Abilities tier list / balance (Sage main)

[rigid topaz]

The testing is base on Sage duo weapon gameplay in stage 5 agony mode cuz that's the maximum difficulty in game atm.

Tier 0: (Completely broken)
Kugelblitz : With base atk speed this skill shred everything off screen period. Kinda feel like a bug since the scaling doesn't really make sense for the shock wave atk speed.

Tier 0.5 : (can carry the whole run very early into the stage)
Spectral Fist: Rough beginning, but once you get consecutive punch and base atk speed, can clear the screen clean and shred bosses
Morning Star: Pretty busted weapon, strong from beginning til end. Go to weapon for Sage if you want chill run.
Arcane Rift: Decent clear at beginning followed by op screen shredder end game. Causes huge lag though.

Tier 1: (Can easily clear stages but have drawbacks)
Spirit Warrior: Outside of rough beginning and couple bugs, very solid choice once you scale it up. Good clear and bossing.
Transfixion: The raw damage aspect of this weapon is surprisngly strong. Can clear screen clean and shred bosses, plus a very good support weapon too. Great go-to weapon for any scenario.
Arcane Splinter: Very weak at beginning and requires deep investment til late game to shine. Turn screen shredder in end game. Scale force/ multistrike/ area to be strong.
Meteor Strike: At end game can reach arcane splinter level of screen clear and massive damage if you scale enough area/multi-hit. Solid weapon.
Phantom Needle: Lack a bit of aoe , but can pull its weight once build up, plus it's one of the best weapons to bring at beginning to help other abilities get through early stage.

Tier 2: (You can use it to clear the stage still, but very unsmooth. Requires a lot of effort)
Radiant Aura: This is actually a strong ability , especially at beginning, but when agony mode goes up , the split damage falls short a bit. Nowhere close to cleric base weapon damage
Hailstorm: Very hard to use at beginning, but pretty solid once you build it up. Still this weapon alone would be tough to carry you cuz of slow buildup.
Ring Blade: Even If you scale everything into area, hit box is still kinda small. Satisfying to see full screen of ring blade with cyclone but dps is still pretty meh at end game.
Astro orbs: About same strength as Ring Blade. Super low damage at beginning , and with no utility/kb. Can becomes quite strong at end game but still not op as some of the t1 weapon.
Fire Breath: Due to bug not scaling its area/ range, the coverage of this weapon is limited. Need other abilities to help keep the screen clean. Good burst damage though.
Lightning hit: one of the most balanced/ average weapon from Sage. Average aoe, average ceiling, doesn't get overscaled by any trait. Not recommend picking as main weapon because no utility and subpar clearing at beginning.
Frost Avalenche: Very weak starter weapon with pathetic clear and boss clearing. Need 2nd weapon to carry it til it's viable. At end game can turns into screen shredder , but may crash the game.

Tier 3: (Probably need a buff)
Flame Strike : Did they overnerf it? Charge time is way slower now cuz dev separate the charge time from atk speed. (atk speed only affect cd between each explosion) Even with 3 double potion on charge time reduction the skill feel slow. And mobs are too dense/ fast to give you room to always max charge.
Summon Golem: Surviving first 15 mins of stage 5 with golem take some miracle. Feels completely outclassed by spirit warrior on both rolling and aoe build. Electrified scaling feels pretty trash compare to real electrified build too.

[cosmic edge]

how is dragon breath in bottom tier

[pulsar kettle]

I think it's fine that some abilities are "weaker" than others, they fulfill different roles

[rigid topaz]

True for supplementary weapon like transfix. (That's why you dont see me saying t2 need a buff)
But Summon Golem/ Flame strike are almost unexecusablely weak and subpar and bring nothing to the table (no knockback/slow/ affliction/fragile)

[robust oxide]

Few comments about your list.

• Arcane Splinter is the strongest ability in the game. It now replaces Hailstorm as king of dps. This should be tier 0 with Kugelblitz.
• Transfixion, Ring Blades, Radiant Aura, Arcane Rift are all capable of clearing the screen with massive dps. Including bosses. All of these should appear before your tier 0.5 stuff.
• Frost Avalanche is bottom tier. i agree sarcasm btw (see screenshot)
• I will give you that so long as summon golem roll competes with it's normal attack it's bottom tier. i hate that it does that so much.
• Dragon Breath is fine. it lacks reach but its damage is massive.
• Flame Strike is good at exactly 1 thing. and that is evaporating bosses with 500k+ crits. otherwise yes it's underwhelming. but if you create a weak AOE build it fills in the boss-fight nicely.

[rigid topaz]

This tier list is exclusively about stage 5 agony mode though.
Some of the earlier maps mobs are way too easy/ low hp/ cant hit you that any weapons can perform well

For example radiant can melt stage 2/3 but in stage 5 once it reaches ag 5 , those mobs with 100k hp makes radiant hard to catch up the dps

I tried to scale ring blade to its maximum potential in stage 5, nope, the mobs can still touch me frequently.
Need other weapons to support it

[rigid topaz]

After another round of testing , i agree with you.
Breath can scale pretty crazily with raw damage. Would move its tier.

[robust oxide]

Radiant Aura can't what on map 5?

Nothing about what I said changes based on map.

Are you perhaps talking about using just a single ability by itself? Like, for the entire map?

[rigid topaz]

I moved some ability tier around after more testing
I figured out the true potential of arcane splinter, but i dont think it deserve to be t0 or 0.5 because it only reach that potential after way too deep into end game, and it's a very weak early weapon. I know at around level 90~ it can reach kelgu damage potential, but t0/ 0.5 is in that tier because it requires one specific stuff to just make it broken from get go.
For example , Kulge can reach t0 status right after you get base atk speed, so you pretty much go invincible at around 16~18 min mark , and it's a pretty decent weapon early on too.
In order to reach my standard of t0~0.5, skill need to be broken with just one gimmick investment early on. If a skill becomes screen clear op at the very end game, it is my standard of t1 weapn. It's still very good weapons mind you so don't get all pissed just because some weapons are not put in t0/0.5

Tbh anything in t0/0.5 probably deserve a nerf cuz it turns op too quickly/ easily.

[robust oxide]

Fair enough. It's good that you've spent time thinking about it! I hope you continue looking for the fun broken stuff and keep sharing it.

[rigid topaz]

I prob would test frost avalanche again soon.
I dont think i need to test flame strike and golem again, i give golem so many tries now and it always feel inexcusably weak.
If someone can bring out true potential of golem in stage 5 agony, feel free to post here.

[robust oxide]

normally i'd jump on a challenge like this but summon golem really does suck. roll competes against attack. it doesn't actually gain +movespeed from its own skills. its AI derps around more often than not. taking this ability is a DPS loss because you could have taken literally anything else and done more damage. lol.

[cosmic edge]

i think the issue with flame strike is that it got nerfed while it was bugged to be way too strong. since the math/balancing was done for the weapon working as intended. also emberfall scales incorrectly with range iirc instead of area. i'd have to check.

i'll do some FS/golem testing to see how this goes

[tulip flame]

for me, the only abilities that have worked well with Sage are morning star and spectral fists

the rest just make me want to slam my head against my desk until i knock myself out

🥲

[rigid topaz]

I mean sage can make so many other abilities op, HOWEVER, most of them make the game super laggy

lolz

[rigid topaz]

I think the nerf is 100% unjustified, especially with sage able to make so many abilities way more op than the old bugged flame strike lol
Nowaday screenwide wipe is a common thing

[rigid topaz]

After a lot more testing:
Radiant Aura just doesn't scale as crazily as some of the other broken aoe weapons so i put him still at t2. Mobs can still show on screen. lolz
Arcane Splinter is good , but Arcane Rift is WAYYY more broken if you scale the area/ multihit to maximum . The only downside is it'd lag your game to hell.
I think Rift is near Kulge tier now , but i dont recommend playing it now cuz it's too laggy, and your highscore would be lower cuz mob spawn slower if the game is lagging.
Frost Avalanche and Meteor about same tier of brokenness once you scale area/ base atk speed/multihit, but early game it's pretty trash weapon. Also Frost Avalanche may crash your game so not recommend playing it too. Both are about Splinter tier if not better.
Transfixion is surprisngly strong for the raw damage build, can clear the screen clean and shred bosses. A good main weapon and support weapon. Plus it doesn't generate lag. Thinking of bumping it to t1.
Ring Blade is pretty overrated though. Not a good starter weapon and even if you scale to maximum, it's nowhere as strong as the weapons i mentioned above. Its about Dragon Breath tier. Good, but not THAT good.

[robust oxide]

Yea radiant does fall off. it's still functional though
Rift is not near kugel imo, kugel can offscreen insta-kill, rift cant. ive also never got lag unless i take the projectile upgrade
yeah ringblades starts weak and there is no avoiding that. it's basically useless until you get cyclone. or decide to supplement with arcane/morningstar to cover the vertical. ring blades can offscreen instakill late game. so i'd rate it waaaaay higher than DB

[rigid topaz]

For rift, you prob not scaling base rift + full area hard enough lol
Rift can one shot full screen continuously and shred boss in 3 secs if you scale area to absolute maximum (I even use double potion one time on 30% area trait)
It's def kill as fast as kulge, it's just the game start lagging so mob spawn stop syncing with timer, making the high score lower

I'm hesitant to put it in t0 because of this

[robust oxide]

the screen yes, mobs spawn offscreen and it wont reach them

[rigid topaz]

Prob cant reach high score cuz of this but for general gameplay you're about invincible too so it's def near t0

[robust oxide]

i get no lag with it. ive also tested both at their maximum and kugel is far superior because of the offscreen reach and the projectile persistence.

[cosmic edge]

well you can't really say the nerf is unjustified now, when it was justified at the time... but yes some improvements could be made. and overall the traits for flame strike are a tad on the bland side i guess

golem would be good, great even, if ferrite infusion worked with tagged area traits

[robust oxide]

im not ashamed to say that, all other problems aside... if golem just gains +movespeed like it says it does from its own trait then it would be great

i could do so much with just that

[cosmic edge]

the problem i keep having with "solo-golem" is that even with cape + gordon mask i keep getting ran over by the speedy champs, who spawn 95% of the time when there's a champ

so my runs die before i get my second upgrade

[robust oxide]

again... movespeed. if you run offscreen to your golem it will run to catch up to you never hitting anything, but cos it doesn't get +movespeed like it should. you can theoretically have it chase you forever never attacking at all. if you are running away from stuff you might experience that too

[cosmic edge]

build concentrated on golem attack speed 😬

[rigid topaz]

Since frost avalanche frost trait crash my game, forced to take the static ice which is like giving up a trait..
With the setup that wont crash my game, frost only deserve t2 tbh.
Score looks pretty but compare to other screen wipe skills in end game this is pretty meh.

[rigid topaz]

Trying out spectual punch again after suffering through all those weaker early stage weapon, i can feel why i put these skills in 0.5
It's not about highscore or anything, the whole flow of the game just feel different
Just because an ability end up with higher score does not make it a better option though, has to consider the whole stage progression in terms of smoothness/ how and when it turns op, and when it turns op , and how clean it clear the screen.
I think my ability ranking is finalized at last. Feel free to add any more input , but i think this is a pretty accurate reprensentation of the current ability strength.

[rigid topaz]

Yknow the funny part is your mask does more damage than golem

Showing how bad the ability is

I do agree these burn/ weakness/ magic damage helm/ body are pretty underrated . It's pretty critical to use those to survive early tough part of game with bad abilities XD

[cosmic edge]

they were never bad, just outclassed by characters with competent main weapons. silly builds with sage appreciate and somewhat necessitate at least having some sort of slow support

[robust oxide]

for as long as golem hasn't gained +movespeed it's been bad (that's forever). i should shutup about this lol

[cosmic edge]

im talking about equipment???

[robust oxide]

right. derp. if we cut the summon golems head off we could use it as a mask to headbutt stuff. might be more useful than the golem

[rigid topaz]

It's ok , as far as main weapon goes , i think true melee classes still suck XD (especially norseman. Man, talking about awful main weapon)
Especially once you get used to how op the area scaling from most abilities.