I trust GGG
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thanks for explaining.
all numbers in my post are purely abstract. just to say while you are right armor will mitigate a larger chunk of flat damage from a bigger hit, you'd still take a much bigger chunk of unmitigated damage, and die. something which doesn't happen with % mitigation, or Immortal Call - because you can easily calculate how much damage you'll take, without going into elaborate "if I get hit with X, that's worse than getting hit with Y" calculations, which are ultimately balanced against the player. don't know who in GGG thought that's a good idea, but he/she deserves a medal for over-complicating something, that should be just as simple and straightforward as elemental resistance. Alva: I'm sweating like a hog in heat
Shadow: That was fun | |
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thing is though, look how hard to games elemental damage was to balance, elemental used to be by far the most scary thing back in open beta. Reason for that was we had Purity which was something like +5% max ele resists and we had Elemental Adaptation which was +5% max ele resists in the marauder tree. So having some people running around with 75% all res and others with 85% all res made such a big difference between the damage people took that making things hit hard enough to scare the 85% resist chars who could then pot for another +10% meant people with 75% who could pot to 85% were getting obliterated.
So how do you then balance between people who have 75%+ physical resist and people who have 0% physical resist like a pure evasion or ci build? Can you imagine the average marauder having 75% all res and the average ranger having 0% all res? If the marauder could even be harmed the ranger would just die instantly. The way phys works in this game it sort of balances against the really hard hits, it may really be a case of 75% phys resist vs 0% against smaller hits that wont hurt you for large amounts of your life but against gargantuan hits the mitigation difference is smaller which allows a Brutus slam in a high map to do a scary amount of damage to both characters which is desired. Thats how Im seeing it anyway. With the small hits it doesnt matter because you need to take a lot of them to be dangerous and against many hits evasion is as good as damage reduction. the way to make armour + endurance 'work' is life regen and damage avoidance. Between cwdt enfeeble, 10k evasion and 42% block kaom only hits me about 1 in 4 swings, and then my life regen can heal that 1 hit during the space he misses the next 3. the same goes in reverse, the way to make evasion 'work' is having physical damage reduction and life regen. I feel like thats a problem this game has had for so long now, basically people dont understand how to make characters. They swing from "get armour" to "get evasion" to "get armour" always under the really, really bad assumption that you never get a bit of both. Everyones just stuck in this either or mindset, its not the game its the group logic mindset we have, thats where the problems are. Like back in open beta kripp said armour sucked and you shouldnt invest in armour, and thats still how people see the game. but you have to take what he said in context of the time, and that was armour nodes were pure, not life + armour, not % phys reduction + armour, just like 8% armour then 8% armour then 16% armour, that was your 3 node cluster. Then consider this was a guy making characters that stacked 6+ auras, so hes got iron reflexes running grace + determination and he has a surgeons granite flask of iron skin that he pre pots for every single mob encounter while religiously maintaining full endurance charges with cry... Dont invest in armour, ya dont spend points on those little 8% armour nodes but the guy is running around with 30k armour and his choice is between 8% armour and 8% life nodes like we had back then while hes wearing a 1k life kaoms heart and hes hitting 9k life total. Now people are still following that logic he spread and theyre at the point where theyre choosing long trips across the tree for 4% life nodes instead of armour thats sitting right there while they have 6k life and 4k total armour because armour sucks so 4k is fine... right said the dude 2 years ago with 30k armour perm granite flask uptime running 2 armour auras. What do people run now? Haste + Hatred... err.... I feel like the defense meta is rotten to the core and has remained to through many meta shifts, the group logic we have is so bad and has been so bad for so long. Why dont evasion characters get some armour? Youre evasion, you avoid damage like crazy and your big weakness is not reducing phys damage when you do get hit, so what do you do? Errr durrrrr Im gonna grab acrobatics to avoid more damage.... seriously? You think destroying whatever traces of armour you have left is the way forward for you rather than grabbing armour + evasion duelist nodes, running grace and then getting some armour on your gear? sure I grab acro, when Im wearing a lightning coil. What armour chars need the most is evasion, and what evasion chars need the most is armour, and thats why Iron Reflexes and Acrobatics are such popular nodes, because they do the exact opposite of what your character needs and get you killed. I dunno, maybe Im the crazy one getting it wrong but I feel totally at odds with the conventions weve constructed as a community. |
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"I think yo're correct in all the things you said. I can vouch for the Evasion part needing Armor at least as that is what I do all the time. I would love to play pure evasion build, but every time I try to make this work I feel like the game is forcing me to have at least 40% phys reduction thus Armor. And I hate that of course :) but still it's true, going pure one defense gets you killed. That's my experience. Still I will keep trying to make pure nonblock evasion build work, because I love evasion and kiting. My original account Dushan is banned. I miss my Kiwi and Demigod's Presence. :( By reading any of Duchan's forum posts you agree to the following Duchan forum posts Terms of Use: http://i.imgur.com/tmkhs22.png Last edited by Duchan on Jul 24, 2015, 8:59:38 AM
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great post, Snorkle. awesome read.
you're definitely not "the crazy one", because reading your post made me also think - for the first time - about combining armor and evasion. but it's hard getting into that mind-set. more than anything popular Streamers in Open Beta ever said, I think most people - myself included - think Armor and Evasion are opposites. fire and water. you choose one, never both. plus, let's consider the required investment: if you take - for example - armor + life OR evasion + life, you have remaining Passive Points to take some offense as well. in this equation, evasion + life is superior most of the time. you can regen between evading enemy attacks, at the risk of getting hit really hard when you do get hit. with armor (and no evasion) + life, you are pretty much getting hit constantly, AND the formula still makes sure some attacks hit you just as hard as if you were evasion-only. the choice therefore seems pretty obvious. now if you take armor + evasion + life + all other forms of mitigation, you need to get your offense from somewhere. that means gear. getting an awesome weapon. otherwise you'll be extremely tanky, but will have to fight every single boss for an hour, slowly tooth-picking away at their giant life pool. Alva: I'm sweating like a hog in heat Shadow: That was fun Last edited by johnKeys on Jul 24, 2015, 12:11:23 PM
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" No problem. | |
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Facebreakers are one option, yes.
but the gloves alone aren't too good if you can't scale them with some nice Passives, and additional gear, like mine - in Standard - are a 953 legacy version, and I still need to use the above to make them good enough for Mapping. new versions are much weaker: Alva: I'm sweating like a hog in heat
Shadow: That was fun | |
" "Good enough for mapping" would imply they where passable, you literally one shot anything most of the game (pre-ultra buff all monsters 2.0) with the belt and some shitty rings until maybe hit end of meri and mid maps. Current ones are perfectly fine for leveling and can scale into end game maps if you get a bringer of rain or some other stuff, it caps off eventually (lower power ceiling) but isn't a problem if you want min amounts of farming. Also I have no idea why people are getting so in-depth into defense mechanics when we all obviously know damage has been amped up a metric shit ton in the previous patch. When damage is high enough, all you have people do is copy the best combination of defensive mechanics with their build. Last edited by RagnarokChu on Jul 24, 2015, 2:41:58 PM
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Standard Facebreaker gear:
Shiny new upgrade: Ice Crash/Frenzy dps @ level-67: 25K Last edited by RogueMage on Jul 24, 2015, 2:51:03 PM
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that's almost identical to my Ice Crash setup in Standard.
I guess we think alike, RogueMage :) however, Abyssus is a giant dent in both our defenses. something Snorkle would surely disapprove of. and as RagnarokChu put it brilliantly, monster damage was "amped up a metric shit ton" in The Awakening, so "shit ton" with an extra 40% equals big trouble. overall, even Facebreakers prove my point: you can't have both tankiness and sufficient DPS, unless gear. especially if your passive tree is all about maintaining said tankiness. that, was always a problem. and the fact monsters now hit harder while Evasion was basically dethroned from the status of a self-sustaining defensive mechanic - only made it more of a problem. Snorkle solves this, with a superior weapon. not everyone can. Alva: I'm sweating like a hog in heat Shadow: That was fun Last edited by johnKeys on Jul 24, 2015, 3:10:17 PM
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" Nah, it's only 40% increased damage, easily offset with a Belly of the Beast. With decent HP, life regen, End Charges, AA, and Fortify, you don't even notice taking the extra damage. |
