Here are my thoughts, as someone who casually revels in meta (i.e. I like lazy builds that dominate) and the Steel Path:
I want to point out that Crystalline Bond is actually probably a terrible augment in a team of competent players (or just players with any sense of survivability), because all of Citrine’s defenses are applied to everyone else so Citrine is not chonkier than others (outside of just having more pure HP/Armor in her build). I’d rather the damage go to the Revenant or Nezha in the team than Citrine, lol.
Jeweled Crown feels like a bad augment, for two reasons. Firstly, Prismatic Gem is already kind of a bad ability (outside of Duviri) and one of the first abilities to be subsumed so it needs help and this augment doesn’t provide that. Secondly, it doesn’t provide enough utility to take up a mod slot. A moving gem is nice, but the ability is easily recastable wherever you go. This feels like an augment that should be part of the base ability (and we have enough of those).
Unyielding Prism has a similar issue, because status immunity and knockdown immunity (which, status immunity is also knockdown immunity) are nice, but that’s not a huge boost when you have ~80% damage reduction at all times. This is the type of augment that should be part of the base ability to boost it up, or offer something more to really improve the ability.
Empowered Shards, though, is an okay augment. It would be more interesting if it also affected Citrine, but as it stands it’s a useful augment that can help allies. I think the augment’s duration should either scale or be significantly longer, though, as Citrine’s playstyle is mostly passively supporting the team and I think it would do well to encourage that more.
Mineral Preservation is interesting but potentially overpowered or useless. You see, you don’t really need infinite duration (or really any duration) if the enemy is already dead, and most enemies are going to die fairly quickly when you have a 300% crit rate, especially if your weapons are already up-to-par before that. However, Crystallize does work on some notable enemies like Acolytes, with significantly reduced duration, meaning duration is actually valuable on those enemies and infinite duration would be a permanent stun to the highest threats in Steel Path. That sounds very strong when combined with the crit boost. Of course, that’s only if the augment works on them, otherwise I would consider it useless.
Prismatic Gem is not weak in the slightest. It’s triggered by all allies (including companions, humanoid defense targets, specters, what have you). It ignores Line of Sight, feeds all the CO mods (using Archon Continuity 5 statuses easily) and any of the status arcanes (Cascadia Flare). The beams have unrestricted range (meaning if you strike something at the edge of the circle the status beam will keep going) and bypasses all obstacles and can make anything into a hybrid weapon while turboboosting any status weapon. Also, it extends Fractured Blast’s status durations, meaning the duration for HP and Energy orb gain is extended. Hell, with Mecha set shenanigans it actually murders and even without that I’ve seen it do some solid damage by itself on SP Circulum.
I do agree the augment is not strong enough to sacrifice a mod slot since there’s way too little mod space already (unless you make it Exilus) but I’ll pick Prismatic Gem any time of the day over the slow as hell, clunky and way too short lasting for a 4th ability Crystalize even though it can stun Acolytes.
shuuuuush I love Prismatic Gem too but like, lowkey, I’m hopping on the little “Citrine’s 3 is bad” bandwagon cuz maybe DE’ll give it a teeny tiny buff lol.
Please no, she’s completely OP as it is but in a good fun way that doesn’t ruin the fun for other players. Just keep quiet and pray they make no changes to her cuz otherwise DE will notice and pull out the nerf bat 😁
Nothing you have said is new information, and I stand by the fact Prismatic Gem is a sub-par ability (to be clear, it is functional and certainly better than some abilities like Frost’s 1, but that’s not saying much).
It feeding status arcanes is meh, as are almost all the status arcanes excluding Cascadia Flare, which only goes on status secondaries that can feed it anyway.
The main benefit of Prismatic Gem is the boost to status chance. Status duration doesn’t matter that much (most enemies will be dead long before it matters and you can just refresh most statuses well before they expire anyway) and the beams are neat but only affect a single enemy at a time, which is really bad in a game where you’re killing hundreds of enemies per mission. However, it has several issues from being stationary and having poor range (I fully understand that it will hit enemies inside the circle and hit enemies if you stand inside the circle, the circle is still small).
The extension to Fractured Blast is meh. As stated, enemies don’t last long, so the added duration is meaningless.
While Mecha Set can help, that’s a lot of wasted mod slots to make a sub-par ability effective and even then it’s not that much of a help as it’s only hitting a group once every 15 seconds. Still a pretty bad job at doing things to enemies.
As for your point about it doing solid damage in Circulum (Circulus, you mean?), it doesn’t. It can kill enemies, sure, but that’s hardly stunning praise when it’s super slow and one at a time. Unless you mean Duviri Circuit, in which case I already said I’m excluding Circuit, and I will note now that it is because the devs have openly stated Circuit throws balance out the window (and indeed it does, and it’s only a tiny portion of the game).
Your comparison to Crystallize is warranted, given that both abilities are not fantastic, but Crystallize has multiple things over Prismatic Gem. Crystallize stuns many important enemies, from Acolytes to Disruptors, and offers a weakpoint that grants excessive damage to kill those very sturdy enemies. This is a niche use, but it is a better use than more status on enemies that are already dead. It is slow, true, but so is constantly recasting Prismatic Gem if you are on the move.
You can prefer what you like, but that doesn’t change what is and isn’t strong. Prismatic Gem is sub-par. It’s not terrible, but it could do with a bit of an extra boost.
I’ve really nothing much to say other than ‘thank you for giving me feedback on these’ because I didn’t really put too much thought into them. But aside from that, I just wanna express my agreement with what you said about her Prismatic Gem. I really wish it was more than a little status circle.
Here are my thoughts, as someone who casually revels in meta (i.e. I like lazy builds that dominate) and the Steel Path:
I want to point out that Crystalline Bond is actually probably a terrible augment in a team of competent players (or just players with any sense of survivability), because all of Citrine’s defenses are applied to everyone else so Citrine is not chonkier than others (outside of just having more pure HP/Armor in her build). I’d rather the damage go to the Revenant or Nezha in the team than Citrine, lol.
Jeweled Crown feels like a bad augment, for two reasons. Firstly, Prismatic Gem is already kind of a bad ability (outside of Duviri) and one of the first abilities to be subsumed so it needs help and this augment doesn’t provide that. Secondly, it doesn’t provide enough utility to take up a mod slot. A moving gem is nice, but the ability is easily recastable wherever you go. This feels like an augment that should be part of the base ability (and we have enough of those).
Unyielding Prism has a similar issue, because status immunity and knockdown immunity (which, status immunity is also knockdown immunity) are nice, but that’s not a huge boost when you have ~80% damage reduction at all times. This is the type of augment that should be part of the base ability to boost it up, or offer something more to really improve the ability.
Empowered Shards, though, is an okay augment. It would be more interesting if it also affected Citrine, but as it stands it’s a useful augment that can help allies. I think the augment’s duration should either scale or be significantly longer, though, as Citrine’s playstyle is mostly passively supporting the team and I think it would do well to encourage that more.
Mineral Preservation is interesting but potentially overpowered or useless. You see, you don’t really need infinite duration (or really any duration) if the enemy is already dead, and most enemies are going to die fairly quickly when you have a 300% crit rate, especially if your weapons are already up-to-par before that. However, Crystallize does work on some notable enemies like Acolytes, with significantly reduced duration, meaning duration is actually valuable on those enemies and infinite duration would be a permanent stun to the highest threats in Steel Path. That sounds very strong when combined with the crit boost. Of course, that’s only if the augment works on them, otherwise I would consider it useless.
Prismatic Gem is not weak in the slightest. It’s triggered by all allies (including companions, humanoid defense targets, specters, what have you). It ignores Line of Sight, feeds all the CO mods (using Archon Continuity 5 statuses easily) and any of the status arcanes (Cascadia Flare). The beams have unrestricted range (meaning if you strike something at the edge of the circle the status beam will keep going) and bypasses all obstacles and can make anything into a hybrid weapon while turboboosting any status weapon. Also, it extends Fractured Blast’s status durations, meaning the duration for HP and Energy orb gain is extended. Hell, with Mecha set shenanigans it actually murders and even without that I’ve seen it do some solid damage by itself on SP Circulum.
I do agree the augment is not strong enough to sacrifice a mod slot since there’s way too little mod space already (unless you make it Exilus) but I’ll pick Prismatic Gem any time of the day over the slow as hell, clunky and way too short lasting for a 4th ability Crystalize even though it can stun Acolytes.
shuuuuush I love Prismatic Gem too but like, lowkey, I’m hopping on the little “Citrine’s 3 is bad” bandwagon cuz maybe DE’ll give it a teeny tiny buff lol.
Please no, she’s completely OP as it is but in a good fun way that doesn’t ruin the fun for other players. Just keep quiet and pray they make no changes to her cuz otherwise DE will notice and pull out the nerf bat 😁
Nothing you have said is new information, and I stand by the fact Prismatic Gem is a sub-par ability (to be clear, it is functional and certainly better than some abilities like Frost’s 1, but that’s not saying much).
It feeding status arcanes is meh, as are almost all the status arcanes excluding Cascadia Flare, which only goes on status secondaries that can feed it anyway.
The main benefit of Prismatic Gem is the boost to status chance. Status duration doesn’t matter that much (most enemies will be dead long before it matters and you can just refresh most statuses well before they expire anyway) and the beams are neat but only affect a single enemy at a time, which is really bad in a game where you’re killing hundreds of enemies per mission. However, it has several issues from being stationary and having poor range (I fully understand that it will hit enemies inside the circle and hit enemies if you stand inside the circle, the circle is still small).
The extension to Fractured Blast is meh. As stated, enemies don’t last long, so the added duration is meaningless.
While Mecha Set can help, that’s a lot of wasted mod slots to make a sub-par ability effective and even then it’s not that much of a help as it’s only hitting a group once every 15 seconds. Still a pretty bad job at doing things to enemies.
As for your point about it doing solid damage in Circulum (Circulus, you mean?), it doesn’t. It can kill enemies, sure, but that’s hardly stunning praise when it’s super slow and one at a time. Unless you mean Duviri Circuit, in which case I already said I’m excluding Circuit, and I will note now that it is because the devs have openly stated Circuit throws balance out the window (and indeed it does, and it’s only a tiny portion of the game).
Your comparison to Crystallize is warranted, given that both abilities are not fantastic, but Crystallize has multiple things over Prismatic Gem. Crystallize stuns many important enemies, from Acolytes to Disruptors, and offers a weakpoint that grants excessive damage to kill those very sturdy enemies. This is a niche use, but it is a better use than more status on enemies that are already dead. It is slow, true, but so is constantly recasting Prismatic Gem if you are on the move.
You can prefer what you like, but that doesn’t change what is and isn’t strong. Prismatic Gem is sub-par. It’s not terrible, but it could do with a bit of an extra boost.
I’ve really nothing much to say other than ‘thank you for giving me feedback on these’ because I didn’t really put too much thought into them. But aside from that, I just wanna express my agreement with what you said about her Prismatic Gem. I really wish it was more than a little status circle.