VP+Reflect

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astraph wrote:

I explained extensively in page 11 why i think reflect is an unfair mechanic (in this form), and how it punishes different builds that can essentially have the same DPS/defenses but different ways to scale their damage. The best option is to turn it into a damage over time effect.

If you turn it into a damage over time effect it won't be a counter to the builds it's supposed to counter. You might as well remove it then. The best option is to just keep it and let players deal with it. Maybe add a few extra options to reduce reflected damage taken through uniques (maybe a new unique or two that's not in the ring slot) or buff the essence craft ring to 15 or 20%.

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Shppy wrote:

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

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Right. And unfortunately we are neither slayer nor we are juggernaut. You're trying to lure me to the left side again.

First, in PoE, there are no tanks as long as red rare maps are involved. There only offensive builds, very offensive builds, and extremely offensive builds.
Second, if you plan to use physical damage and dont get reflect immunity, you just MUST go Slayer/Ascendant no matter what.

At least, that's what GGG forces us to do! Not immune to reflect and using physical? Suffer, noob.

Funny, my main character and a couple others this league were phys, and reflect rares weren't really an issue. And only one of those characters was a slayer (which i lost interest in early in mapping, cuz flicker kinda gets old real fast), and none of them were VP. Hell, none of them even hit 5k life.

Now reflect maps? Yeah, those kinda sucked (but were do-able with caution). But those are easily rerolled.

But of course, with Slayer+Yugul, my Slayer (with his former, physical build) also could ignore reflect rares. Without? Potentially dangerous, could insta-gib myself. And my Slayer had 8k+ life.
Reflect map? Just a "FUCK YOU" if you arent a Slayer (with 100% reflect resist, reflect map isnt an issue).

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Frankenberry wrote:

About the whole "tanks don't exist in PoE". Depends how you understand a tank. If your understanding of a WoW tank that does almost no damage but can take even very large amounts of damage then yeah - kind of true.

Yes, that's the tank in my opinion (though you arent right about WoW - "tanks" there still DO damage, just few times lower as those who dedicated themselves to DPS). In PoE, no matter how much you invest into defenses (and how shit your DPS/movespeed will become), you still can be killed in ~1 second.

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Frankenberry wrote:

f you look at the math I just presented what you write is just not true. You can do physical damage without Slayer / Ascendant. It requires high physical mitigation which mathematically works similarly (except if you go to 100% reflect reduction) to reduced reflect damage taken except it also provides defense against physical damage which is useful in every map! :D

You can, potentially. But how much investments it will take? And how it will reduce your DPS/killing speed? With Slayer, you get "reflect-proof" with just 1 ring and 1 lesser Pantheon, while still keeping nice DPS/leech boosts from Slayer and everything else you might need in your build. Without Slayer (and without instant leech, obviously? You have to dedicate most of your build just to counter reflect, specifically.


For me, reflect looks like a "cheap trick" to make enemies, that always die instantly before they can even react, "difficult" to player.
But enemies (in content, appropriate to player's level/gear) should die so fast, that's the problem. Player's damage is just overpowered in PoE. Even if you invest like 80-90% of your build and items into defences (like my Slayer builds), you still oneshot trash in T16.
It's much easier to add cheap mechanics like reflect or porcupine goliaphs, rather than balance out player's damage and enemy's HP (which would probably require revising current system of tons of "MOAR DAMAGE" multipliers.

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Frankenberry wrote:

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astraph wrote:

I explained extensively in page 11 why i think reflect is an unfair mechanic (in this form), and how it punishes different builds that can essentially have the same DPS/defenses but different ways to scale their damage. The best option is to turn it into a damage over time effect.

If you turn it into a damage over time effect it won't be a counter to the builds it's supposed to counter. You might as well remove it then. The best option is to just keep it and let players deal with it. Maybe add a few extra options to reduce reflected damage taken through uniques (maybe a new unique or two that's not in the ring slot) or buff the essence craft ring to 15 or 20%.

No and no. Forcing uniques for one stupid MINOR mechanic that few rares have here and there, or forcing a specific ascedancy is not right. Do not ignore said post in page 11. It is stupid that someone who chooses to scale pure physical or pure elemental, or a heavy hitting skill instead of a fast one to be punished much harder(even when the practically have the sane DPS/defenses). Yeah you can make a total glass cannon that laughs at reflect, and one that can actually have lower DPS and gets destroyed by it. It discriminates. A change of the mechanic should happen. Watch Mathil's shield charge. The first one (Berseker) failed. The second (slayer) which used every fuckin mechanic around to counter phys reflect, still had traboules. Why? Because shield charge, while on DPS/clear speed terms is mediocre, it hits very fucking hard. How is fair that this mediocre to the last bit skill to be punished so hard at a mechanic, while bows can offscreen the whole map, have 10x the clear speed and just laugh at the mechanic? How can you also justify the fact that melee, due to being all the time in the crossfire and the much much less AoE, by design needs more damage per hit etc.? Adress these issues, tell me that reflect is equal for all builds/playstyle when similar defenses/DPS/clear speed is considered, and i will shut the fuck up. Cheers.

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Address these issues, tell me that reflect is equal for all builds/play style when similar defenses/DPS/clear speed is considered

And here is where your misconception comes in.

Reflect does not effect all play styles the same. And it is not supposed to.

Here are some examples, under your similar defenses/DPS/clear speed argument.

A pure element/physical build can deal more status ailments then a mixed one, but a mixed one has less of an issue against reflect.

Damage done by one hit as opposed to many has more status damage and better against corrupting blood Rares, but one with a lot of little hits (at least in terms of physical damage) is much better against reflect.

Damage that hits a large area has much better clear speed then damage that hits a small area, but hitting a smaller area means less reflected damage when fighting on a reflect map (which is 100% avoidable).

Specializing in dealing damage off screen means opponents never get a chance to attack you, but runs the risk of getting a reflect rare in the face. I feel this is a 100% fare trade-off as you are not even interacting with the enemy otherwise.

The above is not an exhaustive list.

Also reflect is not the only mechanic that needs to be considered when building characters.

Here is a list of things I am taking into account on my character about various (non-reflect) mechanics.
-I have a single target attack for Soul Link creatures.
-I keep a bloodthirsty support in my inventory to add to my weapon (so to remove the option of bleeding) on my Vorici Missions.
-I keep myself at 75% Elemental Resist with Fortify Socceted to my melee attack to keep down elemental damage.
-I keep Vitality in my inventory to switch out with Enfeeble-Blasphemy for when curses don't work.
-I use high life regen to combat damage over time effects.
-Etc.

We all have to do many things to deal with various aspects of the game.

The problem with removing reflect is it allows one technique. Kill the screen with massive damage to make it so you can ignore all other aspects of the game.

If we removed everything that is bad for a particular build/play style we would just be left with loot laying around on the floor. Oh wait that would preference people who like high movement speed.

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astraph wrote:

No and no. Forcing uniques for one stupid MINOR mechanic that few rares have here and there, or forcing a specific ascedancy is not right.

There are plenty of other options. Evasion / dodge / block / general mitigation (either elemental or physical), splitting damage and so on and so on and so on. It's not like we don't already have numerous options to counter it. It's not forced on you. But extra options are (almost) always good.

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astraph wrote:

Do not ignore said post in page 11. It is stupid that someone who chooses to scale pure physical or pure elemental, or a heavy hitting skill instead of a fast one to be punished much harder(even when the practically have the sane DPS/defenses).

You have to hit silly hard for this to make a difference with elemental hits. With physical damage armour still makes quite a difference even if you hit hard and slow instead of fast. I already went over the math numerous times in this thread. For my current Bow Archer to kill myself in 1 hit I would have to hit the monster for 302k damage. And that's a character without that much reflect protection.

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astraph wrote:

Yeah you can make a total glass cannon that laughs at reflect, and one that can actually have lower DPS and gets destroyed by it. It discriminates.

Yes. It's possible to make a well made character and a poorly made character. It's one of the good things about this game.

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astraph wrote:

Watch Mathil's shield charge. The first one (Berseker) failed. The second (slayer) which used every fuckin mechanic around to counter phys reflect, still had traboules. Why? Because shield charge, while on DPS/clear speed terms is mediocre, it hits very fucking hard.

I don't really watch streams that much. Don't really see the point. But honestly as I already showed several times in this thread you can easily survive reflect as long as you scale some form of mitigation. It doesn't even have to be reflect reduction. Honestly the mechanic is not even different from any other form of damage except it actually hits us because monsters can't really fight back in this game (which sucks).

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astraph wrote:

How is fair that this mediocre to the last bit skill to be punished so hard at a mechanic, while bows can offscreen the whole map, have 10x the clear speed and just laugh at the mechanic?

They can't ? The mechanic works similarly for bows and it does for other attacks. The reflected damage becomes projectile base so Arrow dancer helps a bit but that's the only difference.

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astraph wrote:

How can you also justify the fact that melee, due to being all the time in the crossfire and the much much less AoE, by design needs more damage per hit etc.? Adress these issues, tell me that reflect is equal for all builds/playstyle when similar defenses/DPS/clear speed is considered, and i will shut the fuck up. Cheers.

I don't have to address any of these issues because they have nothing to do with reflect or this thread.

also you wrote something about not ignoring your post on page 11. I am sorry. I could go over it in detail but the post just seem like claims that can't be backed up by math or reality. To me it sounds like you think reflect is this super special mechanic in this game when in reality mitigating and surviving it is not really different from any other mechanic. People just fail to do the math.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

But of course, with Slayer+Yugul, my Slayer (with his former, physical build) also could ignore reflect rares. Without? Potentially dangerous, could insta-gib myself. And my Slayer had 8k+ life.
Reflect map? Just a "FUCK YOU" if you arent a Slayer (with 100% reflect resist, reflect map isnt an issue).

No, without slayer or Yugul. Try reading, I said only one of those characters, that wasn't even my main character, was a slayer. And I did't bring up Yugul, but I didn't use it on any of them, i generally prefer Ryslatha. Don't usually need Yugul outside of reflect maps, because I have this handy thing called a brain that helps approach reflect rares.

(did use yugul on my turmoil character though, mostly cuz i ran a lot of unid'd maps and he had a harder time with the occasional reflect maps even with caution)

The slayer didn't have much of an issue with reflect of course, because his 50% and fortify he was pretty safe. Of the other couple characters, my main gladiator has no reduced reflect (but sometimes has fortify), and a my raider archer had no reduced damage taken mod of any kind. Reflect rares aren't much of an issue, just takes a little awareness and some decent defenses.

mathil's shield charge build: Abyssus + Lycosidae + crit/multi + extremely low AR + noob trap (CWDT/IC)

no wonder he had to take 50% + 25% + 10% phys reduction from the tree

btw: check Abyss trailer, reflect mob is there, right in the middle (and sadly, it is the only thing that damages the player)

as long as the game is as it is - mobs are more dangerous when dead and we deal screen-wide, 1m+ damage - reflect has to stay, no matter how stupid or dated this mechanic is.

Mathil, like him or not, is anything BUT a noob. He did what he did because he had his reasons. If we are talking about shield charge, on my playstyle (glass cannon, abyssus, mirrored dagger) i get one shotted on reflect even on enfeeble maps with shield charge which is linked JUST to fortify. Personally i do not care. I have not played seriously in years. I do not give a fuck. I even leveled in the past from 92-95 SOLO with a build that one shotted itself on reflect. How? PLaying smartly(taking slower and using totem/a full ele conversion skill on reflect mobs or abusing CWDT/IM with Doedre's Elixir) and never playing maps with Beyond or Devourers where it would be unavoidable to hit a reflect rare. I had leveled to 96 on earlky 2014 (1.1) when very few people did (i think peaked at 200 or so on the Standard Softcore Ladder). I know what i can do or what it takes to level up. But i still think reflect has to go. Not because i dislike it OR hurts my playstyle. I have proven that i do not think this way.

I love instant leech. I always advocated that is bad for the game and has to go or changed.

I love extreme DPS. I always advocated that player damage is too high and has to be cut by a factor of 5-10.

But there is no point in discussing it anymore since it is clear that it is still there.

Mathil is no noob, but exactly given his experience he is playing builds that are "fun to play, fast, and fun to be watched" - as it was stated - he is playing builds that are noobs traps in lots of cases as you have to be skilled and know how to deal with some shit to make builds work.

Playing for the extremes, you can be one in thousand who has mirrored gear and is capable of breaking the game, but you gets punished in a way that other 999 are not.

There are lots of changes that affect 80% and 20% is being shit on.
But there are some changes that get pushed that shits on 80% and are being shouted through the dev process through reddit and big outcrys.
Letz see if the leaked VP change will affect Reflect in any shape or form. I am pretty sure they will lower the reflect % (maybe even on map mod)