A potential change I'm keen to hear your thoughts on

After thinking it through some more I think the largest benefit of keeping the old EB is it's a very simple and intuitive mechanic. The new one is not quite as simple so it's like to cause more confusion. The resource costs on skills and the like will need to be reassessed.

On the other hand the new more complicated version gives more interesting choices due to its various interactions with other mechanics. I can think of more interesting things to do with the new one compared to the old. The choices for caster defenses would end up more varied, more thought would have to go into the choice of EB.

On a slightly different note I think the change to the tree that Spede_p proposed seems neat if you go with this.

"

Spede_P wrote:

It should be fine after this little change:

Edit: Oh and I'm still in favour of the change, more interesting mechanical possibilities and complex choices is always a plus for me.

I'm playing a lvl 90 Arc witch that is mostly relying on mana mechanics:

- Eldrtch Battery
- lvl 25 Arctic Armor (+1 from Voidbringer, +3 from lvl 4 empower)
- Inner Force
- Pledge of Hands
- Mind Over Matter (given by a Cloak of Defiance)
- Vaal Pact

My passive tree gives me:

118% Increased Max Mana
155% Increased Mana Regeneration Rate

For a total of 562.2 Mana regen per sec and 2049 free mana after reserving Herald of Ice/Thunder Clarity and Purity of lightning.

I've been polishing this character since Torment league and sold all my other character items to make it viable. I understand that some balance is necessary but I fear that EB overhaul will hurt badly EB MoM AA users.

I have a pretty decent gear but I don't feel that AA EB MoM setup is nearly as OP as you mentioned:
- Huge damage burst deplete your mana and deactivate you AA often letting you with 0 physical mitigation exept CWDT EC IM (that will be rework aswell since warcries will no longer be supported by CWDT AFAIK).
- Passive tree point investment are huge to get a decent amount of Mana Regen to make it work "smoothly".
- You have to gear up with ES (no mitigation here) ManaMax/Int/ManaRegeneration/life/%ES
- Ghost Reaver is a NO GO since it will negate my life leech. And I follow the Wich->Templar->Scion for Vaal Pact.
- Very sensible to stun.
- One aura less than most of builds.
- Dexterity requirement (I guess it will be fixed with Passive Tree Gems)

The reason I've choosen AA MoM EB is because it is the most obvious way for physical mitigation when you travel to non-crit witch -> templar side. I'm not a huge fan of hybrid ES/AR (without shav) when you have to sustain heavy mana cost spells.

From what I can see:

- Lower our mana pool leading to a weaker mana regen.
- Sustaining AA will be harder at higher level.
- MoM will be less effective.
- Having to spend extra point in ES Regen nods and recovery.
- Chaos damage will be more difficult to handle.
- Ghost Reaver + EB = fail.
- Casting a spell will stop ES recovery (I'm spamming my spells 100% of the time. I use Lightning warp to avoid AA draining my mana)

I really like the idea of changing EB but CLEARLY NOT THAT WAY. I may haveunderstand the all overhaul mechanics wrong tho. I wish we could get a major patch / xpansion without having to trade-modifie-tweak our main build from scraps over and over again. I manage to make it work and I will have to change it again.

Keep up the good work GGG whatever happen I'm sure you'll make your decision wisely.

I think it was a mistake to ask for feedback on this without having more information about total changes in the big patch. We just can't really judge it without knowing more. Since in the current state of the game, its just a massive nerf to EB. That state is about to be torpedoed.

After some thought i can only see this change as a general nerf: AA very hard to run, if you want to reserve most mana you only gain ~5% that you needed to cast your skills, you need to get zealot's oath to get ES regen which makes you lose your life regen or a lot of recovery speed which does not seem viable for a fast clearing speed build (you are always using movement skill's), If you want ES leech you need Ghost Reaver which makes you lose life leech.

There are some buff's: Blood Magic can now use MoM and regular MoM users can use more auras with some costs (ZO,GR or ES recovery speed).

In conclusion i think this would be an interesting change but some things need to be looked at, AA was nerfed last patch because was quite easy to run and that's no longer the case, getting "mana" leech at the cost of having no life leech does not seem worth it so GR need's to be looked at too and a similar thing with ZO.

PS: start hoarding all that shavrone's Revelation and become rich!

"

CliveHowlitzer wrote:

I think it was a mistake to ask for feedback on this without having more information about total changes in the big patch. We just can't really judge it without knowing more. Since in the current state of the game, its just a massive nerf to EB. That state is about to be torpedoed.

This. Nobody's going to agree if the compensation isn't massive, and we have no idea what kind of compensation we're getting.

Honestly, even if we get big compensation, this change looks pointless to me, just nerf MoM, there's no need to overhaul a keystone that's worked just fine ever since its creation. The only reason it's a bit too strong is MoM, and MoM isn't even getting changed lol.

edit: by MoM I pretty much mean CoD, but sadly that would just make the legacy version OP, so GGG can't really nerf the item itself. I'd say they should nerf the keystone and put some nodes behind it like acro has, that CoD doesn't give you.

I like the potential of this. No matter what happens, a majority of people will view this as a nerf and RIP their lovingly crafted toons. However, I think that it will open up some grand new possibilities.

Love it or hate it, ES has given the game Low Life mods. And we have a taste of somehting similar in the troll mantle (don't be low mana state). Well with ES on mana we can start playing with similar Mana pool level controls to create uber mods. Admit it, If the low mana penalty wasn't on the Infernal Mantle, or rather, if it was made into a feature of the build, then its a pretty OP chest with 100%inc crit, and 25% fire to chaos.

If this proposed change is to nerf Aa/MoM/Eb (aka mainly casters) while seriously buffing melee at the same time, you're overdoing the nerf/buff cycle (again).

Also why change a longstanding keystone to something completely different just because items and passive tree evolved in a way that weren't predicted when Eb was implemented? Give it the acrobatics treatment instead (Add a minor penalty to reduce the synergy with other mechanics).



I`m so happy you guys are running another beta though... and I hope some people without much personal bias get in and provide solid feedback on upcoming changes like this.

"

Metronomy wrote:

What they mean by taking damage wont stop recovery is just that, instead of taking damage stopping recovery, casting spells / spending mana will stop recovery (because its ES over your mana and not your life)

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1247469/page/15#p10481411

Of course if you had MoM & take some of your damage as mana it will stop recovery as well, and it says so in the post I linked

And how exactly will players be conveyed this information without the "rules" being overly convoluted? Say we have a new player who has Energy Shields - he will understand that taking damage stops ES recovery. But after taking EB 2.0, suddenly taking damage no longer stops this recovery.

The point I am trying to make is that while the mechanic is very cool, I hope that how it'll be conveyed to the new player will be clear enough.

My immediate reaction is that I don't like this change.

The main reason why you take Eldritch Battery is not for a larger mana pool, but for larger mana regeneration. While the combination of MoM and AA is rather overpowered, this change would completely kill the possibility of sustaining high level AA while also making MoM much weaker since your ability to regenerate through the Mana damage is severely diminished.

I dont know what to think or what to propose,since i dont know how much regen will be,nor know the gems,nor how it can be applied.

I think this would be a question for close beta players,general feeling is somewhat complicated at this point