How can we fix Hierophant?

It just seems this Ascendancy is either far too narrow in scope or far too weak to be any good.

For totem builds, the reduced damage per totem on Ritual of Awakening just leaves it feeling like a gimp Ancestral bond while you have significantly less totem boosts than a Chieftain. There's also the fact that other builds are still keeping up just as well with even less totems (like flameblast totem Inquisitor) but even more damage built into their Ascendancies.

But the section that feels the most weak is Divine Guidance and Sanctuary of Thought. Given that Sanctuary of Thought is preceded by Divine Guidance, it looks like the focus of this section of the tree is to boost Mind over Matter builds. But, this is seemingly countered by the fact that Sanctuary of Thought gives a substantial boost to energy shield, which has no interaction with any kind of Mind over Matter mechanics.

But what can be done?

I've been thinking about this for a while of changes that could be easily coded without changing much.

For one, Ritual of Awakening could receive a buff to where totems cast instantly. This would provide incentive to go all out on totems while actually having reduced totem damage make sense.

But, Sanctuary of Thought is the tough one. With a mini-Mind Over Matter, it seems the best way to utilize this node is to give increased Health for mana? Maybe something along the lines of "Gain 25-40% of Maximum Mana as extra Maximum Life instead of ES? Maybe also Gain 1-5% of Mana regeneration as Life Regeneration?

What do you think should be done?

edit: Clarification.

edit 2: redid mana regen as life regen due to how much can be stacked (some dude apparently had 400%? dude what are you doing).

All these views and no responses? Not even a "your ideas suck, just don't play Hierophant"?

your ideas suck, just don't play Hierophant

Hierophant is strong and good no need to change.

Energy shield may look confusing but even for MoM builds its realy strong.
I got abouth 1700ES with no actual invesment and monsters most of time dont even pirce it, with VP its actualy also good agenst random damage and its strong buffer for max HP in certain situations.
As you can see even if you dont go MoM you can go hibrid, LL or CI and get masive bonus whit all of them. Some more uniq mechanics can make hibrid realy strong and he be a class to go for it.

Logica aplications are only logical if you pruven them in practice, as it stand all he ofer have high practical value.
Ther are many mechanic, treshold jewels, uniq items that effect what he offer and when i just look in my guild thers plenty of Hierophants that go araund. It may not be flashy ascendency on frst look but its defenitly strong.

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nEVER_BoRN wrote:

Hierophant is strong and good no need to change.

Energy shield may look confusing but even for MoM builds its really strong.
I got about 1700ES with no actual investment and monsters most of time don't even pierce it, with VP its actually also good against random damage and its strong buffer for max HP in certain situations.
As you can see even if you don't go MoM you can go hybrid, LL or CI and get massive bonus whit all of them. Some more uniq mechanics can make hybrid really strong and he be a class to go for it.

Logical applications are only logical if you proven them in practice, as it stand all he offers has high practical value.
There are many mechanic, threshold jewels, uniq items that effect what he offer and when i just look in my guild there's plenty of Hierophants that go around. It may not be flashy ascendency on frst look but its defenitly strong.

The problem is that many other Ascendancies can go those paths with much better damage. Occultist can go hybrid as well and bypass the energy shield recharge from damage.

Most other Ascendancy can also go LL/CI and not waste a single ascendancy point unlike Hierophant with Divine Guidance (can't have a MoM when taking life damage kills you anyway).

As for LL/CI, I'd rather not steer this conversation into a life vs energy shield effectiveness debate. We need more Life based builds, MoM can give that to us.

But, as for you saying that Hierophant can track down threshold jewels, and other unique items, that's all for making this single ascendancy work. All the other Hybrid, LL, CI builds can simply acquire a Shavronne's and be done with it, while Hierophant in its current state would need to track down 5 corrupted items and try to run with Corrupted Energy Jewel to not waste any of it's passive.

This is why it needs such a change.

I think you looking to hard in to it, its realy good ascendency and it pay off way more then some cheep tricks. I got like 2,6k mana and Voll protector get it to 2k and from that i get almost full ES chest worth of ES. It is practical use or to got crazy scaling things difrently. You come to apriciate it if you see it for what it actualy is.

Completely redesign Ritual of Awakening or add more utility totems. A totem keystone that punishes you for using totems is stupid (you can even get to the point where this keystone is an overall damage loss) and there aren't enough good utility totems to justify taking the keystone in a build that doesn't use totems for damage.
Change Helmet and Boots in Illuminated Devotion to have better utility effects instead of being effects that only make sense on an ability that's an important source of damage.
I think Divine Guidance and Sanctuary of Thought are fine. MoM + Eldritch Battery can give Hierophant the biggest effective health pool of any life build.

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Nykken wrote:

Completely redesign Ritual of Awakening or add more utility totems. A totem keystone that punishes you for using totems is stupid (you can even get to the point where this keystone is an overall damage loss) and there aren't enough good utility totems to justify taking the keystone in a build that doesn't use totems for damage.
Change Helmet and Boots in Illuminated Devotion to have better utility effects instead of being effects that only make sense on an ability that's an important source of damage.
I think Divine Guidance and Sanctuary of Thought are fine. MoM + Eldritch Battery can give Hierophant the biggest effective health pool of any life build.

Ritual of Awakening has a sound idea, but needs better execution. Totems as they are do have benefits (Things taking hits for you) and drawbacks (delayed and lessened damage), but without instant cast, Ritual of Awakening merely adds another drawback (less damage per totem) while scarcely improving the benefit of more totems.

Again, other Ascendancies (Occultist, Elementalist, Inquisitor, even some Marauder classes are all capable of picking up) MoM+Eldritch Battery to have similar tankiness with loads more in damage capabilities or even more defensive capabilities. In addition, MoM and Eldritch Battery is usually a huge investment in terms of points and gear as you'd still need to pour enough into both life and ES in order to function.

As for biggest effective health pool of any life build, I'd disagree. There are known 9k+ health builds that have poured more into damage since they did not need to put points into ES nodes. Maybe I'm wrong on this point, but I have rarely seen a hybrid, let alone a MoM EB build going over 6k life.

It is for all of this that it would benefit the game simply to make Sanctuary of Thought more defined along a Mind over Matter build or even support RF through pure life regen. The change here is to make this Ascendancy much more defined as well as having synergy between the actual nodes.

As for Illuminated Devotion, what would you suggest?

the MoM asendency should add some form of stun threhold partial of mana added to the life pool.

You cant make a pie from shit. Scrap the entire ascendancy and start over from scratch.