Hello there o/
This is an idea that’s been floating around in my head since I saw the new Paladin passive tree nodes that buff Holy Aura and Symbols of hope. After elaborating on it for a few days, I think I reached a concept that I enjoy and that I think would be interesting to play around, while reinforcing the support Paladin playstyle.
The numerical values are more placeholders than anything else, and could be changed if the item would be OP/UP in its current state - what I am mainly presenting here is the item itself, the stats it provides, and when it provides them, rather than the numerical values of said stats.
A few of my general notes on the item:
- Just to be clear, this is a fan-made concept, and is not planned to be added the game in any way.
- I wanted to make an item that would be strong for solo Paladins, but that would shine in party play.
- A stat that I wanted to add, but that would have made the item way too strong with its current stats, was “Nearby Party Members also benefit from Symbols of Hope’s active effect” (granting ward and less damage taken, which currently only applies to the Paladin himself).
- Since the stats on the item are already very strong, they would warrant the item having a high effective level for Legendary Potential (meaning that getting LP on it should be rare).
- While the stats provided might seem very high at first glance, a lot of them are situational, and the player would realistically almost never benefit from all of them at once.
- I chose the Oracle Amulet base because resistance to damage over time is crucial to most, if not all, builds who fight in melee, which is the case of a lot of support-Paladin builds; but the base could be changed.
- Edit: u/SlightRedeye on Reddit has pointed out that this would be better fit to be a relic than an amulet, and I’m inclined to agree. So let’s pretend this is a unique Solar Commandment instead ^^
A few notes about each stat line separately:
+(4 to 8) Attunement, doubled for 4 seconds on directly using a Buff skill
- Attunement is a valuable stat for most Paladins, especially support-oriented ones. It can provide both healing effectiveness to skills that can heal, and damage.
- The only way I can think of to easily and reliably maintain the doubled effect permanently is to self-cast Healing Hands (without making it a movement skill, which adds a cooldown), which represents a large loss of DPS compared to triggering it on melee attack / Smite cast. As such, this option would mean sacrificing a substantial amount of damage, for the benefit of gaining 4 to 8 additional attunement, which I think is a fair trade (and incentivises self-casting Healing Hands, which is rarely ever done currently).
- Outside of self-casting Healing Hands, the doubled Attunement buff would trigger after directly using Buff skills, like Javelin’s Battle Standard, Holy Aura, Symbols of Hope, etc., which fits the support-Paladin playstyle.
(20% to 50%) increased Healing Effectiveness, tripled for 5 seconds when you or a nearby Party Member take Health damage that leaves below the Endurance Threshold
- Healing Effectiveness, on top of increasing the healing of all skills that can heal, can also scale the damage of Healing Hands, Javelin’s Holy Train, and Judgement’s Consecrated Ground/Aura.
- The area of “nearby” is intended to be the same as Holy Aura, i.e. around one screen.
- Triggering the tripling of this effect requires you or a party member taking health damage that leaves below the endurance threshold, which means it can’t be triggered by low life characters, unless they take damage that removes their ward completely and then deals some damage to health.
- The tripling of the stat is not meant to be a buff that you maintain all the time, but something that triggers in dire situation when it is needed. If a way to easily and safely trigger the tripling of the stat is found, this stat line might need to be adjusted, e.g. numerically or by replacing “tripled” with “doubled”.
- While tripling the buff might seem OP, I personally don’t think it is, since triggering it requires you or a party member being taken to very low health, which can very easily end tragically.
- Tripling the healing effectiveness buff helps the Paladin heal their ally who is now in dire need of healing.
(15% to 25%) increased effect of your Holy Aura and Symbols of Hope on allies other than yourself
- Since making the picture of the item, I’ve realized that the numerical value of this might need to be adjusted to (10% to 20%).
- This stat line would help Paladin players who want to buff their party. The fact that it doesn’t affect the Paladin himself is, in my opinion, what would allow this stat line to exist without being OP.
- This stat line would also benefit Paladins who play with minions. As far as I know, the only way to play a minion build as Paladin is with Manifest Armor, since Forge Strike being a Forge Guard exclusive skill means it can’t be specialized by Paladins to increase the damage of their Forged Weapons.
(20% to 30%) increased effect of your Holy Aura for 4 seconds on using Symbols of Hope
(20% to 30%) increased effect of your Symbols of Hope for 4 seconds on using Holy Aura
- Having Holy Aura’s activation buff Symbols of Hope and vice-versa could provide interesting and new ways to use each skill. For instance, using Holy Aura to increase the damage/mana regen/electrify chance granted by Holy Symbols, or using Holy Symbols to increase the attack speed / Holy Flame Burst buildup of Holy Aura.
- Holy Aura has a base cooldown of 10 seconds, and Symbols of Hope has a base cooldown of 18 seconds (which can be reduced to 12 seconds with its skill tree), so the stat line would be inactive most of the time, and would act as “precision buffs” that can be used to provide a burst of survivability/damage/utility.
- Using both Holy Aura and Symbols of Hope at the same time would have the benefit of strongly buffing Holy Aura (with this stat line’s “increased effect” buff, plus the fact that activating Holy Aura doubles its effects for 4 seconds), but since using Symbols of Hope consumes them, the increased effect of Symbols of Hope would be useless. This would be a way to sacrifice your Symbols completely to strongly improve your Holy Aura for 4 seconds.
Conclusion
Thanks for looking at my item concept! ^^ I’d love to hear what people think about it. Though please keep in mind that, once again, numerical values are placeholders, and shouldn’t be focussed on too much - the main point of this post is to showcase the kind of stats the item provides, and when it provides them.
I hope everyone enjoys the new cycle! Take care, and see you on Eterra <3
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ EHG take my energy