Introducing [Chronostasis, Dawn Blade], a new supporter unique coming in version 8.4

General
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Introducing Chronostasis, Dawn Blade, a new supporter unique coming in version 8.4

Chronostasis, Dawn Blade is my supporter unique (I’m Corax on Discord) and it will be joining the world of Eterra with the release of 8.4. Before I jump into a detailed explanation, there’s an important clarification on the first mod: It has a very wide roll range, and the version shown in the picture is on the very low end. While none of the numbers are final, it can go up to 2000, breaking flat damage records beyond even the strongest two handed weapons.

The unique design

One thing I knew from the start is that I wanted a systemic unique, as opposed to a skill or class-focused one. Even though it’s pretty fun to build around uniques that tie very closely to a single skill, I prefer the kind of item that interacts with a general, widely available mechanic, without too much coupling to a particular class.

I decided to go with Ward as a theme, as I’m pretty enamored with the mechanic; I love the volatility of the balance between generation and retention. My goal was to design a unique that turned Ward on its head, allowing players to build around it as an offensive as opposed to defensive mechanic.

One thing I really cared about is keeping the item non-obvious, suggesting different build directions. I intended every mod to push against each other in some way, so that no build can (at least not easily) exploit its power to the fullest, which goes with the theme of a misunderstood artifact. Some of these conflicting directions:

  • The sword provides intelligence and ward generation, which are powerful spellcasting and defensive bonuses, but attack speed and flat damage are only usable through melee attacks.
  • The ward to damage conversion rewards powerful, slow strikes, but the high attack speed works for fast hitting builds.
  • Lining up high damage attacks often requires generating mana quickly to use on the big spender, but quick attacks that generate mana would consume the ward.

I’m hoping players will come up with creative ways of using the item to the fullest, such as by using a spell/throwing mana generator and an infrequent high damage melee skill “finisher”. I certainly have some build ideas to try, and I’m happy that there are many approaches I’m excited to try wit the Ward using classes, and surprisingly some with the non-ward using classes too. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, and I hope you’ll get to enjoy it too!

Theming

The lore behind the sword is deliberately pretty vague, as it’s meant to showcase an undecipherable artifact from some distant era past or future. While it manifests as a weapon when wielded as such, it may just be a part of a larger machine, the implication being that it requires much more energy than a single person can provide (though if someone is capable of building a full attack speed build that maxes out the Ward consumption mod, I’ll be impressed!)

The design process

Communication with the EHG team flowed extremely well. They understood what I was going for immediately, and they helped me pinpoint the spots where it could be completely degenerate (I initially wanted the ward mod to be uncapped and take all of your ward, go figure) and shore up the lackluster aspects (the intelligence mod was EHG’s idea, for example, which really helps round the sword up).

Huge props to their artist(s) for taking a few vague directions and references and turning them into this absolutely kickass piece. I can’t wait until 3d art is rolled out for uniques, I think this one is going to look great.

Thanks to EHG for making this possible. I’m excited to support LE and watch it grow from the very start. Looking forward to your thoughts on the unique, and to see what builds you come up with!

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Thanks for sharing your design! It’s interesting to hear how creators go about concretising their own design creations :smiley:

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Hate to say this but… THATS A LIGHTSABER and I want one… :wink:

I hope its 3d artwork matches the 2d… glowy bits and all…

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@Falcord What is the first build you plan to utilize this unique? I only have 2 low-life ward builds at the moment, so I’m trying to envision how to build around spending ward as a trade off for damage. Maybe grab another charge for Flame Ward, build mainly around health, then just pop Flame Ward, use a melee skill for extra damage?

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Please duplicate the description of the first ability of this subject in the topic so that it can be translated with the help of a translator.

P/S
As for me, this is how the Humming Bee was originally supposed to be.
When I started the game, I wanted to make a build with the game from Ward, but unfortunately its effectiveness is very low in my opinion.

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Your Melee Skills consume up to 541 Ward.
Gaining +1 Melee Physical Damage per 10 Ward Consumed.

Dual wielding this weapon does not provide this benefit twice but it will raise the maximum ward you can consume for additional damager.

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The first thing that comes to mind is Surge with a full focus on Ward.
Another question is that the damage is physical, and there are not many ways to translate it into elemental.

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I wonder if Tempest Strike might be able to take advantage of the Physical damage, since attack speed is static for it, you could theoretically build around a certain amount of ward generation for every Tempest Strike attack.

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Here’s a very very rough sketch of the first build I’m planning. The idea is to go Rogue and bank on Flow, mechanics that boost the next attack, shadow generation, and ward gain on shadow creation.

I can create 4 shadows with sync strike and potentially another with dash (overwriting one of the previous) for a big boost of ~150-300 ward per shadow, then stack a bunch of damage boosters for the next attack (cascade) which is optimized for a big one-shot hit.

Since most of the ward generation is obtained in the rotation itself (from the shadows created by sync strike) the build should be able to keep up sustained damage if you get into a flow rotation of flask, sync, dash, cascade. Shuriken is only for the shielding and the automated trigger on dash.

Weapon set would be a high roll Chronostasis and an off-hand smoke weaver for the lower Dash cooldown.

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Yep, I have some ideas for a beastmaster with this sword, with the following themes:

  • “Honest” low life using Exsang and a lot of Endurance and max HP to stay alive at low life, to exploit the absolutely insane Berserker node.
  • Crows with Forager / Silverberries to get constant ward generation from crows (since you’re always below 50% life).
  • Tempest Strike to scale single powerful hits as opposed to attack speed, and leverage the weapon attack speed mod in a different way.
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I really like this, just because it uses two mechanics, which usually don’t work very well together.

Using Berserk in conjunction with Endurance sounds brilliant.
You probably don’t even want that much endurance threshold.
And maybe even a little bit of hp regen or so, that you actually stay on a few hundred health instead of <100.

I guess you could also use your unique just 1 time and try a ward setup that does constantly generate more ward, than you consume, so that even after consuming ward, you still have some ward left as buffer.

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By the way, a question arose.
Does he consume 541 wards for each hit?

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It literally says “consume” on the item.
So yes.

Also just keep in mind, the “541” is not a fixed number, but a roll and it’s actually on the lower end of the roll range.

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Well, not exactly. It consumes ward on attack, not on hit, so attacks that hit multiple times (or multiple enemies) will only consume ward once.

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Yep all good points :slight_smile: ideally I’d have just enough regen to stabilize a bit below low HP (though it’s probably difficult with the crows constantly pecking me for 75hp, but I’m sure that can be factored in)

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And a hit that touches nothing will also consume?

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Yes. Well, this is my understanding of the item based on wording and conversations with EHG anyway, but it’s certainly my intention. Ward is consumed on performing the attack (think of it as an extra cost, but one that can be paid partially), and it buffs all the hits that result from that attack.

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If you’re going low life with Exsanguinous/Last Steps of the Living then Endurance won’t have any effect on the damage you take to ward, it only affects your hp.

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I know, but that’s the idea: use ward exclusively offensively, and have an endurance-backed high HP buffer as our EHP pool behind it. Naturally it won’t be 100% efficient (we’ll get hit with ward and lose damage) but I think it can work well.

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Ahh. You’d either be quite glass-cannon if you used Exsanguinous & something that consumes the ward, or you’d have enough leech to keep your hp reasonably high so Exsanguinous won’t give you much ward to consume.