Game Mechanics Light Bender rework

Lightbender while being a really cool archetype - getting stronger by healing, solo or in a team, has some issues.

Orb hitpoints
The elephant in the room is the whole % healed per 10s amount of time mechanic. While being great it really depends on having something to heal, in other words something with missing health. Those things 90% of the time are Ophanim orbs. Biggest issue with them is that they don't scale their hp with the player. This really limits their ability to provide decent heal value (I will call healing % per 10s that from now on).

• Having less max hp be beneficial for a healing archetype is really counterintuitive.
• Ophanim not scaling also makes Lightbender really bad for long lootruns since activating abilitites becomes more and more difficult to impossible. See Lightbender lootrun.

Orbs' total health (with all upgrades) should scale to about 2.4x of player's max hp.

Spoiler: Why?

Total ophanim health is has massive jumps. From 400 to 2k to 3k to 12k to 24k. Making orbs scale with players health would smoothen the curve.

Most builds have between 10k to 15k hp. Making orbs scale to about 2.4x player's hp would keep average heal value not far from as it is now. Exact changes in the next spoiler.

Spoiler: Changes to abilities

Orb hp:
Ophanim: 200 -> 25% of your max hp each
Healthier Ophanim: +800 -> +10%
Healthier Ophanim II: +3000 -> +5%

One orb with all upgrades would have 40% of player's max hp.

Attack speed problem
Other really bad thing about Lightbender is it's attack speed dependency. Ophanim needs slow attack speed to not die in seconds while maintaining decent damage. A simple fix for this would be to make melee-ing not reset the orbs' flight and their queue to attack.

Less fundamental but still really important issue is Sunflare being nearly useless. It requires so much heal value you wont activate it solo ever (unless your build has very low max hp). It only working for your party members on your next heal is also hard to take advantage of (it is really hard to notice when it activates too). So I suggest completly removing it for another ability.

I present to you: (Extension of) Orphion's Will
This ability damage, overhealth and width would increase with your current heal value. For example if your heal value when casting Orphion's Will is 300% a 1800% (6x heal value) spell multilpier will be used, you and allies will get 60% (0.2x heal value) of their max health as overhealth and size of the ability is goin to be 10 blocks wide (about 1 blocks every 30% heal value). Ability will affect everything below or above it aswell (like jasmine bloom and boiling blood). Cooldown should be around 20 seconds. Orphion's Will could also drop heal value to 0% or consume all Lightweaver orbs when casted if it is too broken.

Spoiler: Alternate option

This ability strength could increase with the amount of hp you healed in the last 10 seconds but in raw numbers. For example if you healed 50k hp in the last 10 seconds the ability will deal that as damage multiplied by 3 and overhealth to allies multilplied by 0.2.

Though I imagine this would break the consistency of Lightbender using heal value and make it hard to balance.

It would look like a giant Orphion's head (fox like thing) or just a realy bright wave of light.

Here is an image for yall (thanks to @ChrisWildfire, for teaching me how to make these):

It would activate by shift casting Ice Snake (it has no Lightbender abilities), so Sentient Snake and Snake Nest could also enchance Orphion's Will. Gust or Winded would not buff it. Arctic Snake would buff Orphion's Will (same effect).

Spoiler: Ice Snake's ability Changes

Snake Nest wouldn't make Orphion's Will triple.

Flashfreeze mID could make Orphion's Will blind enemies for 3s (make it blind allies for a little trolling too).

 

I love these kinds of detailed suggestions! Really well made ability IMO, would love to see this in game!

 

@ChrisWildfire you have found a new employee for Ability Reworks Inc.

Also as a lightbender main this seems perfect for a new final ult ability. Sunflare imo should be a pink or orange node as it does have use if you play with teams, but usually I go solo for most stuff and this would have more of a practical use.

 

We’re gonna start stealing Silverbull Syndicates too

 

you see it's all part of my plan to take over the world

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But yes this looks great, man! I'm a fan of all the proposed changes!

Question though, why is the elemental conversion for Orphion's Will thunder and air? Since its damage scales off of your healing, I think it's more appropriate for it to have water elemental conversion instead.

 

Mainly it doesn't feel like light attack is gonna have a water conversion, though

adds it.

 

Wdym?

 

Yeah doesn't Sunshower, an ability that makes you emit a strong light, have a water elemental conversion?

 

I really like these ideas. I'm not really a hardcore player - I'm still using my mage build from before the skill tree update - but I've noticed how annoying only using the first of the orbs and the lack of any use for ice snake is. I didn't know about the lack of hp scaling but that really needs to be changed. I'm always a support player in most games so I naturally chose light bender when the update first came out and I was really impressed with how they mostly managed to make it playable for a solo player (I've never been in a guild or had friends to play with), and I managed to beat the boss of the Silent Expanse dungeon solo after a couple of attempts which I was very pleased to be able to do as a solo support class. Your suggestions would go a long way to make the archetype far more enjoyable to play solo and not struggle with harder endgame content. I can't really comment on the lack of long lootrunning capabilities since I've only done one lootrun but anything to make the class more viable would be great.

 

With my highest leveled account being lightbender, I generally agree. It solves the problem of useless ice snake, terrible non-endgame power curve, and sunflare not existing.

However I have a concern with the ophanim max health scaling:
Mage(and shamans ultlizing totem regeneration, although their healing is much smaller and need to stand in totem range) already synergies better with high health builds due to heal scaling on max health while regen/lifesteal/potions don't. If ophanim also scales on max health, it may make high hp builds too good, reducing build diversity. It also worsens the current problem of the "stronger" builds being too extreme, either full tank or glass cannon that shreds greg in seconds(with like 8k ehp, -200 health regen, -400 lifesteal -600 ele def).

 

Hp scaling would just make every light bender have around the same healing value. I think there should be a way to regulate it more than just how much ya damage the orbs. Maybe scaling could diminish after a certain point. Or maybe giving orbs some static health.

Lightbender is not meta neither for damage neither for heals. Acolyte outperforms it in heals. Damage is much greater on riftstorm (riftwalker with manastorm) or arcanist.

Thank you for da feedback.

 

:)
It is still a very good suggestion and is much better than the current state.
I guess it won't be too bad, since mages builds already work around raw damages due to the low base damage and high spell multipliers.
High max hp also helps the lightbender to support the team more, by tanking.

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btw I was thinking of if healing power (max HP/healing efficiency) buff sunshower and lightweaver, and maybe also dps buff healing slightly. This allows healer/tank-/walk speed- light bender builds to do their solo content more efficiently without needing to switch builds. It also allow playstyles that utilizes lightweaver, with is a very interesting ability that got overshadowed.

(it won't be op maybe except for lament)(statue won't be a problem since -walk speed hurts lightweaver)

 

i respecd into a full light bender for fun and i didn't even unlock ice snake at all. only reason i have it now is because you need it for winded. an archetype shouldn't be able to completely ignore and not even unlock a core spell and have literally nothing change

 

So true (technically my mage is riftbender but I really get the ice snake just for winded, I didn't upgrade it)
Ice snake is just spell cycle or for lament builds to waste their excess mana.

Btw I'm making a whole mage ability tree rework suggestion.

 

i had a dumb idea for ophiron that might be cool
what if there was a passive that stopped it from damaging itself when it hit enemies, but in return every second that it was active the self damage it does for just existing is increased endlessly (and maybe it gets some small buff to validate using it

 

This would actually be an interesting major ID.