Chaos Damage Mechanic

To be honest this thing sucks. It is the most stupid defensive thing I have to deal with. And there are not a lot of options out there.

Lets say I want to do a low life build. Well crap now the really hard thing to deal with called Chaos Damage goes from hard to stupid.

Lets look at my options to deal with it.

First the passive tree: I tried to grab Mind Over Matter + the Hierophant passive making it 40% of damage to come from mana first. However; chaos damage seems to ignore this. Actual all damage overtime seems to ignore these passives. So that's out. I wish I realized that before trying to make a build off it. The only real passive that seems to work well is Chaos Inoculation, or the minor ones that just give you chaos resist. Whats Odd is I read that Eldritch battery works against chaos making it come from mana first. I think if it does isn't that a bug? How does Mind Over matter not work for it when Eldritch battery does? Confusing?

Second Chaos resist: Well lets see that stat seems to be everywhere and easy to put on gear. NOT!!! I literately have to give up everything else to get this stat. As it only ever seems to roll on gear that has no other stats my char would want. That or play the stupid market game as there is no auction house in the game.

Third Unique Items: Seems to be the only real option. And there not great. Lets see there are 4 valid choices. They are Coruscating Elixir, Shavronne's Wrappings, Saffell's Frame, and Solaris Lorica. And only one that seems viable. The Elixir is ok, but when you have 90% or more then your HP reserved it is not even close to reliable. Same can be said about the shield. Then there's the Solaris Lorica. Hmmm... Lets give you an armor item that makes Chaos Damage not bypass ES. Like really?!?! Is it just me or is that stat completely useless on that item. Leaving Shavroone's Wrapping as the only real option.

So if you want to go low life build. You pretty much need to have a Shavronne's. All other options either suck or are mediocre at best. Meaning that you will only ever spec into Pain Attunement if you have the Shavronne's Wrappings unique. And making pretty much all other low life or blood magic items almost require you to also have a Shavronnes. It is stupid to me.

So Chaos damage... Do you guys love or hate it? I really dislike it's current state. Not because of how it works. But because there are very few options into avoiding/mitigating it's damage. If it worked liked elemental damage, or other damage types, I would find its lack of options to negating it fine. But in it's current state it simply makes low life builds suck at late game. With the only option around it being a Shavronne's Wrapping.

Shouldn't low life be its own risk? Why does Chaos damage feel like a punishment for trying to do a low life build?

The risk of low life is chaos damage. Shav's is a unique that mitigates the risk, that's really all there is to it. Mind over matter only works on hits, so all damage over time things don't work with it.

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j33bus wrote:

The risk of low life is chaos damage. Shav's is a unique that mitigates the risk, that's really all there is to it. Mind over matter only works on hits, so all damage over time things don't work with it.

You basically said what I said. But instead made it sound as if everyone should see it that way. Is that really your way of arguing against things you don't agree with?

You could have simply said "I like chaos damage, and I like how it challenges low life builds. So I don't see this as a problem." But instead you are passive aggressive. If you're going to disagree with me that's fine. But don't be a jerk when doing it plz.

While you might think this gives Shavronne's Wrappings meaning. I think this is poor game design. I could suggest a # of different ways to handle Chaos Damage better. I chose not too. I wanted feedback on its current state. Not a you should know better answer. If your going to be like that. Why are you even in this forum?

Everything you wrote is basically true.

It is technically possible to make a Solaris Lorica build (eg: Gladiator or Champion with a high ES shield and shield defenses nodes), or Coruscating Elixir build (pathfinder or overflowing chalice to keep it up the whole time).
Also it is possible to get 75% chaos resist (playing the trading game isn't that hard, just do it instead of whining), but you'd probably need to have only 70%-ish of life reserved instead of 90%.

All of those options are pretty much just worse than Shavs though. Unless you are doing low-level PVP!

Get yourself a shav's and problem solved, they are cheap, stop whining!


Seriously, I agree with what you say, it's just lazy and incredibly one-dimensional design. There's really not much more to say. No shav no LL, it's as dull as it sounds.
The ability to use extra auras or have a big extra dmg buff (PA) is exclusively tied to ONE SINGLE item in the entire game. Imagine if power charges didn't exist but there was a single unique item that enabled that mechanic, if there was only ONE shield in game and 'blocking' was tied to that only one item... if there was only ONE bow capable of using ranged attacks... it's OK to tie functions to uniques but not *that much* into *so little*.

It would be cool if some supporter came up with alternative items designing, as they seem to be the only ones who know that only one alien language these devs are capable of understanding... but i guess expecting they are actually able to intellectually contribute to the works of the developers in a truly constructive and positive way instead of polluting the game with their dumbsh1t nonsense would be too much asking.

There are many items that do one thing. Such as Rise of the Phoenix. Sure there are other ways to get max fire resist. But I never go without it when making my RF build.

Hmm maybe a better argument. Is to say how many ways are there to get +max Resist. Not many. And all the ways/forms in which it exist are not any where as good as CI, or Shavronne's Wrappings. For a damage type that is hard to get, and ignores ES. It's simply stupid. When I look at the passive tree CI is better then any other node on the tree. Even if I combine all the other passive nodes related to Chaos defense. CI still beats them all combined.

Going Full ES with CI seems so freaking good. That everything else seems like crap. Do I think CI is bad game design. No not really. I think the rest of the options just suck and need some sort of buff. And a lot of it deals with how crappy Chaos damage is to deal with. There should be trade offs. Not one supper better option. Do you see anything else in the game that just strait up makes you immune to something? Do you see any other option in the game that lets you do a low life build because Chaos damage is BS? Nah your better off just getting CI with a cookie cutter build and full clearing a map at movement speed.

@BacktoHell [Removed by Support] I don't get it. And I really dislike trade in this game. Why should I have to deal with it to make a build? The game lacks build diversity because it tries to punish you for things it shouldn't punish you for. Because someone will abuse it otherwise. Builds keep getting destroyed because of this crap. Instead of fixing Chaos they will probable just remove CI. It will be like block. Instead of fixing it they will remove basically all the ways of getting it. And build diversity will go down. But instead of talking about it we should all shut up and wait for it to happen right? I think I will turn you down. I want more options in the game for more builds. [Removed by Support]

The subject of this thread should be not 'Chaos Damage Mechanic' but 'Low Life Mechanic'. Your issue is not with chaos damage but with the fact that the whole Low Life concept is built around one item. If you don't have that item you can't really play Low Life. As simple as that.

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Kelvynn wrote:

The subject of this thread should be not 'Chaos Damage Mechanic' but 'Low Life Mechanic'. Your issue is not with chaos damage but with the fact that the whole Low Life concept is built around one item. If you don't have that item you can't really play Low Life. As simple as that.

I think it is actually more about chaos damage than you think. It's not just low-life builds; any build that has a lot of ES needs to deal with chaos damage. The three main ways people do this are:

1) Also get a lot of life. (ie: go hybrid)
2) Get Shav's. You don't even have to go low life with Shav's, but you might as well.
3) Get CI.

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dudiobugtron wrote:

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Kelvynn wrote:

The subject of this thread should be not 'Chaos Damage Mechanic' but 'Low Life Mechanic'. Your issue is not with chaos damage but with the fact that the whole Low Life concept is built around one item. If you don't have that item you can't really play Low Life. As simple as that.

I think it is actually more about chaos damage than you think. It's not just low-life builds; any build that has a lot of ES needs to deal with chaos damage. The three main ways people do this are:

1) Also get a lot of life. (ie: go hybrid)
2) Get Shav's. You don't even have to go low life with Shav's, but you might as well.
3) Get CI.

This is actually the core of the ES vs AR/EV argument, because the ways you deal the drawbacks of armour or evasion is simply you can't. You can also get chaos resistance, it's not really too hard to get, you just have to get your elemental resists somewhere else.

Chaos and ES are really in fine places, but the alternatives to ES are just bad.

Yay I guess there are 3 major ways to deal with it.

CI > Shav's > Hybrid > anything else.

I just really don't see why things like Mind over mater don't work with it. I find this defensive key stone practically useless as is. It's like here is a way to up your defenses. Oh wait never-mind it doesn't work with a lot of stuff out there.

While CI being a solid choice. Shav's being a must if you don't go CI. And everything else just seems not so efficient to even bother with. For something you have to deal with in game... it just seems like such a poor design.

I like it when a unique helps a specific build. I however don't like it when a unique is needed for basically any none CI build. I don't know if that makes sense. Where Rise of the Phoenix is great for a specific build. Shav's seems a must for any ES build not using CI. I think that's the problem I have with the whole thing.