Regular Schmuck's Take on ES Manifesto(?)

I know nobody cares, but thus far my observation is that the forum in general’s reaction to the, ahh…controversial…ES Manifesto falls into one of two camps. Those camps being:

1.) “EHRMUHGEHRD MUH EEH EHSS IZ GEHRBEHGE NUW!!”

2.) “YEEESSSSS SWEET DELICIOUS TEARS CRY SOME MOOOOO0OORE”

Neither of these is…really helpful at all. Neither outrage nor crowing at outrage is really warranted, so I was hoping to express, and ask for, a few somewhat more moderate opinions. Mostly just to see if they exist.

So. Concerns:

A.) ES is a poor choice if you cannot get significantly more ES than you can life for the same build.
The new system is increasing the amount of overall life that life builds can get – I’m expecting another ~500 life on average from the new mods as a ballpark figure, transforming a ~4.5-6k Average Range to a ~5-6.5k range. ES, in the meantime, is being pulled ALL the way back, with the top-end range being cut by north of 10k and the interim ranges being trimmed back as well.

I’m concerned that when there’s not enough gap between the “Doable” totals between the two (i.e. not the “I have a million Exalts and nothing else useful to do with them” bleeding-edge maximums, but the Regular Schmoe midrange totals), then ES becomes little more than Blue Life you can’t sustain for crap. 7k, 8k, 9k ES builds already have to invest heavily in other defensive measures; is turning them into 6k, 7k, maybe 8k at the top end of “affordable” really going to be worthwhile?

Tying into this…:

B.) ES is already expensive. These changes seem like they may push ES out of the realm of anyone without infinite money
ES is already expensive and difficult to work with for a lot of folks. Yes yes, I know, “GIT GUDDER SCRUB”. Again – moderate opinions, here. To my eyes, reducing the range of possible ES rolls means that people who previously charged fifteen exalts for a chestpiece only on a 900+ ES roll will now charge those same fifteen exalts for a 600+ chestpiece because “this is the new high end!”

Nobody can pay fifteen flippin’ Ex for a 600 ES chest and not hate themselves for it.

This change worries me mostly because it seems to eliminate the middle ground between “not enough ES, just be a Life build” and “I HAVE ALL THE MONEYS” that allowed players who couldn’t scrum up 5ex a day to try ES builds. You either don’t have enough ES to bother with being an ES build, or you don’t have the dozens of exalts you need to outfit a character with enough ES to be worthwhile. The middle ground’s been squeezed out – is that the way we want this to go?

On a more positive(?) note:

C.) CIGRVP Is Dead, and Rightly So
Energy Shield has become too easy to sustain. Its advantage over life was always supposed to be the fact that you could get a shitload more of it, with its drawback being that it was much more difficult to reliably recover than a life build, forcing the player to actually change their playstyle in order to find ways to get their ES back. I like the idea of Ghost Reaver trading ES recharge out for ES leech – that means either a significant and painful choice for a build, or that Ghost Reaver builds need to do more than just take Ghost Reaver, slap a Vinktar on and win – they have to actually invest in their leech because their ES recharge will suck.

The changes to Ghost Reaver and Vaal Pact means no more ducking the no-regen drawback on Vaal Pact (which makes Labbing with VP Life builds just fucking awful, by the way) by just going ES and getting superior recharge anyways as well as improving your leech even without VP by having twice the health pool and thus twice the max leech rate. The Occultist Ascendancy becomes valuable for being an ES specialist and carves out its own niche now that every CI build under the sun can’t get all the sustain of a life build except with twice the EHP pool. I like how these keystone adjustments make the playstyle divide between Life (easy to sustain, low EHP pool) and ES (hard to sustain, high EHP pool) much sharper. That’s a plus, and a win for the game as a whole.

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Without seeing/playing the beta I have no idea how this’ll all shake out for the Regular Schmuck (as opposed to the rich bastards complaining about not being able to make an AFK Shaper farmer build anymore, oh boo hoo for joo…), but I’m cautiously optimistic over the keystone changes whilst being worried about the drastic cuts to ES totals. I feel like maybe the total-value penalties might be overdoing it some, but the adjustments to VP and Ghost Reaver are definitely a step in the right direction. Vaal Pact needs to be reworked completely – with Volatiles and Reflect being redone as well, now is the time to make instant leech as a thing entirely just go away – but as a start? This is…acceptable.

It is a beta, and they may settle on final ES values that aren’t as punitive as the proposed numbers, but overall I believe I am warily in favor of the direction as a whole. That will change a lot if ES goes back to being “don’t even attempt without 30ex in the bank” because that’s horse manure and everybody knows it, but anything which reinforces an actual difference in playstyle between ES and Life builds is worth investigating.

Anyone else out there interested in seeing where this goes, as opposed to sobbing over not being able to facetank double Shaper anymore or prickishly taunting people who can’t facetank double Shaper anymore?

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1453R wrote:

Neither outrage nor crowing at outrage is really warranted

SSDD

GGG have made so many great things kaputt in the past and the kiddies were crying over their now broken toys, flooding the forum with tears. But rest assured, this will pass as it always had and people will get on with it. ;)

I'm well familiar with the dual-sided bitchstorm that always accompanies sweeping changes or updates in any vidja gaem. Heh, just mostly pointing out that neither screeching nor taunting solves anything and desirous of a more measured discussion, if one is out there to be had.

I don't particularly mind the current top-end ES numbers, frankly. It's the ease of sustain for ES that's the issue. Ghost Reaver makes Energy Shield as easy to sustain as a typical life build, especially since Vaal Pact had no downside whatsoever for a typical Chaos Inoculation build. If you want a giant fat blue EHP cushion to soak damage with, that cushion should ideally be harder to fill back up than the slimmer red EHP cushion, especially given that "you can use life flasks!" is usually considered a drawback by CI folks when they're not trying to defend the current state of CI.

As I recall, most folks consider the ability to use five utility/unique flasks to be one of the primary strengths of CI, with Chaos immunity being a nice bonus but not really critical to the game. CI is "five util flasks and a 15% MOAR shield node, and also bonus chaos immunity if you care". If that's one of the strengths of Chaos Inoculation, you can't also then turn around and say that life flasks - which you're claiming are Bad and Stuff - are a benefit to Life builds.

That one can only swing one way, folks. Are life flasks Gud, or Bad?