Issues with CI and Suggestions for Improvement

First off, let me say for those who don't know me I have a fairly long history of playing CI characters (namely shadows). You can search for 'zSavage' in the shadow guides forums and find a couple of my currently outdated CI guides.

Second, a little precursor to my whole discussion:
CI is difficult to balance, as it's in a situation where too much leech makes it only die to oneshots, while too little makes it not playable at all. Currently, CI's advantages are a potentially larger HP pool and immunity to chaos damage, while its list of disadvantages (as you'll see) is rather long.






Conclusion:
CI is only currently viable for non-melee, reflect immune characters that can deal damage while moving to allow for ES recharge. This limits builds to summoners, totem users, and trappers/miners. This also holds true for other builds that use primarily ES to cover their life pool. To some extent I could see ranged attacking or casting builds being OK, as if they have enough damage they can kill dangerous monsters fast enough to avoid most hits. But they'll struggle a lot with bosses with AoE/degens, as they have little to no recovery mechanics. High regen builds are an option but still struggle with mitigation as well as needing to traverse large amounts of the tree to get the necessary regen.

Suggestions:
I have a few ideas that could potentially help CI. Some of them only apply to attacking builds, while others could help all CI builds (and potentially low-life and hybrid characters). Note: These are all modifications to currently existing keystones, or perhaps nodes that could be placed behind them.

1. CI node also grants 100-150% increased leech effectiveness. (This would apply to life and mana leech, or just life leech)
-> This would make CI able to leech better without affecting the prime culprit, low life builds.

2. Give the CI node OR Ghost Reaver node something like 2-4% of damage leeched as life.
-> This would also give CI additional leech. Buffing GR makes hybrid and low life builds more effective without something like the double leech effectiveness idea for CI.

3. Make Ghost Reaver also apply LGoH to ES instead of life.
-> This makes attacking ES builds able to use the LGoH gem, and makes all claw bases usable for CI.

4. Leave Bloodrage damage scaling as is, but change the damage type back to chaos.
-> This makes it harder for Low Life to use, and makes using it as a life based character take a little more thought (rather than the nearly free buff it is right now), while returning the original synergy it had with CI.

5. Add 1-2% of damage leeched as life to the Vaal Pact node.
-> This is the one I like the least, as it would have further reaching consequences for a lot of builds that already use VP, as it is used by life and ES based characters.

Personally, I would think the best case would be a combination of 1 (at 50-75%), 3, and 4. Another alternative is to release another skill that does something similar to what Bloodrage used to do, but I think that's not really in the scope of what should be done. Same with the idea to make a gem that makes skills cost ES instead of mana.

Looking forward to a response! (GGG, we know you've been real quiet about CI since the 2.0 release)

-Savage

In the current state of game I sort of support these changes.

But the game constantly changes :( it may be a drought for CI melee right (though it has always been very build bottle necked) now but in the new things may be introduced, other changes occur, etc and then suddenly these changes may become super overtuned. There may be some well functioning CI characters right now where these changes would completely make them over the top in some aspects.

I like CI but it's its clearly a hard to balance keystone, and nearly unheard for for leveling.

In this aspect I think best option is revert Blood Rage as it basically is have regen or go home which really does not encourage build diversity due to the amount of things CI melee needs or would like to have on the tree. Well, the ideas of CI melee in general are very demanding and expensive to be fair and often has only worked well with the more powerful mechanics/gear which typically worked with other builds too (examples, Exalton (invasion #1 shadow) and your own build)

Thanks for the good thoughts biyte!

and bump ;)

Casters have their concerns as well, much has been written about this topic but nothing has been done so far. Not even a hint of a comment from GGG.
Read below its a long list in one place by GjieGjie with tons of concerns.

"

zSavage wrote:

Second, a little precursor to my whole discussion:
CI is difficult to balance, as it's in a situation where too much leech makes it only die to oneshots, while too little makes it not playable at all. Currently, CI's advantages are a potentially larger HP pool and immunity to chaos damage, while its list of disadvantages (as you'll see) is rather long.

-Savage

On your note above, any chance you can elaborate on this, what is a good balance and what should one look out for? Do you by any chance know the sweet spot?

Sure; I can give an example of this.

In the 1.3 patch my dual claw shadow had about 6K ES, and about 60K pure physical DPS (not counting cold and other elements). He had something around 28% instant life leech by using mainhand Bloodseeker.

This equated to a little over 16K ES/s recovery via leech while in combat.
Basically, he could get chunked to 100 ES (which happened very rarely), and be back to full HP before the next hit could come (like against a boss). He could easily facetank both stages of Shrine Piety, for example.

This character was a devoted to getting a high leech value, and designed to do exactly this.

I think the sweet spot for CI would probably be if they had 2-3 times more leech than they do now (something like 8-10%+). A caster should be able to get to around 10% and a melee should be able to be able to get to 10-20% (depending on weapon choice), in order to get to what I think would be a good balance point. This is still less than 1.3 values, of course. I would really like it if leech for CI had the old effectiveness (5 x current), but that's probably too much.

From my own testing 4% w/ VP (on my crit arc character, 2% gem + 2% warlords) really doesn't feel like enough.

By comparison, in 1.3 he had 12-13% non instant life leech (from the same gems) and it was fine.

Also, I'm pretty sure implicit life leech from weapons (aka claws) doesn't stack anymore, so it would still be almost impossible to get to 10%, even with claws, in the current patch.

bump

I like these ideas.

Another thought I have is to add ES Regen to the ES nodes behind CI. Not Recharge Rate or Start or Recharge, but actual % ES Regenerated per second analogous to Life Regen. This way it is something unique to CI builds that can help cover for the lack of flasks, gives some starter regen if one chooses to go Zealot's Oath, or gives a bit of regen that bypasses the downside on Vaal Pact.

My initial thought is for 0.4% on each of the small nodes and 1.2% on Infused Shield, but that would probably wind up pretty OP since ES pools can get quite large. Maybe half that or something.

suggestion 1 is by far your most mellow and as such best suggestion in my opinion. Yes it's a buff, but it's not all that ludicrous of a buff considering that portion of the passive tree is rather devoid of that stat.

Suggestion 2 already touches the base with what i consider a ludicrous proposition though. 2 to 4% while arbitrary numbers i think? Are extremely high value's considering the new leech changes.

I would go with 1% leech, but global leech. I would also make it on a new node behind soul-reaver, so there is a passive point cost associated with it.

The aim would be to create some sustain in combat, not create a facetank paradigm for CI melee's again.

It seems apparent GGG is forcing CI into a "high pool -> attack and retreat" strategy(given the introduction of the regen recovery nodes and the decreased duration between damage vs regen ability)

suggestion 3 is out of the question for me personally. Both regen and lgoh are one of the few ways for a hybrid to directly replenish his life pool. Removing that option would push that sub-class into regen only, narrowing it's potential builds by a lot.

Suggestion 4 is a no-go for me. But my reasoning is simple, keep blood rage as is and provide CI and hybrid characters with a new buff directly aimed to help them out, rather then fuck with blood rage again.(blood rage is in a pretty okaish state, except for its heavy penalty on hybrid builds which i consider "out of line")


Suggestion 5, again a no go for the point you mentioned. It would inevitability impact other builds, which would not be desired. Vaal pact seems fine as is in it's current state and does not require any tampering.

Cheers and keep up the fight :), i do hope CI melee loses some of it's power in general compared to the old game state but still remains viable and enjoyable. Currently it seems like a neutered kitten, which is a bid to much of the bad stuff eh.

Peace,

-Boem-

edit : on second thought suggestion 1 should be lowered to roughly 40% to max 60% considering the amount available on the other portions of the tree and the passive skill point dedication required for that side, coupled with the high base pool of CI.

"

biyte wrote:

In the current state of game I sort of support these changes.

But the game constantly changes :( it may be a drought for CI melee right (though it has always been very build bottle necked) now but in the new things may be introduced, other changes occur, etc and then suddenly these changes may become super overtuned. There may be some well functioning CI characters right now where these changes would completely make them over the top in some aspects.

I like CI but it's its clearly a hard to balance keystone, and nearly unheard for for leveling.

The overtuning would probably be noticed if significant changes went through again, but the single knobs themselves might be simple enough to dial them back once those changes come in and things are fun and playable again.

Given the limitations and cons provided in the OP, it seems unlikely (but maybe possible) there are some builds out there that would start absolutely wrecking if any of these changes went through. I suppose the issue with knowing about that is they won't be well known until someone writes a thorough guide for them, and the chance of a guide being made is roughly proportional to both how strong the build itself is and how easy it is to build.

Some things are not meant to be leveled with. Sure, RF can be used at 16 but there's no way anyone who knows the game would do that. Getting stable life with it running requires very specific gear and passive choices which aren't available at that level.

Likewise, getting the ES nodes and gear required to make CI worth it compared to having life means significant investment.

"

Boem wrote:

suggestion 1 is by far your most mellow and as such best suggestion in my opinion. Yes it's a buff, but it's not all that ludicrous of a buff considering that portion of the passive tree is rather devoid of that stat. (40-60% instead, perhaps?)

Suggestion 2 already touches the base with what i consider a ludicrous proposition though. 2 to 4% while arbitrary numbers i think? Are extremely high value's considering the new leech changes.

I would go with 1% leech, but global leech. I would also make it on a new node behind soul-reaver, so there is a passive point cost associated with it.

The aim would be to create some sustain in combat, not create a facetank paradigm for CI melee's again.

It seems apparent GGG is forcing CI into a "high pool -> attack and retreat" strategy(given the introduction of the regen recovery nodes and the decreased duration between damage vs regen ability)

suggestion 3 is out of the question for me personally. Both regen and lgoh are one of the few ways for a hybrid to directly replenish his life pool. Removing that option would push that sub-class into regen only, narrowing it's potential builds by a lot.

Suggestion 4 is a no-go for me. But my reasoning is simple, keep blood rage as is and provide CI and hybrid characters with a new buff directly aimed to help them out, rather then fuck with blood rage again.(blood rage is in a pretty okaish state, except for its heavy penalty on hybrid builds which i consider "out of line")

Suggestion 5, again a no go for the point you mentioned. It would inevitability impact other builds, which would not be desired. Vaal pact seems fine as is in it's current state and does not require any tampering.

Cheers and keep up the fight :), i do hope CI melee loses some of it's power in general compared to the old game state but still remains viable and enjoyable. Currently it seems like a neutered kitten, which is a bid to much of the bad stuff eh.

Peace,

-Boem-

Yeah, increasing CI's leech effectiveness I also think is the best idea. I think it would be good for a CI caster to get to 8%+ LL, while using the gem + warlords, and a melee should be able to get to around 10% without using the gem.

I think small buff in the 40-60% range wouldn't do enough to make a difference right now, if the change was on its own, but of course I'd still test it.

I like the idea of placing a global 1% (or maybe 2%) leech node behind ghost reaver. That's a version of the change I considered.

I also disliked punishing hybrid builds by moving LGoH's function to ES. Maybe a node behind Ghost Reaver could do that as well.

I really do miss Bloodrage though. That 'little' buff pushed the leech to a usuable level and enabled all kinds of cool things in the past (RIP, Flickerstrikers). Still, flicker IS playable with a few quirky uniques, or using frenzy as a setup skill. But back on top, I'd really like to be able to use this skill, or something like it, with my ES melee builds at least.

Thanks for all the thoughts so far guys! I think we're all looking for similar things here.

Cheers

-Savage