Feedback on Berserker's new Defy Pain notable

When I first saw Pain Reaver being changed into Defy Pain, I was of the opinion that it was worse than the notable it replaces and moreover it felt 'rushed'.

Since then I've played a build that utilizes it and did all forms of content the game provides with it.

Here is my feedback:
This notable feels really lacking and in need of improvement. The reflect feels punishing versus swarms and it's linear charge scaling feels useless versus bosses. There's also resentment due to feeling of previous notable being better.

My suggestion on ways of improving it:
Give it back the life leech it had during Pain Reaver times.
Frontload the armor bonus, eg "100% increased armor while you have Defiance, 15% increased armor per Defiance"
Make reaching 10 Defiance provide a buff, granting armor equal to the reflected damage (lowkey synergy with Aspect of Carnage increased damage).
Alternatively, have the bonus for having Defiance or from reaching 10 Defiance from previous suggestion be 100% chance to Defend with Double Armour instead.
Anything else that is conditional on taking a Savage Hit recently. (it felt very thematic for Berserker to have such a bonus, feels weird he no longer has such a conditional and it also synergises with the reflect at 10 Defiance)

From what I understand reflect damage you can guard against with reduced reflect damage, no? If so you got 60% on skill tree so that not big problem?

It’s just not a good node. Life/mana leech may have been boring but it had a practical use. Max life leech rate is certainly nice but I think there could have been a simpler and better way of adding that to the old node.

this node is as good as Elemental Attack Damage Support on a bleed build

like seriously, it is so bad that picking two minor ascendancies is better in 99% situations.

armour bonus is 100% worthless. both because armour is useless on its own and because it is 'randomly available'. you have it now, and now you dont.. cool. defensive mechanic that is this unpredictable is just worthless

life leech.. who cares? same deal: its practical effect is hard to notice and.. now you have it and now you dont.

and after that you just get mauled every 10th hit.. like wtf?

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demon9675 wrote:

It’s just not a good node. Life/mana leech may have been boring but it had a practical use. Max life leech rate is certainly nice but I think there could have been a simpler and better way of adding that to the old node.

The old node had that, it was just conditional on taking a savage hit recently (which in effect is the same, you'd always trigger it if you took damage).
It is indeed a very undesirable node, all builds I saw that take it have been crit slam builds that just don't benefit from Blitz or rage cap. I saw some taking 2 travel nodes instead of allocating it or not have Uber lab points...

I personally like the idea behind the node, just hate the weak/jank implementation.

I couldn't believe they put that node in I genuinely thought it was a joke when they datamined it, has to be in the top 5 for worst ascendancy node and I can't think of many it wouldn't take the top spot vs.

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lolPLSiGOTthis wrote:

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demon9675 wrote:

It’s just not a good node. Life/mana leech may have been boring but it had a practical use. Max life leech rate is certainly nice but I think there could have been a simpler and better way of adding that to the old node.

The old node had that, it was just conditional on taking a savage hit recently (which in effect is the same, you'd always trigger it if you took damage).
It is indeed a very undesirable node, all builds I saw that take it have been crit slam builds that just don't benefit from Blitz or rage cap. I saw some taking 2 travel nodes instead of allocating it or not have Uber lab points...

I personally like the idea behind the node, just hate the weak/jank implementation.

I totally forgot the old node had max leech. Wow, so defy pain is even worse than I thought!

Why was this change made again?

"

demon9675 wrote:

I totally forgot the old node had max leech. Wow, so defy pain is even worse than I thought!

Why was this change made again?

Well Pain Reaver was in similar position, weaker than competition, only picked because specific build can't use the competition.
Might be they had something cooking alongside it but that got scrapped or didn't make it in time.

"

lolPLSiGOTthis wrote:

Might be they had something cooking alongside it but that got scrapped or didn't make it in time.

I'm hoping this is the case, because I don't want to insult GGG's intelligence, but they should have simply waited for the mechanic to be complete before replacing an unused node with an even more unused node.

I use it on my zerk but still don't understand it :D I am pretty sure it killed me couple of times, but well.

It's rather odd Berserk ascendancy node "lore wise" to be honest. Leech was practical.