If life was back to CB levels...

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nynyny wrote:

You are a hardcore player?

facepalm.jpg

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nynyny wrote:

Any life build in a hardcore environment should be using Determination and Grace for defensive purposes. Running Blood Magic as a keystone is the worst idea ever, and I havent met anyone in ages who does it. A well rolled shield alone gives you more than 1000k, add that up with Grace, Determination, a few big nodes that dont really require you to go out of your way at all and all the other gear youre wearing and you end up at that amount of armor.

5000 Armor on a life based character. If thats the norm no wonder there are people complaining about survivability issues, they apparently dont know what is important.

Ive run 4 blood magic keystone marauders (2 caster, 1 bow, 1 wand) to demi finishes in 1/2 week events. Around 5k armor on average before granite, no eva, no es. We ran rare maps up to the cap. The only times i came close to dying were when i got careless vs a savage pack of triple frenzy cannibals in a rare cells, and when i solod deadly twinned oversouls with 6p life in a rare maze (other players didnt join for the boss room or had to bail).

These claims you make are completely false and display what appears to be a total lack of experience outside of 1 build in a well-geared 6p group environment.

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nynyny wrote:

The mods were mob based, they were far from stacking as hard as current maps do it ON TOP of the rares own mods. If you really beliece MoC maps are comparable to the current map system youre completely delusional.

Sure, you might be able to do SOME maps without leech as long as you play completely careful, but is will probably stop with mods like Burning Ground. Running leechless characters in reflect, -max, vuln, enfeeble, added cold damage simply isnt worth the time investment and in my opinion theres no really a point, let alone that I doubt it is possible, especially in 74+ maps. So comparing Arcers, Titty bithces and Alchemists with the mobs you usually face in MoC that mostly skeletons, spiders and dogs, thats a whole new level.

I already explained why MoC was roughly comparable to higher maps, mainly due to the similar incoming damage.

I ran a leechless mf bow marauder in more high maps than i can count in mid~late cb. He never died.

And that comparison is ridiculous. How bout we compare skeletons, zombies and spitters in maps to coldsnap elementals (used to do 3-4x damage and have no cooldown), flicker pirates (often came in blue packs of 20+) and rhoa carcasses (could land 10k damage charges from offscreen) in MoC instead?

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nynyny wrote:

Its a question of efficiency and as long as you dont show me a CI GMP Freeze Pulser (the only spell that currently is worth self casting apart from Discharge) that is soloing a reflect map in a decent time I simply cant take you serious.

I would love for you to prove me wrong but I highly doubt that you can, hell I know that you cant. The funny thing is that it probably is possible, but so is running CI EB in a Dual Totem build. Does that make the whole thing a smart idea? Not really.

Read up about the caster maras (fireball as primary skill, btw) winning demis in new leagues with junk gear- its already been done. My current main also runs fireball and spark as his primary (self cast) skill on various maps and has no major issues.

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nynyny wrote:

Probably you just focus on the wrong thing. The guy who started this debate was saying that a person who needs leech as a caster is doing something wrong. So lets just assume that you can play a Freeze Pulser without leech, whats the point?

The guy who mentioned that a person who needs leech as a caster is doing something wrong is correct. Its clearly superior to cooldown or pure regen atm, but its not required.

And the point is to have es/ci mechanics changed so they arent just life 2.0, so that characters utilizing them have their own distinct builds and playstyles and so that life/es wont be subject to direct numerical comparisons and constant buff/nerf whine threads, valid or otherwise.

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nynyny wrote:

"

Endgame maps with difficult map mods. You can find the build im working on right now in the witch section.

A crit based LA builds without Vaal Pact. Good thing you play Standard I guess.

Hahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Totally no voltaxic rift, [Removed]

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KoTao wrote:

Read up about the caster maras (fireball as primary skill, btw) winning demis in new leagues with junk gear- its already been done. My current main also runs fireball and spark as his primary (self cast) skill on various maps and has no major issues.

Have one of those myself, mostly Incinerate switching to Fireball when dealing with nasty critters. Actually it's the first char I played in OB, so he started with no gear, besides that I play salf-found except for build-enablers and gems. With all that crappy gear he still did fine, besides an average caster weapon the only thing you really need on gear is life and resists so many of the stuff he still uses is blue.

And I'll repeat an awesome suggestion one of the players made some time ago

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- Remove Vaal Pact (it only really works with GR anyway)
- Melee hits leech instantly
- Ranged leech half instantly, half over time
- Spells leech over time

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JohnNamikaze wrote:

You have to invest in endurance charges
You have to invest in HP
You have to invest in AR

all your gear as a life based character have armor

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fsg wrote:

"

JohnNamikaze wrote:

You have to invest in endurance charges
You have to invest in HP
You have to invest in AR

all your gear as a life based character have armor

All my gear as a life based character has life (along with resists and stats).

Life =/= Armor

There needs to be Armour-ES Parity on gear baseline.

12 Armour = ~1 HP = ~1 ES at an arbitrary amount of damage.

Currently ES gets used because excessively large amounts of soak are better than soaking large amounts of low damage. That's because the only real credible threats are enemies capable of one-shottting or near-one shotting you. If AR was brought into balance with ES baseline on gear then wearing AR gear would grant the same effective health as wearing ES gear against credible threats, currently it's nowhere near close and you still have to significantly invest in inefficient armour or health nodes to get there.

So how do you achieve effective parity between Armour and ES?

Currently AR exists at roughly 3 times the value of ES on gear. This means that armour nadds roughly 1/4 the HP to your OHKO threshold that ES does, before considering effectiveness of passives. For Es there exist to two higher-efficiency passive clusters for both secondary defenses, further skewing perception in favor of ES because not only do you gain large amounts of HP from going ES you gain an effective eHP multiplier.

Step 1: Reduce ES value on Gear 50%, increase AR value on gear 100%

What does this step do? Well, it means AR gives as much "HP" as ES does. In reality this step is "tune ES on gear to be 1/12 Armour, in all cases across all non-unique sources". Aside from granting immediate transparency to the stats it makes Low-Life ES a riskier proposition (as you'll have the approximate life total of an HP character).

Note EV=AR at all times across all gear, so it would get tuned at the same time.

Step 2: ES nodes grant the same % bonus as Armour/Evasion nodes

This gives a little power back to the ES user in some cases, and power to the AR user in others.

Step 3: Evasion area EV/HP clusters made equivalent to void barrier clusters, Strength area given AR/HP clusters equivalent to Body and Soul.

With this change there are now 4 Primary/Secondary defense cluster sets, a Secondary/Secondary cluster set, and the Witch should have a Primary Multiplier (in the form of CI). This grants two very high efficiency clusters to armour users, and makes the "clusters" by the ranger actually competitive with the shadow clusters.

Note: in this step a high-returns HP cluster set should be placed near duelist, the troll's blood cluster would be idea adding HP to the regen nodes. Also make sure the ES/HP mess by witch has relatively high efficiency.

Step 4: Retune CI where it needs to be to feel good.

This is the final step. After these changes ES and HP will find themselves in the same ballpark of visible life, with Armour having enough soak to effectively double (or come close) their life. This means for a "Pure" ES character to compete on the same level they will need to have a relatively large more multiplie in the 80-100% range.

End Result: HP = ES, Low Life ES = ~Low Life HP

There will be complaints. People will threaten to quit. But the game's defensive balance will be much healthier for changes like these.

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MrMisterMissedHer wrote:

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Autocthon wrote:

There needs to be Armour-ES Parity on gear baseline.

12 Armour = ~1 HP = ~1 ES at an arbitrary amount of damage.

I'd have to disagree with this and similar estimations due to armour not being general.

The hardest hits in the game are physical (and often reflections of your crits).

The point isn't "Armour = HP" it's "Armour should provide similar HP buffers to what ES does" and currently it doesn't even provide 1/4 of the buffer an ES character gets against the damage type it's GOOD for.

If the damage is physical Armour = HP. Otherwise Armour = Nothing. However for ES ES = HP against everything but status ailments. They both have a loophole.

If you read the post it basically says:

"Make Visible HP = Visible ES for non-CI, Make ES = Armour on gear against physical"

Though considering something like 80% of incoming damage in most siuations is physical, saying armour sucks is a pretty bad generalization.