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Luminaries: Playing the Law (CG)
Haven
World BurnerFlight School
Welcome to the Luminary Class Guide!
"...I never broke the law, I AM THE LAW!"
Class Traits
- Class: The Hybrid [ Affliction, Damage, Limb ]
- Role: Variable. You are nearly the Jack Of All Trades being capable of playing any role effectively except that of the Carry/Nuke unless you've been augmented with offensive artifacts. However, the class' primary role and design is that of the Defender. Not only are you tough and durable but you also have the ability to contain the enemy and direct the flow of combat. Think of yourself as the walking fortress.
- Power Source: Devotion, Spark, Angel Power
[spoiler]
Devotion may be replenished by consuming a spirit bulb created and enchanted by the Magi (Ascendril or Sciomancers iirc). Cost may vary. Otherwise Devotion can be replenished naturally over time, albeit significantly slower. (Roughly 2-4+ hours, need confirmation.) This is by far the hardest resource to replenish.
Spark may be replenished either by consuming most flame sources for a minor amount or by meditating within the Great Spark located within the Luminary watch tower. The latter method will replenish your spark from 0% to 100% within roughly 2 minutes. Be warned, however, that this method will also diminish the strength of the Great Spark unless you feed the flame coal or wood.
Angel Power can be replenished a variety of ways and by far the easiest of all your resources to replenish. You may dismiss your angel, who will then meditate in the heavens and replenish her power over time, or if you're skilled enough in Spirituality, you may sacrifice a small portion of either your current health or mana to restore your Angel to full strength.
[/spoiler]
- Key Attributes: Intelligence, Strength, Dexterity
Augmenting Strength will increase the damage of your smite and possibly some of your fire based attacks but I'm not entirely sure on the latter. This is particularly important if you're more interested in survivability regardless of interest in bashing or PK because each statpack that supports strength is inherently tankier than those that support Intelligence or Dexterity.
- Equipment (Excluding curative essentials): Splintmail Armor, A Spiritual Mace, A [Buckler, Kite, Tower ] Shield (The type depends on the kill route or role you're deciding to play.)
- Suggested Automation: Semi-automation minimum recommended. You need to be able to never deliver an affliction/combo that the victim already has. I personally wouldn't do full automation even though it is possible and relatively easy to do if only because you also need to be able to decide when to change tactics on the fly.
- Suggested AB Level for combat entry (solo): Due to the fact that most of the essential skills in the Luminary combat tree are near the transcendent levels, I'm going to have to say focus on becoming tri-trans in the guild skills at the very least before delving into 1v1 confrontations.
- Suggested AB Level for combat entry (group): For Spirituality, you'll need to learn anywhere between 50% Gifted (Crush skill) and 0% Virtuoso (Chasten skill). The minimum will allow you to complement any salve/limb based class your allies might be using while the latter will better help complement any affliction based class. For Devotion, you'll need to learn anywhere between 50% Capable (Bliss skill) and 0% Expert (Demons skill). The minimum will allow you to offer up defenses to your allies that'll passively heal them of mana and health for a set period of time or alternatively be used upon yourself to cure yourself of afflictions and amplify your survivability while the latter will help in aiding in damaging your enemies. The Illumination skill set is largely utility and other skills that help with your survivability until you start nearing the end of the skill set where some essential 1v1 skills become available like Heatwave (12% Fabled) and Transfixion (64% Fabled).
- Suggested Statpacks: The statpack you choose as a Luminary depends entirely on what you want to do since the class works with literally every statpack since most if not all of our skills already have a favorably low balance/equilibrium cost to begin with.
For those that are pre-endgame, the best statpack to use would either be Muscular (if you're comfortable with your tankiness and want some oomph behind your attacks) or Resilient (if you're not terribly interested in the added oomph to your attacks and prefer having added tankiness).
For those that are post-endgame, the best statpack depends entirely on which kill route you prefer to be optimal at. If you prefer to go the affliction route then Wise is best. If you prefer to go the limb damage route then Dexterous is for you. This is not to say that a Wise Luminary cannot use the limb route, only that the Dexterous Luminary will do it better than you and vice versa. If you want the best of both worlds then you can choose to go Dexterous and pick up the crown artifact to bring your EQ abilities closer to rivaling that of Wise statpack while still maintaining the optimal competitive edge with the limb route. However, a Wise Luminary with a crown will still have a higher affliction output. The choice is entirely yours. If you want some more survivability and care less about optimal PK then you can choose the more tankier statpacks like Powerful or Herclean or even Experienced if you're more concerned with just bashing. As stated earlier, due to the inherently low balance/equilibrium cost of most of the Luminary skills and the fact that your shield type plays a larger factor in your speed than your actual stats, any statpack is viable for the Luminary class.
The Pros:
- Versatile. Near seamless transition between any of the kill routes available to the class. Plus it's ability to provide a range of utility both offensively and defensively in group situations.
- Durable and High Cure Rate: Can withstand quite a beating (even against an overwhelming affliction output) when placed on the defensive, provided you're willing to sacrifice your offense for the duration.
- Decent Affliction Rate.
- Decent Escability.
- High Limb Damage Rate.
- Decent enemy containment.
- While there are statpacks that will allow a Luminary to reach optimal levels, the class can literally be used with -any- statpack and still not only be viable but lethal in some settings.
- Due to the fact that the class is not very mobile but tanky, it proves great in holding key positions (like Foci points) and establishing a fortification or "base of operations".
The Cons:
- Very resource heavy and thus susceptible to many tactics of attrition.
- Heavy time-consuming basic set up for both offensive and defensive avenues. This is due to the fact that many of the basic skills associated with setting up your fortication have a high cost to them leaving your opponent any where from 4-12+ seconds of free time to attack you / set up their own stuff before you're ready to attack them optimally. This is aggravated even further against classes that have entities or skills designed to distract or slow you, whether it is due to needing to kill the entity prior to attacking your target or simply through hampering harassment (EQ/BAL knocks, etc).
- The affliction route has a relatively slow to mild build-up and thus susceptible to most hinder tactics. What's debilitating to this kill avenue are any skills or afflictions that disrupt the momentum like epilepsy, confusion, lethargy, etc. Essentially any BAL or EQ extenders/disrupters.
- While the Limb Damage route has a relatively high build-up rate, it is easily disruptable/undone with a well-timed parry or spamming of the shield tattoo.
- Investment heavy combat entry-point. Most essential skills are located at the far end of the skillsets.
- No lockbreaker beyond lucky tick of a passive curing element.
- Lack of mobility. If a situation calls for you to move a lot, setting up will become less and less beneficial to you as it'll drain your limited resources heavily redoing the class basics/fortifications.
Summary: The sheer versatility of the class both offensively and defensively, in my opinion, outweighs any cons the class may have because you have the opportunity to try just about everything in terms of what Aetolia's PK system offers. I find that very appealing as someone that gets bored with a class that has a limited kill avenue. If the class could deal punishing amounts of damage without setup or artifacts then I'd name it the Jack of All Trades since it can do just about everything well on its own. While there are other classes that can achieve the same success better in any of the different avenues, the importance here is that the Luminary can still compete well enough to not be easily dismissed.
Kill Avenues
Solo Elements
- Affliction Route: [Buckler Shield] The basic concept for the Luminary affliction route is distracting and manipulating your opponent into curing potentially lethal afflictions so that you may weave/stack more subtle dangers before they realize what's going on and find themselves incapacitated long enough for a variety of finishers. There are several ways to achieve kills through this route, but this guide will focus on how to utilize the most reliable distract & weave combination available to the class - the goldenseal and kelp stack - for a true lock kill.
Key Abilities:
[spoiler]
- Angel Battle (Spirituality - 25% Virtuoso): This allows you to direct your angel to inflict your target with any one of the following afflictions - Anorexia, Impatience, Self-pity, Sensitivity (do note that it will strip the deafness defense first where applicable before delivering sensitivity), Stupidity, or Vertigo. It has a 5 second external cooldown (meaning it is comboable with all skills) before your angel will be able to afflict again at your command.
- Shield Strike (Spirituality - 80% Adept): Striking your opponent with your shield in this manner will render them paralyzed. The damage and speed of this attack depends entirely on your shield type with the Buckler shield being the fastest but least damaging and the Tower shield being the slowest but most damaging. Comboable with chasten.
- Chasten (Spirituality - 0% Virtuoso): Striking your opponent with your mace will render them afflicted with any of the following (Note: If you fail to specify from the list, it will randomly deliver one from the list.): Anorexia, Dementia, Hypochondria, Lethargy, Loneliness, Masochism, Paranoia, Recklessness, and Stupidity. The afflictions delivered with chasten are hidden from the victim UNLESS it has been combined with another skill. Not all skills are comboable with chasten. (Primarily, only balance skills that deliver only 1 affliction are comboable with chasten so that the maximum active affliction output a Luminary can achieve is 3 every other round - Angel Battle + BAL skill + Chasten.)
- Shield Punch (Spirituality - 50% Fabled): Striking your opponent with your shield in this manner will render them afflicted with weariness. The damage and speed of this attack depends entirely on your shield type with the Buckler shield being the fastest but least damaging and the Tower shield being the slowest but most damaging. Comboable with chasten.
- Shield Slam (Spirituality - 50% Mythical): Striking your opponent with your shield in this manner will render them afflicted with asthma and haemophilia. If the target has the fitness defense active, it will strip the defense first instead of delivering asthma while haemophilia is still delivered. The damage and speed of this attack depends entirely on your shield type with the Buckler shield being the fastest but least damaging and the Tower shield being the slowest but most damaging. This is primarily an objective securing skill.
- Shield Facesmash (Spirituality - 50% Expert): Striking your opponent with your shield in this manner will render them stripped of their blindness defense if applicable and afflicted with berserking. The damage and speed of this attack depends entirely on your shield type with the Buckler shield being the fastest but least damaging and the Tower shield being the slowest but most damaging. This is primarily an objective securing skill.
- Shield Crash (Spirituality - 50% Virtuoso): Striking your opponent with your shield in this manner will render their equilibrium completely disrupted. This is primarily an objective securing skill.
- Perform Hellsight (Devotion - 33% Gifted): Using your divine gifts, you open your opponent's mind to the visage of hell itself, afflicting them with hellsight and one random affliction. Thereafter, if the subject has NOT cured themselves of hellsight within 3 seconds of receiving it, they will suffer one new random affliction (most of which are delivered hidden) per second they remain hellsighted. This is primarily an objective securing skill. Current known hellsight affliction list - stupidity, fear, dizziness, epilepsy, slickness, confusion, hallucinations, clarity strip, deafness strip, blindness strip, vertigo, paralysis, anorexia, weariness, disfigurement, shyness, clumsiness, asthma, recklessness, crippled left arm, crippled right arm, crippled left leg, crippled right leg, sensitvity, prone, selarnia, stun, health drain, mana drain
- Perform Dazzle (Devotion - 66% Gifted): Using your divine gifts, you blast your opponent with divine light and afflict them with confusion and dizziness. This skill is particularly effective against classes that heavily rely on equilibrium to build moment and for maintaining your own distract and weave momentum due to its ability to completely bypass rebounding.
- Evoke Heatwave (Illumination - 12% Fabled): By raising the temperature in your opponent's skull, you leave them afflicted with hallucinations and berserking. This skill is particularly effective in helping to maintain your own distract and weave momentum due to its ability to completely bypass rebounding.
[/spoiler]
Steps:
1. The first thing you're going to want to do as a Luminary is set up your Rites where the fight is going to primarily take place (I like to call it the "base") depending on how much time you're allotted to prepare. (Note: Most rites will only affect those on your enemy list that are in the same room as the rite, so be sure your target is enemied.) If you're in a rush and cannot spare any time then proceed to the next step. At the bare minimum you'll want the Demons Rite active in the room you're fighting in. What the Demon Rite does is alternate between health and mana damage to all enemies within its field. The next rite you'll potentially want active is the Rite of Piety. What this rite will do is change all normal movement into a chance failure for your enemies, effectively containing them to the room should you or they decide to flee/move for whatever reason.
Most of these rites have a high devotion cost upon usage, so try not to over do it. Here are some optional and situational rites to add to your "base":
[spoiler]
- Rite of Allsight - There are some classes in the game that allow characters to move stealthily about without your knowledge. What this rite will do is inform you of the arrival and departure of any enemy on the same plane that passes over it. I particularly like to have this rite active in my base to catch those that try to flee from me or alternatively lay the rite down at choke points along side Piety or Warding Rites to inform me of incoming enemy parties and or slow down/break up their arrival.
- Rite of Banishment - This rite is exclusively for use against Domination users. While this rite is active, it will attempt to banish/destroy one chaos entity at a time within its field provided there isn't a storm demon present at the time of each tick. What I like to do is lay this rite in two locations: one at my base and the other in an adjacent room. When the Domination user arrives with their pack of demons and sets them on me, I try to lose the storm demon and move into the base with the rest of the demons in tow. Once there, I would force (angel beckon) the target to follow or if they're eager enough, allow them to chase after me before I begin my attack routine while the banishment rite gradually banishes their demons. The effectiveness of this tactic depends largely on how prepared/aware your opponent is and how swiftly they respond. There are other clever uses for this rite but I'll leave that for you to discover/think up yourself.
- Rite of Well Being/Sustenance - This rite will lock your current sustenance level in place so long as you remain within its field, making this rite extremely effective against most if not all hunger tactics. The duration of the rite is somewhere around 10 minutes long so you can set it and forget it for the most part if you've the resources, desire, and time to lay this rite down. Like all rites, it will vanish upon your death.
- Rite of Damnation - This rite will render all deaths within its field "final". Not to be confused with permanent! The rite will disable all "second-life" skills and abilities (like rebirth, the starburst tattoo, soulcage, etc) of those within its field of influence and destroy the corpses of all parties (allies, enemies, and yourself included) that should perish in its field, rendering the victims unable to be revived and escape the death sequence.
- Rite of Warding - This rite will instill fear into the hearts of any (allies and enemies included. I'm unsure if it affects you as well since I rarely use the rite.) within its field of influence, forcing them to flee if able. Fortunately, Luminaries and many of their allies have a skill that will anchor them to their current location and so this rite becomes pretty effective in breaking up enemy teams caught unaware.
[/spoiler]
2. Give your opponent the curse of the sun (Illumination - Shadow: 54% Mythical). What this will do is, for 6.25 minutes, your opponent will periodically receive one of the following afflictions passively in a random order: dizziness, blurry vision, weariness, disfigurement, or loss of the mass defense. If your opponent should have all these effects in place then the curse of the sun will knock them off equilibrium (or add to the recovery time if they're already off equilibrium) for .25 seconds each tick instead. While the effects themselves aren't particularly dangerous on their own, the point of this curse is to add to the distract and weave style of the class by potentially wasting your opponent's active curing ability with skills like endgame's Reconstitute/Renew/Erase, Vision's Focus, and the Tree tattoo.
3. Now with our "base" established and our opponent cursed, we may begin constructing our weave. There are three primary skills that we will be using to setup our kill and they are: Angel Battle, Shield Strike, and Chasten, all of which are comboed together. The importance of this combination is that Angel Battle will be used to limit our opponent's curing potential via goldenseal stack with Impatience (this disables the use of Focus) and Self-pity primarily. Shield strike will serve as the main distraction in our weave because of the potency of the affliction it delivers (paralysis), that will almost always guarantee that it'll be attempted to be cured first by the opponent. And finally Chasten will serve as the augmenter in our weave either by providing a secondary distraction, supplement Angel Battle, or delivering key afflictions for our subtle weave's second stage. This is where semi-automation is suggested because
- it is imperative you do not waste rounds delivering afflictions your opponent already has
- the Luminary skills can be neatly packaged away into 2-4 aliases instead of 10-15+ to account for all the possible combinations of afflictions being delivered.
So with all our passives running from rites, curses, etc, as you chain your attacks together (Angel Battle [Impatience, if they already have it then Self-pity, and if they have that then Vertigo or Sensitivity and so on], Shield Strike [Paralysis], and Chasten [ Stupidity, if they already have that then Recklessness or Hypochondria and so on]) you'll start to notice that their affliction pool gradually growing larger. The only reasons you may want to alternate out of this distract and weave combination is either when rebounding crops up or when you are ready to begin the second stage of the weave: securing objectives to prep for the kill. When rebounding crops up, you ultimately have two choices before you:
- Strip the defense aura using Evoke Fire Aura or using your angel via Angel Strip (Angel strip is the faster skill). Unfortunately, this slows your momentum since you're not actively delivering any sort of affliction unless you've recovered Angel Balance and thus leaves the opponent with an opportunity to begin catching up and undoing your weave. If the weave is large enough it won't really matter at this point but it is something to consider for each round that you find yourself up against the rebounding aura.
- Alternatively, you can maintain affliction pressure by using Dazzle [confusion and dizziness] and or Heatwave [berserking and hallucinations] because of their unique trait of bypassing rebounding entirely. Usually, your opponent is attacking back and thus will drop rebounding of their own accord meaning you can proceed back to your main weave combination in the next round. If they don't, you should have Angel Balance back and thus if you angel strip/evoke fire then you're at least able to deliver an affliction alongside the strip. Better than nothing at all and allowing your opponent a moments reprieve. Remember that Dazzle is potent against EQ using classes due to the confusion affliction it delivers (it increases the equilibrium cost of any skill used and disables the use of concentrate to restore equilibrium that has been forced away via disrupt.). Heatwave, on the other hand, is primarily useful as a buffer for your weave (the more afflictions they have, the less chance that the tree tattoo or reconstitute or any random curing ability has of curing the essential afflictions in your weave like Impatience which has them unable to focus at all and thus eliminating an entire curing avenue altogether and thus slowing your opponent down) and has the added benefit of berserking's secondary affect of stripping rebounding and or shield auras whenever it ticks if they have not cured the affliction. The choice of which you use is entirely up to you. Both options are beneficial to you regardless.
4. Once your opponent has these afflictions "stuck/buried" on them - Impatience, Self-pity, Stupidity and or Recklessness, +some sort of buffer affliction likely obtained from heatwave and or dazzle but the bolded are the most important - then you should begin alternating using the main distraction combination and objective securing skills. There are several avenues you can take from here to kill your opponent. This guide will focus on obtaining the true lock and thus will be using Shield Punch [weariness] and Shield Slam [Haemophilia and Asthma] as the objective securing skills. What you need to watch for is when the opponent is unable to cure Asthma due to it being buried behind either Weariness and or Hypochondria. When that happens give them Hellsight. Remember to reapply the afflictions they've cured to maintain your weave!
5. Once the opponent has been hellsighted, you merely have to wait for hellsight to deliver slickness which shouldn't be long considering how potent hellsight itself is (read the Key Abilities section above for details). A clear sign since we cannot detect what hellsight directly delivers when it happens is to watch for symptoms like when sileris or bone marrow (undead counterpart) slides off their skin.
Game Message: The (bone marrow|sileris) coating (Target's name)'s body sloughs off, unable to stick to (her|his) unnaturally slick skin.
All the while you're waiting for this indication that slickness has stuck on them, you should be reapplying anything they might have cured from your main weave combination.
Alternatively, if you do not have the patience to wait, you may sheath your mace and envenom a dagger/rapier/whatever with gecko (slickness venom) and slash or throw it at them before re-wielding your mace. Regardless of how, once they have slickness, apply a Shield Strike (paralysis) and chasten anorexia to venom lock them (a lesser version of a true lock). What's happened is this:
- Due to having asthma they are unable to smoke.
- Due to being unable to smoke, they then cannot cure slickness and thus unable to apply salves.
- Due to being unable to apply salves, they then cannot cure anorexia and thus unable to eat or drink anything.
- Due to being unable to eat or drink anything, they then cannot cure paralysis which thus disables most of their ability to attack you or touch tree. Since impatience has been stuck on them as well, they are unable to focus. So this would leave them with a very limited option of curing themselves. Reconstitute/Erase/Renew or any passive curing element at their disposal or using the Fitness ability to cure the asthma. Keep in mind that hellsight is delivering 1 new affliction every second (if they have all the afflictions, it will damage their health and mana instead) and they're hopefully still being bothered by the Sun Curse and your other rites. And you should be delivering whatever it is that they cure to maintain this weave. If they are spamming fitness to try and cure the asthma, you need not fear! You should be able to reafflict your target with asthma faster than they can recover and fitness again.
6. Chances are that somewhere between steps 4 & 5, the opponent's mana has dropped below 50% and thus leaves them open to our instant kill Absolve or simply Overwhelming them to death. However, with superb resource management and or artifacts they may still be hanging on. Also bear in mind that with Anorexia in place, they cannot drink health or mana or even eat moss to mitigate any damage they are receiving from you or your passive abilities. Either way, this guide's focus is on completely incapacitating your opponent with a true lock. To that end, the next step is checking to see if they have confusion. Remember that confusion disables their ability to concentrate on recovering disrupted equilibrium as well as extending the use of any equilibrium skill used while under its affects. The former is the more important at this point.
If they do not or if you're unsure, simply dazzle [confusion and dizziness] your opponent. Once they have confusion, disrupt their equilibrium with Shield Crash (or assuming they have all the afflictions of the Sun's curse then it may already be disrupting their EQ for you but it is better to be safe than sorry). What this does is eliminate their ability to use active cures like Fitness and I believe reconstitute/erase/renew due to their requirement of needing equilibrium before use and thus meaning their only curing method left is that of the passive element like purity necklace or something. That can be completely ignored since the sheer volume of afflictions being applied to them by hellsight and other sources beat their curing potential every time.
7. Kill your victim however you wish. Chances are the damage from your regular attacks or even hellsight or your rites have ended their lives by now. If not, you're free to do whatever you wish. Judge, Sap & Absolve, Shield Overwhelm (for every 5 afflictions the opponent has, the damage is increased a threshold with this skill. At 5, you're doing 150% more damage with this attack, at 10 its 200%, at 15 chances are the overwhelm will kill them in one blow), kick them to death, or simply wait for the secondary affects of the afflictions upon them to do the job for you. Without outside help, there is nothing your opponent can do at this point but die.
Congratulations! You've learned how to kill with one of the many routes available to the Luminary class. There are other ways to incapacitate your opponent via the affliction route but I'll leave that for you to discover on your own. Experiment! Goldenseal and Kelp aren't the only stacks we can weave with. I should note, however, that this route does not affect every class to the same degree nor does it not have a weakness. Momentum is key and if you're opponent is actively hindering you (maybe they're spamming entanglements at you or breaking your limbs or a variety of other hinders) or fleeing then you need to figure out a way to disrupt them in order to maintain your momentum. Whether this means switching tactics or not I'll leave up to you to decide/figure out. Know your enemy and may the odds ever be in your favor!
- Limb Route: [Tower Shield] The basic concept behind the Luminary limb damage route is in dividing and conquering your opponent's resources through sheer overwhelming force. Staying true to the class's inherent versatility, there are several ways to achieve a kill with this avenue but this guide will primarily be focusing on utilizing the Overwhelm finisher.
Key Abilities:
Steps:
- Damage Route: To be added.
Key Abilities:
Steps:
Team/Group Elements
To be added.
Counter & Defensive Avenue
To be added.
¤ Si vis pacem, para bellum. ¤
Someone powerful says, "We're going to have to delete you."
6
Comments
Anyone else can pipe up and disagree with me, though. I'm not the most savvy of combatants.
Some stuff is outdated but easily interpreted into now-speak.