The Current State of Eternias Meta

[TheHopscotch]

It's no secret the current state of Eternia is one which heavily revolves around combat and conflict. Whoever can cook up the spiciest build or who can combo the hardest. This has been removed in some form due to the removal / nerfing of many root builds with the great gutting of 2023. However, as things now stand we find ourselves dealing with a whole new issue that seems to plague a number of builds.

Shields no longer see use.
Immunities are rampant in every build.
Counters allow for even further weenie strategies and hiding out to insulate this immunity spam.

Let's take a moment to look at our current strongest character in the whole of Eternia; Xarxes. This character alone has four methods in which they can stay in the fight and continue to maneuver about the battlefield while avoiding punishment / interaction from other players entirely.

True Counter
Deaths Door
Shadow Walk
Time Master E

Four ways (two even off the bar!) to essentially negate any means of fighting back. Though this issue goes deeper than just that; Mist being one of the largest offenders of dippers now acting as a free way to get an immunity spell on builds that push out heavy damage while otherwise wouldn't have a method to avoid heavy damage. Cosmic magi in particular seem the biggest offender to this; with their new tree being so strong and cheap, why would I go for a much inferior energy shield when I can spend 30 rpp and get one of the best immunities in the game?

The issue boils down to facing an unfun/unfair playstyle where the majority of the times your moves are incapable of doing much if any damage to your opponent.

How do we fix this?

The solution is one I have been advocating for months; However Chance believes this will stifle build ingenuity. I, on the other hand, see this rampant use of immunities stifling in the addition for new ones out of fear for stacking and so on. The solutions I pose to you all is thus;

1. All forms of immunities should be made intermediate in some way shape or form. The exception to the rule being those that lock you in place. (I.E, sand barrier, magma barrier, etc.) This will require a much heavier bar for investment and force players to actually invest in said tree as opposed to dipping into the bare minimum for a very strong tool on their bar.

Trees will need shifted about and spells will need tweaked, but that is a task Chance and I could implement quite easily.

The far superior option?

2. Immunities and Counters should share a global cooldown.
This would mean; you activate shadow walk? Your Time E or Mistform goes on cooldown as well. Making you select from one of the spells and put a bit more critical thinking into your decisions as well. Ribcage OR shadow walk / dpalm. Not Ribcage AND both these spells. Shield could fall under this as well(with an overall buff to them being given.) - Limiting builds to two defensive options as opposed to the mass amounts we're seeing now.

Same would apply for counters - True Counter and Quickdraw would set one another on cooldown as well as any we may add in the future; to avoid this game being inundated with these defensive spells that should be used in critical combat situations, not on a whim because your build has multiple ways of escaping/negating your opponents damage wholeheartedly.

Naturally, feedback and suggestions to these proposals are always something we should strive and push for. As is the purpose of this thread; but handling this current issue within the meta needs to happen sooner rather than later so as not to damage the delicate balance of combat and current gamestate as it stands.

You've all had your fun; but it's time we put an end to this era of immunity / defensive utility spam and put back emphasis on their importance in the role of combat, as opposed to simply being must have abilities that anyone can now slap on their build without much thought or reason.

[uncatastrophic]

invuln meta exists because otherwise you're eating 30+% health combos

[Quatral]

i must be fasting

[SilkiyTea]

Remove stun locking too thanks.

[Mald]

I could agree with some of this tbh, but at the very least, roots should not be able to be comboed into stuns. and people should have a cd to being rooted after a stun, this could probably neg a lot of stun root combo builds.

DR with invul is pain.

[GSM]

There’s a certain stun in the Gravity tree that stunlocks you for longer than GCD. It’s an intermediate and rhymes with Telekinesis.

This has bothered me since this was used against me, and the worst part is that it was apparently patched out, but lmao no it fucking wasn’t.

Any reliable CC into Telekinesis into your big damaging move and you just initiated a cutscene mid combat.

I don’t really care for the invuln changes, I just want to point out why I run one now.

[Powerjake]

cosmic is too strong i keep losing to it otherwise i win so clearly it needs to be nerfed

im joking but still cosmic is pretty mf strong and while i think the new spells and features look cool i still think its strong af

[Sailor Ryu]

I generally feel like DR stacking as a whole needs looking at, honestly.

It's very easy to make a build that can sit at 60+% DR, has invulns, and has sustain on top of it, making fighting these people effectively impossible, since it's doable without sacrificing a great deal of their own damage. It's not fun running at a brick wall over and over, and it's only becoming more prevalent as more people realize that DR stacking is in fact the current meta.

We're getting to a point where rounds in fights can legitimately last for 5+ minutes and they consist of people literally back and forthing between shielding or invulning themselves up.
It's boring.

[ForgetTheUnknown]

Nerf cosmic some more god damnit.

[RainIsABirb]

Energy shield sees plenty of use by holy users, seeing as it's essentially an invulnerability can move in. Running in with holyshield is essentially an easy way to win all trades you make especially with the typical 5dr those holy users also have.

Other shields don't see much use because they're objectively worse and typically have a normal invulnerability on bar.

However I can say with confidence that a build without an invulnerability is extremely difficult to play, if only because of the aforementioned 40% combos that most builds are capable of due to the steadily increased damage numbers on already heavy hitting spells. While this has pushed them into viability and has indirectly nerfed the kite autohit meta, it's difficult to play without some sort of defensive option- which many builds do lack!

The issue of stacking is exacerbated by where you find these defensive options as well:

- Wind has no invulnerability, and while Twister is good, you can't block during it making it more of a mediocre speedup for dodging.. and just worse shadow walk
- Water has mistform which is dipped often
- Fire has magma invulnerability, the worst in the game
- Earth has sand invuln and earth aura
- Bio has ribcage and smog
- Ether has holyshield and dpalm, occult leads to shadow
- Meta has shadow walk, chronos
- Armed has Quickdraw which isn't really an invuln so much as it is a damage and gapclose
- Unarmed has demonstep. An entire thread could be made about it.
- True Counter is limited in availability but is a good defensive for any build. It's fine.

Most of these defensive abilities- most importantly, the good, more problematic ones- are concentrated in bio, ether and meta. Elemental trees (except mist) are unanimously shafted, not to mention Time and Shadow are both awesome trees in their own right.

This problem will only be exacerbated once Fortuna becomes more widely available with 2 of its spells being very potent defensive options.

Tl;dr invulns are important for counterplay options and keeping the game dynamic and winnable, but the best trees have the best invulns on top and many trees lack defensive options outright. If invuln stacking is rightfully nerfed, there should be more defensives added to elemental trees to help compensate (not necessarily full invulns).