In all honesty, there is no real reason to take most T2 constellations simply because the return in the…color nodes (not too sure what the term is) you get is too little.
A great example of what I think T2’s should look like is harp. 2 blues + 2 yellows for a 6 point investment.
Or crab with 3 greys for 5 points of amazing nodes.
That makes sense to me.
But something like wendigo or even manticore is just painful to use.
Let’s be honest, every single build which uses manticore here hates it. It’s honestly a necessary evil because it’s the only source of x RR reduction to all damage types.
P.S. I think investing just 3 points into wendigo is totally worth as a caster.
I would like to see quite a few changes to devotions.
arcane bomb vs eldritch fire and Rumor - they are all 4 seconds long yet arcane bomb has the highest rr and the highest activation chance. This doesn’t make sense to me, why can’t EF and Rumor be 25% at the very least also? It can be really annoying for some builds to proc these short rr devo at 15% chance. Rumor should have the acid rr buffed given acid rr woes.
Behemoth and Tree of Life vs adcth - I am losing hope these devo will ever be buffed. I asked Z on a stream whether there was any intent on improving them and his response gave the impression it is low priority (understandable but sad). They both suck hard relative to adcth. Behemoth on blast shield at least forces the initial heal to heal but the CD is monumental for a game where stuff dies in 5 seconds.
Fissure is probably one of the best damaging T2 devotion power since blizzard was nerfed but it is not taken up that often because the constellation takes a lot of points.
Wendigo is a levelling devotion in my eyes, makes it very hard to die so good for hc. At least it has a purpose but it is not found on end game build. +1 for buff suggestion.
Ulzaad decree has a nice buff proc but the CD should be 18 seconds or so I think.
Crab proc is fine but elemental caster don’t take it because of the affinity requirements.
I’ve never taken Boar myself so I don’t know for sure if it is good or not but it’s a lot of nodes and the proc does not hit multiple time like anvil.
Alladrah phoenix is very niche since it requires good cdr to use the proc effectively and the damage on it is low. I think it could use a buff.
Bear - I don’t think I have ever seen this proc taken by anyone in my entire GD life. Chance to activate is too low so it’s very hard to make it proc every second. I guess it could be proc every second it would be too good relative to Oleron as a cheaper constellation but people rather take bull than bear atm I think. Oleron needs a buff anyway so buff bear too.
Problem with most underused tier 2 constellations is imo that they have shit procs and/or don’t give you enough affinity for their investment, while rumor and arcane bomb give good affinity and have insane procs due to attached RR. Things like affliction can just never ever compete with that in their current state. Then there are devotions like blizzard, elemental storm and magi that are very good and are fine to be taken even with bad affinity reward per point invested. Tempest represents pretty much the current breaking even point for tier 2 devotions. It gives only 2 affinity for 7 points invested with the proc on 6th node. It still gets picked sometimes, cuz the proc has good damage. All tier 2 devotions that are worse than tempest see no play whatsoever (bear, boar, affliction, etc.). They either need their damage buffed, a debuff added (maybe even some RR) or their affinity reward increased.
About your initial comparison of widow/rumor/witchfire: Rumor is more flexible, you can choose to only invest 3 points just for the proc and it rewards you with 4 affinity points compared to 3. Witchfire’s fire RR is a little weak compared to widow/rumor, I agree.
Overall though I wouldn’t focus too much on comparing the currently used devotions , but rather focus on the devotions that are currently in the gutter…a lot of tier 2 devotions are. What we need are good suggestions for buffs to tier 2 devos like affliction, etc. If Z doesn’t want to mess with affinities, because it would screw up his finely tuned affinity system (no eel nerf says hello), then he needs to massively buff the nodes/procs of those devotions… Maybe even add some low amounts of RR.
Btw boar got some retaliation damage added to attack now. Has anyone of the playtesters tried it? Is it worth taking now?
