Glowing Reactor (Hevelius) discussion

[Anolise]

This blessing's effect is:
At the start of your turn, Light Shield is decreased by half (rounded up) instead of being removed.
Your Corruption Meter is always set to 6 Corruption and can't be filled with Purification.
At the start of each battle, gain 6 Light Shield.

Has anyone been able to use this blessing? I like Light Shield-focused strategies, but this seems really bad to me. Sure, you start with 6 Shield, but you also start at 1 health, so you didn't even gain any effective health, and healing doesn't help you at all. The few times I picked this up it ended up getting me killed. What do you think?

[Nixmachine]

It's definitely an iffy blessing to use if you don't find any shield based dice or blessings. I was able to win with this as the starting relic, but I did find Bright Resonator on the early parts of the run so it felt easier than normal.

I feel like Glowing Reactor is the equivalent of "1 heart" black hole blessings for other characters - has a powerful effect, but your life is on the edge unless you find dice that synergize with the effect fast

[Bumc]

You lose the ability to juggle virtues, and a lot of dice turn into do nothing.

For that you gain some light shield, which amplifies a single not exciting finisher (shield bash).

To get defensive profit, you need to consistently end turn with 9-12+ light shield, at which point do you even need that blessing in the first place?

I don't see it ever working out.

[Silyon]

I can absolutely see what they're going for with the relic. Stack it with Shock armor, Vorpal Plate, and all the Light shield you can manage. A version of Thorns build basically, enemy hits you and they get hurt instead. Main problem is there arn't enough good sources of Light Shield to end up with 6+ every turn while still putting out damage or stacking the other buffs. Not to mention the early game simply murders you if you take it, because the starting deck doesn't have enough defense to make survival possible.

Worst part is Hel also has Barrier, which is an objectively better version of Light Shield and the preffered pick over it. Vorpal plate still triggers off of the corruption it negates, and Shock Shield explicitly states Barrier triggers it. But the Glowing Reactor relic? No interaction. Relic is nigh worthless even in builds it's designed for.

[Jamjars]

It'd be good if it didn't have the drawback. The drawback is too much.

Hev only having 2 hearts makes it even worse.

[Nixmachine]

Would this blessing be too broken if it didn't remove your light shield? It seems hard to make the blessing better without making the "you can't heal yourself" penalty a big hindrance

[Lykurgos]

I have been too scared to try. Maybe it could work if you also picked up die and blessings that increased light shield and the die that applies a damage multiple of your shield and the blessing that applies 2x your shield damage to the lowest corruption enemy.

Okay, I'll try it. But I expect to die.

[Winterhearted]

I would love to play with this style actually. I think if you can get safeguard going, it would be great. But it feels rough...I dont know how to make it feel better though. I think it needs minor buff, but only minor. Like you lose 1/3 of your shield every turn or could heal one or two health or something. Or maybe its fine as it is, I just dont have any wins with it yet (Im far from the best player) :)

[Anolise]

Yeah a small buff would be nice. I like the concept of the item at least. I agree that reducing the per-turn loss of shield would be the most reasonable way to do it.

[Otato]

Every time I've seen it I've thought "Oh, that's interesting" but then picked something else because it just wouldn't give enough of an advantage for what the downside would be, even in very shield-heavy runs.

The lower shield loss seems like it could make it feel worth it for sure. I was thinking that if it gave you a 'shield all 1' virtue or something that could help as well, so at least it could give an extra charged body proc or make survival a little less of a nightmare early on.

[HeraldOfOpera]

I know there's at least one blessing that wants you at that health threshold, which is annoying to activate under normal circumstances.

[Lykurgos]

Originally posted by HeraldOfOpera:

I know there's at least one blessing that wants you at that health threshold, which is annoying to activate under normal circumstances.

Yes, there is a blessing which adds a shield bash virtue to your leftmost empty corruption slot. That would be a great fit.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by Lykurgos:

Originally posted by HeraldOfOpera:

I know there's at least one blessing that wants you at that health threshold, which is annoying to activate under normal circumstances.

Yes, there is a blessing which adds a shield bash virtue to your leftmost empty corruption slot. That would be a great fit.

I was actually talking about Zenith Ring, which causes you to deal +2 purification when you have 6 current corruption. That's normally hard to make happen consistently, but Glowing Reactor locks you at that amount.

[Jamjars]

There's a few ways you could buff this relic.

You could make it full shield retain instead of half shield retain.
You could make it so it sets you to 1 at the start of each of your turns, after ruin, but you CAN heal to give yourself more buffer.

[Little Leo Games]

Will try buffing this blessing on next patch =D

Honestly in our beta testing this blessing was quite strong when aligned with high Light Shield and Fortify.
I think not removing Light Shield at all would make it too strong, but I will test it here, will also test starting with more Light Shield instead of only 6.

[Bumc]

Yeah not removing the shield at all goes against the main paradigm of every turn mattering.

The 9-10 LS risky die comes with very weak downside (1-2 single target corruption), so its already a priority pick for Hevelius, and might break the run a bit too easily with glowing reactor.