Diamond Flasks

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EpsiIon wrote:

A build MADE around a diamond, will 1 shot anything in a solo game short of an end of dungeon unique. At least mine was able to.

Probably 99.999% of the time, you are correct.

But are you suggesting that the game NEVER generated a situation that you weren't able to handle? I have a hard time believing it. I'm talking about 100% success rate here. The witch with 15k ES, a good control, and inexhaustible granite charges can run away even in the most ridiculous worst-case situations.

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EpsiIon wrote:

Though I will say this. Zak, I am rather sad to see you pulling the "If it doesn't happen in HC, it doesn't matter.

You're changing my argument. If a certain build/itemization has limited success in HC endgame (CM/CI/4 diamonds this time), I can't believe that it's game-breakingly OP. Is that more reasonable?

Maybe I'm wrong, and this is in fact very common? Maybe I just haven't been grouping with the right people? Sadly a lot of people at the top of the ladder keep their builds secret, but everyone I've seen focuses heavily on defenses instead.

On the flip side, if a certain build/itemization completely dominates hc? It's probably broken. Right now I don't think such a thing exists. It's very reasonable to use HC as a yardstick in this way.

Summary of my point in two sentences: I don't think diamonds are broken OP, and we'll see them in OB just as they are now. Max mult builds suffer enough defensively that diamond flasks are a fair trade-off.

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Zakaluka wrote:

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EpsiIon wrote:

A build MADE around a diamond, will 1 shot anything in a solo game short of an end of dungeon unique. At least mine was able to.

Probably 99.999% of the time, you are correct.

But are you suggesting that the game NEVER generated a situation that you weren't able to handle? I have a hard time believing it. I'm talking about 100% success rate here. The witch with 15k ES, a good control, and inexhaustible granite charges can run away even in the most ridiculous worst-case situations.

Exempting reflect, no, I have yet to run into a situation my build in particular is unable to handle. I will say one thing, as I was running at around lvl 55, on a 68 map, my harper had a bit of trouble against vaal, I however, solved this by just running around throwing bear traps at vaal.

The reason i say this, is reflects are extremely broken, and exist, somewhat outside the norm of typical balance discussion and comparison as they give and present an unavoidable, unmitigatable, 1 shot chance. They are also the most dangerous for crit builds.

My posts were mainly to point out that it is all subjective. Most HC builds are simply 1 dimensional, as in, wheres the next HP/ES nodes, and how can I get there, grabbing the most cc/dps nodes on the way. Where as default are, for the most part, the opposite.

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Zakaluka wrote:

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EpsiIon wrote:

Though I will say this. Zak, I am rather sad to see you pulling the "If it doesn't happen in HC, it doesn't matter.

You're changing my argument. If a certain build/itemization has limited success in HC endgame (CM/CI/4 diamonds this time), I can't believe that it's game-breakingly OP. Is that more reasonable?

Maybe I'm wrong, and this is in fact very common? Maybe I just haven't been grouping with the right people? Sadly a lot of people at the top of the ladder keep their builds secret, but everyone I've seen focuses heavily on defenses instead.

On the flip side, if a certain build/itemization completely dominates hc? It's probably broken. Right now I don't think such a thing exists. It's very reasonable to use HC as a yardstick in this way.

Summary of my point in two sentences: I don't think diamonds are broken OP, and we'll see them in OB just as they are now. Max mult builds suffer enough defensively that diamond flasks are a fair trade-off.

HC is a small segment, within a small segment of beta testers. While I have the utmost respect for many of the HC players, they have a very small pool of....how should I say this. Build variation. HC is very prone to copy-cat and mimicry.

As for diamonds suffering defensively? Only against lag+Ele/Phys reflects. Diamonds also gain the ability, in many situations, to double as a granite flask, and actually refill granites, in a single duration. The same issue exists with HP potions, I, in general, have two situations: Either a huge amount of damage incoming, or little to none. In one case I spam ALL my flasks in one singular moment, in the other I hit maybe one, if not regen it while I go to the next mob. The parsing in damage in this game is not evenly spread out, you don't "Take a lot of damage over time and then die" you "Take so much damage you die instantly and outright". Of all my experiences with death in this game, i have never had a time where two more HP flasks could/would/should have saved me.


Simply because someone in HC doesn't or hasn't done it yet, doesn't mean it doesn't present a problem. The issue with using HC as a yardstick is that there is very little build variation or diversity. Even if there was, it all revolves around HP/ES/Defense stacking. Furthering that, is that HC itself is a small segment, or meant to be. Balancing around the HC player base, simply isn't a viable route, if you want to keep a viable default league going.

I have not played much since right around the time the Shadow was released, but I know at that point Diamond Flasks were very OP. I could infinitely loop with two perpetual flasks. I just had fast movement speed on a ranger, grouped up screens of mobs in MoC and killed everything in a few shots.

The main problem with the Diamond Flask is that it does not interact with the characters critical chance, this renders the crit chance essentially useless and crit multiplier OP.

The same holds true for Granite Flasks imo. CI players should never have access to 10k armor on demand. This completely breaks the balance of the keystone.

Personally I feel Diamond Flasks should increase BASE critical chance and have an increased duration. Or give XXX% to crit chance. This would give crit chance nodes more meaning.

Granite flasks should have a similar balancing and provide XXX% increase to armor rather than a flat 10k armor bonus.

Loosing flasks will do the game good, period. WIll bring balance back to critical strike (maybe needs some mods to the passive tree first)

Flask are just temporary OP flasks that's all, relaly don't understand why they are in the game. Not fun at all.

The necromancy is strong in these forums lately...