QCF Design Community

So, new absolution: I don't feel this is working well. It's keeping the boon under control for low-level characters... by crippling it for high-level characters. I understand the purpose is to prevent spamming it at level 1, but it's really putting Enlightenment out of reach and hurting later joinees who don't have the opportunity to leverage early.

Five layers of absolution grants 20 HP. It used to cost 10 piety; it now costs 30 piety. This is much more sensible for a 1st or 2nd level character, for whom this is a huge bonus. For a higher-level character it's a bit overpriced for the loss of popcorn and inventory space. Its higher cost means it now has a dissonance with Enlightenment. This is also a considerable stealth-nerf to Enlightenment, since it's no longer possible to obtain an appreciable number of beads for enchantment and still having enough piety to pull it off.

I feel that piety cost on its own will not keep this boon under control. Thanks to his conversion piety, GG can fuel pretty much any rational cost at level 1, which is where this boon is a real issue. Absolution, even at its old rock-bottom price, was a non-issue at level 5+. It was a good HP boost, but you paid for it with popcorn and inventory space. I feel any nerf should be targeted at the lower levels.

Having absolution only affect lower-level monsters, having it consume both a bloodstain and a monster, or having the HP scale by player level (presumably with a very different piety structure) would all be great ways to solve this. Tweaking the piety structure just seems to have have amplified GG's worst tendency: the requirement to find him at level 1 to get the best bang for your buck.

^ Absolutely. Didn't want to speak too soon because I'd imagine I'm a bit too partial to ye olde healthmonster and I've only been rolling in a vicious context, but I'm hugely noticing the piety cost on my Paladins. I imagine it'd be even more of a problem for some of the other interesting GG builds (e.g. the Transmuter absolver or whatever). After a few casts the trade-off in costs between that and protections/cleansings makes it unappealing. It also makes the low-level humility sweetspot much harder to leverage, and the massively increased cost:benefit makes any late-game GG play much more difficult to use.

I'll admit the old one was maybe a tad too good for the piety cost but the mounting system really hurts Enlightenment, hurts health-driven builds a lot more than damage-driven builds (which is a shame in my view because we have so many more of the latter than the former, and also because I'm an egomaniac baby and came up with one of the main ones : p) and hurts monotheistic worshippers way more than converter-outs and low-level-only-users, which is a shame.

The best solutions are definitely lower level monsters only, scaling hp, or making piety scale by level (8 piety minus level, minimum 2).

How about increasing returns the higher your level is compared to the monster used for absolution?

ie. 2 HP + difference in level per monster?

or

1 + (2*player level) health

Stops lvl 1's exploiting too much, rewards later joiners with massive health for no popcorn.

Wow, simple yet effective. The two ideals.

Almost beat Vicious Avatar. Got piercing wand and Mage plate, MA into EM with a Binlor desecration. 4 fireballs short. If I had gotten the crystal ball instead of the Mage plate I would have won.

How about Absolution giving 2 beads?