One of major problems of the game - life leech

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

You know what else can limit offense and encourage investment into defense?

Telegraphed hits.

Not really.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8rKtv33Yg

No defense required - the more telegraphed hits are, the less you actually need to have defense if you play well. Especially telegraphed hits like the Vaal Slam in Maze make defense investments pretty useless. You are not going to survive that hit unless you have upwards of 18k EHP, so it doesn't matter for that specific attack whether you are tanky with 12k ES or very squishy with 3k HP.

There's a wide range of possible telegraph times. As wide as possible human reaction times.

True, but monsters actually have to be able to get to you in the first place. I have played more than 1 build where I rarely get hit at all.

Now, I agree with you that telegraphed hits are great and if mobs actually had enough HP to reach me before they die, that would in itself force me to build some defense. However, I do not agree that reflect damage is in principle a bad concept. The way it exists in PoE is pretty meh, though. Made me make a totem character on HC.

As I've said before, Corrupted Blood is fine. It's fully avoidable with Staunching (low cost), and technically never OHKOs. I'd be okay with variations on that: DoT reflects with unspammable user-activated immunity.

Reflect as DOT sounds not too bad. I am not saying reflect is in a great place, all I am saying is that the concept is not generally flawed.

Reflect as implemented in the Racecourse boss on the other hand, for example, is complete bullshit.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

"

grepman wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Here's the bullshit hierarchy, from least bullshit to most bullshit:
3. One-hit KOs
2. Instant leech
1. Reflected Damage

However, the highest on our bullshit hierarchy here is reflected damage, because it forces instant leech. Well, either that or going pure physical with CWDT IC, or go totems/minions/traps, or self-gimp your offense into non-viability. But for normal characters using normal skills, yeah, instant leech.

The game should have a more attrition-based style of combat where being on less than full health during combat is a routine position with its own strategy, not some bizarre anomaly. To do that, the mechanics in the hierarchy need to be removed or at least softened, starting with the most bullshit and ending with the least.

reflect doesn't force the player to use instant leech. It's just instant leech is the most convenient, lazy, easy and efficient form of dealing with reflect which is IGNORING it and refusing to deviate from playstyle instead of actively (or even passively, choice to not kill/hit a reflect mob/pack exists) engaging with it.

It's the same argument I've had with people who dislike managing resources, ie mana and the best way to deal with mana was to bypass it instead of investing into it. So what the fuck is the point of resource management if resources aren't scarce? Might as well give infinite mana then.

I kinda see what you're saying, but you're not making the best comparison. Life is a resource under normal conditions, or at least should be, similar in nature to Mana even without reflected damage in the mix. So reflected damage is more like some kind of anti-mana monster mechanic: to have enough mana to negate the monster, you immediately trivialize all mana issues with other content.

Actually, that sounds kind of cool. But there's another key difference: running out of mana doesn't kill you.

Point is, I think Corrupted Blood is a much better take on the reflected damage mechanic. It's completely avoidable with the right flasks, just like any hit from any monster should be avoidable with epic mouse skills. I'm completely against ANY untelegraphed damage.

I think you missed my point here.

There is a problem - reflected mob. We can talk why it exists in first place (damage cap, playstyle deviation, etc) all we want to, but at the end of the day it's a problem for you to solve.

There are (nowadays even for melee and bow builds) multiple solutions to the problem that don't end up undermining the main aspect of the problem. You can ignore the monster, you can have a secondary skill setup that does the other type of damage, you can have a weapon swap (remember this one? most people think it's only for gem leveling), you can have a totem just for these situations, you can have trap or mine or minion for these situations. All these solutions preserve the intent of the problem - you slow down, you use different tactic (deviate from facerolleverything), you deal less damage in most cases and definitely deal less damage per timeslice.

This is a correct way to solve the problem. Then there is a way to circumvent and avoid solving the problem entirely by, say, using a build that cannot be reflected. Using VP isn't quite as circumventing because against reflect map and insufficient damage you can still die, but overall it's still the easiest way to essentially avoid dealing with a problem without stopping to deviate from a given playstyle.

The reason I brought up mana management is because while people like to have mana in the game (unlike reflect) they don't want to use mana flasks that would deviate from usual playstyle (not worrying about running out of resources or monitoring resources). Thus we arrive at a situation where the best way to deal with mana problems used to be to avoid it altogether. Then mana becomes a resource that you just need to checkmark without investing or managing it. So question is, why does it exist then? It's not gameplay to set and forget something. Resource management is gameplay, getting enough mana to spam your skill freely isn't. It's a routine threshold checkmark that people don't want to deal with.

Corrupting blood is yet another checkmark, especially nowadays. With flasks that grant bleed immunity for 5+ seconds and dps so high it bursts down any non-essence rare in that time period, it's nothing but a trivial checkmark and an occasional 'stop watching TV, dumbass' wake up call. Meh. Nothing about it is remotely interesting. Herald of the obelisk is much more interesting, especially if you play melee namelock skills that don't kill whole screens at once

grep, you just went on for several paragraphs about what mana systems are supposed to do. And I'm actually a big fan of mana mattering, because it means that the occasional manual reposition isn't a DPS loss.

The way I think tank vs glass balance should be is kind of like how people thought of the Monster Power system in vanilla D3: tanky should be easier with lower rewards per unit time (due to lower clearspeed), glass should be more difficult but with higher rewards. The important thing here is HOW it's harder; the difficulty vector should be telegraph window vs human reaction time. The tankier you are, the less you need to avoid, the more the game becomes EZ Mode.

At the end of the day, I believe in limiting glass this way, and always prefer it to any form of mandatory defense. I think you should be able to play EB+CI, if you have the mouse skills to back it up. There's no form of non-telegraphed, unavoidable damage I'm ever going to support.

I don't get why everyone wants to defend their skill-less gearchecks so hard.

btw Im playing wild strike inquisitor this league. so near capped crit and ignore enemies resists with full elemental damage and high attack speed. if I run hatred and wild strike chains more than once on a reflect rare, Im as good as dead. and, well, I have a wild strike chains 6 more times enchant...


ancestral protector unlinked does the job of dealing with reflect. it does so by introducing a wrinkle in gameplay where I have to place it and have it kill the rare, kiting it if necessary, slowing my clear speed and putting me in more danger. and that's great to me.

I think I died to reflect twice, and once was a mystery death to racecourse boss where I didnt attack him at all with my melee skill and just placed the said totem.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

grep, you just went on for several paragraphs about what mana systems are supposed to do. And I'm actually a big fan of mana mattering, because it means that the occasional manual reposition isn't a DPS loss.

The way I think tank vs glass balance should be is kind of like how people thought of the Monster Power system in vanilla D3: tanky should be easier with lower rewards per unit time (due to lower clearspeed), glass should be more difficult but with higher rewards. The important thing here is HOW it's harder; the difficulty vector should be telegraph window vs human reaction time. The tankier you are, the less you need to avoid, the more the game becomes EZ Mode.

At the end of the day, I believe in limiting glass this way, and always prefer it to any form of mandatory defense. I think you should be able to play EB+CI, if you have the mouse skills to back it up. There's no form of non-telegraphed, unavoidable damage I'm ever going to support.

I don't get why everyone wants to defend their skill-less gearchecks so hard.

you said reflect was bullshit, and instant leech was another form of bullshit that was byproduct of reflect.

I disagree with that notion. There's nothing inherently wrong with reflect. It's a mechanic clearly created with concrete purposes in mind (no, 'for players to not have "fun" ' is Not a concrete purpose) and a mechanic that can be worked around by sacrificing existing form of gameplay for a few seconds.

What I don't get is people calling for interesting mechanics, and yet refusing to participate in any mechanic that makes them deviate from their playstyle because it slows them down or is clunky to them.