Luminary Ultimate Ratings
I am rating only the Ultimate abilities and not the entire builds because of how complicated the interactions between the various abilities can be, so I want to focus on just the one most important one.
Criteria:
Ult Power: How well does this ult do its job? Does it use your specialisations well? Does it have a focused effect with proportional conditions? Does it work well with your other abilities?
Ult Fun: How fun was this ult to read? Does it match the theme of your build? Did you make an Ultimate around a single idea instead of trying to game it?
These ratings are obviously my opinions, so take them with a grain of salt. The scale goes from F to S+, for a total of 20 different possible ratings.
- Luminary Ultimate Ratings
- Blah
- Golden Knight
- Floating Guns
- Kirei
- Bubble Man
- Physical Guardian
- Actual Musician
- Corporate Insider
- Teleporting Assassin
- Ordinary Salaryman
- Vampire Monstergirl
- Ambush Predator
- Gloria
- Magical Boy Horrible Sea Urchin Monstrosity
- Magical Guy
- Dark Sovereign (Outdated)
- Keep Practicing
- Tok
- Cute Wizard
- Defense Penetration
- Gwenith Gwilym
- Biggest Nuker
- Distorted Heart
- Survive First, Learn Later
- Raikiri
- Invisible Needles
- IAN-01
- Spiritual Crushing
- Anything I Need to Be
- Biotech Tinker (Outdated)
- A Build of the Masses
- Twilight
- Not A Psychopath
- Blue-White Beast
- Drain
- Gift of Countless Blessings
- Nobody Knows
- Destined Victory
- Assimilation
- Ice Queen
- Miko Battlemage
- Legionnaire
- SPECTRE*
- Threads of Fate
Blah
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: D-
Second Form. Short and simple, but knowing the cosmetic effects and what schools it uses is enough.
Golden Knight
Ult Power: B-
Ult Fun: C+
A little derivative. Still, it works well with your schools, Physicality and Spirit in particular. It also matches your knightly theme.
Floating Guns
Ult Power: D-
Ult Fun: C
It's just weak. You're making your Ultimate ability use Tech, which has a great strength in its ability to be produced en-masse provided upkeep, and using it for a personal attack ability of your eponymous floating guns. You could have just built robots to use the guns, added doc oc style robo arms, recruited or mindslaved corpo sorcerers to overcharge them, or even made your ability more focused on attack power by boosting your magnum opus(which you did not specify). You're already planning on recruiting other Luminaries to your organization, you could have them use your tech. Boosting an artillery cannon is a great idea, you just can already do that without using your Ultimate like this. Sacrificing power for identity can be fun, but Luminary makes it very possible to have both.
Kirei
Ult Power: N/A
Ult Fun: N/A
Cannot rate my own build.
Bubble Man
Ult Power: B-
Ult Fun: B+
It's a unique ability that uses your Specialities and has a very defined role. It should probably be able to last long enough to remain unaffected through a whole Domain from one of your equals, but in most cases this just isn't super useful. You've got solid counters to three schools to add to your generally high defensive capabilities, but the split between acting as a counter-ult and defensive utility lessens its effectiveness.
Physical Guardian
Ult Power: A
Ult Fun: S
Excellent. I really hope you aren't fucking it though. Expanding your Shadow Guardian to have access to another school is a massive improvement that matches, or, well, is your build's theme. You've also planned your other schools and your Quirks around synergy with your Ultimate, which really makes it all just fit perfectly.
Actual Musician
Ult Power: D+
Ult Fun: A
You have a lot of solid abilities against those weaker than you, and your ult improves them. The problem is that Radiant's pressure functions on the weak willed at Specialisation level(which you don't have), so you're just completely wasting part of your ult in one of your Novice affinities. It functioning through Sonic is a good condition that matches with your build's theme as a musician, but Sonic and Psychic are also not Specialities. If I were to be pedantic, you don't need to use your Lightning at all to power your Domain, so your only Speciality usage is for SFX.
Corporate Insider
Ult Power: C
Ult Fun: D+
It's simple, but also vague. The limitation on time is excellent, but the short description and the lack of any examples of tech you would make is disappointing. Not taking any missions works well with this to spend more time on your rituals. You forgot your Dark Speciality, so I don't know how well it could tie into this ult.
Teleporting Assassin
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: C
It matches your physical style, and an upgrade to your Implement means it can't be a weak ability. Storing blood to be released later in Spatial storage could provide you with a lot of reserves during important fights, but it also requires consistent killings, and more importantly, not using that blood until you need it. It's very related to your Adept affinity Sacrifice, but not reliant on it, so it probably functions just fine.
Ordinary Salaryman
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: E+
Second Form. Only listed what schools it uses.
Vampire Monstergirl
Ult Power: C+
Ult Fun: D
A regeneration factor combines well with Bio-Shifting's combat form, and your stamina from Physicality can help with it. One sentence description.
Ambush Predator
Ult Power: A
Ult Fun: B+
If its creations are even a tenth as powerful as they were when they were alive it's busted as shit. It uses both of your Specialities, it's named, and it matches well with your methodical plan. The problem is that you added too much to it. Fully restoring the mental and magical capabilities is already insane unless it requires upkeep like Tech(is that why you included that school in the label?), the idea that you could use such an ability at Novice level is laughable.
Gloria
Ult Power: C+
Ult Fun: S+
It has a very detailed description, which is excellent. I appreciate the effort you put in to writing out your Ultimate, even if it was a pain to copy to a text file from the image build. The choice of environment as a battlefield fits the character images, Outfit, Implement, and your general strategy perfectly. You have well-thought out counters to Danger Sense(though for some builds artillery might not count as danger at all), and your use of nonvisual detection is a great application of Sonic Speciality. I don't think this is comparable to a Final Form, though, even if you can use it for longer. It's well-suited to sniping your enemies and hiding like you plan, but there are some build types that could ignore major parts of the sensory obstruction; Earthen, Sonic, Force, and possibly Aero Specialists all benefit from your Domain only a little less than you do. With the right Ultimate, one could even completely reverse your advantages by benefiting more from your own Domain than you can, which is a massive issue. Finally, the statement "magical senses fail, because the Battlefield is a magical construct" seems to imply that all Domains automatically blind the magical senses of targets. I have found absolutely no basis to this in the cyoa's descriptions of Domains, so this would have to also be done through the Domain's effects. Obstruction of senses(both mundane and magical) and powering magically created and enhanced soldiers also divides the focus of the Domain, weakening it. It seems like the only way to connect the sheer variety of effects used would be Illusion, which you have no affinity in at all. It's certainly easier than trying to actually create all of the mechanically relevant effects(human infantry, artillery, and fog that can't be blown away by your equals like Voss, that can annihilate city blocks). I don't think you can possibly change it to make it more focused, but changing it to manage the assumptions that your enemies' durability, magical perception, speed, and affinities are all worthless and plan what exemption from the Domains effects uniquely benefits you alone would improve it significantly. I really don't see why you have the Domain effect you in the same ways as your foes, because it's definitely not an attempt to game the conditions with how fair the rest of the build and the Ultimate has been. I believe rewriting the sentence about magical senses to just be that the fog also hinders the magical perception of everyone but you would fix nearly all of the problems with an otherwise amazing Ultimate.
Magical Boy Horrible Sea Urchin Monstrosity
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: D
It's a powerful ability that compares well to a Second Form, risking a lower power level for a greater chance at growth potential. It's just too poorly-defined. The degree and type of adaptations are unclear, to the point I don't know whether you're trying to make a type of overpowered adaptation similar to Mahoraga from JJK or Darwin from X-Men, or something closer to automatic combat shapeshifting.
Magical Guy
Ult Power: C+
Ult Fun: B
This might be my bias towards Illusion, but the image of a man in a wizard robe duct-taping a cigarette lighter and a water gun to make some building-destroying flamethrower is hilarious. Taking the possible resource limitations into account indicates that you've considered risk minimization and contingency plans for if things don't work out for you.
Dark Sovereign (Outdated)
Ult Power: D+
Ult Fun: B
You've named it, and it bridges your two Specialities quite well, but I doubt you need the autonomous Flora magic when you have spirits from Pact and barriers from Spirit. The affinity with spirits associated with nature will be immensely useful, and might be able to combine with your autonomous control to allow you to win battles in your sleep, literally. It just doesn't help you much to do things you couldn't do already.
Keep Practicing
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: B-
Short and simple Continuous Art that matches your Speciality as a direct improvement on the Curse school's self-buff. It's from a school with pretty wide-reaching effects if you can change what's plausible effectively, and you seem to have planned your build around doing that effectively while maintaining your cover.
Tok
Ult Power: E
Ult Fun: C-
It's funny and all, and a random set of options is a good condition for an Ultimate, but there are too many ways pulling someone into one of Tok's cyoas could be interpreted, many of which would be auto-wins.
Cute Wizard
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: E+
Second Form. Specified Lightning school. I like the build as a whole, but the Ultimate is not a strong point.
Defense Penetration
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: E-
Second Form. No school specified.
Gwenith Gwilym
Ult Power: F
Ult Fun: F
I did not need to know of your love of "brutal ryona rape" or your desire to "be dominated". This Ultimate does not use any of your schools, much less your Specialisation. It's effect is an instant-win via your opponents natural regeneration destroying their own soul gem, so you cannot even open the Domain. It's completely illegal twice-over. I cannot fathom how any human being could be so monumentally stupid as to be capable of writing this without throwing their computer off of a bridge out of shame.
Biggest Nuker
Ult Power: A+
Ult Fun: A
Incredibly simple and fun domain concept with a lot of power. The "stars" act as essentially teleportation markers, right? It's mentioned that they are "innumerable", so that would indicate you can move to or attack from anywhere in the Domain as many times as you want, which makes sense with your Space Mastery and Radiant Speciality.
Distorted Heart
Ult Power: F
Ult Fun: E-
This is exceptionally verbose while failing to paint a clear picture of what you actually want your Ultimate to do. The idea that it could automatically disrupt every school of magic is immensely stupid, and the domains effects heavily overlap with Curse in that regard, which you have no affinity in. "Constant damage to anything composed of matter" is also an immensely munchkin pick. You straight up can never open your domain, it's an instant-loss. I'm giving you one sole point over Tok because you at least didn't regale me with tales of your fetishes.
Survive First, Learn Later
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: C
Automatic use of your magics to defend you is a simple and effective plan, and using Curse to dictate what counts as the best defense is an excellent way to use your Speciality. I doubt this can influence anything significantly outside of your awareness, so this isn't invincible by any means. It might, but that would be nearly invincible and require the Curse spell to somehow sense what action is beneficial to you; it also may just be costly as the description of Curse: Specialised says "brute-forcing practically impossible events at great cost".
Raikiri
Ult Power: B-
Ult Fun: B-
Named Ultimate, which is nice. Somewhat unclear how Time and Space involve energy generation, when only Lightning uses that. Still, Lightning is one of your Specialities. It gives you nice sustainability when not going all-out, but the dragon part feels very tacked-on, even if it is solely cosmetic. I don't know how you'd combine a dragon and a "magical fusion reactor", but it sounds very fun.
Invisible Needles
Ult Power: A+
Ult Fun: C+
You actually are "Mike Tyson with an awl" in this scenario.
IAN-01
Ult Power: C
Ult Fun: A
You've arranged your build around your Named Ultimate and defined a limit to the mass of nanomachines, so props for that. It's a very interesting idea, and I don't think anyone else has done anything similar to it at all. It doesn't exactly make you more powerful, but I'd expect that you intend to separate yourself into weaker parts for survival purposes, which this would excel at.
Spiritual Crushing
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: E
Second Form. I can't answer your question, no idea what a Psychic Second Form would look like.
Anything I Need to Be
Ult Power: E
Ult Fun: E
"It's a Second Form, how can it be E in Ult Power?", you ask. He is never going to get powerful enough to use it because of his overwhelming naïveté. No description of the Ultimate itself. Absolutely zero indication what it would look like or what it would do specifically.
Biotech Tinker (Outdated)
Ult Power: C-
Ult Fun: C+
It's an interesting and very specific Ultimate. I very much doubt you'll ever get to use this, but it could save you against foes far, far out of your league. Is travel back in time even possible?
A Build of the Masses
Ult Power: F
Ult Fun: F
Didn't design one. "Continuous" is all we have, unfortunately.
Twilight
Ult Power: C-
Ult Fun: D+
Taking on some of the traits of the spirits you summon is very interesting, and I would have loved to see examples of what you might get from hypothetical spirits. The bonus to meeting spirits divides the focus too much, even if they're both Pact related.
Not A Psychopath
Ult Power: E-
Ult Fun: E
Direct stabbing and cutting attacks can work for a Domain, but Spirit and Bio-Shifting don't seem at all conducive to that, with your closest runner-up being Shadow. It just doesn't make much use of your Specialities. I very much doubt you could even use your Domain.
Blue-White Beast
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: E
Final Form. Zero description, but at least you included an image.
Drain
Ult Power: F
Ult Fun: E
No name, and it describes something Binding at the Master and Specialised levels already does.
Gift of Countless Blessings
Ult Power: D+
Ult Fun: C
It's an interesting Ultimate, but including exceptions in the conditions is more than a little weird. Examples of what a "critical success" might be and what "multicrits" would have entailed could have improved this Ultimate a lot. I expect it will combine well with Magic Bloodhound. Using it to try to mimic Second Form also seems like a waste of the main strengths of a Continuous Ultimate, and your conditions don't seem restrictive enough to justify that level of power at all (hell, the third condition isn't even a restriction but a buff, as Curse's normal description only says you can turn Curse onto yourself for blessings).
Nobody Knows
Ult Power:
Ult Fun:
Huh? There's nothing here.
In all seriousness, though, here's the real rating taking the following into account: https://desuarchive.org/tg/thread/96187933#96192632
Ult Power: B+
Ult Fun: B+
It's very strongly connected to your Space Speciality, focused, and well-thought out. Limiting your enemies' ability to use their environment is a good use of Domains, and it could be especially useful against Force, Aero, Earth, and even Sacrifice or Bio-Shifting if you were in an area near other people. The lack of light is a useful advantage against some opponents, but it might be a concern if you face any Shadow magic users.
Destined Victory
Ult Power: F
Ult Fun: F
This isn't even a Continuous Art, this should be your Domain and it's still too much. It uses Curse, which you have zero affinity for. Fails to activate, you die like a jobber. Next.
Assimilation
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: D-
It's a Domain, which is nice. It's a very interesting Ultimate, trying to imagine what Bio-Shifting would do if it treated stuff like electricity as if it were biological matter. The resistance for living things makes it somewhat balanced, but you should've specified that spells can resist, too. An example of applying Bio-Shifting to nonbiological materials (like causing electrical wiring to grow like tree branches or a fireball to duplicate via mitosis) would have also been nice.
Ice Queen
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: C+
Second Form. Named, with a clear description of the cosmetic effects and what abilities it gives. It ties in very clearly to your Specialities. Solid all-around.
Miko Battlemage
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: D-
Second Form. Short and simple, but knowing the cosmetic effects and what schools it uses is enough.
Legionnaire
Ult Power: C
Ult Fun: C
Adding environmental/offensive capabilities to a Barrier Ultimate is interesting, but it seems to go quite a ways outside the Barrier Description. It uses both of your Specialities, and is named, so points for that.
SPECTRE*
Ult Power: B
Ult Fun: C
It enables you to keep up your activities for longer and helps with your plan to be "as close to full time as possible", but you've already got solid abilities on that front; you wouldn't have to worry about running out and thus will have few opportunities to use this. It's generic, but it uses your Specialities. Some Ultimates just don't need a long description.
Threads of Fate
Ult Power: C+
Ult Fun: C-
Single sentence description, but you named it. Unclear how this luck manifests, no examples described at all. I can compare it to LotM, but I haven't read the book yet so I have no idea what exactly you are trying to make it.