Power, Frenzy, and Endurance Charges

Hello, exiles!
I've recently been reading up on what people have to say about this game, and a lot of the combat-related feedback has to do with tanking as a melee character as well as dealing enough damage with physical attacks.

My suggestion would be to change the way the three charges work: rebalancing Endurance, buffing Frenzy and nerfing Power.
Why the buff/nerf? When comparing Charges to passive nodes, I found that frenzy's 5% boost is about 60% stronger than the average 3% boost that the small ais passive node gives. Compare that to PC's 50% boost, which is 233% stronger than the average 15% boost that the small crit passive gives.




Proposed Endurance Charge change:
The intention of this change is to make Endurance Charges stronger early game and weaker late game. Instead of a flat additive +5% damage reduction, I propose changing it to a 7% damage reduction with diminishing returns and a default cap of 4 charges instead of 3. This would make it so that those heavy armor-piercing critical hits aren't as impossible to deal with, while at the same time preventing a godly tank lategame.

The math would be real damage taken= original damage taken * .93^(endurance charges)
With 25% damage reduction before EC:
3 charges will cause incoming damage to be reduced from 75% to 60%.
7 charges will cause incoming damage to be reduced from 75% to 40%.

With new EC:
4 charges will cause incoming damage to be reduced from 75% to 56.1%
8 charges will cause incoming damage to be reduced from 75% to 42%.


Proposed Frenzy Charge change:
The intention of this change is to make physical attacks more powerful, with the bonus falling off if stacked. Instead of 5% attack speed per charge, Frenzy Charges give 4% attack speed and 1% movement speed for each charge. Default cap of 4 charges instead of 3.

Old frenzy charge at 3 and 7 charges: 15% increased attack speed - > 35% IAS
New frenzy charge at 4 and 8 charges: 16% IAS, 4% ms - > 32% IAS, 8% ms


Proposed Power Charge change:
As long as there's going to be a new way to get Power Charges soon, I think it's safe to say that Power Charges could be +30% critical chance instead of +50% critical chance. Default cap of 4 charges instead of 3.



Your thoughts?

Why nerf power charge ? They are already the most difficult to gain with only 2 ways to gain them, one unique ta reduce your maximum mana by half and one skill specific to wand build and useless for anything else...and we still have to wait for this new skill (I hope spell) :x

I agree the charges probably need rebalancing, but I don't agree with your analysis. Frenzy Charges are generally regarded being the weakest, power charges the hardest to utilize, and endurance charges 'must-have' for melee.

What builds does this affect?
Why do these builds need to be nerfed/buffed?

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Etna wrote:

What builds does this affect?
Why do these builds need to be nerfed/buffed?

I think trying to conform the charges to passive skills is a poor notion. But,

Endurance Charges need to be nerfed in the long run, because a flat 5% physical reduction... with 9 endurance charges...? It's pretty ridiculous. Something that should probably change once melee are fixed. And by change, I mean 5%->4%.

Frenzy Charges need to be altered in the long run, because they bias weapons that are already fast. I don't know how they should change. But maybe it's fine if they stay the same. But I'd prefer if they would change. I'd also like to see casters getting an eaasier way to generate frenzy charges, but I dunno if that's in line with GGG's design.

Power Charges cannot be fully evaluated because of ther difficulty of use... but they are the largest source of crit in the game. Critical strike chance needs reworking, and when it finally is balanced, power charges will probably need some overhaul.

I honestly think endurance charges should now have chaos resist due to the penalties. Even 3% would be very useful.

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Zrahurgh wrote:

I honestly think endurance charges should now have chaos resist due to the penalties. Even 3% would be very useful.

Chaos Resistance is meant to be non-trivial and STR-oriented classes already get enough life regen to make chaos resistance very poweful on them already...

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anubite wrote:

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Etna wrote:

What builds does this affect?
Why do these builds need to be nerfed/buffed?

I think trying to conform the charges to passive skills is a poor notion. But,

Endurance Charges need to be nerfed in the long run, because a flat 5% physical reduction... with 9 endurance charges...? It's pretty ridiculous. Something that should probably change once melee are fixed. And by change, I mean 5%->4%.

Frenzy Charges need to be altered in the long run, because they bias weapons that are already fast. I don't know how they should change. But maybe it's fine if they stay the same. But I'd prefer if they would change. I'd also like to see casters getting an eaasier way to generate frenzy charges, but I dunno if that's in line with GGG's design.

Power Charges cannot be fully evaluated because of ther difficulty of use... but they are the largest source of crit in the game. Critical strike chance needs reworking, and when it finally is balanced, power charges will probably need some overhaul.

Just curious how you would go about getting 9 endurance charges? I though 3 baseline, 3 from passives, 1 from quest in merciless - only comes out to 7. Sure, 35% damage reduction is huge but I don't think they need to be nerfed.

The only reason endurance charges are OP is because Armor is so underpowered at high damage levels. Compared to the passive gains in survivability from armor they are amazing.

But I don't think they should be balanced around characters who go way out of their way to maximize the number of charges they get. If they were reduced to 4% per charge they would then be much less useful for non-armor tank characters.

Also, nerfing or changing power charges without making them easier to gain would be really counterproductive. Right now many players don't like relying on charges because:

1) Endurance Charges are hard to maintain when you need them. For example, on the Brutus fight. You have no adds to kill, and there's only ever 1 target. Both factors eliminate Enduring cry and warlords mark as an option for gaining charges, yet the way the game works bosses with big single swing damage like brutus are the ones you need charges most against.

2) Frenzy Charges are basically too weak to begin with. They are the easiest to maintain because of frenzy and blood rage, but 5% attack speed and cast speed is pretty lame compared to 5% damage reduction and 5% elemental resistanes.

3) Power charges are basically limited to niche wand builds. 50% critical strike chance per charge can be good, but their limitation to wand builds makes them not very desireable.

I like the idea of making charges slightly less effective per charge, but more max charges, but I think it's too early to be nerfing them as they haven't really been the cornerstone of many builds yet.

Also I don't think you should consider a 'baseline' of 25% reduction when nerfing endurance charges. How much damage you reduce from armor depends in large part on how much damage you are taking in a single hit. Against many small hits, endurance charges on a high armor character can make you virtually invincible, but against big hits getting enough armor to reduce damage by 25% is not trivial. You need 4x the damage taken in armor to reduce a hit by 25%. So to reduce a 2000 damage hit by 25% you need 8000 armor. For 3000 damage it's 12000 armor, etc. Balancing charges around armor levels like that can severely limit builds, particularly dual wield and 2h builds.

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anubite wrote:

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Zrahurgh wrote:

I honestly think endurance charges should now have chaos resist due to the penalties. Even 3% would be very useful.

Chaos Resistance is meant to be non-trivial and STR-oriented classes already get enough life regen to make chaos resistance very poweful on them already...

I would simply die against chaos with that penalty. Specially poison archers. I remember in closed beta, got hit by 2 poison archers, and I literally freaked out, because poof goes 3k hp. I don't even want to know what it's like now.

I don't see the point of this slight changes. Generating Endurance & Power charges are not as easy as generating a Frenzy charge, so even if the full charge result is better (and what you propose is the opposite), you are effectively nerfing these charges.

Power definitely does not need a nerf. It actually needs a way to generate OR maintain it better. Maybe a skill that refreshes the duration, but does not add another charge.

Endurance proposal, it seems ok. But unnecessary. Some sort of passive, allowing you to generate frenzy charges as you block might be welcome (is there anything like this already?)

Frenzy on the other hand, definitely needs something more. I agree that it requires movement speed, but maybe not 1, 1.5% per level. And the node that grants evasion per frenzy charge needs a slight improvement over it I think.