Retouching Archon Hero Talents to fulfill ARCHON fantasy

Classes Priest
1

The current Archon Hero Talents kind of fail to fulfill the given class fantasy of achieving an ultimate form. Instead, it places too much emphasis on casting Halo- a talent and spell less preferred by a lot of players. So I came up with a few ideas to shift the power of the Archon Hero Talents in order to better align with the Archon fantasy. Mostly just for fun.

Primary Talent:
[Perfected Form]
(Shadow) Your damage dealt is increased by 10% during Dark Ascension, and 15% during Voidform.
(Holy) Your healing is increased by 10% during Apotheosis, and for 20 seconds after casting Holy Word: Salvation.

Column 1, Talent 1:
[Power Surge]
When you cast Dark Ascension, Void Eruption, Apotheosis, or Holy Word: Salvation, unleash a Greater Halo from your location that heals allies for (300% of Spell Power) and damages enemies for (250% of Spell Power)

Column 1, Talent 2:
[Divine Ascent]
For the duration of your major cooldown, you levitate off the ground, reducing your area of effect damage taken by 15%, and increasing your movement speed by 30%.

OR
[Incessant Screams]
Psychic Scream leaves an image of you at your location. After 4 seconds, the image will let out a Psychic Scream.

Column 1, Talent 3:
[Resonant Energy]
After your Greater Halo reaches its apex, it returns to you- granting you 3% increased intellect for the first target hit, +1% for each additional enemy or ally hit, up to 6%, for the remainder of your major cooldown, or for 20 seconds after casting Holy Word: Salvation.

Column 2, Talent 1:
[Sustained Potency]
(Shadow) Dark Ascension, and Voidform last 4 seconds longer.
(Holy) Apotheosis lasts 4 seconds longer, and Holy Word: Salvation’s initial heal is increased by 30%

Column 2, Talent 2:
[Word of Supremacy]
Power Word: Fortitude grants you 10% bonus Stamina. During your major cooldowns, increase this bonus to 15%.

OR
[Heightened Alteration]
Casting Fade during your major cooldowns grants you Invisibility for 1 second.

Column 3, Talent 3:
[Concentrated Infusion]
Your Power Infusion effect grants you an additional 10% haste.

OR
[Profane Bargain]
While within your major cooldowns, you gain an additional 5% damage and healing. But outside of your major cooldowns, your damage and healing is reduced by 2%.

Column 3, Talent 1:
[Manifested Power]
(Shadow) While within your major cooldowns, Surge of Insanity requires 1 less Devouring Plague to activate. Additionally, Mind Spike: Insanity and Mind Flay: Insanity will consume up to 2 stacks of Surge of Insanity to deal 100% additional damage, and generate 100% additional healing.
(Holy) While within your major cooldowns, Surge of Light triggers 100% more often. Additionally, Surge of Light can be consumed by Prayer of Healing.

Column 3, Talent 2:
[Empowered Surges]
(Shadow) Increase the damage done by Mind Flay: Insanity and Mind Spike: Insanity by 25%.
(Holy) Increase the healing done by Flash Heal and Prayer of Healing when affected by Surge of Light by 30%.

Column 3, Talent 3:
[Devotion’s Blessing]
Power Word: Shield, Silence, Psychic Scream, and Dispel Magic delay the end of your major cooldown by 1 second.

1 Like
2

I like the direction of this interaction where upon entering into your empowered form or I suppose for Holy if you cast Holy Word: Salvation that you also create a Halo.

But I think that this would be good only if shadows cooldowns remained having a cast time… but at the same time Holy’s cooldowns don’t have a cast time.

If they both were instant cast then the creation of a halo going into those forms would be a bit overpowered I think. But having to both manually cast those forms and cast Halo afterwards is just annoying.

But with Holy and Shadow currently residing in different areas of design philosophy in that right, seems regardless something needs to shift one way or the other.

3

No need to cast or even spec into Halo. “Greater Halo” is just an automatic byproduct of entering Dark Ascension, Voidform, Apotheosis, or finishing your cast of Holy Word: Salvation. It’s meant to make entering your cooldowns have an immediate, dramatic impact. I had to keep some form of Halo in the design of this Talent Tree in order to preserve a bit of the original vision. And while Greater Halo has synergies in the talents in order to empower your cooldowns further, the halo itself is completely removed from the rotation.

4

Well if that is the case that your intention is to avoid having to manually cast Halo ever then… wont it be a bit awkward where you have all this Halo synergy in the tree with the multiple Halos expanding and contracting and your actual Halo spell would not do the same?

Or are you just flat out disregarding the multiple Halo centerpiece that the Keystone and capstone already have in place?

As much as I want changes and updates to Archon, I think its past the point of change regarding the key centerpiece feature of Multiple Halo’s being created and them partaking in the dual expanding and contracting bit. The only real question is how do we make that feel good and fluid via gameplay for Both Holy and Shadow.

One feature I would like to see is being able to create a Halo at your targets location instead of your own.

My approach to implement that is to have a trigger from your own casted/created Halo to grant your next Holy Word: Serenity and Shadow Word: Death to create a Halo at the target. Or something along those lines.

Overall I think the current Archon tree is “fine” aside from the disconnect between the description compared to the implementation. However I have not tested it myself because I refuse to buy the next expansion before I am convinced enough that we as Priests are not forgotten or pushed aside into another patch as we have been used to by now.

But I do see the general attempt that you made to make the description of Archon be more aligned to the gameplay experience to an extent. So its nice to see other ideas and considerations that I haven’t seen or thought up myself yet.

5

I applaud your effort but I think a simpler solution is to rename Archon to somthing else, such as Eminence as you emanate either holy or shadow energy. The problem with the Archon tree isn’t that the abilities are bad, just that they don’t match well with the Archon name or description.

6

The capstone and other talents were reworked so that the whole halo expanding and contracting is less of a factor. In this version, it goes out to do damage, returns to give you a buff, and that’s it. It won’t pulse Halo’s as that gimmick doesn’t really align with the Archon power fantasy. Instead, a lot of the talents aim to provide more buffs and utility within your cooldowns to fulfill that feeling of achieving an “ultimate form”.

7

I think the multiple Halos expanding and contracting could be good in some cases and not so much in others. I think that would benefit Holy more so than shadow.

But I do agree that it’s rather gimmicky.

If anything, would be cool if you could have less Halos… or a singular Halo as you have described where it is super pumped and juiced up to give that damage/healing you want alongside other buffs. Have that be a choice node instead of the lame Halo just does 30% more damage choice.

Then you can really pick if you want to have focused burst or spread consistent healing/damage.

Also, as far as visual aesthetics go, I ponder over the idea that Halo seems rather 2 dimensional and perhaps it need to be 3 dimensional in being an expanding Sphere instead of a ring. I mean a ring is more akin to a Halo but still… something about the description of Archon makes me think that you should be like an explosion of raw energy and explosions are not limited to 2 dimensions.

This once again makes me think of StarCrafts Archon as that is a being of pure radiant energy.

Maybe instead of Halo… you can pick Halo or Divine Star and the Archon Hero talent tree would convert either of those into Radiant Sphere where you explode energy from yourself when you enter your ultimate form (from your cooldown power up spells as you mentioned) and then you can cause more Radiant Sphere explosions of energy at your targets the next time you use X ability be it the Holy Word: Serenity or Shadow Word: Death as I have mentioned or other spells.

To me, that would much more capture the idea of becoming your ultimate self imo.

Edit:

Even further still, perhaps that radiant sphere could last for a bit and every enemy and ally within the sphere take damage and healing respectively as well as power you up so you deal more damage and healing while you are within the sphere. But the radius would have to be massive like at least the size of Mass Dispel targeting circle or even more.

I mean if we are going to remain immobile then at least we should gain some massive advantage while we stay in our sphere of awesomeness lol.

I’m kind of thinking of the Room ability that Law makes from the One Piece anime where he creates a giant sphere and can do amazing things within that sphere. Only we would do more damage and healing and perhaps other buffs like dealing more critical strike bonus healing and damage or something.

Or hey even better still, the sphere you create on yourself from your cooldown activation would just follow you (stuck to you) and when you create spheres around other targets, it follows them… not like how Entropic Rift “chases” a target but actually is a buff/debuff on the target that is stuck to them for the duration unless removed via dispelled.
Then if the target dies, the sphere would live out its remaining duration at the targets location so it doesn’t become a massive waste.

It’s like a super amped up Power Word: Shield except that it doesn’t absorb damage, it just deals damage and healing to enemies and Allie’s within its radius.

You should be able to deal more damage and healing to targets that are within the sphere and you will also be buffed to deal more damage and healing if you are also in the sphere so you can double dip if both you and the target is in the sphere.

Then Phantom Reach could extend the sphere range (radius) and you can have other talents that increase the potency of the sphere or the duration.

Here is a link to a previous thread showing off some interesting FX work and the sphere one could be a perfect fit for what I am envisioning.