VP+Reflect

If reflect was removed, what other play style could compete with glass cannon in terms of race leagues?

People like to compete and like to win. This would bring the competitive characters down to just very high dps builds.

They noticed that the presence of Vaal Pact was causing the meta-game to shift to exactly that.

So how could variety of play-styles be achieved and be competitive when it wasn't when Vaal Pact existed before?

Similarly how could it be achieved with reflect removed as you suggest.

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CidAvadose wrote:

If reflect was removed, what other play style could compete with glass cannon in terms of race leagues?

People are constantly saying that you don't need too much DPS to fast clear. I actually agree with that - my sunder glad has DPS that is so low that most people would laugh on it, but i can still clear T15 in a minute or two, depending on the layout.

But really, some builds are better for race events, while others are inferior. Maybe i'd prefer to play
blade flurry in turmoil but sunder has a way superior clearspeed, so i had to choose sunder.

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LaiTash wrote:

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Only if you build a poorly made glass canon. It's really simple to deal with reflect. With or without VP. Just take it into account.

You keep saying this and yet all your current characters use Vaal Pact. Yeah there is a way to deal with reflect. Just don't make a glass cannon. So much for a build diversity.

Alright, then I'll say it. It's really simple to deal with reflect. Just take it into account.

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LaiTash wrote:

Here we go again. Show me you "outskilling" reflect. I don't think you ever tried because VP does this for you.

They could just add a visible aura to volatile mobs and be done with it. Here we go. Can be outskilled. Just don't kill the damn thing. I guess not killing is even easier than not hitting. Or reduce it to low life and finish it by swapping to ranged. Or reduce it to low life and let DoT do the rest. Or just don't play pure melee. Perfectly avoidable.

Already told you a few pages back. Use point blank / far shot or split your damage or use a safe AoE skill since you don't need overkill damage or any other option that seems suitable for your build. And if you make it a DoT reflect wouldn't be effective against the very thing it's supposed to be strong against (high damage direct damage builds). So it makes no sense.

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LaiTash wrote:

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They are two completely different mechanics.

No they are very similar. Both are designed to punish specific builds with instant RIP while not affecting others at all. Both are insanely hard to avoid. Both aren't needed.

No. They are very different. To survive Volatile you had to raise your effective elemental hit points through the roof and this was not possible for a lot builds that didn't use Kaom's Heart (or ES back then). Reflect has many different counters depending on your own type of attack (small faster attacks or 1 big strong), attack damage, choice of Ascendancy and so on and so on.

Instant rips through reflects points back at you. Volatile often didn't when a Devourer popped up beneath and instantly blew you up.

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LaiTash wrote:

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If you Pathfinder use the flask increase + reduced elemental damage to reduce reflect.

Right. I've been playing an elemental tornado shot raider while wearing sibyl's + yugul + flasks + dodge
but still VP was *required* to play it without dying or just being reduced to like 40% life due to reflect. I guess i also needed shittons of evasion.

Then lower the damage on your AoE skill. TS + GMP + Chain increases clear speed and is reflect safe. Adapt, adapt, adapt.

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LaiTash wrote:

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Btw the new VP gives you leech very similar to the current Slayer leech. Would you say a Slayer dealing elemental damage has a hard time dealing with reflect because he doesn't have VP? Of course not. And you know it's true.

Of course it's not true. Slayer with VP is (was) a nonsense. He's using atziri's acuity instead.

You misunderstand. Slayers today do not need VP to survive reflect. Not even if they go for elemental damage. The new VP is very similar to current Slayer Leech. Therefore reflect is not gonna be a problem when VP is changed.

Again - I gave you the tools on how to combat reflect without VP. If you for some reason can't handle it well have fun playing totem builds / chaos builds / other 100% reflect proof builds. I'll just stick to simple math, solve the problem and keep playing bow builds with balanced defense and offense.

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astraph wrote:

I WAS NOT using abyssus in the "tanky" setup. Also i had something like 50% chance to evade plus ~50% block with flasks, enfeeble on blasphemy and high life regen, in addition to instant leech. Yeah in terms of physical mitigation i did not have much, but i was a BERSEKER, not a duelist so your math is way off to begin with. Also on a 5700 hit you would need 23500 armour to reduce that damage by 1/4 which essentially means 1425, so no 20000 Armour would not reduce by 2K, and if we are talking about an active flask,if i have time to react and press the damn flask i would have immortal call triggered so i would be safe anyway :P.

I gave you some calculations based on what you wrote. I don't know your setup. The math is correct (besides armour. Should have explicitly stated that you can soak a maximum of 10% of your armour score, not that 20000 equals 2000 soak). You can do the similar calculations with the correct numbers for your own build and adapt accordingly. If you 1-shot yourself with 8k hit points the mistake is your own. Even as a Berserker.

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No. They are very different. To survive Volatile you had to raise your effective elemental hit points through the roof and this was not possible for a lot builds that didn't use Kaom's Heart (or ES back then). Reflect has many different counters depending on your own type of attack (small faster attacks or 1 big strong), attack damage, choice of Ascendancy and so on and so on.

Then use Kaom's heart, what's the problem?

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Then lower the damage on your AoE skill. TS + GMP + Chain increases clear speed and is reflect safe. Adapt, adapt, adapt.

It's damage WAS relatively low already. If i wanted even lower damage, i'd just play phys cyclone slayer and be safe from almost everything.

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I'll just stick to simple math, solve the problem and keep playing bow builds with balanced defense and offense.

Somehow i don't think so. You did not bother doing so when you had Vaal Pact and just prefered the easy route, which was smart and allowed you to compete with other builds that can do great damage and don't fear reflect. I don't see why you would want to gimp yourself and still have a GOOD chance to die from reflect.

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LaiTash wrote:

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No. They are very different. To survive Volatile you had to raise your effective elemental hit points through the roof and this was not possible for a lot builds that didn't use Kaom's Heart (or ES back then). Reflect has many different counters depending on your own type of attack (small faster attacks or 1 big strong), attack damage, choice of Ascendancy and so on and so on.

Then use Kaom's heart, what's the problem?

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Then lower the damage on your AoE skill. TS + GMP + Chain increases clear speed and is reflect safe. Adapt, adapt, adapt.

It's damage WAS relatively low already. If i wanted even lower damage, i'd just play phys cyclone slayer and be safe from almost everything.

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I'll just stick to simple math, solve the problem and keep playing bow builds with balanced defense and offense.

Somehow i don't think so. You did not bother doing so when you had Vaal Pact and just prefered the easy route, which was smart and allowed you to compete with other builds that can do great damage and don't fear reflect. I don't see why you would want to gimp yourself and still have a GOOD chance to die from reflect.

Dude. I don't even why I bother with this discussion. You have a long line of claims grabbed out out of thin air and you back them up with zero valid arguments or zero calculations. I have already showed you how you can outleech reflect damage without VP. With the new VP it's going to be even easier to survive reflect without instant leech. It's really simple math but somehow you just ignore facts and go "fakenews" on this thread.

A) It's a bad thing if every build needs to use Kaom's Heart. But it's not a bad thing if many different builds have many different ways of countering reflect.

B) ... So you damage was low but somehow you still needed VP to survive reflect when you had sibyl's, yugul, primeval force, pathfinder nodes and possibly 82% max resist with flasks up? LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. Bullshit alert xD

C) I didn't bother playing without VP lately. Doesn't mean I haven't dealt with reflect for years without instant leech. Last Mayhem I was #4 champion without VP on a bow build. So yeah, I can deal with reflect just fine without VP. And who is talking about gimping yourself and still having a good chance to die from reflect xD? You can do efficient builds with every Ascendancy class just fine and deal with reflect easily. You just gotta know how (which for some reason you refuse to accept).

Oh well. I guess you are just one of those people that jumped on forum bandwagon of "reflect is hard" and when a streamer shows you how to deal with it then you can finally accept reality.

I have 5700 life and 76 fire res and can withstand a volatile (and reflect) head-on in t12+ maps, using a melee cleave build relying mostly on non-vp leech (and blind. BotR. pretty sure volatiles cannot be blinded).

You don't need to be super-tank for them.

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tidbit wrote:

I have 5700 life and 76 fire res and can withstand a volatile (and reflect) head-on in t12+ maps, using a melee cleave build relying mostly on non-vp leech (and blind. BotR. pretty sure volatiles cannot be blinded).

You don't need to be super-tank for them.

Old volatiles. They used to do higher damage on average, and their damage was tied to the damage of the monster that caused it, so it depended on what the particular rare was... sometimes it could be incredibly high damage, sometimes it was laughable.

The new volatiles are much more reasonable, especially since they started making noise... it's not just a raw hp/res check to survive them now as a melee.

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CidAvadose wrote:

If reflect was removed, what other play style could compete with glass cannon in terms of race leagues?

Glass cannons already dominate both SC and HC ladders. See Turmoil HC, Ziz and Havoc ran builds with ZERO defense and crushed the race.