life vs ES - what 2.5 brings us..

Back when this vote was casted we a lot of people still had champion in their mind, which was a pretty good Ascendancy in the time before (I think the Voting started early mid year). So people thought... "Wait I have permanent Fortify and I get free Onslaugt? Great."

Now that Champion is a less frequent appearance and people prefer Juggernauts this changed, but honestly even for a Juggernaut this is the best possible pick. You essentially only need to Fortify on bosses, because its up always on trash and you get a free 20% movespeed on top. You hardly have any issues keeping up endurance charges anyway. However the Juggernaut will have issues with the other mod.

But the classic hybrid would be the duelist, and while the Gladiator might prefer the Charge option the champion prefers the onslaugt one as does the Slayer. The Raider also could massively benefit from this version, because he has easy access to Frenzy Charges anyway and due to how readily avaible Fortify is getting 40% increased movespeed, attackspeed and cast speed is pretty awesome and he also gets a huge buff to Evasion, which he could not normally access on bosses.

And with the new Armor you could get a Raider that:

a) Always has Onslaught when he wants, with twice the effect
b) Always has Phasing due to having Onslaught
c) Is immune to status Ailments
d) Has a free Arctic Armor
e) Has Phase Acrobatics without reductions to his Armor value

I mean I'm not sure how it compares to ES, propably it is still worse, but getting a char that has 60% increased movespeed all the time just from his ascendancy is pretty awesome. And I'm not sure what I would support my Whirling Blades or Shield Charge with anyway if not Faster Casting and Fortify.

well.. that new armor (one with free AA) is quite bonkers

main issue is simple: life builds are crap right now. they are, they are playable etc but when it comes to tough stuff life builds fail or avoid it. thats it

items introduced in beach league are Kaoms of today - items designed to fix system-wide problems. total design mistakes



this one out, lets touch the belt once again:

- it has fortify on melee stun. cool concept while clearing thrash. or rather pointless gimmick without real value. it being so unreliable makes it pretty much USELESS.

blood rage CAN be used vs bosses - it is a skill you can activate manualy that lasts for 10+ seconds. the leech and damage it gives is well worth triggering it manualy. this fortify bonus - cannot.

- it has onslaught tied with fortify. 20% aspd/ms/castspeed sounds nice. however most attack builds already swim in attack speed. thus the 'tooltip' does not grow all that much.

- AR/EV attack damage bonus is very weak. id consider it 'competitive' if it was 'sum of AR and EV'. but it is lowest of the two and it is quite difficult to stack these high enough for the bonus to matter AND stack enough life. ofc there is an option of Pathfinder/flasks but pathfider can play as CI so who cares anyway

sure i CAN imagine your Raider - but your Raider is cool because of the new armor - NOT because of this belt. this belt gives you circumstantial Fortify vs mobs you do not need them against. Raiders have 0 issues keeping up their Phasing/Onslaught, they do not need this belt for that.

it is that armor that makes a build, not this belt.

this belt is a total flop im affraid. item that fortifies AR/EV playstyle that literally 3 players play because it is a horrid build choice compared to CI and does NOTHING vs elemental spells. life buffer you can achieve with AR/EV build is too low. Dead on Arrival



that Chayula amulet on the other hand..

I'll just have to agree to disagree. I think belt has its uses, especially in content like breaches where you'll get permanent fortify and onslaught. And just like blood rage giving you attack speed and leech it will still give you onslaught on fortify. I use fortify on a lot of bosses aside from mechanical fights like atziri or shaper.

I do agree because life is in a very shitty spot right now, it's fairly limited in its use. Again, the problem seems to me that you need an item more powerful than 120 life, 3x30+res to displace rare belts

Also I'm not sure why you'd use that new chest as a raider. It seems great for those who cannot take acro normally. Ie IR toons or block toons.

I guess an IR raider could be a thing but it doesn't seem super synergizing at all.

If you have max block on other hand, it's pretty crazy

well, ive tested breaches (english is my 3rd language but am i right thinking breaches are some kind of trousers?) in standard using this:

and have to say that this belt makes ZERO difference in practice. sadly.

and it is not that im using some kind of exalt-worthy belt, i mostly wear self found stuff or pieces like


on my AR/EV character (without flasks) lowest between the two is ~6k. this is lower than rustic sash gives.. clearing thrash i do not really use flasks because why would i. and vs bosses.. flasks run out. again - conditional stuff, unreliable stuff. meginord's girdle gives unconditional damage AND 10% life with other stuff

fortify.. for thrash i can run on a 4 link+fortify and get %increased damage from the gem on top of that. you do not really need the damage anyway - just the coverage. movement speed is nice and ive mentioned that in the first post, movement speed is the only bonus this belt has

other than that.. please. it doesnt take mirror-worthy belt to beat it.

any item 'good for clearing thrash but not-so-useful' vs the hard content i consider fluff not worth talking about nor building around. and you have to know that i DO NOT play meta and list of my builds look like a hipster's wardrobe. but even for me this TOP TIER! item is mostly amusing because of what a collosal flop it had become despite the hype and publicity

Fair enough that it's not even close to a top tier item.

But why people act like other options would make it one?

The charge duration one, aside from a discharge build, which build would take it? Specifically life build.

It's a severe itemization problem that a triple res high life belt is the standard of belts. Can't think of any other item slot in the game where uniques are competing with a defacto triple res and top life roll. Yes, including rings

the charge duration mod from Restless Ward is VERY fine mod indeed. i made 2 characters with that item in mind and both were VERY nice to play with 25+ second duration charges. it is longer than most boss fights AND as the charges refress in bulk, you have 25 seconds to refresh them all - that is frequently enough to cast end cry or use frenzy

id take this duration mod ANY DAY over this stuff we've got now - it really is pretty pointless


the 1% attack damage per 300 ar/ev is also PRETTY DAMN BAD

my duelist has
5000 AR
8000 EV
without flasks
15k
14.5k
with flasks

that means i get whooping 48% increased damage. it sounds amazing but
a) this is conditional. without flasks i get 16% increased. rustic sash gives you ~22% without obligations
b) build already has 300 or 400+ % anyway so this added damage is drowned by the base value. and this is NOT a leveling item so it wont be a big help early on.

sure, i can get more basic defences and reach 8000 unbuffed of the lowest value (cannot really see how on this character but lets pretend it is doable) for a whoping 30% inc damage. colour me amazed

id take +60% chaos resist that amulet gets. really. 60% chaos resist from one slot? where should i sign to get it? instead of that this belt is not only incoherrent but simply weak

for melee builds id rather use Wurm's molt (as they are 1alch each) with +1 end charge corruption. or meginords with the same corruption. first one solves all leech problems, second one gives a heap of life and damage in a neat package. no strings attached.

and im not even 'mad' because of this belt. it is the comparison of bonkers items CI/LL/ES get and the thrash life builds are given. lightning crit amulet is another offender on the list. mainly because you CAN have a CI item without ES and still reach 12K+ buffer. but you really cannot pick more than 1 non-life item as life. so ofc the most broken items have no life - because life is already too strong..

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grepman wrote:

Also I'm not sure why you'd use that new chest as a raider. It seems great for those who cannot take acro normally. Ie IR toons or block toons.

I guess an IR raider could be a thing but it doesn't seem super synergizing at all.

If you have max block on other hand, it's pretty crazy

I meant exspecially the new Chest + the Belt. A Raider can easily be an AR/Eva hybrid, just like a Duelist. Right now he isn't because the Dodge nodes are more impactful with Phase Acrobatics, but if you can get Phase Acrobatics without reducing your Block Chance and Armor, it's good. And like I said a Hybrid AR/Eva char cannot take Acrobatics without hurtimg himself a lot, so the chest is good for them.

"

- it has fortify on melee stun. cool concept while clearing thrash. or rather pointless gimmick without real value. it being so unreliable makes it pretty much USELESS.

How is it unreliable? Triggering Fortify is propably one of the easiest things in the game. The Belt additionally offers you a way to not have to proc Fortify manually on Trash mobs. So I see this Belt as giving me Onslaugt when I have Fortify, which as a raider gives me Phasing too. Getting Fortify on Melee Stun is something I don't even care much about, but it is a nice to have.

Just getting Fortify on Melee Stun would be terrible, but this way the Belt is really good. And as a raider I wouldn't say 25% more Melee Evade Chance, 15% Projectile Evade Chance and 40% AS and Movespeed is bad, I agree it doesn't compare to a decently equipped CI build, but it is a belt that is quite nice for a Raider because he has no other way to make his Onslaught unconditional (and I consider Fortify to be Unconditional, there is no situation that won't allow you to get it).

The Belt isn't super OP, but it is propably the most offensive one you can get at least from a Raiders Perspective. I agree for a Gladiator the Charge one would be a lot better.

well.. so this belt (in conjunction with pretty damn bonkers chest) gives you onslaught. mmkay. one belt slot that reads: one big life node, one resist roll (surprisingly the most popular), 2 passives worth of attack damage and somethin you can get on a flask. hmm.. it doesnt sound that bad untill you realize what the 'competition' gets

the big mod from this item (fortify on stun) does pretty much nothing. noob trap. fools gold. (some players do not know - 1shoting a mob CANNOT stun!)

on a lvl80 item. the major mod does nothing.

onslaught is cool (mostly movement speed because aspd is most likely already in the 100s) but there is a flask for that (raiders have little reason to not use it) and even without flasks my raider never had issues keeping this stuff up

it isnt a bad item. it can be used. but it has one deceptive mode (1% damage), one highly dubious (fortify on stun) and one that can be called 'movement speed boots'

for me this is a flop. numbers and being scared of life builds actually being good

but as good as life builds sound (and raider sounds nice however it wasnt bad in 2.4 neither) it all boils down to life being life - small buffer. who cares about fancy dodges and evades when that one unlucky streak hits and izaro clips you for 5.5k. CI leeches back up. you eat your keyboard.. with double effective onslaught on melee stun

"

onslaught is cool (mostly movement speed because aspd is most likely already in the 100s) but there is a flask for that (raiders have little reason to not use it) and even without flasks my raider never had issues keeping this stuff up

Well you can't keep up onslaught on bosses. And this belt allows that, and exspecially on bosses the Evasion Chance is pretty important. And you don't need the chest Perfect Form just enables you to be Hybrid Armor/Eva while still having Phase Acrobatics, because honestly you can use that Belt as a raider even if you are not Hybrid. This single benefit of having Onslaught on bosses, because you won't necessarily be able to keep up a flask (which you actually said before yourself).

The one flaw in the raiders onslaught tree is that it is not avaible on bosses. And as much as I agree that you likely already have a lot of AS getting 40% increased Attack Speed is still a huge damage buff.

And honestly yes the buffer is smaller on life, but then again people massively overestimate how many things actually exhaust 5k HP. There is hardly a need to have more.

CI is miles ahead, compared to Life, but it often sounds as if the game is unplayable as Life, you can do any content in the game with a Life based build even though you might actually have to dodge a few things were a CI char will just stand there and take the beating.

And I also never got hit by Izaro for 5,5k HP unless it was one of the attacks you are supposed to dodge and even then he would need a few buffs for that, but the ones you have to take are a lot weaker, considering you have Fortify, Arctic Armor and in such a fight likely even a few Endurance Charges and even more you have a rather decent Evasion rate too, which means that even if you fail to manually avoid an attack you might get lucky.

People also overstate how easy it is to get 8k ES with CI. It is not too hard anymore, but exspecially the transition can be difficult and it isn't something you just do. Getting 5k HP on the other hand is not too hard, if you are pushing 6k that is were the trouble starts. CI has a lot more freedom on boots, gloves and helmet because most of their ES comes from Shield and Chest, while the life values on all items are hardly different, but a Chest can give 900+ ES, I think a Shield 500+, this alone is a bigger difference than Life has. Exspecially shields seem lacking for Life Builds because they offer so much less than for CI. Exspecially with Acrobatics using a Shield hardly makes you any more tanky. Your evasion rating likely is already so high that the Shield might only give you a few percentage points, that won't do much and not more HP than a Quiver. And the Block Chance is heavily reduced due to Acrobatics.


So I generally agree on the premise that life is worse than CI, that is hardly debatable. However I can't see how that has any effect on this Belt. Just to be very technical now. However considering how weak the actual mod is that gives you attack damage you can totally wear that Belt with CI and considering that if you go CI on raider (you wouldn't more likely you take an Assassin for that) you will lack movespeed... a lot. So getting this belt just for the essentially perma 20% movespeed might even be worthwhile. So if there is an issue, then that this belt might be better for a CI char than it is for an actual hybrid, because a CI char can live with sacrificing the ES from a Crystal Belt, while a Life based build has a hard time not having a Leather Belt with 100+ HP.

I think the belt would be in a much better spot if it would have at least 70 HP. Which is still not high for a belt, but considering you are sacrificing the slot with the highest possible amount of Life you can get you should get something good for it and I agree it is hardly worth it. I don't agree that you cannot play with a lot less life it will be more dangerous, but then again in Standard that hardly matters, because you might die, but it is hard to notice before reaching 90+. And the speed you get from the belt might actually be worth it.