Oracle nerfs have been terrible to say the least. Now I’m not complaining about all the nerfs, the purpose of the spirit rain nerfs was for clan wars (even though we could’ve just nerfed how much spirit rain heals from more than one person instead of just making it give basically 15hp in 1v1s???)
I think the aithoro nerfs and astrapikis nerfs were more than justified, I have no issue with those nerfs. However, we need to talk about the athenas imbuement nerf. 15% power increase all the way down to 2.5%. Not only was this imbuement not problematic for Oracle when it came to pvp (clan war healing capacity, Aithoro and Astrapikis was), but it was extremely excessive. I have never seen a nerf this high of a percentage for any individual buff. Especially one that isn’t necessary.
I don’t think a lot of people know this. But because Oracle has healing, a lot of its moves do less damage than other moves. Nichtetheis and Spirit Shockwave are great examples of really low damage moves. Shockwave does less than 200 damage if you’re not well into the 200 power range. And most other moves with the exception of ultimate Spirit Rain (no one uses this in 1v1s), Astrapikis and Flomva do above 300 damage base. That’s really problematic. Oracles’ current most reliable move (when it comes to landing it) is Nichtetheis, which recently got its hitbox nerfed, making landing it way less reliable. (I can feel the nerf very obviously in arena)
I feel like Vetex should revert the Nichtetheis hitbox nerf, and increase the effectiveness of Athena’s imbuement on Eagle Patrimony to compensate for the state Oracle is in right now. It’s not in a good position right now. Unless this new oracle boss on this new story update gives us an insanely and I mean insanely good spirit weapon, Oracle just will never be able to compete
EDIT: I’m surprised I forgot to mention this, Clash Disadvantages. You’d be surprised how important Clashes actually are in this game, especially when fighting players in the Arena. The better the player, the more this matters. Almost any move can clash with an Oracle. Worst case scenario, you just cancel the Oracle’s move, normal case. You actually score damage for free because you outclash them. This is something that should probably get changed, considering that Oracle clashes equally with magics like light. Who notoriously have weak clashes
some of your other points are iffy but this is so valid. 2.5% is literally nothing just remove it at that point? what are we even doing anymore lol. Literally at no amount of damage is 2.5% more worth anything.
Also what was wrong with aithoro? I’ve only played oracle a handful of times but all before the nerf and the move was more underwhelming if anything to me, especially compared to annihilation, specifically because of the poor size.
Aithoro is smaller, and has less damage— but is much more spammable than Annihilation; having less energy cost and a shorter cooldown. I’ve got 283 Haste[1], and it allows me to keep up two sets of Aithoro at once constantly.
This was alongside getting 250 size, and 130 regen[2]. With Aithoro’s previous size, you basically always hit a target. The damage falloff on large builds is still negligable, so I’d basically keep regenerating if you at any point wanted to go near me.
Honestly, it’s more surprising that Aithoro isn’t the target of Oracles nerfs… Every other move has like a third of the utility of it.
AO says this is about 118% CD reduction, so a bit over half. Given how i can very temporarily have 3 Aithoro’s at once, it seems like ≤250 Intensity is all you need. ↩︎
Combined with Oracles free 10% HP, this was a total of 26% regen ↩︎
Sentinel Talent so i can run 1 insanity for free; so the rest of my build went into power which raised it up to 80[1]. I sacrificed defense, only have 2k health (~350 defense, no shield), but the regen more than makes up for it— I heal like 50 health from most attacks, and again, the size and haste ensure that I’m always healing something before somebody can hit me.
Honestly my build isn’t really complete and is optimized to be cheaper; i usually go on gear builder and make the most expensive build, then cut the costs to my budget + save for future goals. ↩︎
“Roughly” doing a bit of heavy-lifting here (on intensity and a bit of Def) but the loss in Intensity allows me to still use two Aithoros (Intensity scaling gets so bad past 200 ngl).
