100% Spell Suppression sounds OP but 75% Spell Dodge is still superior

"

Xyel wrote:

[
It's about boss fights - in a typical boss fight, the mechanics come at a slower pace, allowing for recovery of health in the meantime, and they hit hard.

Suppose the boss hits for 6k, and your character has 5k health. Let's say you get hit 20 times in the fight.

If you've got 75 % spell dodge, than you die 5 times, the 5 times the spell dodge didn't work.

With spell suppression, you die 0 times, because each of the 20 hits slaps you for 3k, which you recover before the next hit comes.


This nuance gets lost in averages - in this example, you took 30k total damage with spell block and 60k total damage with spell suppression, so in averages, the spell block is twice as effective as spell suppression, yet in reality it's 5 deaths vs 0.

Like Draegnarrr said, depends on the scenario.

If those are hits that would kill you with SS, Dodge takes over the advantage.
If hits are too high or stack too much you die every time with SS and have a chance to survive with dodge.

Those scenarios are very rare though and usually involve a play mistake you can fix rather than a desirable outcome to be that you dodged. The only scenario I can see it coming up is damage modded single boss encounters. I'm not even sure there are any of these though aside from the 2 new guys?

If Atziri could be modded for example and you rolled 100% increased damage on it or -max res etc then dodge will outperform but its an absolutely tiny avenue for the "dodged a guaranteed death otherwise" scenario.

That's looking in isolation too once you factor in the 20% more dps/life/other defences/max res (choose 1 not all of them obviously) you get from how much more efficient it is it really becomes not much of a choice.

"

TorsteinTheFallen wrote:

"

Nubatron wrote:

It depends on your build. If you're a glass cannon where anything that hits you kills you, block might be more effective.

I personally prefer damage mitigation. Spell Suppression is amazing as an additional layer to reduce the amount of damage taken on a hit. If you stack enough layers of mitigation, very few things hit you hard enough to matter.

But as someone else mentioned, the two are not mutually exclusive. This is a false dilemma; the game doesn't force you to choose between them.

Actually they are, that's why the conundrum. You can have spell block along suppression but for spell dodge you gotta go Acrobatics. Or I'm missing something?

My mistake, I read it as spell block, not dodge. Yes, spell dodge and spell suppression don't work well together though you can still have both. Your spell dodge just won't be maxed; at least not easily.

Mixing spell suppression with spell block makes more sense though.

"

Draegnarrr wrote:

Those scenarios are very rare though and usually involve a play mistake you can fix rather than a desirable outcome to be that you dodged. The only scenario I can see it coming up is damage modded single boss encounters. I'm not even sure there are any of these though aside from the 2 new guys?

If Atziri could be modded for example and you rolled 100% increased damage on it or -max res etc then dodge will outperform but its an absolutely tiny avenue for the "dodged a guaranteed death otherwise" scenario.

That's looking in isolation too once you factor in the 20% more dps/life/other defences/max res (choose 1 not all of them obviously) you get from how much more efficient it is it really becomes not much of a choice.

https://youtu.be/Z0cDbLJ6UGs
Sirus testing

Ill do other boses to too.

"

Nubatron wrote:

My mistake, I read it as spell block, not dodge. Yes, spell dodge and spell suppression don't work well together though you can still have both. Your spell dodge just won't be maxed; at least not easily.

Mixing spell suppression with spell block makes more sense though.

No no, you can't have both. Gear doesn't have dodge anymore you can only get it thru Acrobatics keystone which coverts suppression for half value of spell dodge.

"

vlmndd wrote:

"

TorsteinTheFallen wrote:

I'd like to see the other side of the coin.

It's less feasible for hc. You stack up your defenses in a way that doesn't guarantee survival. Eventually your spell dodge fails and you die. Alternatively, you could instead mitigate ALL spell damage and so your survival is less dependent on luck and relies more on not being dumb.

You have control over the latter, but not on rng.

True

Generally I'm more concerned with one shots than flurries of small hits, so spell suppression is superior to me. 100% chance to not die vs 75% chance to not die.

Flurries of smaller hits can be an issue and dodge will mitigate more overall damage, it's true. However, my solution for that is typically life/ES gain when being hit, such as the shield gain on block mods. This is why I think the Instinct notable passive is very good (it's just too bad it's in the middle of nowhere).

The problem is that getting hit with any spell damage at all carries secondary risks. Ailments, blind, impale, hinder, stacking debuffs of types that aren't covered by flasks/pantheon. A lot of stuff now has grasping vines types of effects (baran with his cheeseball Lightning Trap slows anyone?) on hit which means dodge is superior protection even if it's not 100% protection.

Same for block. If you're not somehow preventing the spell from registering a hit, recovery doesn't matter because you'll be immobilized, or have a permanent cumulative debuff added that may directly affect that recovery.

The devs have decided it's more important for you to exercise your superior mechanical twitch reflexes so here we are. It's an arms race of automated flasks and suppression and recovery and gains on hit/block vs. devs being cheeky with how pinnacle boss spell hits and degens work.

"

crunkatog wrote:

The problem is that getting hit with any spell damage at all carries secondary risks. Ailments, blind, impale, hinder, stacking debuffs of types that aren't covered by flasks/pantheon. A lot of stuff now has grasping vines types of effects (baran with his cheeseball Lightning Trap slows anyone?) on hit which means dodge is superior protection even if it's not 100% protection.

Same for block. If you're not somehow preventing the spell from registering a hit, recovery doesn't matter because you'll be immobilized, or have a permanent cumulative debuff added that may directly affect that recovery.

The devs have decided it's more important for you to exercise your superior mechanical twitch reflexes so here we are. It's an arms race of automated flasks and suppression and recovery and gains on hit/block vs. devs being cheeky with how pinnacle boss spell hits and degens work.

I feel the same way. Would also add Detonate Dead, Lightning Mirages and those ghost totems that shoot million Lightning Balls...

"

TorsteinTheFallen wrote:

I feel the same way. Would also add Detonate Dead, Lightning Mirages and those ghost totems that shoot million Lightning Balls...

It's not so much the on-death effects (which are their own can of design worms) relevant to the discussion of spell block/dodge here.

The design of some endgame entities' hits is tipping the hand of the devs who are actively creating exceptions to the conditions that would otherwise be met by blocked hits and suppressed spells.

Namely, beams, which hit AND apply conditional and unconditional degens; and multistage or frag grenade hits, barrages, etc.

Kosis teleport slam, for instance, has 2 trigger dependencies, both of which can create barrages of projectiles or thrown weapons on contact with the player. Taking penumbral damage from the large AOE of the teleport slam can be dodged, or blocked, but the subsequent triggered barrages, and the chaos/CB/cold aura degen, either are not blockable or may well fall within the block recovery period. If you're relying on spell suppression, the aura degen is still going to land at full value.

Almost NO major boss attack is solely a big unitary hit with all its ailments dependent on that hit connecting. Almost all of them apply, or trigger, one or more secondary attacks or spells including detonating secondary projectiles, forking/chaining projectiles, triggered AOE spell degens and delayed gotchas, permanent debuffs, or cumulative area denial in the form of puddles/storms, beams, or "floor tiles are lava" mechanics.

They're never going to let you just get hit and go recover. They're going to poke you with a stick to put you into your block refractory period, and then they're going to shit a nuke on you during that refractory period. Spell/attack combos with a big afterload are a particularly dirty way of getting around cooldown recovery mechanics, ward shenanigans, and molten shell.

Capped Spell Dodge is better until you don't dodge a crucial spell and die.
100% spell supression is just going to feel more consistent overall.

When playinig with 75% dodge you will run around and your health will never drop, then suddenly you get oneshot by some elemntal crit or a slam et.c. That's just the nature of the game.

When playing with Spell Supression you'll instead constantly take damage but most of it will be trivial. When a crit or Volatile Dead et.c. that would oneshot you eventually comes, you will GUARANTEE to have 50% of it mitigated.
With Spell dodge, 25% of those times will result in one less portal for your map or a sad HC character.