If life was back to CB levels...

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MrMisterMissedHer wrote:

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nynyny wrote:

I will ask this one question only, have you ever actually played a 2h life melee build?

You get destroyed, you *have* to take hits too and you can't really stack armour to any meaningful degree, not without it costing you significantly in another area.

Group play has consistently made the game significantly easier for me as 2h, not necessarily always more efficient (because my builds generally end up having to be solo focused and very specific, not allowing partying much except when I plan with my brother).

I havent but I honestly dont consider 2handed builds a smart idea anyway.

In my oppinion picking damage over survivability (to a certain degree) is never a good idea. Staffs and 2handed weapons apart from bows simply arent worth it, they basically dont give you enough to make up for the loss of a shield.

Hardcore mentality I suppose but by my experience it simply isnt necessary to take that risk, one handers deal enough damage.

For the record, I dont think that they should be seen as the norm. You making a sacrifice to deal more damage should be punished with lack of defense. Although it seems to me that it currently doesnt make up for that in damage, but thats just what the numbers look like so I could be wrong about that.

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MrMisterMissedHer wrote:

The damage isn't the issue, the survivability is, I don't know how many times I can say this. Many many experienced high level players have echoed this too, no amount of damage is going to make up for death.

And as I said its justified.

I didnt say that the damage is a problem, I simply feel that its not enough for the loss of defense. You deciding to drop your shield which gives you 20+% block, a shit ton of armor life and resistances should get punished harsh.

You want to deal more damage then you have to deal with stuff hitting you hard, thats the sacrifice you have to make and its fair in my opinion.

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If it's not viable, then surely it's a balance issue?

Yes and no.

Two-Handers never worked in Hardcore environments unless you one shot everything and they, as I stated, arent supposed to. In Standard you can just go full out glass canon and pray, you chose that playstyle. I honestly dont really see it being an issue because you you still get a lot from Endurance Charges, high leech and nodes.

I dont know what place twohanders are in right now exactly but if you say you tank a lot of damage then that sounds right to me, its the game punishing you for practically abandoning your most important defense.

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MrMisterMissedHer wrote:

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nynyny wrote:

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MrMisterMissedHer wrote:

The damage isn't the issue, the survivability is, I don't know how many times I can say this. Many many experienced high level players have echoed this too, no amount of damage is going to make up for death.

And as I said its justified.

I didnt say that the damage is a problem, I simply feel that its not enough for the loss of defense. You deciding to drop your shield which gives you 20+% block, a shit ton of armor life and resistances should get punished harsh.

You want to deal more damage then you have to deal with stuff hitting you hard, thats the sacrifice you have to make and its fair in my opinion.

Fair to the point of being unviable, whole parts of the skilltree, whole playstyles, classes of weapons and even skills themselves being irrelevant. Pretty good situation that.

Its not viable in my opinion because I dont consider it wise to sacrifice defense for damage, it would kill me on hardcore/onslaught. You choosing a build like this shows that it is viable in standard (depending on how far you made it).

I believe that going full out glasscanon is something you can do but due to the current problem with desynch and lagg I wouldnt want to risk my money and time like this. Whether or not it really isnt viable I cant tell, I lack experience in that field, but I am pretty sure that you could pull it off in a standard environment as long as you keep up charges, chain granites and concentrate on defensive nodes to make up for throwing out the shield.

No clue if its possible to actually replace it completely, would have to try to build around it.

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nynyny wrote:

Simply no. I dont know what game youre playing but Reaver cant one shot anything but CI characters without armor, characters this debate wasnt about. We were talking about what can one shot life based characters to justify the claim that 4k HP isnt enough because you can get "one shot". No one doubted that ES based character with no armor can get one shot by phys heavy mobs, that has nothing to do with life though.

You seriously think a 4k life build with 25k armor is somehow better off vs an 8k hit than a 10k es build with no armor? What. That armor is going to mitigate a fraction of the damage and the 4k life is going to be gone almost twice over.

Also, when was the last time you took a crit reaver beartrap with double damage mods and a damage aura? Im assuming never. Ive taken one (overlord + deadly + substantial), lost over 6k es and i cant even be sure it was a crit. If id had 4k life (with any obtainable amount of armor) id have been sent straight to default.

And considering there are plenty of other, similar situations where spike damage can go well over 4k (see previous post), life builds without kaoms or godly gear not being reliably able to handle nasty maps/mods is a pretty valid concern.

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nynyny wrote:

Just for comparison. My Low Life Freezing Pulser had 26k while Granite was active. Life based characters should have at least 15k while having a shield equipped by default, so a lot more than I did with Granite (had 8.2k without)

Life builds dont get 15k armor "by default". Either you purposefully take armor nodes, determination, grace+ir etc- which eats into your life- or youll have around 4-5k armor even in well-rolled, endgame level pure armor gear.

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nynyny wrote:

Which has literally nothing to do with the current game, even though people seem to think it does. There are a lot of mobs and especially mods like reflects, -max that make Leech mandatory. The game isnt like it used to be anymore.

You asked how to handle status ailments, high maps etc with none of the current CI crutches and i answered. Its been done, it can still be done. We had to deal with all the same status effects back then (with no grounding or staunching flasks), reflect still existed, rares often spawned with double regen + leech + res or other "immortality" mods and the spike damage in MoC could exceed 10k for some blue monsters, which you generally wont even see now in a bad 77 map, yet players managed to clear MoC maps solo with CI, no leech, no regen etc. The game hasnt changed so radically that the old CI playstyles from cb no longer function.

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nynyny wrote:

I highly doubt that you solo 74+ maps, its a bit too expensive for my taste and simply not worth it.

Ive solod 3x 75 and 10 or so each of 74,73,72 in the last week, all rare. The expense is annoying but irrelevant, and what does your taste have to do with this?

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nynyny wrote:

Content at full difficulty is a questionable statement, especially when youre able to 2 shots 99% of the mobs in a 6 player party (which is what I used to be able to). I used to simply spam my Quicksilver and was killing most packs before the rest of the group even arrived. Doing so solo doesnt become harder, its rather the opposite. It made the game a bit dull outside of insane mods like this one but my goal wasnt to farm endgame for eternity anyway, it was to make LLRF GMP Freezing Pulse work in Reflect -max maps and I accomplished that.

...

If your build is thought out the only thing that stops your from clearing fast is your gear or the amount of point you spend in damage. Group play doesnt trivialize the content, it makes it affordable.

A solo, no-minion, no-totem player has 100% aggro of 100% of the monsters 100% of the time. A player in a 6p group filled with minions and totems has under 5% of the total aggro on average, and can stay at 0% aggro as long as they need by simply not attacking.

Group play may not outright trivialize the game, but it certainly comes with a huge reduction in overall difficulty, which results in the level of build quality and player skill necessary to succeed being accordingly lower...

Which results in these threads where newer players who spend most their endgame time in a godly-geared 6p group cant believe that leechless CI casters or 2h melee builds or etc can successfully solo (or perhaps even exist at all) in endgame areas. Not only referring to you here either, similar arguements come up in almost every life vs es thread where comparative survivablity, changing es to be less like life or cb vs ob builds/playstyles get mentioned.

@Nynyny: No.
Alright guys, the above should address every point nynyny has adequately.

It's funny because he's literally the only person who actually believes himself (delusional), and yet he's helping our cause by emphasising just how ridiculous it is every time somebody says there isn't a problem with ES vs Life.

He thinks he's trolling, but is actually hurting his side of the 'argument' while also bumping my thread constantly.

<3

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Group play may not outright trivialize the game,

Don't be so nice. You know that it does, and people who require a full party to play are extremely bad at the game, with the exception of a pure tank like XendranTurboTank. But even then, XTT only needs one other party member, and is taking 100% of the aggro on purpose anyway.

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Which results in these threads where newer players who spend most their endgame time in a godly-geared 6p group

His join date is before mine, which is why i was wondering if the account was given to him.

One thing i want to clarify, when i say people that are incapable of playing without a full group, i really do mean people, and not builds. If somebody is incapable of creating any solo-able build.

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Life builds dont get 15k armor "by default". Either you purposefully take armor nodes, determination, grace+ir etc- which eats into your life- or youll have around 4-5k armor even in well-rolled, endgame level pure armor gear.

You are a hardcore player?

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.

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You asked how to handle status ailments, high maps etc with none of the current CI crutches and i answered. Its been done, it can still be done. We had to deal with all the same status effects back then (with no grounding or staunching flasks), reflect still existed, rares often spawned with double regen + leech + res or other "immortality" mods and the spike damage in MoC could exceed 10k for some blue monsters, which you generally wont even see now in a bad 77 map, yet players managed to clear MoC maps solo with CI, no leech, no regen etc. The game hasnt changed so radically that the old CI playstyles from cb no longer function.

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.

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Ive solod 3x 75 and 10 or so each of 74,73,72 in the last week, all rare. The expense is annoying but irrelevant, and what does your taste have to do with this?

The fact that its necessary to group up unless you want to run out of money in a single evening. Soloing them isnt hard, its just bloody expensive because as I said I used to two shot most packs in 6 player maps.

Nothing in this game is hard, it simply requires you to be patient and have your build thought out well enough for it to work in as many maps as possible.

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Which results in these threads where newer players who spend most their endgame time in a godly-geared 6p group cant believe that leechless CI casters or 2h melee builds or etc can successfully solo (or perhaps even exist at all) in endgame areas. Not only referring to you here either, similar arguements come up in almost every life vs es thread where comparative survivablity, changing es to be less like life or cb vs ob builds/playstyles get mentioned.

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.

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?

I hit the pack once every 20 seconds because its impossible for me to sustain my own damage? Slowing down my progression pretty hard, probably even making it next to impossible for me to actually clear the maps. What do you do about a map with added cold? Once again I reroll? A build is only good if you can play a vast majority of maps mods. Being a leechless Caster basically makes it impossible for you to actively participate in almost every single dangerous mod. You wanna call that viable? Go ahead. If you ask me its complete trash.