Ondar's Guile nerf

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HikaruYami wrote:

Yeah, I figured out that I misunderstood you. See my last edit to my previous response.

And please note _how much harder_ it is after this nerf to survive reflect maps without Acuity :/ That is my primary concern. It feels impossible now. I have a lowly 10k tooltip GMP tornado shot with high leech quantity but standard leech "rate" that can barely survive reliably as it is, with Queen of the Forest and Rat's Nest as examples of my evasion investment. That is what this topic is about.

That really isn't an investment at all though. Rat's nest is primarily an offensive item in a defensive gear slot, and QotF is kind of just a gimmicky rare evasion chest. You weren't really sacrificing anything to begin with. That high damage (tooltip is obviously nonsense in this case) now comes at a cost just like it does for almost all other build types (in the form of instant leech, having low damage, or outright avoiding reflect maps). Use grace, invest in evasion nodes that you may not have otherwise, or keep your damage under control etc.

Reflect has been too easy to ignore for far too long, times are-a-changing.

Another suggestion is to build puncture as a secondary offensive skill. Hit enemy, make them bleed, then lead them around. Bleed DoT isn't reflected, so it's a tedious yet safer approach to reflect rares.

I took this node on all my melee builds, gave you total control of the battle field because you didnt have to take out any dangerous projectile mobs first, you could happily decide the necro needed to go first while standing in a hail of gmp titty bitches, birdmen etc taking absolutely no damage from them, facetank piety ice form in shrine, cant hit you... Just such a nice node when youre a melee and all you care about is things in melee range, which is where you want mobs to be, if theyre outside melee range and they can hit you but you cant hit them, thats a problem, but not with ondars.


It was a harsh nerf, for sure, the majority of my characters are taking a big hit with this but lets be fair, it was op as fuck, just absolutely ridiculous node, entropically evade 19 out of 20 projectiles. It was broken, no 2 ways about it, and not only was it imo one of the strongest melee defense nodes on the tree, you roll ranged attacker... bam, also one of the strongest ranged attack nodes on the tree because of reflect. Every armour char I have i get 8-10k evasion on top and do ondars, my evasion coil builds, of course, ondars, even my trapper has ondars. When youre taking the same defensive node on almost every build you make, trying to find a way to crowbar it in to literally everything and only not taking it when you cant... much needed nerf.


Over nerfed? Its pretty harsh ya, but Im not complaining tbh, things change and I feel like this thing changed for the right reasons, Im happy with it.

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HikaruYami wrote:

Evasion was never really meant for Melee. I'm sorry if you think GGG is killing build diversity with this. I don't think they are killing build diversity, I just think they're nerfing archers along an axis that they shouldn't be nerfed. Crit builds with acuities will be unchanged, and all other archer builds without vaal pact will be forced to reduce their DPS. That is basically the extent of this change.

I dont think that right tbh, Ranger is a heavily physical melee class, her start is littered with shield defense, dual wield melee nodes, 1H melee nodes etc. Blade Of Cunning, on the Marauder side of the duelist start..

22% inc phys damage with swords
8% inc attack speed with swords
20% increased evasion

splitting Strikes below it, axe damage + evasion on the wheel, even all the way over in the Marauder section between Marauder and Templar, By The Blade..

24% phys with axes and swords
10% accuracy
16% evasion rating

Melee nodes are littered with evasion, even melee nodes deep within the strength part of the tree on the way to the int side have evasion on them. I think they absolutely intend evasion to be used with melee, hybrid evasion and armour to be a thing. all these rules like just go evasion or armour, iron reflex op, evasion is for ranged and armour for melee etc, I think thats all just bullshit the community has made up that they do not intend, do not design and balance around in any shape or form.

Evasion and esp Evasion with Ondars is one of the most vital defenses in the game for a melee char imo. The entropy cuts out small burst of high damage hits like being clubbed by 2 big powerful crits gigantic bonestalkers at once, being double slammed by a mob like kole, it gives you those windows to quick flask where a pure armour IR char just gets absolutely obliterated before they can even react. Its better than attack block which is pure rng, better than dodge, its an awesome melee defense.


honestly I think pure armour is better for a ranged char like bows than a melee if it wasnt for the ondars reflect safety issue, because as a bow char you can manually evade almost everything by kiting, dodging, outplaying the mobs, melee has to close gaps by moving directly forwards through the line of fire and facetank at point blank. A bow char can circle around a pack at a distance and still dps it. Reflect issues aside I think evasion is of way more use to a melee than a ranged char.

It's quite alright. Might not be its final form but it definitely requires a nerf.

At the moment Ondar's is like free reflect immunity for ranged attackers. I can do double reflect maps thanks to Ondar's, how is that not OP.

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HikaruYami wrote:

The only reason people can survive reflect without Vaal Pact or Acuity is because of a combination of Ondar's and the Acrobatics cluster.

Personally, I use Arctic Armor (My dmg is about 50/50 fire and phys) and Poacher's Mark linked to CWDT. My main attack skill is barrage, and my group clear is Multishot+Chain, so I hit very frequently for relatively little damage per hit, making this setup entirely adequate. In fact, I recently switched to Iron Reflexes over Ondar's for this very reason. The Arctic Armor is high enough level that it empties my mana pool as soon as I stop attacking (leach + the mana on hit from Poacher's) but that's fine, I only need the armor for reflecting mobs anyway.

Just saying, you seem to be mischaracterizing the number of options you have at your disposal.

GGG also stated that there are going to be many more sources of %increased leech rate in 2.0. You said that you have a large amount of leech, maybe these changes will allow u to get fast enough leech to still survive reflect without Vaal pact/acuity. Guess we'll see.

Also, if all you're really worried about is reflect maps, you can just reroll them... I've sustained 77+ maps in 1mhc (rank 19 living char) without ever doing a reflect map, or even alching a map for that matter.

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HikaruYami wrote:

Edit: Sorry, maybe I was unclear. As a ranged build, I have very little problem manually avoiding damage from every direction. So the only thing I am actually concerned about with this ondar's guile nerf is the implication it has on Reflect mobs. I could not give two shits about the effect it has on evading actual enemy projectiles. It feels to me like GGG's only goal here was to make it impossible for non-acuity/vaal pact builds to survive reflect maps anymore

so basically, what it all comes down to is 'wah wah, i'm entitled to ignore reflect passively'.



If you want to deal with reflect, try actually adapting to it, like everyone else. Use Chaos damage. Use elemental attacks vs physical reflect and physical against elemental. Bring totems or traps to work around it, or flasks to mitigate the damage. Attack single targets at a time (especially when it comes to taking down reflect aura rares). There's plenty of active options to deal with reflect, it's been bullcrap for too long that ranged evasion characters have just been allowed to virtually ignore it with a single completely effortless passive.

If you've ever needed Ondar's or VP/Acuity to deal with reflect on any build in existence, you clearly don't put enough thought into adaptation or situational awareness.

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Nerdicide wrote:

Also, if all you're really worried about is reflect maps, you can just reroll them... I've sustained 77+ maps in 1mhc (rank 19 living char) without ever doing a reflect map, or even alching a map for that matter.

yep, or just limit your damage, like we used to do before the game became a bit of a joke with acuities and flask use with vaal pact etc giving people the impression stacking 100,000s of damage per sec is always a good idea.


I have a dagger crit melee ranger, 460pdps platinum kriss, I can run double reflect maps and attack reflect aura packs inside them with this weapon. How? Im a physical crit character, I dont have a melee phys gem socketed and I dont have a crit multiplier gem socketed. I use doublestrike splash because its safer on reflect than reave. I got 75k dps... i could have 150k Reave if I went ham but then Id die to reflect.

Its there for a reason, if you cant take reflect, take out that stupid crit multi gem, use added fire, use crit strikes, use LoH, I know its not the epeen dps but this game used to be about making smart choices not just chasing paper numbers and always pushing dps clear speeds. Im glad theyre trying to get back to that to some extent, just a shame they cant remove acuity from the game and actually bring everyone back down to a balanced, thinking player level where speccing vaal pact actually had serious consequences and inherent risks and players didnt want or expect to scale damage to 10x as much as they need to faceroll the game.