VP+Reflect

"

Frankenberry wrote:

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.

Calling someone's arguments invalid doesn't mean they are. Zero calculation? Ok here you go:

Flicker strike character with 40000k DPS. Something you would expect from a pure glass cannon.

variables:
M = 0.2 - reflected damage multiplier
R = 0.55 - reflect reduction multiplier from yugul + fortify
D = 0.6 - dodge multiplier
B = 0.85 - basalt multiplier
A = 0.87 - AA multiplier

400000 * 0.2 * 0.55 * 0.6 * 0.85 * 0.87 = 19522

19522 damage per second.

I think we better reduce our damage to 200k:

19522 / 2 = 9761

Damn. Let's add lightning coil:

Total reflected: 200000 * 0.55 * 0.6 = 13200
Phys part: 13200 * 0.7 * 0.85 * 0.87 = 6832
Lightning part: 13200 * 0.3 * 0.25 = 990

6832 + 990 = 7822

OOOOK. Let's split our damage and add phys to lightning (not counting added damage to simplify):

Total reflected = 13200
Phys part: 6600 * 0.7 * 0.85 * 0.87 = 3416
Lightning part: (6600 + 6600 * 0.3) * 0.25 = 2145

3416 + 2145 = 5561

Ok, let's have topaz flask:
Lightning part: (6600 + 6600 * 0.3) * 0.19 = 1630

3416 + 1630 = 5046

Good. With the new VP, IF we can get there after taking all the crit chance nodes to sustain frenzy charges, we can partially outleech that. Let's say we have 7k HP. Very unlikely for a glass cannon (lol a glass cannon with 200k dps) with lightning coil, but...

7k * 0.4 = 2800

So after one second, we're down only to 7000 - 5046 + 2800 = 4754 life. Well that's mych more than half of our life pool left.

All with lightning coil, yugul, fortify, basalt, phys to lightning, full dodge, topaz, AA, VP and hell know what i've forgot already.

Now let's see what mods we can't do now:

- Phys reflect
- Elemental reflect
- Vulnerability
- No leech
- -12% resists
- reduced flask charges gained
- dodge chance is unlucky
- most likely elemental weakness because with LC it's hard to overcap resists properly

All suffixes. What this means is that we'll have to reroll maps A LOT more than someone with reflect immunity. And sure as hell we can't do corrupted maps.

So i've just lowered my DPS to something laughable, got LC, full dodge, 2 flasks, AA, splitted my damage, added fortify, took yugul - all to barely survive reflect and be unable to run most maps.

Now, yes, it would be much easier if i also had sibyl's. But hey, just like you i don't like mandatory uniques. And i don't think that this build is SO BAD that i have to wear it simply to survive.

"

toyotatundra wrote:

"

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.

They run with aurabots and most likely auto-logout macro. They also don't have any real jobs. Doesn't count.

There are ways to counter reflect for pretty much any build. This does not make it a good mechanic. Same as Instant Leech. It is not a good mechanic. Reflect is "unfair" because:

1) It discriminates against skills. It can be very harsh against heavy hitters, while it can be non issue for other skills that attack multiple times but essentially can have the same DPS.

2) It discrimates against your support gems/playstyle. It is far harsher if you go pure damage, meaning pure physical or pure elemental. For the first time GGG let us scale pure physical damage and not having to convert to elemental to do some devent DPS. However going Brutality/Melee Physical/Maim/Ruthless is essentially asking for trouble with reflect.

3) It -kind off- discriminates against Melee. Melee usually has higher damage per hit. Especially if you are not a 2 Handed user, you are essentially playing with your single target skill all the time, minus one gem. On the other hand, bow skills or spell clearing skills usually have much higher clear speed, but they resort into billions projectiles that chain and huge AoE skills that individually do not DO as much damage to really hurt you on reflect. Usually, not always. Some spells can have issues, and do not have access to 2 6Ls, like bows do. Also melee has Abyssus, and before you say "do not use it", this item can be responsible for half you damage and as a Melee glass cannon, you can ALWAYS use the extra damage to kil fast since you do not have the safety of outranging mobs like a ranged build can. Also a melee build will get hit more and harder, and the extra physical damage you receive is already extremelly harsh.

4) The amount of damage needed to take care of Shaper, guardians, and even t15 bosses if you stack them with mods that reduce your damage/increase their HP, is disproportionate to the damage that will hurt you on reflect. In order to kill them fast enough in a less defense oriented build which cannot tank them long enough, the damage needed WILL hurt you on reflect on some builds. See above the discrimantions. Sure some skills that rely more on attack speed and have split damage will be less suspectible. Sure reflect, even as a whole pack aura that it used to be, made more sense when the final boss lv77 Shrine Piety, or lv78 Palace dominus, where 15K DPS was also enough to comfortably clear all content, and the most high end, mirrored item users had 150 - 500K DPS.

5) It is stupid to have Uncapped, Percentage based, Instant mechanic that either punishes you for your damage output, or rewards you (reflect + instant leech). Since one finally hits the road, the other has too. Do not talk to me about hardcore game or that bullshit. Dark Souls is far more hardcore than PoE and it does not have reflect. Neither does Demon Souls, BLoodborne, Witcher 2(which was ore hardcore than 3), Nioh, Salt and Sanctuary or pretty much any of the new wave "hardcore" ARPGs that came out the last 8-9 years(and have become kind of a trend).

6) It discriminates against build philosophy. A glass cannon (TRUE glass cannon, people throw the term too easily for pretty much any vaal pact build. A glass cannon will have 4-5.5K HP in the absolute endgame, possibly with abyssus and no defenses. No, NOBODY on hardcore plays such a build. NOBODY got to lv100 with such a build all the way through. A low defense build, or rather a "more offense oriented build" is NOT nesceserily a glass cannon), gets punished by a million mechanics, will never get to lv100, will never be hardcore viable, and especially without instant leech it will much much harder to pull off. There is no need to get punished by its damage as well. ALSO CHRIS IN 2013 HAD STATED THAT HE WANTED GLASS CANNONS TO BE VIABLE. Do not tell me to find the quote, i won't. People who were around in beta possibly remember it.

7) It forces the use of specific uniques, acedancy classes, pantheon powers. It is stupid for just one damn mechanic.

8) It even discrimantes against BUILDS altogether (specifically glass cannons). This is a sum of all my other points. There can be 2 glass cannon builds with the exact same DPS, and one to be very vulnerable to reflect and the other not. NOT because one took more defenses, but rather on how one SCALES ITs Damage. See above. This also makes it unfair. A split ele/phys build can reach higher, much higher damage, while being much safer against reflect at the same time, which also makes it unfair.

Having said that, i do not beleive that reflect should be REMOVED nesceserily. It can be CHANGED. There several ways that it can be done and be a better mechanic like:

1) Make it a damage overtime effect with capped rate (like leech, but definetely higher cap). The higher the damage the longer the duration.

2) Keep it instant but with a cap on a player's HP percentage, like capping at the removal of 50% of players HP.

3) Keep it instant but with a flat value rather than percentage based.

4) Keep it instant with percentage based but make it sort of like Volatile, that it can be manually avoided.

5) At the VERY LEAST, if no other change happens in its mechanic, ,change it to NOT spawn on unavoidable mobs like beyonders or devourers.

"

LaiTash wrote:

They run with aurabots and most likely auto-logout macro. They also don't have any real jobs. Doesn't count.

Everyone competing on the Turmoil ladder runs with supports and logout macros. They also dont have real jobs. They all finished well, well behind Ziz and Havoc.

If you want to compete, you have to play fast glass builds. There's a reason why tanky 0dps Juggernauts, for example, never win a race (not that anyone races with a build that terrible, but you get my point).

Ah yes, i've forgot the funniest part.
Can reflect actually do it's job in limiting glass cannon builds?

Ok. I don't take assassin, maybe loose some damage or maybe not because... slayer has some GOOD nodes for flicker strike.

So i take slayer, sibyl's, yugul... That's it. Nothing stops me from obliterating maps now.

This is what happens when you invent a botch mechanics instead of properly balancing stuff:

- glass cannon builds still exist and don't care for the most part (i guess yes, this invalidates some of my arguments). They just switch ascendancies or just take fortify+sibyl's+yugul and some limited defences.
- choice of ascendancies, uniques, and pantheon powers are severely limited

"

LaiTash wrote:

Ok. I don't take assassin, maybe loose some damage or maybe not because... slayer has some GOOD nodes for flicker strike.

So i take slayer, sibyl's, yugul... That's it. Nothing stops me from obliterating maps now.

This is what happens when you invent a botch mechanics instead of properly balancing stuff:

- glass cannon builds still exist and don't care for the most part (i guess yes, this invalidates some of my arguments). They just switch ascendancies or just take fortify+sibyl's+yugul and some limited defences.
- choice of ascendancies, uniques, and pantheon powers are severely limited

But that's bad game design. I mean forcing people into anti-reflect ascendancy, anti-reflect ring, and anti-reflect pantheon. The fact that we're all forced to run the same all CWDT+Immortal Call+Inc Duration setup bullshit is already bad enough, mandatory bullshit is no good.

Yeeaaaah. I'm ready for a game rebalance. Reflect gotta go.

"

toyotatundra wrote:

"

LaiTash wrote:

They run with aurabots and most likely auto-logout macro. They also don't have any real jobs. Doesn't count.

Everyone competing on the Turmoil ladder runs with aurobots and logout macros. They also dont have real jobs.

They all finished well, well behind glass-cannon builds of Ziz and Havoc.

Hey that's a big assumption on your part. I know at least one person who wasn't running a glass cannon, had no aurabot or autologout and died somewhere on 50'th position.

Someone running with 12 auras and/or 6 curses hardly qualify as a glass cannon. We're talking about regular gameplay, not races. If we are talking about races, then sunder should be nerfed to the ground as the most used in HC/HCSSF during the race.

"

But that's bad game design. I mean forcing people into anti-reflect ascendancy, anti-reflect ring, and anti-reflect pantheon. The fact that we're all forced to run the same all CWDT+Immortal Call+Inc Duration setup bullshit is already bad enough.

Exactly what i'm trying to say.

"

LaiTash wrote:

"

Frankenberry wrote:

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.

Calling someone's arguments invalid doesn't mean they are. Zero calculation? Ok here you go:

Flicker strike character with 40000k DPS. Something you would expect from a pure glass cannon.

variables:
M = 0.2 - reflected damage multiplier
R = 0.55 - reflect reduction multiplier from yugul + fortify
D = 0.6 - dodge multiplier
B = 0.85 - basalt multiplier
A = 0.87 - AA multiplier

[...]

You forgot that you can easily get 50% evasion or so, but that doesn't really matter. Your elaborate calculation mostly shows one thing: Player damage is completely out of whack. So, BTW, is monster life.

Player: 5-15k life.
Player: 1-5 million DPS.

Shaper: 20000k life.
Shaper: 0.02 million DPS

At which point I scratch my head and wonder.... why? Why are we allowed to have DPS that is about a factor of 100 higher than the end bosses DPS? Also, Uber Atziri Double Flameblast is probably the hardest-hitting thing in the entire game from mobs, and hits for around 200k I think (before resists). Players can get single hits to deal way upward of 1 million damage. Why?

The right thing would be to cut monster life by a factor of 100, player damage by a factor of 100. Would also remove the BS high numbers that are floating around, this game is getting closer and closer to D3 in that regard.

I know it will not happen, but making player and monster life comparable as well as player and monster damage comparable would make balancing a lot of things a lot easier. At the same time one could reduce the ridiculous spread in player damage output, and once that is done, even PvP would almost auto-balance itself.

"

You forgot that you can easily get 50% evasion or so

Against monsters, yes, but i need lots of accuracy for my crit chance to work.

"

astraph wrote:

There are ways to counter reflect for pretty much any build. This does not make it a good mechanic. Same as Instant Leech. It is not a good mechanic. Reflect is "unfair" because:

wall of text

Good post. It's much easier to mitigate elemental reflect with 75% resistances than phys reflect investing in armor, endurance charges and etc. This why we can witness the situation where many melee builds forced to convert physical to elemental damage. Many "new" support melee skills aggravate the reflect issue, as you mentioned for example ruthless.

I'm the one who wants all reflect rares be redesigned into racecourse minotaur timed 100% reflect.