If life was back to CB levels...

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facepalm.jpg

Justified question when youre assuming that people dont use Grace and Determination by default. Dropping all the defense you get from auras for a snigle gem in your link? No way to justify that.

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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.

Outside of one build? Pardon? Last time checked one of a biggest assets of this game is that you are able to play whatever the hell you want on whatever starting character? What I told you that 2 of my Witches in fact were EB Hybrid Witches that focused on getting as much life as possible as well.

The fact that you most likely ran a bunch of longrange characters doesnt really proof that armor isnt helpful, it just shows that you didnt need it due to the distance between yourself and the mobs. So what about melees or mid range casters? You think they will be safe?

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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?

So you ran a life based longrange character that had access to Pots and most likely a lot of hps. I wonder what that has to do with casters (ES users was what the debate was about) being able to run difficult maps without leech. I think literally nothing.

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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.

Once again mentioning the past. I wonder what node was accountable for that... mhhhh. I dont need to read up on Fireball based Marauders that were based on a node that doesnt even exist anymore.

Let alone that I didnt say that you cant use anything else but Freezing Pulse, there simply is no point. Why would I run Spark selfcast if my totems deal way more damage and shock way more efficiently? Having major issues and actually clearing efficiently are two completely different things. You can probably even make an Arc ColdSnap build wok if you really want to without getting into major trouble, question is if its worth the time.

Armour is considerably more effective than ES at soaking physical damage across a time period. The real problem is that armour is simply unfeasiible on high damage spikes because you cannot get enough physical soak against reflect.

The changes I outlined effectively normalize Es and Armour against physical damage (which Armour remaining ahead due to the fact that it isn't a finite resource) and make armour an attractive option for a physical damage dealer. ES will remain more effective against non-physical sources of damage and EV will remain more effective at mitigating attack sources than armour (assuming you actually spec for the EV).

End result is three defenses that are each uniquely effective. After taht it's just a matter of tuning their multipliers and such to prevent a clear winner.

well imagine for a moment a world where your armour is powerful enough to mimic 5000 ES.

That means that there would be literally nothing in the game that would be able to smack you around enough to make you feel squishy. At that point Vaal Smash is dealing ~2k damageto your 5k life.

The ES character will instead be taking 6k to his ES/Life pool. Most of the "getting smacked around" problem stems from simply not having enough armour on gear to effectively mimic the damage absorption capacity of ES against big hits.

I wish life could be more = to CI without Kaom's. The problem is that if there was a life buff or CI nerf, Kaom's builds would be very dominant. Kaom's builds are already much more safe than ES based builds. ES based builds only look safe because they are hiding behind totems most of the time.

Here is a ES build taking Vaal slams from merciless Vaal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiXwfm6mckI&feature=player_detailpage#t=122
Wow! Except that char is a high lvl with end game gear

Here is a Life build taking 2 Slams in a row from Maps Shadow of Vaal
http://www.twitch.tv/kabancheg11/c/2803431
lowl lowl

Lets see how an ES char handles Maze Vaal
http://www.twitch.tv/fireknight747/b/416364299?t=5h55m40s
He kind of sounds like John Malkovich

Imo Kaom's is ridiculous and is holding back a needed life buff but changing gear is much harder for GGG to do than changing the tree. Maybe there will be a change but it has to be planed very well.

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Necrogue wrote:

I wish life could be more = to CI without Kaom's. The problem is that if there was a life buff or CI nerf, Kaom's builds would be very dominant. Kaom's builds are already much more safe than ES based builds. ES based builds only look safe because they are hiding behind totems most of the time.

Here is a ES build taking Vaal slams from merciless Vaal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiXwfm6mckI&feature=player_detailpage#t=122
Wow! Except that char is a high lvl with end game gear

Here is a Life build taking 2 Slams in a row from Maps Shadow of Vaal
http://www.twitch.tv/kabancheg11/c/2803431
lowl lowl

Lets see how an ES char handles Maze Vaal
http://www.twitch.tv/fireknight747/b/416364299?t=5h55m40s
He kind of sounds like John Malkovich

Imo Kaom's is ridiculous and is holding back a needed life buff but changing gear is much harder than GGG to do than changing the tree. Maybe there will be a change but it has to be planed very well.

To be fair, with Shavronnes, Endurance Charges, Grace and Determination, both Body&Soul and Nulification wheels I was able to tank Maze Vaal smash on my low life character.

He didnt have any extra damage mods though.

The last link is from Merciless by the way, its not Maze and he mispositioned himself pretty badly, tanking the smash with 0 armor, 0 endurance charges and 4000 ES. Not what you want to do.

So in the end you can tank his smash if you really want to and set it up right, even as an ES based character. It requires heavy investment though because usually you dont have any reason to get down to US and IR.

Life right now is just a bit worse than ES, but Kaoms really makes the situation complicated if the focus is on Standard and Hardcore and not the leagues that have limitations (which is the wrong approach in my opinion). I honestly believe that it is in a good place but if a buff happens the best way would be to simply increase the life rolls on items, maybe make it possible to roll 129 instead of 109 and make it a bit easier to actually roll above average life.

e// I just rewatched the video of the guy tanking the Vaal Smash twice. Do you have his build? 6100 Health without Kaoms definitely is pretty good.

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nynyny wrote:

Justified question when youre assuming that people dont use Grace and Determination by default. Dropping all the defense you get from auras for a snigle gem in your link? No way to justify that.

My main character and league are in my signature.

Players dont run auras "by default", discipline for CI builds aside. Plenty of builds have no room or no use for evasion/armor auras.

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nynyny wrote:

The fact that you most likely ran a bunch of longrange characters doesnt really proof that armor isnt helpful, it just shows that you didnt need it due to the distance between yourself and the mobs. So what about melees or mid range casters? You think they will be safe?

The fireball characters were midrange- gmp fireball fans too much to be useful at long range- and point blanked rares and bosses.

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nynyny wrote:

So you ran a life based longrange character that had access to Pots and most likely a lot of hps. I wonder what that has to do with casters (ES users was what the debate was about) being able to run difficult maps without leech. I think literally nothing.

I ran a CI pulse shadow to a demi finish in the first 2-week HC event. Teammate ran a similar CI pulse witch. This is from scratch, mostly poor gear (nothing above 4-link, barely breaking 8k es at the end), direct casting, and we duo'd the entire event (as in, didnt party with anyone else, though we did some soloing when one of us wasnt on) with around 10 days of it spent running rare maps.

Scroll about halfway down for the results (teammate is #3)- and check the finish date:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/39572/page/32

And heres the patch that introduced ghost reaver- dont forget to check that date again!:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/49469

So thats that. People claiming it cant be done are ultimately only referring to themselves and their own lack of building/execution skills; the proof that it can be done and has been done is right there in the games history.

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nynyny wrote:

Once again mentioning the past. I wonder what node was accountable for that... mhhhh. I dont need to read up on Fireball based Marauders that were based on a node that doesnt even exist anymore.

The past in this case is a map system thats almost identical to the one we have now. There were no events run in MoC.

Your "node that doesnt even exist anymore" comment (do name this nonexistant fireball build-enabling node, btw!) about my event fireball marauders is even more evidence that you werent around (or playing at an endgame level) back then and that many of your claims are based on theorycraft rather than actual experience.

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Your "node that doesnt even exist anymore" comment (do name this nonexistant fireball build-enabling node, btw!) about my event fireball marauders is even more evidence that you werent around (or playing at an endgame level) back then and that many of your claims are based on theorycraft rather than actual experience.

Sounds to me like he thinks avatar of fire would help a fireball build.
That's totally wrong, and me and KoTao are talking about times after AoF was removed anyway.