Grah! It would seem the honorable Skip Cocoa has Parkinson’s Disease of the Mouse. He can’t touch a mouse without sporadically twitching at random buttons and hitting the back button while typing out long walls of text that he hasn’t had the honorable sense of saving recently. Let me advise that you not buy a “gamer mouse” if you can’t touch it without tapping mindlessly at the extra buttons at inappropriate times. They do things. Things mortals were not meant to have power over. Now, on to business.
With the new Bloodmoon event on its way, the biggest talk is about the new Celestial power set. It’s a big one with lots of powers, and since they’re up on the public test shard, we’re gonna have to take a look prior to their live release. To facilitate this test, yours truly, the honorable Skip Cocoa, has found and donned an ancient, divine artifact to temporarily become The Radiant Skip Cocoa! Behold!
Sexiness has never known such a righteous master. It’s a near shame to be going back to my less divine but still sexy self on the live servers. Now, to the matter at hand.
The Celestial power set is, through and through, a support set. Unlike its competitors, Sorcery and Telepathy, it does this almost exclusively through healing. If there’s a green bar, a Celestial character is designed to empty it or fill it, as it desires. It doesn’t have the holds, auras and summons of its sisters and so it’s actually fairly active, as support goes. You’ll find yourself constantly switching between healing and dealing damage. What, you wanted to just heal? Oh no, you’ve been playing those other MMO games, haven’t you. No, Champions Online has no need for your single mindedness. As a pure and unwavering Celestial-based character, your job will be to both fill and empty green bars. And this baby is built to suit that need. Most powers share a unique duality in that they work differently depending on if you target enemies or allies. Target an enemy, and you’ll hurt, mame, debuff, or otherwise inconvenience said lackey. Target an ally, and you’ll heal and buff your friend, just like any good support character should. Now, on to the business of powers.
The Celestial Powers
Radiance (Energy Builder) – Like the friendly parenthetic text says, this is your energy builder. Some EBs are melee. They hit people up close and generate blueness quite quickly. Some EBs have range and nice bonus effects both innately and through advantage points. This EB flirts with column B, being a quick firing and decently effective builder with an interesting side game. If you are targeting an ally, your shots will instead heal them. Now, this isn’t exactly a beastly mega-heal. In fact, I’m going to take a few seconds to laugh whole heartedly at everyone on the CO forums who even speculated that this ability has any potential to make a person a healer. Ha ha ha. No, if this were the only healing ability you ever took as a character, you’ve probably wasted your EB slot. At low levels, the heals barely break 10 HP, and at upper levels, you’re still looking at under 50 HP per pop. It’s not going to even remotely keep up with the damage any individual is taking, and isn’t even going to keep up with the rate of abilities like Regeneration. Gobs of Presence will help, but it’ll never be made for great things.
“Worthless”, the forum babies would cry! Well, not quite. While you are (pathetically) healing said ally, you are gaining energy (only when they’re actually hurt). A few shots will mitigate a little damage and give you energy. You can then use that energy to heal that individual with a real healing ability without the time spent targeting. The biggest advantage is that exact convenience.
The ability also lets you target yourself, though no energy comes of this, making the act an exercise in futility. In fact, it’s worth noting that this feature is of detriment to some. If you use certain control setups that let you play “shooter style” and aim at enemies that you don’t actually target (like certain honorable blogging heroes who shall remain uncredited), this ability will thwart your playstyle (oh how it thwarts). Without a designated target, the ability will spam weak, non-energy-building heals on yourself, wasting the effort you spent applying force to a button.
Advantage: Convergence – Continuing in the general “novel but not necessarily useful” theme, Convergence grants you a 20% chance of bouncing your EB shots at a nearby target. If you were healing, it will pick an enemy and deal damage. If you were damaging, it’ll find an ally and heal it. It’s pretty well determined to do exactly the opposite of what little you were trying to accomplish. Remember that energy builders do damage (and in this case, healing) somewhere in the area of nothing. Add in that the stray shots generate no extra energy, and you have a two advantage points recipe for bottled water. Cuz, what what? You spent two dollars on something that comes out of a tap? Convergence was made with your consumerism in mind. Next!
Rebuke (Tier 0) – As T0 abilities go, Rebuke is no lame duck. It’s your basic ranged caster “I charge up for boomz!” fare, and does that Celestial “heal when I target people I sort of like” thing on the side. I’d dare say there are some abilities it actually out performs, even not considering the heal, and so it’ll be appealing to anyone willing to plop down a bit of Presence boosting gear in its name. It’s not going to save you while soloing when you pull that army of 7+ henchmen with no means to protect yourself, nor is it going to top the damage game, but it wins at efficiency. If ever you need a reasonable pop of damage or healing for not a lot of energy, it’s ready and waiting to please.
Advantage: Admonish – This adds a stun to all weakling enemies surrounding your target, be they healed or harmed. At least that’s what the description says. Try as I might, I just couldn’t make it do it. Not once. And I was using real henchmen, not those pansy training dummies. No, you all are worth more to me than that. There are those that I watched make it work, but “sometimes” just isn’t good enough. Luckily, Skip Cocoa is trained in the honorable art of the /bug, and hopefully the powers that be are aware and will have this handy sounding ability ready and clean when it goes live for the masses.
Illumination (Tier 1) – This is the premiere buff for Celestial beings. Because, well, it is the only traditional buff as we know it from other games ever. And that would make it great, if it worked. On PTS, as of this writing, it is bugged in ways inconceivable by the human brain. So, we’ll be looking at it more conceptually than at its current state.
As a buff for your allies, Illumination grants a 30 minute buff to any friendly target that gives them a small heal over time whenever they are attacked. As a debuff on enemies, it gives a 5 minute effect that grants anyone attacking them that same heal. The healing isn’t exactly stellar (even on the rare occasion I was able to actually trigger it), but as the one and only 30 minute drive-by-buff in the game right now, it has that lovely “better than nothing” brand on it that means you just can’t complain, no matter how lack luster it may be. In fact, it’s a downright infection, as you can’t walk anywhere in PTS without someone dropping an Illumination on you eventually. Illumination has a friend further down, so don’t forget about it just yet.
Advantage: Brilliance – Brilliance changes the ability entirely. Instead of a targeted buff, it becomes an PBAoE toggle. Every 10 seconds it is active, it’ll trim off a few points off your endurance bar and apply a short Illumination buff to one ally, one enemy, and you (again, you know, when it gets around to working). It’s important to note that a non-advantaged Illumination can’t currently be placed on the caster (see also: you) and so this would be the only means shy of bringing a second Celly to the party to benefit from your own ability. Again, this is all just theory class. You get hands on when they bug fix it. /bug to you!
Celestial Conduit (Tier 1) – CC is the endurance bar equivalent to a gas guzzling SUV. As a maintained ability costing 27 points per second, regular people will find they can easily chew through a full bar in just a few ticks. Like its predecessors, it heals allies and harms anything with red over its head. The difference is that if the target has the Illumination buff/debuff (told you it was coming back), it will chain off to other similar creatures down the line. That is to say it’ll heal more allies if it was already healing and harm more baddies if it was attacking. The trigger rate isn’t exactly reliable, bouncing about and collapsing like a hyper active child with a sugar high, so bring some energy management to get the most out of it.
Advantage: Serenity – I deserve a metal for testing this ability. Skip Cocoa needs more friends. This advantage will fill up a bit of your blue bar if you channel it at someone under the effect of Mend. Mend is the healing trigger on Illumination, if you were curious. Can you plan around this? In short, no. In long, noooooooooooooooooooooo. And yet, as sporadic as your chances are of ever seeing a benefit from this, the mortgage worthy cost on Celestial Conduit means you might just take any offer you can find at reducing its cost, however random and meek it may be.
Of course, those are all the things I would’ve said had I not actually tested it. No, it seems Serenity actually gains a bonus off the regular old Illumination buff, and it gains a lot. One person I tested with (thank you @Bron, you are a saint. Sorry I DC’d on you. Internet is flakey when your apartment building doubles as an orbital weapons platform) was able to maintain a constant stream of heals with this, despite the high cost. Switch to a Sentinel build role (you are support, you were already there, right?), raise some Recovery and the energy gain was insane. It’s good to be a support character.
Conviction (Tier 1) – What is Convicition? HP. It is HP three ways to Sunday. At the surface, it offers +15% maximum HP for 20 seconds (non-stacking). Just under that, it is a self heal, and a respectable one, at that. The 6 second cooldown keeps it from being a spammable life saver above all other heals, but if you’re popping it off every few seconds to keep your HP high and full, it will serve alright. It’s also designed to offer up some ammo for the next ability we’ll cover.
Advantage: Reverence - Adds a small AoE heal to the power. And, yeah, it’s pretty small. Of course, the plain Rank 2 and 3 bonuses only improve the self healing, not the max HP buff, so it’s a matter of personal preference in the end.
Iniquity (Tier 1) – Give your life for your team mates. No, literally. Iniquity sacrifices a huge chunk of your health and gives it to your target, and has no qualms chopping you up even when your target isn’t someone you can heal (like your newly chopped up self). So, why would you ever do this? Because it’s probably the only ability in the game that will let you mash the button and churn out massive amounts of health for someone who would otherwise be outright doomed. No other heal matches it in sheer power, limited only to your own health. This ability is reason #1 the game suggests you take Constitution as a main characteristic focus. The more health you have, the more health you have to give.
Advantage: Justice – This turns Iniquity into a cone. For each extra ally up to the max friend number 5, the ability will be 10% less effective. Only 10%?! Hot dog! If you can give up 500 health and give 450 to two friends, that’s a 400 HP net gain. Buff your Presence and Constitution, take Justice, and you have the most potent heal ever conceived. That is unless something is attacking you. Which they no doubt will do the moment they see you throwing out numbers like that. Hold block for great justice!
Imbue (Tier 1) – Imbue lets you pound out a crit like nobody’s business. With a reasonably high energy cost and a 30 second recharge, it had better be good. The result is that your next attack or heal is a guaranteed crit and the severity of which is based on your good old Constitution instead of the usual Ego. Oh, the tanks are going to love this one! I’m hearing and seeing some word that damage over time effects break the ability before it can be useful. Hopefully that’ll be changed come live.
Advantage: Illusive – The Imbued ability will also produce less threat, making it less likely to draw the ire of every enemy in a 40 mile radius. If the problems with healing threat aren’t fixed by live, this will probably not be enough to save your feathered angel hide, sadly. If you took this ability as a damage absorbing brick, you may just look at this advantage and laugh.
Palliate (Tier 2) – Palliate is an amazing emergency heal. Where as most heals offer a set amount, Palliate gives health based on a percentage. What’s this, you took Constitution as a characteristic focus like a good little Celestial? That’s extra healing! With a pretty low energy cost for its results, of which are health near and past the 30% mark, this heal can total up for a lot. You’re looking at a 2ish minute cooldown, but it’s a fair price for a flick this flashy. It also offers the target a small boost to their Presence characteristic, though it’s a spit in the bucket by comparison. Used on yourself, it might eek out a little extra healing, should you still need it, or net the brick you just healed a bit of extra threat, but it’s not a reason to use the ability nor worth caring about in any capacity. Even with the cooldown, I smell an eventual nerf coming Palliate’s way. It’s just that good.
Advantage: Absolve – This’ll get the enemy off your target quick with a burst of stealth and threat dumping on par with that of a smoke bomb. It sort of kills the “save the tank” functionality, but chances are most anyone you would be tossing this out to save never wanted to be attacked in the first place, so it’ll get them back into the game at the speed of F-1. Pop it on yourself while soloing to catch your breath and escape, or in a group to brush off all of those enemies who thought your unparalleled healing was an insult to their manhood. Palliate might just be “too good”, and this advantage nudges it ever the further.
Redemption (Tier 2) – Much the same as similar abilities in Sorcery and Gadgeteering, Redemption raises a defeated ally and nothing else. It can’t be used in battle and it does nothing to enemies, unlike most of those other abilities. Given that the penalty for failure in this game is you have to run/fly/swing/jump/etc back to where you fell down from a nearby respawn point, the necessity for an ability like this is questionable. But, here it is!
Advantage: Salvation - Take a highly situational ability of questionable value and make it work on everyone around you! There may come a time when you are knee deep in fallen team mates, far far from a respawn point, and whatever had taken them out is no longer trying to flay you as well. And on that day, you can laugh at all who called you mad for taking Salvation. And on that day, I will humbly eat my bandana.
Seraphim (Tier 2) – Oh my Grond, we gots us a slotted passive y’all! What be it, what be it? It’s something of an offensive/support mix, though it goes in the support slot. This is a blessing, because you probably want to be in the Sentinel build for all of that juicy energy regeneration. It offers bonus power to both healing and dimensional damage, more than offsetting the damage lost by your support stance and making you better at everything else you do. It also offers up a small, gradual heal to any ally near you. It’s not much, but it requires no effort on your part, so just take what you get.
It seems to cause a bit of fuss in that Constitution improves the healing bonus while Presence improves the damage bonus. Now, before we groan at all, remember that most scaling is laughable. The scaling isn’t much better here, so don’t lose it. For starters, Presence already boosts healing, and making the slotted ability do that is what we like to call “double dipping”. It becomes exponentially improved at one thing by camping just one characteristic. Celestial is not a healing power set, exclusively. It’s a healing and damaging set, existing in a dual, flip-flop nature that works best being on the ball and doing both. The fact that you can improve your Presence and get both healing improvement (because that’s what it does normally) and a damage bonus (from the slot) is a testament to this duality and improves your versatility greatly.
Advantage: Balance – This adds a damage component to the aura effect, gradually harming every enemy nearby. It’s very similar to Fiery form in that respect, which wasn’t putting out amazing damage either. It’s not a power gaming addition to your arsenal, especially if you’re staying out of melee range (you probably are), but its a cool concept, so take or leave.
Expulse (Tier 2) – Very similar to Force Eruption, Expulse blasts enemies nearby you and knocks them back. Compared to FE, Expulse costs more, has shorter range, and has to be fully charge, but has the benefit of doing near twice the damage.
Advantage: Impose – A few seconds after sending your enemy flying through the air, Impose will apply a 16 second movement reduction snare on them. If it actually rooted them, that’d be really nice. Movement reduction doesn’t really get my halo up.
Ascension (Tier 3) – Ascension is an Active Defense. It isn’t actually very defensive, but that means it shares a little 30 second side-cooldown that keeps people from collecting all of the Active Defenses and spamming them in sequence. If there were ever a power to spam, this baby would be it. Sadly, you’ll have to settle for a dozen seconds of pure honor and awesome. Your damage goes way up, your healing power goes way up, and you can fly at a speed that puts Rank 3 travel powers to shame, even if you don’t actually have a flight travel power. I want it just to fire it off as a Nitro boost while traveling from point A to point B to get me there faster!
Advantage: Judgement - Ascension will also consume all of the Illumination buffs and debuffs around you, exchanging them for heals and damage as appropriate. Given that you’re popping Ascension off to grant you massive healing and damage, this little pop of numbers isn’t really going to play up by comparison. But, if you just can’t get enough of the Illumination, I guess I’ve seen worse.
Purge (Tier 3) – Purge doesn’t exist. Not on PTS right now. I looked. Not there. Got purged. Why is it here? It’s on the preview page, so someone thought it was going somewhere. It’s supposed to strip buffs, debuffs, travel powers, DoTs and other such powers off your target. Bad things off good people and vice versa. At least that’s what it says. Don’t look at me like that, I’m not psychic.
Advantage: Deliverance – Makes Purge help break holds off friendly targets too. Because they saw a status effect it didn’t work on, and now you can remove everything instead of almost everything.
What is a “By the Book” Celestial Going to Offer?
I’ve said it before, but a full-on Celestial without dabbling outside the tree much is going to do two things: heal and hurt. In both departments you are respectable, and you’ll need to be able to adapt and be aware of where your efforts are needed at any given time. It’s an active, twitchy, “need now do now” type of character. This isn’t the traditional fantasy MMO, and if you’re just staring at your allies health bars, waiting to toss heals, you’re wasting a huge chunk of your power.
What Other Power Sets Are Useful to a Celestial?
Just at a glance, I can’t recommend the Shadow power Life Drain near enough. A high Presence with the slotted Seraphim will greatly improve both the damage and healing of the power. It can be a great way to refill your life after passing out a few Iniquities, while dealing extra damage too, which fits the set’s theme to the letter. Just remember that it can’t drain life from the livingly challenged like robots and undead.
Several powers within the Radiant Sorcery set fit Celestial conceptually, and are actually useful as well. Aura of Radiant Protection is an amazing slotted passive that grants amazing defense to you and all of your teammates and scales very noticeably with Presence. It’s also potentially more useful for traveling alone than Seraphim, as healing yourself (or anyone) is infinitely easier when you’re taking less damage. Summoning a fellow angel can also be fun.
Telepathy is your sister set, and far more pure at support than you are. You probably don’t need the healing, but there are some really good holds and status effects up for grabs, and nothing says you can’t cherry pick whatever suits your style to add some subtlety to the C game.
There’s obviously more, and the sky is the limit (not just because you have wings), so whatever concept you might have in mind, give it a go. Don’t let me tell you you’re playing your game wrong.
Fun Ideas to Dabble With
The Dark Angel – You are a benefit to all of your allies. Your support abilities are second to none. However, you are a force to be feared, should you ever fall in battle. You have taken Rebirth from the Supernatural set. Rank it up and watch as you rampage about with the damage of the gods. It is slightly more work, but you may also consider Fiery Form (which scales its damage bonus with your Presence) with some high-damage fire attacks to produce a mythical Phoenix concept.
The Paladin - You are both brick and healer. You favor a Protector build, due to its large HP pool and threat production. Your Presence serves to empower your healing as well as bolster the threat you produce. Your Constitution improves your ever growing HP Pool. Your favorite heals are Iniquity, Conviction and Palliate. Iniquity allows you to put your massive HP pool to use on others. Conviction and Palliate both offer benefits based upon a percentage of your HP, making them far more effective on you, since a percentage of your health rivals the full health bars of others. Defiance and Invulnerability both make good slotted passives for you, and so you’ll probably want to gear for Strength. It’s way easier to heal yourself when you’re hardly taking damage to begin with. Might as well take some melee attacks while you’re getting the benefit to them. Laser Saber Robo Paladin?
Heavenly Archer – Okay, you don’t really have to take Archery abilities (what, they have some?), but this concept revolves around taking Quarry. You are a blitz build. You go offensive, deal damage quickly and efficiently. Quarry is an ability that reduces the cost of your powers the more you attack and Fair Game is an advantage for Quarry that scales with Constitution and heals you anytime your Quarry dies. Thus, your role is primarily offensive, with the ability to toss heals on occasion. Wear them down, then pop Imbue and throw your biggest attack for a massive crit spike.
