When should I level up Tempest Shield?
" Why the heck not? First of all, you can currently maintain Tempest Shield indefinitely so long as you keep blocking. There's nothing stopping you from maintain Tempest Shield all day long, AFK or otherwise, except the obvious thing that'd stop it regardless of whether it's a reservation or not - eventually you kill all the things in your immediate vicinity and run out of attackers to block. As a freebie the way it is, it's a minor buff nobody notices but people do anyways because it takes all of one socket in your CWDT set-up if you're a shield character. It's boring, and it shouldn't be. How the hell is casting lightning bolts from your shield boring? Why did we let this happen? Make it a reservation and you can make it much more impactful. 3% block and a weak one-quarter Arc doesn't do anyone any good. 10% block (or even 15%, if I had my way) and a much stronger Arc? That'd be worth spending some reservation on. Expand out the idea behind the Heralds and Arctic Armor - give us interesting reservations with interesting mechanics and interactions, instead of auras that amount to giant stat dumps which are certainly helpful but mechanically boring. Last edited by 1453R on Oct 19, 2016, 5:21:03 PM
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" More reservations would butt in on auras, which are already difficult to stack. While I'm not advocating stacking auras should be easy, but you shouldn't have to specifically focus on it to enable the basic things you want to do. Tempest Shield is fine being up indefinitely because you're blocking. That's the entire point. If something is made for something, doing that thing should make it better at what it does. Someone who uses a sword learns to maintain it, or the sword will become useless before it should and thereby leave that swordsman without a weapon. He learns to maintain it. There's no reason we should have to recast Tempest Shield-which would be the only alternative-just let it refresh on a block. " Oh, so you automatically clear an area because...why? Oh, that's right, you don't clear an area until everything is dead. So going afk in the middle of a map doesn't mean there won't be stray enemies that might chance on your character just after the TS duration expires. Yes, there is something stopping you from having TS active while AFK. Otherwise, you'll have to use a CWDT version, and that one won't be as effective AND costs more sockets. TS does too little damage for that to be viable. " Then we should also nerf Decoy Totem, Desecrate, Conversion Trap, Vengeance, Reckoning, Riposte, Abyssal Cry, Ancestral Warchief, Devouring Totem, Enduring Cry, Golems... You see how asinine that thought process is? There are tons of things that can be boring. There are tons of one-gem wonders in this game. It all depends on what build you're playing. I can pop in Conversion Trap, Multiple Traps, and Cluster Traps, and I'm immune to most burst damage from most content in most maps provided I throw the traps. WOW. Strongbox? Why Smoke Mine, Lightning Warp, Flame Dash out when I can Conversion Trap? Why avoid lab traps when I can make 21 corpses and four totems that leech so much life from them so quickly I can stand in two traps and live? Why does every single build have a Chaos Golem? It's the new Reduced Mana. Tempest Shield is amazingly complex compared to many other gems out there. " 3% block is nothing. That's basically the only thing you get from TS. One socket for 3% block, and supports don't do much for it. It also isn't CoH effective since it relies on enemies hitting you and you blocking it, and then it only hits a few enemies. Orb of Storms, Ice Nova, and many other skills apply curses many times faster and on demand, rather than when enemies attack you. 10% block would be too much. GGG would never do that, even if it were a 50% reservation. Every block build would be centered around it, and other options would become available as TS is used in place of them. Why use so many Reckless Defense jewels when I can avoid the crit problem and use my new 10% TS? Your problem, 1453R, is that you're forcing it to be a reservation in your mind. That's the main issue. Tempest Shield should not be a reservation. It's always active, and that means AFKing is much easier to do. That's the exact opposite we need for this game. I don't care how it is done, just so long as it does not result in a reservation or a forced CWDT setup. We need more actively used skills in this game, even if it is only once in a while. Anyways, BM builds cannot make use of reservations. More reservations means BM is put in a worse and worse place. BM is the best alternative to CI, and CI is already brokenly powerful and we all know it. | |
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Nath...who cares if you can AFK for a while and not die? You can't clear maps AFK, and frankly even if you could it'd be slow and weird enough to be inefficient as hell next to actually playing the game, on top of, y'know...not getting any drops?
Who cares if more reservations butt in on auras? Auras shouldn't be mandatory anyways. They should have to justify their slots like everything else, and perhaps more defensive options that actually make a difference would improve PoE as a whole? You agree with me that Tempest Shield is weak and generally not worth using...then yammer on about how that's how it should be because Decoy Totem exists and Chaos Golems are a thing? I've stopped using golems in an increasing number of builds. Unless leveled quite high, which precludes the CWDT thing most folks do with them (or used on a LotP Elementalist), their buffs are thoroughly ignorable and the golem itself ranges from pointless to actively detrimental in a fight. I've been using a lot fewer traditional damage auras, instead using that space for Blasphemy - which, by the way, is a reservation, always-on AFK method for curses, and so should be anathema to you. You're acting like putting more things on reservation means everyone will immediately start AFK-map clearing. That's ridiculous. Nobody does that now - when folks are AFK they're in their hideout. Either temporarily because they're getting a sandwich or using the pot or performing other life tasks, or permanently because they're a market mule trying to sink prices on expensive shit. Neither of those cases gives a snot that Tempest Shield can or can not AFK clear. Seriously. Where's the hurt? And if it's going to stay a cast-and-kill buff, then can we at least try to make it a minimum of half as useful as Blood Rage? | |
" I stopped reading there. I'll post it one last time: Chaos Inoculation needs to stop being the best thing in the game. Blood Magic is the only alternative. Blood Magic cannot make use of any reservations because it directly cuts your life. Reservations cannot be used by Blood Magic. More reservations just adds to the list of the uselessness of Blood Magic. I'm still salty about GGG just nerfing acro-block. I still think they should've just added content rather than remove content. But I'm sour about it because there are two things you do in this game if you have money to get the items: energy shield and crit. It's the absolute best in everything, and there's nothing it cannot do. Quite literally, the only exception are maps with BM on them. That, 1453R, is why I don't want more reservations. More reservations are worse than adding boring mechanics. | |
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How the hell is Blood Magic the answer to CI/Low Life being overabundant right now?
The Blood Magic tree keystone has always been awful. Outright eliminating mana destroys a huge resource you could otherwise be making very good use of through, you guessed it...RESERVATIONS. That's why things like Hezmana's Bloodlust are so popular - Blood Magic is very useful, but only selectively. The answer to CI/Low Life being overabundant is to A.) stop instagibbing any player with less than 20k EHP with effectively no warning on every third boss fight, and/or B.) improve passive tree life nodes/distribute them more broadly across the tree. It has absolutely nothing to do with Blood Magic. Blood Magic in the tree has no point and never will have a point because nobody sane wants absolutely everything they run to be cast off Blood Magic. IF the Blood Magic tree keystone had something like "Your maximum mana becomes maximum health instead. Cast all skills from health", then it might be an answer to CI/Low Life being overabundant because that would allow Blood Magic to generate the same sort of humongo EHP pool people go CI/LL to get. GGG is never going to do that though (even though it would actually make sense and also be pretty bitchin'), so the Blood Magic treestone will continue to be pretty much generally pointless for the staggering majority of worthwhile builds. In no case does this have anything to do with Tempest Shield and how to make it suck less. | |
" Because it's the opposite. How else? " Yeah, and it's also a map mod. Did you know that? Hezmana's is also a lackluster weapon. A nice 350-400 DPS weapon, but it takes up a possible shield (Saffel's, Rise of the Phoenix, etc) and is axe specific. What about Harvest? (Infinite flasks) What about Atziri's Disfavor? Chin Sol and Point Blank? Doon Cuebiyari? Doon's is probably the best to shit on Hezmana's Bloodlust. You're pumping life and strength, getting some 1.8k strength (360% damage) along with 900 base life out of it. This is without mentioning the additional 1:8% damage Doon's gives, which is another 225%. Blood Magic shits on leaving mana. But CI shits on everything. But it's not because of reservations. It's because it gets massive hit points (just like BM) while keeping reservations. That is the difference. " Yet there are BM builds out there, and plenty of them. What does that say? They aren't insane, and it sure isn't "nobody". Blood Magic has a point. The only problem is that it isn't half as effective as CI. Blood Magic prevents you from using reservations, unless you go ES. CI removes a damage type and allows you to keep your reservations. " While that would be nice, it won't happen because you'd be able to stack life, mana, armor, and other forms of mitigation to make you more immortal than current CI builds. " It does if you paid attention to what was being said. Blood Magic cannot run reservations without gimping itself. | |
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Thanks.
Seems to me that TS does quite nicely as it is, but most people seem to use it at low level, thus being easier to fit in with CWDT, as there is only a slight incentinve in leveling the gem. To make leveling Tempest Shield slightly more tempting and the skill itself more interesting, I would recommend that level increase adds a small reflect % amout of the damage blocked. (One could actually consider adding increased reflect damage nodes on the passive tree for niche builds that wish to invest in this otherwise ignored statistic, such as the flat reflect on spiked shields.) Underrated stats: Basic human decency, small quantum of respect, microportion of compassion
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