Has Ascendancy really created diversity?

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toyotatundra wrote:

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thevdende wrote:

Actually I feel like it had reduced build viability by gating certain mechanics behind a class. You used to be able to make a spell casting duelist

After Ascendacy, I've seen an SRS duelist (!) level to 100, there's a streamer playing ED Duelist, there's a shit ton of people who have played Spark, whatever caster Duelist.

Before Ascendancy, I've never even heard of caster Duelist.

Im willing to bet a paycheck that this duelist summoner rocked a champ for fortify. Is the only reason to pick a duelist is for fortify? You can then make any build with a duelist with this line of thinking simply for fortify...Eh, how interesting is that?

That to me is not diversity.

I guess shags was right in the beginning of the thread...what does it mean to be diverse? Because picking duelist soley for fortify is not fostering diversity or creativity in my mind.

I see what a lot of you are saying, and you are all definitely correct. But again, what happened to an RF totem witch, or a templar trapper? why would you pick anything but a shadow for a trapper (please stop using Duelist for fortify as an example...provide others).

On the risk of taking us away from the topic... picking on ascendancy... I'd say the strongest force against build diversity (what ever that is) is the basic imbalance between the three defenses... armor/ES/evasion. Anything that relies on evasion isn't even considered a "build" by most standards.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

On the risk of taking us away from the topic... picking on ascendancy... I'd say the strongest force against build diversity (what ever that is) is the basic imbalance between the three defenses... armor/ES/evasion. Anything that relies on evasion isn't even considered a "build" by most standards.

Not really. Evasion is better than armour in most situations. Even the world's first level 100 character in PoE was an evasion-based bow ranger.

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cesmode wrote:

Im willing to bet a paycheck that this duelist summoner rocked a champ for fortify. Is the only reason to pick a duelist is for fortify? You can then make any build with a duelist with this line of thinking simply for fortify...Eh, how interesting is that?

My summoner duelist was using the taunt branch + inspirational, a summoner has plenty of time to fortify himself.

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Bars wrote:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

On the risk of taking us away from the topic... picking on ascendancy... I'd say the strongest force against build diversity (what ever that is) is the basic imbalance between the three defenses... armor/ES/evasion. Anything that relies on evasion isn't even considered a "build" by most standards.

Not really. Evasion is better than armour in most situations. Even the world's first level 100 character in PoE was an evasion-based bow ranger.

The game has changed since then. Back then, the main source of damage wasn't area of effect. You could use evasion. With the addition of act IV and the Labyrinth, there are far too many counters to evasion in the game.

Also "most situations" doesn't matter a bit. Even if 2% of the situations make evasion fail, it's still too many. Our progress in the game is about getting by ALL situations... not just most.

I think now that people are straying a bit further away from 100% Chaos meta you're starting to see more different builds pop up. Hell, even I'm playing a melee character.

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raics wrote:

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cesmode wrote:

Im willing to bet a paycheck that this duelist summoner rocked a champ for fortify. Is the only reason to pick a duelist is for fortify? You can then make any build with a duelist with this line of thinking simply for fortify...Eh, how interesting is that?

My summoner duelist was using the taunt branch + inspirational, a summoner has plenty of time to fortify himself.

Actually, to expand on it a bit, I'm fairly certain you'd end up a paycheck short. If it was just after ascendancy he was most likely using the taunt branch too, it was broken at the time.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

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Bars wrote:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

On the risk of taking us away from the topic... picking on ascendancy... I'd say the strongest force against build diversity (what ever that is) is the basic imbalance between the three defenses... armor/ES/evasion. Anything that relies on evasion isn't even considered a "build" by most standards.

Not really. Evasion is better than armour in most situations. Even the world's first level 100 character in PoE was an evasion-based bow ranger.

The game has changed since then. Back then, the main source of damage wasn't area of effect. You could use evasion. With the addition of act IV and the Labyrinth, there are far too many counters to evasion in the game.

Also "most situations" doesn't matter a bit. Even if 2% of the situations make evasion fail, it's still too many. Our progress in the game is about getting by ALL situations... not just most.

Yes, you can't rely entirely on evasion but the same applies to block and armour. You still want a solid health pool or other mitigation sources. The difference is, armour is useless if not stacked in large amounts, while evasion is always beneficial.

The most resource-efficient way to get defenses is by having some evasion, acro, phase acro and the atziri boots. You'll easily have around 60-70% chance to evade or dodge attacks and 46% to dodge spells with a minimum resource investment. Armour beats it only if you want to build a mitigation or block tank with a heavy investment in various flat reduction mechanics.

Evasion is better with a small investment, armour is better with a significant one. I like that distinction and I think both types of defense have their place in the game. Not to mention that you could build a solid mitigation tank with evasion and dodge too. Get a Lightning Coil and a Saffell's, the Atziri boots, acro and phase acro, fortify, know how to use flasks and you'll get a super tanky build.

I feel that they should revise the passives on ascendancy trees to make it more applicable to more builds.

For example saying "20% increased physical attack damage" is just bad, when you can include so many other builds by just saying "20% increased attack damage" - or even an all-encompassing "20% increased damage". The same thing applies to Projectiles, Projectile Attacks, etc, etc.

There are times when I am playing a specific build into a weird ascendancy tree and I'm thinking... "Well that doesn't apply to me, so I'm wasting a point, but I DO want the one behind it". It's a shitty feeling.

Just open up the wording to allow more builds to fit into more subclasses.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

With the addition of act IV and the Labyrinth, there are far too many counters to evasion in the game.

True enough. However, even if we assume that armor is indeed a vastly superior defense method there's nothing wrong with that in my eyes, right side of the tree has stronger offense and favors ranged combat so it should by all means have weaker defense. You shouldn't be able to have everything, it's a choice you have to make. I'm thinking the ability to have everything in this game is what's holding it back, not enough choices, the assumption we have all our bases covered, sure, we can pull it off, but that doesn't mean we want to, or at least not always.