How can we fix Hierophant?

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Iyacthu написал:

Ritual of Awakening is meant to provide an additional source of damage when needed (be it AoE or single target) mostly. Can also be used for utility albeit rarely.

Divine Providence and Sanctuary of Thought provide additional layers of defense. A small MoM effect, which is basically a 11.1% damage reduction against hits, and an ES buffer against burst damage, which scales out of your mana (small nodes are mana regeneration and you have a mana boost for a class that is split between strength AND intelligence, intelligence providing ES AND mana)
It works in a similar way other ascendancies' defensive perks work : a bonus.

It actually makes lots of sense : if your EHP pools are depleted, you can rely on your totems and kite to refill it back. And your mana costs are reduced to help handling your mana pool, which will not deplete until it is needed. Mana acts as a secondary life pool there.

Illuminated Devotion helps with that Totem/Self damage duality : you'll probably lack links for that but that node helps in that regard.

Hierophant is well balanced of an ascendancy class to me.

Small example for totems : Ancestral Warchief.
* Being a Berserker yields about 1.4 x 2 = 2.8 base damage for 2 totems (Ancestral Bond), discounting minor bonuses (Attack speed and small nodes)
* Being a Hierophant yields about 0.76 x 3 = 2.28 base damage for 3 totems (no Ancestral Bond) PLUS your own damage, which can count as 1 for simplication. It would be a bit less beneficial for Hierophant casters with spell totems usage because of the support gem cost + its inherent penalty.

On an Ancestral Bond build, you'll rely entirely on your totems whereas on Hierophant, you won't. You'll use them cause they scale on the same stats your main Attack/Spell/Whatever does.

The whole class is based around this concept, which helps against Ancestral Bond builds general boredom.

Tl;dr : Hierophant is efficient, not shiny.

I'm underlining the very important parts that I'll respond to.

First off, Sanctuary of Thought as it is now provides only marginal increases in defenses. An extra 500-600 ES that doesn't scale doesn't mean anything given the damage upper tier enemies are capable of putting out, not to mention that ES and MoM mechanics do not synergize at all, in fact they work against each other. You cannot get MoM from ES unless you go EB.

The problem is further exacerbated that any other ascendency can either go full ES, or full MoM + EB and gain much higher damage than Hierophant can just from their ascendancy while having comparable defenses or in some cases, greater defenses.

"if your EHP pools are depleted, you can rely on your totems and kite to refill it back." 2 major problems with this. Other Ascendancies have many more damage multipliers compared to Hierophant. They're not likely to run into this kind of problem, yet if they do there's problem #2. There's nothing stopping any other Ascendancy from just utilizing a single decoy totem and doing the exact same thing except that those other trees would actually be able to do far more damage after they've recovered.

As for your totem example. Notice how it takes 3 totems to still be underperforming compared to the Chieftain. You'd need to cast 3 totems (lots of cast time) and then begin your own casting to get a marginal improvement in damage. How much time do you think you really have against true threats?

If this is your idea of efficiency, of 2 nodes on a single path contradicting each other outside of the nichest of niche builds, of spending time casting 3 totems to get the most marginal of marginal damage boosts, then I don't know what to say.

@Iyacthu
You paint a nice picture; however, taking Ritual of Awakening and Sanctuary of Thought leaves no more points to spend. Thus, assuming you take Ritual of Awakening for that hybrid totem build, you would have to choose between either reduced mana cost for your totems OR Illuminated Devotion to help with that 'totem/self damage duality'.

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Tsokushin написал:

As for your totem example. Notice how it takes 3 totems to still be underperforming compared to the Chieftain. And no, your own damage wouldn't be 1. That less damage multiplier also applies to you. So 3 totems and your own damage is .74*4=2.96

It says '8% less totem damage per totem'

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Kaz2ndChance написал:

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Tsokushin написал:

As for your totem example. Notice how it takes 3 totems to still be underperforming compared to the Chieftain. And no, your own damage wouldn't be 1. That less damage multiplier also applies to you. So 3 totems and your own damage is .74*4=2.96

It says '8% less totem damage per totem'

Woops, might have been before the buff then.

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grepman написал:

currently ascendancies are used either to get 1)defense 2)offense or both

hierophants main problem that not only his offenses/defenses are niche or too pigeonhol-y, but theyre both somewhat marginal.

Im on the record stating a MoM+Acro life build is probably the most tanky build out there, and I stand firmly by that statement.
however, you really need to build around MoM. hierophant gives you max mana and a bit of a crutch for MoM, but it really isn't enough compared to powers other ascendancies have.

totems ? get very little *free* damage, even though it provides you *almost* unique ability to use 2+ totems and being able to leech. the only straight up damage buffs hierophant gets are too marginal - the ability to get charges is nice, but nowadays its not that hard to create/sustain charges for discharge.
the '6L in a helmet' is good concept, especially with essence, but at the end of the day it doesn't boost total power of the main skill. other ascendancies do.

if other ascendancies did not exist, I think hierophant would be a quite solid class. but other ascendancies do exist, and they provide crazy offense or defense.

elementalist can get 150% increased damage, and ANOTHER 100% increased damage for 40% of the time, with a cold to fire build (ANY cold to fire build). and you get elemental immune golems for getting aggro away from you. and all for just FOUR ascendancy points.

how is a hierophant supposed to compete with that kind of power ?

You don't have to look far. Compare it with the Guardian. It has the same concept with +ES based on mana. You stack INT get mana and ES and kill two birds with one stone. Except Guardian's ES bonus gets affected by %increases to maximum ES while Hierophant's doesn't. The Guardian gets a solid armour boost while the Hierophant gets a rather gimmicky 10% MoM effect.


As for right now, I think the main draw of Hierophant is the offensive node Ritual of Awakening. The class would probably utilize totems for offense and MoM for defense, and probably ignore Sanctuary of Thought altogether.

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Kaz2ndChance написал:

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grepman написал:

currently ascendancies are used either to get 1)defense 2)offense or both

hierophants main problem that not only his offenses/defenses are niche or too pigeonhol-y, but theyre both somewhat marginal.

Im on the record stating a MoM+Acro life build is probably the most tanky build out there, and I stand firmly by that statement.
however, you really need to build around MoM. hierophant gives you max mana and a bit of a crutch for MoM, but it really isn't enough compared to powers other ascendancies have.

totems ? get very little *free* damage, even though it provides you *almost* unique ability to use 2+ totems and being able to leech. the only straight up damage buffs hierophant gets are too marginal - the ability to get charges is nice, but nowadays its not that hard to create/sustain charges for discharge.
the '6L in a helmet' is good concept, especially with essence, but at the end of the day it doesn't boost total power of the main skill. other ascendancies do.

if other ascendancies did not exist, I think hierophant would be a quite solid class. but other ascendancies do exist, and they provide crazy offense or defense.

elementalist can get 150% increased damage, and ANOTHER 100% increased damage for 40% of the time, with a cold to fire build (ANY cold to fire build). and you get elemental immune golems for getting aggro away from you. and all for just FOUR ascendancy points.

how is a hierophant supposed to compete with that kind of power ?

You don't have to look far. Compare it with the Guardian. It has the same concept with +ES based on mana. You stack INT get mana and ES and kill two birds with one stone. Except Guardian's ES bonus gets affected by %increases to maximum ES while Hierophant's doesn't. The Guardian gets a solid armour boost while the Hierophant gets a rather gimmicky 10% MoM effect.


As for right now, I think the main draw of Hierophant is the offensive node Ritual of Awakening. The class would probably utilize totems for offense and MoM for defense, and probably ignore Sanctuary of Thought altogether.

yeah the gimmick is too niche. if they increase it to like 25%, MoM (esp with acro) will be very very good defensively, but it wont change the niche-ness much. MoM builds are fairly locked into defenses, plus they are lacking offensively with so many resources invested in mana. if somehow there was a scale some mana into damage, it could have at least *try* to compete against other ascendancies

so, 10%->25% MoM effect, plus %of mana somehow influencing damage. these are serious buffs, and Id rather nerf other ascendancies that have insane power, but if we're talking 'buff' route, thats probably a good start.

Ther plenty of items that can give nice bonuses.

The Vertex

For example Explosive arrow that can cost loot of mana.
Ofcors gloves are better you will say for how skill scale but ther is also a fact that you can use totems like that for free.
Now exploding arrow have one uniq mechanic, it only take frst hit as damage sorce all next scale AoE.
Lets presume you use some uniq or esence crafted gloves, or even boots for that mather depending on what effect you need. Now firing frst arrow from Damage setup then using say helm to spam many stacks for max AoE may be practical.
Well just helm alone can reduce expensive skill to cost nothing with no invesment so thats huge.

Corrupted Energy Jewel

Its rather good option to get most of your MoM effectvnes aplayed to Energy shield so thats one way of menaging resorces.
And you whant to use corupted items with Hierophant thats almost a fact.


I mast say Hierophant have so many ways to be used its just people are lazy or finde it not worth invesment. Its such a class that is uniq just for say resons and it should not be Blanted just becouse it does not fit some one expectations of what it should be focused on.

Dont know about other builds, but for totems having more should be good. Its an asc class yet gets -damage for casting your skill? Respeced mine after finding out 3 > 4 and got more perc's.

Why doesnt sab get -trap or mine damage etc? Doesnt balance

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nEVER_BoRN написал:

Ther plenty of items that can give nice bonuses.

For example Explosive arrow that can cost loot of mana.
Ofcors gloves are better you will say for how skill scale but ther is also a fact that you can use totems like that for free.
Now exploding arrow have one uniq mechanic, it only take frst hit as damage sorce all next scale AoE.
Lets presume you use some uniq or esence crafted gloves, or even boots for that mather depending on what effect you need. Now firing frst arrow from Damage setup then using say helm to spam many stacks for max AoE may be practical.
Well just helm alone can reduce expensive skill to cost nothing with no invesment so thats huge.

Corrupted Energy Jewel

Its rather good option to get most of your MoM effectvnes aplayed to Energy shield so thats one way of menaging resorces.
And you whant to use corupted items with Hierophant thats almost a fact.

I mast say Hierophant have so many ways to be used its just people are lazy or finde it not worth invesment. Its such a class that is uniq just for say resons and it should not be Blanted just becouse it does not fit some one expectations of what it should be focused on.

Numerous problems here.

While explosive arrow is indeed expensive to cost, there are other Ascendencies that can do far better. Example, Elementalist can use it with blood magic. They'll have tons of damage, a free explosive arrow with leech, and all the Elementalist Perks. Heck, here is even a build of Elementalist that has no problem with shaper simply because it went Blood magic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_PF70n_LAY

Inquisitor can also use Explosive arrow with Pious Path that grants 4% mana regen per second. Inquisitor can also go blood magic since Consecrated Ground also grants 4% health regen per second along with the numerous damage and attack/cast speed perks attached.

A Hierophant will not be able to avoid damage during such a fight, so it will not even have 100% reduced mana cost. And neither would it have the damage potential of Elementalist. So again, what tool does Hierophant truly have in this regard that can't be easily replicated elsewhere?

As for the corrupted Energy Jewel. First off, there's heavy rng involved in hoping you don't brick one of the build enabling uniques you have. Second off, it's a huge investment for very little return compared to nearly every other build available. You could simply go CI and stack ES forever. You could go full MoM with chaos resist (and then lose out on 2 ascendancy points) and mitigate damage. You could go MoM+EB but again, every other Ascendancy can do that and most of their trees have synergistic effects and either tons of damage or defense compared to the rest of Hierophant.

It's not a matter of lazyness, it's a matter that the tree cannot do anything that another tree does better. Some of its major strengths are simply marginal compared to other trees and come with significant drawbacks or just flat out contradict each other.

This is why it needs a change.

Idk, that defence sims worth it, thers reson its hard.

For Explosiv arrow well thing is you use frst attack from links in glowes for example, gain nice 20% AoE and stack some esency craft with damage gems. Then use Same skill with loot of attack speed linked in helm ( uniq with 50% reduced cost) so that way you have benefit.
I gess you can also have setup in boots that will leech life if you prefer and gloves for cleer speed. Its just example of posibilities.

In other hand Persuit of Faith sims feable and Ritual of Awekening is also not briliant.
I can see use of them but still. Tho i cant ignore bonuses of smaler nodes as placment speed (total of 40%) is realy strong.