Please look at ES Cooldown Recovery for 1.2.0

With the revamp of the Witch and Shadow areas in 1.2.0 I really hope GGG is considering buffing ES Cooldown Recovery nodes, adding more of such nodes or even some Notables.

I'm looking to run a self-found, CI Melee Shadow in the upcoming patch (hopefully Crafting will allow me to level as an ES character, too), and I'm kinda miffed that Ghost Reaver will have to be my main option for sustaining ES, which as a method is not that distinct from Life. I'd rather have the capability to focus on Evasion and ES CDR instead of having to rely on Leech exclusively. Obviously there is a case to be made for the usefulness of Leech especially given claws' implicit mod, but why should it be the only option?

Sure, it's possible to use EC+IC and try to buy the time to play a more ES CDR focused character, but would some more passive tree support go amiss?

I wouldn't normally have an issue with this, but the addition of Soul Strike which by itself adds *much* more ES CDR (150%) than the sum of all the nodes you can currently get on the tree (105%, I think?) feels rather distressing. Why not distribute some of that ES CDR throughout the relevant regions of the tree at least?

I'd like to see 200% ESCDR on the passive tree, with heavier ESCDR near the shadow than the witch.

I was thinking of how cool it would be if GGG offered ES CDR as one of the "niche" mods being introduced in 1.2.0. Might as well note it down here as a suggestion.

We won't be able to tell unless they give the tree out early.
We need to be able to see all the stats.

Frankly I highly doubt they're going to release it, as I foresee a lot of last minute changes.

I'm seriously concerned about the point efficiency.
Everyone is super hyped for it, but I can already tell it's the same for highway and travel nodes.

The main difference between the tree now and the new tree, is we are given more stuff to choose from. That's it. Everything else is moved and condensed.
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I think you can get 105% CDR, but you have to invest deep into the shadow tree to get the extra 10%.

You can get 65% without investing into shadow, or 95% while investing into the Evasion ES nodes.

I seriously hope they add CDR that is just near regular ES nodes, and not a hybrid one.

I'd like to see something closer to 150% total, but that would still take a deep investment.

The new total is 135% and there's a very helpful cluster netting 70% of it... which is quite cool. I would have preferred something like 150-160%, but I still sense that Soul Strike is causing some impairment there.

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ephetat wrote:

The new total is 135% and there's a very helpful cluster netting 70% of it... which is quite cool. I would have preferred something like 150-160%, but I still sense that Soul Strike is causing some impairment there.

I don't know if Soul Strike is a good reason to limit the amount of faster start of ES recharge in the tree. After all, Soul Strike also hits you with reduced ES recharge rate, so the item becomes a mixed blessing when you reach large amounts of FSESR.

With no FSESR from the tree, Soul Strike is really good: instead of waiting a whole 6 seconds for recharge to kick in, you only wait 2.4 seconds, which is far more useful even with the reduced recharge rate. But with all the FSESR from the tree, it's not so clear. Would you rather recharge in 3 seconds after 2.6 seconds of not taking damage, or recharge in 5 seconds after 1.6 seconds of not taking damage? The latter is maybe better, but it's not enormously better, so other quivers (e.g. Rearguard) start to look more appealing.

I did a little math, and I think the tipping point for Soul Strike is 50% faster start ES recharge from the tree. If you have that, the total time to go from being damaged to 100% energy shield is the same whether or not you have Soul Strike equipped. (-40% Energy shield recharge rate, +150% faster start of energy shield recharge)

So if you have more than 50% FSESR from the tree, adding Soul Strike will make it take longer to charge back to full ES than without it.

However, as already noted if you have more than 50% FSESR, adding Soul Strike will still reduce your delay to a very small amount (under 2 seconds) which might be worth more to you.

Edit: I guess that a more direct contribution is: even if you could get to 150%-160% FSESR from the tree, not only would Soul Striker make it take longer to get back to 100%, but the amount of time it would save is still pretty minor.

So I guess I'm saying: if GGG reduced the total available FSESR because of worries about the potential of Soul Striker, I don't think they need to have bothered.

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Softspoken wrote:

So I guess I'm saying: if GGG reduced the total available FSESR because of worries about the potential of Soul Striker, I don't think they need to have bothered.

Indeed. I think we could afford to have a bit more FSESR squirrelled away on the tree somewhere in hybrid nodes (and not just ES+FSESR - it would also make sense to have life regen + FSESR near the Templar, for instance). As it is, any CI Witch build will now get to 100% FSESR without really trying (starting path + Arcane Focus cluster + Essence Surge cluster, all on a beeline to CI), but it's not really possible to 'specialise' in FSESR beyond that, because there's not much left to pick up.

Here's a crazy thought: what if there were some extra FSESR nodes behind Acrobatics? Obviously, playing a pure ES build with Acrobatics is a bad idea, but with good evasion/block and a lot of FSESR (so that your ES has a chance to recover in combat), a bit of shield on top of your life, even halved, can be quite handy for preventing stuns and taking the edge off big hits.