by Darvin on Mon May 07, 2012 2:58 am
Classic JJ you'd have petition almost instantly, followed shortly by a hit of boost health, then two to three hits of boost mana over the course of the level, and then you could save up for chaos avatar for your end-game and maybe a last chance if you really needed it. That was blatantly overpowered. Then they raised the cost of petition, meaning more time spent taking penalties at the start and you'd have a hard time getting chaos avatar if you took more than one level of boost mana, but it was doable. The trick with this setup was finding some way to slingshot past your early petition phase to quickly get your first shot of boost health; with a little luck you'd avoid any weakening, so he was still top-tier. Then they lowered his piety gain, and now you're spending way too much time taking punishments even if you do have a slingshot, and you'll be hard pressed to get chaos avatar at all if you're attaining his other boons. This payoff is generally not justified unless you have some way to mitigate his downsides or accrue some extra piety.
Desecration, convert in from another god or use concensus, or prep fortitude and burn cure. Otherwise it's too risky to worship him straight from level 1, but too low piety gain to worship him later. Unfortunately, I don't see a middle ground here, and I feel petition will need to be fundamentally reworked. The fact is, even with all these nerfs he still works well with proper planning so buffing him will just return him to a top-tier god again, but leaving him as is makes him a wasted altar to most characters. Because health drain and mana burn are game-enders in the late-game, you can't even use him for late-game conversion antics.
I'm thinking perhaps JJ should become more like patches, offering both benefits and penalties on random whims. Petition would go back to its 25 piety cost and it would turn off both the good stuff and the bad stuff.