imo Mana, Energy Shield and Leech are not good enough

I could show you examples of builds, but Ive not been doing that because I dont think we are on the same page at all. I think you would think these are the builds I am talking about and then you would set about trying to solve this one builds mana sustain rather than understanding this isnt about any 1 build. I dont have builds to show you with mana problems, because I dont have any. I could show you a mana leech build and what it would take to sustain mana on regen...






now, about this build. Its a mana leech caster, life/armour/energy shield hybrid crit arc. The gear is often stupidly expensive and it wouldnt really function if the gear was anything short of really good. Compared to an equally geared melee or bow character its more squishy and has less damage, would e harder to gear, would require a higher level of gear to start to become defensively viable for mid to high maps. Far more picky about map mods than the attackers.

The stats we are getting with the setup, 5k life, 4,200 energy sheild, 4,700 armour, 4 endurance charges, 50% all res over cap in merciless, positive 10% chaos resist, life regen still applies to life, ghost reaver with instant life and mana leech from acuity gloves and a warlords mark curse on hit herald of thunder setup + manual warlords curse. 40k dps crit arc, 7 power charges 0 frenzy charges.

You can faceroll maps with this sort of build, no doubt, but you are really relying on that instant leech. In really hard rolled higher maps blue mobs can knock off your entire 4k shield with a single hit, killing a flame dog can evaporate your es on the burning ground in seconds. You would have to play so carefully, timidly if you didnt have that instant leech. I wouldnt play it, Im sure it would work but just way too fragile. An armour+evasion hybrid melee could virtually afk content that could kill this build very quickly if its not leeching.



so what did I invest in mana? There are 12 mana nodes of some description taken, Im running a lvl15 clarity and I have flat mana and mana regen on both rings. This is to make mana leech work, not regen. My 6th gem is power charge on crit which is a 110% multiplier, fc is 120%, empower is 125%, this is not an expensive supports build at all. My arc cost is 89 per cast and I have 4.61 casts per sec, so I pay that a little over twice per second with spell echo being a link. I have 108 mana per second, you would need about 100 more I think to sustain this on regen.

So if I didnt go leech, if I went regen lets look at what Id have to do. The mana regen nodes in the witch start are really nice, 8% mana + 10% regen, its a little under the efficiency of taking a small mana node and then a larger mana notable so a good indicator of what we would get for points spent. If I take one I get about 7 more mana per sec. We need 100, we have 12 mana nodes of various sorts already. Lets call it 8 per node as its a little under notable efficiency, so we need another 12 mana nodes... well theres 3 in the witch start, decree in templar, siphon in shadow, thats 7, could spend 2 nodes to get to dreamer, thats now 9 of the 12 we need and we have spent 11 points taking our mana investment to 23 points and still failing to sustain our mana cost. What next? Take mind drinker? It still wont be enough,. maybe path to duelist and get mana flows?


This isnt even a cast speed heavy build. No speed on rings, non on amulet, Im not dual wielding 22% cast speed sceptres I have 1 wand with 16%, I picked the spell damage instead of cast speed in the witch start. Mana cost per second for this build is nowhere near what some builds would demand. I didnt pick leech because it was easier than regen sustain, I picked it because it was POSSIBLE, right? This resulting character is already outclassed by similar budget builds right across the spectrum in defense and damage, it doesnt have 11 more points to spend on mana, at that point you dont even have a character worth playing for that sort of budget, and 11 is still not enough to sustain, the mana nodes are just not there even if I wanted to invest in them. It wasnt a choice between leech and regen, regen was not an option even if I was willing to completely invalidate my damage or defenses to invest in it because the nodes dont even exist, are you with me? Or is your answer to all this still "I can sustain mana fine on the 5 link builds I play this guy must be a noob, go get flat mana on your gear noob and learn to invest in mana, its not free like when you used to get eb you actually have to take the mana nodes omg" patronizing nonsense?



I think what I invested to sustain my skills on that build is fine. I think elreon jewellery is ok actually, I had mixed feelings but from an investment point of view its not 'free'. These are the rings/amulet I use on a ci attack build, these sustain my mana




you think I would swap these for elreon jewellery? People have to regal something good on the base and then pay 2 exalts to multimod a ring that would be verging on vendor trash if it wasnt for the -8 skill cost, and they end up sustaining their skills the same way all melee, bow, wand etc characters do. Thats a significant investment imo, same with blood magic gem. An entire gem slot? thats extreme, you would very rarely see me ever using a bm gem or elreon jewellery, maybe in a new league on some shoe string budget struggle, maybe self found in hardcore, maybe if I enjoyed incinerate.





Im not saying make mana into some infinite resource for all in a completely over the top, pointless fashion. What I am saying in this thread is look at hybrid builds like the one above, thats what spell casters should look like, they should be ci, low life, hybrid, eb mom, some kind of es based thing and that should work for budget builds through to high end builds. They need to be fun, interesting, and worth playing. People who dont have gear like this, people in leagues etc are just ending up using coils and bm gems because the total investment for a lot of these sort of builds is just too high before they even become viable, never mind comparable to what summoners, cast on crits, melees, archers, wanders etc are doing. If you let a build like this have budget gear, only have 2k es but still be able to have viable leech on that es as its based off their 5k hp and if you had mana at a point where they could spend another 5 points on top of the existing 12 and actually come close to sustaining their skills then energy shield self casting spell builds would be more appealing and not quite so far detached from everything else when it comes to all round viability across the budget spectrum.

Im not saying go mad. I would increase the amount of mana you get from int, up the amount of mana on the hybrid life/mana nodes in the witch start, keep the es the same on the arcane focus nodes but add mana to those too, make cruel preperation and deep thoughts take 2 fill nodes to reach from either side and then have deep thoughts be 30% mana 30% regen. Add some more regen to a few nodes around there the way mental rapidity got a bit. Just to help anchor casters and mana in the int part of the tree. The game is balanced around what we are playing right now. A lot of people think the game is too hard right now, I disagree, I think its mostly fine, but what is not a good idea is lets nerf every other style of build in the entire game down to the level of resource cost and defensive capability open to energy shield mana regen based characters. Thats not going to happen, its absurd. This is a game, it should be fun, it should be challenging yes, theres no point nerfing 50 different things and making everyone hate the game when you can just buff 1 and if you need to up the mobs damage a bit more then so be it. I dont think you do, I think the damage being done to us is pretty heavy duty, the tools are there to handle it for most builds, the int area needs a little love somewhere though because its falling behind. So you have to look at what you can do to bring them more on par with the massive range of other build types that we are all playing right now and are working. Mana is an int aligned function and it seems to me the only characters who are struggling with mana for the longest time are int based casters using the int based energy shield defense mechanic in a lot of its forms like hybrid, ci and low life. There was a time when you could add wanders to that, another int based theme where mana just fell short of being good enough. Just drop the whole reactionary way you are taking what Im saying and actually think about it from a view point that is not constantly trying to balance through nerfing. I feel like people are in knee jerk, dismissive autopilot mode just rolling out their stock arguments against a stereotypical "make game ez plz" inexperienced gamer who needs schooled. I dont think youre seeing the bigger picture and understanding the interactions and equivalences involved in what Im pointing out.

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grepman wrote:

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Ashen_Shugar_IV wrote:

Compare the prices of 5L's vs 6L's and tell me again a single gem link is laughable.

its laughable compared to 10 or so nodes on the tree.

no its not, and if 10 or so nodes on the tree wont even meet the demand, if 20 wont, if its actually impossible then its not a choice between x nodes and an alternative, you either use the alternative or you dont have a build basically.

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grepman wrote:

that 20% damage isnt making or breaking your build. all it makes is have you clear a bit faster.

well if the build already has 50% of the damage you can get with the alternatives, and its more squishy, and it can do less map mods, and now you take away another 20% then maybe theres no reason to actually bother playing those builds any more? At some point you have to stop having such a reductive take on things and look at what is healthy and balanced for the wider game, rather than have this myopic perspective of this one individual build that can be somehow nerfed to a level you personally find appropriate. You have to look at what that build costs, how it performs across a budget spectrum and how it performs compared to the alternatives, otherwise people just wont play areas of builds that dont perform regardless of how satisfied you are with what it takes to make them work 1 by 1. You cant let the game become dysfunctional and not enjoyable just because it suits some kind of negative idealist agenda you hold. You have look at whats there, how its working in practice and what you can change to improve how it works in practice. Its not about some Spanish Inquisition style nerf hunt through the game, bring the noob in front of me and I will flail his heretic build until Im satisfied its suffered enough. Thats a sure way to just kill this game.