Chaos Inoculation and Acrobatics After ES Nerfs

In the wake of Energy Shield nerfs, I have personally found the Shadow has gotten the short end of the stick for defensive options. Acrobatics has never been exactly Hardcore viable, despite being a fun mechanic that plays well with the crit-centered thematic the Shadow is most often built toward.

Personally, I'm very interested in the evasion/ES/Dodge playstyle strongly suggested by Shadow's node placement and Trickster's ascendancy options. Further, I think that it could be fully realized with two small changes to Keystone nodes, or a larger change to one.

Method One: CI and Acrobatics changes.
Chaos Inoculation: REMOVED: Immune to Chaos Damage, Maximum Life is set to 1.
Replaced with: Chaos Damage does not bypass energy shield. 20% Less Life, 10% Less Energy Shield, Chaos Resistance is set to 0%

Context: With an overall smaller sacrifice of potential effective Life, this change offsets the sheer gear-dependency of Chaos Inoculation builds while enabling Pain Attunement builds that don't require Shavronne's Wrappings. Combined with the next change, it enables Shadow to build a combination of Life and Energy Shield to build a buffer against instant death while using Dodge/Evasion as their primary defense. Setting Chaos Resistance to 0 (or below) means that you're also sacrificing the ability to reduce incoming chaos damage- all for the privilege of being able to rely on your effective life total to be effective

Acrobatics: CHANGED: 30% Chance to Dodge Attacks. 50% Less Armor and Energy Shield From Intelligence, 30% less chance to block spells and attacks.
Phase Acrobatics: 30% Chance to Dodge Spell Damage. 30% Reduced Energy Shield

Context: Intelligence can provide a deceptively large infusion of Energy Shield to most builds that use the stat. The majority of my builds are focused in the northern part of the tree, so it's not unusual for me to see 500+ intelligence at level 85, totaling up to a whopping 100% increased ES! Though many players don't notice it, this means almost a third of their Increased Energy Shield stat comes from Intelligence, making this around 50% Reduced ES for the average build, 100% reduced for high-int builds (Hand of Wisdom and Action, Whispering Ice). Meanwhile, builds that only dip into the northern area of the tree for ES and favor hovering around the Ranger/Shadow region will see less of a hit to their effective life pool. With the changes to CI mentioned above, plus these reduced penalties to using ES with Acrobatics, Shadow's unique defensive niche can be fully viable without falling into the territory of 'overpowered'.

Method 2: Only change Acrobatics.
Acrobatics: 30% Chance to Dodge Attacks. 50% less Armor and Intelligence, 30% Less chance to dodge spells and attacks.

Context: At a slightly steeper penalty, the current function of Chaos Inoculation is preserved. Penalizing Intelligence directly causes the same reduction in effective Increased Energy Shield, but also adds a penalty to the player's mana pool that they'll have to compensate for with other nodes.

I feel this is the inferior route to take, as currently the Chaos Inoculation node is hard to balance and makes Chaos Damage hard to balance by extension; by making sure all players TAKE Chaos damage, the Chaos damage of traps, monsters, etc. can be balanced more appropriately, and thanks to the recent ES nerfs (most notably the removal of the 'more' node behind CI), fears of Acrobatics being overpowered in tandem with Energy Shield can be effectively dismissed, opening the way for the highly hybridized duck-and-weave defensive style Shadow can offer us.

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Arakk01 wrote:

In the wake of Energy Shield nerfs, I have personally found the Shadow has gotten the short end of the stick for defensive options.

Sounds like you aren't building the right type of Shadow. *ducks*

Joking aside, the Shadow is the best or second best class for ES regeneration (vs. Scion-Trickster) and recharge (vs. Witch Occultist) due to the ability to stack 70% recovery rate from ascendancy, easily triggered in any build that wants to take advantage of it, and you get 250 base ES to boot.

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Method One: CI and Acrobatics changes.
Chaos Inoculation: REMOVED: Immune to Chaos Damage, Maximum Life is set to 1.
Replaced with: Chaos Damage does not bypass energy shield. 20% Less Life, 10% Less Energy Shield, Chaos Resistance is set to 0%

Killing off full ES-CI builds in favour of "all builds must be life or hybrid" because you have trouble building your shadow as a hybrid or pure ES is a poor idea. There is still a room for ES-CI builds in the current form, as the class build forums attest to.

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Acrobatics: CHANGED: 30% Chance to Dodge Attacks. 50% Less Armor and Energy Shield From Intelligence, 30% less chance to block spells and attacks.
Phase Acrobatics: 30% Chance to Dodge Spell Damage. 30% Reduced Energy Shield

I appreciate your thinking, but you are overlooking a build option here: the ES builds that build ES primarily through strength rather than intelligence. They are based around the interactions of two uniques (Shaper's Touch and Geofri's Sanctuary), possibly further supplemented by another two (Doon Cuebiyari and Alberon's Warpath). And while there aren't all that many strength passives in the shadow area, there are plenty elsewhere as well as conversion of intelligence and dexterity to strength via jewels.



I currently use the above combination for my ES-CI flametank, but it should be noted that the combination is also pretty good for hybrid builds as the strength builds life as well.

Halving the bonus from intelligence when it is dwarfed by the contributions from the base (100%), strength, tree, jewels, and amulet would make taking the acrobatics keystone a no-brainer choice for any STR based ES build that was willing to track there (probably using Inertia jewels to pave the way.)