Why does the "FORTIFY" skill gem exists?

Here's the changes I'd make:
1. Fortify buff base duration halved to 2 seconds.
2. Vigilant Strike cooldown halved to 2 seconds. (It can still be bypassed by using an Endurance Charge.)
3. Fortify support gem loses its base "25% increased Fortify duration" bonus. It still gets 0.5% Fortify duration per 1 gem quality. Its damage bonus is also changed to "Melee Damage" instead of "Melee Physical Damage."
4. The "Fortify Effect and Duration" passive node has its value increased to 20% increased Fortify duration.

The intent of these effects is that utilizing the Fortify buff would be much harder for spellcasters, while a melee character with Fortify on their main skill would still easily maintain the buff.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Here's the changes I'd make:
1. Fortify buff base duration halved to 2 seconds.
2. Vigilant Strike cooldown halved to 2 seconds. (It can still be bypassed by using an Endurance Charge.)
3. Fortify support gem loses its base "25% increased Fortify duration" bonus. It still gets 0.5% Fortify duration per 1 gem quality. Its damage bonus is also changed to "Melee Damage" instead of "Melee Physical Damage."
4. The "Fortify Effect and Duration" passive node has its value increased to 20% increased Fortify duration.

The intent of these effects is that utilizing the Fortify buff would be much harder for spellcasters, while a melee character with Fortify on their main skill would still easily maintain the buff.

I suggested a unique jewel around this concept.

Grants fortify for 1 second "on hit"

This imply's a player is required to frenzy in battle and not leave it for the buff to be sustained :) in return he opens up a link in his gems.

Risk vs reward kind of thing. I still think this would be cool as a raging frenzy concept.

Peace,

-Boem-

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Panini_aux_olives wrote:

Just moving fortify on all melee attacks with various degree of reduction (ie. heavy strike would give more protection than lightning strike), as Boem proposed some months ago, is the best way to go imho. This would allow easier balance with more melee naturally being tanky than range (just like in D3 and maybe some other HnS).

Fortify just made it a mandatory support gem for every melee attack. Using it with secondary skill is just NOT an option, because of too short duration. And even with Fortify, melee feels bad cause enemies just hit too hard in melee.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

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Panini_aux_olives wrote:

Just moving fortify on all melee attacks with various degree of reduction (ie. heavy strike would give more protection than lightning strike), as Boem proposed some months ago, is the best way to go imho. This would allow easier balance with more melee naturally being tanky than range (just like in D3 and maybe some other HnS).

Fortify just made it a mandatory support gem for every melee attack. Using it with secondary skill is just NOT an option, because of too short duration. And even with Fortify, melee feels bad cause enemies just hit too hard in melee.

The misconception is that fortify was added to make melee stronger.

In my opinion, it was not, it was added to make ranged weaker. Melee is left in a similar spot to
pre-awakening, while ranged are definitely feeling the hits now if they endure one.

The problem i see is that fortify eats up a slot in melee links thus also signifying somewhat of a nerf.

Remove it from the link system and make it inherent to melee and it will have attained it's function of making ranged comparably weaker to melee.

Peace,

-Boem-

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

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Panini_aux_olives wrote:

Just moving fortify on all melee attacks with various degree of reduction (ie. heavy strike would give more protection than lightning strike), as Boem proposed some months ago, is the best way to go imho. This would allow easier balance with more melee naturally being tanky than range (just like in D3 and maybe some other HnS).

Fortify just made it a mandatory support gem for every melee attack. Using it with secondary skill is just NOT an option, because of too short duration. And even with Fortify, melee feels bad cause enemies just hit too hard in melee.

fortify works perfectly fine with secondary skills. i played ice crasher all of warbands league with leapslam linked to fortify. enemies hit too hard. bah. i was wearing abyssus all the time. you play glass cannon builds.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Here's the changes I'd make:
1. Fortify buff base duration halved to 2 seconds.
2. Vigilant Strike cooldown halved to 2 seconds. (It can still be bypassed by using an Endurance Charge.)
3. Fortify support gem loses its base "25% increased Fortify duration" bonus. It still gets 0.5% Fortify duration per 1 gem quality. Its damage bonus is also changed to "Melee Damage" instead of "Melee Physical Damage."
4. The "Fortify Effect and Duration" passive node has its value increased to 20% increased Fortify duration.

The intent of these effects is that utilizing the Fortify buff would be much harder for spellcasters, while a melee character with Fortify on their main skill would still easily maintain the buff.

I don't like this idea at all. What it would accomplish is that every melee build would be forced to link Fortify to their main skill, as opposed to now when you have the option to attach it to your movement or single target skill and still be effective.

If you want to exclude spellcasters from using it, a better idea would be to remove the gem and add the Fortify buff as an on-hit effect to all skills with a Melee-tag as has been suggested before. That, however, would be a passive buff to melee with no opportunity cost and I don't think this is what GGG wants. Might as well remove it altogether and lower all damage dealt by a flat 25%, like it used to be. None of which will happen, I'm sure.

No, I think what we have now is what GGG intended: add an opportunity cost to using Fortify and make things a little more complicated for no other reason than making things more complicated. Blindly linking it to your main skill feels too much like Reduced Mana - a mandatory choice that really isn't a choice at all.

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Ceri wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Here's the changes I'd make:
1. Fortify buff base duration halved to 2 seconds.
2. Vigilant Strike cooldown halved to 2 seconds. (It can still be bypassed by using an Endurance Charge.)
3. Fortify support gem loses its base "25% increased Fortify duration" bonus. It still gets 0.5% Fortify duration per 1 gem quality. Its damage bonus is also changed to "Melee Damage" instead of "Melee Physical Damage."
4. The "Fortify Effect and Duration" passive node has its value increased to 20% increased Fortify duration.

The intent of these effects is that utilizing the Fortify buff would be much harder for spellcasters, while a melee character with Fortify on their main skill would still easily maintain the buff.

I don't like this idea at all. What it would accomplish is that every melee build would be forced to link Fortify to their main skill, as opposed to now when you have the option to attach it to your movement or single target skill and still be effective.

I don't think there's anything saying you can't alternate between skills once every two seconds. Especially if you've got a two-hander equipped.

But yes, in general, the idea is to make secondary skill Fortify less effective (not impossible, just harder), because the secondary skill version of Fortify is what non-melee use to get the buff.

Outside the box solution: add more defensive support gems. GGG could even make one suited to casters (some complain about the state of defenses) or EV/ES characters.

Fuck it...i still think they should do like they used to do in WoW or something similar...as a tank you would need to get 104%? ( i for get the exact percentage) defenses to become "uncrushable".

From a combination of armour, evasion, block and dodge...just tweak the numbers to make it achievable but not particularly easy to do.