This thread was supposed to touch on the topic of devotions, but since it became more of a Dagallon’s and set design thread instead, I wanted to bring devotion conversation into its own thread.
I believe the devs said there will be no new constellations in FoA, but the team has surprised us before, and I hold out on hope that this system will be touched on in the expansion similar to how potions get a big revamp in FoA. Simply put, due to the T3 affinity requirements and plentiful paths to get there, I see these devotions gathering dust as they’re simply outclassed.
Tsunami: Sailor’s Guide, Eel, and Gallows provide infinitely more value in their passive stats AND they require fewer points to reach the same affinity. The proc could be as good as Whirlpool - a T3 devotion - and it probably wouldn’t be used because most builds have far bigger problems with sustain and survivability than needing another proc for more offense. I guess it’s useful early game before your bigger skills come online, but having your only use come in early game is never a good feel.
Vulture: Vulture provides some honestly really good value and stats; except you never need more than 8 Chaos and most of the devotions used to grab the other affinities for Dying God / Abomination / Torch / etc. already give you Chaos affinity as well. Probably used in leveling to get to the 8 Chaos threshold early, but then is otherwise completely ignored.
Anvil: The best Retaliation devotion is Obelisk, which requires 0 Purple to reach. Messenger of War only requires 3 Purple. Vire, the Stone Matron can technically be used, but why use a 5-node constellation when you can use Hammer / Throne (the latter gives particularly nice secondary resistances like Freeze) and get the same or near-identical value with fewer nodes? Also, it has a weird Constitution bonus that I thought was being phased out in general.
Harpy: Fox, a similar devotion but for green affinity, has 6% ADTCH on it. What does Harpy give that’s even remotely close to this? 3% Crit Damage? A little flat OA? There’s just nothing good about this devotion. I’ll use Owl in a few builds and even that one is pushing it in terms of viability; this one simply has nothing.
Bull: I was going to put Scarab in here, but the Shield and Armor bonuses there actually look OK, like there is a defensive build out there that could appreciate what it offers. Bull, on the other hand? Two nodes quite literally have nothing outside a little Physique. The -10% Physique requirement is actually really good for Physical builds who want to stack Cunning while also using Heavy Armor. But zero resistances is simply unacceptable for a 5 node devotion, especially when Turtle, Solemn Watcher, and Ulo exist to give the same affinities.
These are the safest devotions I could think of that people wouldn’t consider even in a vacuum. Some are simply unfortunate that much better alternatives exist. Others have really bad stats that have no place when compared to something like Gallows which has 6% Health, resistances, and racial damage multipliers.
The devotions with 5 nodes have a proc, which is why they are more expensive for the same gain in points.
Vulture is ok, nothing you can change about it that makes it not give 5 points in red anyway.
Not sure what you think is wrong with Anvil. The proc is pretty good if you use a shield.
Harpy gives flat pierce, resist, decent OA, energy regen. If anything it’s a bit all over the place
I don’t think Bull is bad, but… it’s one more proc and when you go for trauma there are other procs that you probably want and there’s only so many skills you can put anything on. So while I’ve tried to put it in my paths it never actually fits
Same thing with Tsunami, the proc is nice, but… I usually don’t have room for it.
The anvil proc is fantastic on retal, the hammers linger for a while, hit all around you, and in any serious fight you’ll have 3-4 of them flying around. As far as the proc itself goes, I’d rate it higher than the Targo or Boar procs for sure.
tsunami and bull are offensive devos, probably why they are short(er) on passives leading up to them. Bull in particular is a strong dmg devo (pet builders specially might see this). - personally i only take Tsunami for “the lulz”(so rarely on end builds), mostly because of the proc being too high cd for my taste(and split dmg). Bull however i’d happily take even on piece builds, would i get miffed if it had some passive nodes beefed up, no, would i “demand” it, also no.
Anvil is kinda ok, there is not really a reason why you’d skip this on a shield retal build unless your block sucks, for non shield retal builds it’s a no-brainer skip
And you need 12 purple for Vire anyway, not sure why affinity reward is a complaint then
Vulture i personally rarely rarely use, but actually see used often in less “minmax”/casul optimization builds, exactly because of it’s big stat spread where other reds are more generic.
I don’t think the issue is actually its stats, compare it to other expensive gold devos and see what you get.
And that’s probably the key, like expensive gold devos, you don’t see it in “optimized” builds, because part of that optimizatin is shaving points off to squee more devos in. Loading golds and reds with bit more stats is probably not gonna change that so much, because getting 2-3 tier3s and 2s or a dozen tier1s is just strong from procs. So it’s a neat filler option or “i really need these stats”.
Similarly one might ask why Crane isn’t equally being raised, but i suppose that one is fine since atleast it sees use in a pet build here or there, despite nothing else.
Harpy, struggle to disagree with, i haven’t used it in a long time, not even when Lee switched back from throne/etc to the more greedy max dmg option because it was doable again
Of the ones mentioned here I used Vulture and Owl. I like Vulture because it doesn’t lock you into a damage type. The OA doesn’t hurt either. It’s one of those where you don’t need it until you do, and then you’re happy it’s an option.
Owl gives insane DoT damage. Nothing wrong with that.
Tsunami I used when I first started the game, but not since then. On most builds I wouldn’t have the skills to proc it. The damage it grants is not exactly compelling.
I really like Vulture but can never quite fit it in a build. I thought about this already some months ago and thought that a t3 constellation that requires a deep investment into chaos (like 15 points) would allow taking it while not causing a combinatorial explosion.
Here is my list of devos, which I don’t use or barely see anyone using:
Autumn Boar: super expensive, I like my crab better, retaliation is always super tight when it comes to devotions so I never take it, instead I go Anvil.
Bull: I Only seen this one for that super duper forcewave trauma build, other than that it’s not being used much either.
Targo, the Builder: it’s definitely used but hear me out… never fully cuz 2 precious affinities is better than 1 yellow (I seen somewhere where people complain about lowest affinity self-worth, which is this).
Attack Seru, The Mirage: most not so loved T3 devotion due to having lots of goodies, it’s skil remains unliked atm.
Vulture: it’s decent but the problem is, I don’t need 20 red affinities when maximum u ever need is 8 for any T3 devos, ever, so I also rarely take it.
Tsunami: on paper it’s really good but costs wayyy too much, like opposite of vulture almost, really dunno what could be done there to make it more attractive to me.
Rat/Wendigo: seems pretty decent but when u actually look at it, it’s just eh, same with Wendigo (I take 3 points there or sometimes 4 and leave it as is).
The biggest problem for Tsunami is not sustain and survivability, but too expensive. Sailor’s Guide needs 4 input and Eel needs 3. This means you can get 1-2 more points on tier 3 devotions. Actually, Tsunami has 14% Fumble that helps survivability.
Besides, 1 second cd means it needs a high-frequency bounding skill to maximizing its effectiveness. But cold and lightning builds already have many good procs and don’t have enough high-frequency skills to assign to Tsunami.
As you say, most time we only need 8 Red. This goal is easy to achieve.
5 inputs and 5 outputs without a proc, this is a bad exchange for tier 1 devotion. 4 inputs for 5-6 outputs, or 5 inputs for a good proc, are two acceptable exchanges.
Anvil is very good. Its proc has the highest damage in all retaliation procs. Much stronger than most tier 2 retaliation procs. High damage, 360 degree, some leech from 45% WD, and 50% chance stun, it does good in both damage and survival. Even some non-retaliation shield lord will use it.
It’s mediocre but ok. Some piercing builds will use it.
Worse than Tsunami. The two face similar situations. Bull is even worse as it is a Phys devotion. 32% WD and 115-230 Phys damage will be significantly reduced by armor. And bull doesn’t have Fumble effect.
I like to use Bull early, even if i know it gets replaced later by dire dear and assassins mark later.
Because assassins mark has weak stat buffs and i don’t need to worry about OA when my gear is constantly changing.
Vulture is the only devotion i have never found a purpose for, I think it would be much better if it gave only 2 points in exchange for very strong buffs
Crane: I find myself using this much less often then other pet buff devotions, mainly because occultists don’t need the poison and necromancers rarely need the vitality, making it underwhelming for both classes. I think it would be better if the 4th node gave bleed resist, because then it would be very good for necro at least.
Anvil was objectively stronger when it didn’t have a 10 hammer limit.
In general, all “of block” procs reveal potential on S&B builds, but going to 100% shield uptime forces you to sacrifice damage, which isn’t compensated by all of the procs. But this is another thread for discuss.
I’ll chip in with my list, i do a lot of different builds. In order of badness:
Scarab. The worst devo, very simple. You only ever take it in any build if you desperately need the 3rd 3 blue + 2 yellow 4 point devo. Stats are very bad, even for retal or block stacking.
Autumn Boar. Again, very bad stats. Proc is very weak. Expensive. You go for 4 nodes for %retal on it when you have spare points in a retal build. That’s it.
Targo. The only devo i sometimes struggle to find on the map cause i forget where it is. Stats are absolute nothingness. So you are looking at a pure proc value on a 5 for 5 const. On paper the proc is good. In reality it does no dmg for native phys retal. And for magic retals with a shield it’s much harder to collect enough block chance to justify this investment. Targo in endgame is simply outdated, because RtA currently has enough dmg sources to prioritize %retal in devos. And Targo gives zero %retal. Most importantly it’s a 5 purple devo, and shield retals never need a lot of purple. So it ends up being basically a pure 5 point investment for no return, similar to t3.
Ulo. Leveling devo. Overshadowed by all other 3 blue + 2 yellow. Proc is good but requires an active skill.
Bull. Stats are bad for 5 for 5. Again, overshadowed by other 3b+2y. Hard to justify for phys cause phys rarely has good free procers.
Harpy. Completely outclassed by two other 4 for 5 purple const.
Tsunami. Mostly what people above said. For most builds outclassed by Sailor’s which costs 1 point less. If proc cd is reduced to 0.5 it might become good.
Mantis. Almost never taken by pierce cause it gives 2 red. Low value for other dmg types. Only taken for requirements.
Hammer. Underwhelming outside of trauma builds that are super rare. Only taken for requirements.
Oleron. Completely outclassed by the blue route for phys. Unreachable for bleed. If it’s a proc devo, proc needs to be stronger.
These are probably my top10, unless i missed smth. Honorable mentions of two groups:
Vulture and Crane give a little underwhelming stats for 5 for 5 devos, but are sometimes taken for requirements and dont feel too bad.
Berserker, Rhowan and Nadaan are good value for bleed, phys and pierce respectively but for everything else they are worthless and that might not be the best for weapon class specific const. Kraken is good for all 2H, Hydra - for all ranged, Lantern - for all scepters, daggers and offhands, Shieldmaiden - for all shield builds based around block (although would be good if it had some value for offensive shield builds as well).
the actual Targo is even worse than that, let’s be real
every time I wanna take it I end up dropping it because of a cost too high. Sailor’s Guide and Eel both give 5 blue for 4 and 3 points respectively, and then Sailor’s is one of the best t1 devos, imo.
I think I’ve taken it a couple of times, and it feels pretty ok. maybe a bit more love won’t hurt but at least I sued it more times than other devos in this list combined.
I’m ok with Vulture being an offensive devo with a bunch of generally good stats. Crane is kinda it’s “defensive” counterpart but, imo, can get some more of that “defence” on top of just resists.
That one i forgot. But i don’t think it’s worse. Armor is pretty strong now, and all of its stats are usable. The worst thing is 7 points for only 1 return.
I don’t like the whole piecemeal quote thingy where I focus on one sentence you write and ignore the rest of it, but do know I try to read and understand your points:
@Anvil: I was under the impression that most retaliation builds gun for Obelisk, Messenger of War, and then grab a smattering of T2 retal devotions. Most don’t even go for Vire because it’s too expensive when combined with Obelisk. You need Shieldmaiden and Obelisk at a minimum for your shield to have enough Block to make Anvil’s proc worth it, but at that point the 5 Purple is overkill because again, you’re not going for Vire. If that’s not the case, I’m happy to retract, but that was my impression when seeing other retaliation builds.
@Crane: I didn’t list Crane as a counterpart for Vulture because unlike Chaos, which has a ton of dual Chaos + Green / Blue devotions that are really good, Light is always paired with Blue (and occasionally purple), where the straight Blue devotions are much better than the combined Light + Blue (and face it, there are basically zero good Light + Purple devotions if you’re not a Physical / Pierce build that needs Assassin’s Blade). In that case, if you’re going for something like Tree of Life + Ishtak for a defensive pet build, then Crane’s +5 is really good in filling those affinity requirements
Yeah, if there only was someone in this thread who plays pet builds…
Seriously, though, pet builds need an extremely good reason not to pick Mogdrogen the Wolf, especially after a ton of sources of pet total speed were gutted. Bull’s 2 Light + 3 Blue does nothing to help with those affinity requirements, so even if Bull’s damage was nice, it’s not worth the opportunity cost when compared to taking another devotion like Fiend that better helps with affinities while also having a good proc.
The proc hits pretty hard already? It’s just that you need other things more than try to fit this in somewhere. Plus it’s another on-crit, that and phys builds already have two mandatory on-hit procs that need to trigger as often as possible.
