Hierophant weapons

[Lankester]

It looks to me there is not much of a choice here. The limited number of 1-handed weapons that can be equipped are oddly single-target only. Since equipping them on hierophant disables their abilities 3 and 4, all you are left with are the first two abilities, which in most cases are single target.

If I want to build my hierophant as a ranged caster and use a 1h ranged weapon with one single target attack and an AoE ability (to complement hierophant's spells), what are the options? Grav pistol: ST only. Plasma pistol: ST only. Inferno pistol: 1 ST + 1 AoE (a pretty underwhelming one). That's it for ranged weapons.

So I pretty much have to go melee. Out of those, the Aether Blade is the only somewhat fun weapon, zooming around the battlefield - but also not very good with the game's targeting. Chainsword is ok, albeit a bit clumsy with targeting and its AoE attack. Force sword is useless, since its attacks seem to be bugged and the character just stands there doing nothing. Biomantic sword: only one available ability - with a 5s cd (!).

All in all, a very underwhelming selection of weapons and as far as ranged hierophant goes, a pretty sad range of options.

Was there really no time at Neocore to give this a bit more thought and development? Either as a few new options or adjusting the existing ones to give a more diverse portfolio of possible builds?

[mcb0ny]

What's sad is no armor with free ability slot. Psyker has one, TA has one, Hiero does not. I would really like to be able to have another cheap spell instead of the expensive "ultimate".

[Wilfrid Wong]

Go Aether Blade. You won’t regret. Level 100 mortality relic holy with crit buff probably one of the best. Mobility is king in this game. Aether Blade gives you just that. Problem is, you probably need a Psyker to efficiently farm that.

Understand that in this game, Psalm doctrine is greater than weapon affixes greater than what the weapon skill can do. Also 30% weapon damage can be converted into Heat. So you don’t really need to be too hung up on what that 1 slot of weapon power or skill can do.

[Treyen]

I feel like it's really just not meant for you to focus on or care much about the weapon. You're not a soldier, you're a commander with 4 goofy goobers to kill things for you...unfortunately, that means the only real viable weapons are the force sword variants for the extra spell slot, with aetherblade being the stand out because nothing can really compare to that mobility.

[Lankester]

Originally posted by Treyen:

I feel like it's really just not meant for you to focus on or care much about the weapon. You're not a soldier, you're a commander with 4 goofy goobers to kill things for you...

Well, that is not exactly true, as can be seen with the TA. There you actually have quite interesting choices to make regarding the way you want to build your TA and the weapons that are available to you to boost your chosen role. You can be a ranged debuffer (with several weapons giving you ST and AoE options) or a melee tank, you can go for big damage dealing constructs, hordes of small ones, support them with towers (or not) - there really are way more choices and you actually have gear options for them.

In case of the hierophant, this is not really the case. We get a couple of new off-hand weapons, which cannot really be swapped for other types (e.g. 2-handers) and the 1-handers that have been in the game since its launch do not offer much of a choice in terms of their abilities, as mentioned. None of them have been adjusted for the new class and no new main hand weapons have been added.

For some reason, the design of the new class seems to have stopped short of giving us gear options for diverse builds. If there is only one viable or interesting weapon option, something has failed during the class design process.

[Schalimah]

The Hierophant, by design, is a support class for his retinue.
End of story.
That is just how it is ment to be played.
The variety is mostly in how you equip and spec your retinue members.

If you want to deal the damage, your only option is auramancer, preferably with aether blade.
You need:
- One form of enrage token generation
- Enchant: While in enrage state enemies in 5 meters are shocked
- Enchant: +X% damage per enrage token but attacks consume an additional token
- Psalm code doctrine: inflicting shock causes an explosion
- Psalm code doctrine: heat aura

[Lankester]

Originally posted by Schalimah:

The Hierophant, by design, is a support class for his retinue.
End of story.
That is just how it is ment to be played.
The variety is mostly in how you equip and spec your retinue members.

No, it is not the end of the story. It is a broken cliffhanger that Neocore did not finish for some reason. Once again, see the TA design - another pet class - and his interaction with gear and weapons and the options they give. Quite a difference compared to the new class. Compared to the TA, it seems like the hierophant design process stopped a decent way away from the finish line.

[Schalimah]

Different class - different approach.
You have a complete skill bar dedicated to issue orders as a Hierophant.
Spend more time on that than shooting your gun.

[CaoLex]

Originally posted by Lankester:

Originally posted by Schalimah:

The Hierophant, by design, is a support class for his retinue.
End of story.
That is just how it is ment to be played.
The variety is mostly in how you equip and spec your retinue members.

No, it is not the end of the story. It is a broken cliffhanger that Neocore did not finish for some reason. Once again, see the TA design - another pet class - and his interaction with gear and weapons and the options they give. Quite a difference compared to the new class. Compared to the TA, it seems like the hierophant design process stopped a decent way away from the finish line.

New class have much deeper "equip" system. Gameplay wise it's like going with two Castellans (or are they Kastelans?) but with more options a bit more control.
Yeah, sure, it's designed to go with 4 specific units, while with TA you can go "full power" yourself and just, I dunno, take couple of fire turrets to keep enemies away. when there is to many of them but the only way you can actually do any actual command with them is target pointing with a second skill of specific weapon, which means -1 summon slots.
There is many stupid options, like getting for "ultimate tank" which kinda useless because you can just rapidly use turret or arachnid spawn to get max extra shield and just not getting shot ever. The options are here just for you to enjoy if you want five arachnids, 5 turrets (for example 2 fire with pushback, 2 of your favourite longer ranges, 1 healing turret to keep turrets alive on higher difficulties), two Castellans with towers or arachnids for support (and probably needing to get all that deploy cost and reserve cost reductions as well as class resource increases on lower levels) or a mix of all of this because TA is only really strong when it's properly utilises it's summons. And variance (or lack of it) after deciding on build early on dictated not only by perks, but also by need to farm shards to upgrade your summons.

Hierophans is straight up "companions managment". Don't like it? Don't play it. Play TA. But you can switch your builds pretty cheaply.

[The Grand Mugwump]

My brain is completely blanking on the names right now, but the only ranged weapons I'd recommend for hierophant are the guns which apply vulnerability on hit (I think it was the bolter pistol and inferno pistol?), since they end up helping the retinue too.

You can very easily go heat damage with the heat skill tree + criticals + the channeled spell hierophant has to stack up heat vulnerability on big targets though. This also synergizes well with most of the other damaging spells. I'm loving an enchant I found on an archeotech item which reduces all enemy heat resistance by 50%. It's probably not BiS, but I still like the idea.