Energy Shield passives

"

Autocthon wrote:

Sounds like a problem with pure ES items overall and not with CI/ESnodes specifically. Thus it should be rectified by boosting pure ES equipment, not by changing passives overmuch.

All the defensive gear in the game does different stuff, but should be balanced equally against one another. For example, there are "defenses from shield" nodes that increase the armour, evasion, and/or energy shield from your shield... the ES nodes are pretty much "8% increased defenses" while the evasion nodes are "10% increased defenses" with some 30 percents tossed in as notables... armour is a little different, since Strength doesn't increase it, but evasion and ES both are increased by base stats... it's not very balanced. ES needs some more 10s and 30s... although I was probably wrong to balance ES nodes against armour nodes earlier.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

"

Autocthon wrote:

Sounds like a problem with pure ES items overall and not with CI/ESnodes specifically. Thus it should be rectified by boosting pure ES equipment, not by changing passives overmuch.

All the defensive gear in the game does different stuff, but should be balanced equally against one another. For example, there are "defenses from shield" nodes that increase the armour, evasion, and/or energy shield from your shield... the ES nodes are pretty much "8% increased defenses" while the evasion nodes are "10% increased defenses" with some 30 percents tossed in as notables... armour is a little different, since Strength doesn't increase it, but evasion and ES both are increased by base stats... it's not very balanced. ES needs some more 10s and 30s... although I was probably wrong to balance ES nodes against armour nodes earlier.

Except you're filing to take into account that ES is multiplicative with other defense types in a way that armor/ev is not. Thats why the nodes are lower.

The problem for CI witches is that raw ES as a single defense is too low compared to returns from hybrid ES.

Consider: IF you go ES/EV or ES/Armor you get increase ES multiplicative with the armor/ev. And if you go ES/EV you get potential ES generation in combat (dodge attacks all day long). However in ES alone you only get your raw ES. Consider...

ES: 175
ES/EV: 105/251
ES/Armor: 98/286

Assuming the hybrid gear overall provides roughly 30% damage reduction it grants considerably more eHP than the ES gear factoring base HP. If it manages to be 40% DR on average then you're reaching a point where it WILL provide more efective HP and more ES than raw energy shield gear. To ilustrate my Shadow is using EV/ES gear has 38% dodge change and is a paltry 50% lower ES than raw ES gear. I'll give yo ua hint: 38% DR bridges the gap and then some (and the gap CLOSES as gear gets better)

Also consider that ES is NOT multiplicative with health like the other defenses, which depresses its value significantly, and is basically the reason CI exists.

This is clearly primarily a problem with ES gear in terms of eHP contribution, not with the nodes themselves.

"

Autocthon wrote:

Except you're [failing] to take into account that ES is multiplicative with other defense types in a way that armor/ev is not. Thats why the nodes are lower.

For hybrid defenses, yes; for pure ES pieces, not really. Okay, you can add granites and maybe grace aura, but I think the concept here is that pure ES should be better balanced agianst pure evasion, at the very least.

The reason you don't see any 8% dodge nodes (except in hybrid nodes) is that each Dex is 0.2% increased evasion. This means that a +30 Dex node is 6% evasion already, plus a bunch of accuracy... and a +30 Int node is 6% ES and +15 mana. An 8% ES node doesn't really have a big enough advantage for an ES user over Savant, which means the ES nodes need a buff.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

"

Autocthon wrote:

Except you're [failing] to take into account that ES is multiplicative with other defense types in a way that armor/ev is not. Thats why the nodes are lower.

For hybrid defenses, yes; for pure ES pieces, not really. Okay, you can add granites and maybe grace aura, but I think the concept here is that pure ES should be better balanced agianst pure evasion, at the very least.

The reason you don't see any 8% dodge nodes (except in hybrid nodes) is that each Dex is 0.2% increased evasion. This means that a +30 Dex node is 6% evasion already, plus a bunch of accuracy... and a +30 Int node is 6% ES and +15 mana. An 8% ES node doesn't really have a big enough advantage for an ES user over Savant, which means the ES nodes need a buff.

Currently my ES/EV gear increases my total eHP by (1.4)(1.66) or a 130% eHP increase at level 13. Equivalent ES gear would provide roughly double my current ES, but no evasion granting 80% total eHP increase. The equivalent dodge gear would have roughly 50% more dodge, increasing my dodge to roughly 60% or a 150% eHP increase.

Raw dodge is roughly twice the eHP increase over ES for me. And I've got roughly equal bonuses to both dodge and ES. Seems to me to be an item problem first.

Currently, the hybrid ES gear already suffers from a larger penalty to individual values (45%/35% to about 50/60) than hybrid armor/eva gear. If pure ES still cannot compete in terms of EHP, then I would agree - it's an item problem.

"

Cronos988 wrote:

I guess the issue with ES nodes is that as a primary defense, ES stacks multiplicatively with any secondary or tertiary form of defense like armor, resists and evasion/dodge/block.

That means in a mixed gear build, even relatively small amounts of ES, and consequently relatively small boosts to ES from passives, provide a signigicant increase in survivability. By comparison, pure ES builds only have a primary defense and therefore lack the important synergy that comes from combining different layers of defense.

With additional armor or evasion, every point spent in the second layer of defense multiplies with the primary defense. An 8% increase in ES with 50% mitigation turns into a 16% increase in ES. So the issue of ES builds is that where all other builds have at least 2 layers of defense, pure ES users only have one. Add to that that there are no flasks for ES and you end up with an underpowered build.

Yes, energy shield is a "Primary" defense, it has the same attributes as health in that regard. But logically think of it this way.

You have a health pool, that health pool increases with level, you can put passives to increase that health pool further and talents to regen that health pool quicker and you can equip items to increase that health pool, Strength scales that health pool and Flasks offer quick regeneration to that health pool.

You have an energy Shield pool, that energy shield pool does not increase with level, you can put passives to increase that Shield pool and further talents to regen that shield pool quicker and you can equip items to increase that energy shield pool, Intelligence scales that energy shield pool and flasks do not offer quick regeneration to that shield pool.



Energy shield
1). Needs armor to equal the base amount of health you would have, before passives, by natural character scaling.
2). In using it's Stat to equal base health, does not grant a secondary defense like Armor or Evasion does, and is therefore sacrificing damage mitigation.
3). Does not have recovery options via Flasks.



Yes it scales with secondary defenses, but so does health, and health does it tons better while naturally offering you those secondary defenses.

"

Autocthon wrote:

This is clearly primarily a problem with ES gear in terms of eHP contribution, not with the nodes themselves.

Frankly it's also a problem with Energy shield being a primary health-like mechanic instead of a secondary defense mechanic.

But i agree a good boost on PURE-ES only items, would put the mechanic in a really good place. The energy shield given by armor pieces should be equal to the damage mitigation that piece would otherwise offer.

"

Autocthon wrote:

Except you're filing to take into account that ES is multiplicative with other defense types in a way that armor/ev is not. Thats why the nodes are lower.

Well that's not completely True.

They multiply the effectiveness of one another.

Say you have 50% armor, 20% Evasion and 30% Block, on a tank with 1000 HP.

(This isn't exactly how the math works, but its a good idea)
You have 1000 HP and a 20% chance to dodge, for easy-sake we'll assume the mobs are hitting for 100s and out of 10 hits we'll dodge 2. This means our Effective HP is something like 1200.

Next comes block, on that 1200 HP we have a 30% chance to block a hit, so out of the 12 hits we can now take ,we'll block another 3.6 of them. So our effective HP is sitting at 1560 now.

Lastly comes armor, meaning a good half of all damage dealt is just mitigated, doubling the final value and settling us at an Effective health pool of 3120 health.



The only things that aren't multiplicative with one another are Energy shield, and health. Everything else is.

"

mack1510 wrote:

Frankly it's also a problem with Energy shield being a primary health-like mechanic instead of a secondary defense mechanic.

But i agree a good boost on PURE-ES only items, would put the mechanic in a really good place. The energy shield given by armor pieces should be equal to the damage mitigation that piece would otherwise offer.

You obviously don't understand relative eHP.

Let us assume that we have three characters, these characters are all single defense stat users, ES, EV, AR

Let us assume (for the sake of argument) that they all attain roughly 2k HP

If EV has 60% evasion (5000 eHP)
If AR has 60% damage reduction (5000 eHP)
If ES has 3000 ES (5000 eHP)

They all have the same effective HP. ES being a "health like" defense has nothing to do with how to balance it. In fact it makes it a hell of a lot more predictable than armor or evasion (which account for enemy damage and accuracy respectively) because it will ALWAYS be that additional eHP. The problem is that ES cannot keep up with base eHP contributions of EV and AR, and lags behind.

CI is particularly weak because you give up a significant portion of your eHP (in the case above you give up 40% of your eHP) to gain Chaos immunity. For hybric ES users this is mitigated by the fact that the yhave WAY more effective ES than straight ES users. Which means that the *primary* problem with ES is that the items baseline are simply not providing enough eHP.

Consider my level (14 now) shadow. He has ~130 and 60 ES. 20 of that ES is coming from a BELT, raw ES gear would get me to maybe 100 ES total.

Right now I have something like 40% dodge giving 2.4x eHP, with raw ES gear I might be hovering at 20% dodge and 2.2x eHP. That means that eHP contribution from hybrid gear for me is something like 10% higher than straight ES gear. Ergo ES gear is below eHP contribution of other gear types. Consider that with raw EV gear I might hit ~60% evasion, giving a 2.5x eHP multiplier, even higher gains over raw ES gear.

Pure ES gear needs a rough 10-20% buff on numbers to help even the score in early levels, later levels I can't say too much about but given that the gap between raw ES and hybrid ES is only ~30% of the raw ES I'd be inclined to bet that yes it's too low.

How does Life Leech work with ES? (Life Leech Gem Support + Passive ES instead of HP)
With 0 Quality you have a 20% regen rate per second, but the question is 20% of what? Of the ES pool? Or your HP pool without CI?

Also while we're at it. At 20% Quality, does the life leech have 40% regen rate per second or 24%?

I hope I posted in the right section/thread

Thanks guys

What if CI functioned something similar to Dodge? You lose any armour or evasion rating, but gain a passive flat 20% damage reduction. This would help increase the eHP for pure ES while offering a balance compensation for hybrids. Maybe it would also work like Iron Reflexes and convert all armour and evasion to ES at the appropriate rate to make the skill more useable for other classes.

I think it would also be a boon to the skill to increase Energy Shields stun resist to 100%. The 50% base is nice, but if you get several mobs hitting you, or even just a fast hitter it doesn't really matter. My understanding of stun is that it works like this stun_chance = 200 * damage / defender_effective_max_life. Part of the issue is that without armour, even if ES can easily absorb the hit, the damage is often a greater portion of your effective max life. On top of that, if you take CI you probably respec out of all your health nodes making your effective max life really low. 50% of those being ignored is all well and good but I've definitely been in situations where I tried to runaway or cast lightning teleport and just been chain stunned till I'm dead. If I'm giving up the health pool I can use potions on to potentially escape, I want my escapes to be more reliable. It would also play into making GR more effective, especially with the above change.

I think these changes keep the skill and the defense unique, while also opening up it's utility for various specs. It's another factor to consider as part of one's overall defense.


As kind of a sub-note, I think having high potential mitigation if you link you're build well together is a perfectly successful play-model. The biggest key imo is to develop one of those for each area. It shouldn't be CI or bust, or IR or bust. But if it's CI or IR or life stack or Dodge with Block where you have good competition between classes for HC races and such then you're solid.

"

notalltogether wrote:

What if CI functioned something similar to Dodge? You lose any armour or evasion rating, but gain a passive flat 20% damage reduction. This would help increase the eHP for pure ES while offering a balance compensation for hybrids. Maybe it would also work like Iron Reflexes and convert all armour and evasion to ES at the appropriate rate to make the skill more useable for other classes.

Flat DR is fine, but hybrid armor users actuallyt benefit more fomr CI than raw ES users (because they have considerably more effective ES)

"

I think it would also be a boon to the skill to increase Energy Shields stun resist to 100%. The 50% base is nice, but if you get several mobs hitting you, or even just a fast hitter it doesn't really matter. My understanding of stun is that it works like this stun_chance = 200 * damage / defender_effective_max_life. Part of the issue is that without armour, even if ES can easily absorb the hit, the damage is often a greater portion of your effective max life. On top of that, if you take CI you probably respec out of all your health nodes making your effective max life really low. 50% of those being ignored is all well and good but I've definitely been in situations where I tried to runaway or cast lightning teleport and just been chain stunned till I'm dead. If I'm giving up the health pool I can use potions on to potentially escape, I want my escapes to be more reliable. It would also play into making GR more effective, especially with the above change.

Don't respec out of your health nodes. To be honest what they really need to do is add HP+ES nodes to the witch (and only the witch) area.

Basically a straight ES user has 50% more ES (give or take) than a hybrid ES/(whatever) user. Those hybrid users tho get more ES because they have higher Evade/Armour than the ES user (a 50% armor value will mean they have 33% more ES than the straight ES user).

Hybrid CI builds are in general better than witch CI builds and that's a problem. CI itself is actually relatively decent.

"

I think these changes keep the skill and the defense unique, while also opening up it's utility for various specs. It's another factor to consider as part of one's overall defense.


As kind of a sub-note, I think having high potential mitigation if you link you're build well together is a perfectly successful play-model. The biggest key imo is to develop one of those for each area. It shouldn't be CI or bust, or IR or bust. But if it's CI or IR or life stack or Dodge with Block where you have good competition between classes for HC races and such then you're solid.

No comment etained primarily because I don't like snipping.