Why Energy Shield/Armor Armor?

"

redrach wrote:

Let me add another point and say that it's very odd to have a low-value ES (from armor+ES gear instead of pure ES) on a melee character. The recharge time is simply too high because of how far you need to run away since you start at melee range, and the ES recharge nodes are quite far away for a melee Templar meaning you need to not get hit by any damage for 6s (plus however long it takes for the shield to recharge).
Zealot's Oath doesn't help either, since you lose %HP regen for %ES regen and you'll typically have a lot more HP than ES if you don't take CI and go for ES+armor gear.

It seems to me that GGG just gave the Templar armor+ES nodes and put in armor+ES gear in the game to match his hybrid position on the tree without considering what that means for a melee character.

Not sure how you'd fix this... some sort of ES gained on melee hit node? More increased ES cooldown recovery nodes near the Templar/Marauder side? Maybe even a keystone passive that grants a bonus to your ES based on the strength you have?

I think they first thing that would help is to make Zealot's Oath keep life regen based max life and not max ES. That would exactly be the hybrid talent that we need (it'd become useless for CI characters which makes sense seeing how its on the complete other side of the tree).

And then ya, I like your ideas:
1) extra ES based on str not int
2) ES nodes for regen/delay in the Templar part of the tree
3) a node that reduces chaos damage by 20% when going through your energy shield
4) A node that doubles armor damage reduction when damage goes through your energy shield

Stuff like that would make a really interesting alternative to pure ES or pure Armor.

I'm glad though to see I'm not the only one who thought something was wack with the system.

Armor is pretty much worthless against big hits, doesn't matter how much you stack it, later on you are going to be able to shrug off some of the piddly damage but anything with any real force is going to hit you hard. People tend to stack life for late game survivability, and ES is almost as good as life. The armor values on templar armor are just as effective at reducing damage from weak hits, then you get an extra boost to overall HP from the inherent ES (and all the armor/ES passives in that area). Imagine mara armor with inherent +health on it, that's basically what templar armor is for somebody taking passives in that area of the tree. The reduced base armor value is negligible.

"

SevenStrikes wrote:

Eldritch Battery ;) heheh

This is the correct answer

Being able to stack multiple auras late game >>>

It's built into the design paradigm. Energy shield is the Int defense, and armor is the Str defense.

Templar are a hybrid Int/Str class so "Templar gear" has a hybrid of the Int/Str defenses. Whether that gear is better for your build than dedicated armor or dedicated energy shield is going to depend a lot on what your build is.

"

Turtlewing wrote:

It's built into the design paradigm. Energy shield is the Int defense, and armor is the Str defense.

Templar are a hybrid Int/Str class so "Templar gear" has a hybrid of the Int/Str defenses.

As I said above, while that's the probable reasoning for assigning the Templar hybrid passive nodes, they still aren't enough to make the hybrid int/str gear useful on him because of the mechanics behind ES and how they interact with a melee character.

Design-wise the Templar ought to be a "melee/melee-ish caster", with gear that makes good use of both ES and Armor, but as things stand it seems better to just get armor and life from gear and neglect ES. GGG could fix that by adding certain passive nodes to encourage using hybrid int/str gear (and redesigning Zealot's Oath).

"

Astasia wrote:

Imagine mara armor with inherent +health on it, that's basically what templar armor is for somebody taking passives in that area of the tree. The reduced base armor value is negligible.

The problem is ES isn't quite equivalent to life. It's useless vs. chaos damage, and can't be regenerated in the middle of battle unless you have Ghost Reaver or Zealot's Oath (which gives crappy ES regen at the cost of much higher HP regen). Plus the time Templar need to spend out of battle before their ES regenerates is higher because of how far the ES recovery nodes are.

"

redrach wrote:

"

Turtlewing wrote:

It's built into the design paradigm. Energy shield is the Int defense, and armor is the Str defense.

Templar are a hybrid Int/Str class so "Templar gear" has a hybrid of the Int/Str defenses.

As I said above, while that's the probable reasoning for assigning the Templar hybrid passive nodes, they still aren't enough to make the hybrid int/str gear useful on him because of the mechanics behind ES and how they interact with a melee character.

Design-wise the Templar ought to be a "melee/melee-ish caster", with gear that makes good use of both ES and Armor, but as things stand it seems better to just get armor and life from gear and neglect ES. GGG could fix that by adding certain passive nodes to encourage using hybrid int/str gear (and redesigning Zealot's Oath).

"

Astasia wrote:

Imagine mara armor with inherent +health on it, that's basically what templar armor is for somebody taking passives in that area of the tree. The reduced base armor value is negligible.

The problem is ES isn't quite equivalent to life. It's useless vs. chaos damage, and can't be regenerated in the middle of battle unless you have Ghost Reaver or Zealot's Oath (which gives crappy ES regen at the cost of much higher HP regen). Plus the time Templar need to spend out of battle before their ES regenerates is higher because of how far the ES recovery nodes are.

This.

I completely agree with Turtlewing when he says it's what they intended and if everything was well balanced, I would be totally be behind it. But it isn't. Energy shield for templars and melee characters in general without CI/GR is just worse than evasion, evasion/armor, or armor armors.

Like Redrach said, several things need to happen before it becomes equivalent, or at least comparable, to other armor options.

"

redrach wrote:

The problem is ES isn't quite equivalent to life. It's useless vs. chaos damage, and can't be regenerated in the middle of battle unless you have Ghost Reaver or Zealot's Oath (which gives crappy ES regen at the cost of much higher HP regen). Plus the time Templar need to spend out of battle before their ES regenerates is higher because of how far the ES recovery nodes are.

Ya I was specifically thinking of chaos damage when I said "almost" before, it's certainly a large drawback for any ES build. Regenerating it mid-battle is sort of moot since it doesn't matter what is being regenerated/healed at that point, the ES can take the brunt of (or at least some of) the alpha while you kill a few enemies then you can survive the rest of the fight through health regeneration if you so choose (my witch/templar uses Rejuvenation Totem). Fights against targets that hit big usually require running around a lot anyway and it's not hard to avoid damage long enough to regen ES so you can move back in at full strength for a few more blows. 6 seconds is not that long.

"

Astasia wrote:

"

redrach wrote:

...

Ya I was specifically thinking of chaos damage when I said "almost" before, it's certainly a large drawback for any ES build. Regenerating it mid-battle is sort of moot since it doesn't matter what is being regenerated/healed at that point, the ES can take the brunt of (or at least some of) the alpha while you kill a few enemies then you can survive the rest of the fight through health regeneration if you so choose (my witch/templar uses Rejuvenation Totem). Fights against targets that hit big usually require running around a lot anyway and it's not hard to avoid damage long enough to regen ES so you can move back in at full strength for a few more blows. 6 seconds is not that long.

But if ES is just there to take the brunt of alpha when you're getting into melee range before you start attacking and leeching, why would you prefer having ES? Wouldn't more armor + health just be better? After the alpha strike, you have no more ES, so your total effective health pool is reduced and won't go back up until after the fight. You could just skill/gear more for health/armor and you'd just absorb the alpha with your larger health pool and you could even leech it back during the fight.

More health/armor > Less health/armor + ES for a melee character. Which makes me sad for Armor/ES gear.

As others pointed out: EB build

And as others have pointed out as well - if you want to get the most of your int hybrid gear might be interesting (a lot of templar builds go into the which tree for something and thuus have a decent amount of int available eitherway)

And there is the point of the color of sockets - getting any combination including many blue sockets (on 5 or 6L) is MUCH easier on a hyrid chest piece (during closed beta i wanted 2 red, 1 blue and 2 green (and i couldn't equip the str/dex hybrid) which was still easier to get on the hybrid (still took around a lot of chromatics))

If you are afraid that the physical damage reduction won't be enough you could still equip one or two pure str items e.g. shield users can have the pure str shield in their hand and thanks to some juici + def from shield nodes you can actually get really good amount of armor only from that one piece, so add some goo hybrid armor elewhere and you end up close to the armor of e.g. a 2 handed weapon user while also having ES (which is good against mages for example - armor doesn't help you there at all...) and a block chance ;)

And again for shield users you have the Aegis aurora which replenish ES by 4% of your armor when you block (so it is specifically designed for hybrid users)

wild guess: because of stats needed. due to passive skill build and\or gems used you may need equal amount of str and int (to level your gems) so you wont have enough str to put pure armor gear, while you have enough str+int to put on highend es\armor gear.