imo Mana, Energy Shield and Leech are not good enough

"

svnhddbst wrote:

the more easily you can explain something, the better you know it.

explaining or arguing to an idiot will never convince the idiot, but it might convince an onlooker with an open mind.

Agreed on both points.

I think you guys do have decent points about mana, I just don't know how well it's possible to apply the suggestions to self-cast spell casters (lower mana cost supports, leaving some unreserved, higher base mana, bloodmagic craft). When playing SRS I considered all of these options. For instance culling strike is like a 20-25% more support, whereas multistrike is 35% more. However culling is a 1.1 mana multiplier and multistrike is 1.8, so culling is often a good choice, because you simply won't be able to get enough mana regen to make full use of multistrike. Similarly a +3 staff is 5-10% less DPS than pledge but it's also 20-40% less mana cost, so once again you can make full use of the +3, but might not be able to get enough regen for pledge. I also used mana on all my gear pieces to have enough base mana (my skill cost 76 and I had 77 unreserved), and when I didn't have enough regen I speced an extra 4-8% reservation reduction if possible.

Now this is possible with SRS, but SRS basically takes minion damage (12pts) auras (5-11pts) , jewels (12-20pts), skill duration (6pts) , and life/es from the tree. A good SRS build spends 2-4 points on mana (the rest is handled by reduced cost on jewels). So a SRS build spends 21-27 pts on damage. It looks like spell casters will take 25-35 points of damage. In theory it's possible with other builds too it seems. The key is mixing mana regen on jewelry and reduced mana cost of skills on jewels. IMO the requirement to have mana regen on jewelry is reasonable, since attack builds are required to get WED/flat phys and accuracy.

"

svnhddbst wrote:

the more easily you can explain something, the better you know it.

explaining or arguing to an idiot will never convince the idiot, but it might convince an onlooker with an open mind.

"can't be arsed to explain" means you don't recognize either of these, or value your time more than both, which means you commented for attention, and not to contribute.

" 'wave your hands like you just don't care' wouldn't a better show of apathy have been to not even bother?" you are shouting how much you don't care, which demonstrates either you do care, or don't care but want attention for not caring.

both my comment and yours should be deleted for being non-constructive, all you said was "you are so wrong i can't even explain it" and all i said was "stop crying for attention and do something constructive" neither of which helps this thread or the readers of the thread.

I dont think you quite appreciate how many 50 page discussions and arguments ive been dragged into that have cost me like 15+ hours of my life for what? This is feedback for the devs, they either get it or they dont, me talking to this guy endlessly isnt going to make any difference to anything. If there was a feedback email where I could send these points to GGG directly and not even put them in public i would.


The guy is using a 6L shavs, his only 6L from what I can see, and his 6th gem is reduced mana, meaning he cant even afford to sustain his 5L gems on mana and hes telling me mana is fine for all casters who use their es as es aka ci, low life, hybrid etc, non eb. That says it all, if he cant even see that what am I gonna do?

Crying for attention? Dont be silly mate, im making a feedback post for the devs im not looking to engage in a debate with fairly new players about their thoughts on mana. Understand that, this is from me to the devs, end of story. The guys not an idiot hes just inexperienced and doesnt see the point Im making because he doesnt have a big enough frame of reference. When hes got another 4000 hours play time maybe we can have a serious in depth convo about how mana effects a wide range of caster builds at all levels of the game and how that plays out vs melee, bows, coc builds etc at all levels of gear and passive investment and where that leaves casters in the bigger picture as a result.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

"

svnhddbst wrote:

the more easily you can explain something, the better you know it.

explaining or arguing to an idiot will never convince the idiot, but it might convince an onlooker with an open mind.

"can't be arsed to explain" means you don't recognize either of these, or value your time more than both, which means you commented for attention, and not to contribute.

" 'wave your hands like you just don't care' wouldn't a better show of apathy have been to not even bother?" you are shouting how much you don't care, which demonstrates either you do care, or don't care but want attention for not caring.

both my comment and yours should be deleted for being non-constructive, all you said was "you are so wrong i can't even explain it" and all i said was "stop crying for attention and do something constructive" neither of which helps this thread or the readers of the thread.

I dont think you quite appreciate how many 50 page discussions and arguments ive been dragged into that have cost me like 15+ hours of my life for what? This is feedback for the devs, they either get it or they dont, me talking to this guy endlessly isnt going to make any difference to anything. If there was a feedback email where I could send these points to GGG directly and not even put them in public i would.


The guy is using a 6L shavs, his only 6L from what I can see, and his 6th gem is reduced mana, meaning he cant even afford to sustain his 5L gems on mana and hes telling me mana is fine for all casters who use their es as es aka ci, low life, hybrid etc, non eb. That says it all, if he cant even see that what am I gonna do?

Crying for attention? Dont be silly mate, im making a feedback post for the devs im not looking to engage in a debate with fairly new players about their thoughts on mana. Understand that, this is from me to the devs, end of story. The guys not an idiot hes just inexperienced and doesnt see the point Im making because he doesnt have a big enough frame of reference. When hes got another 4000 hours play time maybe we can have a serious in depth convo about how mana effects a wide range of caster builds at all levels of the game and how that plays out vs melee, bows, coc builds etc at all levels of gear and passive investment and where that leaves casters in the bigger picture as a result.

see this is why clarity is important, i fully support and understand everything said by snorkle, to varying extents, but all well into the positive.

molok said "nope you are wrong, can't be bothered to explain why" to indicate that he doesn't even know nor care about explaining himself.

snorkle wrote a short essay in this thread alone about what he thinks, molok couldn't be arsed to even attempt a second sentence.

snorkle = great, molok = bad.

Again +1 to Snorkle, he's one of the highest quality posters on these boards, and sums my thoughts far better than I would had. I love playing spellcasters in all RPGs, but right now this poor (self-caster) ice witch of mine feels as if she must fend off a full air assault with a slingshot. With a regular attacker, you stack life+regen+armour and you're good to go. With a spellcaster you need crit, casting speed, penetration, mana pool, mana regen, as well as life. Additionally, if your build is ES based you need to take ZO+GR, which are conveniently far away from each other. Trying to play a D2 sorc-like char on this game is so !@#$ing frustrating sometimes...

if people want to hear it heres my take ob the history of this subject. Brace yourselves because Im never gonna do this again so i might as well say it how i see it if thats what people want. Even i cant be bothered to read this now ive written it so if it rambles, it is what it is, this is why I just say "cant be arsed to discuss"




Ive got 10,000 hours clocked in this game since the start of open beta, I played my first 6 link spellcaster in march of 2013 a few months into the open beta launch, it was a blood magic gem marauder ek armour based. There was a massive problem in PoE at that point in time, I was playing bm gem ek marauder armour, Etup was playing bm gem ek armour mara, Kripparian was playing bm gem armour based marauder freeze pulser, Default Pam was playing a bm gem armour based rain of arrows sniper archer marauder... we spotting a trend here?

The reason for this was marauder had the most life, armour was seen as the only viable defense for most players, marauder had elemental adaptation for +5 max resists 1 node investment, marauder had resolute technique which was required for most attack builds because accuracy and evasion were not in a good place. What those of us playing at that time came to realise is that marauder was the best melee, marauder was the best caster, marauder was the best archer, people made marauder summoners, something had to be done about it.

To sustain the mana cost of skills on a witch you needed eb, and that meant that you sacrificed all your defense from gear to turn into mana just to sustain and u were fucked, you had no defenses, you had way less life than a marauder, you had to go to the marauder anyway to get ele adaptation and his life start so why not start marauder?

Then came arctic armour, a way to use that mana as a defense mechanism, and we actually started to see a witch based spell meta coming into play in the wider sense. Often still with armour and still going to the marauder start but the viability in defensive terms of eb tied the builds to the witch area and made the class a decent start.

Evasion and accuracy were improved and we started to see archers using evasion, not getting rt, oftne still going to marauder for ele adapt but it was improving, no longer path of marauder, path of armour, path of res tech. We had dex bow builds, int casters, healthy use of the mechanics across the whole tree in the larger meta. A path of CI meta appeared at some stage with mana leeching ci attackers, some ci casters, most of whom were not trying to sustain 6 links etc because our level of gear back then was so much worse, crit was still not really a thing, the impression of the larger community at that point was crit for wanders and casters yes, for attackers no because we didnt have accuracy gear etc.

The introduction of melee splash and multistrike somewhere around there finally made things like daggers viable aoe clearers although the misconceptions about the non viability of crit attackers meant that daggers were a sort of hidden secret meta in standard league virtually all the way until uber atiziri/ambush league where crit dagger low life spec throw took hold and the general population realised just how powerful daggers really were and that crit attacks were sick. No harbingers with implicit crit at this point in the game, bows were considered shit, lacking.





Fast forward to that ambush league. Cloak Of Defiance had been in the game for a while and again was a somewhat underground meta, Nugi was singing its praises, he was one of the first people I saw using it. But in Ambush Foxtactics came out with the CoD Geofris Crest arcer, a 4 link non crit spell build that was outdamaging a lot of the crit casters in play up till then using the newly buffed arc, a 4% base crit spell at the time. That was when CoD MoM EB Arctic Armour really blew up in the mainstream meta, here was a int, life based non crit caster whos defenses actually worked to some degree against tough content and was affordable. Geofris went from a 1 chaos item to an exalt+, cod went from insta vendor to one of the only unique chests you could actually sell for good money unlinked, people in the 1m race that followed ambush were selling moonsorrow wands for an exalt each, thats how popular this build was, one of the most important builds in the history of spell casters in poe.

But does anyone remember how Foxtactics cod arc builds looked by the end of ambush? Foxtactics is my friend and guild leader, and I will link you his exact chest from the end of ambush when I got all his gear in standard league...





funny looking cloak of defiance hu? thats right its a lightning coil, because as Fox pushed his build higher and higher, doing atziri, uber atziri etc the Cloak MoM EB AA setup proved to be lacking, it was just shit compared to the power of a lightning coil. The CoD build was dying left right and center, getting fragged by death explosion porcupines etc and to make his caster have viable defenses he had to use a dex/str hybrid unique armour, int gear and int defense mechanics were often just too shit for a highly offensive caster build in high content when you wernt just prolif flame blasting mobs or using broken discharge prolif.



So what did GGG do? The nerfed CoD AA out of the game basically, stating is was too strong, so strong that the very build that made them a big deal wasnt even using them because they were basically a bit shit. The reason they thought it was too good was because it was very popular, people love casters and CoD was really the only int defense mechanism that was working for a wide variety of builds. CoDs were going for 4+ exalts unlinked, it was crazy, felt like literally half the player base had CoD on top of their shopping list. I wasnt happy, zeno wasnt happy, ziggy wasnt happy, many were not happy, something had to be done but rather than just move MoM keystone so people could use mom aa with rare int gear the whole cheese of eldritch battery was called out and the entire thing got hammered into what we see now. But really, cod mom wasnt great, it was at best a budget way to be viable, it was not a gg endgame setup, no one in standard was using mirrored gear with a CoD build.


This is what Ziggy D said in an on stream talk with RoryGGG leading up to 2.0... paraphrased from memory sry zigs mate....

"eb has no down side really because in most cases energy shield does nothing for you, its just down all the time so eb IS a problem as the draw back isnt a draw back"

hes right, in some sense, but does that mean eb was broken? Maybe eb was but heres the thing, giving up all your gears defenses to have mana isnt a downside because you gears defense in most cases as a life based caster do fuck all for you. Doesnt that say theres actually a bigger problem here and that is that energy shield is, for the most, shit because the investment needed to sustain it is not viable in most builds? Thats exactly what it says. If a maraude rhad to give up all his armour to be able to sustain cyclone, would that be ok? fuck no. If a ranger had to give up all her evasion just to use tornado shot would that be ok? Of course not. But rather than make the alternatives to eb better they made eb essentially exactly the same over expensive mess that the rest of life based es defense was for most builds, leaving a lot of casters essentially fucked...

But theyre not fucked right? Because what did foxtactics teach us in ambush? That a coil was better, it was always better, the birth of the popularity of eb mom came from a character who, even at the height of that defenses popularity dropped it for a coil. coil was better than, sure as fuck its better now, expect now you dont even need lightning weaver, you dont need heart of thunder etc in the witch tree because you cna go scion, get as much damage from jewels, use your coil, not have to deal with having less than needed life levels in the top half of the tree. You are pulled to scion life wheel anyway for survivability, you are wearing a dex/str hybrid armour, why bother with witch at all?

and that brings us back here, to where we started, with bm gem builds, with str defenses being the best option for a caster, back to the same problem that arctic armour and mom fixed all that time ago.

Ziggy said another important thing, and im so with him, and that is that eb was hiding the fact that mana wasnt in a good place, and that was another reason that eb was too popular and needed to be changed. Ziggy is a smart guy, hes a big thinker on the game, dont always agree with him but often I do.

Mana isnt good enough, its just not. You can look at it 2 ways, is mana too expensive and unworkable or are the alternatives too cheap? Well when you look at the alternatives are those builds over powered? No, not at all. Casters are shit right now, so shit, do we want to talk about what a 6 link melee can do with 5 damage supports? what a bow can do? What a coc build can do? a summoner? A totem build? Self casters do not match up, sure theres incinerate examples that do, theres this example and that example, but I dont see many self casters that can match what every other path of builds is doing and the answer is not to keep nerfing its that mana needs help, desperately needs help, has always needed help. Look at the history of the situation, its hardly ever worked right on a wide scale outside of eb which covered up a problem left unchecked for 2 and half years now.


I watched foxtactics struggle with sustain for the entire time he played warbands. He started armour based witch using mana, couldnt make mana work and still have the life, damage and defense needed to be worth his time playing the char to high levels. He tried curse on hit warlords, too restrictive map mod wise and against single target, he tried bm gems, he tried reduced mana reduced cost jewels, he tried eb, he tried es eb mom defenses... 100s and 100s of regrets trying to find a way to make arc good in 2,0. What did he end up with?





one of these, a coil, a coil crit arc scion bm gem, fuck mana, fuck es, fuck witches, fuck everything to do with int. Just like ambush, a year later hes still making coil arc because it was the best way to do arc back then and all that has happened since is hard hard nerfs to the int alternatives that couldnt even compare before they were nerfed. Coil, more armour than armour by just putting it on even when you drag your witch back to marauder like open beta and spent 10+ points on armour nodes. dont even think about es, that isnt even on the cards, all your es is doing is making your bloodrage hurt more.


you guys think im some sort of caster only fan crying because my 1 little build isnt as op as I want it to be?



etc etc


we getting the idea now? im an attacker, first and formost an attack based builder because I play strong dps, very high survivability attack based builds because theyre better, theyve been better for ages. I dabble in spells, Ive played a lot of caster builds, I have caster gears of course




etc etc, could link gears for days to show you how far Ive gone with dozens upon dozens of caster builds over the last 10k hours ive played this game

Im no tourist in the land of spells, Ive been doing high level spell builds for 2 and half years and Im in a spell caster guild. I know spells, but Im no bitter caster whos talking about 'my little ice build' here because I cant adapt. Im a very knowledgable experienced player who has vigilantly followed the build metas across all classes, casters, attackers, melee, bows, coc, you name it in this game since it first went live with open beta in 2013 and I am saying these things based on the history of what I have seen in that time frame and this is honest feedback for the good of the game as I see it. Aint not crybaby antics, this isnt attention seeking, this is me looking out for the health and variety of ALL builds in this game.

I play purely self found in hc league, no trading, Ive played casters there, melee, bows, in 4 links with no gear, Im no spoiled 6 link standard trade whore who doesnt understand budget play and what happens when you dont have 500 exalts to sink into a build. Ive written detailed guides on how to play self found builds from start to finish in hardcore challenge leagues to show it can be done in the face of those who say self found isnt viable. I know what Im talking about, I see the bigger picture, i understand the history here, the evolution, my itentions when I post a feedback thread are true, make no mistake about that regardless if you agree with me or not, Im a 33 year old man, Ill be 34 in a month, i take this game seriously, I take my feedback seriously. Ive devoted 2.5 years of my life to this game, I work freelance from home even though I could be earning £30,000 more a year than I am now by working in an office for a serious design company, thats how much I care about this game.


This is why I made this post, to communicate my feeling about casters and what I think needs looked at to GGG.







Is this enough? You guys happy now? Enough text for you lot? Is anyone even reading by this point? Ill tell you who probably took one look at this wall of text and thought tl:dr if they even bothered looking in this thread, Qarl, Rory and Neon, the only peoples whos opinions matter, the only people Im actually trying to communicate with, god help those men if theyre reading all this, sry guys. If GGG want to debate this, if they want to open a dialogue with me in this thread and challenge my thoughts then please, do it, Ill talk all day with you about casters. But when I say I dont have time to post all this its because I know you guys dont have time to read it either, and it doesnt matter, none of this matters if GGG are not reading it. I made the original post for them, its still there, they can take it or leave it.


svnh, matrix, molo, ovej, love all you guys, peace to you all Im sure you are all sound chaps and if we were in a pub having a pint im sure we would all get along famously. I mean no disrespect when I say I cant be bothered to rely to everything and explain everything but I think maybe now you can see what I mean, like where to even start with this topic?



and there we have it.






tl:dr = read the thread title and ignore everything else, I said it all in that one line.

"

molok said "nope you are wrong, can't be bothered to explain why" to indicate that he doesn't even know nor care about explaining himself.

snorkle wrote a short essay in this thread alone about what he thinks, molok couldn't be arsed to even attempt a second sentence.

I had a few detailed posts in the first 1-2 pages of the thread which were glossed over. Later, getting a reply like "you're so wrong I can't be bothered to explain why" made me less excited to type all that out again.

To recap, my main points were:

1. EB/MoM/ZO is totally viable. I've done it. Others have done it and reached 95+ in HC leagues. This is what you do if you don't want to invest in mana or aura nodes.

2. Mana requires a larger investment now that EB is no longer "all mana problems solved for 2 passive points." But, if you want to run a 6L spell spam with your Voidbringer gloves on to get that sweet, sweet DPS, having to invest in mana on the tree and flat mana on your gear seems like a reasonable price to pay. I gave the example of my own character using a 6th slot for Reduced Mana because I didn't have enough to make that investment yet (and if I was willing to give up my Voidbringers, I wouldn't even have to do that).

3. Mana potions have been buffed and are another option if you're willing to reserve less than 95% of your mana with heralds/auras.

Or, put more eloquently than I was able,

"

sidtherat wrote:

Want your 6L spam? Pay for it.

For snorkle: I respect your opinion and the experience you bring to the game. You've been playing longer than I have and your retrospective look on how things were vs. how they are now gives a lot to think about. I think we agree on several things, namely that casters are much weaker than they have been before.

To me, the biggest issue for casters is difficulty in mitigating physical damage which has been tuned up a lot in 2.0. This basically requires running AA if you're in HC, plus a chaos golem, plus endurance charges and then you're "mostly" okay with careful play. Unfortunately this means that CI largely sucks because with AA and Discipline you have no room for another aura after Clarity, so the caster builds that can use CI are extremely limited. I want to see some buff for ES as a defensive mechanic.

Evasion in HC is also in a pretty terrible spot for similar reasons, with Lightning Coil / Taste of Hate being required gear to progress in high maps (this is why I've been experimenting so much with different caster setups, because I want to play ranged and bow builds are way too squishy without this top-notch gear).

Mana just ranks much lower on my list of caster issues needing solutions because it is workable now, just not nearly so easily as it used to be.

Snorkle your posts are gospel lately mate.

@snorkel .... story time with snorkel might need to be a thing.... well written, well thought out, enjoyable read.


@molok well now i understand you, and someone else might learn....


so as the comparative noob here, would just blanket decrease of 20% across the board for all spell mana costs (except incinerate) solve it?

or another option,
stick 3 nodes "behind" MoM
two "5% additional damage taken from mana instead of life, 10% increased mana"
one "10% more mana, 15% more mana regen"

or a new key stone with something like
"when mana is consumed, or used, 20% of the amount used is given/regened/leeched as life"
i don't think there's anything in the game yet that let's the player regain life based on mana use.
then that would allow the possibility of converting those to es recovery.
crit casters could use this keystone + eb + ghost reaver/zo to maintain mana, and then assassin's mark for life.
non-crit would just have a solid method of regen.

just tossing out ideas.

"

MoLoK13 wrote:

2. Mana requires a larger investment now that EB is no longer "all mana problems solved for 2 passive points." But, if you want to run a 6L spell spam with your Voidbringer gloves on to get that sweet, sweet DPS, having to invest in mana on the tree and flat mana on your gear seems like a reasonable price to pay.

In too many cases you cant, you take all the mana you can reach and afford, devote as many mana stats on gear as you can afford considering you already are playing a build that doesnt have enough hp, damage or defenses to compare with attackers, totems or summons, and you still dont even have HALF the amount of mana regen you need to sustain without even wearing voids, not even half. Investing in flat mana, regen and passives, yes thats reasonable, if it worked, too many builds it doesnt, thats why Im here. You think I would be here posting this if it always worked with a reasonable investment? If it even worked most of the time? If it even worked in 50% of cases? No, I wouldnt be here posting this. It doesnt even work with an unreasonable investment for a lot of builds that need it to work, never mind a reasonable one.


You have no cast speed on your weapon, no cast speed on your rings or amulet, no faster casting gem, a sum total of one whole 4% cast speed node on your passive tree + one 4% cast speed jewel and you cant even afford to run a 5 link mana cost on your build because you mana consumption per sec is too high. And this is your experience of the sort of builds Im talking about that somehow proves mana is fine?

Ya ok mate, think were just gonna have to agree to disagree on this one tbh.

If we are ever going to see a healthy spell meta where ci, hybrid and low life casters of all kinds on all levels of budgets are awesome, fun and a big part of the popular meta then something in their total investments has to give. Something has to give them back 20 points to spend on stuff they need to be worth it and when you look at it, mana and es sustain are 2 major road blocks. The damage is there on the tree, the life/es % increases are just about there, builds that can avoid mana costs and/or avoid having to sustain es are doing ok because they can afford to get those nodes. Thats why we have such a warped, restrictive, backwards spell meta in play right now Where the gap between an ele caster and a physical attacker is insane and so many people are falling back on incinerate/totems, aka the spells people play when spells stop working for builds whos es is still protecting their life.

Thats all I have to say about it, honestly, I dont have any more time to spend going round in circles. Qarl is either sympathetic to the point, unsympathetic or hasnt even seen it, and ultimately hes the only one whos opinion actually matters, not ours.

"

snorkle_uk wrote:

You have no cast speed on your weapon, no cast speed on your rings or amulet, no faster casting gem, a sum total of one whole 4% cast speed node on your passive tree + one 4% cast speed jewel and you cant even afford to run a 5 link mana cost on your build because you mana consumption per sec is too high. And this is your experience of the sort of builds Im talking about that somehow proves mana is fine?

Maybe you're looking at the wrong character? The 6L Shav's, low-life Arc one I've been talking about has 24% cast speed on the passive tree plus another 9% cast speed on jewels. A small amount of reduced mana cost on the tree/jewels and 105% mana regen rate. A total of 5 points spent on mana nodes. Cursing with Assassin's Mark + Mana gain on kill from Divinarius makes pack clearing quite smooth, only running out of mana against bosses (which is what Vaal Storm Call is for).

Anyway, I suppose we will have to agree to disagree as you said. I guess our experiences with this are just different.

Edit: trying to sustain mana on my low-life ele wander - now that is a legitimate nightmare, a problem that I have yet to resolve. But it's also probably the only thing that keeps that build from being insanely OP...