Test Discussion GU 122: The Clarion Artifact

I figured they would. Thinking rifle and staff are on the bottom end of it. Waiting on Rej to do all the work haha

Idk, staff does have that fast ranged twirl combo (it's name escapes me at the moment lol) it's speed may be able to throw heals on par with the others but im interested at his findings too

hmmm ... HB and DP ... good options, but firstly they are stationary (by the way, the usual 3 taps of HB in terms of healing are more effective than Pulse Beam ...), secondly, they cannot be cliped off, for example, Shuriken Storm from bravling, inferior to both ...but only until the moment when you start to actively cliping...and then the picture changes dramatically....

Dang, comes in gets us all excited then turns around and leaves.

flowers is fast but good luck getting that off with out being countered

Didn’t get to do any group stuff tonight so I went over and spent time EoG heal loudout solo fighting giganta. My power consumption is thru the roof like this because I don’t have head augs and I’m not buffed at all. Also not running cyborg passive and no generator. So that’s really hurting this build I think. Sorcery, EoG/page/clarion all 200s. Full resto 90 in prec. I survived till I was out of power. I didn’t feel like I didn’t have enough heals with 2 supers in. I’m skimming, LO was prio group pancake blossom skimming super weapon buff. I was under attack the whole time obviously so it was a bit rough but yeah, with power I’d be immortal.

I wouldn’t run it in an EoG build tho personally. I’d rather be spending my time tac swapping phr with scrap. I ran out of super which wouldn’t happen with scrap swapping. Which means my weapon taps (granted I was dealing with having to survive so maybe I’m wrong?) weren’t generating as much super as I thought they were going to.

I do like it. Powers never really been an issue for me on my main so I’ll definitely be getting it. I don’t think I’ll be using it on my solo healer build for newest elites but I’ve been running EoG build more often than anything. I’ll probably have to learn how to make a 5th armory and have an alert healer build. So that’s my healer review. This thing has a lot of potential and it’s going to end up pairing with something we haven’t thought of yet and let healers contribute to the damage column. Next up, tanking with it. Prec ice battle tank. I’m saving dps for last since I feel like better testers will handle that.

I think the shield should pop for a slightly lower health. Maybe 90%?

In addition.

I was also thinking of having the shield pop if your health drops below say 30%? Exact number debatable.

Agree with the health above 90% change but the health below part I’d pass on because if a healers running it, that’s page proc territory and that’s already op. Add a shield on top of that and healers have all the time in the world to react to rough situations. Then on a tank, if they combined this and Everyman, and probably a healer with page, they would have 0 challenge in content.

Since at this point all we are doing is discuss what we think of the effects would it be possible to have a dev weigh in on what is intended and what would be fixed so that we can do more testing? As it stands everything seems straightforward.

Is it supposed to heal allies/pets? If it is not intended will this be allowed to changed?
Is the shield supposed to be slightly stronger than sorcery’s group shield? Will be be adjusted?
Are any of these components ok to you outside of healer role? IE dps/tanks? Will we expect any changes to this?

A lot of the features seem to be almost entirely pleasing for the majority of the players trying it out. Some want it to only heal group members while others (myself included) like it healing pets too (mainly for earth tanking). Some like the shield strength while others are worried that the shield could make it a little to strong for when multiple have this artifact. Some want it to be only usable for healers while others (myself included) like that it can be used by any role to find different play styles.

I ask for a weigh in just so that we can see if any testing should continue as is or if we should ignore testing that would be made pointless by future changes.

Howdy everyone, thanks for all the wonderful feedback for The Clarion artifact; several testers have asked for additional clarification for specific functionalities so I will outline our decisions regarding these functionalities.

1: Healing for NPCs/Pets - while this could be an issue I think due to the frequency and number of targets for the heal I actually find the ability to heal NPCs/Pets could actually boost the functionality slightly

2: Shield strength - The reason why the shield is so strong is due to several factors 1 - unreliability: with a regular group shield you can often prep it right before a big attack or cast for a pickup or as you drop a supply drop, with this shield it is 'mostly' out of your control of when to activate it. 2 - Cooldown: most group shields have a shorter cooldown which increases the overall effective Hp/s granted by the shields

3: Role specific functions - Overall this one is just No, as designers our interest is trying to find new playstyles to offer players as well as find and reinforce existing playstyles to increase their viability in the meta. While I will concede that the Clarion is primarily a healer focused artifact it is not my job to attempt to stifle player expression by forcing their playstyle into a specific box so I would love for players to use our artifacts to find new ways to express a playstyle unique to them.

4: HP Requirement reduction - While this might be a point of contention, the original design actually had it set to activate at 100% I found this clunky to play around and lowered the value slightly to accommodate but for lowering the value more I find that if you are unable to heal a target to 95% hp to activate the shield, it would be unlikely that you would of healed them to 90% or 85% respectively in the same timeframe; in my eyes the shield is a bonus effect for healing a target who does not require additional healing/ a reward for all party members being topped up.

Notable changes:

Shield strength - I have considered lowering the damage negation from the shield from 100% to 80% to nerf its overall viability, but with the above statements to its strength/weaknesses I think it is currently in a good spot.

Damage numbers - another thought for the damage component of this artifact is to reduce the damage by about 30-40% and decrease the cooldown to about 6s (down from 12s) but I personally feel the damage is quite potent in terms of values.

The artifact is fine as is. It's not like the testers are going to max it day one on live and really put it to good use.
Nerfing it would just make the juice not worth the squeeze. *remembers Gem of Horus, Vietnam flashbacks*

Disagree.

Thank you for the clarification. Now that I know that everything on it is working as intended I will love to test it out on different builds like earth tanking for an example and seeing how reinforce/clarion works when compared to fortify in regards to keeping brick alive.

Yaaaaay (drops confetti)

I'd give you all a pizza party if I could lol.

Hello Ranmaru,

The Clarion seems like an interesting artifact. I had some time to try it out on test. I feel like the support side effect is in a good spot as it is now with the new scale changes and may require some positioning if looking to heal certain players.

Though I feel like the damage side is lacking some as it's less than a blast adapter effect and it's only able to proc once with no crits. Perhaps allowing it to proc twice (once every 6 seconds) will help even the damage side or allow it to crit like the heals can. One or the other will do. Both would be nice too but then the slight damage deduction (maybe 15-30%) will be warranted. Reducing it with just the 2 procs and no crits will make it close to the damage that it is doing now.

Also if possible can the heals and damage proc when tossing an object at your target. Right now only smashing an object on your target procs the effects. This will help range users who would like to mix up their play style (weaponization) some without having to be melee with objects to get the effects to proc with this artifact.

Either way the artifact is pretty good and depending on the intentions is a nice additional option to the game for players looking for a different play style. Thank you for your time and consideration. Your work and the rest of the development teams work is very much appreciated.

Sincerely: Brav

1: it’s placing the shield on allies. Doubtful that’s intended but I was alone so couldn’t tell if it would make it so one actual group member would lose out on it.

2: if it stays healing npcs, I’m assuming there’s no priority to actual players? Meaning I’m in a group of 8 and they each have a pet. Will the 4 healed always be players that need it or is it random? (Sorry you dropped but at least I kept your pet alive!)

3: so no to adding any numbers to all the 0s in the 0/0/0/100 part of it?

4: I’d add some commas in the descriptions. It’s pretty weirdly worded without them.

5: I believe it was mentioned and I’ll read back to see if it was answered but it doesn’t get affected by circes mask when I’m running both in tank role. Intended?

5a: if a tank is wearing circes and a healer is running clarion, will the heals that a healer gives to the tank be buffed or are these 2 artis designed to not work together?

An ice tanks review: hahaha you will never kill me again enemies. 342cr, 448sp, no head augs, no generator mods, no league buffs, no consumables, dom bottom augs. Full dom, 100 into resto. Nothing into health. HL, winter ward, reflection, pull, frost slam (running leg mod, I do this for bosses) and weapon buff. Circes, clarion, manacles/mystic/Everyman/trans, all 200s. Tried them all. I kinda liked it with “unshakable” the best. But they all worked well. Circes buffs the frost slam heal into meh ok territory and helps with the regenerative shielding mod. Went and face tanked giganta. Literally never moved. Had to try to die. So you can get the timing to trigger this shield which means ice can set it up really well. Pop the buff, lunge and boom, strong shield. Pop HL after. Then ww. Cooldown is probably ready to reapply the clarion shield. If not, reflection. Basically, once you’ve got a groove, ice finally has self heals and yet another really strong shield. This is an SM necessary arti imo.

The shield does stack with tank shields and weapon mitigation shield in tank role. Not sure intended but for sure does. I’d think rage and atomic are the only tank sets that won’t really want this artifact. Well, rage battle tank types that are might based. Normal rage tanks will also love it. But could be made to work via thinking outside the box for atomic. I’m going to say that this is a must for fire and ice. Probably would replace my circes with it since they don’t stack but considering replacing mystic for it. Well, in my build not feeding it just yet. But yeah, a tank running this won’t die unless you do something really dumb or ignore mechanics. Tanks are already mostly there but this has the potential to make ice the most favored in the game imo. Fires health pool may be a bit too high for the low amount of heals it puts out but an ice tank can now spec full dom/resto 1st and really just ignore health ending the debate of “dom/resto then health or dom health then resto?”

Prec battle tanking ice. I’m not great at prec. I ran it against giganta and cheetah. Changed dom augs for prec and ran trans/clarion/and EoG and tried circes for a bit also. Results were what I expected, basically same as above with more damage. You can survive anything except cheetahs tornados. It seems like you wouldn’t be able to pull off truly hard elite fights like this till you’re familiar and geared up slightly. They did have 15cr on me and again, no buffs and genny mods. I could die but if I had a healer, not a chance and I was putting out decent damage. Got hungry so will try again tomorrow. Still hoping to find some groups but no luck yet. New guy so I know I’ll be picked last.

Revised review: I’ll still be picking this up for my healer. I’ll wait till double most likely to get it to 200 but will absolutely be doing it. Want my scrap at 180 first tho since I want 3 eogs. But now I will also be getting it for my tank. He’s got 200 Circe mystic manacles and will have 200eog next double so his will definitely be waiting for the following double. I’m not sure which artifact I’ll be ditching but thanks to this artifact, he’s finally going prec so I’ll most likely feed his tetra into this and dual role it. Probably replacing mystic for boss fights.

1: The abilities seem to all be under an umbrella. IE if it can heal an ally than it can shield an ally. So this seems to be intended. I personally am ok with it since it gives it risk vs reward. The rewards are the healing and the shield. The risk is the art might heal an NPC instead of a group member. I would not want it to prioritize members since it would make this artifact that much better. And healers do not need any more OP artifacts.

2: So this acts more like a group heal. As in it should target the lower health members. Is it not working that way?

3: I believe that the rank 200 is meant to be a overall buff. So this seems to be intended.

1: if that’s the case, I can see the shields being wasted a lot. We can control our own ally but 7 others can be putting them out whenever. That sorta greatly diminishes its value imo. Even in an alert, you could possibly be “wasting it” several times a run. I mean, if an ally is going to get hit then I guess it’s nice of me to offer them a shield but personally I don’t want them to have it. I’ll be testing this weekend to see if it also goes onto henchman or sidekicks. That would truly depress me tbh. Imo, the shield HAS to go to players.

2: I haven’t been able to get into a group to test. But since it can heal npcs, that means they’re considered a part of the group. So if we’re in an alert and every person is at 70% health and each has an rsk at 60% health, this doesn’t really have any value to me as a healer. That’s why I was asking. Like it’s cool if it can heal npcs but if your group doesn’t get precedent then I see it being far less beneficial and that 100% needs to be put in the description. If someone buys this and then finds out it’s healing things you don’t care about at all, they won’t be happy. Hopefully I can find out if it will prioritize real players 1st this weekend. Or maybe someone already knows?

3: that’s a bummer. While I know the difference would be negligible, I just really hate the look of it. It’s like strat card to me. The 30% at 200 is great. But y’all couldn’t give me 2% at 80? 1% even? It just looks better and adds value to the players spending or grinding. As is now, anyone seen having this under 200 is going to catch grief from the community.

I do still like it but it’s losing the appeal to me with the npc stuff. I know mine will be 200 but how many will be turned off by how much better it is at 200 than 160? I know on my alts, I’ll be passing on it. Granted it makes no real sense for my muni toon but I could use it on my water toon and turn her prec and dual role EoG/trans/clarion but now that’s 2 “better be 200s” and a 3rd “should be 200” on a toon that’s taken years to get 160s.

Personal opinions here of course and I will still be testing it out on various roles and powersets this weekend. It is still a fun artifact either way especially with ice tanking since your own toon will always benefit and that’s important in tank role. Always put yourself 1st haha.

Random thought edit: this healing npcs is also going to cause some confusion. I’ll try to explain my thought here and y’all lmk if it makes sense. When you run 2 healers, sometimes one is far outperforming the other on the scoreboard. That could be because they’re using a loadout that has a bunch of npc healing abilities and the other healer isn’t using any. We all know that npcs have very large health pools. Which is why some healers will drop supply drops on them, to boost their numbers. So if this is constantly healing yet the group is still dying, they’re going to blame the healer with less heals out. They’ll bring in a replacement but that healer was kicked and could have been the far better one. Make sense? Am I overthinking it? Possibly and probably but I know that when I run my shield build on my water toon, my numbers are always questioned. Having to explain that shields don’t show numbers confuses players. Now pit me against an electric healer using this in a npc heavy raid and I’ll look like wet garbage yet am probably far more beneficial.

After spending some time discussing with Charon, I've gone ahead and decided to go ahead and change the targeting formula for the healing proc's they should now properly only target players instead of all 'group' members. additionally I'm going to go ahead and decrease the damage on Arion's might by about 30% and buff the activation time to 6s (an overall net dps increase of about 20%) this should allow it to be a greater impact in overall visibility and damage for the move.

Thanks again for the feedback, it was instrumental in finding out what works for players best.

I feel like my inbox is about to be full of “thanks a lot hell” messages but I think those are fantastic changes. I honestly don’t really get the desire to heal or shield npcs tho I do sort of get the apprehension of players thinking this will be too op. To that I can only say EoG page and phr already exist. Your choice, for end game elite anyway, will be to replace phr with this or to continue using phr. Due to buff trolls, the power back is the most important function of phr. It also happens to have some other nifty stuff. The changes to this balance it enough to be a viable phr alternative (trans also is) since you can spec hybrid and regen that way. And if someone decides to run clarion/ phr/ page then they already know everyone’s going to be asking for EoGs.

But now the best part of it will be the different ways to build your group. One healer with 2 or 3 Eogs running page/phr/EoG swapping scrap and a tank and one or 2 electric dps running this for speed runs or for those that want to solo heal but get handcuffed every 5secs, they can have an electric dps running this and galvanize maybe. All sorts of things seem possible and I don’t think they would have been if there were 19 pets out and it stayed as is.