Porcupine Goliath Damage is too much

Gee, IMO both sides are right in this \o/

One can/should properly mitigate or find ways to cope with porcupines, buuut it is also true their damage can be IMBA under certain conditions (maps RNG) when compared to other mobs.

Would be nice if GGG tunned them down a little, just around 10~20%. And, also tunned up all the trash mobs in the game so that some of them actually offer challenges in a way or another, to different build setups (nothing to whine over, just on par with porcupines after they are tunned down a bit).

Thing is, GGG don't quite grasp the sweet spot of balance, they either break or overpower the content. Altough it seems they did it better in this league.

I could actually use some help with this.

Playing a fireball self cast elementalist this league, life/eb/mom (yes, I'm a sucker for punishment, but also screw mana flasks). Using herald of ice and steelskin and arctic armor but still get deleted by porcupines. Biggest problem is that I have pretty good aoe + chain, so I die before I even see the pack most of the time I die to them.

Pretty much have to resort to hiding behind cover. Still trying to figure out flask/some extra slot setup (thinking cwdt/unearth/gmp), but char is in profile (Pewpewpewz) and here: https://pastebin.com/VGvJajGC.

It's enough of a problem that I'm thinking of maybe pathing to sanctity and using a granite flask of dousing. Would that actually be enough to tank it?

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Candlejack297 wrote:

I could actually use some help with this.

...

As a caster with little to no armor on gear, I do not think Granite flask is your best choice. I would go with Basalt flask instead as the flat reduction to physical damage should be better than 3k armor with no scaling on skill tree.

I would also look for way to generate endurance charges, again another source of flat damage reduction.

Going with the above assumption that your character has low to no armor, you should use max level Steelskin, ideally with some +levels to push its absorbed amount as high as possible and increased duration.

Last but not least, ensure that the map does not have "projectile chains" if you are using golem. Having golem out on maps with chains where you encounter porcupine is fast way to die. Use pantheon power, and upgrade them, to avoid projectiles that chain or simply do not use totem in chain maps.

I hate Porcupines with all my heart and every time I encounter them I curse them and Chris Wilson for allowing these abomination to be in the game.

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Baron01 wrote:

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Candlejack297 wrote:

I could actually use some help with this.

...

As a caster with little to no armor on gear, I do not think Granite flask is your best choice. I would go with Basalt flask instead as the flat reduction to physical damage should be better than 3k armor with no scaling on skill tree.

I would also look for way to generate endurance charges, again another source of flat damage reduction.

Going with the above assumption that your character has low to no armor, you should use max level Steelskin, ideally with some +levels to push its absorbed amount as high as possible and increased duration.

Last but not least, ensure that the map does not have "projectile chains" if you are using golem. Having golem out on maps with chains where you encounter porcupine is fast way to die. Use pantheon power, and upgrade them, to avoid projectiles that chain or simply do not use totem in chain maps.

I hate Porcupines with all my heart and every time I encounter them I curse them and Chris Wilson for allowing these abomination to be in the game.

That was useful, thanks. I was going to upgrade the lunaris pantheon anyway (it grants move speed, so obviously the only viable choice). You did give me an idea, I could slot the red dream into a jewel slot for some end charges. Not sure if that's good enough, but I'm honestly not sure if I really need a life/crit multi jewel. Won't work against bosses, but that's not even an issue. I really don't want to use warlord's mark for generation, and I have no idea what else I could possibly get it with (enduring cry?????????????????????? let's be real that's never going to happen).

Is cwdt + ic just completely dead? I feel like a lot of ts deadeyes were still using it last league, but they do have the benefit of evade which few witches are going to have.

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Fruz wrote:

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Madridist wrote:

Why people even mention mele chars here in this topic?
Every mele char have 20k+++ armour or it should be deleted, right?
So mele is out of the table.

Nonsense.

Evasion works as well as armour against porcupines, I am playing a RF trickster right now with ~7k armour and no armour flasks, I blow up packs of porcupines and barely feel anything.



Just
build
defences



Or keep dying to porcupines, your choice.

i feel like evasion is better for dealing with them than armour. If you evade it you evade everything, its entropic so it cuts down the speed of the burst in a steady way, it cant fail the way block or dodge can fail. Armour mitigates only the phys, an awful lot of maps have physical damage as extra elemental on the rolls, with armour you still eat all that ele damage, evasion evades the entire hit.


any build with good defence should essentially be immune to porcs, its almost certain a build has suspect defences if theyre a danger in my experience.

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Candlejack297 wrote:

(enduring cry?????????????????????? let's be real that's never going to happen).

why?

why would you invest anything more than a single gem slot to get endurance charges when enduring cry is in the game?

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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Candlejack297 wrote:

(enduring cry?????????????????????? let's be real that's never going to happen).

why?

why would you invest anything more than a single gem slot to get endurance charges when enduring cry is in the game?

As a fireball sorc witch, why would I be close enough to generate endurance charges from a warcry? I might literally just die to the hits while casting it or get stunlocked or something. I think it's also significantly less invasive to use a passive jewel socket compared to actually casting a skill. Also, in my specific case, my gem sockets are pretty much filled up.

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any build with good defence should essentially be immune to porcs, its almost certain a build has suspect defences if theyre a danger in my experience.

I don't think that's true at all, I see porcs blow their way through 8k+ es all the time. Many es focused builds used to ignore the problem with cwdt + ic and/or have end charges with warlord's mark. Now that both those options are pretty neutered for most es builds, I think these characters got hit the hardest.

Ev builds seem to ignore the problem almost entirely (I don't think I ever noticed when I played a qotf deadeye ts last league, and it had less life but a lot of ev). I'm not sure what the death animation is but does acro/phase acro also dodge them?

Never tried an armor build, but it's basically designed to stop porcupines. If it couldn't do that, I would see no reason to ever invest in armor.

The main problem now with casters is what GGG removed tons of ES ehp from tree, items, ascendancies again. And not gave effective trade in instead.

And big part of the problem what casters and now summoners are is Int based. So they cannot scale life as good as marauders. It was better with old IC and better ES. Now its in close to failstate. So everyone is goin into glasscannoning and shatter or freeze just to minimize this Path of Postdeath Effects type of a meta..

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Candlejack297 wrote:

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any build with good defence should essentially be immune to porcs, its almost certain a build has suspect defences if theyre a danger in my experience.

I don't think that's true at all, I see porcs blow their way through 8k+ es all the time.

8k ES with nothing else is not "good defences", at all.

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Fruz wrote:

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Candlejack297 wrote:

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any build with good defence should essentially be immune to porcs, its almost certain a build has suspect defences if theyre a danger in my experience.

I don't think that's true at all, I see porcs blow their way through 8k+ es all the time.

8k ES with nothing else is not "good defences", at all.

Out of curiosity, what do you actually see 8k+ es ci/ll witches do for physical damage reduction, especially with the warlord's mark and ic nerfs? Most pure es builds I've seen just attempt to tank hits and heal/regen it up (disc with +es on hits and a bunch of the new leech nodes and support). Seriously, what kind of layered defenses do you see pure es builds or eb/mom builds do? Block at best? What about bow+quiver casters? For bosses, you can always "git gud" and manual dodge stuff, but porcupines (still a normal trash mob that probably dies in 1-2 hits like most other trash mobs) just kills you from offscreen after you've already cleared them.

Is the goal for porcupines to only kill certain types of builds? Seems like a weird design for one kind of otherwise random trash mob in a game where most trash is completely forgettable and dies by the hundreds.