Bless, as it currently stands, is a bad ability.
In beta, Bless had no source point cost. This was good, because Bless was powerful, but limited by its cooldown and what surfaces were available, along with its then five-turn surface duration.
In beta, this surface duration generally lasted (in my experience) longer than five turns due to issues with how surfaces and turns interacted. Nowadays, those issues are mostly fixed.
The problem with Bless now is that it is, depending on how you look at it, pretty weak. It offers two possible targets: people and surfaces.
People gain +20% accuracy, +10% dodge, and +15% to all resistances. This is, by certain definitions, powerful, but lasts two turns. According to wikis (haven't tested myself), blessed characters also bless the surfaces they step on. This lasts for 2 turns.
Surface Blessing is just that: you bless a surface. This lasts for two turns.
Here's the problem: 20% accuracy, 10% dodge, and 15% to all resistances is still not worth a source point if it only lasts 2 turns. Just like blessed surfaces are not worth a source point if they only last 2 turns. To list them, they provide:
Blessed Water/Blood: Healing (instantly)
Blessed Oil: Fortified + Armor (basically Fortify)
Blessed Ice: Magic Shell + Magic Armor (basically Armor of Frost)
Blessed Fire: Holy Fire (+150% Fire Res, immunity to all water-type debuffs.)
Blessed Poison: Regeneration.
All of these buffs are provided for 1 turn - in other words, they're only upkept while standing in the surface... and the surface lasts 2 turns.
If they had their previous duration, then it'd make sense: A strong defensive buff for several rounds merits a source point. The surfaces are valuable the longer they exist. That makes sense.
But let's compare Bless to what it can pretend to be.
Bless can pretend to be Restoration, Fortify, Mage Armor, Flaming Skin, or it can be a buff spell that grants defensive stuff, so... idk, I'll compare it to Peace of Mind for completeness's sake, despite PoM's higher offensive purposes.
So let's go down the line. I'll be valuing each skill based on EHPS (effective heals per second) or EDPS (effective damage per second). This includes defense - so if you apply a 10% damage reduction, your EHPS is effectively 10% of each hit dealt.
Bless is a skill that costs 1 AP, 1 SP, and has a 3 turn cooldown. It has a 2-turn duration. Generally, it relies on surfaces to be more than a basic defensive buff. If we claim that +10% Dodge is a 10% damage reduction (because that's, frankly, easier to write) then its EHPS is 25% of damage dealt due to the resistance increases. Dodge is probably worth less, but let's roll with it.
Restoration is a skill that costs 1 AP and has a 4 turn cooldown. It's more likely to heal over 30% of a person's HP, just because casters of it will likely have invested in Hydrosophist and also be of an appropriate level - so if we rate it at 30% EHPS, it's still on par with Bless's shorter CD due to the fact you can cast it more than however many SP you have. I'd say it's objectively better.
Fortify is a skill that costs 1 AP and has a 4 turn cooldown. Again, this has the exact same effect as a blessed oil surface, without worrying about potentially getting slowed when the bless wears off. ... It's basically better.
Armor of Frost is a skill that costs 1 AP and has a 4 turn-- you see where I'm going with this.
Flaming Skin is a 1 AP, 1 SP, 5 turn CD spell that grants fire immunity, lowered water resistance, and makes you bleed fire. This one is actually competitive with Holy Fire, but that's mainly because Holy Fire is extremely powerful. Blessed Fire basically manages to edge out the Flaming Skin buff, which is just kind of sad.
Peace of Mind is 1 AP, 3 turn CD. It gives buffs like Bless does, but it also doesn't cost an SP to use. It's not the most perfect comparison, but hey.
With all of that said, here's some obvious criticisms I can think of:
1) Blessed surfaces work as a mass version of the spell they copy!
Poison and Fire are pretty common, though I mostly see Cursed Fire, so I suppose you could argue mass regen or Holy Fire would skew the comparison. But by the time you're creating large puddles of oil or ice on allies, something has probably gone wrong. Most of the time, Blessed Surface buffs will hit one or two people, not your entire party.
Also, blessed surface buffs = 2 turns of the buff if you're in the surface the entire time.
2) Since all the buffs from Blessed are defensive, that's +25% per attack, not overall!
Okay. If we want to get into semantics, that's only +15% from elemental damage, so it's 10% protection versus physical attacks based on the Dodge addition, which is napkin math rather than a really truly reliable statistic.
That's also *per attack*. If you consider attack damage to be maybe 5-10% of your HP bar, that means it's effectively 2.25% to 3.5% in effective health.
3) Okay, but if everyone casts Bless--
It's a waste of a Source Point for everyone involved. Especially considering that many enemies can (and will) curse your bless away.
4) It protects from Decay/Curse/etc!
It does protect from these effects. But the only one that's vaguely threatening is Decaying.
The issue with Bless is not that it costs a source point. It's that like five different parts of it got nerfed, some coincidentally and others not, and it has come together to make Bless fundamentally worse.
The source point cost would not have been an issue if it had the power of a Source Point skill. But it's just a defensive buff that relies on good surface placement to do anything more than basic defensive buffs + an accuracy gain.
The duration nerf creates an issue because it makes it fundamentally worse than basic NON-SOURCE POINT skills.
The surface bugfixing creates an issue because blessed surfaces lasting for 2 turns makes them just as useless.
And here's the final, major nerf: Enemies were designed around Curse being a non-SP skill. They can use Curse on cooldown. The nerf is that enemies' Curse does not have any cost changes to match the player SP cost.
In other words, enemies can curse. A lot. They will curse. A lot. But source points are tedious to obtain and use unless you use something like teleporter prisms at Source Fountains, which just sounds wrong.
So Bless tries to be a puzzle skill... and kinda fails. Unless you've got obvious source point access (ie the puddles in Act 1), blessing to solve puzzles just isn't an option, because if you bless the wrong thing you have just wasted your time.
Bless tries to be a combat skill... and fails, because it just starts to feel pointless. It is a waste of a Memory slot.
I'm writing all this out as feedback because the change I want to see in this game is that I want Bless to be useful. I understand limitations in earlygame, but c'mon!
Ways I can see to make Bless work without overtuning it:
1) Drop the SP cost after meeting some Source Masters in Act 2.
It makes sense with the lore - realizing what's ~inside~ during the Godwoken rituals would actually really help fluff out losing the SP cost on Bless.
2) Make Bless stack duration.
If I cast Bless, it would be nice if another person Blessing the same thing added turns to its Bless, which would really allow for some silly cheese without making it too ridiculous.
3) Buff Bless, but keep the SP cost.
Give extra dodge/resistances, but leave the SP cost on. Make it actually worth my SP, not a waste of everyone's time. Or even just buff blessed surfaces, or the spell duration! If I can only cast Bless once (/twice/thrice), let me make it count.
As it is, Bless just bothers me. It was so cool and fun to use in beta, so I'm just left here sitting around like what even happened?
