Buff life.

"

Peterlerock wrote:

"

j33bus wrote:

ES also takes less investment on the tree and into gear, with CI you have 3 prefixes you want and 3 suffixes you want most armor pieces (yes you want MS on boots but mostly), while life builds using armor or evasion as mitigation what 4 prefixes and 4 suffixes. On the tree it's a similar story, for ES you want ES nodes, for life you want life nodes and you want armor/ev nodes to get your mitigation.

4th suffix = strength? Then please add "4th suffix = int" for ES as well.
Also, I can deal with not having the hybrid %armour/stun prefix on a life build. ;)

And luckily, there's a bunch of nodes in the tree that provide Armour/Evasion AND life. So it's really not that bad as your trying to make it.
There's very few AR/EV nodes in the tree that don't offer something useful on top. Like life, resists, life regen.

"

Sogolon wrote:

Armor does actually work and is useful if you can get it. But then because you get too little life in a regular build you MUST have Kaom's heart. It is a must have for any life build. So you already miss out on like 900-2000 armour extra that you could get from a chest.

Sounds like a stupid idea to me to stack armour % and then wear a Kaom's with 600 armour.
If this is your idea of an armour build, I understand you think it's bad. :p

Wearing a Kaom's/Belly =/= playing an armour build.

Not so true regarding the last aspect, as for certain situations having a Kaom's/Belly might feel just as good as a 2000 armour and 120 flat flat life. Not going Juggernaut where an high armour chest piece feels mandatory, you could always supplement the missing armour with a shield for Belly or go towards a block centered Hegemony's Era build with a Kaom's...

Armour/Evasion need more focus on scaling them than it would be optimal in contrast with ES, but are viable especially when having them both, or supplementing one with Block/Spell Block or Dodge/Spell Dodge...

People just tend to neglect that you should have an equally invested build towards defences and offensive points, but as the situation is at the moment, with a life character you end up investing anywhere between 60-80% towards defences and only the rest in offensive and rely on the items to get your build to an appropiate damage output (discounting broken skills/mechanics/interactions or even the broken items), while a ES CI character could go 50/50% no problem what so ever, heck they could push even more towards damage due to the way ES scales...

That is the dishearting part...

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

for certain situations having a Kaom's/Belly might feel just as good as a 2000 armour and 120 flat flat life.

I know, but then I don't play an armour build.

when i want to build around armour, I certainly don't wear a Kaom's: I can only get high Armour on chest and shield, with a Kaom's, I'd have no 6L (shield) or no shield (2h), and no armour on chest.
With a Belly, I have my 6L and can have a shield, but I'm still not getting very high armour ratings.

If I wear either of them, I'm not focussing on my AR at all. And if I invested into lots of armour %, I might as well respec them at this point.

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

People just tend to neglect that you should have an equally invested build towards defences and offensive points, but as the situation is at the moment, with a life character you end up investing anywhere between 60-80% towards defences and only the rest in offensive and rely on the items to get your build to an appropiate damage output (discounting broken skills/mechanics/interactions or even the broken items), while a ES CI character could go 50/50% no problem what so ever, heck they could push even more towards damage due to the way ES scales...

I don't know how you're building, but my trees usually look something like this:

~30-40 in pure offense (frenzy, crit, weapon damage)
~30-40 in life nodes (+ armour, evasion)
~5 jewels (offense/defense)
~30 in +10 attribute travel nodes
~10 in gimmicks like regen, block, keystones, etc

Like this onehanded crit sword gladiator tree.

Numbers are shifting from tree to tree, but I'm certainly not investing 60-80% into defense.

"

Peterlerock wrote:

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

for certain situations having a Kaom's/Belly might feel just as good as a 2000 armour and 120 flat flat life.

I know, but then I don't play an armour build.

when i want to build around armour, I certainly don't wear a Kaom's: I can only get high Armour on chest and shield, with a Kaom's, I'd have no 6L (shield) or no shield (2h), and no armour on chest.
With a Belly, I have my 6L and can have a shield, but I'm still not getting very high armour ratings.

If I wear either of them, I'm not focussing on my AR at all. And if I invested into lots of armour %, I might as well respec them at this point.

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

People just tend to neglect that you should have an equally invested build towards defences and offensive points, but as the situation is at the moment, with a life character you end up investing anywhere between 60-80% towards defences and only the rest in offensive and rely on the items to get your build to an appropiate damage output (discounting broken skills/mechanics/interactions or even the broken items), while a ES CI character could go 50/50% no problem what so ever, heck they could push even more towards damage due to the way ES scales...

I don't know how you're building, but my trees usually look something like this:

~30-40 in pure offense (frenzy, crit, weapon damage)
~30-40 in life nodes (+ armour, evasion)
~5 jewels (offense/defense)
~30 in +10 attribute travel nodes
~10 in gimmicks like regen, block, keystones, etc

Like this onehanded crit sword gladiator tree.

Numbers are shifting from tree to tree, but I'm certainly not investing 60-80% into defense.

Well, some of the travel nodes should count as life/damage too (the strength ones in your case), and jewels could go either way, but even the offensive ones have as a main selling point increased life, and all the gimmick points are actually helping you filling certain defensive holes, so yeah you're building towards 60% defense too.

And Gladiator Ascendancy is one of the "tanky" ones due to the block/spell block focus...

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

Well, some of the travel nodes should count as life/damage too (the strength ones in your case), and jewels could go either way, but even the offensive ones have as a main selling point increased life, and all the gimmick points are actually helping you filling certain defensive holes, so yeah you're building towards 60% defense too.

If you count like this, then most ES builds probably also have >60% points in defense.

The only fair way to count is:
30-40 points offense (this tree has ~40)
30-40 points defense (this tree has ~30)
Looks very 50:50ish to me.

My Ascendancy points are spent 50:50 in terms of DpS and tank, btw.
Like you wanted it to be.

Read it as BUTT LIFE. Somehow it rung so true for me.

Lets be serious here. GGG buffs life, they will buff monster damage as well to "compensate". It's just how it works with them. In the end life will still be in dumpster and ES with few nodes here and there, 700ES chest will carry on like it used to. Simples.

"

Peterlerock wrote:

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

Well, some of the travel nodes should count as life/damage too (the strength ones in your case), and jewels could go either way, but even the offensive ones have as a main selling point increased life, and all the gimmick points are actually helping you filling certain defensive holes, so yeah you're building towards 60% defense too.

If you count like this, then most ES builds probably also have >60% points in defense.

The only fair way to count is:
30-40 points offense (this tree has ~40)
30-40 points defense (this tree has ~30)
Looks very 50:50ish to me.

My Ascendancy points are spent 50:50 in terms of DpS and tank, btw.
Like you wanted it to be.

Your next 10 points will be defensive ones for sure as higher content with dangerous rolls will need more on the defence side...

Well, it's more like 37 offensive ones versus 32 defensive ones and your tree is actually one of the few that manage the 50/50% balanced scenario.

There are many more different scenarios where if you want to feel safe, you have to push for a larger buffer EHP wise and rely on limited scaling potential, helped by better than average items, and yes I still discount the broken mechanics/skills/interactions and items...

Going Life + Armour/Evasion + Block/Dodge just feels like there is less wiggle room on having great variety regarding builds in contrast to ES...

"

Peterlerock wrote:

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

Well, some of the travel nodes should count as life/damage too (the strength ones in your case), and jewels could go either way, but even the offensive ones have as a main selling point increased life, and all the gimmick points are actually helping you filling certain defensive holes, so yeah you're building towards 60% defense too.

If you count like this, then most ES builds probably also have >60% points in defense.

The only fair way to count is:
30-40 points offense (this tree has ~40)
30-40 points defense (this tree has ~30)
Looks very 50:50ish to me.

My Ascendancy points are spent 50:50 in terms of DpS and tank, btw.
Like you wanted it to be.

Wait a minute, you're seriously defending Path of Life Nodes?

With life builds you path according to the life nodes, no buts or ifs.
With CI builds you maybe take 10 actual ES nodes, 3 of which are behind CI and others that are along the path wherever you're going to.

I myself took a couple of them in the ES wheel, while I was pathing towards the left part). And that was it, 30c gear and less than 10 ES nodes and I was over 10k ES.
I was free to pick and choose which offensive nodes I'll take. While in life builds you take the nearest ones to the life nodes.

At a quick glance I've counted a total of 28 passive points (from 111 total) invested into offense in my most recent character. And all of them were either right on the main path or max 1 point away from it.

And I'm still at only 5.8k life with Belly and I have to be very careful at how I play. Whenever I'm tired or bored from smashing trash monsters I instantly evaporate by some sudden damage spike.

Compare that to the ~10 node investment from a CI character that I played in Breach? Lmao... ez 10k ES with cheap gear and overall much better damage because of how the benefits of CI interact with other stuff (much larger window for dealing damage, insta leech, much larger damage because of offensive nodes, etc.)


So plox m9. Stop being a hipster and defend this garbage.

who necro'd my thread o.0 dayum this shit is old af but it still stands LOL Life is FUUCKING GARBAGE.

Life is only garbage now because they won't stop raising the monster damage. Since at least version 2.0. They buffed it 3 times. On top of making shittier map mods. That cripple the player.

They brought this on themselves. Its kind of ironic though because they will do a small incremental buff to help the player. Like redoing the armor formula to make it 15% more effective in scaling while giving melee players a 6% damage buff for a said certain skill! Even while buffing the life scaling nodes to require less point investment... Mostly good.....


Then, they reduced the value of the life nodes from 8% down to 5% and they raised the monster damage probably has high as 30-40% more in some cases per hit. I am sitting here like WTF? You just undid the player buffs fool....

I am not up for busting balls on a matter this serious though. But communication needs to take place so that any meaning full buffs that take place actually don't get neglected. Also the balance league needs to actually play end game to actually gauge the changes they make taking place...

When i say end game, at least maps tier 8+ At the moment melee is in a bad place because of the difficulty in surviving a hit. Esp with targeted skills. When a white trash monster with no map mods can hit for 3k damage with out endurance charges and fortify up. You just might be screwed.