Some suggestions - passive tree/keystone modifications

Keystone locations


Iron Reflexes - move right next to acrobatics
Reasoning
- Would be slightly similar to the interaction between EB and CI.
- Right side of the tree is under-used.
- Current location of IR is relatively close to US.
- New location would increase the use of Acrobatics; players may consider taking both



Zealot's Oath & Vaal Pact - move both closer to ZO's original location/MI's current location
Reasoning
- ZO and VP cancel each other out, might be nice putting them side by side
- VP is rarely going to be used in the current state of the game except by ES based characters.
- May as well place it within reach of Witch and Shadow as well instead of just Scion
- Downsides for VP should not be its location but rather something else.


Shadow/acro HP nodes
- As mentioned in a previous post, would be nice to get this cluster linked.
- Shadow HP nodes should be increased. If not 8/8/12, then 8/8/10 at least
- This area needs at least one hp cluster


ES nodes above Scion - create links to bypass the nodes to witch/shadow/templar
Reasoning
- ES is redundant early on, ES nodes shouldn't be the only way of getting out of the starting area
- Encourage diversity, improve access by other classes to desirable scion notables
- This can be repeated for the Str and Dex areas as well for symmetry


Keystone modification


Iron Reflexes - Converts half of evasion to armour (dex applies to bonus)

Reasoning
- Create a downside at least in terms of interaction with US
- It'll still be free armour for evasion users, and they still get some evasion left
- Some form of mitigation against physical spells without sacrificing all benefits of evasion
- No longer just free armour from Grace


Phase Acrobatics - Change it from a completely random mechanic to entropy-based

Reasoning
- Provide less unreliable physical spell mitigation for pure evasion users


CI - one keystone, not 5 nodes. 20% more maximum ES
ES CDR - Improve all 10% nodes back to 15% (Nullification back to 20%)
Ghost Reaver - 30% less maximum ES
Vaal Pact - No ES recovery (edit: what I mean is normal out-of-combat ES recovery)

"

Invalesco wrote:

Ghost Reaver - 30% less maximum ES

WOW Oo
Do you really think that it needs a 30% less ? Who would use it after that ? this is more than huge, I know that my char would just become unplayable in higher level maps from that, loosing 1800 ES down to 3800 ? Better completely respec it.

C'mon, how can your propose such a brutal change when health buffer is basically all that matters for survival in most of the cases ?

"

Invalesco wrote:

ES nodes above Scion - create links to bypass the nodes to witch/shadow/templar
Spoiler
Reasoning
- ES is redundant early on, ES nodes shouldn't be the only way of getting out of the starting area
- Encourage diversity, improve access by other classes to desirable scion notables
- This can be repeated for the Str and Dex areas as well for symmetry

I see the point, but that would be unfair to the two other areas designed like this one, and that'd be a direct buff for the Scion too.

"

Invalesco wrote:

Iron Reflexes - Converts half of evasion to armour (dex applies to bonus)

Reasoning
- Create a downside at least in terms of interaction with US
- It'll still be free armour for evasion users, and they still get some evasion left
- Some form of mitigation against physical spells without sacrificing all benefits of evasion
- No longer just free armour from Grace

50% is imho too much. 60 or 70% would probably be better already.


/agree with the rest

Plus : remove the damn ES halving from acrobatics -__-"

"

Invalesco wrote:

Ghost Reaver - 30% less maximum ES
Vaal Pact - No ES recovery

On ES (CI) character, there is no point in taking VP without GR, so in fact, it means double drawback. Considering, that CI melees are the hardest to gear category of builds, it means, that they will just extinct.

"

Fruz wrote:

"

Invalesco wrote:

Ghost Reaver - 30% less maximum ES

WOW Oo
Do you really think that it needs a 30% less ? Who would use it after that ? this is more than huge, I know that my char would just become unplayable in higher level maps from that, loosing 1800 ES down to 3800 ? Better completely respec it.

C'mon, how can your propose such a brutal change when health buffer is basically all that matters for survival in most of the cases ?

It might indeed be too harsh! What I did want though is to negate the bonus from CI while at the same time promoting the old CI gameplay style.

"

I see the point, but that would be unfair to the two other areas designed like this one, and that'd be a direct buff for the Scion too.

Yup, I actually did add a sentence where it should be done for the other two areas as well for symmetry's sake, although the dex part definitely needs it and the str doesn't.

"

tmaciak wrote:

"

Invalesco wrote:

Ghost Reaver - 30% less maximum ES
Vaal Pact - No ES recovery

On ES (CI) character, there is no point in taking VP without GR, so in fact, it means double drawback. Considering, that CI melees are the hardest to gear category of builds, it means, that they will just extinct.

ah good point. edited to make my statement less ambiguous

Another thing that would promote old-CI gameplay, could be to implement a keystone that speeds the user when his ES pool becomes low, so that he can run away to temporize and therefore regenerate his shield, while still putting him in danger.
It would promote kiting more than brainless leeching as it often is now.


Something like "adrenaline rush" :
"- gains 50% move speed for 4 seconds when going below 20% of the max ES pool.
- looses 75% move speed for 4 seconds when the ES pool reaches 0.

"

Invalesco wrote:

Phase Acrobatics - Change it from a completely random mechanic to entropy-based

Reasoning
- Provide less unreliable physical spell mitigation for pure evasion users

This is an interesting conundrum. Acrobatics is one of the strongest defensive options in the game right now and its only shortcoming is its failure to deal with high physical damage spells which makes it very very difficult to do some content.

While I like the premise behind it, I feel it would benefit slightly from something like "x% of your Evasion Rating is applied for Spells" in addition to its existing functionality. This would give it some degree of both making it a two-layer defense (of sorts). Possibly even an additional cluster of nodes behind it (or notable).

I personally don't feel like pure-entropy or pure-random would work. A modest mix of the two however might.

Acro could give chance to dodge physical attacks period, so it would double roll VS physical spells with phase taken as well.... nah IDK. This stuff is complicated.

I don't like a lot of these ideas, but I do like the spirit behind them.

The infographic released yesterday suggests many keystones are not working as intended -- which is something we alpha testers have known for a long ass time. Of course, GGG's also known probably, even before those infographics were ever made public.

The main issue with acrobatics is people think evasion sucks. Acrobatics is really strong right now, it makes evasion super powerful. Could they change its mechanics? Sure, but I don't see the benefit. Making it deterministic would be fine, but it sets a bad trend - some things should just be random.

Moving IR will piss off 50% of the player population right now. I don't see the benefit in it. IR needs a proper drawback, something like, "Cannot deal elemental damage" or "Can't block attacks" -- something we ask players to build around. Not that specific drawback, just a drawback that says, "Hey, build around this." That's what all the other keystones sort of do.

CI / GR / VP / ZO are all broken and need fixing, duh, we've known that. It has nothing to do with less or more modifiers on passives. It has everything to do with the fact ES gear balance is shit. Fix ES gear already GGG, it's long overdue. Base values for sub 50 gear need to go way up - it's strictly inferior to armor/evasion, especially if you're trying a sub-50 CI build. Get rid of the more modifier and just buff all ES gear, as it is, it takes so many passives they're already giving up life passives to take ES passives. Actually, in general, armor and evasion need to be made better so that they actually compete more strongly with life, a high eva/armor/es chest w/o life should not be considered "junk" by 90% of players - getting those kinds of rolls is megahard. IR or some armor-keystone should encourage stacking the fuck out of armor over life, acrobatics should do the same for evasion, or some other keystone. CI already does this, but poorly, because base ES values are shit.

Ghost Reaver needs an actual downside - -30% es is dumb and stupid. Just give it something interesting like, "Bleed damage also applies to your mana" -- or something like that. A downside we ask GR users to build around.

The problem with the Templar in general, is the Whispers of Doom route has almost no defensive passives. It's horrible. They also have no interesting mechanics that makes armor/es hybrid any good. They also don't get enough mana or mana regen. The very worst racers are Templars, in my opinion. Fix them! They can only ever do anything if they just go pseudo-gs-Marauder, at least in shorter races. In longer races they can survive, but they have shit kill speed imo.

The Scion is really strong, but I agree those ES nodes are shit and should be fixed. There's nothing wrong with adding attribute highways out of the Scion start, it would just improve Scion build diversity, not Scion build power. The other classes need these sorts of tune-ups as well - in general, the Templar, Marauder and Witch all need their starting areas evaluated. The Shadow needs a rehaul.

Phase Acro is fine right now, I think. Some combination of this, and spell block, provide a fairly-decent defense against spells that you can otherwise resist when they hit. That means.. everything but EK.. (are there others? I've never really paid attention as this is my first EV character I've taken seriously).

One of two things I'd rather see happen, if phys spells are deemed something that needs to be fixed.
1) Recalculate monster damage such that physical spells are less damning overall. It's okay if it's trivialized by armour, so long as it's not an automatic one-hit versus builds that have no access to physical mitigation. They are still a direct threat to EV and to a lesser extent ES w/o mitigation, as they will immediately chunk life and leave you more vulnerable to further attacks.
2) Change Blind such that it does not offer such an outrageous bonus versus attacks, increase it's proc chance to be slightly more reliable, and somehow allow it to apply a miss chance to spells.

Without leech (in general in-battle health pool regeneration), there is no way to be melee or active caster after A1C, so any change to GR would make it "sapper keystone" for chess lovers, not a aRPG keystone. Additionally, thou as solo player I don't care, it's anti group measure, because nobody will be waiting for ppl to regenerate his ES pool, so such builds will be eliminated from parties.

It would be better, if GGG would focus on enabling HP/ES hybrids for anything else than Shavs low life or AA builds, because due to above, all other usage scenarios are "gimmicks for the sake of gimmick" not something what you can build about.