What Collective Unconcious could be

Let's face it, even if they buff the numbers on Collective Unconcious to 3000 potency per tick and 90% DR it's still going to be a really boring ability. The animation for it is totally sweet so it needs two totally sweet and unique effects tied to it.

Let's see some ideas, the only guidelines are that you can't just copy the effect from some other class and avoid numbers, just put X potency or X%, values are for tuning and this is just about ideas. You also can't change the animation of the ability so it needs to be an AoE spell. You don't have to have the effect for both sects but it's nice if you do!

Here's my take on it.

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Diurnal Sect:
Time Heals All Wounds
X% of damage taken while under the effect of Time Heals All Wounds is healed back over Y seconds.

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The idea is trying to stay within the theme of the Diurnal Sect by providing a heal over time effect but doing so in a more interesting fashion. It would still require you to be channeling and stand still to maintain the effect but depending on the damage pattern you don't need to maintain it for a long time to get a powerful effect that would be kept in check due to the nature of scaling to incoming damage.

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Nocturnal Sect:
Stasis Field (Yes, it would change name depending on the currently active sect!)
Prevent all damage taken by players while under the effect of Stasis Field. When the effect ends each player takes X% of damage prevented this way over Y seconds.

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Again, the idea here is to try to stay within the theme of the associated sect and that means preventing damage (or delaying it, in this case). Dispersing damage spikes over a span of time feels very Astrologian to me. Again, you'd need to channel and remain stationary but you're rewarded with a powerful effect. Some mechanics may need to pierce this effect or alternatively the effect may have to "shatter" if a player prevents more than a set percentage of their maximum health in damage.

Also, as a final addition, there's nothing saying that the value of X in any of these effects HAS to be below 100%. it could be absolutely anything so please don't get hung up on the numbers themselves!

Thoughts? Ideas?

Nice thread! I really like your idea about noct CU (stasis field). My idea is the following:

Diurnal Sect:
Every player in the bubble is healed by #players inside*5% of (max hp - current hp) per tick.

Nocturnal Sect:
Damage mitigation for every player in the bubble by #players inside*2.5% of damage taken and damage is equally shared by all the players inside the bubble.

I wouldn't change the name of the skill. I linked the effectiveness of the skill to the number of players inside the bubble, so the word "collective" is fine.

I also know that they might be a little OP with those numbers, but simply adjusting the % value would be enough to make them "right". However, since you can't move while channelling it, I think it should be very powerful in its base effect.

I think just adding MP refresh to it would go a long way.

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Originally Posted by Zholi

I think just adding MP refresh to it would go a long way.

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I second this.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

I wouldn't change the name of the skill. I linked the effectiveness of the skill to the number of players inside the bubble, so the word "collective" is fine.

I also know that they might be a little OP with those numbers, but simply adjusting the % value would be enough to make them "right". However, since you can't move while channelling it, I think it should be very powerful in its base effect.

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I really like this, this is cool.
The thing with forcing you to stand still and channel a spell is that it's a very high price to pay so the effect has to be very strong. If you can coordinate in such a way that you have 8 players standing in one for a while you deserve to get something totally sweet out of it so I'm very on board with this.

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Originally Posted by Zholi

I think just adding MP refresh to it would go a long way.

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It's so boring though :(
Also, I fear this would just turn it into a mana cooldown more than anything else. While that would make it more useful I feel it might defeat the purpose of giving AST a useful cooldown to aid healing but still being something with an AST twist to it.

This thread <3

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Originally Posted by Seeri

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I really like your idea as well. And the idea of the more people inside, the more potency it increases, kinda like how Essential dignity work, but in term of number of people.

In addition, I also don't like the fact that we cannot move within the duration. I would very much prefer if they adjust so:
-CU has bigger range of effect, like 1.5-2 times bigger.
-You can move and use skills inside the bubble, but you cannot move out. If you move outside, the spell is broken.

I don't like the ideas that you should be able to move when using CU. In my opinion it really gives the skill visual flare that you can't. I like the idea though that it gets stronger the more people are inside the bubble, it's like more people submitting their minds to you the more powerful you get. I love it!!

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Originally Posted by Seeri

It's so boring though :(
Also, I fear this would just turn it into a mana cooldown more than anything else. While that would make it more useful I feel it might defeat the purpose of giving AST a useful cooldown to aid healing but still being something with an AST twist to it.

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I agree with you on both points. It is boring, but it's just boring enough that it might actually make it into the game. I thought about making it AOE refresh, but that seems like it might be a little overpowered, like a ballad on steroids. Yet, the skill almost HAS to be overpowered. A lot of people, and especially the designers, seem to underestimate just how severe a penalty being unable to move and unable to act for 18 seconds is. In my opinion this is by far the most costly skill in the game, and if they are going to keep that aspect of it, the payoff needs to be huge.

And honestly, the design of this skill obviously began with "look cool like Y'shtola," and not "be useful." The skill has a lot of nice "flavor" to it, but it just isn't really usable.

It's probably considered too OP if I share my idea, but if C.U. wasn't tied with what sect you're in, and did both diurnal and nocturnal effects throughout the duration of C.U., I'd use it every chance I get and finally feel uniquely valuable. I think it'd be fair since we sacrifice any movement and can't do extra heals if AoE's encompass the C.U. radius. Regen (aspected diurnal + aspected helios diurnal) wouldn't be enough to make up the extra damage taken while I can't move, unless there's a tip I'm missing. I also don't feel that this would make AST any better than SCH or WHM if C.U. did both diurnal and nocturnal effects.

Either raise potencies and percents for both sects if we have to channel. Or give it a unique effect. Like hp bubble+heal like war thrill of battle and put a random card effect on all players that enter.

Because atm having to channel something equal to sacred soil in strength is a very bad down step.

Or just combine both the effects from both the sects (cure+hot+reduced damage) and just slightly lower the potency. The only time I have ever used CU is when I know incoming AoE damage is next in the boss's rotation and would normally pop it a few seconds ahead of time. Just makes sense that an ability like that would need to compensate for the lack of mobility.

I like the idea but the one for nocturnal is WAY op - like could easily cheese mechanics with it.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Nocturnal Sect:
Damage mitigation for every player in the bubble by #players inside*2.5% of damage taken and damage is equally shared by all the players inside the bubble.

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O_O Spirit link totem for astrologian would be amazing!

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Originally Posted by ckc22

I like the idea but the one for nocturnal is WAY op - like could easily cheese mechanics with it.

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Lowered potency could possibly resolve the cheese aspect of it, that and lowering the duration so you actually have to time it correctly to be of any use.

Your Noct sect idea is fabulous.

What if on top of all this you got auto-raise while inside the bubble!? WHAT!?

My take on Collective Unconscious:

Creates a wheel of fortune around the caster. Effect granted to members upon entry differs depending on active Sect. Can only be executed when a Sect is active. Effect ends upon using another action or moving. (This is all unchanged.)

Duration: 6s

Diurnal Sect Effect: Grants party members in range Diurnal Unconscious
Diurnal Unconscious: Regen. 200 Potency. 12s Duraction

Nocturnal Sect Effect: Grants party members in range Nocturnal Unconscious
Noturnal Unconscious: Damage taken is reduced by 10%. 12s Duraction

The idea is pretty straight forward. It would still be a channeled effect, but it would only need to be maintained long enough for party members to enter and receive the buff effect. At that point it can be cancelled, but the buff would remain on affected party members for its full duration. Effect duration subject to change.

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

My take on Collective Unconscious...

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Interesting Diurnal Effect.
Noct Effect however is still too weak. Let me elaborate.
Consider what a SCH has to mitigate damage versus what an AST in nocturnal sect has.
SCH: adlo+deployment tactics, sacred soil (and you can move while using it), virus, possibly E4E and, in some circumstances, even fey illumination for a more powerful adlo shield and even covenant.
Noct AST: aspected helios (succor), CU (a harder to use version of sacred soil), disable (weak virus) and that's it. I'm not even going to consider expanded bole, that would be just sad and in order to have it with a reasonable probability you would have to save spread for a bole and throw away some cards, making AST role as a buffer totally useless.

Adlo+deploy alone is stronger than all of AST's skills combined and if adlo crits you won't even need all the other skills. If AS3/4 have some unavoidable aoe damage (something like gigaflare) when the party will need all of the SCH mitigations to survive (+dragon kick + storm's path or whatever), it will be a wipe with an AST/WHM combo, making SCH a necessity. This is simply wrong. AST/WHM, AST/SCH and of course SCH/WHM should all be viable combinations. Noct AST must be comparable to SCH in max potential damage mitigation (probably something less since SCH should use a lot of different skills to maximize damage mitigation). Right now it's considerably weaker than a 2.X SCH. Noct CU should be completely reworked to give it something original and very powerful to justify the fact that we cannot act while channeling it. If they're too lazy for that, they should at least make it so that damage is reduced by 15-20%.

What if we in addition to the other effects of CU (preferably not the current ones) also got the ability to let everyone inside the bubble get the buff from the card in our current Spread? Someone somewhere suggested a similar thing but with random buffs, although I didn't seem to be able to find the post in order to give full cred to that person. Giving everyone the full effect of the currently spreaded card (as opposed to halved potency with expanded RR) could be one way to boost our buffing capabilities, but I don't know if it would be too powerful even if the spreaded card was consumed in the process, but it's an idea anyway. Random buffs could work, but we do want our buffs to be as controlled as possible. Still situational of course, but very effective in battles which encourage stacking.

In the 1.0 Limsa Intro Movie, Collective Unconscious is a actual physical barrier. Quite interesting, you think?

Stasis field: all targets split damage equally. Noct sect.

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Originally Posted by ckc22

I like the idea but the one for nocturnal is WAY op - like could easily cheese mechanics with it.

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I very much understand the potential for abuse, that's why I said:

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Originally Posted by Seeri

Some mechanics may need to pierce this effect or alternatively the effect may have to "shatter" if a player prevents more than a set percentage of their maximum health in damage.

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The mechanic itself would never be overpowered, the execution of it could be but that's why I left out numbers. As an example, if the effect shattered early when a player has prevented 100% of their max health in damage and then took 1000% of the damage prevented this way over 6 seconds the effect would be useless and you couldn't actually use it to cheese anything at all.

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

The idea is pretty straight forward. It would still be a channeled effect, but it would only need to be maintained long enough for party members to enter and receive the buff effect. At that point it can be cancelled, but the buff would remain on affected party members for its full duration. Effect duration subject to change.

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I think it's an interesting idea to have the channeled cast create a persistent effect on the people hit by it. It certainly serves to make the channel feel less punishing.

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Originally Posted by Aldebaran92

What if we in addition to the other effects of CU (preferably not the current ones) also got the ability to let everyone inside the bubble get the buff from the card in our current Spread?

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Personally I feel the cards on their own are random enough as it is. I like that aspect of AST but I'd like to pile on some more reliable tools in addition to that.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

Stasis field: all targets split damage equally. Noct sect.

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This would also be sweet. I think Collective Unconscious works better as a name for this effect though!

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

My take on Collective Unconscious:

Duration: 6s

Diurnal Sect Effect: Grants party members in range Diurnal Unconscious
Diurnal Unconscious: Regen. 200 Potency. 12s Duraction

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I personally think Collective Unconscious in Noct Sect is fine the way it is, but I think something along the lines of your idea for Diurnal CU is needed to make the spell usable in Diurnal Sect as a proper CD.

To preserve the current feel of it being more powerful the longer you channel it, I think it should grant a 12s duration 200 potency regen on the first tick, but continue to refresh duration to 12s every tick until they leave the bubble. That way it is a powerful cd to aid us in aoe healing, keeps the flavor of the ability as is, but also allows it the potential to be even more useful the longer we maintain the channel.

PS. I also really just want to say that I hope the devs seriously look at changing how this spell works in Diurnal Sect..the situations that its used in Noct Sect (bubble/shield up for boss ultimate etc.) doesn't have any movement going on, in most cases a Diurnal AST is main healing and wants the regen effect, they "have" to move after one tick, or people are moving out of it to go attack the boss, or an aoe telegraph appears a split second later, or the tank gets a big hit and you have to stop channeling to do something else. this spells potential is wasted in roughly 95% of situations, it has to be changed..

Could be great if with diurnal sect you can put an aoe on the ground and players heals 50% of damage dealt to the enemies in our aoe for X seconds. Then in nocturnal players gain 10% damage absortion of their damage dealt for X seconds.

+1 love this animation so much. I hate that I don't get to use it often.