dense totem
Hi, I think it's quite interesting how the Shatter bug is being handled.
Yes. I do agree it was stupid in how it worked. Quite weird how a refund mechanic was being exploited to essentially generate free blood.
However, I think the popularity of Shatter and its overall place in the meta really revealed something about how Acolyte is played: people want a proactive way to generate blood. Acolyte itself feels like a rather boring waiting game of maintaining EC and casting Aura to heal itself, often crutching entirely on Healing Efficiency to maintain enough Blood Pool economy to gain access to Blood Sorrow. The absolute prevalence of Double Totem (which, if general archetype balance philosophy is to be followed, is crutching way too much on a Summoner node to be able to maintain a semblance of proactive gameplay) shows that people really desire faster Blood Generation, and Single Totem Acolyte is not viewed as very viable.
Acolyte node usage from 2025-09-20 to 2025-10-15 (total 1054):
Both (doubleTotem & totemicShatter): 31 (2.94%)
Only doubleTotem: 877 (83.21%)
Only totemicShatter: 54 (5.12%)
Neither: 58 (5.50%)
^^ above information is skewed since people who play Shatter are more likely to be higher-level players who also are more likely to hide their statistics. Really just wanted to highlight the insane difference between default acolyte and some form of blood generation
Double Totem fixes a lot of Acolyte's base issues since, while it does double Blood Pool costs of Aura and Eldritch Call, gives plenty of benefits like:
- Increasing # of targets for EC (by increasing tentacle count)
- Amplifying Healing and Damage of Aura by 20% (2*(100-40) = 120%)
- Increases overall Blood Pool Generation opportunities from Blood Rite
- DOES NOT increase cost of Blood Sorrow (primary limiting factor of Single Totem)
This leads to a rather passive playstyle for Acolyte, in which in order to actually utilize Blood Sorrow (a massive 70 Blood Pool investment) -- which does not grant enough Overhealth to outheal Double Totem while simultaneously not having enough Blood Pool generation with single totem to consistently cast -- you must build high Healing Efficiency (since you don't have enough AP to get Fluid Healing as well) and it leads to a rather boring playstyle of sitting around waiting to refresh Eldritch Call and Blood Sorrow while Auraing to maintain yourself
Shatter (at least the gameplay loop) flipped Acolyte on its head. In exchange for vastly increased skill ceiling (managing two masks, giving extra inputs, etc) gave far superior flexibility and a huge increase in tactical reposition-ability(?), while pretty much maintaining the same or slightly less damage, and also increased the interactiveness
While I don't expect Shatter to make a return, since while it did offer a proactive playstyle, it also offered a way to cheat the economy, I would like to see some new method for generating blood on Acolyte (perhaps by increasing the amount of blood that Shatter itself generates so as to offer a real downside of an instantaneous health cut without reimplementing the bug, similar to how Regeneration is affected by it) that offers it a choice between a proactive gameplay style and a passive one, and doesn't make it rely entirely on a rather passive waiting playstyle that DTotem offers.
side note: its also super annoying that you have to forcibly end Eldritch Call by swapping off the weapon, which Shatter alleviated by allowing an uproot eject button
Edit: To clarify: I would like to maintain the current loop of a mobile generating state --> locking yourself down to use eldritch call
Edit: Bleeding offers 1.6 Blood Pool per second per mod only if the mob is in range, which is simply not enough compared to the 10 per second from double totem
versed monolith
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