Game Mechanics Shaman Acolyte Suggestions

Heyo, I'm Toast, long time Acolyte main and shaman enthusiast. I had a long conversation about acolytes balancing and viability as a stand alone subclass, I really do not think that acolyte can hold it's own in the current game state. I'm going to cover my current issues with the subclass and then my suggestions to fix them and help acolyte settle into a more comfy spot in the game.

Problems:

Pure Acolyte:

The main issue I personally have with pure Acolyte is the Ult is not good. Generating Blood Pool sounds useful but given the recent changes to Acolyte and generating Blood Pool, this ends up just being useless. Also you're not often playing with more than 1 Acolyte, so giving other Acolytes Blood Pool is just never used. The healing is definitely nice, though if you are playing Acolyte optimally then this doesn't do very much.

The other issue with Acolyte just fall short in damage. For a subclass based around healing and damage, its damage is really quite weak compared to other classes, while also consuming your health in the process. Other classes like Light Bender feel do better damage and have better healing without also consuming your health. The biggest issue with Acolyte falling short in damage is just that it fails in its job as add clear as it just doesn't deal enough damage to deal with smaller groups of tank enemies.

Impure Acolyte:

The biggest issue is still damage, even with double totem. Acolyte's damage output is just not up to par with other classes, and while healing with double totems is much better, it doesn't make up for the lack of damage, nor is it optimal for healing in any way.

Other:

Something really odd about Acolyte in particular is that, pre-Fruma, it felt like it was trying to be the everything class. Healing, damage, debuffing, buffing, really just everything. Because of this it was just average at everything, and now that it's lost part of its debuffing ability post-Fruma, it just feels below par in all aspects. Originally it was made good with help from Ritualist or Summoner, but now that it's synergy with Ritualist has been, for the most part, completely severed, it feels like Acolyte has been left behind.

Additionally, it's hard to tell whether you should be playing aggressively or defensively. Acolyte's healing and damage suggest playing aggressively and in the front, while the health drain and Shaman's reduced DR suggest that you should play more defensively and in the back. Shaman's general lack of range doesn't help this either. With summoner you can comfortably play in the back as your summons have range. Ritualist gets heavy healing and defensive buffs suggesting you can play in the front as an aggressive healer. But with Acolyte you can't really do either. Too squishy to be in front, Too limited to play in back.

Acolyte feels identity-less. It feels like there's a missing power fantasy here that really should be more explored and would make Acolyte a better class over all. So...

Solutions:

Identifying Acolyte:

When I think of Acolyte, I think of an evil shaman, drawing blood from everything around them. They inflict as much pain as possible, they are extremely aggressive and angry. I almost think of them more as a fanatic than an acolyte, obsessed with pain and blood.

Currently Acolyte feels a little too separated from its identity. Allowing Acolyte to be more aggressive is a great first step. If Acolytes are obsessed with inflicting pain then they should do as much of that as possible. Giving Acolyte more defensiveness by allowing them to redirect damage to nearby allies and siphon Blood Pool off that plays heavily into that fantasy and allows them to more solidly play at the front and be aggressive. Bringing back the weaken even further increases this idea of breaking your enemies down as much as possible and inflicting pain. What differentiates Acolyte from Fallen is that Acolyte wants that pain to last forever, which is also why they turn that pain into healing for their allies.

I think the subclass could do with just being more volatile entirely by increasing damage, healing, and buffing, by siphoning your health, your enemies health, and your allies health (conditionally). This generally allows for more synergy. Speaking of please give more synergy to Fallen and Acolyte. I head canon them as besties and I think they should wok together better.

Overhauling Ultimate:

Currently Acolyte has the worst Ult in the game. It's the only Ult that is purely defensive, and it's not even good at it. It needs a complete and total over haul. My recommendation is to make it a burst damage Ult with healing and overhealing ability. Here's my full overhaul idea:

Casting Ult causes your totem to rise into the air. Your totem siphons Blood Pool from all nearby enemies, dealing damage. Bleeding Enemies contribute more Blood Pool. This over fills your Blood Pool meter. While your totem is in the air, casting aura with cause enemies hit by it to bleed and be weaken. After 5 seconds, your totem will shatter consuming all of your Blood Pool and releasing an aura that deals damage and overheals based on the amount of Blood Pool consumed.

This plays into the fantasy that your Blood Pool is stored in your totem and you essentially over charge your totem until it explodes. I also thought it was odd that Blood Sorrow is the only Acolyte ability that applies overhealth, I think the Ult should too. This makes Acolyte's Ult much more usable and definitely way cooler. I don't think my idea should be implemented word for word, it is a suggestion after all, but I think it's a good starting point.

Overall Balancing:

Given my current suggestions, I can see Acolyte being a bit overpowered. I want to bring things like weaken back to the table while increasing all of the other abilities potency and I understand that that can kind of throw a wrench in balancing. I do think that Acolyte damaging allies is a great way to help balance the class in team play, and makes it worse in solo play as you can't redirect that damage. Which I think helps with the balancing. I also think the increased totem damage should stay because shaman just needs more damage but I understand that that is a bit much to ask for. I think Acolyte just needs a lot more team play and viability in endgame content.

And that's all I have to say! I really want a good buff for my baby that makes it more viable for all content. Plus having a more refined power fantasy would be very nice. Let me know what you think! Thank you :3

 

I've never played Aco so I'm not qualified to evaluate these suggestions but

I am consistently outperformed damage-wise by Acolytes in raids.

I've heard that lb's damage was basically obliterated in fruma

 

I have found that Acolyte is good in certain raids. While My damage was pretty good in NOTG and TCC, my damage fell of heavily in TNA and NOL due to the boss being smaller and just all over the place. Also with TCC, despite my damage being very good, I was pretty heavily punished for being near the boss which I think is kind of annoying. Also yea Light Bender is insane right now lol.