At the moment the ward bar is pretty confusing to interpret how much ward you currently have and I’m not sure why it doesn’t behave like the HP bar? Once you start hitting certain higher levels of ward the bar begins to separate into compartments, whether it’s the ward bar at the bottom of the UI or above your character. It’s quite problematic in the middle of combat as it looks like it’s always full. Can this be changed just to a simple 0-100% bar?
I think that would be difficult to do since there’s no cap on the amount of ward you have, especially for builds that can generate a lot of ward. Though it would make more sense for builds that primarily rely on Exsanguinous/Last Steps of the Living.
I can maybe see the reasons why they’ve done it the way they have due to the max ward being dynamic especially with nodes on active skills. Visually speaking though the current system is hard to interpret.
For example, I’d like to run the ward bar above my character because certain arena maps are dark, and pools of poison can blend in with the surroundings. Within a couple seconds I’m dead. I feel like a ward bar that makes more sense would help prevent these deaths. At the moment the bar always looks full as the compartment numbers dwindle with damage taken.
I think the ward in one “compartment” is equivalent to 100% hp. So in some way you have this behaviour you are asking for. The problem is that in theory there is no ward limit if you get a high amount instantaneously.
This.
I thought on the contrary it was pretty clear to interpret, and i like it a lot. Especially compared to what we had before, it’s easier to see if you’re stacking a lot of ward compared to just normal amount.
Of what exactly ? there is no max ward so percentage makes no sense here.
Unfortunately, doing any sort of remotely challenging content makes it hard to interpret.
My suggestion would be for a multi-layered system similar to other games with bosses. Deplete multiple HP bars until depleted, each layer being coloured. Except in this case it would be for ward.
And how is there no max ward? If I sit still for a minute my ward won’t exceed a certain point unless I play around with some active skills to increase it further. So if after a minute you have 10k ward your ward bar would be 100% full at 10k ward. Do any activity and it would pass it farther than 100%. Make a small bar after 100% that can be filled with excess ward.
This is confusing to me. 100% means 100% . When the others are saying there is no Max ward, they mean there is no cap on ward at all. Just because your gear/passives allow for generating ward to a certain point (which is just a stabilization between your generation and decay) doesn’t make that 100% . It’s just the value you have when you’re not doing anything. Moreover this doesn’t address how new players would view it.
You’re small bar after 100% also doesn’t really make sense, because theoretically, my “100%” is different from someone else’s, but I generate a lot more ward actively than they do, so the small bar could represent 100 extra ward or 5000.
I’d argue that absent any equipment that generates ward, a system like the current could be used. If you have ward generating equipment then the value of 100% is where generation stabilizes with any passives. Any active skills with ward generation then fill up the small bar if there’s an excess. Small bar would be a relative amount to your 100% ward.
For example, in my sorcerer build I have almost 10k ward, if I use active skills like Focus and Arcane Ascendance I could get this up to almost 12k ward. 10k ward would make 100% of my main ward bar, a small excess bar could take into account up to ~25% excess ward.
That’s inconsistent between characters. Which is confusing. Maybe I generate only 20 ward passively, but actively can generate 400 ward – now the small excess bar would take into account up to ~2000% excess ward. Which is confusing, why is the big bar representing a smaller value, and the small one representing a larger value?
This is also complicated, because then for each character, the math needs to be done to determine a stabilization state for ward to determine what “100%” means in this context.
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It is also inconsistent at different times for the same characters. your ward changes all the times… It never stop changing. And if i take an example of my necromancer, my ward can go from 2k to 12k in seconds if i’m bursting in single target… and then quickly get back to an average of 3/6k…
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Yes, but we’ve (at least temporarily) made a distinction between active and passive ward generation. So, your passive generation would be 100% in this context, and anything your generate actively would be a part of a small bar greater than 100%.
Taking a different look at the problem:
Just took a look at Tunks Ward Calculator
The theoretical Max assuming Tunks calcs are ok is about 69 000 stable ward… (devs or tunks 
).
So lets say that the scale of the Ward bar just uses that figure as 100%. According to tunks graphs the curve is fairly predicatable so the ward bar could be done in multiple ways…
A scaled bar filling up, i.e. the first 30k ward takes up 2 thirds of the bar and and then the remaining third is the next 39k ward… little notches on the ward bar could show 5k, then 10k increments that people will get used to over time.
A purely linear bar from 0 to 69k - this might be crap idea as 95% of people are never going to get to 20k ward let alone 69k so the bar will look empty most of the time…
Just a suggestion…
This is just a random value as it is based on the random maximum values you can set in tunk’s simulator. I don’t think these maximum values are anyhow related to ingame stuff.
Also if the max would be calculated on available gear it could change in new patches which would be quite confusing. I like the current system which shows a relation between ward and health. But maybe there could be a solution where you always hhave 2-3 of these segments always visible and extend it only if necessary. Would result in a less dynamical change in the “important” low ward part.
Yes, something like this. Point is the dynamic bars is really confusing to look at when you’re in battle. Am I high ward? Am I taking damage or low ward?
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