Bedevil. Is it a liability to have now?

Linus

Bedevil in its current state has become a liability. If it was possible, I would unlearn trans healing to get rid of it.

Here is my logic in it becoming a liability. In a recent fight against Eloru, Eloru forced me to put bedevil up so that I could no longer use any of my healing abilities allowing her to darkshade stack me and kill me. There is nothing I can do to prevent bedevil being forced as it's usable off balance/EQ (which I was off both when I was forced to use it) Additionally, there is no way to deactivate it once it's activated.

Even if you got rid of the passive defense, the active Bedevil is now stopped by arms broken or paralysis. Additionally, It heals some afflictions before transfering them. In testing today, I bedeviled four afflictions, and none of them transfered to the target. All four were healed. And with the change to healing, I can't just stack heal linus arms/heal linus arms/heal linus paralysis/stand/bedevil. So unless I am one affliction short of being locked, without broken arms does this become useful, and even then, I can count on half of the afflictions being cured off me, so whatever I bedeviled is cured in a single volley as I have no ability to stick additional afflictions on people. Even constantly smite/chasten/disrupt earth and or spirit ontop of wrack, I diagnose before every attack and do not see any afflictions stacking. 

Does anyone else have better experiences with it since the patch nerf?

Traelor

I've been struggling a lot with how to use it effectively. Isaiah got through mine yesterday and killed me by giving me darkshade and stacking paralysis until I keeled over. An effective strategy for sure.

Keeping it up against Lilian seemed to help me in the fight more than hinder me, and keeping it up versus Alchemists seems to work some of the time. I also have found that keeping it up versus knight classes can occasionally transfer venoms to them.

My suggestion is to keep it up and not use Healing for your afflictions anymore. IMO, Healing is of some use to heal allies in group combat or to help with herb stacking, but it's just not much good to use for healing your own afflictions anymore. With disrupt and spiritlash, look at the skillset as something to use offensively instead of a get-out-of-jail free card like it used to be for us. Heal deafness, dazzle and chasten. Get ahead of their herb balance and stack some afflictions on them. Spiritlash is your new best friend.

Tesha

It's definitely a liability in its current form, as there is no defense against it. On one hand, a counter to healing is a positive thing, on the other hand, force bedevil (defense) is so strong a counter that there is nothing to guard against it.

Priests are using their healing balance for offense primarily, switching to defense when they're put in a tough spot. For that reason, it's as easy to build momentum on a priest as it is against a paladin, apostate, or anything with a single form of passive curing. 

What happens is they let affs build up because they have healing to fall back on if they absolutely need it, and suddenly bedevil is forced on out of the blue while they were already letting their opponent build momentum against them. So when they need healing, it's blocked for a full minute, with no way to recover.

Since there's no counter to force bedevil defense, the only other counter is not letting people build momentum at all, by not using disrupt. This is boring and takes things back almost to where we were before disrupt/healing balance. 

Cleanest solution is to just make bedevil (defense) require equilibrium/balance to put up, so at the very least, you can defend against it the same way you defend against most force things. Another solution is making bedevil defense mimic active bedevil, but one affliction at a time every X (5?) seconds. This would make it less devastating to be forced. Could also make turning bedevil defense on cure you of afflictions the same way using active bedevil does.

The largest problem is the fact that this transcendent ability is a larger problem for the user than it is for the target. We already have a lackluster transcendent ability in bloodsworn (maybe this will be better after next classlead season?!), letting bedevil be this much of a weakness seems kinda meh.

Honestly though I think this is more of an oversight than an intended feature.

Traelor

Spiritlash is about 10X more useful than Bedevil. It should be the transcendent ability now, IMO. I stacked some afflictions the other day, hit inquisition+lash and got about 15% of their mana all at once. That helps me a lot more than Bedevil.

Jhui

Can someone lay out the specifics of passive bedevil?

What % does it proc?  What types of attacks does it proc on?  What happens when it procs (both parties receive the same affliction?)?  Can you use spirit disrupts when it is up, heal blind/deaf?

#noob

Tesha

Well, ideally the solution wouldn't be switching bedevil and spiritlash in the learning order. The solution would be to make bedevil not such a gigantic weakness.

Traelor

Jhui said:

Can someone lay out the specifics of passive bedevil?

What % does it proc?  What types of attacks does it proc on?  What happens when it procs (both parties receive the same affliction?)?  Can you use spirit disrupts when it is up, heal blind/deaf?

#noob

Th procs seem to be too random to tell. It sometimes reflects afflictions back at the person who gave them to us, and sometimes heals them from us. Can't heal anything while it's up, but can still use disrupts.

Tesha

It's low chance, 30-50%-ish, which is rather meh. No notification when it procs, only for the attacker. Attacker gives us paralysis; if it procs, it will give them paralysis, too. You can disrupt while it's up. It's either going to be too mild or too strong, with RNG and what proc chance it's set to determining it.

Jhui

how hindery is a priests offense if they really want to be affliction wise?

Are you worried about getting locked?  Serpents have a dead give away (snap) when they're going for a lock, which means they'll both have to snap to force bedevil as well as wait for the impatience to tick.  That's still easy to not get locked.

Bard I can see it being very tough, but you can force them to auralbless you or call harmonics to slow them down right?  Passive healing is still good, and bards use a lot of mana last I heard.

Seems like a very useful skill imo and makes your offense much stronger if you get a few good procs against affliction heavy offenses as long as you are still able to manage your curing and situational defense/offense.

Goggo

bedevil lasts a while so they can do it long before going for the lock

Traelor

Jhui said:

how hindery is a priests offense if they really want to be affliction wise?

Are you worried about getting locked?  Serpents have a dead give away (snap) when they're going for a lock, which means they'll both have to snap to force bedevil as well as wait for the impatience to tick.  That's still easy to not get locked.

Bard I can see it being very tough, but you can force them to auralbless you or call harmonics to slow them down right?  Passive healing is still good, and bards use a lot of mana last I heard.

Seems like a very useful skill imo and makes your offense much stronger if you get a few good procs against affliction heavy offenses as long as you are still able to manage your curing and situational defense/offense.

The problem with hindering is the amount of RNG. I -can- get paralysis, recklessness, clumsiness, nausea on you, but because Chasten gives a random affliction instead of a set one, it's more about spamming and hoping.

I see Bedevil as good against some classes like Bard/Alchemist/Apostate/Knights but useless against others. It's more about affliction stacking and then spiritlashing to grab chunks of mana on the way to an absolve than it is about locking anyone.

It's frustrating because of its randomness. It's not like applying a set of venoms with a goal in mind, it's just spamming afflictions and hoping enough stick for spiritlash to grab a bunch of mana and help towards an absolve.

Jhui

Right, that part sounds shitty.  I've never really liked the randomness of priest offense, but I'm not sure if bedevil is necessarily a bad ability.  It's guaranteed extra offense with some added risk.

Traelor

Agreed, and I like the spirit of how it is now. It was terribly overpowered for a long time and feels much more balanced now.

Tesha

Jhui said:

how hindery is a priests offense if they really want to be affliction wise?

Still exploring that. Chasten's new mechanics are random but don't overlap, so if you're building momentum, 20% chance to paralyse turns into 50% chance to paralyse. If you don't have momentum and you're starting from scratch, it's 20% chance to paralyse. It can give weariness and clumsiness, but I need more fights to be able to tell whether normal priest can build affs enough to hinder effectively. 

Are you worried about getting locked?  Serpents have a dead give away (snap) when they're going for a lock, which means they'll both have to snap to force bedevil as well as wait for the impatience to tick.  That's still easy to not get locked.

Yes. Serpent isn't as much of an issue because snap is a warning before the force. I wouldn't say it's -easy- not to get locked with hypochondria change and dstab cap, but it's definitely easier to avoid than Bard.

Bard I can see it being very tough, but you can force them to auralbless you or call harmonics to slow them down right?  Passive healing is still good, and bards use a lot of mana last I heard.

Minuet is a free force, force is ~3s eq with 2k devo cost (devo cap is 65k). Not feasible at all to spam force for a defense measure, and I doubt anyone would be up for a force buff to make it feasible.

Seems like a very useful skill imo and makes your offense much stronger if you get a few good procs against affliction heavy offenses as long as you are still able to manage your curing and situational defense/offense.

Maybe. It's hard to say one way or another, RNG is RNG.

@Traelor priest is a lot less random-based than you might think at first glance. Don't forget our other abilities, the randomness combined with no doubling up on things combined with almost all of chasten's affs being desirable is a good thing, and was great for the class.

Jhui

So we've essentially boiled this down to, bedevil is working exactly as intended and is pretty helpful.  Bards are OP.  Correct?

Traelor

Tesha said:

Jhui said:

how hindery is a priests offense if they really want to be affliction wise?

Still exploring that. Chasten's new mechanics are random but don't overlap, so if you're building momentum, 20% chance to paralyse turns into 50% chance to paralyse. If you don't have momentum and you're starting from scratch, it's 20% chance to paralyse. It can give weariness and clumsiness, but I need more fights to be able to tell whether normal priest can build affs enough to hinder effectively. 

Are you worried about getting locked?  Serpents have a dead give away (snap) when they're going for a lock, which means they'll both have to snap to force bedevil as well as wait for the impatience to tick.  That's still easy to not get locked.

Yes. Serpent isn't as much of an issue because snap is a warning before the force. I wouldn't say it's -easy- not to get locked with hypochondria change and dstab cap, but it's definitely easier to avoid than Bard.

Bard I can see it being very tough, but you can force them to auralbless you or call harmonics to slow them down right?  Passive healing is still good, and bards use a lot of mana last I heard.

Minuet is a free force, force is ~3s eq with 2k devo cost (devo cap is 65k). Not feasible at all to spam force for a defense measure, and I doubt anyone would be up for a force buff to make it feasible.

Seems like a very useful skill imo and makes your offense much stronger if you get a few good procs against affliction heavy offenses as long as you are still able to manage your curing and situational defense/offense.

Maybe. It's hard to say one way or another, RNG is RNG.

@Traelor priest is a lot less random-based than you might think at first glance. Don't forget our other abilities, the randomness combined with no doubling up on things combined with almost all of chasten's affs being desirable is a good thing, and was great for the class.

Yes, I've been playing the class for over two years now. Jhui's question was about hindering, which is a little too RNG to rely on in its current form, IMO. I think the class is in a great place right now, as mistakes will hurt us, we don't have a get-out-of-jail free card anymore, and Dazzle is actually useful for the first time ever because of the changes to Chasten.

I quite like Bedevil being good against some classes and weak against others. Priest finally feels more balanced than I can ever remember it being.

Spiritlash is the best ability Priest has right now and can take large chunks of mana with proper affliction momentum. Finally we have something to use against people who put their mana priority at max. Getting an absolve feels like more of an accomplishment than ever before. However, Chasten still has an RNG element to it and I'm not an RNG fan.

Tesha

Jhui said:

So we've essentially boiled this down to, bedevil is working exactly as intended and is pretty helpful.  Bards are OP.  Correct?

No. It's able to be forced while off equilibrium and balance, which is a huge weakness without any counter. It doesn't mean instant-lock against serpent, but that doesn't mean it's working exactly as intended.

Mishgul

People avoid getting locked against serpent without fitness or passive healing by fighting intelligently. Occultist and Jester really have very little going in comparison. Bard I can see being tough, but serpents have so many warning signs when they are about to go for a kill (more than 3 affs? Darkshade for more than 4 seconds? Snap?) that if you are dying to them, it's generally a curing mistake and not because you lack x ability. 

Tesha

To clarify, the problem isn't that bedevil makes Priest instantly die to afflictions, the problem is that it can be forced while off equilibrium/balance and has a long equilibrium of its own. It's comparable to being able to force satiation while target is off equilibrium/balance with the added effect of taking something you're used to having (tree, for example) and making it inaccessible for 60 seconds.

Austere

so bedevil is active curing[or affliction hindering] that you don't need equilibrium or balance to use and you are complaining?  I am confused.  Please make blood boil usable off equilibrium and balance. 

Melodie

They're not talking bedevil's active effect, but rather the passive effect, I believe.

Edit: Or so I thought, perhaps Tesha is speaking about something different than the original poster.

Tesha

Austere said:

so bedevil is active curing[or affliction hindering] that you don't need equilibrium or balance to use and you are complaining?  I am confused.  Please make blood boil usable off equilibrium and balance. 

Active bedevil = heals afflictions, has a chance of giving them to the target.

Passive bedevil = nothing when you turn it on, but has a chance of afflicting your target with afflictions they use on you, blocks healing, and uses 3 seconds of equilibrium. 

Austere

So the fact you can use it off balance is still useful in a situation or two, but not a lot.  Thank you for clarifying. 

Tesha

I can't think of any situation where I'd want to extend my recovery time by turning bedevil on after attacking. The eq loss is additive, and 2-3 seconds is enough to lose all momentum 

Strata

Can use devo force on anyone with server queuing turned on and the force will take place once they regain balance/eq.

Commences to surrepticiously convince IRE to reverse bedevil changes and/or amended into something to make Priest even more impossible to lock.

Ignores the fact that Bard has serious OP issues at the moment because one has to have a class to fall back on if shit can no longer be exploited on Priest.

Terra

Wtf. Bedevil isn't a weakness at all. Without healing, priests still have passive healing and active bedevil, which is very comparable to other classes. All passive bedevil adds is a -ton- of extra affliction power. It seems to transfer 1/3 or 1/2 of all afflictions to the attacker. It's a great way to fix healing. Healing can be stopped, and the priest gets a major offensive benefit at the same time.

Priest shouldn't be invincible. Having passive bedevil heal afflictions is an awful idea. That eliminates the whole point of making priests killable but able to killed at the same time.

Edit: Didn't realize it took 3 secs of eq. If that's a problem, make it balanceless. I see no problem with that at all. It should be usable off eq and bal though. I like that it's easy to force. Gives affliction classes a chance, while still giving the priest a benefit.

Also, bard is pretty easy to beat as priest. Can sap and absolve while prone, and bard uses quite a bit of mana. I kept getting absolved by Linus before my lock completed, once he went all-out mana-drain mode.

Jarrod

It basically boils down to: Force bedevil is necessary for an affliction class to have any chance against Priest. Because of the limits of force, Bedevil should remain usable as is, off-EQ/Bal. The 'weakness' of Bedevil is that it brings Priest down to the same level of affliction curing as every other class with a passive cure.

If a class is too strong because it's able to force bedevil and lock Priest really easy, that means it can just lock pretty much any other class really easy. Bedevil is fine, fix the actual problem.

Dunn

Jarrod doesn't even go here anymore.

Makarios

Passive bedevil transfers but doesn't cure afflictions. The chance is substantial.

The force off eq/bal wasn't an oversight. We had to come up with something to limit tertiary balance affliction curing (as it was too potent for stalling so many classes, heal/touch shield, etc), but didn't want to just make it blocked by having an aff. This seemed like a reasonable compromise.

The eq cost is a bug though, looks like passive bedevil was using the active bedevil eq cost. Will sort it out.

Terra

Daeir said:

(did you read the thread terra)

Yes. Did you?

Linus said:

In a recent fight against Eloru, Eloru forced me to put bedevil up so that I could no longer use any of my healing abilities allowing her to darkshade stack me and kill me. There is nothing I can do to prevent bedevil being forced as it's usable off balance/EQ (which I was off both when I was forced to use it) Additionally, there is no way to deactivate it once it's activated.

Tesha said:

Cleanest solution is to just make bedevil (defense) require equilibrium/balance to put up, so at the very least, you can defend against it the same way you defend against most force things. Another solution is making bedevil defense mimic active bedevil, but one affliction at a time every X (5?) seconds. This would make it less devastating to be forced.

The largest problem is the fact that this transcendent ability is a larger problem for the user than it is for the target. We already have a lackluster transcendent ability in bloodsworn (maybe this will be better after next classlead season?!), letting bedevil be this much of a weakness seems kinda meh.

Tesha said:

To clarify, the problem isn't that bedevil makes Priest instantly die to afflictions, the problem is that it can be forced while off equilibrium/balance and has a long equilibrium of its own. It's comparable to being able to force satiation while target is off equilibrium/balance with the added effect of taking something you're used to having (tree, for example) and making it inaccessible for 60 seconds.

Tesha said:

 

Passive bedevil = nothing when you turn it on, but has a chance of afflicting your target with afflictions they use on you, blocks healing, and uses 3 seconds of equilibrium. 

I did pretty well at responding to all of these comments for not reading the thread. /confused

Do I have to use quotes more?

Alaskar

yes.

Constructive posts require a minimum of six quote boxes.

Terra said:

Daeir said:

(did you read the thread terra)

Yes. Did you?

Linus said:

In a recent fight against Eloru, Eloru forced me to put bedevil up so that I could no longer use any of my healing abilities allowing her to darkshade stack me and kill me. There is nothing I can do to prevent bedevil being forced as it's usable off balance/EQ (which I was off both when I was forced to use it) Additionally, there is no way to deactivate it once it's activated.

Tesha said:

Cleanest solution is to just make bedevil (defense) require equilibrium/balance to put up, so at the very least, you can defend against it the same way you defend against most force things. Another solution is making bedevil defense mimic active bedevil, but one affliction at a time every X (5?) seconds. This would make it less devastating to be forced.

The largest problem is the fact that this transcendent ability is a larger problem for the user than it is for the target. We already have a lackluster transcendent ability in bloodsworn (maybe this will be better after next classlead season?!), letting bedevil be this much of a weakness seems kinda meh.

Tesha said:

To clarify, the problem isn't that bedevil makes Priest instantly die to afflictions, the problem is that it can be forced while off equilibrium/balance and has a long equilibrium of its own. It's comparable to being able to force satiation while target is off equilibrium/balance with the added effect of taking something you're used to having (tree, for example) and making it inaccessible for 60 seconds.

Tesha said:

 

Passive bedevil = nothing when you turn it on, but has a chance of afflicting your target with afflictions they use on you, blocks healing, and uses 3 seconds of equilibrium. 

I did pretty well at responding to all of these comments for not reading the thread. /confused

Do I have to use quotes more?