Cleric’s First Armor Ability | Patreon Weekly #288

Hey Patrons, in this weekly I’m going to go over some more detailed concepting for the Cleric’s first armor ability!

Also, Here are the results from Patreon Poll #60:
60%: Ascendant Form
57%: Trinity
33%: Power of Many
A close win for Ascendant Form! The results for Power of Many are a little sad (though I know many people don’t care much about allies), but I’m happy with people’s enthusiasm for the other two choices here. As the winner of the poll I’ll be implementing Ascendant Form first, read on for some more details on that...

Bless

Firstly though, really quick, I added a new T2 talent/spell to the Cleric late last week. Bless is a divine caster staple that in Shattered grants the bless buff to the Cleric or an ally, and shielding or healing depending on the target. This is the first case of variable functionality for the Cleric vs. their allies, which is how I think I’m going to solve the ‘self-healing OP’ problem moving forward, rather than with charging based on exp.

Ascendant Form

I’ve spent a bit more time pinning down the design for this ability, and here’s where we’re currently at. Keep in mind that the design here is still WIP and may change.

Ascendant form is a 50 charge-cost armor ability that lets the Cleric assume a glowing godly form with various benefits. They gain some shielding to start with and bonus shielding for each tome charge they consume. I am also strongly considering giving them a ranged basic attack in this form, and having this attack and shielding temporarily replace their weapon and armor. Mainly I want to ensure this form is always useful (i.e. not designing the shielding around a certain armor value), but also worry that making the player forgo their equipment will feel pretty bad. In addition, there are three new spells (each tied to a talent) which are only castable in this form:

One relatively cheap spell I’m going to offer with this ability is Flash, which lets the Cleric blink to a nearby location. This spell will only cost 1 tome charge to start, but will cost more each time it is cast in the same use of ascendant form.

A more medium cost (perhaps 2 or 3) spell is Judgement. I don’t yet have a concrete design here, but I am considering a more powerful short-range attack to complement the potential ranged attack option the ability gives at base.

Lastly, a very expensive and powerful spell, Divine Intervention, which consumes a bunch of charges to grant a massive amount of shielding to the Cleric and all allies on the level. This is the closest the Cleric is going to get to an invulnerability effect I think, and should be very useful as a tanking option, albeit with a usefulness

My current plan is to finish implementing the priest in alpha in another day or two, and then get this armor ability implemented in prep for a beta next week.