was hitting them with a fairly unoptimized Kensei/Druid too, so imagine if it was an optimal axe creature doing it instead...

I think part of it is just the damage meta, though. You usually want to rocket-tag them better than they can you, so having an ally that doesn't ever do damage but is full support doesn't work as well as it'd sound in PVP.

[Poruku]

Damage meta and heals being just really strong in events in general. A pacifist elf in your party also makes any PvE fights impossible to lose, and in pvp they suffer from being more vulnerable to silence and interference. Trading SAN for APT is a big drawback, and I think it's a cool build in concept. It just needs a nerf like healing in general needs some kind of nerf