is juggernaut overshadowed by berserker?

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1453R wrote:

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Apos912 wrote:

Acro-dodge.

OK, whatever. I guess we're trolling now. And no, ranger does not imply that she does ranged only builds.

The point of defences is to stay alive. However staying alive seems to be a cardinal sin in this game and part of its community, so might as well not even bother, since whatever form of defence someone gets to function reliably will get nerfed.

Why does "Stay alive" have to be a binary value? Why is the game not allowed to try and kill the player?

The point of defenses is to mitigate damage. Mitigating damage is not an all-or-nothing deal - poor play should result in taking more damage than your defenses can mitigate. The game should be capable of killing you, and as has been demonstrated many a time by many streamers, the game really is not capable of killing half-decent Vaal Pact builds. The devs' continued attempts to make the game capable of killing VP characters has made things like Shaper excessively difficult for everything else.

Instant leech skews the curve and needs to go. Make Vaal Pact double the leech cap and leech rate instead of being instant, cap-ignoring leech - even that would be a really powerful boon, doubling the effectiveness of the best sustain option in the game, but then it'd still respect the same rules all other leech sources that aren't Acuity do and would also pull the investment in line with the return.

And VP builds would need to do all the other things everybody else has to do if they want to make a stab at Staying Alive, instead of spending almost nothing on defense but still being better at staying alive than almost every other type of build in the game.

Anyways. As for Juggernaut/Berserker issues...Kaom's Roots are an option but one I would not normally consider for most builds. They are very powerful now, yes, but they eliminate the evasion layer of defense completely. Given that I live my life on Stibnite flasks and how any sort of evasion or accuracy reduction goes a long way in protecting you from horde damage and even boss junk, losing evasion completely is a huge blow. I can very much see where Juggernaut would be useful over Kaom's Roots, but at the same time the Juggz is a pretty focused class. It helps you stay alive, and that is...just about it.

Berserker is unusually flexible for an offensive Ascendancy - War Bringer is surprisingly awesome as a defense/utility booster as well as making Abyssal Cry viable* as a primary damage source, and being able to just get leech without needing any Warlord's Marks or item leech or Leech gems or leech clusters or any of that sassery is very nice even on non-VP builds. Plus Aspect of Carnage is basically a free link on all your damage skills. Berserker offers movement, IAS, leech/sustain, defense, and a very big damage boost all in one depending on what you need. it fits more builds than Juggernaut does, but it's not better at staying alive than Juggernaut is.

Outside Cloaked in Savagery/Vaal Pact abusiveness, anyways.

If streamers are anything to go by as your example, then it's quite obvious that poor play does result in death.

It doesn't have to be a binary value, but there is a continuous attempt to place a cap in place as to what constitutes bad play. And that cap is always too low.

If people have such a big issue for shaper's beam being tanked, then ask for it to be changed in a one shot mechanic like his slam. It has the qualities to be one without being complete bullshit like volatiles.

When people want to influence my ability to survive bullshit mechanics just because people tank shaper's beam, then sorry but I won't oblige to the sentiment.

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Apos912 wrote:

If streamers are anything to go by as your example, then it's quite obvious that poor play does result in death.

It doesn't have to be a binary value, but there is a continuous attempt to place a cap in place as to what constitutes bad play. And that cap is always too low.

If people have such a big issue for shaper's beam being tanked, then ask for it to be changed in a one shot mechanic like his slam. It has the qualities to be one without being complete bullshit like volatiles.

When people want to influence my ability to survive bullshit mechanics just because people tank shaper's beam, then sorry but I won't oblige to the sentiment.

So your bar is "I want to be immune to one-shot kills so don't screw with Vaal Pact, which has nothing to do with protecting against one-shot kills"?

I don't know what you're arguing for here; Volatiles are instagibs and one of the few things that can threaten a Vaal Pact build. Bringing up Volatiles as an argument for why Vaal Pact should remain gigabusted makes no sense. If Vaal Pact were less gigabusted, perhaps the rest of the game's damage could be toned down to the point where you weren't as under threat of Volatile instagibs.

Are you arguing for defenses to be able to be raised high enough to trivialize content? Because that's sort of exactly what people mean by 'power creep', and no - they don't want that to happen. 'Bullshit mechanics' should be fixed, not used as an excuse to turn everything in the game into a Juggernaut.

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1453R wrote:

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Apos912 wrote:

If streamers are anything to go by as your example, then it's quite obvious that poor play does result in death.

It doesn't have to be a binary value, but there is a continuous attempt to place a cap in place as to what constitutes bad play. And that cap is always too low.

If people have such a big issue for shaper's beam being tanked, then ask for it to be changed in a one shot mechanic like his slam. It has the qualities to be one without being complete bullshit like volatiles.

When people want to influence my ability to survive bullshit mechanics just because people tank shaper's beam, then sorry but I won't oblige to the sentiment.

So your bar is "I want to be immune to one-shot kills so don't screw with Vaal Pact, which has nothing to do with protecting against one-shot kills"?

I don't know what you're arguing for here; Volatiles are instagibs and one of the few things that can threaten a Vaal Pact build. Bringing up Volatiles as an argument for why Vaal Pact should remain gigabusted makes no sense. If Vaal Pact were less gigabusted, perhaps the rest of the game's damage could be toned down to the point where you weren't as under threat of Volatile instagibs.

Are you arguing for defenses to be able to be raised high enough to trivialize content? Because that's sort of exactly what people mean by 'power creep', and no - they don't want that to happen. 'Bullshit mechanics' should be fixed, not used as an excuse to turn everything in the game into a Juggernaut.

No and I think I've been clear enough.

My bar is that I don't want bullshit instakills, but instakills that involve punishing bad plays. I also don't want crap mechanics that have no meaningful avoidance. So spare me the strawman.

Atziri flameblast, instakill all day long. Shaper's slam, instakill all day long. Shaper's Beam, make it instakill all day long. I don't care.

But the moment people start proposing that being instagibbed or unable to recover meaningfully by Daresso's swords just because they spawned on you or Malachai's turd flings that are spammed every 2 seconds, I'll start biting.

Again: how does that have anything to do with Juggernaut or Vaal Pact?

Touhou bosses like Malachai or Daresso are supposed to be challenging. Things like Atziri, Izaro, and other heavily telegraphed bosses are only really 'challenging' in that if your raw numbers aren't high enough they squash you (and the fact that you fight Izaro in an exploding hamster cage rather than a proper boss arena, but even then - trap avoidance is part of Being Challenged in the Lab).

It sounds like a lot of what you're saying you need broken overpowered defenses to deal with is "Did Not Pay Attention" issues. Daresso swords could stand to not cover three quarters of the battlefield, but they're a degen - move out of them and even if they spawn on you, you only take a bit of damage. Malachai is a prickfairy but people wanted prickfairy bosses to challenge them so they got one. Even then, most of his stuff is degens rather than heavy spikes. Except for those f***ing runic landmines, but blegh.

Nevertheless. Those things are the game trying to kill you. it should, in fact, be allowed to do that, and scoffing at any character which is not Immune to Death is not terribly productive.

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1453R wrote:

Again: how does that have anything to do with Juggernaut or Vaal Pact?

Touhou bosses like Malachai or Daresso are supposed to be challenging. Things like Atziri, Izaro, and other heavily telegraphed bosses are only really 'challenging' in that if your raw numbers aren't high enough they squash you (and the fact that you fight Izaro in an exploding hamster cage rather than a proper boss arena, but even then - trap avoidance is part of Being Challenged in the Lab).

It sounds like a lot of what you're saying you need broken overpowered defenses to deal with is "Did Not Pay Attention" issues. Daresso swords could stand to not cover three quarters of the battlefield, but they're a degen - move out of them and even if they spawn on you, you only take a bit of damage. Malachai is a prickfairy but people wanted prickfairy bosses to challenge them so they got one. Even then, most of his stuff is degens rather than heavy spikes. Except for those f***ing runic landmines, but blegh.

Nevertheless. Those things are the game trying to kill you. it should, in fact, be allowed to do that, and scoffing at any character which is not Immune to Death is not terribly productive.

Many builds don't have the ability to recover within these fights without Vaal Pact, because the leech caps are stupid and they don't have reliable access to other forms of recovery. And then coupled with these mechanics ignoring these builds' form of avoidance AND their damage being based around taking in account 75% resistance.

And there's always the reflect bs, but that's not boss fight related. If Ngamahu doesn't showcase why Vaal Pact is so popular, I don't know what does.

There's a difference between the game trying to kill me and nullifying every single mechanic that keeps me alive.

Next patch will probably lower damage across the board. A lot. This will affect leech rates on its own. Do people want a MoM/EB/AA kind of nerfing again where all 3 mechanics ended up being extremely subpar for years because the hammer just fell on 3 altogether?

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Apos912 wrote:

Many builds don't have the ability to recover within these fights without Vaal Pact, because the leech caps are stupid and they don't have reliable access to other forms of recovery. And then coupled with these mechanics ignoring these builds' form of avoidance AND their damage being based around taking in account 75% resistance.

And there's always the reflect bs, but that's not boss fight related. If Ngamahu doesn't showcase why Vaal Pact is so popular, I don't know what does.

There's a difference between the game trying to kill me and nullifying every single mechanic that keeps me alive.

Then kill the outlier causing the issue - that being Vaal Pact - and reign in all these problematic things you're talking about that are apparently undoable without Vaal Pact, but which require absolutely zero other defensive investment with Vaal Pact.

You're stating that not being able to instantly nullify all damage taken the moment it's taken means your character has no reliable recovery. That's not true - it means the character does not have instant 100% recovery that allows it to take 99% of its health five times a second and not care so long as it can land a hit on an enemy six times a second.

War Bringer is very nice sustain that allows one to instantly recover a 25% chunk of life and mana at once, every two seconds.

Life regeneration is a thing that exists.

ES has innate regeneration - it's delicate, but the Occultist Ascendancy can help fix that.

Flat recovery is workable for some builds, if usually only fast-hitting claw builds, but still - I've physically seen it do its thing on said builds.

And none of these are generally exclusive of each other - my Frost Blades Raider uses leech, regen, and flat recovery from her claws all at once on top of evasion, Acro/Phase Acro, Stibnite blinds, Kintsugi's reduction, Fortify, and Enfeeble.

Is any of that as outright broken as Vaal Pact? No, because it does not allow you to just outright ignore all the damage you're taking, stand in one spot, and Heavy Strike bosses to death without investing in any other defensive layers whatsoever. But by the same token taking Vaal Pact by itself should not be better than layering (standard) leech, regen, flat recovery, Evasion, dodge/spelldodge, Kintsugi, Fortify, Blind, and Enfeeble all on the same character.

But it is.

And that is more of a bullshit mechanic than anything the game can do to me.

#VaalPactmustdie

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Apos912 wrote:

After removing instant leech, on top of regen having nerfed in the past, on top of armour being crap, on top of evasion being crap, what can a player do to survive?

Call me crazy.

But what if, right, what if they removed instant leech... But then balanced the game around no instant leech?

Thus making Armour/Evasion/Regen/Block/Regular Leech all viable forms of mitigation for all content, rather than making instant leech the end all be all of defence.

Throw in a non-Vaal Discipline way for non-Witch characters to get their ES recharge to work in combat and you might even be able to make non-Leech based ES builds properly.

That's the thing right? Players are suffering from power creep, because content is being power creeped due to Instant Leech being so powerful, especially when combined with power creep of damage (I mean, even Instant Leech is garbage pre-Merc. Like you'll be doing what 4-5k DPS in Cruel? Which is only what 160-200 HPS if you've taken 2% leech worth of passives and slotted a 2% leech gem? Heck, you take every non-weapon specific leech and gem you're only at 6.6% which is 264-330 HPS which isn't going to make you immortal)

They remove instant leech, then they can balance leech around player life. While keeping player damage able to be high (They mentioned they wanted the game to be relaxing after a day at work, hence making players kill stuff so easily right?)

Like, they could make Vaal Pact work on increasing the maximum leech/s threshold and balance around that so you have a choice of VP for more leech, or no VP and go something like Leech + Regen. Or any number of other Leech combo's (Or even take no leech)

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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grepman wrote:

this is why a life-based berserker can sleepwalk tank through shaper beam and his balls, but Im still waiting to see a non-instant leech life based juggernaut to do it. ok.

but this is the thing, you just take 2 steps to the side and dont stand in it.

that is irrelevant to the discussion.
this seems to be a recurring problem here too.

the point is not that shaper's beam is entirely avoidable- the point is that you can leechtank through the most powerful degen in the game with instant leech and you cant outregen it with a build specifically built as a regen tank.

true, its as long as youre hitting and damaging something, but in the age of supersonic move speed, pseudo melee, and retarded move skills, and increased pack sizes, the times you're not going to be hitting something is far and between...your entire post basically is based on this as a serious limitation. so you do agree that if you can meet this condition, instant leech is otherwise an infallible defense?

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because I get gibbed in t13 maps by projectile attacks that burst me when Im not leeching.

when and why are you not leeching in t13 maps ? a shield charge leeches. a leap slam leeches. these skills close the distance and then you can facetank

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Block isnt better than evasion because you can also stack armour, you can stack armour through the roof on an evasion character and the ev is entropic.

block is better than acro/phase acro, which is what I meant by being evasion character. same reason why you cant stack armour with having acro. stacking both armour and evasion without acro requires some heavy investment, probably comparable to block. whereas instant leech is pretty much no investment, and acro/phase acro require only 5 points.

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Im sure the way you guys play marauder melee

you're slippin' here

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When I farm uber lab, I kill izzaro 3 times and argus once, Ive recorded it and watched it back, across all 4 of those fights I got hit by them a total of 2 times despite facetanking them at point blank the whole time, and when they landed those 2 shots they did essentially no damage.

izaro and argus are phys attack hitters. no shit armour and endurance charges makes them cakewalk. add a blind, enfeeble and even with 5k evasion its a breeze. izaro is trivial for both spectrums of builds nowadays. bursty glass builds kill him instantly, and tanks tank him.

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I dont think vp leech is the best defense in the game, at all,

its not the best defense in the game per se, but it is by far the best defense you get while being able to dish out ridiculous levels of damage. otherwise, a regen aegis tank with gg gear is probably the best defense. which still wont protect him from DD or powerful degen. so, in general, when we talk about archetypes, pound for pound, instant leech type is by far the powerful defensive archetype that many and MOST builds - life/es/spell/melee/bow - can employ.

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it lets you facetank the shapers beam which is something you can just side step with ease, it does that 1 trick and thats it.

as long as youre hitting and damaging something, its superior defense for ANY degen in the game. why do you think they made the beam as a degen ? its because conventional defenses cannot handle hard degen.

also, in no way its a 'one trick' pony, stop it with hyperboles please.
go ahead and show me a armour/evasion toon facetanking two/three shaper's balls in a row.

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Everything else you can facetank with other defenses

again, go ahead and show me a armour/evasion toon facetanking two/three shaper's balls in a row. and that's me quoting me myself !

I can show you a leech zerker with 7.5es who can do it. and as we all know, 7.5kes is around 6k life or even worse

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and often you can tank them from a distance while you are not leeching,

why do you need to tank from distance if you can stand next to them and leechtank ?

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Tarille wrote:

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Apos912 wrote:

After removing instant leech, on top of regen having nerfed in the past, on top of armour being crap, on top of evasion being crap, what can a player do to survive?

Call me crazy.

But what if, right, what if they removed instant leech... But then balanced the game around no instant leech?

Thus making Armour/Evasion/Regen/Block/Regular Leech all viable forms of mitigation for all content, rather than making instant leech the end all be all of defence.

Throw in a non-Vaal Discipline way for non-Witch characters to get their ES recharge to work in combat and you might even be able to make non-Leech based ES builds properly.

That's the thing right? Players are suffering from power creep, because content is being power creeped due to Instant Leech being so powerful, especially when combined with power creep of damage (I mean, even Instant Leech is garbage pre-Merc. Like you'll be doing what 4-5k DPS in Cruel? Which is only what 160-200 HPS if you've taken 2% leech worth of passives and slotted a 2% leech gem? Heck, you take every non-weapon specific leech and gem you're only at 6.6% which is 264-330 HPS which isn't going to make you immortal)

They remove instant leech, then they can balance leech around player life. While keeping player damage able to be high (They mentioned they wanted the game to be relaxing after a day at work, hence making players kill stuff so easily right?)

Like, they could make Vaal Pact work on increasing the maximum leech/s threshold and balance around that so you have a choice of VP for more leech, or no VP and go something like Leech + Regen. Or any number of other Leech combo's (Or even take no leech)

I'd be up for it if the plan was established before hand to weight everything.

A solution that involves 20 steps and 19 of them are blind ones based on "let's make the first step and go from there" are recipes for disaster. I'd rather the game didn't become a drag to play for 3-4 leagues.

That kind of balancing is what got us to this point to begin with. Always nerfing something and then promise that now we can balance more properly in the future.

The future is bright now that HP got rescaled. So much easier to balance now!
The future is bright now that MoM/EB/AA is shit. So much easier to balance now!
The future is bright now that regen got nerfed. So much easier to balance now!
The future is bright now that juggernaut got nerfed. So much easier to balance now!

And yet the future never became bright with any of that.

A huge revamp, sure, all for it. Yet another "this mechanic is bad, you'll see how much better everything will be without it", I'd rather not.

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Apos912 wrote:

A huge revamp, sure, all for it. Yet another "this mechanic is bad, you'll see how much better everything will be without it", I'd rather not.

A huge revamp would be ideal for it.

That way they can not only rebalance all the values so that everything is in check (Monster damage vs player defences etc)

But also can try and revamp the skill tree to make sure that various defences are roughly equal in their ease of access vs output.

I.e. A Witch can hit every pure ES node, including Essence Surge in just 47 points granting 199% increased ES, 54 base ES and CI. Meanwhile you have someone like Marauder who to get similar values needs to spend 66 points and ends up with 193% life and 86 base life. Oh, with 2% regen (Compared to CI...)

If the tree was more balanced these would be much closer in terms of output:input ratio especially if both pretty much use the same sustain mechanics.

I do agree that just flat removing instant leech and then saying "Oh yeah, we'll get around to making people not wet tissue paper... Eventually" would be bad.

But hopefully they can and do decide to do an overhaul of the way defences and monster damage works (I mean, 3.0 would have been an ideal time. However, it's unlikely that they have done so and it's too late to start working on it now)