How can we fix Hierophant?

What i dislike on Hierophant is mostly lack of intercation of charges with let say MoM, it be nice if they give some mana when damage taken interaction becouse sorces of such things are so hard to get on items and its rather limiting on RNG.
If it whas more popular it be virtualy imposible to make something like it for ages its realy loot of rng to take in.

Also i be mach more accesable if so caled 5L bonuses whas just one of to chose, it be rather week i gess compered to other ascendency but agen probably better then jogling items to make things worck.

Hierophant have great utility and end game that is huge bonus if you can make use of all he offer, its blody hard but you do get loot in return. Itemisation of Hierophant is just unbelivably harder, not mach else to say abouth it.

I make dicent Hierophant, to make more progres i need items like SkyFort and some cralzy stuff to melt your minde with how mach rng its needed but he can greatly benefit and use thos tings with huge returns. You can still do stuff with him but to get full potencial its probably hardest thing i can think of curently.

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Tsokushin написал:

Furthermore, let's actually discuss this data. How is this data undermining my argument? It shows that rarely anyone plays Hierophant, the surmised reason being that there isn't much a Hierophant can do that other Ascendancies can do better.

People copy what streamers play. Welcome to 2010s.

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Can a Hierophant casting 3 totems or more deal more dps than any number of any other Ascendency? Inquisitor, Elementalist, Occultist, Chieftan, Slayer, Berserker, etc. Does it even offer faster clear speed than any of the big name Ascendancies (Elementalist, Inquisitor) that happen to use a single spell totem?
(...)
Can a Hierophant build either damage or Defenses comparable or equal to other Ascendancies?

Dude wat. I never played Hierophant yet but it's plain clear to me it is NOT totem class (unless you find a way to abuse having this many totems and somehow ignore less damage). It is totem + selfcast/attack class. Sidtherat here mentioned some build he plays where he drops totems on bosses and clears packs with selfcast skill. And he is doing it right, if you want pure totem damage there are better options.

As for defences, Hierophant seems to be the class that gets best hybrid ehp buffer which seems huge in PathOfOneshots. HP + MoM, Lowlife non-Shavs, MoM + EB, HP + ES, these things will work with Hierophant, I don't think any other class can get their EHP this high with other Ascendancies.

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Does the Hierophant tree have split capabilty with multiple builds like Chieftan, Gladiator, Necromancer, Elementalist, Inquisitor, etc.? This is to say, you can build easily viable builds with Pious path in Inquisitor, not even utilizing crit, Aura or Minion Necromancers, etc. Can the Hierophant have a viable tree without utilizing either 4 point path?

Well, the 5-links node seems to work great with gloves/boots/helmets that also have additional effects to socketed gems. Bringer of Rain build?

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Can a Hierophant bring party utility greater than or equal to a la Guardian or Necromancer?

Theoretically, Aura totems. Practically? Not sure, playing party in aRPG is pain. (dat lag)

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Turbodevil написал:

Dude wat. I never played Hierophant yet but it's plain clear to me it is NOT totem class (unless you find a way to abuse having this many totems and somehow ignore less damage). It is totem + selfcast/attack class. Sidtherat here mentioned some build he plays where he drops totems on bosses and clears packs with selfcast skill. And he is doing it right, if you want pure totem damage there are better options.

The problem is that this same playstyle is doable on any other Ascendancy with higher damage potential on other Ascendancies.

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As for defences, Hierophant seems to be the class that gets best hybrid ehp buffer which seems huge in PathOfOneshots. HP + MoM, Lowlife non-Shavs, MoM + EB, HP + ES, these things will work with Hierophant, I don't think any other class can get their EHP this high with other Ascendancies.

A split max EHP buffer is dangerous when it comes to either 1 shots or spike damage. You have a limited number of passive points with which to build your defenses and splitting more and more of your effective eHP means it requires more tools to be able to avoid 1 shots.

Playing Low Life shavs is better done on a Guardian who would be able to stack more (and properly scaled ES rather than the conversion rules from Hierophant). Pure CI builds will stack up far more ES than the total HP+Mana from MoM or total ES/HP or HP/ES/EB.

Attempting to go VP/GR while hybrid life/es means a significant portion of your full eHP cannot be regained by that method. Same goes for any build that attempts to mix/match full eHP. It's the simple math of what # of stats your require. I'll pull the direct quote from my post on page 11.

"(...) you keep bringing up ZO, ES nodes, etc. You need Life regen to keep ES going, or Ghost Reaver and Vaal pact to keep ES going, Life to boost life, Mana to boost mana, and ES to boost ES.

That's several stats you'd have to keep invested in nearly every build resembling this, all of which would be identical. That's pigeonholed. Again, I'll reiterate. The build that requires a fewer number of distinctive stats is freer to pursue other options in gear and passives. Streamlining Hierophant Sanctuary of Thought into a mana->life conversion frees up a lot of points and a lot of gear."

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Theoretically, Aura totems. Practically? Not sure, playing party in aRPG is pain. (dat lag)

But this brings me to my ultimate point. Hierophant does not have close or equal damage to other Ascendancies, does not have close or equal mitigation of dedicated tank Ascendancies, and has no party utility.

Each and every single other Ascendancy can always pick up MoM with a 10% loss, but all the other tools of those Ascendancies. The only thing that truly seems noteworthy is Illuminated Devotion, but is a potential set-in-stone 5 link much greater than what every other Ascendancy offers?

You can have free endurance charges with Conviction of power and Romira's, but a Juggernaught can have that along with Increased Damage per endurance charge and not requiring a unique.

Let's not forget that the MoM node in Hierophant has no effect when you pick up Sanctuary of Thought. MoM does not take effect until ES is at 0.

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Tsokushin написал:

The problem is that this same playstyle is doable on any other Ascendancy with higher damage potential on other Ascendancies.

Not sure what you mean by damage potential, imo there is too many variables to make sensible comparision. All I can provide is napkin math, assuming your selfcast skill and totem skill deal similar damage other classes deal 2x damage with selfcast skill + totem, and 3-totem Hierophant deal 3.28x. So putting 4 points into hierophant gave you 1.64 more multiplier, which seems pretty good on paper compared to other Ascendancies. Ofc the math is of little relevance and it's up to the player to find skills/strategies that interract with each other but potential is definitely there.

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A split max EHP buffer is dangerous when it comes to either 1 shots or spike damage. You have a limited number of passive points with which to build your defenses and splitting more and more of your effective eHP means it requires more tools to be able to avoid 1 shots.

(...)

Attempting to go VP/GR while hybrid life/es means a significant portion of your full eHP cannot be regained by that method. Same goes for any build that attempts to mix/match full eHP. It's the simple math of what # of stats your require. I'll pull the direct quote from my post on page 11.

"(...) you keep bringing up ZO, ES nodes, etc. You need Life regen to keep ES going, or Ghost Reaver and Vaal pact to keep ES going, Life to boost life, Mana to boost mana, and ES to boost ES.


That's several stats you'd have to keep invested in nearly every build resembling this, all of which would be identical. That's pigeonholed. Again, I'll reiterate. The build that requires a fewer number of distinctive stats is freer to pursue other options in gear and passives. Streamlining Hierophant Sanctuary of Thought into a mana->life conversion frees up a lot of points and a lot of gear."

You argue about hybrid builds in general here. I disagree that they are bad even though they require investment. Few points:

- Hierophant can make hybrids easier accessible (less currency and passive investment required)
- Hierophant can siginificanttly boost hybrids in endgame gear too
- Hybriding gives you large EHP pool and large EHP pool is best strategy for one shots/spike damage
- Ofc hybridding means recovery issues. As it is meant to be, large EHP pool = difficult to maintain, you must overcome that in your build
- I gave you 4 strategies of when Hierophant works for defenses. That's not streamlining.

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Playing Low Life shavs is better done on a Guardian who would be able to stack more (and properly scaled ES rather than the conversion rules from Hierophant). Pure CI builds will stack up far more ES than the total HP+Mana from MoM or total ES/HP or HP/ES/EB.

These things are pure ES and Hierophant is not meant to be great for them.

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Turbodevil написал:

Not sure what you mean by damage potential, imo there is too many variables to make sensible comparision. All I can provide is napkin math, assuming your selfcast skill and totem skill deal similar damage other classes deal 2x damage with selfcast skill + totem, and 3-totem Hierophant deal 3.28x. So putting 4 points into hierophant gave you 1.64 more multiplier, which seems pretty good on paper compared to other Ascendancies. Ofc the math is of little relevance and it's up to the player to find skills/strategies that interract with each other but potential is definitely there.

A 2x damage multiplier is an underestimation given what we've seen in practice. Crit multipliers would easily push inquisitors or assassins well into the 3x range, and double-dipping ignite, conversion elementalists as well.

There's also an opportunity cost to this for Hierophant in that he has to repeatedly cast totems. If he does not invest in totem survivability, his total uptime on them will be less. If he places more points into totem passives, his self cast will be lacking.

It is in these cases you can see a self cast +totem build on any other Ascendancy would yield much higher damage.

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You argue about hybrid builds in general here. I disagree that they are bad even though they require investment. Few points:

- Hierophant can make hybrids easier accessible (less currency and passive investment required)
- Hierophant can siginificanttly boost hybrids in endgame gear too
- Hybriding gives you large EHP pool and large EHP pool is best strategy for one shots/spike damage
- Ofc hybridding means recovery issues. As it is meant to be, large EHP pool = difficult to maintain, you must overcome that in your build
- I gave you 4 strategies of when Hierophant works for defenses. That's not streamlining.

-I agree here at the start.

-Very slightly agree here. Right now, it's a matter of people view +mana or +intelligence+life on items as a wasted stat, so it tends to come cheap. Builds right now are polarized between either pure life or pure ES for good reason.

-True that Hybrid can give eHP but you forget the opportunity cost. eHP will always be ES+Life (or ES+Life+Unreserved Mana for MoM). The opportunity cost exists both in spreading the build and in recovery of eHP. Every defensive Aura you utilize means less mana of MoM. That has its own opportunity costs in damage or survivability. But, the point you neglect is that pure life (220%+ life in passives) or pure ES often have much more eHP and have no such opportunity cost.

Anything under 220% bonus life, yes, will have far less eHP but they make up for it in damage and there's nothing stopping them from utilizing MoM themselves. But this is a problem more to hybrid builds specifically, the opportunity cost is exceedingly high.

This opportunity cost is heavily apparent in the upper tiers of gear. Unless Hierophant specifically builds for mana and ES nodes, he won't get much ES benefit from Sanctuary of Thought. Doing so also reduces the points you can allocate for life. You can build a life build with easily 8k life without having to worry much about this cost.

-This recovery cost is also what I've been addressing. You have every CI build with higher eHP and no recovery problems, extremely high life builds with equal or in some case higher eHP and no recovery problems. But, you go hybrid and then you're suddenly forced to be carrying other, less beneficial flasks to attempt to recover.

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These things are pure ES and Hierophant is not meant to be great for them.

That was brought up to illustrate builds that can easily get higher eHP with comparable or higher damage.

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Tsokushin написал:

A split max EHP buffer is dangerous when it comes to either 1 shots or spike damage. You have a limited number of passive points with which to build your defenses and splitting more and more of your effective eHP means it requires more tools to be able to avoid 1 shots.

Actually, no.

If we forget the most broken ES combinations ( and the fact that ES is the best at the moment for obvious reasons ), hybrid buffer does give you basically the higher buffer potential.
One shot it's not its weakness, its weakness is the recovery of the buffer.
Being strong against one shots is one of it's strength.

It gives you actually more effective EHP.

That is of course, if we forget for a second the broken amount of ES reachable atm, without too much investment.
But actually, I'm not quite sure how high a very expensive hybrid character could reach in term of EHP, considering Hierophant and MoM in the equation of course, it might be bigger than ES solo, not sure.

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Fruz написал:

Actually, no.

If we forget the most broken ES combinations ( and the fact that ES is the best at the moment for obvious reasons ), hybrid buffer does give you basically the higher buffer potential.
One shot it's not its weakness, its weakness is the recovery of the buffer.
Being strong against one shots is one of it's strength.

The practicality of the weakness in any kind of hybrid build regarding ES+life or ES+Life+MoM is apparent. In any spike damage situation, your ES will presumably be 0 from the damage.

Without Ghost Reaver+Vaal Pact, or Zealot's Oath, you will NOT be able to regenerate to full ES again if you continue to take any damage at all. Purely relying on the ES recovery to kick in naturally in a full fledged fight is usually a death sentence.

I do not dispute that this sort of hybrid build is good against 1 shots. I dispute that after you survive the one shot, you will be hard pressed to actually survive another of comparable damage, especially if it happens before your ES is full.

It is for this reason that hybrid builds are usually avoided, as having to fight anything capable of one shots at a sizeable reduced % of eHP for 2 seconds to ES recharge start, and at most 5 seconds for it to reach full, and this means no DoT damage, no burning ground, no damage taken whatsoever, is a huge opportunity cost.

Any pure life or pure ES can simply leech to full, their full eHP being a single pool.

MoM builds are better in this hybrid situation as instead of juggling damage for 5+ seconds, you can at least leech mana back via Warlord's Mark.

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It gives you actually more effective EHP.

That is of course, if we forget for a second the broken amount of ES reachable atm, without too much investment.
But actually, I'm not quite sure how high a very expensive hybrid character could reach in term of EHP, considering Hierophant and MoM in the equation of course, it might be bigger than ES solo, not sure.

We can easily put this to the test as to whether pure life builds compete with Hybrid builds in eHP in any offline builder, and I may actually be wrong here, but I hold that assuming max t1 rolls, same number of passive points into eHP pools, Life would be within 500 eHP of any sort of hybrid build. I have no doubt in this regard, however, that ES will definitely scale much higher than any hybrid build, with no opportunity cost.

MoM is definitely interesting to build for, needing both life and mana to be at a necessary balance. Too much is wasted, too little is asking for death.

You'll have to build heavier into mana if you want any sort of Auras though, until you hit that proper ratio of life/mana.

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Theoretically, Aura totems. Practically? Not sure, playing party in aRPG is pain. (dat lag)

i had that too for a while; it's bad.
you can get 0 cost on auras on 5 totems; MoM it up at max mana(or hell, you can even go blood magic/ci) but the thing is, you are always to slow or to clunky.
- totem cast range is limited, then the totem has to cast the aura, then you need to make it stun/freeze immune, then you need to account for each totem type in the middle of the fight to know what to replace and when, if the totem gets destroyed players could remain without an aura for some time and even if somehow you muster up the masochistic tendencies needed to bear all that, you realize that you need to take the aura nodes anyway for the aura aoe increases ...
the end.

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Tsokushin написал:

stuff

This conversasion comes down to:

- Hierophant is bad
- No, it's good for hybrid builds
- But hybrids are bad
- No, they have more EHP buffers. That's a good thing, potentialy best for spike damage
- But you need to maintain them!

YES. You need to maintain them. Find working way to maintain them and enjoy your Hierophancy boosted huge EHP pool.

HP + MOM? Life leech, life pot, mana regen, mana pot
HP + MOM + EB + ES? Life leech, life pot, Zealoth Oath, ES recovery, have slightly more ES than MOM ratio suggests so ES is not fully depleted in spike damage situation
HP + MOM + ES? Life regen, life pot, mana regen, Ghost Reaver.

Or come up with something else, there are hundreds of uniques to make things working.

Be creative.

Many people seem to be using ES recharge instead of leech, it's a different playstile than just facetanking everything, but it's there, and there are many ways to reduce the recharge time / rate.

You can also use life regen + pots, and gost reaver for example, or the other way around.
You could use shavronne's revelation also.
Or Aegis aurora.

Yes, you need to play around it, or build around it, or both.
Maybe it won't give you brainless facetanking like full ES + crit + VP + GR, so what ?

Completely agree with the post above.