Game Mechanics Sacred Surge is awesome, Paladin is not

Hey all! Today I bring you a very special treat: A Sacred Surge info dump!!!! At the end I'll leave some final thoughts about what this all might mean

First off, what the hell is a "sacred surge?" Allow me to introduce you to my new favorite ability:

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Since our friend Sacred Surge needs to be charged with "Holy Power," let's go over all the wacky ways you can get this stuff

Sacred Surge has some really neat interactions!!

War Scream​

• Casting War Scream, of course, gives +1% holy power
• Air Shout gives +1%
• Tempest gives +1%
• Cyclone gives +1%
• Ragnarokkr does not give +1%
• Surprisingly, Provoke does not give +1%
• Activating Mantle (which can be done even if Mantle is still active as long as the “shield” cooldown has worn off) gives +1%
• Activating Corrupted gives +1%

Uppercut​

• Casting Uppercut, of course, gives +1%
• Fireworks gives +1% per enemy hit
• Comet gives +1% per enemy hit
• Flaming Uppercut gives +1% per enemy hit, per activation, and it activates on all 3 instances of damage. This means hitting 1 enemy with all 3 upgrades gives +6% holy power, hitting 2 enemies gives +11%, and hitting 3 enemies gives +16%, etc
• this is so strong that I almost feel like it's a bug...? maybe i shouldn't include this part, for the safety of this insane interaction
• Activating Armour Breaker on an enemy gives +1% per enemy hit (not doubled by Flaming)

Bash​

• Casting Bash, of course, gives +1%
• Quad Bash does not give +1% (goes without saying that Double Bash doesn't either)
• Boiling Blood gives +1% per activation, regardless of whether it hits an enemy
• Massive Bash gives +1% per activation
• Radiance gives +1% per activation
• Thunderclap and Discombobulate do not give +1%
• Bash sucks for charging Sacred Surge!

Charge​

• Casting Charge, of course, gives +1%
• Flyby Jab gives +1% per enemy hit
• Heavy Impact gives +1%, regardless of whether it hits an enemy (doesn’t increase if more enemies are hit)
• Flying Kick gives +1% if it hits an enemy (doesn’t increase if more enemies are hit)
• Cleansing breeze gives +1%
• Given how little cooldown there is, chargespam is INSANELY fast at building Sacred Surge

Other Ability Interactions​

• Generalist gives +1% per activation
• Each mantle cracked gives +1%
• Manachism gives +1% per hit
• Rejuvenating Skin gives +2% per hit. (combines well with manachism to charge Sacred Surge incredibly quickly when taking a lot of weaker hits)
• Rejuvenating Skin still gives +2% even if corrupted (getting hit gives +4% total)
• Shield Strike gives +1% (regardless of how many Mantles or how many enemies hit)
• Sparkling Hope gives +1%, regardless of whether an enemy is being hit

• Charging Corrupted gives +2% per hit (not affected by how much corruption % was gained, so one big dmg hit gives the same amount of holy power as one weak one)
• Massacre melee hit gives +2%! (internally, maybe its +1 for massacre and +1 for charging corruption? I have no idea)
• Blood Pact gives +1% per spell cast (not per health lost)

• Using a powder special gives +1%, (not affected by how many enemies are hit)
• Using a powder special that triggers massacre results in the expected +3%

Things unrelated to Sacred Surge that I learned while testing!:

Spoiler: cool things

• Rejuvenating Skin and Corrupted only give +1% if procced by fall damage (definitely didn't cause any confusion while testing...)
• Massacre counts towards Armour Breaker (getting 30% corrupted at max HP enables Armour Breaker). However A.B. is also tied to HP, so getting 100% corrupted via Massacre with 100% HP, using up the available A.B. charge, then taking 30%+ of max HP in damage will allow another use of A.B.! (comes out to like 6 total possible activations of A.B. in just one use of Corrupted)
• I'm unsure of how provoke works exactly, the wording of "at least 8s" is vague. But the provoke timer in the status effect menu only shows provoke's cooldown, not how long provoke is active for (unlike something like radiance, which has 2 separate timers for its active period and its cooldown)
• Brink of Madness doesn't appear on Wynn's Status Effects menu (bug report time?)

Special thanks to @Calluum, @Asoart, and @Untxtlxd for helping me test stuff!

Closing Thoughts​

Hopefully you guys see how cool Sacred Surge is now! Even if it's not enough to make paladin good (or even that strong in and of itself), I think all the unique interactions between abilities is something that other classes wish they had. I really want to praise the designer/programmers behind this cuz they really did a great job.
On a more bitter note, testing and fiddling around a ton with pala-focused trees made the flaws plaguing this archetype really clear. For one, Bash barely interacts with Sacred Surge, which is problematic when 2 bash upgrades (stronger and cheaper II) are directly imbedded in the tree, as well as one of bash's best upgrades, Radiance, being a pala ability. All of these issues are simply symptoms of a much simpler one: base bash is the sewer grime of spell hitboxes (and yeah, im talking quad bash). Battlemonk has the best solution: scrap that bash and enjoy Thunderclap. Fallen, meanwhile, has massive bash (with massacre to keep it massive every time) or, as we all know, it can simply synergize with Bmonk and take thunderclap.

So what should happen? Well, 1-hit, 2-hit, and 4-hit bash are all so unbelievably ass that it's offensive. I think all 3 need a complete overhaul that at least makes them usable without upgrades for paladin's sake. I understand that this might be hard to balance seeing that quad bash is available very soon into the game (but then again so was pre-2.0 bash so is it really that hard). So, another solution would be to make Thunderclap more accessible to Paladin, by lowering its reqs and adding a direction connection to idk stronger sacred surge or something. This would be balanced by giving Cyclone a 7 Bmonk ability Req, so that Bmonk can't access tclap any easier than before (and yea that sucks for Cyclone but even without a bmonk req, no one is taking that ability if they're not just trying to get tclap and/or discombobulate. it's..... not a strong ability).

But yeah that's all! If you managed to get through all that, thank you!! Feel free to leave praise down in the replies for how in-depth this is (or i guess u could leave feedback on the proposed changes... if you want )

 

very indepth

 

if u use the temporal lantern for many damage ticks and activate corrupt does it charge many sacred surge for many damage

 

I like Sacred Surge, but I feel it could use a minor buff in damage even if charging it up isn't much of an issue.

Also, the fact that charge spam is the fastest way to charge it up is weird since it isn't the usual Paladin build, meanwhile bash could fill it up more, since its a more used spell in the class.

Also, as usual in Paladin posts I gotta mention that I miss Burning Heart...

 

How about counter?

 

temporal lantern is a relik, while sacred surge is a warrior ability, so that specific weapon wouldn't do anything. as for negative hpr spears, its definitely possible that it charges surge when you lose hp!

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Yeah the surge itself is really weak. it's only a little bit more damage than the hit that fireworks gives (fireworks is 100% of dps while ssurge is 120%). the biggest issue is that, unlike fireworks, each 25% chunk of ssurge only damages ONE enemy. so at 100% holy power, you will only be adding extra damage onto 4 enemies.

i know!!! i definitely would like to see bash charging ssurge a lot more than it can right now

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Yep! I initially left out some abilities that I thought would be straightforward, but in hindsight that wasn't a good idea since there are so many weird interactions and who knows how something seemingly "straightforward" (like counter) might interact

 

This is some great work

 

tyyy!! :DDD

 

Sorry my memory messed up I meant the utility trinket with the same texture that lights u on fire and heals you I think it’s talisman of the valley or at least from bonfire

 

really cool thread loved it (didn't read it) (real)