Value of Grace

Thanks @Geisalt. I indeed thought that Haste was a bit... underwhelming.

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Bars wrote:

I am amazed you even managed to reach this far with ~90% increased life from the passive tree, no damage avoidance and a melee char. 4k DPS is next to nothing, players have more by mid merciless with HC builds concentrated entirely on defense.

Well, I concede that point; It's damage output is pitiful. Fluctuates between 2.5 and 6.5k depending on buff level.
Fittingly rises the more mobs are around.
Sadly, I think that's as good as it gets with a 3L Reave.
It's not entirely without mitigation, however;
It's got AA, Fortify, Smoke more or less permanently active, and Bone offering gives it 48% block chance. Biggest problem is running out of flask charges during boss fights.

On the risk of derailing my own topic;
If it grows too boring, I could drop Herald of Ash and Grace/Haste or Wrath, freeing up enough mana to drop one ichimonji and swap Victarios for Lightning Coil. That'd allow me to use the chest for the main attack, so potentially a 5L, + an actual damage weapon. - Or spell dagger.
I think I could reach 81% lightning res. Are 3 points worth it for that extra % up top?

Nothing is worth anything until you hit at least 150% increased life in the passive tree.

i believe that 120% is the minimum to reach 4K hp, which is the minimum life to survive approximatively in act4 merciless. If we have life on each items.

Yeah 150% life is barely enough to stay alive in difficult maps/hard bosses , especially without life regen / spell dodge/ spell block

it depends on your build. it can be unnecessary as well as very valuable

for example, how would you express its defensive value on a ranged build with dodge/evasion/movement speed as main defenses, and Queen of the Forest?

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Geisalt wrote:

Grace is the second best aura, after discipline. (and maybe purity of fire but too situational)

I would argue grace is better than discipline actually, as it gives more of its defense rating per-mana-reserved than discipline (relative to the amounts given by apparel).

Or, to put it another way, grace gives ~51 evasion per 1% mana reserved, discipline gives ~8.5 ES per 1% mana reserved (both at lvl 20). Generally speaking, magnitudes of ES on gear are 35% that of evasion, meaning grace provides roughly the equivalent of ~18 ES per 1% mana reserved... over double the value of discipline.


Of course, their priorities are different (as are their mana reserved values), but simply putting it in terms of the cost-efficiency of their bonuses, grace is better.

Incidentally... I believe I've used Grace on every serious character I've made this league.




As for the people talking about minimum %life values... lol. I've made several melees that can survive through t14s with around 110-120% life. My eponymous character, as a Berserker with 10% inc damage taken, managed everything through t14s pretty safely and only finally hit 4k life in the last couple levels of taking life nodes (he's 90 now). Admittedly he didn't handle Coliseum or Core maps well, but for a low-budget supposedly-glassy melee he did quite well for himself.

If we speak about defensive auras, blasphemy temp chains is number 1 and blasphemy enfeeble is number 2, hands down no contest :)

but if the target is not in the AoE of blasphemy, it does nothing and reduces your mana pool. Plus it needs + x curses if you have more than one curse

Same idea for grace against discipline, discipline/es protects against everything, spell attack and degen. Only chaos damage bypass it. (shav and ci fix it)

Ok, it requires nodes to be efficient ;) It's not the case for blasphemy and arctic armour.

You level the blasphemy and get Leadership for +30% radius and it covers almost the entire screen. With quality and level on temp chains, you barely get hit. It makes builds like CI triple curse mines possible - you have no flasks, no leech or CI regen and still you can clear the hardest content in the game. I played this build until recently, it's extremely potent and the blasphemy temp chains is what makes it possible.

So, yes, it requires some investment but the returns are more than worth it. Same goes for enfeeble.

Discipline will give you about 1200 ES which should be 15% or less of your total ES. Enfeeble reduces damage by much more and with temp chains you don't get hit at all. No contest.

Seems to be a very special build and it's difficult to say it as a general statement, however i perfectly understand your point ;p

15% of your es pool for 35% mana is not so bad.

Another use for this aura: with blood magic nodes MoM EB build to get a very great return per life used !