WHY is the Defense System Like This?
" Well I am sorry then, I'll have to do a fresh playthrough to refresh my memory. | |
" Would you mind explaining what it is I don't understand? From what I know, spells are the attack with numbered damages, instead of % damages, and they can be blocked, evades, and are effected by armor (or at least not enough to make a difference). And that is not exactly what I'm trying to say. Yes, I believe Life overpowering the other defenses, but not for the reason you stated. What you're suggesting is simply increasing Life for everyone, to remove the dependency on passives and mods. This doesn't change the fact that Life is still so much more important than the other defense. This is mostly because they no, or close enough to no effect on most spells, which makes up at least half the game. Increasing base life for everyone still doesn't solve this problem. | |
" no. spells are those skills wich do not use attack speed but casting speed. They are usually boosted by spell power. They do not need any weapon to be cast and they deal spell damage and not attack damage. Armour is useless against spells. You can evade spells with phase acrobatics. Normal block rate cant block spells, but certain passives or uniques can. | |
" Which is pretty much what I said. They are not a % of your weapon damage, but deals damage by their own numbers. The absolute highest spell block is about 50%, with all passives and uniques. This means spending all of your passives to focus on block. Yet, it's still only about 50%, which mean you will be easily killed by the other half you can't block. Phase Acrobatics requires you to lose all Armor and ES, which makes you extremely reliant on Life, much more so than Evasion. So all in all they really are quite useless against spells. | |
|
@tingshi
According to you then elemental hit would be a spell. Short version: Spells don't use your gear stats except for % increased spell and other damage, cast speed, global and spell crit chance/damage. They can deal any type of damage - elemental, physical and chaos(only ethereal knives at the moment and no chaos spell but it could be added if devs want to). Cannot be evaded because they don't use accuracy. Can be dodged with Phase Acrobatics which is similar but has flat % chance and has nothing to do with evasion rating. Can be blocked only with certain uniques and passives. Are you sure you aren't confusing spells with elemental damage? I can't imagine every second monster you encounter throwing fireballs and other spells at you. And yes, life is THE most important defensive stat if you would call it that. Whole game is trying to avoid your life dropping to 0. All other defenses are there to only reduce the damage you take to your life. @kadrek91 There is no "spell" damage type. Elemental might be the word but even then Ethereal Knives is an exception. | |
|
As far as I understand, the basic attack used by skeletal mages is counted as a spell, and therefore can't be blocked or evaded without specific passives/uniques.
The areas/maps with, by far, the most dangerous forms of elemental damage contain skeletal mages, goatmen shaman, merveil's chosen, and of course merveil and vaal. In all my playthroughs with all forms of defense, these have always been more dangerous than the Lightning Arrow archers, Explosive Arrow archers, elemental melee skeletons, lightning melee goatmen, or firecats. ES helps buffer against these most dangerous areas. None of the other defenses do. | |
" None of that made any sense. I think this is your argument: (1) Spells are by far the most dangerous skills in the game. (2) Life, ES and resists are the only defensive stats that are useful against spells. (3) Thus blocking, armour and evasion are both useless. I don't really have the time or energy to type a meaningful response, but I think the core of it is that you exaggerate (1). Archers are just dangerous as mages (if not more) and their damage can be blocked, evaded and (to some extent) mitigated by armour. Armour/evasion and/or blocking is absolutely essential to a melee char. Almost every char will need life and resists to counter spell/elemental damage. Deal with it. Maybe ranged ES users are overpowered (defensively) compared to other characters, but that's something else really. Last edited by hubb on Nov 6, 2012, 2:08:55 PM
| |
" Not only can you get 75% Block (unique shield with 120% Block applied to Spells when on Low Life), but you can also negate the damage that comes through by literally up to 100% through Resists. (Purity, max res passive, Inner Force passive, Flask) All attack and damage types have pros and cons. Spells are no different. Rather than Armor, you have Resists to protect you from Elemental Spells. On that note, they all have one downside in common; weakness to kiting. | |
|
I've found that elemental resists are the counters to spells, as spells used by enemies (such as ice-spear, fire-storm etc) are elemental. Other skills such as phase run, flicker strike and the such are either wholly physical, or part ele, part physical.
So when I played my 9k ES witch, I stayed the hell away from anything that had phys damage, and stacked resists to help against spells that I couldn't dodge. (I was a summoner, so staying away from melee was easy) "Minions of your minions are your minion's minions, not your minions." - Mark
|
