Blessings

Haven

With my suggestion you would earn your blessing...

You bash and offer to X god and receive a blessing in its current incarnation when you approach their priest at their temple.

Example: Aren bashes and offers 100 essence to Chakrasul. When Aren greets Chakrasul's priest or whatever, Aren is then blessed for 10 minutes having met the first threshold. Offer more and meet the next threshold? Then you'll receive a longer blessing.

That's what I meant by automated. The High Blessing stuff I mentioned earlier would be new perks gods could hand out to make people feel special and rewarded/punished for deeds in their roleplay. This way the gods still have something meaningful to hand out without skewing the balance of survivability in the game.

Valdus

Right now, damage scaling is a bit of an issue, which means that the application of resistances to PvP might also be out of sync. We're aware of the situation and we really hope to begin tackling it soon - we're collecting data and looking at the formulas, figuring out how to adjust everything to get back to working order.

I think declaring whether or not PvP is balanced around blessings is a bit of a misnomer - they are factored into the balancing 'equation', but we don't consider them part of the class's core. When we look at damage scaling, we're looking at the scaling between the barebones defense offered by the class, and then the highest tier of defense available (blessing, miasma, shell, artifacts, etc etc). Balancing occurs within this margin, not at either extreme; the major goal is to make sure that people don't end up as outliers when all of the cumulative protection is factored in.

I personally loathe having such a high degree of variability, especially when combined with the scaling ALSO present in determining a class's damage at the extremes. If I had my druthers, we'd be reigning both variables in, and hopefully that will be the case in the near future! Just not right this moment.

Without weighing in on whether or not blessings should be automated, I'll say that we've approached the topic of redoing the favor system entirely, and that's likely the direction we'd go if we were to alter it. As it stands, I think adjusting innate resistances and damage across the board would have a kinder effect on balance than assuming everyone's audits will be +10%.

Dhar

Hey, I'm pretty generous about blessings based on offerings, unless you're a smelly undead.

PS: The guy above me is the liaison-head ex-Slyphe, his name isn't colored because he's not cool enough yet.

Toz

Watch it though. He also likes to throw rocks.

Setne

Dhar said:

Hey, I'm pretty generous about blessings based on offerings, unless you're a smelly undead.

PS: The guy above me is the liaison-head ex-Slyphe, his name isn't colored because he's not cool enough yet.

I'm not undead! Good to know for the future.

Ezrax

I'm not Undead, I'm life-retardant. Where's my blessing, Dhar!

Dhar

Though wicked sick Attack on Titan gifs get you cool points, dirty Spireans also need not apply to the Dharian make-a-wish foundation.

I read a little more into the discussion and just wanted to remind you guys that active Gods come and go. In character, a decision has to be made whether or not to pursue a more rewarding (but temporary) Divinity, or to stick to your dormant and unrewarding selection with uncompromising devotion. While Gods are more than blessing dispensers, I'd say that every active God understands their importance. The current favor system is far from perfect, but it does serve a purpose.

Setne

No love, time for me to assist in the Carnifex War on Dhar. CWOD.

Maghak

The current culture around blessings is detrimental to both players and godplayers. They should not be an expectation, but for various reasons they are perceived as mandatory; this reduces them from a reward to a necessity and turns Gods into blessing mules for large swathes of the game.

Regarding PVE, though, blessings are absolutely not a necessity or design focus. If you cannot handle an area unblessed then either your character or your tactics are unsuited to bash there.

Incidentally, yes, at this point Bloodloch is too big to reliably bless. I have trouble mustering enough essence to bless -Spinesreach- for a day. If you want your blessing, do not expect it to come from your city advisory.

Mastema

Setne said:

No love, time for me to assist in the Carnifex War on Dhar. CWOD.

Welcome to the darkside

Moirean

Did they change how offerings and essence work? Checking ESSLOG for Iosyne shows a TON of essence going in (between just me and Alexina, there's like 100 million) - are blessings really expensive these days, or has essence been decoupled from offerings somehow?

Ezalor

Blessing energy and shrine energy are not the same thing though they both come from offering.

Moirean

Ah, actually I remember them decoupling the two, now that you mention it. Still, point stands - players offer pretty obscene amounts these days (if I am recalling right, they split the two before the big bashing spots like Xaanhal and definitely Tiyen came out), far larger than the type of numbers we used to see (2-3 million used to be a punishing amount). They also did an essence wipe when that happened, so everyone had to start from scratch, making essence actually worth something and shrine power a new and actually valuable resource to monitor. Maybe a bigger overall look is needed for costs vs intakes. There is certainly enough coming in to make shrine power/upkeep costs nonexistent, so maybe adjust the ratio of offerings:essence (eg double the amount of blessing energy you get per offering) as a temporary stopgap until a revision to the blessing process/better balance is achieved. While at it, maybe also consider higher shrine drains/a %-based esswipe or something like that, since everyone has such a huge backlog of shrine energy that the powers are a bit silly to even have costs these days - OR make god energy visible again, so you feel like offerings are making a tangible difference.

Daskalos

Regarding PVE, though, blessings are absolutely not a necessity or design focus. If you cannot handle an area unblessed then either your character or your tactics are unsuited to bash there.

 

I would respectfully disagree or argue then that you guys need to take a serious look at some classes and\or bashing areas if they are not an example. As an example, without a blessing, in Templar, with the max possible defenses, including all artifact buffs, I cannot handle Xaanhal. In Luminary I can tank just about anything using wise (my optimum statpack) with all my artifacts, however, I still die to Lava Daemons if more than one is in the room and I don't have a blessing.

Vampires, according to Alexina, can last forever with (blood affinity?) and has often said that their bashing is better than anyone elses, but I know as a monk, daru, or Templar, I had serious trouble with some areas, often dying, if I wasn't blessed. I literally cannot bash in Templar as it involves way too much hit and running.

Just my two cents.

Edit for formatting.

Ezalor

Vampires are so last year, Teradrim are the new OP bashing class. They're comparably tanky with Praenomen (maybe even tankier) and kill twice as fast.

As far as dying to lava daemons, everyone dies to them if there are more than 1 in a room. I'm pretty sure the volcano isn't meant to be a solo-invincible-bash area; even though it is still possible to solo, you do have to be very careful with aggro.

I could hit-and-run handle Xaanhal pre-endgame without any artifacts or trans minis on Templar so they aren't -that- bad, though certainly not anywhere close to the tankiest bashing classes. With artifacts and minis it shouldn't take any running unless you're insistent on using sacrifice I guess.

Xavin

Idk, Sapivi Praenomen are pretty OP bashing.

Edit: I do see what you're saying, @Maghak, but I know for a long time now blessings have been considered part of balance for liaisons. They're at least considered because they do help push the upper end of what classes are capable of. It does stink, though, that it puts pressure on godplayers to bless.

Azton

Yep, Im bashing elementals as I type this without arties but just orbs, BLESSING and no arties and getting like 1.2k damage..

Haven

Yeah, I was under the impression that some of these newer areas were meant to be group bashing areas in general and that if you coud solo-bash it then it meant you were just part of a fringe group in the population. There's also the possibility that you might not be in your class' optimal bashing statpack in favor of being optimal for player-killing. But I don't know truthfully.

Regardless of any of that though I'm still of the opinion that an automated blessing system would be the best bandaid for now until they decided/are ready for an overhaul of the favor system because of how damage+survivability has been historically handled in this game. If blessings aren't meant to be a core part of a class' defense then.... something somewhere has got to change. Where exactly is hard to say until we've fixed the damage scaling with artifacts and have brought all classes where they're supposed to be.

Sarita

I know this has been brought up in other threads, but my big issue with not having blessings reliably (and thus losing access to grace), is the monuments. As things are now, somewhere between a quarter and a half of the areas I spend time in for things like leylines are much more difficult to get through now. I can easily spend 15-20 minutes in some of the larger areas with monuments just trying to find leylines, which really sucks when I only have 30 minutes of no sun damage in one go. If blessings are going to be regarded as something you should not plan on having all the time, maybe there could be another way of getting grace, or the hindrance from the monuments could be revised?

Angwe

I was bashing Xaanhal and Tiyen from level 90 up with no blessings, no artifacts, no minis, no dodging as a Sentinel. I don't understand how people with 7000+ health are having any trouble with this. Just run if you fall below 50% health. It isn't that hard.

Ezalor

@Sarita you can get grace whenever you want but you have to have the Order privilege.

Maghak

I should amend - I am aware that PVP needs to take blessings into account for balancing.

Having personally bashed Xaanhal reliably as unblessed, unartifacted Syssin and Lycanthrope, I maintain my point. If you are considering damage from Sacrifice to be a critical facet of your bashing it is not surprising that you are having trouble as Templar. 

Areas like the Volcano are intended to be borderline impossible to solo.

Moirean

Wanna echo Sarita's comment about grace. Monuments are a headache and grace is how you counter that - if you aren't decently ranked in an order or actively bashing a LOT, you aren't going to have grace at your disposal, and that makes stuff like leylining or even just basic questing a complete headache to do. 

Areka

@Ezalor - what version of Templar was this? With Resistance blessing or without? 

Macavity

Ezalor said:

@Sarita you can get grace whenever you want but you have to have the Order privilege.

I'll bite....what priv are you talking about?

Macavity

Also if classes are meant to have two statpacks for optimal bashing and PK then I would request that for those that have the polymath and adaption artifacts that we be able to switch statpacks once per hour without switching classes

Ezalor

@Macavity well that's what the 1000 credit statpack changing gem is for! I ended up getting that instead of adaptation simply so I could shift for bashing.

@Areka post, I ran healing aura. Had something like half in all my minis and was Resilient statpack.

Macavity

@ezalor already spent 1500 credits for both adaption and polymath (750 each)

Ezalor

Yeah, but you could trade in adaptation and use a discount token to get the 1000 credit one. You essentially aren't losing much beyond the discount token (which you seem to have a loooot of) and pay some extra credits to be able to change statpacks without switching classes. That's what I ended up doing.

Well actually you'd still be eating a bit of loss. It worked out for me because I had bought the adaptation with a discount token too, heh. So all I lost was a token.

Daskalos

I wasn't running sacrifice, though I have that as an option. Granted, I'm generally used to playing a tanky class and going squish has been a learning experience.