How can we fix Hierophant?

Bumping this thread again. Made a Hierophant during this league. I haven't taken Sanctuary of Thought yet because the points seem wasted and haven't completed uber lab yet.

I'd still wager that mana->life conversion instead of a mana->ES conversion is the key to streamlining Hierophant.

Hierophant as it stands is unique in the sense that because of MoM capabilities, it's actually desirable to have mana on gear, an often neglected stat. It makes for finding the current gear I have both extremely hard in the sense that nobody really sells it and extremely cheap because mana is viewed as a wasted affix.

Beyond all this, it's strange that I could simply go Inquisitor with this very same tree and have much more capable DPS and no half-wasted ascendancies.

Again, to anyone that would say "Go ES build", there are other Ascendancies that can also build ES and have similar, if not greater defense and offensive capabilities.

i don't think it can be repaired at this point. totems became to slow for the meta.

initially i thought that if sanctuary of thought is moved above conviction of power then conviction of power reworked a little to be more inline with a CI+end charges tankish build, it would be fine.
divine guidance left alone(on its own) and maybe bumped a little to make it more worthwhile defensively.

but now, i'm thinking the damage is not there and it's not. 26% less damage and 30% less cast speed from the totem and on top of that 28% less damage from the ascendancy makes it not-saveable(not to mention that every totem build has -1 to support links).

every other ascendancy gets damage bonuses on top of the 100% from the skill but hierophant needs 2 totems up just to beak even with the 100% from the skill and then the third to amount to something other than garbage.
(oh and do you want to play a proj based totem?; here, take another 26% less dmg multiplier and that's the end right there).

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but now, i'm thinking the damage is not there and it's not. 26% less damage and 30% less cast speed from the totem and on top of that 28% less damage from the ascendancy makes it not-saveable(not to mention that every totem build has -1 to support links).

Well totems natively deal 2 x 0,74 x 0,7 base damage. So yeah, Spell Totem essentially is a 3% more damage, which isn't really on par with other supports. In case of Hierophant it gets buffed to 12% more damage, so essentially the difference between Hierophant and a normal Totem user is not even 10% more damage.

The Inquisitors or Elementalists Penetration nodes already outweight that, and they both have other nodes that synergizes a lot more with totems. I feel the original intent is that you are still dealing damage while your totems do their work, which is not gonna happen considering you want to place totems, maybe proc Elemental Overload, maybe somehow curse etc.

If the Hierophant would have anything like a Penetration node or just something that increases his damage he would be decent. However if you go for Totems all the other options are bad. Do you want Illuminated Devotion? Not really your totems are likely in your chest, you could make an essence with more Elemental Damage and turn it into a 6l, but for what purpose, you won't be using two skills most of the time. Conviction of Power looks fine and does nothing on bosses, except you have another way to make power charges, if it would have something like the raider maybe it would be better. And all the mana/mom things won't help either, because you don't need a lot of mana on a totem build and you don't really need EB, you would prefer a damage node. And then just compare Instruments of Virtue with Pursuit of Faith. 30% Cast Speed and 30% Spelldamage vs. 8% Cast Speed and a bit of damage (I think you can keep it at 60%, but again not on bosses, only when it doesn't matter).

So Hierophant has too many conditional and very special things. As long as everybody is going CI I don't think he has a good spot. Having 3 totems give way too little boost in damage (its 16% more compared to having 2 totems with Ancestral Bond).

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i don't think it can be repaired at this point. totems became to slow for the meta.

You seem to have never enjoyed the presence of Pizza Sticks :P

i played pizza sticks before it was meta. i'm talking about the days in which the totem wouldn't give you any charges and to finish the pizza you'd have to summon another totem. :)
i did not play it this league nor last one.

i think i have 4 or so hierophants that ended up in standard. i played MoM, EB/MOM, CI, crit, noncrit, spell, ranged attack, before the buff and after the buff; it just doesn't work.

MoM was to much investment for to little gain, CI was scamaz, with crit i felt like a wannabee but not quite there yet, ranged attacking never worked(~70%less dmg double dipping on poison on 3-4 actual supports...).

Illuminated Devotion?, hell yea. did that too until i realized(and it didn''t take long) that using a life leech gem and an ascendancy from a different class is way better.


hierophant is the jack of all janks and master of all the junk.
(and i played jank dude - berserker, CI, VP, whispering ice, crit and it beat all hierophants i ever did).

(note: even tried to pair up actual totems with spells that would have similar scaling(shockwave+bladefall or flame totem+incinerate) to use both in 5/6 links(in pledge+chest to MOM it up) and it still didn't work.)

Edit: and if you want to actually feel the pizza, play an elementalist or shadow/inquisitor.
it's at stone age vs industrial revolution levels.

I'm playing Pizzasticks Inquisitor right now, it was just the notion that totems are too slow for the current meta which is something I can't really agree on.


But yeah Hierophant can do pretty much anything but not a single thing right. Totems lack some damage amplification, because they don't really need the MoM defenses that much and just 16% more damage isn't much compared to what penetration offers and for anything else it is mediocre too, because they also lack damage, while even the defensive part seems weak compared to Trickser or Occultist or even Elementalist.

i could easily argue it's because of the pizza not because of the totems but sure, it's a solid t2.

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Emphasy написал:

The Inquisitors or Elementalists Penetration nodes already outweight that, and they both have other nodes that synergizes a lot more with totems. I feel the original intent is that you are still dealing damage while your totems do their work, which is not gonna happen considering you want to place totems, maybe proc Elemental Overload, maybe somehow curse etc.

If the Hierophant would have anything like a Penetration node or just something that increases his damage he would be decent. However if you go for Totems all the other options are bad. Do you want Illuminated Devotion? Not really your totems are likely in your chest, you could make an essence with more Elemental Damage and turn it into a 6l, but for what purpose, you won't be using two skills most of the time. Conviction of Power looks fine and does nothing on bosses, except you have another way to make power charges, if it would have something like the raider maybe it would be better. And all the mana/mom things won't help either, because you don't need a lot of mana on a totem build and you don't really need EB, you would prefer a damage node. And then just compare Instruments of Virtue with Pursuit of Faith. 30% Cast Speed and 30% Spelldamage vs. 8% Cast Speed and a bit of damage (I think you can keep it at 60%, but again not on bosses, only when it doesn't matter).

So Hierophant has too many conditional and very special things. As long as everybody is going CI I don't think he has a good spot. Having 3 totems give way too little boost in damage (its 16% more compared to having 2 totems with Ancestral Bond).

This is close to what I was saying earlier in this thread, that Hierophant has nothing inherently valuable within its build that other Ascendancies can't already replicate.

Right now the only strength I find in the Ascendancy that's applicable to all builds would be permanent 5 endurance charge and permanent physical damage immunity with a low rank CWDT Immortal call along with Romira's and Aylardex and utilizing spells that either cast fast or proc Romira's multiple times in a single cast.

The problem again, is that an Inquisitor with Romira's and Voll's Devotion or Voll's Protector can do the exact same thing with maybe a 10% loss in MoM but gaining all that damage.

I had previously thought that a mana->life conversion would be suitable for the Ascendancy, but its problems seem to go far deeper.

Maybe setting Illuminated Devotion to have two or all three effects on helm,gloves,boots? Turning 4 links into 6 or 7 links would certainly pack more of a punch and make the tree more versatile for other builds.

As it stands, Hierophant seems to be only good on the basis of being cheap in gear. Nobody sells much gear with mana and it can get by without a 6l by utilizing 3 skills that function as 5 links.

It's able to get to endgame, but I doubt it has the power to complete endgame. Everything concerning its subtle power seems outclassed by other Ascendencies' overt power.

as mentioned by me several times in this thread - try to know what you are judging before judging it

i just checked your MoM Hierophant and i have to say that i - for the life of me - cannot understand what have you done there. MoM build that way with 43%+ damage to mana with this gear and this tree and this gear is SUICIDE. youll learn soon enough

maybe try to make it work before you claim it doesnt, willya?

Hierophant is a 'high skill and game understanding required' class. it works well when used well. simple classes like berserker are difficult to 'fail' with. hierophant is very easy to fail with.

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sidtherat написал:

as mentioned by me several times in this thread - try to know what you are judging before judging it

i just checked your MoM Hierophant and i have to say that i - for the life of me - cannot understand what have you done there. MoM build that way with 43%+ damage to mana with this gear and this tree and this gear is SUICIDE. youll learn soon enough

maybe try to make it work before you claim it doesnt, willya?

Hierophant is a 'high skill and game understanding required' class. it works well when used well. simple classes like berserker are difficult to 'fail' with. hierophant is very easy to fail with.

More from a guy who keeps his profile private.

Let's begin again.

Your post on page 13 is as follows.

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sidtherat написал:

well.. properly built Hierophant says 'takes 40% less non-DoT damage' and it is all thanks to mana.

with legacy Cloak of Defiance (or some corruptions that are rather unfeasible to get reliably) you can bring it up to 50%. it is pretty damn amazing

You do realize attempting to swap out my chest for Cloak of Defiance will drop me about 150 HP at the very least.

I have 40%-45% with Aylardex and however many power charges. So, which is it? Very good or very bad? Do you even know? All you seem to do is come into threads, disagree, and speak of "skill and knowledge" but lack any meaningful discussion of any game mechanics. Every post here on page 14 has reference to in game skills and mechanics except yours.

ill let you figure this stuff out yourself.

but i already know how will your encounters in red maps end - few hits, out of mana, mashing flasks, run away/die

you are not there yet with MoM. you can get there but you have to accept that you do not know it yet. otherwise you wont learn a thing.

edit: you ignored more detailed posts in the past. it was when you had ZERO experience in this area yet youve decided your knowledge is good enough to dispute it. this is a mistake you can only make once. i no longer feel the need to teach you anything. just to prevent you spreading misinformation that might harm new players