# **Cosmic Heretic Rework.**

# **Problems with the path and what needs addressing.**

At some point in the future siding into main knowledge from other paths will be disabled,the reason why that is won't be found in this design doc, but it's an important addendum to understand where i'm coming from with this rework.

We do want paths to have different strenghts and weaknesses,which is impossible to do when you can just grab spells from another path with a completely different design phylosophy.

Additionally, in order to ensure all Heretic paths remain somewhat viable, their toolset should include, at least to a degree some of these aspects.

- Have some way to break or access into places.

- Have some form of escape or oh shit button.

- Have the ability to deal with multiple opponents, so long to discourage playing passive until you ascend, because and let's be honest here, **Stealth ascensions are not fun for everyone but the Heretic.**

This is the phylosophy i adopted for my previous path reworks, Rust and Void.

You can play the aforementioned paths without delving into side paths and still don fine for the most part.

Flesh And Blade sit in a risky spot, as they can function on their own but they still have some reliance on other paths, ultimately nothing that can be tweaked with a few adjustments.

Then we have, what I like to call the "problem children" , Moon, Lock and Cosmic.

These paths are so insanely dependant on other paths' knowledge to function (specifically ashen passage), they would utterly fall apart If we were to cut siding into main knowledge.

Now I'm not sure how many paths rework I have it in me admittedly, so I'd like to start working on what is in my opinion the most problematic of the three.

# **Cosmic Heretic**

To noone surprise Cosmic currently sits as the least picked and ascended of all the heretic paths.

Here's why I think that's the case

1) **What the path offers...:**, The cosmic heretic toolkit consists solely of crowd control, stun, knockdowns, roots, paralyzes, and sleeps. Chances are, if you can think of a type of CC, this path contains it.

2) **and....yeah that's pretty much it**, To offset the absurd amount of crowd control this path gets , it lacks in any other areas where other paths are more balanced.

Cosmic has awful damage potential, one utility spell that's just a weaker version of what Lock Heretic already gets,no tools to properly fight groups, the blade upgrade is so laughably bad it feels like an afterthought, And the ascension is straight up non functional.

3) **No ingame-representation of the themes:** For being a path themed around stars, the cosmos and the horrors beyond the horizon, your abilities barely reflect that at all.

The path doesn't offer tools or gear to more easily go into space,have any resemblance to what an actual space wizard would be able to pull off.

Also Cosmic radiation damaging organs? Really?

# **Proposed changes.**

The goal of this rework is to have Cosmic Heretic kit play more with the sandbox, improve their ability to fight groups, lower the amount of Hard CC, and ultimately make cosmic more indipendent from other paths.

**Cosmic fields and Star marks:** Cosmic fields are no longer impassable to heathens with a star mark, instead they disable gravity in the area they are placed,both Heretics and Non-Heretics will get full space adaptation on cosmic tiles.

All kind of projectiles phasing through a cosmic field will be frozen until the field expires, except for the projectiles fired from the Cosmic Blade, more on that later.

Non heretics jetpacks and magboots will get disabled once inside cosmic fields.

Heretics will gain no clip movement on cosmic fields and the ability to go through walls.

Cosmic fields apply a star mark every 5 seconds or so to non heretics and now only empower your skills or Cosmic Blade.

**Cosmic Blade and Mark of Cosmos:** Cosmic Blade is now a ranged weapon!, it shoots slow low damaging projectiles that apply star marks, damage is doubled if the target is already marked

Grasp of Cosmos is also ranged now, (3-4 tiles reach)

- **Reasoning:** For starters, we are making Cosmic more unique by centering the path around ranged combat.

We have 8 paths currently, all of them are melee based, so why not make a ranged one?

The core loop of Cosmic will revolve around marking an area with Cosmic fields and shoot opponents down, while trying to avoid melee combat as much as possible.

So what tool should Cosmic being given to keep enemies at range without stepping on the toes of the other paths,not being miserable to fight against while also being thematic to the path itself?

Well Gravity manipulation!

Fighting on no grav can be annoying but it has plenty of work arounds the crew can employ: throwing an item , using a fire extinguisher, pushing yourself with telekinesis, the list goes on, it's way more fun than being completely unable to move, and it fits with the Theme, because...yeah...space.

I took the liberty to disable the most common tools that would have trivialized the mechanic, i.e jetpacks and magboots to give a slight edge to heretic in his domain.

The globally shared space adapt serves a couple of purposes.

1) It discourages On the heretic side to space an area to gain an additional advantage, cold and deprussirization are Void shtick.

2) Gives the Heretic a tool to space walk, while not granting them passive immunities, again like Void gets.

**Mark of Cosmos:** Now applies the "Crushing Gravity" debuff (the one you get when standing close to the grav gen), instead of a paralyze, gives to the target a 3x3 aura of cosmic fields for a few seconds.

- **Reasoning:** Technically a nerf, moving slowly is nowhere near as bad as getting paralyzed, but hey it's thematic and we need to do some pruning to have good things.

**New spell: Cosmic Walk And reworked Cosmic Expansion**

**Cosmic Walk:** grants to the heretic an 3x3 aura of cosmic fields at the cost of a small movement speed penalty, said penalty is removed when walking on misc turfs (Space,Snow,Sand).

**Cosmic Expansion:** releases a huge area shockwave that propagates cosmic fields around the Heretic (Think of the hierophant blast), targets caught in the blast are starmarked.

- **Reasoning:** Now that Cosmic fields no longer root people in place we can increase the amount the heretic can place.

Cosmic walk is designed to be an utility skill, to let cosmic heretics get into places without having to rely on ashen passage, the movement penalty heavily restricts its actual use in combat, unless you are in space, which is supposed to be the domain of Cosmic heretic.

Cosmic Expansion is the opposite, it's the ability you use when you need to go loud or forced in a fight, it disables cosmic walk when toggled and puts it on a CD in exchange of making a small arena where you can fight.

**Star Touch and Cosmic Runes have been merged into a single knowledge:**

**Cosmic gate:** allows you to place one rune that permanently places cosmic fields around its location,the rune provides a passive heal to the Heretic and its summons.

**Star touch:** can now be self cast or used on other targets for different effects.

- When selfcast it teleports the heretic to the rune.

- When used on others it links the heretic and the target with a cosmic beam

The beam blocks targets from teleporting away and if not broken before 8-10 seconds it puts the victim to sleep while teleporting them alongside the heretic to the rune.

The beam can be broken by knocking the heretic down or walking a specific distance away from them.

-**Reasoning:** The one cool thing you can do right now as a cosmic heretic, is making a small base somewhere, (space ideally), place a cosmic rune, run up to your target, instasleep them, teleport back for an easy sacrifice.

However this sits very much in the field of being "fun for the heretic and not fun at all for the crew" As it literally has no counterplay if you are alone.

Thing is, abducting people to your space base is cool.

Having your little space base is also cool.

It's the one aspect of Cosmic that fits the theme, So instead of removing it,I'd like to improve it while providing more counterplay to the crew.

Cosmic Rune will now be used to properly set up a base, and since it'll permanently cover a huge area around the rune in cosmic fields, you probably want it to be in space.

Once this abilty is unlocked, The heretic will likely employ some hit and run tactics to snatch their targets away, that's why I feel they should get a small heal once they are inside their base.

The decision behind having only 1 rune is mostly balance related, as you can only teleport when Star Touch is off cooldown, and prevents lame scenarios where Heretics would just set their teleportation rune right next to the SM or a shocked grille for guillable crew to walk over.

The changes to star touch are intended to provide counterplay, insta sleep into sacrifice is lame and just balls to the wall overpowered.

So i'm keeping the speelit while giving a large time window for victims to escape, either by running away from the heretic or knocking the assailer down with a shove or baton.

it will still be very strong if your target is isolated, less so if you are in a crowd.

It's ultimately intended to be a high-risk high-reward spell, using star touch to attempt to kidnap someone will burn your escape tool if it fails, and having to chase down a running opponent can be risky for a path themed around ranged combat, especially if your target is not alone.

**Cosmic Blade:** Cosmic projectiles now bounce off starmarked targets and push people away.

- **Reasoning**: Gives the heretic a bit more control over fighting groups, if targets are too close to each other they will take some extra damage.

**Star Blast moved to the last tier and reworked into Super Nova**

**Supernova:** Identical to Star Blast, however if it connects to a mob, the projectile stops and transforms into a super nova, after a short to medium delay it explodes causing a light explosion and massive burn damage to its victims, Starmarked targets are pulled towards the epicenter of the explosion right before detonation.

- **Reasoning:** Star Blast is the worst Heretic spell in the game, and you really cannot change my mind on this.

The projectile is ungodly slow, the cooldown is massive, and for what?

**20 BURN DAMAGE?** That's less than a laser shot.

You know what a Path themed around the cosmos needs?

That's right

# **A F*cking dying star**.

This is definetely intended to be a Big Boy button. Can still be easily avoided, as the projectile is fairly slow, but still prompts the crew to panic and run the fuck away when they see this thing floating.

**New Ascension: "Those who comes from beyond the veil"**

Transmute 3 bodies with a star mark to summon a shower of cosmic meteors that endlessly bombard the station,( they land like drop pods, not regular meteors).

Every 30-60 seconds or so the game will pick 3 more random zone on the station and repeat until the heretic dies or the round ends.

The impact causes massive damage, deploys permanent starfields around the blast zone and open a Cosmic Portal.

Each portal summons 1 (weaker) Star gazer and Cosmic tentacles, the portal can be destroyed and doing so will kill the minions.

Every Member on the station save for the heretic will gain a special brain trauma that forbids them from going to space, space turfs will change to a different color (Spooky!)

The Heretic will gain a permanent aura of cosmic fields, Cosmic blades will now shoot what's the equivalent of cannon balls for projectiles and leech life off of heathens.

- **Reasoning:** To be honest, i think having 1 immortal minion controlled by simplemob ai sucks and it's not very interesting for both parties involved, that's why I want to decentralize the role of the star gazer from the ascension.

There have been talks among our community recently about having Heretic ascensions be more of a grand event than just a simple power up to player.

Cosmicism, at least if we are to borrow it from the lovecraftian applications of theme, is about horrible realities living beyond the horizon, so what's better fit for an ascension to have reality literally tear itself apart?

The "banned from space part" is mostly for RP, Now that the true masters of the universe have shown themselves, mortals are now banned from accessing said realm or something.....idk.

The granted traits to the heretic are relatively minor, he's now capable of dishing out more punishment but he doesn't gain the immunities granted by the other ascensions.

**Other stuff**: Probably gonna give space adapt to space phase, as it's a bit silly right now it doesn't.