150,000+ Ward 100+ minions 200+ waves Reflect/poison/melee/bleed/physical/necrotic/ignite/fire. You name it the damage is in there.
So wardās totally not OP but block isā¦
Not to take anything away from the impressiveness of your continued build developments.
If Sentinel could get 150,000+ ward with the 90-100% Block chance and high protections while having 1000+ health it would be broken, but it canāt.
Although the point here may be that this Ward build is only broken for as long as the minions arenāt getting killed so quick that they can no longer keep your ward up so it has a much lower cap than the Sentinel Block build in Arena.
It is not OP. You have to maintain a high number of minions at all times and you have to cast Rip Blood on them constantly. Donāt focus on the maximum ward thatās good for the post title but instead focus on the stable ward that actually keeps the character alive.
After wave 200+, itās very easy to lose most of your minions in a few seconds and suddenly youāre exposed. Ward decays very quickly so your stable ward at that point is very low and you can get oneshotted.
While this is true if the mechanic is bot changed and minions become tougher in the future or a new affix comes then it will be come stronger. But ATM I wouldnt consider 200 or even 300 waves OP. Just true endgame
I know itās not OP, I was refering to this thread & attempting to make the argument that highly skilled player with probably perfect gear making a build/mechanic fly to the f***ing moon, does not make that build/mechanic OP.
Using Lizardās/Boardmanās arguments, ward should therefore be nerfed (again), despite ānormalā people not getting anywhere near this kind of value of ward, even pre-nerf.
The same thing can be said to many mechanics in the game though.
Yes. I think this is mechanic strong but definitely not OP.
Ah yeah, I probably misunderstood your comment. Thanks for clarifying that.
Iām in the opinion that crazy mechanics should be allowed to exist if itās hard to achieve and not trivial to use. This Rip Blood ward mechanics is a good example of that because you have to really focus on maintaining your minions and ward while dodging projectiles and oneshotty stuff.
The block in that thread is hard to achieve with gear but once you get there, it promotes a super passive playstyle.
Thatās fine, I was being oblique & assuming people had seen the other thread.
I kinda agree with you, but there still has to be limits. If not 150k, where? 200k? 300k?
Iām not entirely sure I agree with that. No amount of block will protect you from dots, plus lots of block & block effectiveness wonāt protect you from big hits. Yes, his block is reducing the majority of hits down to presumably near single figure values that he can then heal/leech/etc through easily. But thatās not going to affect big hits. He had ~600 hp + 3,000 block effectiveness, so a hit for 3,601 (plus however much normal protections he has) would still kill him.
I guess I just donāt see how such high amounts of ward are fine (because itās difficult to maintain & requires you to do a lot of stuff) given that ward will be protecting him from all hits, large & small and dots, whereas 90% block isnāt ok because it can lead to a passive playstyle (despite it not protecting you from the biggest hits or dots).
Also, it takes him from ~11 mins through to ~12:44 to get up to ~140k ward. Granted, thatās without being disturbed by mobs trying to do nasty things to him, so it does have a ramping up time & youād need to do that every 5 waves if you choose to have a look at the gear on the ground. But as he said, if you have an uber-rare item (Orianās Eye) itās easier due to more mana to more quickly summon the minions, plus he didnāt have as much minion dodge as would probably be useful for the gear.
Edit: Iām also assuming the wraiths (ray-ths! Not r-aa-ths) donāt body block for him 'cause with that many heād be protected from most of the bigger hits, though heād loose more minions & therefore have less ward.
Added The build to the Build compendium
I never said ward shpuld be nerfed here. Its bot the problems. The main problem is the 5% ward conversion per point of int inside of rip bloods. It simply allows for to much generation to fast. Slowly reduce that value or cap the number of minions you can hit like soul feast did. Iām even fine leaving the build alone until more buffs for minions arrive
I noticed you didnāt take soul aegis in the acolyte tree. It grants your minions 4% increased armour and protections per character level, so up to 400% increase at level 100 for one passive point. Iāve always considered this one of the best nodes in the tree for a summoner?
Correct I mentioned that in the video that you should take it. I didmt take it on my run cause I was running a low life AoD build that would heal the minions but it didnt work
Ahh sorry, I was skipping around the video to see the build so I didnāt listen to everything. I thought I might be missing something about this node
Hold up wrong node haha. Sorry that bode i didnt take since I was doing a reflect build to begin with i wanted them to take full damage
Did you try taking that build & not going reflect to see how things went? If so, was it much better/worse?
Im still gearing for it. Since I know I can have 100% putrid wraiths (ranged poison) im going to stack minion dodge as well as dodge for me and give minions defense. They will still have reflect since after wave 200 its still good damage will test in next couple days
This amount of ward is not achieveable unless youāre standing still and constantly cast Rip Blood. In the arena, you have to recast your minions and move to dodge stuff, so youāll probably never reach that amount in higher waves. It also decays super fast so itās not worth stacking that much.
I have a Necro that can get around 32k ward with 15 minions, but I actually never bother to get 32k ward in the arena. I usually have around 10k stable ward between resummoning and dodging stuff. In wave 300+, I usually can only maintain 6-8k because things are pretty hectic.
This mechanic really doesnāt need a hard cap because there already exists a soft cap i.e. you have to constantly resummon and cast Rip Blood. Your ward will also be lower if you decide to use another active skill like a curse.
I donāt think itās right to see this and go āoh 150k ward! Nerf!!ā without considering the practicality and opportunity cost to actually reach that amount.
Yeah, thatās a fair point about the practicalities of things like this, though I think you can make the exact same argument for block & protections on a Sentinel. Iām not sure how much EHP (hp + protections + block effectiveness) you can practically maintain on a Forge Guard, but Iād be surprised if it peaked as high as 6-8k & even then, in my experience that would mainly be armour (assuming youāre using Shield Throw for the armour gain on hit) which is pointless for non-physical damage, or (non-bleed) dots. Though I accept Iāve probably pidgeon-holed myself into a specific build & should probably āget outā a bit more build-wise (just because my build canāt do it, doesnāt mean no builds can)ā¦
Great Ward !