How can we fix Hierophant?

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nEVER_BoRN написал:

Mana to life conversion will be build limiting and out of Templar forte of life/ES/MoM.
ES is more balanced option that provinde better build deversity, people posting here have done some impresive build like RF ES builds.
MoM is a life, its way better then life. ES is a bonus for life build and its also difrent way of going ES or hibrid builds where MoM provide some chaos damage defences.

Hierophant is generaly stronges Life/MoM build but it also have options that will be gone with what you propose and they also generaly make MoM characters less tanky. Having ES buffer is great thing for VP/ZO and in general.

I personaly finde 1700 ES on my VP Hierophant to save me tons of flask charges becouse i hardly take random damage that will penetrate it and traps in Lab or similar demage sorces will criple me if not so.
To gain such high ES with out ascendency will be hard for me and it also will reduce effectivnes of hibrid Life/ES and Life/Mana nodes from skill tree, Jewels, Life/Mana/ES on items and all cucle of sinergy scaling efective life. If Mana to Life is to hapen it wont be even close to ES we geting now and we lose so mach build deversity.

End game items like Atziri's Acuity will also reduce in power becouse if you dont have high ES whats the point in ZO. Ther is many benefits in having options and curent scaling is wery beneficial for loot of builds, all that will be gona with mana to life you propose.

To reiterate, there are other Ascendancies that are capable of hybrid builds that also have far more damage or far more defense.

There's also the fact that Hybrid builds, just like life builds, already follow a set pattern on what nodes to go for in the tree to build up effective HP.

Again, there are more efficient RF ES builds, like Guardian, Inquisitor, Chieftan, etc. And that's the thing about MoM. That's Hierophant's strongest point in the tree in terms of defense. If we boost the HP rather than ES, that's more of the effective HP that can be restored in leech and HP pots than if a significant portion of that effective HP was in ES which doesn't interact with either outside of some specific notables.

If you wanted to build more ES, get more items with ES on them and go with a more ES focused build. In any case, what tier of maps are your running that a mere 1700 ES is never pierced outside of chaos damage? Have you done core? Atziri at the very least? Have you done Shaper with that ES?

This mana->life conversion will actually streamline builds and nodes because instead of juggling life+ES+Mana, you'd only have to juggle Life+mana, or mana+ES. And this brings us to build diversity. The build that needs a fewer number of distinctive stats is freer to explore other options both in gear and in passives. You could go full life/mana, and not worry about ES, or even go hybrid with ES if you wish and ignore some of the life nodes as you get plenty just from having mana.

And how can you say it won't be the same effective health? The multiplier is the exact same, even buffed a bit. I put 25-40% mana to life conversion. Same exact percentage, just a different, more buildable format.

As for your comment on Atziri's Acuity, the point of having that is for the instant life leech. As for the Vertex, which I think you're referring to, it still has +1 to gem levels, 50% reduced mana cost, and chaos resist.

And, 1700 ES is not a lot of ES. Not when people are rocking upwards of 15k ES in endgame builds, your ES is a fraction of that. Do you not understand why I brought up Zealot's Oath to begin with?

I'm a fan of diverse builds. The key to getting diverse builds is reducing some of the stat requirements, streamlining necessary stats, or increasing efficiency. Hierophant in its current state of Sanctuary of Thought and Divine Guidance has none of those.

Point in ES with VP, if i get hit with traps they wont pirce my ES so i dont need to chug potions, burinng graund same thing, Puncture and what not. Most monster die before they pirce my ES, opening boxes and similar potencial burst damage is absorbed, range attack are mitigated until i close distance to leech, stun protection.

You can not honesly expect they give you 25% of mana as life.
Life leech is never a problem with MoM, you taking singificantly less damage and leech dont need to be extrime as with ES builds.
I mast say you realy need to build proper MoM character to realise its strengts and to use VP on hibrid builds so you can see in practical aplication is far superior to what you sugest.
Hierophant is not Slayer or some ES/VP leech machine but is probably way tankier they you imagine.

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Tsokushin написал:

It just seems this Ascendancy is either far too narrow in scope or far too weak to be any good.

For totem builds, the reduced damage per totem on Ritual of Awakening just leaves it feeling like a gimp Ancestral bond while you have significantly less totem boosts than a Chieftain. There's also the fact that other builds are still keeping up just as well with even less totems (like flameblast totem Inquisitor) but even more damage built into their Ascendancies.

But the section that feels the most weak is Divine Guidance and Sanctuary of Thought. Given that Sanctuary of Thought is preceded by Divine Guidance, it looks like the focus of this section of the tree is to boost Mind over Matter builds. But, this is seemingly countered by the fact that Sanctuary of Thought gives a substantial boost to energy shield, which has no interaction with any kind of Mind over Matter mechanics.

But what can be done?

I've been thinking about this for a while of changes that could be easily coded without changing much.

For one, Ritual of Awakening could receive a buff to where totems cast instantly. This would provide incentive to go all out on totems while actually having reduced totem damage make sense.

But, Sanctuary of Thought is the tough one. With a mini-Mind Over Matter, it seems the best way to utilize this node is to give increased Health for mana? Maybe something along the lines of "Gain 25-40% of Maximum Mana as extra Maximum Life instead of ES? Maybe also Gain 1-5% of Mana regeneration as Life Regeneration?

What do you think should be done?

edit: Clarification.

edit 2: redid mana regen as life regen due to how much can be stacked (some dude apparently had 400%? dude what are you doing).

Hierophant is actually pretty good. It has a negative to totems because chieftan is supposed to be the totem user.

Instant cast speed is mediocre on totems. More cast speed is what they really need.

Unfortunately not a single class in the game can say they cant use totems. Have you seen warchief totems? They dont even need a 6 link to do insane damage, even if its only supportive damage in boss fights or tough rares. It even has some taunt in it. If you dont want a totem for damage at all you can always use decoy totems, they are always useful .

Likewise in reality hierophant actually pulls out a lot of damage simply because you have so many totems. I would like to see Ritual of awakening give totem placement speed based on number of totems placed. 25% per totem. Meaning every time you place a totem the next one gets placed even faster.

Sanctuary of thought is fine as is. It allows you to have high mana and ES, reserve auras on mana, get free es from mana, and not be starved for mana for placing totems with the reduced mana cost. This means you can reserve 75% or more of your mana with no negative impact on your builds performance.

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nEVER_BoRN написал:

Point in ES with VP, if i get hit with traps they wont pirce my ES so i dont need to chug potions, burinng graund same thing, Puncture and what not. Most monster die before they pirce my ES, opening boxes and similar potencial burst damage is absorbed, range attack are mitigated until i close distance to leech, stun protection.

You can not honesly expect they give you 25% of mana as life.
Life leech is never a problem with MoM, you taking singificantly less damage and leech dont need to be extrime as with ES builds.
I mast say you realy need to build proper MoM character to realise its strengts and to use VP on hibrid builds so you can see in practical aplication is far superior to what you sugest.
Hierophant is not Slayer or some ES/VP leech machine but is probably way tankier they you imagine.

Couple of things here. The greatest counter to Labyrinth traps is not standing in them, all server issues aside.

VP does not work with ES unless you have Ghost Reave. And if you have Ghost Reaver, you do not leech any to your health. So, the instant you get hit with a poison, you're going to be in trouble. And you're telling me you went with VP and Ghost Reaver with a mere 1700 ES? Again, such a build focusing on this is better off going full ES of which there are better Ascendancies.

"Most monster die before they pirce my ES, " Atziri? Core? Volatile? Upper level map bosses? Shaper?

And they already gave 25% of mana to ES. They can easily streamline the tree and give 25% mana to life.

I realize the strength of a MoM build, and I realize the weaknesses of trying to bolster ES on top of it. Simply focusing more into Life and Mana will yield many benefits such as cost to a build and the amount of passives needed for each particular stat.

And no, I'm not attempting to make Hierophant into a leech machine, I only brought up leech for the reason that if more of your effective HP is in fewer pools, it's easier to replenish to absolute full effective HP using the least # of tools possible. This isn't the case in a Hybrid MoM because taking any form of leech either leaves out HP or ES, resulting in either having to support that with another flask, several extra passive points, or stat-locked uniques.

you are STILL talking about stuff you have no idea about. play the build, try it, make it work (or prove it doesnt) and THEN make 'fix stuff' posts

right now you are doing worst possible thing anyone can do on a feedback forum - spread FUD. some players will read this stuff and actually believe it and make WRONG build decisions based on the missinformation you spread

stop it. it is mean and pointless


i repeat: posts like these SHOULD NOT EVER be created by people who 'read about it somewhere sometime ago'.

you spread lies

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Jgizle написал:

Likewise in reality hierophant actually pulls out a lot of damage simply because you have so many totems. I would like to see Ritual of awakening give totem placement speed based on number of totems placed. 25% per totem. Meaning every time you place a totem the next one gets placed even faster.

For all intent and purpose 40% totem placment speed you gain from smaler nodes on way to Ritual of Awekening is suficiently fast especialy when combined with just one totem cluser with placment speed of 15% or so. I remember using Totem Zeal (35%) with out Ritual of Awekening and speed whas so high that most of time i placed totems two time insted of one. Ther is such ting as to mach. xD

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sidtherat написал:

you are STILL talking about stuff you have no idea about. play the build, try it, make it work (or prove it doesnt) and THEN make 'fix stuff' posts

right now you are doing worst possible thing anyone can do on a feedback forum - spread FUD. some players will read this stuff and actually believe it and make WRONG build decisions based on the missinformation you spread

stop it. it is mean and pointless


i repeat: posts like these SHOULD NOT EVER be created by people who 'read about it somewhere sometime ago'.

you spread lies

That is what you get in age of Wiki backseat gaming, this age demand it.
Its good that he/she is stuborn else it be westing time on this game. xD

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Tsokushin написал:

Stuff

So, just to give you a fair warning, I'm with Sid on this one. You've no idea how much sustain you get by being hybrid, regardless of leech.

This is a game of damage spikes. They are what kills you. The extra ES Hierophant gets makes the difference between being "oneshot" by a pack or not, and you vastly undervalue this aspect, which may be due to lack of experience.

The simple fact of the matter is that you are under the impression that Hierophant is less good than other ascendancies, because Hierophant doesn't scream "This is what I am good at", when you look at his ascendancy nodes. Other ascendancies do that, they're easy to understand and pretty straight forward, Hierophant doesn't do that, but that does not mean he needs to get "fixed". You do not "repair" what isn't "broken".

In terms of being a "skill" class I will argue that Hierophant rewards skill on the player's end as much as any other class, though I will add that Hierophant is the class that really shines when built by a player who has the proper expertise. And I suppose that is what Sid was all about.

When you look at the MoM mechanics, the extra ES, and do some basic math, you will come to realize that Hierophants have a much bigger effective HP-pool than you would have expected. They provide oodles of sustain. And if you have a hierophant build with about 5k life, and 4k ES, plus MoM and ZO (and NOT taking EB) You can leech to life, regen your ES and thus you're suddenly really tough to kill. Leech to ES, while regening/flasking life is also good.

You also keep forgetting that Hierophants get additional sustain for free with their ascendancies, which allows for more investments into damage on the passive tree earlier on.

In regards to this:

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"Most monster die before they pirce my ES, " Atziri? Core? Volatile? Upper level map bosses? Shaper?

Yes, most monsters will die before they chew through 2k ES, most monsters are packs, mind you. And bosses, as I said already, will be a lot easier too, because Hierophant has nice sustain.

Look, you have not even played this game for a year yet, and believe it or not, to some mechanics in this game there are finer points, that you won't learn by listening to people who only play the meta (Because it's their last resort). It's not always that simple.

TL;DR: Hierophant isn't captain obvious, but it's significantly better than you think it is.

Chieftain was the Tanky Totemer Ascendancy and has better use of going Blood Magic with all his Life Regen Passives.

Hierophant was supposed to have been the Quantity Totemer Ascendancy.

Plonking 4 Flame Totems does have a more "oomph" feel to it with but as is Hierophant is in an odd spot where as people have pointed out Dual Totem from other Ascendancies is far more efficient.

The problem I have with Hierophant is that I have no idea what to do with it. Like I look at Gladiator and it screams "Dual-wield wrecking machine or block specialist." Chieftain reads as "Fire damage and/or totems." Their skills work in harmony so that you can clearly see how to build around them. Hierophant? Well, we've got some weird tanky branch that seems to work against itself. We've got multiple totems that work against themselves. And then we have the one that boosts gems depending on where they're slotted. Like...I have no idea how to work this to my advantage, nothing seems to synergize. It feels like they just dumped a bunch of leftover ideas into one class. It's kind of the same way I feel about Deadeye having pierce and chain, it creates a weird dissonance that just doesn't feel like a cohesive class (though Deadeye fares a little better).

Now, full disclosure, I've never played Hierophant. But that's once again due to the fact that it seems incredibly unclear how it's supposed to work.

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AkuTenshiiZero написал:

The problem I have with Hierophant is that I have no idea what to do with it.

I've never played Hierophant. But that's once again due to the fact that it seems incredibly unclear how it's supposed to work.

This is why many people, on first glance, think that Hierophant is weak in comparison to other ascendancies.

The way Hierophant works as an ascendandy is that the ascendancy synergises with the tree more than with the actual ascendancy itself, if that makes any sense.

Any other ascendancy tells you "this is what I am good at", the Hierophant tells you "this is what I can do, go figure it out". And that is why people who simply stick to the meta will 90% of the time tell you how weak Hierophant is. But all they're really saying is that they can't use it properly, or they'd rather run the OP kind of build. Hierophant isn't necessarily OP, but Hierophant is a great allround class that can do any content if used properly.