Sacred 2:Radiant Pillar

A pillar of intense, bright light will appear from the heavens and strike down onto the target area. Adaptations include one short burst against a single strong enemy or a devastating area attack against groups of enemies. Aspect - Celestial Magic Modifications See also: Sacred 2:Combat Art Modifications Bronze Hypnosis - Attracts opponents to the center of the pillar. (~6.75m area (guess)) Delude - Reduces opponents' attack values within the area of effect. (650 + 10 per CA level, see below) Silver Brightness - Increases the area of effect. (33.3% increase) Conserve - Increases duration of Radiant Pillar. (50% increase) Gold Magnify - Increase damage of Radiant Pillar. (35.7% increase (guess)) Ordeal - Inflicts twice as much damage when the opponent's health has fallen below a threshold value. (threshold is 25% + 0.5% per CA level of max health) Skills The following skills will affect this combat art: Celestial Magic Lore - improves combat art damage, critical chance and casting speed Celestial Magic Focus - improves regeneration time and increases the maximum combat art level Concentration - directly reduces regeneration time for this skill ... ... Usage Strategies Damage of Radiant Pillar is affected by Intelligence, so you need to invest in it to make RP effective. Bronze choices. Hypnosis may be considered usefull if followed by Flaring Nova, Archangel's Wrath (explosion mod), BFG (pierce mod). Otherwise Delude is a very good option especially when combined with Baneful Smile with another attack value reduction mod. Silver choices. Duration will come naturally with leveling. It will eventually be longer than you ever need. Taking Brightness seems like a better choice. Gold choices. Ordeal effect can be easily obtained with items (in S2 only, this was changed in the Ice & Blood expansion). Straight damage from Magnify is a very good choice. The Delude mod uses a particular formula to calculate the attack value reduction: 1-1/(1+(650+10*CA lvl)/1000). For level 1, this gives 1-1/(1+(650+10*1)/1000 = 39.8% reduction, level 10 gives 1-1/(1+(650+10*10)/1000 = 42.9% reduction, level 50 gives 1-1/(1+(650+10*50)/1000 = 53.5% reduction. Pros and Cons Pros Great ability to cause area of effect damage Very useful debuff ability on both mobs and bosses Cons The cast time of this combat art is a bit slow early on It is a stationary spell, if the target moves out of its damage range, its useless Stats Chart Duration is 10 + 0.1*CA-Lvl seconds and 15 + 0.15*CA-Lvl seconds with Conserve. It inflicts damage 0.5 + 0.003*CA-Lvl times per second.