imo Mana, Energy Shield and Leech are not good enough

"

grepman wrote:

quick show of hands, how many people use rallying cry for mana problems ?
anyone ? I thought so

it gives you 14 flat mana regen that you can scale with items and nodes, for 8 seconds. and quality + incr duration will give you a ton of buff uptime

but no one wants to use a temp buff that helps mana regen. its inefficient and uncomfortable to the way THEY want to play the game and the way theyve been CONDITIONED to play the game for 1000s hours by others who play the game that way.

goes back to the days when AA was meant to be a temp buff and players decided theyd make it binary- either dont use it at all or make it be permanent.

You are a voice or reason in this twilight desert.

"

grepman wrote:

So anyway literally everything sid said made a ton of sense, especially getting rid of the bm gem that simply trivializes resource management with little to no drawback.

a gem slot in your main attack is little to no draw back.... right... remind me to just ignore everything you post in future.

"

kompaniet wrote:

EB/MoM/ZO/AA + life regen, life leech gem and warlord's mark gem. all you need as a caster.

and that leaves conventional hybrid, ci and low life where exactly? Welcome to the point.

"

sidtherat wrote:

finally - unreasonable expectations: 6Link with 150mana/cast with cast speed trough the roof. well.. game rules put a soft cap - via mana costs - on what is achievable. why people expect to reach the technical maximum?

because the technical maximum is still weaker than bow builds, melee builds, summon builds etc so if we cant reach those sort of levels then theres very little point in bothering with those builds.

"

sidtherat wrote:

proper crit build invests more into accuracy than spellcaster needs to invest into mana. and noone has any problems with that. so why mana is such a problem?

no they dont, see this sort of statement shows you know very little about what you are talking about. Me and my guild have specced many casters that cannot work on mana even though they have invested roughtly 4x as many points and gear stats into mana as crit builds are speccing into accuracy. You literally dont know what you are talking about and nonsense is just flowing from your fingers.

"

grepman wrote:

quick show of hands, how many people use rallying cry for mana problems ?
anyone ? I thought so

it gives you 14 flat mana regen that you can scale with items and nodes, for 8 seconds. and quality + incr duration will give you a ton of buff uptime

its not enough to turn the tables in a lot of situations, you say that like this makes mana in poe fine, theres a warcry that gives you 14 flat mana regen you can boost and still fall double or tripple digits short of your cost!! Er.....

ok m8.

"

MortalKombat3 wrote:

Incinerate is OP not because its mana cost can be reduced to 0.
It's OP because it has ~4 times greater base DPS (compared to other spells). Yes, other spells can crit, but even if you invest heavily into crit, you can barely make it match incinerate, which allows you to put your nodes into HP and other defences (thus making a MUCH better build).

had to go make dinner so didnt get a chance to properly respond to this. I think youve made some very fair points in the thread, I found myself nodding along with what you were saying quite consistently.

This is what I said in the intitial topic post re: incin...

"

"Example, incinerate 0 cost. I cant get enough damage and defense and mana at the same time so Ill use incinerate because it does silly dps even when I dont invest in much damage and then Ill use elreon jewellery so I dont have to invest in mana and now I have literally cut my point cost on an average caster build in half which gives me enough points to actually make a strong endgame character with strong defenses that deserves my time and this gear level."

Absolutely, its damage potential is pretty crazy and that is the main draw to the skill.

Heres my take on incin, it should absolutely NOT be nerfed in a meaningful way. That would be the worst thing possible at this point in the game for self casters because its one of the only self cast spells that is actually resulting in builds worthy of their investments. I dont like the spell, play wise, its not a spell I would play purely based on the gameplay of it, its like a turret type thing and Im a cast and kite, mobile kind of player, thats my bag.

Is incin op? In a jovial way yes, in that sort of throw away "omg this is so op lolz" kind of comment yes, its op. When you look at the game as a whole is it really op compared to builds across the spectrum? I dont feel like it is, I think its really good and the builds that are being made with it are exciting, powerful for sure, but within the realms of what one should expect a full on expensive endgame build to be.

It does so though by skipping a large part of 2 of the main investments. Once you take away a massive part of the point spend involved in self casting things start to happen, exciting things, inspiring things that, if involving one of the many spells I actually enjoy, would make me want to invest in a spell build again the way I invest in my many attack builds.


Something has to give for a lot of the other spells in a hybrid/ci/low life setup, somewhere points need to be shaved off. I think its mana and es sustain that need some help, other people may say no, mana is fine, but I feel THIS spell and THAT spell needs more damage, others may say life% is where the pinch is too hard... So lets look at the investments and why I come to the conclusion its mana and specific areas of es sustain...





Life %: Its tight, when I plan a build and it doesnt have 180%+ life my fingernails itch, but you can manage a sort of 160-170% ish area up in the top half of the tree and, give or take thats ok, just about. Casters should really have that little bit less... I dont think this is a good place to buff casters personally. Its punishing and demanding but appropriately so.




Damage: Theres a lot of damage up there, an awful lot. I feel like we are never making builds and finding there isnt enough damage nodes existing within acceptable reach to do enough damage. Theres enough nodes up there to do more than enough dps if you could spec them, last thing we need is more damage nodes we just need more free points so we can comfortably get 'enough' of them and still have ones we didnt take in the vicinity.




ES %: Look at the Dyness, look at so many ci builds, I have ci builds with over 10k es and Im wearing gear with literally half the possible es in multiple major slots. Es % is fine imo.




ES sustain: Sometimes its fine, sometimes its not, depends how you do it. I think CI is ok, it has all the tools to be just fine providing it can fuel its skills on a reasonable investment. Attackers are reasonable and I think when you look at high end CI attack builds theyre really, really powerful. Theres debates about is it worth it instead of life... I dont rly buy into that too much because for me its not about "what is the absolute best, what is that 1% above everything else". Not everything can be equal, and things change, metas evolve and shift with new gems, new nodes, new items. ES when used as your entire life pool (ci/lowlife), imo, deals with sustaining their shield in an acceptable fashion for the most outside of life leech in elemental builds and I mentioned that already in the original post. Maybe could use a little buff, just a tiny buff somewhere wouldnt go a miss but its not something I would make a thread about.


Hybrid tho, mixed bag, really mixed bag and its hybrid sustain that was the motivator for this entire thread. This suggestion...

A node behind Zealots Oath with "energy shield regen % is based off maximum life"

A node behind Ghost Reaver with "energy shield leech rate is based off maximum life"

is the entire reason we are here, all the other points in thie op are "while we are here, I think this also needs looked at". Matrix has said, and hes right, that ES heavy hybrids are in a decent place, hes proved it, he has the builds and what they are capable of is proof that they justify a choice to play them.

But a lot of people, myself included, are not entirely comfortable playing a 3.5k life character no matter how much es is sitting on top when its not a chaos cant bypass es setup. I want 5k red life on any character for whom red life is part of their defense or Im not gonna play it. I dont think Im alone. Now 5k life + 5k es builds are possible and if you reach that point then these suggested nodes ^^ do nothing for you, they do nothing for matrix's builds either. What they help is a build putting life first who doesnt have 100s of exalts to make 5k+5k a reality, or who wants to play a build like that and function in endgame on the road to achieving that over time from a position of getting to 5K life and then growing their es from 2k to 3k to 5k as their expanding budget allows it. Tight budget builds, builds who want 5K life and say 2k or 3k es protecting life while also stacking evasion or armour, these kind of setups.

Thats who really needs help when it comes to es sustain, its not a blanket equal need, its those builds and honestly, eb builds could do with that little buff too, less so but it would be healthy for the game if they got them. Rory said with the new EB, grossly paraphrapsing here sry Rory and I hope Im not doing you an injustice here with a misrepresentation..

'we could just stick a node behind EB that makes EB better than it is, but Im more interested in seeing if we could change things about ES in general to make EB better rather than just have a cheesy node that returns EB to a sort of 1 stop investment for your mana woes'

I think thats what he was trying to get at. I had a dig at him at the time about it and Id like to apologize to Rory for that because Im seeing it in a different light now. ES actually DOES have areas where its sustain outside of EB needs help and if those areas can be addressed that WOULD make EB as investment heavy as it needs to be while while still being good but ALSO helping a wider ES meta. The thing is how do you do that without overbuffing the defense capabilities of areas where ES is already healthy defensively speaking? Well, I think these 2 nodes could be that answer, they do nothing for low life, nothing for ci, nothing for most of the hybrid builds that currently work well.





Mana regen: Well this is it, this is the last of the investments, the last place where this 'spread too thin' issue can be resolved. Imo, its fully justified too because theres so many builds where you could drop 20+ points into mana along with 8+ well rolled gear stats and still fail to fuel by a country mile. Its an area that historically has never worked well, where the cheese alternatives have always covered this up, always dominated the meta and allowed builds to be made IN SPITE of mana falling way short of the mark.

People in this thread are essentuially saying "I have not found mana to be a problem on the builds I have tried". Ok fine, but you havent tried all builds, neither have I, but Ive looked deeply into MANY builds where its not just that its a reasonable but large investment to work, its not a completely unreasonable investment, its LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE. You end up turning to curse leech or bm or 0 cost not because you are greedy for 5 more points but rather you literally do not have 20 more points to put into mana and there are not 20 mana nodes left within a viable distance of a tree that gives you viable amounts of defense and damage.

If you dont think casters are spread too thin and that a wide range of self caster builds are absolutely fine right now at all levels of play then I cant even comprehend you, youre living in a different universe to me. Split Arrow, Tornado Shot, Ice Shot, Poison Arrow, Reave, Cyclone, Sweep, Ice Crash, SRS, Totems of all sorts, many Summoner variants, even Rain Of Arrows, Frost Blades, Cleave, Ground Slam, Lightning Arrow, Dual Strike, Double Strike, probably Viper Strike with the new poison buffs, Fire Trap, many Trap supported spells, Kinetic Blast, Power Siphon... its endless, the amount of builds that can be taken to levels beyond so many of the self cast spells right now is insane, utterly insane. These are not all op builds, these are builds that simply work well. Many of these builds would still be superior to the vast majority of self cast spells even if the self cast spells could make a reasonable mana investment, fuel like they need to on mana regen and be left to use 5 damage supports.

The way some of you talk its like a level of unacceptable power would be reached if mana actually just worked for them all, thats a farcical idea quite frankly. Sort out mana and a lot of the self cast spells will still need looked at and maybe nudget a bit damage wise, a tiny bit, but they have to be in a position where they can actually take the damage nodes they need first and be able to sustain the resulting cast speeds. How many melee builds find it impossible to use faster attacks and multistrike together? How many melee builds are using both those gems and stacking every attack speed node worth taking without giving a fk? MOST of them, the vast majority. The double standards are off the scale when you consider we are coming from a position where we are already accepting that casters get less life, less potential damage and less defenses, that all these are justified because of the range and gem level scaling benefits of spells.

Im not having a little cry about my poor little spell build, Im saying virtually all I do now is attacks because for the last 18 months attacks have been significantly better than spells and this 2.0 made the situation multiple times worse. It was already a bad situation for casters where they neither had the damage nor the survivability of attacks and then they got absolutely nerfed into oblivion from that already dodgy place. The case was made that it was ridiculous that most casters took eb, an int mechanic, and now its gone theyre using str and dex mechanics... how is that anything but worse than before?

If you are with me that casters are spread too thin but you think mana is fine... well we have the investment areas laid out right here, if not mana which of these other areas needs the buff to save points? I dont rly see you can make a good case for buffing the life or damage or the amount of es people are getting to save points and I dont see that the mana nodes even exist to really invest in if you somehow had the points in too many cases.

"

MatrixFactor wrote:

"

grepman wrote:

quick show of hands, how many people use rallying cry for mana problems ?

What's the point of using rallying cry if a split arrow-chain or kb-chain or coc-discharge build will kill the mob pack by the time the cry finishes.

You just can't build a top-end competitive build that relies on a cry just to function.

who said anything about a top-end competitive build ? see you are just proving my point. you want any build to behave the same as the top-end OP builds, when majority of time its the op builds that have problems because they require little investment.

"

MortalKombat3 wrote:

I used it for my bow build. Worked fine, and i'm very fond of this skill. Even if i ran OOM, i have mana for shot in 1 second (it costs 35 mana in 6-link).

But dont overestimate it. It's just 14 mana/sec base regen, and spell usage requires 200-300 mana/second. So how am i supposed to get remaining 150-250 mana/sec?

Im not overestimating it; I've never said it's a self-sufficient way to get around resource management. rallying cry is just one of the tools at peoples disposal, along with things like mana pots, clarity, mana/regen nodes on the tree and gear, and so on. unlike things like BM gem which is essentially a small sacrifice of one gem slot to forego ANY of the tools and completely forget about it, you have to incorporate RC into you build. this goes back to the first point in this post- if you want to model your resource management system after 'I spam one button and alls dying build', you are already thinking inside the box...

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

a gem slot in your main attack is little to no draw back.... right... remind me to just ignore everything you post in future.

its absolutely and utterly laughable of a drawback when the alternatives are so much more expensive. you give up a fraction of DPS to never, ever worry about resources besides no regen maps and in there you can just leech because youre likely leeching anyway in some way.

are you really arguing that the drawback to BM gem matches other ways of dealing with mana ? because that's precisely what this topic is about, you saying mana sucks.

the problem is that you're assuming the BM gem (and earlier, EB) was the baseline, when I say multiple tools for diverse resource management that demand real sacrifice, are the baseline. when resource management is a player avoiding resource management, there isnt really resource management and it needs to rectified by the devs.

BM is a brainless man's solution to resource management, just like the old EB was

"

its not enough to turn the tables in a lot of situations, you say that like this makes mana in poe fine, theres a warcry that gives you 14 flat mana regen you can boost and still fall double or tripple digits short of your cost!! Er.....

ok m8.

kinda weird for you to forget it in the same post, but here-I'm reminding you - ignore everything I post. especially when you don't want/can;t logically argue the point, it seems to work out rather swell for ya.

anyway, I already answered that- if you expect one thing to solve a resource management problem, you are playing inside the box and thinking inside one too. combine a bunch of tools at your disposal. vary your gameplay.
there shouldnt EVER be a thing you pickup and bypass all resource management for virtually nothing. it literally opposes all design ideas of PoE.

but you just want a plug and play solution. lets remove mana altogether and make all spells free. who gives a shit, right ?

I'd like to thank the OP for making a post about this topic.
I have limited experience with pure caster builds, but as someone that took several stabs at making them work when starting to play at launch of 2.0, it was extremely painful and hands down the most negative poe play experience for me.

ES+mana build felt like a terrible noob trap to me, oh and me trying to make CI work without a ton of wealth, hahah rip that character (deleted).
I'd love to try playing a caster again that isnt incinerate or totem, but I don't think I can stomach the disappointment of getting to 75+ and seeing that it just doesnt work at all (again). Gettin tired of deleting witches. It feels broke as hell and seeing other people feel the same way is at least validating to my struggle.

'Spread too thin' sums up the general feeling I had all the time playing witch, god i need more ES, ugh my mana, wait i need more damage,etc.
EB/ZO/MoM/CI/SR all look really enticing to make builds around but i'm really put off at trying again after repeated troubles ,especially for temp league.

I want to quote my post in another thread, regarding totems:

"

MortalKombat3 wrote:

OP or not - it's all about numbers. But it seems you dont bother with math.

Totems are OP because their DPS if far too high for what they do. I mean Flame totem and Shockwave totem. They have the around same base DPS as self-cast spells, but they tank enemies, you can place 2 totems (double DPS), you can do what you want (totems cast spells for you) and you dont even have to waste your mana - 2 casts are enough for a pack.
And i dont even mention that Flame Totem has 0.2 sec base cast time with 5% base crit chance, and with 2 totems its crit rate is 5 times higher than "normal" self-cast spells can ever have (result - surgeon flasks refill instantly which is OP on its own).

Now look at Spell Totem support gem. It not just takes out 1 gem slot, but also puts 52% LESS DPS penalty. With gem slot taken into account, it's 3 times LESS damage. That's how GGG balanced usage of totems.
But of course, no one ever uses Spell Totem for anything except Incinerate (it does 4 times more base DPS than "normal" spells).
Indeed, why bother with 3 times DPS penalty, when you can just use Flame Totem or Shockwave totem without any penalty?

Yes, totem usage has benefits (they tank for you and they cast for you). But it should have drawbacks as well. Reduce their base DPS by 2-3 times, and they'll be balanced (in case of Flame Totem - be reducing base cast speed, of course). ATM, they're OP by definition, giving too many benefits with almost no drawbacks.
Self-cast spells (except incinerate) cant compete with such "monsters" (FT and SWT).

+1 to OP

There are ways to make mana work "somehow" :

- I tested EB - while it works somewhat single target Ghost Reaver leech is so low now that it puts builds at risk way to often, nullifying any benefit from MoM

- Rallying Cry - so we have nodes to avoid interruption while casting but have to use a warcry - the heaviest casting interruption of all - to get some mana regen ? ... Hey there is Kole coming to bash my head - no problem, hey mate give me a second I need to get a cool warcry out to get some mana.

- Clarity - wastes mana for 1-2 Heralds / Auras and does not provide enough mana regen for a 5+ linked spell even with several mana regen nodes.

As even ZiggyD asked on a State of Exile episode - why is mana leech handled in the same way life leech is - why are we not allowed to leech enough mana against single targets ?

For me the only way to build right now is Blood Magic. One Gem that solves the mess that mana is. Leech is barely enough to leech back the mana cost now and it frees up 1-2 auras / heralds since Clarity is ridiculously expensive.

Please GGG check the logs how many builds use Blood Magic now and please take into consideration that most people dont want to use Blood Magic. It is just a workaround the mana mess you introduced now.

Melee - Blood Magic - High life + life regen why bother with mana since it has no advantages

Bow - Blood Magic - Cant mana leech with elemental bows, mana regen is non existant, even Phys Bows using elemental skills cant leech enough mana until a very high dps threshold

Caster - Blood Magic - Clarity wastes as much mana reserved as 1-2 Heralds / auras - EB + MoM - not enough leech to sustain, especially single target - Rallying Cry - as I wrote, we have nodes to avoid interruptions but shall manually interrupt to get mana regen ? ...


Edit : Mana, EB, MoM and Arctic Armour were perfectly fine pre 2.0 - it had synergies and it was fair - Bow and Ev Melee Builds have 50% Evasion + Dodge, Armour Builds have 50% phys dmg mitigation - Casters only had 30%-40% mitigation and operated in melee range most of the time and have nothing now. Now its a mess and the only way to go with all the buffs to monster physical damage is Armour / Blood Magic.

I also agree 100% with what you are saying Snorkle. It always felt like you could make any build with any means you wanted. I've done hybrid anything, CI anything. And pretty much everything was always on mana. Simply because BM USED to be a easy way to fix mana problems. Right now it is mandatory most of the time, unless you want to annoy the hell outta yourself. Playing a clunky mana based char wich runs out of mana the moment you spam a button 1 to many times.

PoE is a game of many faces. Everyone's experience will be different to some extend. I am a league only player, and alot of my builds go 85-98. When you enter t10+ maps, have a 6link. Things change. Most of the people you argue with obviously have no experience with when you get to that point. Because it never used to be the case neither. Yes Leech was quite OP before the awakening. And EB was also quite good. But they served their purpose very well. And allowed for wide class building.

Now, the game has evolved to only allow certain builds to satisfy my needs for playing, and i suspect this is the same case for you. And it makes me and alot of other people really sad. Because the game changed from open and explorable to closed and limited. However like i said some will not share this experience, simply because they enjoy the game differently.

It is closed abd limited because you settle only for top of the top builds quickly discatding anything less as unviable crap. It is that feeling like a god and peer pressure thingy that ruins online gaming for many.


It takes effort and special kind of skill to NOT be able to run melee/bow builds on mana. That skill is lack of understanding how mana works.

With spells it is the same story. But sustaining it has its costs. And when i read that 'clarity is a waste of 2heralds' i know it is greed that talks.

You are NOT entitled to 6link spam without costs. Want to do it? Gear and spec into it. Oh but this requires 'wasting' damage? Tough. Life is tough too. You want good things? Pay for it.

As for the melee damage output and spellcasters damage output disparity it is different topic. And that disparity mainly happens for people with mirrored gear that are already outside of design envelope ggg cares about.

Game seems to be balanced around 250-300pdps 1h weapons and while it is shocking for people wielding 500dps daggers it most probably really is.

By obtaining close to perfect items you guys destroy the game for you. Game with so many multipliers cannot be balanced for all power ranges. It simply cannot. And outliers are.. well.. ignored.