drain>piety, as a cost of healing; Ru the healer
Posted: Sunday, 24th July 2016, 01:16Elyvilon's healing has to be limited, and quite naturally, piety is used to limit healing.
Now, much of Ely's power is just "stay alive longer", and it's a little like making several duplicates of every found curing/hw.
Piety gain and expenditure tends to feel very unsatisfying with Elyvilon.
It may be difficult to articulate exactly why, but many players have experienced what I am talking about.
And IMO it's unusually hard to skill invo properly with Elyvilon.
On the other hand, when I played Ru, it felt just great, using Draw Out Power to maintain my longevity in battle.
This ability essentially makes you weaker in combat in exchange for not running out of health.
(It does other things too but that is not my focus.)
Which leads to my thesis that drain is a better cost for healing than piety.
But why does this relate specifically to healing? I'm not sure, but I think this is the key: The more an ability's effectiveness depends on your character's power, the better suited it is for using Drain as a cost. Healing is only as good as your character. Finesse also comes to mind. Something like Apoc is unrelated to your char's power, so it's not well-suited for Drain as a cost.
Ru is well-primed to become a God of Healing. Ru has an interesting piety system, and the generic passives are really fun, so "boring" abilities can be shoveled in without making the god feel plain as a whole. Divine healing is an appropriate reward, when many sacrifices limit healing and/or alternatives to healing, in the same way that Power Leap lets you get to places that your sacs render inaccessible. The focus on healing would pressure players to develop strong characters in spite of the sacrifices. The flavor of being empowered from within and persevering, rather than being helped from the outside, is strengthened when Ru gives you a healing power, and is weakened when Ru gives you a killdudes power.
While we're on about Ru's abilities... Ru's Exh timer seems to prevent 3 important things: bunny-hopping, spamming leap/apoc consecutively to deal damage, and spamming healing. Jumping deserves an exhaust timer. Leap/apoc can be stripped of damage and removed, respectively. (boohoo, I know, but on the other hand, the apoc effect is simplistic... move some of its elements to Chei? I'm thinking: slouch-pocalypse.) That leaves healing, and the effect of Exh is two-fold: i)it encourages healing pre-emptively, before you really need it, even if you're not sure, and ii)makes you keep track of the Exh status each turn, if you want to keep healing. IMO that's a bit annoying, and: remove it. If continuous healing is too ridiculous, nerf it (e.g. bring it down to a "heal wounds" level, tops) so that it takes more turns to get good HPs.
Relatedly, note that Dithmenos's Shadow Form has a kind of built-in, automized healing-for-draining.
Now, much of Ely's power is just "stay alive longer", and it's a little like making several duplicates of every found curing/hw.
Piety gain and expenditure tends to feel very unsatisfying with Elyvilon.
It may be difficult to articulate exactly why, but many players have experienced what I am talking about.
And IMO it's unusually hard to skill invo properly with Elyvilon.
On the other hand, when I played Ru, it felt just great, using Draw Out Power to maintain my longevity in battle.
This ability essentially makes you weaker in combat in exchange for not running out of health.
(It does other things too but that is not my focus.)
Which leads to my thesis that drain is a better cost for healing than piety.
But why does this relate specifically to healing? I'm not sure, but I think this is the key: The more an ability's effectiveness depends on your character's power, the better suited it is for using Drain as a cost. Healing is only as good as your character. Finesse also comes to mind. Something like Apoc is unrelated to your char's power, so it's not well-suited for Drain as a cost.
Ru is well-primed to become a God of Healing. Ru has an interesting piety system, and the generic passives are really fun, so "boring" abilities can be shoveled in without making the god feel plain as a whole. Divine healing is an appropriate reward, when many sacrifices limit healing and/or alternatives to healing, in the same way that Power Leap lets you get to places that your sacs render inaccessible. The focus on healing would pressure players to develop strong characters in spite of the sacrifices. The flavor of being empowered from within and persevering, rather than being helped from the outside, is strengthened when Ru gives you a healing power, and is weakened when Ru gives you a killdudes power.
While we're on about Ru's abilities... Ru's Exh timer seems to prevent 3 important things: bunny-hopping, spamming leap/apoc consecutively to deal damage, and spamming healing. Jumping deserves an exhaust timer. Leap/apoc can be stripped of damage and removed, respectively. (boohoo, I know, but on the other hand, the apoc effect is simplistic... move some of its elements to Chei? I'm thinking: slouch-pocalypse.) That leaves healing, and the effect of Exh is two-fold: i)it encourages healing pre-emptively, before you really need it, even if you're not sure, and ii)makes you keep track of the Exh status each turn, if you want to keep healing. IMO that's a bit annoying, and: remove it. If continuous healing is too ridiculous, nerf it (e.g. bring it down to a "heal wounds" level, tops) so that it takes more turns to get good HPs.
Relatedly, note that Dithmenos's Shadow Form has a kind of built-in, automized healing-for-draining.