Fortify

Fortify is a design failure and I'm disappointed its not being addressed in 3.0, which IMO is the perfect time to address it.


Fortify 100% should not be working the way it is, you know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Fortify was added to give melee a way to mitigate damage because they are almost always going to be more in danger the other playstyles. What has happened is what you said wouldn't, casters wouldn't get fortify because they don't have the attack speed investment or what not.

Except they have plenty of attack speed to shield charge, not only granting them mobility, but also granting them a damage reduction, even if its flying thru trash mobs. To me this is unacceptable and the fact it is being completely ignored in the beta speaks volumes. It was even worst when you could use shield charge with arcane surge, but it seems like thats being addressed at least.


Fortify shouldn't be working with mobility skills. Simply put its what enables players to get the "free" buff that was intended for melee characters. Conceptually I think I have an issue with it not working, but the consequences far outweigh what is happening. Shield charge is the worst contender, with WB not too far behind. No one uses WB as main skill, so no big deal if that loses fortify possibilies, as for shield charge, I know some people used to play this as main skill, not sure if after the aoe nerfs if its possible. but I think we all can agree that its worth the loss of fortify on shield charge. If they want to introduce a threshold jewel for shield charge that grants fortify on hit, increased aoe\damage and sets players spell damage and minion damage to 0 then you have a half assed work around if its absolutely needed.


The biggest losers from the whole shield charge bullshit stuff is melee 2 handers, which have to use leap slam, LUL.


IMO all melee abilities should inherently give fortify on hit and various items\AC classes be re-worked around it.


The first step is admitting there is a problem.

I don't mind casters and archers having access to fortitude. The opportunity cost just have to much higher like playing Champion or something.

But overall I agree with your point. It's kind of lame to see all the caster shield charge builds basically having permanent fortify - something they really shouldn't have in the first place.

they really should look into this

Also with the change to MOM working against damage over time, is there any consideration in making fortify work against DOT as well?

Of course this would mean the combination of fortify+mom negates a large chunk of DOTs.

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goetzjam wrote:

The first step is admitting there is a problem.

I do consider the newish Vigilant Strike (~40sec fortify for everybody incl party members, totems and minions) a statement indicating that they dont agree with this kind of perspective.

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(And yes if Fortify is meant as something other than "increase micro hassle for player" then it started as a design failure and it is still a design failure.)

I agree, fortify was designed to melee chars but is too easily used by casters, maybe GGG could reduce its duration (1 sec maybe) and then increase fortify duration in the bottom area of the tree

This way everyone without extra duration would have to use the melee skill supported non-stop and this would make it somewhat difficult to be used by casters but a melee that uses it on his main skill would have no problem

To counterbalance the reduction in duration the damage reduction could be increased (30% maybe) and/or (like you said) make it also work with DoT

So ES casters... lol.

33% nerf to ES on gear ✓
Removal of more ES nodes behind CI ✓
Removal of Vaal Pact ✓

...so now the advocation of an additional 25% damage reduction from fortify.

Holy shit you guys aren't trying to kill the ES meta you guys are trying to bury it and make sure nobody ever uses this again as a caster. Life + MoM already has been the go to for casters on beta...this will ensure that most everyone will not use ES for much of anything.

Nerfing has to be reasonable. Want to remove fortify for casters? Give them back the more ES nodes behind CI.

I'm all for changing the way things work...but stuff in end game hits so fucking hard I have no idea how you expect people to survive. Even with double curse, echarges (as a witch lul), block w/ rumis, there is still the possibilty to get one shot right through that stuff.

I mean there are "layered defenses" then there is sending people into battle without anything to protect themselves. This is where I feel you guys are going here.

This game will never be 1.0 again...please let that idea get out of your head. If it does become 1.0 again, you will lose 80% of the player base and along with it a large chunk of money that keeps this game alive.

You guys are seriously over the top with this stuff.

considering the horrible spot, relatively to bow/caster, namelock melee is in, they should add fortify to every skill gem that actually requires facetanking. Make fortify even more powerful in these gems.

GiGiGi you have failed to balance the game for true melee. Storm herald, poison clouds and corpse explosions, volatiles. Meanwhile, ranged sits back and enjoys the fireworks.

Then you add in shit like vaal pact for more retardation, making oneshots to balance it. Well it's sure as hell isn't ranged that get oneshot. And, hey, they can use vaal pact too. What do you know!

/rant

I sort of agree - but what i really think is a longer complicated thing and i lost the huge post i was writing about it.

Essentially now we have 4 so called "damage sources" -

Attack
Spell
Secondary
Damage over time

I'd propose a new one called movement

Which is essentially movement based skills, this decouples movement skills from attack/cast speed scaling which in turn means movement skills can be balanced properly. Right now, because you can get so much attack speed they have to nerf movement skills which results in them being kinda sucky if you don't go attack speed and super good if you do - that creates even more attack speed dependency and unfairly punishes builds that doesn't go as much attack speed to scale their power. It should come complete with movement related support skills, passives and opens the possibility of future itemization.

Consequently, it also decouples movement skills from fortify support since "Melee damage is a category of damage exclusive to the attack damage source".


EDIT: as for punishing ranged i'd really love to see a nemesis mod which when the monster is killed spawns an orb that will slowly travel towards the killer - the longer it travels the harder it hits and the faster it moves. That should be something haharhaha.

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Crackmonster wrote:

I sort of agree - but what i really think is a longer complicated thing and i lost the huge post i was writing about it.

Essentially now we have 4 so called "damage sources" -

Attack
Spell
Secondary
Damage over time

I'd propose a new one called movement

Which is essentially movement based skills, this decouples movement skills from attack/cast speed scaling which in turn means movement skills can be balanced properly. Right now, because you can get so much attack speed they have to nerf movement skills which results in them being kinda sucky if you don't go attack speed and super good if you do - that creates even more attack speed dependency and unfairly punishes builds that doesn't go as much attack speed to scale their power. It should come complete with movement related support skills and opens the possibility of future itemization.

Consequently, it also decouples movement skills from fortify support since "Melee damage is a category of damage exclusive to the attack damage source".

well yeah

Using fortify makes you lose a better damage gem however. Not fair since ranged usually does better damage, and has more survivability.

I dont like charges on movement skills tho, there's nothing wrong with moving fast