WHY is the Defense System Like This?
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The current defense system, as far as I know, is that Armor, Evasion, and Block applies only to melee damage, and Resists to elemental damage. The problem I find with this is that from my experience, a majority of the enemies in the game, and almost all bosses and uniques (especially Vaal Overlord) use exclusively Magic attacks. That means Armor, Block and Evasion, which about two thirds of all classes rely on, is render completely useless for a majority of the game. This makes these forms of defenses are ridiculously useless throughout the whole game. This also gives a huge advantage to witches, and ES users. ES is basically an add on to Life, which is equally viable against all attacks. Your survivability in general pretty much boils down to your Life, and resists. Sure, you get Spell Dodging, but any spell that does hit you will kill you, since you forgo all armor and ES. Sure, you can block some spells, but what difference does that 5% make? None. I just hate going into a dungeon, like the Church, or the Pyramid, knowing that all the armor and evasion and block that I've worked hard to build up will do absolutely nothing and all I can depend on are those two crappy rings I bought off the vendor.
This system places an over emphasize on your Life/ES and resists, forcing you to stockpile on them, or else die constantly. These completely overshadows Armor, Block, and Evasion to the point where there is no point in getting them over the others. This is even reflected in the Resist penalties. Why specifically target resists? Why not simply increase all damage dealt to the players? It just doesn't make sense to me.This pretty much forces you to add life nodes and equipments, even though you want to make an evasion or blocking character. What I simply don't get is WHY? Why make it so that these three defenses are so far removed from the game as a whole? Why not just make it apply to spells and projectiles too? It makes perfectly logical sense. A person can easily evade or block spells and projectiles, in fact, much more easily than melee attacks. It would make these defenses actually viable compared to the ES and Life of Marauders and Witches, and balance the game a bit more. I see no reason why the defenses shouldn't apply to spells. Even applying a nerfed amount, and decreasing the availability of resists would help a lot. Simple damage penalties, instead of Resist penalties, on difficulties would balance this a lot more too. Thanks for reading! I would really like other's thought on this. Last edited by tinghshi on Nov 3, 2012, 8:04:58 PM
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You're incorrect in a few places.
Armor reduces physical damage from any source (spell or attack). Likewise resists reduce damage from any source. In a sense, armor is "physical resist". Block starts off only blocking attacks, but there's a passive node and several unique items which allow you to start blocking spells. Evasion doesn't work against spells, this is true. But archers aren't using spells, they're using physical ranged attacks which can be evaded and the damage reduced via armor. Lastly, there's nothing wrong with having lots of HP and ES. The various forms of damage mitigation (armor, resists, block, spell block, evade, dodge, spell dodge) are all useful but are multipliers to your underlying HP. In addition, because chaos damage exists you are required to get at least a little HP (or CI) through normal play. | |
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1. I'm not sure what you're saying, since spells only deal elemental damage, and armor doesn't protect against that, only resists. It being "physical resist" only is exactly the problem I'm trying to point out.
2. As I've said, it only give on average 5% spell block, maybe 6 is you really invest in it, which makes essentially no difference. 3. Is that not what I said? If not, that what I meant, and the rest of my argument still hold true. 4. You obviously did not read my post at all. What I'm saying is that having Health and resists are so much more important that it completely overshadows the usefulness of armor, block, and evasion, not that you shouldn't have Health. You should just have option to choose others without getting handed a death sentence. Last edited by tinghshi on Nov 3, 2012, 8:38:25 PM
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Unavailable this is a physical dmg spell buffed by anything that increases physical or spells another one is ethereal knivesSome items in this post are currently unavailable.
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The assumption that a vast majority of enemies are magic users might simply be wrong.
Off the top of my head I can think of just as many physical attackers. Normal monsters just as much as bosses. |
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TBH beside the merveil fight i don't know for any situation in game where you would be ounded by magic attacks only (and even at merveil i'm not 100% sure what her attacks are if she goes into close combat).
In all normal areas you always have a mix of monsters (and yes archer attacks (even stuff as lightning arrow) are still attacks and thus can be evaded, blocked, reduced by armor) About Vaal - his melee attack is 50% physical and AFAIK it is an attack... And i'm sure i've heared that the falling stones can be evaded just like attacks (they also deal 100% physical damage) Proud 5th duelist in the Jul 1 2012 Ladder Race and in the Nov 3 2012 Solo Turbo Race :D
And even prouder 4th Templar in the Nov 10 Four-hour Party Hardcore Race :P Current OB success: top 20 Ranger in 105 Minute Turbo Solo (S4E9) |
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" Both her forms have a regular Melee attack. " There's Ethereal Knives in PvP, but also the falling rocks during the Vaal Oversoul fight, that Sony_Black also mentioned. Vaal Constructs cast a spell that deals mostly Chaos damage, but also some Physical damage. I don't know if the Viper Spit deals Physical damage; it most likely does. " Yeah, the passive's pretty worthless without an additional source. There's Uniques that grant a whole lot more though; half of your Block applied to Spells from an Amulet, for example. " You said Evasion (and Armor, and Block) only works against Melee attacks, so no, you didn't say that at all, and it changes your entire argument :) " If you have Armor/Evasion/Block, you don't need as much Health and Resists as you would without. However, you always need *some* amount of Life and Resists. I don't see this as an issue :/ ------------ And, well, you're flat-out wrong when you said the majority of monsters uses Spells. It's only in the last couple areas in A2 that this is true; the first 2/3rds of A2 and the entirety of A1 is more Physical-oriented. | |
" Chamber of Sins? There are tons of electric skeleton mages and warriors. |
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The Warriors deal Lightning damage, yes (as well as Physical), but they're still using weapon attacks. They can be Blocked and Evaded, and Armor works against the Physical portion.
There's also spiders there that deal only Physical melee damage. Don't recall if they use Viper Strike or not. So sure, there's Spell damage, but plenty of weapon attacks too. | |
" I'm seeing a lot of random tangential answers to the original post, but nothing that looks particularly thoughtful/insightful (some of them confuse the question even more IMHO). Can the whole OP post (sort of) be boiled down to this quoted question? Or at the very least, is that a better starting point for answers? P.S. I don't have your answer tinghshi, but I empathize with your confusion. |
