Vigilant Strike

I ran some tests with this skill. Frankly it's pretty useless.

Positives:

Hits harder than Heavy Strike
No Knockback
Applies fortify

Negatives:
4 second Cooldown
Another way to expend endurance charges.
Single Target

Ways to fix it.

Leave the damage alone
Get rid of the cooldown
Get rid of the Fortify Buff on hit.
Give it a % chance to generate an Endurance charge on hit.
Kill the increased fortify duration
Kill the cannot be evaded
Quality Provides additional .25% chance to generate Endurance Charge On hit
10% slower attack speed (to compensate for the cooldown removal)

Rework
165% increased melee damage at lvl1
10% slower attack speed
10% chance to generate an Endurance Charge on Hit
Q20 +5% chance to generate Endurance Charge on Hit


You're still packaging defense + offense but you're making something which while not for everyone could be very useful for specific builds. With the plethora of skill choices
So if I run Vigilant Strike with 10 Endurance charges and take say damage while fortified. After armor is applied, would my Endurance Charges apply damage reduction (40%) first or would Fortify (20%), OR are they combined (60%)
Neither.

Endurance Charges are additive with Armour, as they both grant Physical Damage Reduction. The Chaos Golem and the Soul of Steel Passive also add up to this multiplier. It caps at 90%.
Fortify grants Reduced Damage Taken. This means it is additive with other Increased/Reduced Damage Taken modifiers, such as Shock or Abyssus. This multiplier occurs after Armour/ECharges.
Arctic Armour grants Less Damage Taken, which is another separate multiplier.
Last edited by Vipermagi on Jul 26, 2015, 7:54:47 PM
So, trying to still figure out if the fortify buff is worth using.

I have 90% physical reduction and I wear Abyssus. The 40% of abyssus is taken after my armor correct? So if I get hit for 1k by a physical attack then I would only take 100 damage. Abyssus would then add an additional 40 damage? If I used fortify would it negate 20% of abyssus and only add 20? If that is the case doesn't this gem kind of blow?
Last edited by Oldswole on Aug 3, 2015, 3:02:27 PM
Abyssus grants 40-50% Increased Damage Taken, Fort grants 20% Reduced. These are additive modifiers, so with both active you're looking at 20-30% Increased Phys Damage Taken, depending on Abyssus' roll. It can halve the penalty on Abyssus single-handedly.
I'm new to the game so I'm not exactly sure what additive means. I'm sure most of you guys know this so probably a dumb question but if you could explain that would be awesome.
There's two types of multipliers:
Additive, namely Increased and Reduced
Multiplicatively, namely More and Less

When applying multipliers to a given value, all Increased and Reduced type modifiers are summed up and applied as one single modifier. Each More and Less type modifier is applied as an entirely separate multiplier.

Let's say your Sword deals 100 Physical Damage.
You have 20% Increased Melee Damage, 20% Increased Physical Damage, and 20% Increased Damage with Swords.
To calculate your final Damage, you'd do the following:
100 * (1 + (20/100) + (20/100) + (20/100)) = 100 * 1.6 = 160 Physical Damage per Hit

Equip Le Heup, and you gain another 20% Increased Damage:
100 * (1 + (20/100) + (20/100) + (20/100) + (20/100)) = 100 * 1.8 = 180 Damage

If Le Heup granted More Damage instead, it would work out as follows:
100 * (1 + (20/100) + (20/100) + (20/100)) * (1 + (20/100)) = 100 * 1.6 * 1.2 = 192 Damage


----
In your example, you take 1000 Physical Damage, and have:
90% DR from Armour and Endurance Charges
50% Increased Physical Damage Taken from Abyssus
20% Reduced Damage Taken from Fortify

Armour/EC mitigate Damage before Damage Taken modifiers are calculated:
1000 * 0.1 = 100 Physical Damage Taken

Without Fort, you have 50% Increased Damage Taken:
100 * (1 + (50/100)) = 100 * 1.5 = 150 Physical Damage Taken

With Fort, you have 50-20 = 30% Increased Damage Taken:
100 * (1 + (50/100) + (-20/100)) = 100 * 1.3 = 130 Physical Damage Taken


Overall, Fortify ends up mitigating 13% of incoming Damage - not bad, especially because you can get Fortify from any Attack with the Fortify Support. Pretty useful when linked to a movement Skill for example.
Last edited by Vipermagi on Aug 4, 2015, 8:34:01 PM
Hello there, I've been testing this skill in a tailor-made build lately. I've brought my character from 60-ish to 82 playing solo in standard. This skill really shines against pack of thrash-mob, in a 6-link Marohi supported by Endurance on stun - Melee Phys Dmg - Multistrike - Melee Splash - Blood Magic. The problem comes with every boss that doesn't spawn adds. The use of enduring cry grants only one charge in this situation, so after your next attack you'll have both vigilant strike and enduring cry in cooling down phase. This is a major drawback. I've tried to use Vaal Lightning Strike as boss killer / backup but I wasn't happy with the outcome. It would be cool to invest into crit chance / crit multiplier in the tree but the best nodes are far away from the endurance charges nodes which are, with this skill, mandatory IMO. Another huge disadvantage is that you can't use immortal call, a big deal for a two-handed melee.

Automatic default attack during cooldown is the first of the changes I would implement.
Maybe a "grants endurance charge on crit" would be nice too, if not OP.

In its current state I wouldn't recommend this skill to anybody.

About possible interactions with unique items

Doedre's Elixir:very good against bosses if you can stack huge amount of regen and chaos res (good luck);
Kingsguard: very nice regen that doesn't solve the main issues of the skill;
Kaom's Sign: maybe the legacy version would be worth trying, but the new one I don't think so;
Surgebinders: tested, any rare gloves with +life +attack speed +resistance are better;
The Bringer of Rain: maybe with a staff and max block, but I doubt.


edit: I've forgotten to mention that different Vigilant Strike gems share their cooldown (another major drawback)
Last edited by ammenz on Oct 1, 2015, 5:48:17 AM
Recently I've been playing Vigilat Strike character and it's pretty fun.

In the begining I linked VS with ECoMS-Melee Splash. This way I could use VS as primary skill only exception were bosses which cannot be stunned due to high amount of HP (Enduring Cry help there).

Later in act IV normal I switched to Melee Splash-Multistrike-Melee Phys Damage. As a source of charges I ended up with Warlord's Mark-Blasphemy, Leap Slam-Faster Attacks-Stun-ECoMS, Vengeance-Stun-ECoMK-Melee Phys Damage and Enduring Cry. When clearing packs I have no problem to sustain EC up. Usual ballance is 3-6(Max) EC up. Bosses and tougher rares are sometimes problem but usually I kill them before I spend all of my charges. Multistrike helped a lot in this regard. Even act bosses like Darreso or Malachai are not so bad. I simply charge up while evading boss attacks (Leap Slam, Enduring Cry) and then spend EC in the right moment. Probably not ideal for "clear speed" religion.

My future goals:
-> since I have limited use of primary skill I want to make character with insane burst damage which means use Abyssus (faster killing means more EC up)
-> VS always hit which works for crit so I decided to choose Exquisite Blade as a weapon and spend points into Disemboweling and Fatal Blade clusters
-> To cover Abyssus drawback I need to build strong defences. Lightning Coil + prema fortify should cover most of damage penalty. Next Soul of Steel, AA, decent armour, Granite Flasks.
-> most of damage will be physical so I should reach some insane life leech with Warlord's Mark, Blood Rage and Hematophagy cluster

So far character works fine. I don't like melee splash because of how it looks and works but this is another story. The main reason why I decided to make this character was to try new treshold jewel and support party in some new way. And this is where comes my huge disapointment! I didn't expected crazy screen-wide radius but this radius is just ridiculous. I know fortify is powerful buff and ability to give it to other players is huge but with such a small radius it really is not worth it. I suggest at least double the radius.

Edit: I came to the conclusion that VS build is not for party play anyway. Can't see any use for The Vigil in its currrent state. Because who will use 2 treshold jewels to improve utility skill in a way that can be hardly performed due to incredible small radius?
Last edited by Langhun on Jan 24, 2016, 4:11:28 PM
Like the previous post, I tried Vigilant Strike in combination with its threshold jewel The Vigil. This feedback is moslty in regards to the Vigil jewel;


When I first saw this jewel my initial thought was to use it to put fortify on Zombies. However after doing some testing I feel it's not worth using at all.

It's area of effect is ludicrously small, but worse yet, it's seemingly unaffected by any and all sources of increases to area of effect.

The Increased Area of Effect support gem does nothing. This is probably a similar issue as projectile supports doing nothing for Animate Weapon or Summon Skeletons even when they are supported by their respective threshold jewels. Which supports can affect a skill is probably not something easily malleable yet like so many other stats in this game. It was to be expected is what I'm getting at.

But that increases to the area of effects from the passive tree and items doesn't effect it either makes no sense to me. These stats effect EVERYTHING with an aoe produced by the player character and even ones produced by the player characters items (such as the consecrated ground from Zahndethus' Cassock). I really think this has to be a bug. It feels absolutely silly to have a character with over 100% increased area of effect and the Vigil still only affects allies in an area that feels smaller than the area of Rightious Fire.

Increased Skill Effect duration modifiers don't work either. Not on you nor your allies. Afaik GGG deliberately designed the duration of the fortify effect to not be effected by skill effect duration modifiers though so that probably ain't gonna change.

It's too bad. It could've probably worked well on a bloodlusted zombie summoner build if the aoe wasn't so restrictive.

P.S. Seeing a totem with fortify is pretty cool though.
My supporter items: Victario's Charity and The Forsaken

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info