The reason I don't think quickening apparition is as powerful as it looks at first glance is because it mostly works against your action compression and blasting feats, as well as it chewing through your ability to leverage the versatility of your apparition spell slots. I think it is good, maybe functionally about twice as good...As someone that plays in min-maxed games with min-maxed martials and casters, the animist has a few feats that are somewhat overpowered, mainly the Apparition Quickening and Forest's Heart. Remove or reduce those feats, the animist is on par with every other class with the ability to build a versatile caster much like the druid or cleric.
Then again if those feats are removed, the animist almost becomes subpar. If they decided to errata the Liturgist to do one sustain, they really become average to subpar.
To me the animist seems like a class that was rushed and not tested well. It has some very narrow, overpowered options. But they are so narrow that any other path and you aren't going to be as good as other top tier classes.
If Paizo fixes the feats and one practice that allows overpowered play, the animist goes from a narrow build option with power to average to weak.
I think if they removed the Elf Step exploitation, Forest Heart becomes fine. So mainly Apparition's Quickening is the main culprit for being ovepowered as multiple quickens in a day is really, really powerful.
They kept quicken to one time a day, so I can't help but think they wanted the animist to be slightly more powerful allowing it to quicken up to 3 times a day.
If you reached a boss monster like a dragon, the animist in Channeler's Stance unleashes three quickens over three rounds with as powerful a blasts as they could manage, the damage would be pretty nuts unless the boss was real lucky on saves.
I would think only a level 20 wizard with Spell Combination and Quicken would be able to hit harder because that wizard's first round is pretty nuts.
Quicken is usable by every other caster once a day. They usually wait for a boss or a big encounter when they can really get some bang for the buck using it.
An animist can do that three times per day. So they can unless for one encounter or unleash for two or three. Being able to action compress into one round of double blasting is always going to be very good. For one feat it a no brainer. You take it and learn to use it. It's too good to not take. It's extremely powerful.
Depends. Apparition's Quickening still good to use when you don't know the number of encounters, but still saves it to not use it more than once per encounter.For example, at level 15 when you have 4 apparitions, considering that you don´t care about other apparitions and only want to blast with Steward of Stone and Fire and only wants to use the other apparitions as fuel to Apparition's Quickening.
If a GM sents to you an moderate encounter of this level and sents a moderate Troop (Troop (80 XP): One creature of party level, two creatures of party level – 2) with 2 enemies with around 235 HP and one with 285 HP. With lucky (all creatures failing in their saves) you can cut the enemies HP by half or more casting a Rank 8 Volcanic Eruption
+ Rank 8 Eclipse Burst. Considering that you are not the only one fighting and that your allies can also do a good amount of damage, probably you don't need to use Apparition's Quickening...That is indeed the question. Can you miss the vessel spell, and all the apparition spells it provides, knowing you will have more encounters?
In my experience this is not a trivial sacrifice at all. That's a lot of options in Apparition spells you're chucking in the bin, not just a vessel spell.
I personally would never do that for extra first turn damage in the moderate encounter in your example. It was reserved for panic button situations (ah, unfettered movement, my dear indispensable and often quickened friend).
Animist is very much a feast or famine type class. When you can flex, you can flex HARD. But it is very, very easy to counter your play and take the wind out of your sails. Grabby monsters or swallow whole sucks even more for you than others. Just any enemy with limbs and a decent athletics score. Anything that messes up your mobility actually. Even plain simple difficult terrain just shuts Elf Step+Liturgist down. You will run into things like this a lot. A. Lot.
I am highly skeptical of people who think it's all easy and...
I think it is trivial. If you are a blaster, you only want to keep Steward of Stone and Fire. It's the only major blasting apparition. You can get rid of all the other ones blasting and be just fine. Since this is a blasting thread, you are 100 percent going to build a blasting strategy around Steward of Stone and Fire.
I already looked it over. You will keep that one if you are a blaster. Quicken Apparition to drop three blast spells from that apparition is or mixing them can get very nasty. The spell you use can be from any apparition and not just the apparition you disperse. So there is flexibility enough.
If you're using some martial strategy, then maybe you got a problem. If you're building a heavy blasting animist all the decisions are no brainers and Apparition's Quickening is a monster feat given how good quicken is.
Quicken is great on regular casters. My party with two casters usually picks this up and annihilates at least one encounter per adventuring day wit this feat. If they could do it three times a day, that would be incredible.
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Myeah, ok, sure, let's keep it at me being entirely unconvinced that is not exactly what people are claiming.
I mean, you're partially correct, since Deriven just proved me wrong, but ultimately this isn't a thread about convincing you personally, in the same way that this isn't a thread about personally convincing Unicore that the divine list has good blasting spells. In my experience, the Animist was in fact better-equipped than most other casters for avoiding getting grabbed and Escaping grabs, and while I'd be skeptical of anyone claiming that they're pulling that full three-round damage setup every encounter, I never really found myself at any point where it felt like the Animist was lacking in options for any given situation. Not every situation will be perfect for the Animist, but I've never really found myself in a bad situation for my Animist, unlike with other characters.
More likely to succeed to Succeed at Escape is utterly irrelevant, because that means you are actually in the exact situation where you failed to protect yourself from famine. The only question that remains is whether this is an encounter where that matters.
See, this is the kind of statement that makes me genuinely skeptical, because this is not at all true. Successfully Escaping means you can immediately Elf Step to start creating distance, all while triggering your Sustain effects, or cast blessing of defiance if you're anticipating another attempt to grab you. If a monster powerful enough to reliably grab you keeps focusing you this whole time, the action economy is in your favor, as you're wasting a lot of that monster's actions while keeping your engine up with minimal effort, all while your party focuses that monster with you assisting with your sustained effects.
Because when it matters, this is not a roll you can afford to make, let alone risk failing. Heavens forbid you are restrained and you have no other option. I hope this needs no further explanation.
Hold on, why is this a roll you can't possibly afford to make or risk failing? Because even if you spend two actions Escaping, that one action is all you need to Elf Step, or just cast or Sustain a vessel spell as needed. This is more options than even a martial class, particularly as you can keep yourself at only a relative -1/-2 to the Athletics checks of a Strength martial, equalizing with them entirely across several levels. I can't help but feel like the problem here is being greatly overstated for the sake of making an argument.
And you can Quicken an Apparition spell with a divine spell. So you could eclipse burst then drop a quickened fireball. So quicken apparition may not be usable with divine spells, it is usable in conjunction with divine blasting spells.
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It is usable with your divine spells as well. The only limit is that the spell must come from your animist class, so you can't quicken an archetype/innate spell with it but your divine prepared spells are compatible.
This isn't specific to Apparition's Quickening, though; Quickened Casting also has this same restriction as well.
And you can Quicken an Apparition spell with a divine spell. So you could eclipse burst then drop a quickened fireball. So quicken apparition may not be usable with divine spells, it is usable in conjunction with divine blasting spells.It is usable with your divine spells as well. The only limit is that the spell must come from your animist class, so you can't quicken an archetype/innate spell with it but your divine prepared spells are compatible.
You are correct. That is even better. So you could drop two eclipse bursts, then work your way down multiple times per day.
That is indeed the question. Can you miss the vessel spell, and all the apparition spells it provides, knowing you will have more encounters?
In my experience this is not a trivial sacrifice at all. That's a lot of options in Apparition spells you're chucking in the bin, not just a vessel spell.
I personally would never do that for extra first turn damage in the moderate encounter in your example. It was reserved for panic button situations (ah, unfettered movement, my dear indispensable and often quickened friend).
Depends, for most players probably yes. Just remember what a fighter or barbarian players usually does. They invest hard into Str, goes to the frontline and Strike, sometimes using a different way to Strike like a Vicious Strike, other times maybe doing a maneuver but typically the most common thing that a fighter player does, prepare to do, and wants to do is just Strike their targets until they die.
So it's not too hard to see a player just focusing into a small set of generalist tactics, simply ignoring all other apparitions just to blast with a single one. In fact, it what most blaster casters does when they play as prepared casters. Just prepare a lot of damage spells that works for most situations and blast into everything that moves. So not everyone value the versatility at all.
Anyway, I used the quickened spell as an example in the beginning of an encounter because it's typically the best situation for an AoE blaster to damage a large amount of enemies. When they are starting away from your allies and closer to each other. The idea was to just point that have multiple uses for a quickened spell is probably more useful for when the situation is more favorable or as you said more desperate instead of just spam it mindlessly.
Animist is very much a feast or famine type class. When you can flex, you can flex HARD. But it is very, very easy to counter your play and take the wind out of your sails. Grabby monsters or swallow whole sucks even more for you than others. Just any enemy with limbs and a decent athletics score. Anything that messes up your mobility actually. Even plain simple difficult terrain just shuts Elf Step+Liturgist down. You will run into things like this a lot. A. Lot.
I am highly skeptical of people who think it's all easy and trivial to pull off. Like almost a given or automatic even. Yeah, no, that's just not the case. There's just too many commonly encountered complications
Every class has their own weak points. Probably put an animist in a difficult terrain is one of them for a liturgist animist but unless the GM is playing against the players instead of GM a memorable adventure, this situation probably will be pretty rare, like other classes disadvantageous situations (like rogues fighting oozes) usually are too. It's normal, expected, and fun when not abused.
So I don't except that the GM will put a lot of difficult terrains to disable the animist tactic too frequently.
Myeah, ok, sure, let's keep it at me being entirely unconvinced that is not exactly what people are claiming.I mean, you're partially correct, since Deriven just proved me wrong, but ultimately this isn't a thread about convincing you personally, in the same way that this isn't a thread about personally convincing Unicore that the divine list has good blasting spells. In my experience, the Animist was in fact better-equipped than most other casters for avoiding getting grabbed and Escaping grabs, and while I'd be skeptical of anyone claiming that they're pulling that full three-round damage setup every encounter, I never really found myself at any point where it felt like the Animist was lacking in options for any given situation. Not every situation will be perfect for the Animist, but I've never really found myself in a bad situation for my Animist, unlike with other characters.
More likely to succeed to Succeed at Escape is utterly irrelevant, because that means you are actually in the exact situation where you failed to protect yourself from famine. The only question that remains is whether this is an encounter where that matters.See, this is the kind of statement that makes me genuinely skeptical, because this is not at all true. Successfully Escaping means you can immediately Elf Step to start creating distance, all while triggering your Sustain effects, or cast blessing of defiance if you're anticipating another attempt to grab you. If a monster powerful enough to reliably grab you keeps focusing you this whole time, the action economy is in your favor, as you're wasting a lot of that monster's actions while keeping your engine up with minimal effort, all while your party focuses that monster with you assisting with your sustained effects.
Because when it matters, this is not a roll you can afford to make, let alone risk failing. Heavens forbid you are restrained and you have no other option. I hope this needs no...
IMO the animist isn't too much worse or better than other casters when have to deal with things that are grabbing them. They want to avoid this as much as possible because even being cheaper to them to recover their sustained spells (it's a focus point, and they can cast again with just one-action at all) they still don't want to have to deal with this.
Instead, probably the main advantage of blaster animists (martial melee animist is another talk) is exactly that they are in constant movement what helps them to control their distance other the enemies pretty well and no GM likes to pursue a player that is constantly got out of the reach of its creatures and preventing it to use the full potential of its action economy (except maybe for creatures that have good charge or Trample activities).
So if you are constantly keeping your maximum distance as animist you probably won't be the primary target of your enemies that can use the full might of their 3-action economy on closer targets.
The animist isn't really in constant movement though. The elf step sustain plan means your character is moving 10ft at most, and if you are trying to use Earth's Bile, you are never going to be more than 40ft to 50ft away from your target, and even doing that could easily leave you in the bind of your target being out of range of your sustained abilities, or having to spend one action sustaining, one action moving and then only having one action left for spell casting. Even if you decide to burn one of your apparitions with apparition's quickening, the best spell you are going to be casting that round is top rank -2.
If you try to stay at the exact edge of your range all the time, you could easily end up outside of it.
The animist isn't really in constant movement though. The elf step sustain plan means your character is moving 10ft at most, and if you are trying to use Earth's Bile, you are never going to be more than 40ft to 50ft away from your target, and even doing that could easily leave you in the bind of your target being out of range of your sustained abilities, or having to spend one action sustaining, one action moving and then only having one action left for spell casting. Even if you decide to burn one of your apparitions with apparition's quickening, the best spell you are going to be casting that round is top rank -2.
If you try to stay at the exact edge of your range all the time, you could easily end up outside of it.
I would focus less on the double sustain as that is theoretical. You know sustains spells are only as good as the number of rounds the battle lasts.
Look more at the animist as if you were designing a good blaster using all its feats and tools: Channeler's Stance, Apparition Quickening, a 1 action vessel spell with a 10 foot burst, Cardinal Guardians set up the vessel spell.
You seem to be looking to short circuit this one line of thought as put forth by Teridax in regards to double sustains where min-maxing a blaster with the animist has less to do with sustain spells and more to do with using all the tools available.
From what I understand a player like Blue Frog wasn't even that concerned with sustaining Earth's Bile. He used it as a 1 action additional blast using a focus point. This one action spell gets the bonus from Channeler's Stance as does any apparition spells.
But Divine Spells do not get it. Neither do spells that aren't energy meaning void and positive energy spells and force spells don't get it. that's why channeler's stance is primarily built for use with Steward of Stone and Fire.
This is both a thing that is being missed by the pro-Animist crowd that channeler's stance only works with apparition or vessel spells and only if they do energy damage which includes fire, cold and such but not void and vitality or poison. Channeler's Stance doesn't affect divine spells like a sorcs Sorcerous Potency or an Oracle's Foretell Harm.
So you have to focus on energy blasting which pretty much means an animist blaster build is Steward of Stone and Fire as it has the most energy spells.
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Moving every turn is pretty much the definition of constant movement. Even with 10 feet of movement from Elf Step, that's enough to reposition as a ranged character and force most melee enemies to spend actions moving every turn to catch up with you. Even with a spell 2 ranks below your maximum spell rank, that's still a huge number of powerful options, and well worth the reduced action cost in many cases. I'm not sure why we're trying to downplay these things when both movement and Quickened Casting have been staples of the game for years and are known to be very useful.
Everyone, caster or not, who does not need to be in the place where being grabbed happens way more is better equipped for avoiding grabs. It simply happens more to those who are easily available targets.
This is going back to earlier conversations, but the Animist is one of those characters. They don't need to be in melee range or close to it if they don't want to, seeing how earth's bile is very much a ranged spell. One would assume that an Animist going into melee range would be equipped to handle being grabbed in the same way as any melee martial, such as by having a high Athletics modifier.
This reasoning is flawed on many levels. Against a powerful monster that grabs the realistic scenario is very much NOT that you are action-trading as it'll be a free action, nor is escaping guaranteed at all, even with good athletics and slippery prey. And in the other situations with many enemies action trading is not in the party's favor.
I don't think you understand. If a boss monster is spending those actions on you, whether it's Striking you with a Grab attack or trying to grab you directly, that monster is focusing all of their actions on a party member who is well-equipped to avoid this, giving the rest of your party the freedom to do as they please. If you're being attacked by multiple monsters, they'll each be a lot less likely to grab you, and that's if they decide to grab you at all while you hang back and blast them with AoE, arguably the better strategy in those situations. There's this underlying assumption you're making here that the Animist will get automatically hit and grabbed every turn that I'm quite interested in seeing you justify, given how they're better than even some martials at avoiding and escaping those.
Additionally we were talking about feast or famine situations. Even in the best case of succeeding on the first action, your second action will be elf step and you are left with a third action and map. You have been shut out of 2-action spellcasting.
Correction: you have shut yourself out of 2-action spellcasting. You made that choice to Elf Step, when you could have spent 2 actions casting a spell. Not only that, but spending 2 actions casting a spell could still let you Sustain with Maneuvering spell, so you'd be far better off than any other caster trying to cast, Sustain, and Escape on the same turn.
I think this also begs the question: why were you in melee range in the first place? Because if you were trying to blast with earth's bile, you did not need to do that. If, however, you're fighting as a melee gish, such as with embodiment of battle and/or a battle form vessel spell, then you're not going to be using your remaining two actions to Cast a Spell anyway; you'd just Elf Step to Sustain your spells. Incidentally, this would let you Strike in devouring dark form, so you'd have plenty of actions to do everything you'd need, and if you're using the water elemental form, you could even use your wave attack to Strike at 0 MAP, push the enemy to break the grab, and then use Elf Step to make another Strike. That, and the cave worm form from monstrosity form straight-up ignores the immobilized condition, as well as all forms of difficult terrain.
Animists could get a class feature that gives them a huge bonus to escape and be the absolute best, undisputed champions at it, there is still a big glaring difference between your elf stepping liturgist and everybody else which people who tried it in actual play will have noticed.
You're not "everyone else", though, and in fact the consensus appears to be that the Animist does perform quite well with Elf Step, with a bit of math to support how powerful this is. I'm not sure why you would try to discredit my play experience like this just because it doesn't align with yours, either.
The others simply do not need to escape a grab as urgently as the liturgist in the first place.
Escaping a grab is pretty much everyone's priority, and other casters are far worse off, with casters like the Druid or Warpriest very much putting themselves at risk of getting grabbed. Again, it feels like you're greatly exaggerating the Animist's supposed exposure to enemies in order to make this sound like a glaring weakness, when in practice the things you list as obligations are simply poor choices that could have been easily avoided or mitigated.
Even in bad cases where the enemy has a devastating move against grabbed targets focusing on killing them is many times the best move, so they can forget about escaping if need be. The liturgist who is counting on his mobility to sustain has much, much more at stake.
... more at stake than killing the enemy, which they can do just by Sustaining two spells as a single action? By all means, please elaborate.
Compared to the playtest feat which gave a bonus step or leap on your sustains, the current Liturgist feature might be an upgrade as you can push it further, but it's very much a double-edged sword as it has a real failure-point.
This may have perhaps escaped your notice, but Sustaining Dance didn't let you Leap or Step while you were grabbed either, so once again, this feature is a direct upgrade. It's also not really a double-edged sword, given how even an Animist who's getting grabbed can still use Elf Step to gain an unmatched action economy advantage after Escaping, and so even after two attempts on the same round. The fact that you can choose between Sustaining two spells or casting a spell if you Escape in a single action is, once again, a strength you're trying to disguise as a weakness, a recurring tactic you've used in these conversations.
Does not make it impossible or anything, but investing the actions, focus points and counting on 2 free liturgist sustains is definitely high risk/high reward gameplay, which I like actually, PF2e could use more of that. Liturgist is pretty flashy and has a big wow factor, but also don't be blind to its risks.
I don't think I'm being blind to the risks here, I'm just pointing out that this risk is eminently manageable, to an extent where despite being high-reward, this playstyle can also be very low-risk. Throughout this entire conversation, you've been basically pretending that the Animist is acting alone, when in practice the Animist will have a party who will also be acting and doing useful things. Putting aside how the Animist can apply crowd control of their own to keep enemies at bay, if the Animist is being focused while building their engine, it would be to the party's entire benefit to mitigate that, which can be done in an immense number of ways. This too is what's making me a bit skeptical, to be honest, because these cases you're citing make no mention of the rest of the party and what they're doing, when a party member getting focused as you're saying would normally be grounds for the rest of the party responding to that in some way. What was your party doing when your Animist was getting grabbed every round, Angwa?
But Divine Spells do not get it. Neither do spells that aren't energy meaning void and positive energy spells and force spells don't get it. that's why channeler's stance is primarily built for use with Steward of Stone and Fire.This isn't quite right. Vitality and void damage are both energy damage also, see https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2308
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I think being grabbed does impact the Liturgist somewhat more than other characters, casters and martials alike.
As another caster, you probably use an action to try to Escape. If it fails (as it likely does), no problem, you cast a spell, eating the relatively low failure chance imposed by Grabbed. While you are certainly in lots of danger, your contribution is barely diminished.
As a martial, you often don't care much about being grabbed because it doesn't stop most of the things you want to do (Strikes, maneuvers). Spending MAP on trying to get out is almost always the wrong play. Instead you just accept the off-guard condition and go to town with your full offensive power. Being grabbed only really disables you meaningfully if the GM rules that you can't hit an appendage that outreaches and grabs you.
As a Liturgist who wants to double Sustain (especially some combination with EoB), it really sucks. You can try to Escape, but depending on what are by my estimations the most common circumstances that works maybe 25-55% of the time. In the not-improbable event that you fail, you don't have a great backup plan. Just spending two individual actions to keep your spells up is low impact, doubly so if one of them is EoB. But trying to Escape again also sucks – your success chance has roughly gone to 5-30% and if you fail again, one of your spells will drop for sure and your impact becomes negligible this round. Honestly, if you don't have a plan other than Escape to leave the grab, the most consistently useful move is probably to only choose one spell to sustain and try to Cast another 2-action...
That's nice to know. It does affect vitality, void, and force, I think that makes Channeler's Stance a little better, though it still doesn't work with half your spells.
That is true, the divine list’s best action denial is calm, but that isn’t as effective on a save as slow, so the divine caster is not as good at action denial as other casters but that is also outside the scope of blasting, but it’s a tangent I went on too.
Calm is about being an area of effect save or suck at rank 2. Yes it has got limitations but it is total action denial. It is a different beast to Slow.
Divine has both Infectious Ennui, Roaring Applause at rank 3 which in some ways are both better than Slow, being will save instead of fortitude and the downside is perhaps being mental. Versus a caster they also now have Manifestation Of Spirits at rank 2.
So calling out the divine list for not having Slow just isn't that same that it was back in 2000.
The animist isn't really in constant movement though. The elf step sustain plan means your character is moving 10ft at most, and if you are trying to use Earth's Bile, you are never going to be more than 40ft to 50ft away from your target, and even doing that could easily leave you in the bind of your target being out of range of your sustained abilities, or having to spend one action sustaining, one action moving and then only having one action left for spell casting. Even if you decide to burn one of your apparitions with apparition's quickening, the best spell you are going to be casting that round is top rank -2.
If you try to stay at the exact edge of your range all the time, you could easily end up outside of it.
I would focus less on the double sustain as that is theoretical. You know sustains spells are only as good as the number of rounds the battle lasts.
Look more at the animist as if you were designing a good blaster using all its feats and tools: Channeler's Stance, Apparition Quickening, a 1 action vessel spell with a 10 foot burst, Cardinal Guardians set up the vessel spell.
You seem to be looking to short circuit this one line of thought as put forth by Teridax in regards to double sustains where min-maxing a blaster with the animist has less to do with sustain spells and more to do with using all the tools available.
From what I understand a player like Blue Frog wasn't even that concerned with sustaining Earth's Bile. He used it as a 1 action additional blast using a focus point. This one action spell gets the bonus from Channeler's Stance as does any apparition spells.
But Divine Spells do not get it. Neither do spells that aren't energy meaning void and positive energy spells and force spells don't get it. that's why channeler's stance is primarily built for use with Steward of Stone and Fire.
This is both a thing that is being missed by the pro-Animist crowd that channeler's stance only works with apparition or vessel...
If we can rule out the elf step double sustain as a game breaking element for the animist, and just look at traditional blasting strategies for this evaluation, then it is pretty easy to see that the Animist lacks the spell slots to be a full-time, all the time blaster. It can nova blast well one encounter a day and then it probably needs to switch into doing something else, but even roles like healer become difficult if you have no high rank spell slots left that you can use to cast heal, and Steward of Stone is the only apparition you have left.
I don't think it makes the animist broken that it can kind of blast well once a day, but if you go too hard on it, you end up in situations like Teridax calls hubris, where you are trying to fill one role all the time and you will fall behind a different class that is designed to fill that role.
To be clear, I think it is a strength of the animist that you can pretty easily switch into a different role when there is a better role for you to fill, but you lose a ton of that versatility if you come out burning off apparitions left and right from the start of the adventuring day.
The animist can do a little damage on top of a lot of debuffing and be very effective for a long adventuring day. I don't think that makes it a top tier blaster though.
If we can rule out the elf step double sustain as a game breaking element for the animist, and just look at traditional blasting strategies for this evaluation, then it is pretty easy to see that the Animist lacks the spell slots to be a full-time, all the time blaster.
By what, having more spell slots than most spellcasters?
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Having more lower ranked spell slots than some casters (not ones that qualify as top tier blasters) doesn't help with being a great blaster. Spending actions to add rank based damage to spells is not a good force multiplier when your largest pool of blasting spells starts off top rank -2.
As that blasting comparison demonstrated, lower-rank spell slots do factor very much into blasting, and even if we only count top-rank spell slots, the Animist is still equal with most other casters. Once again, this is a case of trying to present a strength as a weakness, in this case by framing an above-average number of spell slots as a deficiency in spell slots.
The limits on the elf step exploit to me is that is does nothing round 1 and it is shut down by being grappled or knocked prone.
The animist is a class built to sustain spells, much like a witch, so I think it needs help with that. All of the animists vessel spells are close range sustain spells that are going to frequently require the animist to move to be kept going effectively, so there will be many encounters facing melee opponents, many of whom can grab effectively. Or, against mobile enemies like dragons, those sustains might be difficult to leverage anyway. Not getting effortless concentration at all is tough for a class that wants it so badly. Elf step Animists only advantage over effortless concentration (other than getting earlier access), is the two step movements. That is not a lot of movement if the enemy is not standing around in close proximity.
I see how it looks amazing, but I am still curious about how often it feels amazing in play.
Let’s not Forget that you cannot step while flying, which negates a lot of utility.
Let’s not Forget that you cannot step while flying, which negates a lot of utility.
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Air walk.
Hey Alchemist might not have much, but you can bet your butt that my L20 Chir took:
Extend --> Eternal --> Improbable Elixirs
so they could end the campaign with Hovering + _____ potion elixir as their default forever buff.
Permanent air walking for the lil shorty was super neat and thematic, even if it's arguably not worth the feats.
Let’s not Forget that you cannot step while flying, which negates a lot of utility.Air walk.
It’s true (and actually a much better spell in 2ed). It has limitations , though, since it cannot be heightened nor be made permanent through ancestries.
But yeah, you’re right.
Let’s not Forget that you cannot step while flying, which negates a lot of utility.Air walk.
This spell is the main reason that I hope that someday Paizo officially bans these legacy spells when everything becomes remastered.
Air Walk was always an overpowered fly spell that breaks the fly action cost balance and the flight maneuvers mechanics.
This spell is the main reason that I hope that someday Paizo officially bans these legacy spells when everything becomes remastered.
Air Walk was always an overpowered fly spell that breaks the fly action cost balance and the flight maneuvers mechanics.
Will never happen. Paizo has nothing to gain from attempting to limit their customers like that. Such a move could only ever hurt them if they took such a rigid stance.
...The animist isn't really in constant movement though. The elf step sustain plan means your character is moving 10ft at most, and if you are trying to use Earth's Bile, you are never going to be more than 40ft to 50ft away from your target, and even doing that could easily leave you in the bind of your target being out of range of your sustained abilities, or having to spend one action sustaining, one action moving and then only having one action left for spell casting. Even if you decide to burn one of your apparitions with apparition's quickening, the best spell you are going to be casting that round is top rank -2.
If you try to stay at the exact edge of your range all the time, you could easily end up outside of it.
I would focus less on the double sustain as that is theoretical. You know sustains spells are only as good as the number of rounds the battle lasts.
Look more at the animist as if you were designing a good blaster using all its feats and tools: Channeler's Stance, Apparition Quickening, a 1 action vessel spell with a 10 foot burst, Cardinal Guardians set up the vessel spell.
You seem to be looking to short circuit this one line of thought as put forth by Teridax in regards to double sustains where min-maxing a blaster with the animist has less to do with sustain spells and more to do with using all the tools available.
From what I understand a player like Blue Frog wasn't even that concerned with sustaining Earth's Bile. He used it as a 1 action additional blast using a focus point. This one action spell gets the bonus from Channeler's Stance as does any apparition spells.
But Divine Spells do not get it. Neither do spells that aren't energy meaning void and positive energy spells and force spells don't get it. that's why channeler's stance is primarily built for use with Steward of Stone and Fire.
This is both a thing that is being missed by the pro-Animist crowd that channeler's stance only
Why do you think this? It seems like you're not analyzing what the class can do.
If you have apparitions, you can get rid of them without getting rid of Steward of Stone and Fire, which has your main blasting spells. The only other apparition that looks decent for blasting is Lurker in Devouring Dark.
You can spread out your nova blasts.
I'm not sure how you consider Earth's Bile as a one time a day blast spell. You can use it as often as you have focus spells. You don't need to sustain it. Just use it as a blast supplemental after you let out a blast. It's a one action blast enhancer.
Now you do have a low number of slots, so you have to plan blasting like you would for any caster.
If you make the animist a healer, you most likely wouldn't build for blasting. You can turn your apparition spells into healing spells with a feat.
They do have four spells per level for every level but the top levels.
I can't see how you couldn't make a good blaster with all available abilities. It wouldn't be a sorc. But Earth's Bile is better than Force Missile for the supposed "Battle Wizard." Earth's Bile has more optionality than Force Missile and does more damage with Force Missile topping out at 5d4+5 for a single target and Earth's Bile topping out at 10d4+10 with 5 persistent damage with channeler's stance and is an AOE. The save even makes it better because it can do double damage and even its half damage is basically equal to Force Missile.
You really don't see the power of Earth's Bile even without the sustain for a blasting supplemental for 1 focus point combined with Channeler's stance?
Let’s not Forget that you cannot step while flying, which negates a lot of utility.Air walk.This spell is the main reason that I hope that someday Paizo officially bans these legacy spells when everything becomes remastered.
Air Walk was always an overpowered fly spell that breaks the fly action cost balance and the flight maneuvers mechanics.
A few better options limited to a few classes is fun. As long as they aren't too broken, I'm ok with it.
...The animist isn't really in constant movement though. The elf step sustain plan means your character is moving 10ft at most, and if you are trying to use Earth's Bile, you are never going to be more than 40ft to 50ft away from your target, and even doing that could easily leave you in the bind of your target being out of range of your sustained abilities, or having to spend one action sustaining, one action moving and then only having one action left for spell casting. Even if you decide to burn one of your apparitions with apparition's quickening, the best spell you are going to be casting that round is top rank -2.
If you try to stay at the exact edge of your range all the time, you could easily end up outside of it.
I would focus less on the double sustain as that is theoretical. You know sustains spells are only as good as the number of rounds the battle lasts.
Look more at the animist as if you were designing a good blaster using all its feats and tools: Channeler's Stance, Apparition Quickening, a 1 action vessel spell with a 10 foot burst, Cardinal Guardians set up the vessel spell.
You seem to be looking to short circuit this one line of thought as put forth by Teridax in regards to double sustains where min-maxing a blaster with the animist has less to do with sustain spells and more to do with using all the tools available.
From what I understand a player like Blue Frog wasn't even that concerned with sustaining Earth's Bile. He used it as a 1 action additional blast using a focus point. This one action spell gets the bonus from Channeler's Stance as does any apparition spells.
But Divine Spells do not get it. Neither do spells that aren't energy meaning void and positive energy spells and force spells don't get it. that's why channeler's stance is primarily built for use with Steward of Stone and Fire.
This is both a thing that is being missed by the pro-Animist crowd that
Earth's bile is an ok option. Good for one action, nice that it splits its damage types up so you can more easily trigger weaknesses and do some damage past resistances, but it's range is a real limit, same as most 1 action focus spells, especially for round 1. I don't really like the war mage's focus spell for the same reason. A one action force barrage or blazing bolt (depending upon what you know about how difficult your enemy's AC is to target) at your top rank or top rank -1 slot is usually pretty sustainable (like for at least 3 encounters a day, but more like 4 or 5 with heavy scroll use) for a Wizard or Sorcerer, whom I would put at the top tier of blasters in PF2. Slightly behind that, I'd put the oracle, then probably put animist in with clerics and druids behind that. Close range blasters can function and divine casters are good for it, but they miss out on first round damage typically, usually doing their best rounds when enemies move up close to them, which I think is too unreliable to grade out at top tier for blasting.
Again, I don't even love blasting as a dedicated play style, but I have been helping people who really want to play that way, figure out how to do it effectively on these forums since the game originally launched.
I think the animist is a great caster, because it has a lot of flexibility and can do a lot of different things functionally well, in a pinch, but I don't think it does any of them well enough to PF1 god wizard other characters into irrelevance for anything other than being meat shields and hammers to teleport in place. Trying to over commit an animist build to a singular playstyle really seems like it leads players to disappointment and frustration. I think this even happened to Superbidi's healing and blasting Animist that they built.
I would personally be much more inclined to use Apparition's quickening as an emergency situation ability rather than an overpowering first round of blasting ability, because each time you use it you cut a big chunk of spells out of your problem solving pool, at least until I had burned through most of my top ranked apparition spells, especially because the animist can't use scrolls to replace low rank apparition spells like they can with their divine spells.
I know you rank the druid as a higher caliber blaster than I do, because you tend to like focus spells for hitting your damage options, whereas I much prefer utility and multi use, emergency focus spells, and rely on top rank slot spells and scrolls to hit hard with my blasting, so I kind of understand why you might like the animist as a blaster, but I think you'd agree that their range issues are not a trivial problem for them, on top of the lack of high rank slots.
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...The animist isn't really in constant movement though. The elf step sustain plan means your character is moving 10ft at most, and if you are trying to use Earth's Bile, you are never going to be more than 40ft to 50ft away from your target, and even doing that could easily leave you in the bind of your target being out of range of your sustained abilities, or having to spend one action sustaining, one action moving and then only having one action left for spell casting. Even if you decide to burn one of your apparitions with apparition's quickening, the best spell you are going to be casting that round is top rank -2.
If you try to stay at the exact edge of your range all the time, you could easily end up outside of it.
I would focus less on the double sustain as that is theoretical. You know sustains spells are only as good as the number of rounds the battle lasts.
Look more at the animist as if you were designing a good blaster using all its feats and tools: Channeler's Stance, Apparition Quickening, a 1 action vessel spell with a 10 foot burst, Cardinal Guardians set up the vessel spell.
You seem to be looking to short circuit this one line of thought as put forth by Teridax in regards to double sustains where min-maxing a blaster with the animist has less to do with sustain spells and more to do with using all the tools available.
From what I understand a player like Blue Frog wasn't even that concerned with sustaining Earth's Bile. He used it as a 1 action additional blast using a focus point. This one action spell gets the bonus from Channeler's Stance as does any apparition spells.
But Divine Spells do not get it. Neither do spells that aren't energy meaning void and positive energy spells and force spells don't get it. that's why channeler's stance is primarily built for use with Steward of Stone and Fire.
This is both a thing that is being
I don't really rate casters by blasting. As far as blasting goes, the druid can use high value blast spells from the primal list, has a really good blast focus spell with Tempest Surge, and has versatile Untamed Form abilities including dragon breath weapons. So it can blast.
I rate casters by overall abilities. I think the druid's overall package is a great caster.
Not sure why you're focused on blasting right now to rate casters, but it's not how I rate them. I'd much rather have a general caster strategy thread myself as I think blasting is too narrow a way to rate casters. It all comes down to how good the blasting spells are on your list and how much you can supplement them with innate abilities and focus spells which pretty much makes the sorc the best blaster. Then an oracle and or a any arcane or primal caster with a decent focus spell and class ability or a divine caster that can poach some good blasting spells.
For blasting the spell lists rate as follows:
1. Primal/Arcane
2. Divine
3. Occult
For general use the lists rate as follows:
1. Occult: This list has the most spell diversity having some of the best of everything including the best debuff.
2. Primal/Arcane/Divine: These are all kind of the same for different reasons.
Divine used to be last, but since the Remaster its better.
You made a blasting thread for casters and that's a pretty narrow path for a caster with only one top dog specifically built to be the top dog. That top dog blaster for casters is the sorcerer as they are absolutely built for it.
Let’s not Forget that you cannot step while flying, which negates a lot of utility.Air walk.This spell is the main reason that I hope that someday Paizo officially bans these legacy spells when everything becomes remastered.
Air Walk was always an overpowered fly spell that breaks the fly action cost balance and the flight maneuvers mechanics.
Never say never.
Powerful Alchemy was a level 8 feat in the first print and except those who still have the first print of CRB most people not even know this anymore and doesn't know that you could make an alchemist archetype that used alchemist DC to use its items even before the Alchemical Power was created.
We just need that Paizo finishes the remaster process and that the AoN and foundry maintainers to fully split the legacy and remaster and PFS disallow or restrict them to the people easily follow and forget or even ban these things like “it's an old content let it die in peace”.
Nexus already does this. Unless you remember to tick the legacy option to true, it won't show legacy content like air walk.
These things happen way more silently than the people think.
A few better options limited to a few classes is fun. As long as they aren't too broken, I'm ok with it.Let’s not Forget that you cannot step while flying, which negates a lot of utility.Air walk.This spell is the main reason that I hope that someday Paizo officially bans these legacy spells when everything becomes remastered.
Air Walk was always an overpowered fly spell that breaks the fly action cost balance and the flight maneuvers mechanics.
My problem with Air Walk it that it was always broken. Every other flight option or creature have to deal with the Fly action and its idiosyncrasies, like it costs an action every turn to keep flying, and you can't do more than 45° turns without an acrobatics check or when you need to fly in small spaces.
These Fly mechanics were made to compensate the air superiority of a ranged flying character have over many others creatures that doesn't have the same flying capability nor ranged attack long enough to deal with flying creatures.
But Air Walk was always the only thing that fully ignores all the flying action cost and same time that also have same cost that a fly spell have. A level 4 spell slot. None of my primal casters characters and players not even considers taking Fly when they have access to Air Walk due how much more advantageous it was for then.
When the remaster PC1 and PC2 was release and the Air Walk wasn't reprint and Fly spell becomes accessible to all traditions I notice that the Paizo had noticed and starting to deal with the problem.