I'd like to voice some reservations about CWY:
Covetous Wraith's Yearning
Keywords: Dark, Desire, Empathy, Connection, Perceptiveness, Presence, Yin
Most spirits of darkness are quiescant things, wisps born in the night and dead by morning, comfortable in their irrelevance and nonexistence. Those that cling to existence under the rays of the morning sun are hungry things, stained by desires drawn from human and beast alike. The desire to be, and live, and take. In many ways spirits of darkness are a reflection of the fundamental drives of life, and as such there is much understanding to be gained from their perspective.
This art is fundamentally about
desire, so much that I'm surprised Hunger isn't a keyword. Tech-wise I'll talk separately about utility (social or combat), theme and my opinions on suitability.
Passives: mostly social perception, initiative and sp.armor. Overall pretty good, but then all the arts here have relevant passives.
Seeking the Hearthfire:
Using this art, the user channels dark qi through their mundanes senses, enhancing their ability to understand the desires and bonds between those in their sight, and the ways in which they might insinuate themselves into those things. This sharpening of senses also allows the user to react more quickly to the hostility of foes, increasing their initiative and avoid.
- Mechanically it is a fairly potent social combat tech, with some fairly heavy manipulation themes, and in-combat it is a hostility-sense that works to increase our initiative and avoid.
- The combat utility is obvious and undeniable, but overall fairly minor.
- Socially it certainly looks strong, but it's hard to say if Presence-based manipulation of relatively unknown groups is a skillset we'll get much use of, especially considering our other tools.
- Thematically this is the art of the social manipulator. Of Fu Xiang (probably, seems the type) and of Jack Slash, while not bad in and of itself, it does carry unfortunate connotations, especially coupled with its inherent themes of desire.
- Utility-wise, while the combat section is useful in general it's not what we were looking for in this art dive (that being comprehensive perception and some actual stealth). Socially, I'd much prefer the Sixiang approach to social combat;
Laughing Moonlit Maiden: E
Instant
Channeling through their bond with their binder, Sixiang may grant Ling Qi an air of amiable approachability, and make her words seem both more fair and agreeable. Grants Ling Qi Sixiang's passive bonuses to persuade and socialize challenges for a Short time.
An approachable moon fairy that can talk you into anything for a new friend. Without that "like good ol Jack" aftertaste CWY is gonna have. More than that, Harmony of the Dancing Wind has the following core theme:
[...]and in doing, teaches the musician to see and pluck at the lesser patterns and connections in the world around. The harmony reveals the web which connects all things, if the players eyes are but sharp enough to see.
It too is a social combat-heavy art, at or so the passives indicate, and this seems like a music-tinted and less dark way of seeing the same sort of thing, long-term.
- In general I'm a proponent of keeping our dark/monstrous aspects on the physical battlefield. CWY social is the sort of art you'd take to a pit of demons by yourself donning the mask of a demon so they would recognize you as kin. Not very elegant-moon-fairy like.
Welcoming in Shadow:
The darkness spirit might seem a pitable thing, ut it does not due to forget the danger and hunger they represent. Desire is a deadly thing, and has unmade many. Shrouding themselves in the raiment of the dark, the user tugs at the strings of an enemies desires, focusing their attention upon them. An enemy so affected will approach the user at their full speed, and may target no one else while under their this thrall. The approach effect can be resisted with a resolve of C or greater. While this technique is active, the users armor of both types increases significantly, as they take on a wraiths phantasmal traits.
- Mechanically it looks like a decently powerful single-target (might grow into AoE but hard to say) Taunt combined with a fairly significant armoring up, which notably works for spiritual armor. It has the problem of running off our presence though, in terms of landing the taunt and resisting dispels. Also in a fight we are the support, and building a stealth specialty besides. Forcing direct attention on us with a presence-based art seems very anti-stealth and also not the best idea. Much better to let Zhengui do such things, or use arts to force attention on him instead. (we're hoping to stay relatively tanky, but we are not meant to handle the direct attention of a peer combat specialist).
- Synergy with FVM or PLR's gating effects have been raised and while valid they're also kinda confusing. The kinds of opponents that get caught in this effect we'll be destroying already with our layered area effects, while opponents that won't be snared or destroyed are not the kind we want running at our face at their full speed.
- An actually useful Taunt-like effect for us would be attention control, where we can direct aggro to a target of our discretion that isn't us. PLR might go that way with its illusions, Zhengui might figure a taunt of his own making this whole category redundant since he's the best tank.
- Frankly this technique and art would serve us much better if the taunt aspect were removed entirely. Something I think is very unlikely since the technique and, indeed, the art itself, is founded on Desire.
- Thematically we become an irresistible beacon of dark desire and also take on phantasmal wraith traits that make us hard to damage. It's pretty close to what the face/skin cloak shaman guy had in Dark Dreams with slightly less body horror. I guess it's an OK theme but like, where does it sit with LQ's themes, current and desired?
- Utility-wise, while a raiment of phantasmal darkness probably looks metal as fuck and apparently provides a fairly good armor and spiritual armor buff, I would prefer a more dedicated sp.armor/dispel resist/(armor?) focused art that's based off of more appropriate themes than desire and presence. The taunt effect can go die in a fire as far as it being good for us is concerned.
General impression is: If Meizhen were a more examplar Bai (read:evil) and didn't have superior Bai arts then this is would be a perfect fit for her. We're not Meizhen. Not in combat role nor in social approach. Let's not.
More broadly, I'm not exactly happy with any of the perception arts we got in this art dive, at least as far as the visible level1 goes, but of the bunch CWY is undoubtedly the worst fit. It is powerful socially but that power comes with a price I doubt we need to pay at this point, and the combat parts are covering bases that should be covered by much better-fitting arts, ones without glaring clashes with the combat strategy we're going for.
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For the other arts:
For Perception, Harmony has some very interesting conceptual framework that will make avoiding our sight in combat very hard, but it suffers from a severe case of music-sized setup time. Though the friends-based TRF-lite for spiritual isn't bad, and it is thematically rather excellent for us, especially for those of us who want to see Wind incorporated in a significant way. Diviner's Eyes is currently somewhat awkward and heavily utility-focused, with some powerful but unusable-at-its-state combat potential. It's also has the most obvious future-growth potential what with being based on Weilu traditions, and can likely result in a ridiculously powerful core for Perception art to replace AM since it's based off of arts by a guy known as "Diviner".
Ephemeral Nights Memory is an unexpected windfall. It is thematically analogous to SCS and comes as a Wind/Dark art focused on Stealth/Fade; this is pretty much one of the theoretical optimal arts to add to our build for those two purposes, and this one comes with a very powerful memory-based stealth. I honestly did not expect access to effects of this nature this early on. (also in case it's not blindingly obvious: this is an art we should be very reluctant to put into our Domain unless the lessons therein are
very good)
Audacious Fairy's Lark... I'm ambivalent. This art is fairly amazing but frankly, it kinda sucks for us. At least as far direct, common-case, serious combat utility goes. This isn't the old systems where numbers stack with no reason. The jetpack-like effect would be a great boon to our aerial maneuverability... if we couldn't teleport and weren't looking for a perception art that would let us
further abuse SCS's insane mobility. To illustrate the point:
The user's footsteps are light, and they float freely over the earth, bendy nary a single strand of grass in their passing. In flight, the user is merely pushed aside by blows that might have struck home, floating from danger like a cascade of flower petals in the wind. Greatly enhances the users speed and stealth by allowing them to defy gravity for short bursts. With flight, this technique is greatly enhanced, and physical avoid is enhanced as well.
- In red we have things we either have as permanent passives from SCS or are just done better by SCS.
- In orange;
- the "in flight +avoid" is useful if we're engaged in aerial combat. This isn't useless but it's so niche as to be questionable overall. Also SCS teleport abuse and whatever esoteric mobility PLR decides to grow once the leg meridians start mattering. Probably place-swapping with illusions or something.
- the second orange part seems like a reiteration of the first in more concrete mechanical terms. It does not mean we get enhanced stealth during flight.
The theft tech is great on the face of it, but to
use it we need to do a melee attack from stealth. If we're in position to do that, a more to-the-point backstab-for-massive-damage art would work much better. All that said, outside of combat? ALF and its theft aspect gives us Art-backed potency to our larceny, especially in non direct-combat situations. Also ridiculous trolling potential. Under Jiao's lessons we managed without just fine though, and it's worth noting that while with this art we
could have say, yoink Heizui's bullshit pendant in that fight, it doesn't mean said pendant doesn't come with a "disintegrate the unworthy" effect like the imperial throne.
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(math got delayed due to update and the fact we're getting 1/3-1/2 sized arts. AP cost is somewhat deceptive since we can't fit all that without scrunching a bit but it's still far from our core art 1.2-2k for Appraisal only levels of xp. It seems like we're given room to explore and experiment, especially with the way Archive dive voting works now and the amount of arts they return).
(also lol at the moon/water art, of course we'll see a useful art with Water in there).
