Are the Angels worth running these days, either inside or outside paladins? I remember Angel of Mercy and Angel of Protections were run all the time. AoM used to have Paladin Commander and boost healing and was great in Paladins. Angel of Al'Mara was shoeboxed when they changed it to Abuse Charged. How about Bastion or Harbinger? I would love to run an Angels theme, including Blessing of Al'Mara spell, but I'm not sure if there would be enough to take flight (pun intended). Maybe split with ST or some other faction? Thoughts?
Angels of Protection are good, just very overcosted. I still run Angel of Mercy in Paladins, the Boost + Banner is plus 10hp globally to all your champs which is pretty great, I also run her with Divert to increase the survivability of my main champs. Bastion is very much runnable though he can be run for as little as 83 nora or as high as 100+ I think. I run him at 83 and just use him for his Combo Attack. Still running 2xHarbs in my Paladin BG also, run the 83 nora build. Hopefully Angels will be developed further in the future.
Archangel of Al'Mara: Minimum build is 82 nora for Blessed and Charged Heal, 12 dmg, 7 sp, 1-2, 2 def, 52 hp, Abuse Charged, Magic Atk and Flight. Is she worth it? Are any of her other upgrades preferable?
The whole thing happened because I forgot that it no longer had Scale Armor. The idea was for it to soak damage and then depending on the players choice, unleash a ton of damage or heal back up if they selected charge heal. Instead it just sucked because it couldn't soak damage and unless it did it couldn't do damage. Funny enough during that same time I almost selected Archangel to be the recolored rune we got. Paladin Commander and Hoplite have both turned out exactly as I hoped though.
Yeah, I remeber the incident. I think the problem was more evident because in the process archangel also lost 1 SPD. I loved the hoplite change, put it back in the spot of defense stack/phalanx enabler.
- What's more interesting is even after full disclosure and the revelation that this Archangel of Almara result was not intended that there was never anything done to rectify it? ....aka Tweak angel thereby removing Markoth from his crucifix. @Sokolov
Archangel was changed before I came back. As such, I have no context of the original change nor of its intent. Since I came back, I haven't seen any concensus on what Archangel changes there should be. The one I remember that Markoth did got a "meh" grade from Baskit. If there are any specific ideas that you'd like to see, feel free to discuss.
@Sokolov Ok just for starters I'd go with something like this for Archangel of Almara (since she is uncommon it's tough considering, idealy an exotic or even rare would be where theme synergy derived mainly from) Damage: 12 Speed: 6 Range: 1 Defense: 2 Hitpoints: 50 Base: Attack: magical Flight Aerial Supremacy Upgrade 1: Aid Defense, Antagonize, Axe throw Upgrade 2: Protective, Calcify, Boost - Now this is a horn of plenty but more for general archetypes. With upgrade paths for thematic synergy, vanilla power build, or tank build etc.
So it looks like the focus is on keeping the dual nature of offense and defense viable, and the upgrades support either direction. Aid Defense seems to be the odd one out there as it is more of a support-others type ability, though it's thematic for a rune of this nature also. One thing I saw when looking at the Archangel just now is, again, noting how much nora and ability space Charge stuff eats up for ambiguous gain.
Charge Build Suggestion: Aerial Supremacy to Base. Charged Attack to Base. Abuse Charged removed from Base U1: Blessed (Default), Purified, Charged Heal U2: Attack Charged 1 (Default), Abuse Charge 2, Race Charged Build w/o Charges: Damage: 10 Speed: 7 Range: 1 (Or 6 Speed, 1-2 Range) Defense: 2 Hitpoints: 50 Base: Attack: Magical Flight Ironfist Exploit (Or Quest Damage) Upgrade 1 Aerial Supremacy, Scale Armor Upgrade 2: Blessed, Purified, Iron Will
- Yeah it was just too much busy work and effort to incorporate the charge mechanic...it's like all or nothing. The closest I came up with was a module around Abuse charged + damage mitigation (scale armor most likely) + Antagonize/bodyguard (though that doesn't proc abuse?) + Charged "ability". But this was a lot of hoops...to "make" charges work.
- Yeah basically in the interest of making money, just tweak archangel to make sense and save the big Angel rune for an expansion rune. It's just better business...but it's cool that your willing to tweak older runes but don't shoot urself in the foot.