Regarding the rework of Elevated Compassion

[Danek.9450]

First off; Would have loved to see a section about this particular rework in a PvE environment! It is really difficult to estimate the impact if only PvP versions of the trait/skill reworks are shown on-screen and the preview notes don't contain anything more than just a high-level description. This also makes it very difficult to provide specific feedback in advance. Nonetheless, the following are a few lines of thought after giving the this specific upcoming rework some thought - corrections on incorrect assumptions are more than welcome.

Disclaimer: the following is mostly coming from a PvE perspective but could have knock-on effects onto other game modes - additionally, it will pretty much exclusively focus on the proposed reworked Grandmaster due to assumption that this - or something very close - is what we're going to get on the 27th. There have been great other suggestions too which approach the issue from another angle: i.e. folding quickness generation into Shared Empowerment instead so that the choice between offensive- and healing-focus would remain for the grandmaster choices. 

When testing the current version of Elevated Compassion, the healing goes on cooldown for any eligible allies as soon as one ally has received the benefit of it - meaning: it is not tracked on a per-agent basis. As an example, if ally 1 has received a boon and the healing right away and ally 2 steps into boon-sharing range after one second, both ally 1 and ally 2 will be healed at the next earliest increment after ally 1 has previously initially recieved the healing. This means that ally 1 will receive the next heal tick 3 seconds later as normal, while ally 2 needs to wait another 2 seconds for their first heal tick. Feels strange, but alright. 

However, it doesn't appear clear as to how the reworked version of Elevated Compassion would work, in terms of mechanical consistency - the current version of Elevated Compassion does not have a range threshold for its healing application as it is implicitly limited by the range of your boon-giving skill. Are we assuming that this will remain the same for the healing component of the trait and only the shared boons are limited to the very small 240 radius?

Beyond this and more concernengly, it is not clear at what point the quickness would be shared - is it shared immediately as soon as the upkeep threshold has been met or as soon as the next boon is shared to an ally while the upkeep threshold is met? It seems like the healing- and quickness-giving components are required to be decoupled from each other as it is very easy to maintain the required upkeep threshold without ever sharing a boon (e.g. Impossible Odds). Regarding the interval duration; are we essentially forced to maintain the -6 upkeep threshold for multiples/increments of at least 3 seconds? 

Based on the described uncertainties, can the numbers at very least please be fudged for the sake of making them align with a smaller interval, while still meeting whichever numbers you had in mind for the base healing and base quickness duration in PvE? Slumping along with no quickness - possibly through no fault of your own - does not lend well to satisfying gameplay. The suggested interval would only make the quickness application less consistent / predictable, as in: increasing the statistical error of the applied quickness duration.

In my mind, this aspect does not consitute any degree of skill expression (something along the lines of: 'But if you time it well, you can give them a couple more seconds of quickness for free!'), considering we all know how well the 'all alacrity is shared on the final tick of your wells'-chronomancer wells went - one simply cannot control the movement of other players. This is not particularly fun, especially when considering we're coming from a place where we were able to choose precisely at what point we wanted quickness to be shared. Regardless of where the base quickness duration number ends up at - it must be predictable and consistent for the purpose of avoiding unnecessary frustration with the trait. 

On another - admittedly possibly somewhat undercooked - note; 

In addition to the aforementioned, was it ever a consideration to not define a threshold at or beyond which quickness would be shared, but to instead cap the effectiveness of the quickness application at the currently suggested threshold (i.e. share X amount of quickness every second for every tick of upkeep in use, up until the cap of Y upkeep)?

This question sprung to mind, because the suggested upkeep treshold of 6 does not leave many options for attaining eligibility throughout the different legendary stances; 

• Shiro: Impossible Odds (-6 upkeep)
• Jalis: Vengeful Hammers (-6 upkeep)
• Mallyx: Embrace the Darkness (-6 upkeep)
• Centaur: Protective Solace (-6 upkeep) - (seeing a herald pull up the bubble just to continue sharing quickness is bound to be a bit of a meme)
• Glint: Couple more options here ...
  • Considering Facet of Strength (-2 upkeep) and Facet of Elements (-1 upkeep) are still going to be used nigh off cooldown for their offensive value, maintaing Facet of Nature (-2 upkeep) and Facet of Chaos (-4 upkeep) would be the only option to meet the upkeep threshold for offensive Heralds as long as we assume that these changes are supposed to afford situational skill usage of Facet of Darkness as a stun-break
  • Facet of Darkness (-2 upkeep) and Facet of Light (-1 upkeep) together with Facet of Nature (-2 upkeep) would only reach -5 upkeep in total and miss the upkeep threshold 

In addition to the above overview, the cooldown of consuming Facet of Nature does not line up with legend swapping (20s vs 10s), for what it's worth - in that sense one can't reliably assume to have the +20% added boon duration available for legend X or Y on every rotation either. 

During the stream it was specifically mentioned that legend swapping was the intended avenue of energy-management - at face value, this seems more than reasonable. However, when going through the motions of using this in an endgame encounter, one quickly comes to the conclusion that you might not be able to situationally share specific boons any longer (e.g. Jalis Road), because you were forced to swap off that legend due to energy constraints and needing to continue sharing quickness.

Regarding offensive Heralds; the nudge towards using Charged Mists (+25% energy when swapping legends while <10% remaining energy) in favor of i.e. Roiling Mists (+50% crit. chance with fury) in the Invocation trait-line seems obvious, but this will ultimately not only cause a great amount of pain among enjoyers of high numbers, it won't solve the core issue at hand, of affording situational availability of skills, either - eventually you will still be forced to swap legends unless you no longer want to share quickness. 

Please keep in mind: Within the current implementation of Draconic Echo, the complaint about the build being too spammy is a symptom of players not wanting to use additional boon duration in order to afford them the ability of using i.e. Facet of Darkness on-demand as a stun-break. In addition, one could make the trade-off decision regarding if and when one wants to swap to other legends for their provided situational utility skills by themselves and be contempt with the legend swap (and thus one's ability to continue upkeeping quickness) being on cooldown as the cost of that decision. 

In conclusion, aforementioned mechanical uncertainties notwithstanding; allowing Heralds to continue sharing a diminished amount of quickness between actively maintaining high-upkeep skills would allow Heralds to persist in certain stances for a longer period of time, affording them at least longer opportunities for situational skill usage by default - seeing how we will be forced to swap legends in the upcoming change anyways. This way Heralds could rely on prior overshare and the ongoing diminished quickness sharing to bridge the gap until their next window of opportunity to maintain high-upkeep skills for a prolonged period of time.
 

Edited June 12, 2023 by Danek.9450
use proper bullet points, spacing, clarificationj