Paladin Parity Suggestion Package

[Sevyrr]

Reading through this, I am imagining this will introduce a much higher skill cap than paladin currently has (...not really hard to achieve).

Until you mentioned the cleave toggle effect, I was not very sure about that, but (trusting in your number-crunching) the dps-rate seems very balanced, and adds tremendously to what I've always loved about sword-wielding classes in other games: I love to spam cleaves. Even if not efficient... *cleave*.

Could you give some more information about how you would expect your dual-stage Clemency to work? Outside of a prose description, more in terms of the functional mechanics that would be going on behind the screen.

[Shurrikhan]

Reading through this, I am imagining this will introduce a much higher skill cap than paladin currently has (...not really hard to achieve).

Until you mentioned the cleave toggle effect, I was not very sure about that, but (trusting in your number-crunching) the dps-rate seems very balanced, and adds tremendously to what I've always loved about sword-wielding classes in other games: I love to spam cleaves. Even if not efficient... *cleave*.

Could you give some more information about how you would expect your dual-stage Clemency to work? Outside of a prose description, more in terms of the functional mechanics that would be going on behind the screen.

Yeah, sure. The situations it be used in mostly just follow its few advantages, though, e.g.:
1. (Surecasting does not accomplish) being able to dodge AoEs after 1.5 seconds into the cast and still getting the Cure off. - Without increasing overall combined HPS/DPS aside from the heals being more able to actually be used.
2. (Surecasting does not accomplish, Swiftcasting accomplishes only in so far as beating healers to the heal) Can prevent overhealing by ending early. - Faint, faint increase to HPS/DPS at 2.5s+ if overhealing would otherwise occur.
3. (Surecasting does not accomplish) Can end early to better time a heal to go off immediately as a TB, etc., hits (preventing death by near-simultaneous AA).
4. (Surecasting does not accomplish) Can end early to get off the bare minimum heal needs before the target dies.

So aspects in which it has been improved:
1. When movement may be needed, but WM would suffice (plenty of current content)
2. For mana efficiency (when a healer got to your target first)
3. For timing (especially on MT)
4. For immediacy (saving 10% health dps from a 12%-of-max-HP dmg death, etc.)

In terms of what's going on 'behind the screen'...
1. Cast shows full mana cost. Actually requires 50% mana cost to start.
2. Cast starts, no mana cost yet. Interrupts will cancel the cast.
3. Cast reaches 50% progress (1.5s normally). Interrupts will now release the heal at <progress>% healing for <progress>% mana cost.
4. Cast now adds tracks progress, and uses the progress % at finish for its %healing and % mana cost. May continue to charge until 100% progress for 100% healing and 100% mana cost.
5. Automatically goes off after reaching 100% progress/healing/mana cost.

As for the whole cleaving aspect of Swords, same.

I kind of wish it was just the default for numerous abilities, likely with DRK being the king of cleave vs. lighter armored enemies and WAR vs. armored, while PLD has to use Sword Oath just to sort of extend/etherealize his blade just to somewhat keep up (Sword Oath allowing PLD to keep up not via any added cleave function, really, but by other bonuses, that allow for an even higher skill ceiling...). I mean, I look at Scourge, or Spinning Slash, or Delirium, or Power Slash (its shadow blast after), or Maim, or Storm's Eye, or Rage of Halone ('s shockwave), or Royal Authority, or Aeolian Edge, or Whirling Thrust... the animations of each of which go right through every nearby enemy, yet only hit one...
Heck, I wish the damage types actually differed from each other in more than just name and categorical inheritance/mutual exclusion... Such that maybe Storm's Eye could apply something that increases cleave modifiers, Dragon Kick interruption via damage (for which blunt damage would already be king), and Disembowel could increase armor penetration.

But alas, that's for another day... Going to hide this heresy now.

[MrTherm]

Just going to compile my recent responses all here:

I could totally do the first part (in bold). Instead of Shield Oath "reducing damage dealt" it would just read "reducing weaponskill damage dealt". It would only equate to about a 2% dps increase though, or 6-9% total when combined with the refreshable Shield Swipe. I don't see how AAs being revised to work with SS would provide enough of an effect to be worth the loss of dps per TP compared to Det/Crit, however. Similarly, Determination still affects Auto-attacks, just at a lesser level (probably equal to or less than Crit's average effects, now), and changes there, like my Skill/Spell Speed merge, would have external effects. Especially when taking into account the balance from external effects, that would be no less complicated that +25 potency to all attacks (and 25% of weaponskill damage done to nearby enemies). I personally like the %HP-dependence of Spirits Within, but would not be sad to lose it, either.

[MATH] Each GB-RoH-RA does 2200 weaponskill per 22.5 seconds without the Sword Oath modifier suggested in the package (using 280 RoH). With Shield Oath, that would be 1760. Normally Shield Swipe, 100% health Spirits, and CoS would each do 10 potency per second or 225 potency per tri-combo or 8 pps and 180 per tri-combo in Shield Oath. oGCDs ignoring Shield Oath's .8 modifier would save 2 pps or 45 rotational potency, increasing MT WS/Abil DPS by 2.05%. A single Riot - Royal combo would drop this to 2.02%. A single RoH dropped for RA would reduce it to below 2%.

Now, that correction also allows AAs to bypass the reduction, so let's calculate those too to test:
100p/3s * 22.5s = 750 potency. With Shield Oath, 600 potency. 150 potency saved. (2200+225+750)/(2200+600+180) = 1.065, or 6.5% dps increase if Shield Oath's modifier ignored both AAs and oGCDs (only affected weaponskills). Now that would be sizable, though far from able to make up a gap between, say, 650 and 800 dps (23%).

Best part: that damage bonus wouldn't fade when not proccing blocks.... I like.

(I still want some unique way to supply Shield Oath AoE dps though, such that a DRK would swap into MT position for Blood Price, but if low on CDs, the PLD could swap back into MT position for AoE burst via Bulwark while the DRK spends his mana gains without being fettered by Grit's damage modifier, etc. I don't want PLD to be limited solely to OT when paired with a non-PLD.)

Even though I thing it would work I myself am still a bit weird with the whole SS effecting AAs. One of the reasons I personally lean towards this is its rather unique for PLD to have AA buffed. No other class gets that.


While I'm sure you could math this out better than me, currently my AA does 375 a swing on average for the main hit, with 230 being average secondary hit. With FoF, it averages to be 480 and 300 a swing. So for 60 seconds we do ~605 damage and for 30 seconds I do 780 damage every 2.24 seconds. 60/2.24=26.7 swings. 26*605 =15730 30/2.24= 13.3 swings 13*780 = 10140 15730+10140=25870 total damage for 90 seconds. I should mention this is all NON-crit attacks 25870/90 = 287.4 DPS just from auto attacks if all non crit in 90 seconds.

DRK does 560 average (with darkside) every 2.96 seconds 90/2.96 = 30.4 auto attacks in 90 seconds 30*560= 16800 total damage /90 = 186.6 DPS from auto attacks with no crits in 90 seconds.

Sorry, no WAR to give numbers on ATM.

100 DPS difference from AA is a pretty LARGE difference. This is why I feel that they should re-evaluate SO effect on AA to close the gap on overall DPS. DRK gets TONS of skills. WAR gets really HIGH burst skills, so whats PLD get for a niche? If a PLD does 900 DPS in a 3 minute fight, then 30% of it is from AAs. If DRK does 1100 DPS total, only ~15% of its DPS is from AA. So if somehow, SE made PLD do an extra 100 DPS in 90 seconds to bring its DPS up, i feel that it would be more than enough of a boost. Would it be top? Nope. Would it be last? Sure. But it could still compete, and its damage is going to be a hell of a lot more consistant. Nothing wrong with having 'entry level, easy to play' jobs. I know personally, in raids, I'm typically focusing on the fight and yelling at people to do things rather than trying to maximize my DPS. AKA, busy being a leader and guide people thru things while also not eating dirt. But blah, i'm going off on a tangent about how I feel tanks should be played. Lets not get into that one.

This would also help keep the way PLD is played very much the same and very much in its own genre rather then copy-pasta "stacks" like so many other jobs have. Could SS effecting AA bring the damage up proper levels? I think it depends on how its done. What if you only had that effective bonus when under SwO and FoF and the AA delay was dropped.. 25%? or even 50%? I don't know, random numbers. Good chance that they do need to revisit DET's effect on AA also for this to work. (Random personal note: I remember reading about the DET effect on AA in patch notes, but i thought it was removed, not reduced. Either way it was bad. Kinda like how they screwed with shield block %s. But maybe that's just me being bias.)

I also have some more opinions about how much DPS they should do while under ShO but meh. Its late an i'm tired so it can wait.

This of course does not solve the overall TP issue and issues with Vial/clem, but hey, those are easy fixes.

Blah Blah Blah TL;DR - There are tons of fixes/changes to be made. Which is best? who knows. What will SE give us? Probably a steaming pile of poo because they probably already planned on what they are doing and are sitting back drinking beers while reading the forums like its a soap opera and laughing at us..

[Shurrikhan]

snip

Easiest comparison is just 33.33 potency / second from AAs (100/3*wepspd) per hit) for basic AAs. DPS value remains the same regardless of weapon speed. Sword Oath, however, deals the same damage, 50 potency, regardless of weapon speed, such that your AA DPS would be increased to 200% with a 1.5s sword (or, heck, 300% with a 1.0s sword), but would only be 150% with a 3.0s sword. At current that bonus doesn't scale with SS either, simply because AA frequency doesn't scale with SS.

That's what annoys me about the current Oath. We'd be roughly balanced on OT ST dps if we PLDs just all had, say, 1.2s swords (two thirds of an extra Fast Blade every GCD). But instead we get 2.08-2.24 weapon speeds. Bummer. If it at least had just been standardized to "increases AA damage by 70%" then we'd be at the rate of about a 2.0s sword all the time, and at least that much wouldn't annoy me, but I wouldn't get those bonuses to Sword Oath tank enmity that I wanted either (as compared to 25 more potency on all weaponskills and abilities, the prior of which at least scales with Skill Speed).

To compare across a GB-RA-RA tri-combo (22.5s at 2.5 GCD, 1 GB tick clipped):
WS dmg: 500+150+200+340+150+200+340+150+230 --> 2260 (65.3% of total dps)
oGCD dmg: 10 pps x 2 (x3 if blocking) * 22.5s --> 450 (675 if blocking) (13.0% of total dps, 19.5% with blocks)
Base AA dmg: 33.333pps x 22.5s --> 750 (21.7% of total dps)
Oath-less total: 3460
SwO w/ 1.8s sword: 22.5/1.8 *50 -> 625 :: (3460+625)/3460 = 1.181 --> Sword Oath increased your dps by 18.1%.
SwO w/ 2.1s sword: 22.5/2.1 *50 -> 536 :: 1.155 --> Sword Oath increased your dps by 15.5%.
SwO w/ 2.4s sword: 22.5/2.4 *50 -> 469 :: 1.136 --> Sword Oath increased your dps by 13.6%.
SwO w/ 2.7s sword: 22.5/2.7 *50 -> 417 :: 1.121 --> Sword Oath increased your dps by 12.1%.
SwO w/ 3.0s sword: 22.5/3.0 *50 -> 375 :: 1.108 --> Sword Oath increased your dps by 10.8%.

As for the other stuff, I'm not sure our block %s are that far below what they were in First Coil/CT, which is essentially where we're at right now. The only thing we know for sure is that they aren't affected by STR anymore.

In regards to closing the OT gap via SwO, my aim here was to standardize SwO contribution across varying sword weapon speeds (without necessarily increasing OT dps by SwO alone), while getting as many QoL adjustments out of a relatively simple SwO effect as I could. I'd rather not increase the ST DPS gap between SwO and no-Oath/ShO any further than it is. Instead, I've added a rotational option that would primarily be used by OTs in the form of the Riot Blade>Royal Authority combo option (for an extra 60 potency per GB, or 1.7% dps in the current system, or ~1.6% in the modified system). This combined with my Sword Oath should bring it to about a 16% dps increase, if my Excel charts here are up to date, about even with a 2.0s sword, which SE doesn't seem obliged to give us anything faster than, with numerous small QoL changes consequent to it.

If I need to push SwO further for balance, I could push the bonus onto 'all attacks' instead of just 'abilities and weaponskills', for half of the current SwO's bonus--overpowered at up to a 23.6% dps bonus--or write that but actually have it add the 25 to the per-3-seconds potency calculation of the auto-attacks, increasing it only by 25%, thereby adding only 187.5 potency per 22.5 seconds or 5.1% dps in the modified system, giving Sword Oath a total of just over 19% dps bonus, roughly a Maim instead of a Darkside. RoH adjustments, if RoH would have been frequently used, will add another 20 potency (.5% dps) per use per GB compared to pre-buff RoH usage, up to a 20% dps bonus from Sword Oath in a GB-RoH-RoH rotation.

E.g. If needed:
Sword Oath - increases the potency of all attacks you deal by 25, and causes your weaponskills to cleave enemies for 25% damage at 20% additional TP cost (to a maximum of 200% cost). [Cleaves do not apply additional effects.] [In actuality, AA dps is increased by 25%, or at the per-3-seconds calculation, not by 25 potency each AA.] --> ~19.5% increase in DPS.

Similarly, increasing the weaponskill/ability potency bonus from 25 to 30 would increase the DPS gain by another fifth, to around 18%. Increasing the ability damage bonus from 25 potency to 25% would increase DPS output by around 3%, to around 17%(?).

[Sevyrr]

In terms of what's going on 'behind the screen'...
1. Cast shows full mana cost. Actually requires 50% mana cost to start.
2. Cast starts, no mana cost yet. Interrupts will cancel the cast.
3. Cast reaches 50% progress (1.5s normally). Interrupts will now release the heal at <progress>% healing for <progress>% mana cost.
4. Cast now adds tracks progress, and uses the progress % at finish for its %healing and % mana cost. May continue to charge until 100% progress for 100% healing and 100% mana cost.
5. Automatically goes off after reaching 100% progress/healing/mana cost.

Yeah, this really helps. I follow through with your thinking there.

As for the whole cleaving aspect of Swords, same.

I kind of wish it was just the default for numerous abilities, likely with DRK being the king of cleave vs. lighter armored enemies and WAR vs. armored, while PLD has to use Sword Oath just to sort of extend/etherealize his blade just to somewhat keep up (Sword Oath allowing PLD to keep up not via any added cleave function, really, but by other bonuses, that allow for an even higher skill ceiling...). I mean, I look at Scourge, or Spinning Slash, or Delirium, or Power Slash (its shadow blast after), or Maim, or Storm's Eye, or Rage of Halone ('s shockwave), or Royal Authority, or Aeolian Edge, or Whirling Thrust... the animations of each of which go right through every nearby enemy, yet only hit one...
Heck, I wish the damage types actually differed from each other in more than just name and categorical inheritance/mutual exclusion... Such that maybe Storm's Eye could apply something that increases cleave modifiers, Dragon Kick interruption via damage (for which blunt damage would already be king), and Disembowel could increase armor penetration.

But alas, that's for another day... Going to hide this heresy now.

.... In a perfect world, eh?

[Februs]

I think PLD just needs some basic fix's, as I only really have trouble with overgeared DPS or equal/over geared DRK/WAR's.

Those "Fix's" I think should be: A) something to give TP regen when used, like a 5sec buff with "shield swipe" that gives 20tp a tick...or every hit made while buffed by "Fight or Flight" gives back 5-10TP

FoF, sure, but not shield swipe. I only mention this because you're not the first person I've seen make a suggestion involving "fixing" Pld Tp issues using Shield Swipe and it's flat out a bad idea (sorry, but there's no gentle way of putting that). Any changes to the way Pld's can manage Tp should never be tied to a move that requires a physical hit to even proc. OT Pld's would be screwed and in the exact same boat as they are now, and MT Pld's would be even more useless than they are now in fights that have primarily magic based attacks (A4, Nabriales, etc). If SE uses Shield Swipe as a means of giving Pld back Tp, all they would be doing is solidifying the choice for War's and Drks in those fights. Pld would never be seen.

[Februs]

There's definitely an issue with attached cleave when starving for TP (especially if you need damage/enmity on just one enemy in particular). With the 20% TP cost increase per enemy cleaved, to a maximum of double cost, it'd be hitting 5 mobs by the time it costs as much as Overpower. Overpower would however deal more damage by the time they're each hitting 4 mobs.

I think the escalating dmg I was referring to was a Pre-edit issue in which the standard Tp costs of Pld's kit would outlast the Tp cost of Overpower.The reason I picked out examples of 10 or more wasn't for the sake of scaling Tp, it was for time. Bigger pull typically = longer fight. A War would have a strict number of Overpowers they could use before murdering their own Tp bar. Pld's current standard Tp costs would outlive that by miles, so, even at a much weaker dmg output, Pld would outdo the dmg of War in such circumstances by being able to continue their AoE rotation for much longer... at least that's what I think I was talking about. I honestly don't even remember posting this...

Anyway, your Edit addresses the issue by ensuring that Pld's could not throw this power around willy-nilly, but I'm not so sure that the fix would be viable...

I mean, speaking of coding issues, I could make an embedded toggle, where you toggle the cleave on/off instead of leaving Sword Oath. You enter Sword Oath and next recast activates Sword Oath's cleave (hit again to deactivate cleave, rather than deactivating Sword Oath). Shield Oath would still have reasons to be dropped slightly early (if you wanted to finish a combo for full damage before popping Sword Oath), but there is 0 advantage to dropping Sword Oath early, after all.

It's kind of like a similar coding disaster I've always wanted to see, two-stage cooldowns, abilities that you can add cooldown time to while they're already cooling for greater effects within, say, 3 seconds of activating a more basic component of the ability. For example, lets' say you had a Holmgang stage 1 (which pulls the enemy to you and leashes the mob to you at a 1 minute CD), and stage 2 (pulls all the way to you one more time and performs the rest of the typical Holmgang function, but adds 2 minutes CD time).
I think I saw an suggested example like this before for Thrill of Battle, using a 2 minute CD if used only personally, or a 4-minute CD if made party-wide??

The problem I can see with this is creating an overly complex system that's inaccessible to players, especially new players or those who do not play on PC (remember that the field is shared with us Ps4 people now who don't have the same ease of access with modifying their hotbars and such... at least in default settings). War has a complicated system of management with Wrath/Abandon stacks, but the reason it works is because it flows smoothly. Wrath/Abandon stack in the background without conscious effort from the player. They just have to rotate their combos. That's the beauty of it. It's so simple. All you have to do is what you would normally be doing otherwise, and their rotation gains all the additional complexity of the Wrath/Abandon mechanics.

Making this change to SwO would not have that simplicity of use. We'd essentially be talking about modifying a stance within a stance that you had to stance dance just to get to in the first place. Never mind the fact that there would be the added technical issues of: "which version of SwO is default? Which is the one they transition into at first click of SwO? Do the two different versions get their own buttons (essentially giving Pld 3 stances), or is it a double click mechanic? If a double click, how do we have to change the current GCD to account for a player who wanted Version A over version B of SwO when first swapping?" The list goes on. After that, you have to deal with the actual implementation of modifying SwO to the version you want in-practice when using your skills. For me, this means that a double-click feature is not an option, because the GCD timer would immediately put a halt to Pld rotations (similar to the way Shield Swipe used to), thus delaying their combo by one full turn of the GCD. With that, there only leaves one options, which is a separate button used to buff or modify sword oath. Presumably, this button would be OGCD, and Pld's could use it to toggle on the fly, making their rotation a little more smooth... only, we've seen this mechanic before.

Dark Arts.

Toggling the cleave on/off from SwO would be essentially mimicking the OGCD mechanics of DA on a Drk (only difference being that it would not terminate after use, like DA).

[Shurrikhan]

The problem I can see with this is creating an overly complex system that's inaccessible to players, especially new players or those who do not play on PC (remember that the field is shared with us Ps4 people now who don't have the same ease of access with modifying their hotbars and such... at least in default settings). War has a complicated system of management with Wrath/Abandon stacks, but the reason it works is because it flows smoothly. Wrath/Abandon stack in the background without conscious effort from the player. They just have to rotate their combos. That's the beauty of it. It's so simple. All you have to do is what you would normally be doing otherwise, and their rotation gains all the additional complexity of the Wrath/Abandon mechanics.

Making this change to SwO would not have that simplicity of use. We'd essentially be talking about modifying a stance within a stance that you had to stance dance just to get to in the first place. Never mind the fact that there would be the added technical issues of: "which version of SwO is default? Which is the one they transition into at first click of SwO? Do the two different versions get their own buttons (essentially giving Pld 3 stances), or is it a double click mechanic? If a double click, how do we have to change the current GCD to account for a player who wanted Version A over version B of SwO when first swapping?" The list goes on. After that, you have to deal with the actual implementation of modifying SwO to the version you want in-practice when using your skills. For me, this means that a double-click feature is not an option, because the GCD timer would immediately put a halt to Pld rotations (similar to the way Shield Swipe used to), thus delaying their combo by one full turn of the GCD. With that, there only leaves one options, which is a separate button used to buff or modify sword oath. Presumably, this button would be OGCD, and Pld's could use it to toggle on the fly, making their rotation a little more smooth.

Sorry, tired-me wasn't being very clear. Looking at the fix now, it would indeed require a coding change to work smoothly. Essentially, once Sword Oath is cast, "Sword Oath" would have to change from a Spell (which requires a GCD to cast, and requires you to wait until the follow GCD to recast/drop, though queuable to that effect) to an Ability (truly oGCD) for true smoothness. When toggling less often though, the mere fact that all future recasts cost neither mana nor a GCD should be smooth enough (much like dropping either Oath, or Grit/Songs, is now; since Sword Oath itself would never fade, each 'recast' would follow the same parameters as dropping Sword Oath does now).

Really I just need four pieces of coding, two of which are already in game.
1. Recast doesn't remove the original ability (as per Defiance/Deliverance/Cleric/Fists while on CD)
2. ^ but working via the limitation/protection of having a CD/CD-based lock-in. (E.g. if, after learning Deliverance, hitting Defiance again simply swapped you to Deliverance instead of dropping all Wrath stacks for a "shit, fat-thumbed the wrong stance" moment, or if Fists couldn't be dropped, only swapped)
3. Original ability causes 2 effects (as per Vengeance - Vengeance (50 potency reflect) + Vuln Down).
4. Recast affects only the bonus effect.

So, ideally:
Using Sword Oath originally (cast, consumes GCD) would apply the buffs 'Sword Oath' and 'Cleave (25%)' (or w/e cooler name works). Using it a second time (oGCD) would drop only 'Cleave'. Using it a third time brings 'Cleave' back (oGCD), and so forth (all oGCD). You should be able to pop Sword Oath and turn off the Cleave immediately, well before your next GCD is ready, if you don't wish to break nearby CCs. The only time Sword Oath would use a GCD is when coming from no Oath or Shield Oath; once up, only when swapping to or from Shield Oath.

To be honest, I feel like this change should have already been made to all stance-based spells (e.g. Sword Oath, Shield Oath, Grit, Foe Requiem, Army's Paeon, and Mage's Ballad), so that player's needn't wait into the following GCD to drop them (ever the delayed Blood Weapon swap, ever the irritating Ballad drop), but this would be the first thing that would make it actually necessary.

If that were impossible, I would indeed need to use a third oGCD ability to toggle the Cleave function of Sword Oath at drain/multiplied cost (in this case TP, rather than Darkside's mana drain). Of course, I would then apply a mirrored function to Shield Oath as well, and possibly even for no-Oath. In other words, something like Inspire - unlocks an additional buff depending on your Oath, but with a new penalty as well.

Edit: Granted, the ability to drop stance-type spells as if they were oGCDs does come with the same problem as Cleric Stance does already when used back to back -- double clicks. In all cases but this modified Sword Oath, you'd want a small safety window to prevent automatic cancellation by button-mashing.

[Februs]

In all cases but this modified Sword Oath, you'd want a small safety window to prevent automatic cancellation by button-mashing.

Ah... those "PANIC!!!" moments.... been there.

Actually had a run of Arboretum the other day in which I somehow accidentally dropped ShO. Held aggro fine (much to my surprise), but with much more difficulty, and the healer couldn't figure out why I was taking so much more dmg than normal. Took another 1 or 2 pulls before we realized my Oath had disappeared.

[Shurrikhan]

Ah... those "PANIC!!!" moments.... been there.

Actually had a run of Arboretum the other day in which I somehow accidentally dropped ShO. Held aggro fine (much to my surprise), but with much more difficulty, and the healer couldn't figure out why I was taking so much more dmg than normal. Took another 1 or 2 pulls before we realized my Oath had disappeared.

And that Defiance dropping example comes from a landfill of experience. I kept making the mistake of messing with my Ctrl-1 through Ctrl-4 section of my hotbar, on which Defiance and Deliverance were located, such that my muscle memory would make me hit the same stance instead of swapping (there goes the 5 stacks I wanted for FC...). I wanted so badly for Defiance/Deliverance to just toggle into the opposite, and for Inner Beast to immediately turn into Fell Cleave once in Deliverance, and Steel Cyclone into Decimate... alas, that too, is one of those coding issues, I guess.

Edit: Thanks again for all these checks again, btw, Februs. Hard for me to know what's getting across and what I'm missing without it.