Anima Allocation
The times are-a-changing, sweetlings. Any good agent needs to be able to improvise, adapt, and overcome–and right now that’s not always so easy to do. Anima Allocation is our answer; to allow you to remain flexible in your adventures and put control over your character’s statistics into your hands.
Beginning at Level 20, you may access a new tab in your Ability Window (N) where you are presented with this nifty interface:
This is where you can modify your stats. Simply click and drag the little triangular slider to move it anywhere within the triangle. Each corner represents a role; Healing, Damage, and Survivability. The more you move the slider towards one of these corners, the more your stats are shifted to fit that role.
For example, if you want to be in a role where you want sturdiness but still a moderate amount of damage, you can drag the slider towards the blue corner for additional Health and Protection, like so:
You can see a real-time summary of what your stats will look like before you commit your changes. When you’ve configured your stats the way you want, simply press the ‘Commit’ button at the bottom, and your stats will be changed.
It costs *nothing* to play around with your stats and commit changes; one of the big design goals of this system is to allow you to experiment with your stats to your heart’s content! The only limitation is that you can’t change your stats while in combat.
You can also save your Anima Allocation settings using the Build Manager.
Please note: When this update hits, everyone will have a default setting of 90% Damage and 10% Survivability to start. You’ll need to move the slider around to get back to how you were set up previously, if you so choose.
Talisman Revamp
In order to make this system work, we performed a major revamp to itemization: Now, *all* talismans now use a single “Power Rating” statistic instead of using separate Attack/Healing/Protection/Health values. This Power Rating stat is then converted into Hit Points, Attack Rating, Heal Rating, and Protection based on your Anima Allocation.
As an example, let’s look at a Head Talisman with our current Anima Allocation of 25% in Damage and 75% in Survivability:
You can see the item has a base Power Rating of 1892, which is then converted to a large amount of Hit Points and Protection with a moderate amount of Attack Rating when equipped. My character for this example does not have any Head Talisman equipped.
Now, let’s look at the same item, except with an Allocation of 15% Survivability and 85% Healing:
Now I’m in pure heal mode–the Power Rating is now converted into Heal Rating with a small amount of Protection and Hit Points.
What This Means
Now, we’ve covered how Talisman stats will work after the update–but what happens to other things, like Extraordinary effects, Signets, Glyphs, and Weapons?
In short, none of these items are directly affected by Anima Allocation. Extraordinary Talismans will have their base stats changed to Power Rating, but the effects themselves remain the same–meaning an item with an effect ideal for healing, for example, still remains specialized for healing.
Signet and Glyph effects too are not modified by Anima Allocation, and Weapon stats will function exactly the same as they did previously.
We still intend for you to be able to specialize in a certain role, but now with much more flexibility for the situation you find yourself in. Go nuts! Let us know what you think! Anima Allocation is the direct result of your feedback, so please let us know how things go and how we can improve on the system. Thanks for reading!
