Keystone Brainstorming

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ortish wrote:

another idea is to remake punishment into a keystone... and instead of basing it off the damage you are dealt, maybe make it more of a counter attack.

Punishment: Everytime you block you deal 75% of your physical damage to the enemy you blocked.

Really like this suggestion.

You like RNG? :p
I've gathered some more thoughts on above (Spoiler) keystone idea.

Balance
There are a lot of 'screws' that can be adjusted in order to balance this passive.
1) The smaller the %-increase per evasion or crit stack is, the longer it takes to ramp the buff up to high (and potentially overpowered) levels.
2) Accordingly, the bigger the increase per stack is, the greater the impact on dps and survivability becomes.
3) The %-values per stack can even be differentiated between crit and evasion 'ratings', allowing for individual balance adjustment.
4) The buff's duration can be shortened or extended to make it harder/easier to reapply it.

Concerns and thoughts
'Ranged characters' such as bow-users or spellcasters could, while savely standing out of the monsters' reach, ramp up their evasion stacks via critical strikes and then just 'leap into the fray' as they are relatively safe due to a very high chance to evade, beginning to stack crit as well.
Since their crit stacks would increase rahter slowly (due to getting attacked less) the rate of evasion stacks gained per time-unit would also be less than the gain a 'melee character' gets. Thus - I presume - such a strategy wouldn't be too imbalanced compared to the melee's counterpart.

Casters using Ice Spear (possibly even linked to a mp-support) could ramp up their evasion insanely fast, due to a high critrate.
Since %increases are not applied as a 'flat' increase, but always relate to the character's respective base stat, an IS-caster would either need a lot of buff-stacks in order to reach high evasion (while benefitting less from crit-stacks) or invest in evasionpassives/dex-armour to further his gain per evasion-stack, but crippling his offensive build.

Skilling this and iron reflexes allows for armour-increase on crit.
But one loses a lot of evasion and therefore crit-stacks upon evading.
Additionally the two passives may be positioned quite apart. Iron reflexes is dex/str, while this keystone is supposed to be dex/int.

A %decrease-per-stack penalty on ES or lifeleech could also be implemented (see quote).

Synergy
This keystone seems to offer a lot of synergy with equipment/passives/skillgems, resulting in possible builds. I'll list a few I thought of:
- frenzy charges
- power charges
- buff duration passives
- chaos inoculation
- acrobatics
- iron reflexes
- dexterity/evasion passives
- crit-chance/crit-damage-multi passives
- crit-related spells/attack skills
- crit-related support gems
- elemental damage
- energy shield
- lifeleech
Some may be more viable than others.


/promotion campaign established.

Edit: the bold headlines above are not meant to be keystones, but to better the visual accessibility. The whole post relates to a single keystone - Tricks of the Trade - introduced in the 'spoilered' quote's upper part.

Mind over Body
You gain health from intelligence instead of mana. Crit bonus from intelligence becomes zero.

Arcane Loop
Ranged attacks hitting your energy shield are being reflected back into the direction of the attacker. You still take damage from ranged attacks.

Ricochet
Your projectile attacks bounce off of obstacles once.

Frostward
Enemies hitting you in melee combat have a 20% chance of being frozen. All armor and evasion become zero.

Contagious Minions
Your minions inflict a chaos damage DoT when hitting an enemy. Your minions release a poison cloud upon death.

Fire and Ice
Frozen enemies take 100% additional fire damage. Chilled enemies take 25% additional fire damage. Cannot use lightning abilities.

Permafrost
Chilled enemies have a 20% chance of becoming frozen for 2 seconds once per second. Life recovery speed from flasks is halfed.

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dust7 wrote:

Mind over Body
You gain health from intelligence instead of mana. Crit bonus from intelligence becomes zero.

Intelligence doesn't give a crit bonus. It gives Mana and Energy Shield.

Err make that energy shield then.

Get Over Here! -- All knockback effects you cause move enemies towards you instead of away from you.

Piece of Cake -- Your circular AoE skills become cones (originating on the character) with range equal to 75% of the initial circumference.

Drinking Problem -- +33% spell damage. You lose X mana per second, where X is 1/3 of your level. You cannot leech mana.

Reckless Abandon -- You deal +X% physical damage, where X is 95 minus your chance to hit.

Chaos Affliction -- Your critical strikes with chaos damage now cause a random status ailment.

Sinkhole -- Whenever one of your minions is killed, all enemies within a moderate radius are warped to that minion's corpse.

Sustainability -- You gain 1% mana leech for 2 seconds on spell crit; your spell crits no longer apply status ailments.

Get Over Here! is evil. I like it. :D

Avatar of Chaos
All elemental damage is converted to Chaos damage
Your energy shield cannot absorb spell damage

This keeps the theme of chaos intact, with the tradeoff being hefty, and making it so that chaos innoculation cannot be combined with this. The ability to have unresistable damage that can bypass energy shield would be great. The tradeoffs make it (I think) balanced. No elemental passive bonuses, no crit effect, your energy shield is less reliable.

Canny
You gain 1 hp per 2 Int
Your energy shield vaule is set to 0

This gives Int/Dex builds a viable hardcore keystone so that they can attain decent survivability without having to leave the Int/Dex tree. By becoming tankier, you lose the kiting aspect of the class; energy shield and need to rely on evasion and leather type gear. I think its nicely balanced and an important keystone for hardcore, especially melee Int/Dex builds of all types.

Vanguard
You reduce all damage by 15%
Your speed is reduced by 20%

Classic hardcore keystone. Sacrificing mobility for raw survibility. Allows melee having survival issues in hardcore to gain a solid keystone. Might be some balance issues with a shield marauder getting this keystone for example, though he'd be painfully slow. Speed reduction makes it weak for ranged, which is good. Builds can mitigate the speed penalty if they are Int/Dex oriented, which makes it a good keystone for them.

Master Summoner
Your minions damage, speed, health and mana costs are increased by 1000%
You may only summon one minion

Super minion. %'s Can be tweaked. Has no synergy with minion instability, but plenty with necromatic shield. This allows some cool builds because you can ignore +1 minion passives completely. Less admin managing tons of minions and also has PvP potential. A nice way for players to get a strong tanking pet without needing heavy investment in the summon nodes, allowing for many hybrid builds (think Archer + Master Summoner for example.)

Divine Blood
Your regenerate 20% of your hp a second
Halve your total hp

A crazy keystone that changes your playstyle drasticly. Many build options to help support it that aid in reducing spike damage. You remove the need for HP flasks and life leech. When combined with utility flasks, brings more interesting options. Balanced? I have no idea.

Burning Man -- Switch the crit and non-crit effects of fire damage.

That is, whenever you would deal X fire damage, the enemy instead burns for X/3 damage per second for 4 seconds. Whenever you would ignite an enemy, you instead deal the full damage directly/on impact. Crits would essentially do the same thing, with a direct damage component and a DoT component; non-crits would apply a DoT, causing some monsters to run around, instead of doing direct damage. Maybe also increase the potency of the DoT, since burning doesn't stack.

Critical Overload - Reduce critical rate by 50% of your totall.
By holding your attack skill each second your critical rate doubles and your critical damage is increased by 33% (max +200%).
Continus attack by holding skill button is disabled.

Lets say you got 20% critical rate.
With this skill it drop down to 10% ,so well it will be much harder to crit for you normaly.
Though if you hold button of lets say arrow rain, after a second you got 20% rate ,after 2 seconds 40% rate ,after 3 80% rate and on the 4th second you end up with guaraanted critical hit. Also with increased critical damage the longer you charge.

Elemental Aegis - Each time you get hit by elemental attack ,you gain 3% resistance to this element for 6 sec. This skill stack up to 10 times.

So lets say you get hit 3 times by fire mage ,3 times by ice and 4 times by lightning. You will end up with +9% fire, +9% ice and +12% lightning resistance.

Berserker - Each time your frenzy charges expire you gain double their bonus for 3sec.

This one is simple ,your 4 frenzy charges expire ,then for next 3sec you will have power of 8 frenzy charges.

Elemental Siphon - Each time you hit enemy ,you will gain +15% damage and -5% resistance to its element for 6sec. Stack up to 3 times.

In example if you attack fire skeleton mage ,you will get +15% fire damage ,but also -5% fire resist ,and you can repeat it 3 times for combination of elements or just stacking the same over and over. Attacking monsters without elemental attack or not marked as any element wont give you anything.

Ambidextrous - First socket of main hand weapon is linked to first socket of off hand weapon.

This keystone give possiblity to wear 2x 3 socket weapons as dual wield ,while making them work as one 6 socket item.