Winona planar strike and enlightened shard fuel are kind of... underwhelming?

[Catuna_]

I feel like Winona has a lot of filler perks that are redundant between faster firing speed, larger aoe etc. but that's not really the point here
Winona's "affinities" for lack of a better word are extremely weak in their current state and I really fail to see the point of them, among other perks like enlightened shard fuel, let me elaborate.

For all of this testing, I'll be using 7 catapults for this with this skill tree:

Pure Horror Generator + Shadow strike:
Activating planar strike with 7 catapults and a pure horror fueled generator causes them to fire 6 planar shots with 1 normal shot and drain all energy within the generator for 767 damage total.

And while the concept of 767 burst damage might sound appealing, it's a lot less appealing when you realize that off of 1 pure horror the catapults can deal around 10000 damage from sustain fire in that amount of time from my testing, Pure horror lasts a very long time and boosts catapult damage from 42.5 to 47 (around a 10% damage boost). What you get as a result is a really bad exchange of cost and damage.

Brilliance G.E.M.erator, Enlightened G.E.M.erator and Enlightened strike:

Unlike pure horror, pure brilliance only fuels a third of the gemerator, it works like gems (although I'm unsure of what it is equivalent to) and allows you to use planar strike.
One pure brilliance allows you to cast two planar strikes, with the 2nd one having one normal shot. You can get up to 5 planar strikes or so, it falls under the same issue that Pure horror has where letting it do its thing with sustained fire allows you to deal a lot more damage than if you were to actively want to deal burst damage.
However, this is intended for use with the Enlightened shard considering that you can only get pure brilliance after killing Celestial champion (Wilson isn't real it's all in your head). How the enlightened shard works as far as I can tell is that it overtakes the fuel, turning it all into weaker yet infinite fuel that will regenerate 10s after the current fuel is depleted (or "overloaded").
This weaker fuel nets you... one planar strike before it needs to regenerate.

In the time it takes to regenerate (10s), catapults would deal so much more damage.
Each catapult has a dps of 17 - 23.5 depending on the generator, fuel and perks used, in 10s with 7 catapults that means they'd deal 1190-1645 damage. Even under a worst case scenario that is significantly more than the measly 840 you get off with the enlightened shard.
Perhaps most annoyingly, with the attempt to not let other characters use her perks her catapults will go into sleep mode before the gemerator cools down and regenerates. It's an added layer of clunkiness that this update brings that I really dislike.

What does this mean?
Winona's planar strikes are extremely weak, and in the context of infinite fuel I don't really see a reason why I'd need an enlightened shard over the infinite amount of gems Winona could already amass from a varg farm that sustained itself. And so I think that planar strike really needs some looking at, buffing or rework considering how bad of an exchange it typically is.

 

(Also please let everyone make more wobots it's really not fair how exclusive of a perk this is.)

 

 

[Soul7k]

can you use more than one shard and does it affect the amount of energy or recharge time?

[gamehun20]

2 minutes ago, Soul7k said:

can you use more than one shard and does it affect the amount of energy or recharge time?

If you use 2 it recharges faster after the cooldown

[zhangsheng]

I completely agree with your point of view.
Firstly, it should be affirmed that Klei's modifications to Enlightened Shard fuel are correct. The moon line catapult before the update was like a constantly firing nuclear bomb. But the current overload attacks are not as good as ordinary plane attacks. So I'm wondering if it's possible to increase the effectiveness of overload attacks, such as reducing some consumption or adding new features.

[Soul7k]

Hear me out what if the winbot auto loaded the turret from you with pure brilliance at t2 and maybe t2 rose tinted glasses can auto load pure horror.

2 hours ago, gamehun20 said:

If you use 2 it recharges faster after the cooldown

thanks for the info thats good to know.

[MarkBlocos]

I found that too. There is no reason to take planar strike. And there are two of them. Besides the regular strike, the barrage and 3 passive faster cat skills. These are 7 points towards very close skills. Still find this approach very underwhelming for a character with an old kit, considering what maxwell without a skill tree can do, for instance. 

[Jakepeng99]

6 hours ago, Catuna_ said:

I feel like Winona has a lot of filler perks that are redundant between faster firing speed, larger aoe etc. but that's not really the point here
Winona's "affinities" for lack of a better word are extremely weak in their current state and I really fail to see the point of them, among other perks like enlightened shard fuel, let me elaborate.

For all of this testing, I'll be using 7 catapults for this with this skill tree:

Pure Horror Generator + Shadow strike:
Activating planar strike with 7 catapults and a pure horror fueled generator causes them to fire 6 planar shots with 1 normal shot and drain all energy within the generator for 767 damage total.

And while the concept of 767 burst damage might sound appealing, it's a lot less appealing when you realize that off of 1 pure horror the catapults can deal around 10000 damage from sustain fire in that amount of time from my testing, Pure horror lasts a very long time and boosts catapult damage from 42.5 to 47 (around a 10% damage boost). What you get as a result is a really bad exchange of cost and damage.

Brilliance G.E.M.erator, Enlightened G.E.M.erator and Enlightened strike:

Unlike pure horror, pure brilliance only fuels a third of the gemerator, it works like gems (although I'm unsure of what it is equivalent to) and allows you to use planar strike.
One pure brilliance allows you to cast two planar strikes, with the 2nd one having one normal shot. You can get up to 5 planar strikes or so, it falls under the same issue that Pure horror has where letting it do its thing with sustained fire allows you to deal a lot more damage than if you were to actively want to deal burst damage.
However, this is intended for use with the Enlightened shard considering that you can only get pure brilliance after killing Celestial champion (Wilson isn't real it's all in your head). How the enlightened shard works as far as I can tell is that it overtakes the fuel, turning it all into weaker yet infinite fuel that will regenerate 10s after the current fuel is depleted (or "overloaded").
This weaker fuel nets you... one planar strike before it needs to regenerate.

In the time it takes to regenerate (10s), catapults would deal so much more damage.
Each catapult has a dps of 17 - 23.5 depending on the generator, fuel and perks used, in 10s with 7 catapults that means they'd deal 1190-1645 damage. Even under a worst case scenario that is significantly more than the measly 840 you get off with the enlightened shard.
Perhaps most annoyingly, with the attempt to not let other characters use her perks her catapults will go into sleep mode before the gemerator cools down and regenerates. It's an added layer of clunkiness that this update brings that I really dislike.

What does this mean?
Winona's planar strikes are extremely weak, and in the context of infinite fuel I don't really see a reason why I'd need an enlightened shard over the infinite amount of gems Winona could already amass from a varg farm that sustained itself. And so I think that planar strike really needs some looking at, buffing or rework considering how bad of an exchange it typically is.

 

(Also please let everyone make more wobots it's really not fair how exclusive of a perk this is.)

 

 

You forgot that there are skills that double the fuel efficency.

[zhangsheng]

Of course, if you have two Enlightened Shards, add a Pure Brilliance. When using only 5 catapults, the moon's overload output is still sufficient, and it can basically achieve an overload attack every 3 seconds.

However, the overload attack of Shadow Line still lacks practicality, but I remember Klei officials said that Shadow Line's overload attack will add some new effects in the future. So I am still looking forward to it.