Endurance Charges: To Expend or Not?

I've been making a heavily endurance charge focused Templar recently (it should be a marauder, don't ask) and I've run into some annoyances in the design. I am currently at a maximum of 7 endurance charges, and have tried quite a few of the passive and active abilities which apply to them.

The primary annoyance I have is the pitiful conversion rate, or the "bang for your buck" on each charge. The most blatant offenders are the secondary endurance charge nodes, duration and life regeneration. First of all, 0.2% life regeneration? Really? So for a monumental 7 charges, more than 2 times the base amount, I get a total of 1.4% regeneration a second? That is mind numbingly awful. And if a spend a further 2 points, I can increase the duration of my endurance charges by a whopping 3 seconds. This, when endurance charges already last 10 seconds, and the cooldown on something like Enduring Cry is only 4 seconds. Almost entirely useless.

Then there are the active abilities, Immortal Call and Discharge. Discharge is a complete write off. As a primary skill which completely removed all stacked charges, by default it should be moderately effective. Not overwhelmingly effective, but moderately so. As it stands, even at a (I reiterate) monumental number of 7 endurance charges, its effect is essentially negligible. In relation to the enemies that you are likely to be fighting, its damage is simply too low. Furthermore, this ability smacks of poor design. I mean, frenzy charges increase its cast speed and power charges increase its critical strike chance, but endurance charges do absolutely nothing (that I can tell)?

And of course, Immortal Call. Essentially the corner stone of the entire Endurance Charge mechanic. I am currently using this ability to farm content which, ordinarily, I should not be able to. Its nothing fancy, just hoards of monkeys and bandits in the river crossing on merciless, but considering how utterly messed up my character is, I would ordinarily be destroyed. The reason I farm in river crossing is because 90% of all things there deal physical damage and only physical damage. It is one of the only places in the entire game where I have found this to be true.

What this means is the following: Using Immortal Call the way (I believe) it was intended to be used in any zone other than the river crossing is basically suicide, or otherwise is completely pointless. The default DR my 7 endurance charges grant me is quite something. 35% to physical and elemental resistance is quite substantial, but the design seems psychitzophrenic. Why place me in a relatively comfortable position against elemental damage, only to completely remove it on use of Immortal Call? Would it not potentially make sense to add two versions of Immortal Call, one which provides immunity to physical, the other to elemental damage? If this doesn't make sense, then why does physical immunity make sense? In my 12-15 complete playthroughs of the game (on varying difficulties) I would estimate that 80-90% of all damage worth worrying about is not physical.

Also, increased duration currently only works on the base duration of Immortal Call (0.2 seconds extended to something like 0.31 seconds). I really hope that this is a gross oversight, because this is completely useless and shouldn't even be included. However, I think that applying the 50% duration increase to each charge would be massively overpowered. I think this predicament was interpreted as a reason to cut corners, but it isn't. I think it is instead an indicator that the ability needs a little more thought.

"

Vipermagi wrote:

1.4% per second is almost as much as Troll's and Golem's Blood, which are Significant Passives. You're grossly underestimating percentage-based regen...

Why is life regen largely considered useless on gear? I mean, if I have a stat which can be replaced almost wholesale by a simple flask, whats the point in investing in it?

"

Vipermagi wrote:

7 Charges is not a lot for Discharge, and a mile from a "monumental" number. You can get 9 without any increase to your maximum amount of Charges. You can't just slap Discharge on a build that uses one type of Charge and expect it to work.

True, I didn't consider the notion of using multiple charge types for discharge. However, considering that each charge requires a separate spell, and in some cases, separate acts, to stack, what do you think the DPS output of such an approach would be? Simply from a practical point of view, I don't see multiple charge type discharges as a viable option currently.

This is another typical response from you, Imbalanxd. You run your mouth without research.

I am being completely serious and without a hint of hyperbole when I say that everything you have written in this thread is not just wrong, but ass backwards. I would state the line from Billy Madison, but I don't know it by heart.

Please recuse yourself from these boards pending further experience.

"

j8stereo wrote:

I am being completely serious and without a hint of hyperbole when I say that everything you have written in this thread is not just wrong, but ass backwards.

Perfectly demonstrated by the number of references you made to what I wrote (count: 0).

Pick a statement of your choice and I can try to explain.

Alternatively, I'm logging on right now and we can play together. We can chat there if you wouldn't mind.

"

j8stereo wrote:

Pick a statement of your choice and I can try to explain.

Alternatively, I'm logging on right now and we can play together. We can chat there if you wouldn't mind.

I thought that the very point of me making a post on an open forum was to discuss everything mentioned, but very well.

I know of no builds which currently use discharge, nor can I fathom any method to implement it effectively in a build. Its current drawbacks are its incredibly low damage output, and very high relative ramp up period. Taking this into account, I fail to imagine a scenario where it would ever break even with, let alone out damage, abilities such as sweep or cleave. In fact, even when investing skill points into attempting to increase its viability (as I have done) I struggle to see it even coming close to competing with even an unmodified version of sweep or cleave.

Ouch, bad pick. This is an easy one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSc6wTmFOlY

This series is now assigned as homework. I expect a report soon.

"

j8stereo wrote:

Ouch, bad pick. This is an easy one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSc6wTmFOlY

This series is now assigned as homework. I expect a report soon.

Currently at work, so I will need to rewatch this when I have sound later today.

First glance reveals what is essentially a filler build. I'm obviously only interested in the role of discharge in his build, and it seems to simply be something for him to click. Even with the frankly mind boggling number of up to 12 charges (which I have no idea how he managed to stack at some points) the damage output is mediocre at best. If you watch closely, around 70-80% of all his damage done is with direct attacks, and obviously the use of discharge reduces the damage he does with direct attacks.

In an AOE situation, the approach he took would have been adequate, as he is clearly more single target focused than multi target. However, in the encounter with the champion snake pack, he went about it all wrong, and should never have used discharge. It was simple a waste of potential damage. Looking at the complexity of his build, I'm pretty sure he is experienced enough to know that, and was simply doing it to make it look like discharge was playing a bigger part than it actually was.

The time between 10+ discharges was also too long, yielding very low DPS. At the current damage output, you would need to be pulling off 10+ discharges every 3 or so seconds, without ever running away. This is why my preliminary findings are that no discharge strategy based on power and frenzy charges will ever be viable. Without the required focus on the endurance charge side of the map, a character would probably not have the tanking capabilities to remain in combat for prolonged periods of time in order to perform multiple discharges. Save some weird energy regen based build, but we all know CI is going down pretty soon.

Though I must admit again, I did not think it possible to stack that many charges as quickly as was seen in that video. Especially not different types of charges.

So learn a bit more about the game and come back later.

Don't start essays until research has been done, lest the popcorn be busted open.