New Mechanic - Absorb - Mostly for Two-Handed weapons

Now what to do with the damage you have absorbed, convert it to a type of defence. This sounds counter intuitive.

Take damage > Absorb damage > Buff defence > Take less damage > absorb less

But I do want something with this mechanic to not make it just another simple damage reduction. So converting to a defence. Regeneration is what came to mind.

Regeneration
Converting the absorbed damage to an amount of health to be regenerated sounds a lot like free life. Essentially doubling the amount of damage you absorb. Of course this should not be the case. Therefore the amount to be regenerated should be a part of the total absorbed or it should be regenerated over an extended period of time. This won't save you from being one or two shot, but it does help sustain enough health to overcome some tricky situations.
For instance stepping out of combat to let your life recover becomes a nice option.

Leech
Now for the idea of leech, this could be done in 2 ways. Either the very same was as regen or to give a base extra amount of leech. I don't like the idea of just making leech life. Too similar to regen (Rejuv/Devour totem). So base amount of leech. For example, take huge cold hit, gain cold leech. For a certain amount of time or when you get hit by a bigger hit refreshing the leech to a greater amount.


Charges could be a possibility, but quickly becomes a far too easy way to generate charges. Converting to extra armour/evasion/ could be fun. But this takes you back to:
Take damage > Absorb damage > Buff defence > Take less damage > absorb less
Converting to extra energy shield or life on the other hand could work. Gameplay wise it is a very fun way of surviving difficult moments. Take a big hit > Gain more life/es to barely survive another big hit. But this will result in just having a bigger life/es pool to work with in the long run.

What I believe will not work is converting to; Increased Max Elemental Resistances, Physical Resistance, Dodge, Block, Damage taken conversion to another element or Mana gained. Some of these defences should be reserved for other build types.

Reflect has an interesting interaction with absorb. You take less damage from your own reflect and you gain benefits in the prime damage type you deal. Playing in a phys reflect map with a phys build would result in a constant baseline buff. Some might argue this could be far too powerful if you already have a way to deal with reflect via Vaal Pact and deal so much damage you can buff yourself more then any monster might be able to. I believe however that if you already do so much damage any benefits will be small in comparison. Plus this could be handled with the balancing of numbers.

EDIT: New view upon the issue.
Reflect makes it so you take damage from your own attacks. Absorb would work to reduce the damage you take from reflect. But you could state this the other way around. Reflect reduced the amount you absorb. Numbers again: You deal 10.000 damage. Reflect hits you for 18% (map mod). You take 1.800 damage. Now lets say you have 30% absorb. of that 1.800 damage you absorb 540 damage. Resulting in a total of 1260 damage taken from reflect. The total outcome of this is you did not really absorb enough damage to prevent the loss of life. Thus not triggering any buffs from absorbing damage.

Evasion and Acrobatics/Ondur's Guile would works just a powerful with Absorb as it does with Lightning Coil. The combination of all three should be made impossible to achieve through a high need of skill points to achieve a good amount of absorb.

Mind over Matter stacking with Absorb would be a powerful combination. Though absorb would be less effective because, MoM already reduces the damage taken leading to a smaller amount of damage absorbed. And keeping in mind that Absorb is meant for Two-Handed and the only effective Two-Handed MoM builds that I can this of is with Pledge of Hands.

Lightning Coil and Cloak of Flame convert physical damage over to an elemental to let the damage go through your resistances. This could lead to interesting builds where one stacks phys and lightning absorb and gains bonuses from both with a single powerful phys hit. The issue that does stand is that Lightning Coil is already very powerful. Especially if you only care about the defence and take Lightning Coil and Phys Absorb. But doing this causes you to seriously neglect the power conversion of Absorb.

Armour as it stands is weak, pitied upon by the vast majority of players (or just the loud ones). Therefore it is a bit difficult to talk about the combination with it and Absorb. They supplement each other to reduce damage taken, they work against each other because you actually want to absorb a lot of damage.

Block almost completely negates absorb if you manage to cap block. Not taking damage does nothing for Absorb if you block. Though it is a very nice way to reduce damage spikes in between successful blocks. The same goes for Immortal call. Nice for the time IC isn't active, otherwise useless. Makes them balance each other out rather nicely. This should also balance out Staves as they do have implicit block. Or it could empower them greatly and make them outshine all the other weapons.

Added damage of absorbed damage. A simple added amount of damage to your next attack. This boosts the damage and that is all. Fire Absorb causes you to deal a certain amount of extra fire damage. But now for the kicker, this damage bonus would apply to spells as well. This way you could have a reason to actually play a Stave Caster besides certain uniques.

I also believe this could create different play styles/moments. With timing of attacks and attack speed in mind. You could just go for that attack speed and don't care how much added damage you gain per hit. Or you could let yourself get smashed by Brutus or Cole and then hit back for that nice and large puncture. You know, revenge, gotta fuel that anger somehow.

If base added should be simply too powerful percentages could work as well. Though I strongly prefer base, as you could be doing no fire damage and still gain that little amount extra if you happen to even have 1% Fire Absorb.

Alternatives to just adding more base damage would be increased attack/cast speed, movement speed, critical strike chance or accuracy. But I believe these to be far too boring. Plus, what absorb type is going to give what? For this I'm going to be a bit more creative.

Increased chance to shock, ignite, freeze and stun respectively. Ok, I admit. That was not creative. Hmm, how about.... Thunder, Flame, Frost, Quake Walker. Now Flame walker is the easy one, as in not completely overpowered. Creates burning ground for a short duration where you walk. Easy to scale damage accordingly.

In the same respect Thunder would create shocked ground and Frost leaves ground ice. Ground Ice isn't so bad as Arctic armour already does this. The shocked ground would be a problem given that that is now a direct 50% more damage boost. The only way I can think of balancing this is making it last for a very short duration.

Quake walker causes mini earthquakes where you walk. Now one idea is to let this stun enemies when you walk. It could work because you have to move, so you can't attack. But stun is a powerful mechanic so I see easy exploits. Mainly in party play, you just keep trotting around while your team destroys. Ow can you imagine. Now letting it lower the defences of enemies or reducing stun threshold for a short duration sounds ok to me.

The walking aspect could be changed so that the effect I just listed could happen in a small AoE around the target you hit with your skill instead.

Now the main idea is to buff Two-Handed. But lets face it, creating a mechanic solely for a selective part of the game is not worth it. So let it work with spells, wands, bows and One-Handed weapons. I can see you thinking, wait what?!? Simple solution, give them Absorb, just not in great numbers.

Stave Casters could get greater amounts of course. Because according to the critic as to why Two-Handed weapons are sub-par, Stave Casters suffer the same fate. For the other weapon types, small amounts could be made available so that they aren't left out. 1% Fire Absorb won't influence the effects too much. But if it is used to trigger some sort of effect such as Flame Walking then why not? The damage will be minimal but you still get burning ground, gh ghem, Flame Surge. 1% Phys Absorb for a bow character to gain that little extra Phys Damage or Leech. Tiny amounts, but still some extra tweaks and twitches to fine tune your character.

Now how to add this concept to game. As stated mainly meant for Two-Handed but not exclusively. The first way is hated upon by many and will be shunned by most. A magic mod on the weapon itself. The most logical place to put it. Absorb would be mostly a defence stat. Weapons have Resistances, so why not Absorb? A counter argument for this would be loss of a potential damage mod. While that is true Absorb could lead to alternative ways of adding damage. Of course in the end you will trade offence for defence.

In the skill tree itself would be mandatory. Adding Absorb to Two-Handed melee clusters with the description in the general direction of: "While wielding a Two-Handed weapon you gain 5% Physical Damage Absorption". Some Clusters would specialise in Fire, other in the other types. Like you have the Penetration above the witch, only for Two-Handed weapons.

For the smaller global amounts you could use "Master of Force" for Phys Absorb. Or the skill clusters that already provide the +1 to max resists. The elemental resists cluster near the Marauder could serve as a proper base. I would use that cluster to set up for a certain element. Make it so that "Diamond Skin" becomes Absorb 5% Elemental/Physical Damage and have each element be Absorb 10% Fire/Cold/lightning but you can't absorb other elements.

New skills could be created to increase the amount of absorb you get but also as the supplier of some of the extra effects I listed above. This way it isn't a massive mix and mash of all kinds of different effects. One offensive based buff and one defence should do the trick. And of course make them so that they can't both be active at the same time. Just like Flesh and Bone Offering. These skills could be made to be temporary buffs or let them reserve mana like the Heralds.

Existing skills could be adapted to work with this mechanic. Molten Shell could provide 1% Fire Absorb, Tempest shield 1% Lightning Absorb and we can leave Arctic armour just fine where it stands currently. My favourite skill to adapt would be Frost Wall. Make it absorb a nice amount and let it buff the caster and party members around it for a nice amount. That would be nice regardless of Absorb being in the game.

I'd rather not go this route. This way it would be a mechanic but a gimmick. A single keystone would quickly be too powerful and a unique too selective with equipment. We already have enough of that as is.