Cloak of Flame improvement idea

I really like the Cloak of Flame unique, but it's hard to use at endgame because of the low energy shield. I recommend adding an affix "Gain 1 Energy Shield per 5 Intelligence" to the item. This would prevent it from being too strong at low level, but would allow it to scale to ~100 total ES on a typical Intelligence build. 100 ES is still low for an endgame chest, but this would be a modest buff to make it more usable.

The values may need to be adjusted. I'm just throwing out the idea.

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BurnedInEffigy wrote:

I really like the Cloak of Flame unique, but it's hard to use at endgame

Speak for yourself.


It's still the 2nd strongest defensive Chest in the game after Lightning Coil (for a non-CI Build.)

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Sheriff_K wrote:

It's still the 2nd strongest defensive Chest in the game after Lightning Coil (for a non-CI Build.)

I honestly don't understand what it is with the people that haven't done the math, so think that somehow damage conversion trumps all other damage mitigation hands-down.

It'd DEFINITELY be much better to have, say, another 600 (or more!) ES instead of that damage conversion even on a full life build. Let's do some easy math here:

• Let's assume at a pretty rosy (permanent, non-RF) situation: using Purity of Fire (w/passives to make it +6) and a Saffel's Frame (+4) so you permanently have 85%. That means 17% mitigation of physical damage. Scales up to 20% temporarily, especially on RF builds, or only 15% for a lot of other builds without any bonus to max fire resist.
  
  
• If you're a pure ES user, (be it HP hybrid, low-life or CI) once you figure in intelligence, you are NOT going to have less than +400% increased energy shield, and often more. So that 600 additional ES becomes 3,000.
  
  
• Lastly, let's consider the "eHP" calculation: for mitigation, it means you divide your total HP+ES by 1 minus the amount reduced. So for our above calculation, that's +17.6%, +20.5%, or +25.0% in our three scenarios.
  
  
• For the heavy ES situation, we'd need to know how much life/ES we have. Even on a high estimate, you won't have much above 3k life, and with a Cloak of Flame, probably no more than 3k ES. That extra 3k ES becomes, thus, a +50% increase to your total, or double what Cloak of Flame's conversion gives even if you're immune to fire damage. Moreover, it's permanent and applies to elemental damage, too.

tl;dr: CoF's vaunted conversion provides, AT BEST, +25% increased eHP vs. physical damage only, while going with a rare ES chest, AT WORST, gives +50% increased eHP vs. physical and elemental damage.

I must be the only idiot still using traditional ignites...

cuz good items are too expensive.


It's fun being ignited by almost every single physical hit i take though :D like double onslaught for 4 seconds :D
i am a life based character 3 items without life :( sitting at 4.8k life

I'm not saying Cloak of Flame is bad, but its potential is hampered by the low ES roll and no life or defense stats. Having a scaling ES bonus would make it a viable competitor to Lightning Coil for Intelligence builds.

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BurnedInEffigy wrote:

I'm not saying Cloak of Flame is bad, but its potential is hampered by the low ES roll and no life or defense stats. Having a scaling ES bonus would make it a viable competitor to Lightning Coil for Intelligence builds.

It's potential is supposed to be hampered. It is supposed to make your build different if you use it endgame compared to a good rare chest. That's the whole point of it being on a low level base. It's a deliberate design choice that makes the item interesting and not a braindead bis for all blue builds.

Honestly if they did this, they'd have to do it for a lot of items that are low leveled and used late game. ex: Facebreakers

Something I noticed in peoples' attempted defense of CoF as endgame viable: I only see 5L, and no 6Ls... It basically tells me "Yeah, CoF is usable, but if you can afford something good, you won't use it."

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mucker wrote:

It's a deliberate design choice that makes the item interesting and not a braindead bis for all blue builds.

You mean like Shav's or Skyforth? :V

There's a difference between "prevented from being BiS" to "just vendor without thinking twice every time."

A good comparison for blue chests would be Infernal Mantle. It is still cheap, but definitely with solid reason to use it. If it could only roll 50 ES instead of 500, chances are almost no one would use it.

Chest armour is so incredibly core to a build's primary defenses, so if it skimps out on a lot them, it better have very solid reason. Kaom's heart is a good example: it has no bonus armour, but gives +500 life, which for many builds more than makes up for it.

To compare to something with a similar tier, Voll's Protector can clearly justify having basically no defenses to speak of; its very unique "power charge for EVERY enemy crit" gives it phenomenal offensive power to make up for its sheer lack of defense.

In the case of CoF, it only offers some more minor ignite/burning effects, and its mild damage conversion. The former aren't quite strong enough to truly make it build-defining, and the latter is a good deal weaker than Lightning Coil... And LC doesn't have to give up having any life, or much for defense, since you can still readily pass a combined 1.2k armour+evasion as well as 60-80 life.

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Dalxiaxa wrote:

Honestly if they did this, they'd have to do it for a lot of items that are low leveled and used late game. ex: Facebreakers

That's the issue... Facebreaker is used quite WELL late game, including by high-end builds.

Almost no one bothers using CoF lategame, and those that do are often doing so because they can't get anything better.

Right now, CoF has the issue that it's power is set as per a leveling item, but has some special effects that try and pretend it's a build-definer. That ruins a LOT of uniques.

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Dalxiaxa wrote:

Honestly if they did this, they'd have to do it for a lot of items that are low leveled and used late game. ex: Facebreakers

Honestly, I wish they would do something like this for a lot of the low-end uniques. Obviously it's not needed for leveling weapons like The Princess, but for low-level uniques with special effects it would be really nice to make them endgame viable. I'm not asking for best-in-slot stats, just enough scaling that you don't completely shoot yourself in the foot by using them.

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Something I noticed in peoples' attempted defense of CoF as endgame viable: I only see 5L, and no 6Ls... It basically tells me "Yeah, CoF is usable, but if you can afford something good, you won't use it."

Did you look at what league that chest that is being linked is on? I hope you aren't expecting 6 links chests to drop out of the sky for non-standard league builds.