As much as I like the idea of completely Warpathing the entire block Mechanic I propose several less drastic solutions that would not have any spill over to other classes or too many low level builds.
Any of the following or potentially several of them I believe would solve most of the issues:
Put the 18% Bock chance available to Sentinel regardless of Mastery choice in a skill instead, requiring you to further reduce your skill choices in order to specialize in block chance or Have the passives include some form of down side eg less crit chance, less damage etc.
Nerf Rallying Block and Holy Auras “Against the odds” node, either the duration that they provide the bonuses for, how much they provide, or the amount of stacks possible.
Remove all Block effectiveness Passives from the entire Sentinel Class, again maybe put them in a skill or just don’t have them in any capacity.
Put a hard cap on the maximum amount of health gained per hit blocked.
My experience as a very average player and w/ a lvl 85 Forge Guard, My block currently is 82 percent fully buffed (sigils and ring of shields) and I unless I have a whole craptons of mobs to proc all my heals and buffs, I suffer immensely to the single target bad boys like the Siege Golem. So from my perspective it seems I am not invincible. You don’t see me on any leader boards.
Block and Glancing Blow does not work against dots, this is why you suffer against them in particualr. Fire golems attacks are dots (except the bazooka thing) but with a bit of expirience you will never be hit by them ^^
I was laughing hard when they nerfed druid defences because it was to OP when Sentinel back then still had 100% block chance 24/7. Block is far to strong and the DR from blocking should never get higher then 50% of your protections vs the dmg type you block. Just remove all the block protections and make it a % damage reduction and be done with it.
For Example if you have 50% Armor and you block you negate another 25%. Make it multiplicative and be done with it. There is realy no need for one class to have a second 80-90% protection boost vs non ward classes that not even have block nodes. It’s more and more obvious to me why games in the past handled DR like they did and not like it is in LE ^^, still I like the different approach but it seems to have big weaknesses within.
Can we do the same to ward then & have it only block 50% of the incoming damage with the rest going to HP? That’ll deal with all of those pesky ward builds that protect against 100% of all hits & dots before hp. I’m sure there’d be no unintended consequences of such reasonable “tweaks”.
Presumably because it negated all hit damage, rather than just a portion.
Why? If you have 50% protection, your block effectiveness is probably only adding another 25-30% already, so not far off what you suggest. It’s not as if it can absorb 100% of the damage from a really big attack (ward). It’s effecitveness is lower at higher character/gear levels (like dodge).
It’s not though. The Sentinel is thematically built around block, to say it shouldn’t have block is like saying that the ward-based classes shouldn’t have int, or ward generation mechanics because it’s 100% damage mitigation against all damage (apparently except for the blue pools on the Rust Land arena) and can reach massive levels if you really build for it…
Yes, it’s a lot simpler to balance for a capped %, maybe they need to increase the diminishing returns that are already in place? I think that’s what they should have done with ward (more diminishing returns at higher amounts without changing how much you get at lower values) rather than what we got.
But Building Full Block makes you never die so even if it took 69 years 3 days and 4 seconds per Golem, Block would still be way to broken for a Defense based primarily melee Class.
All classes should be equally capable of face tanking regardless of how terrible their DPS is.
I’ll probably never get to wave 400+ with any Class so no idea how long it usually takes to kill them but my guess is it’s possible to do a lot more damage with less focus on Block.
Lizard is a great player. He has a great understanding of the fight mechanics. He is a theory crafter and a streamer. He has characters in the top five in 3 out of 4 ladders. I’d argue he does not represent the masses when it comes to skill level.
Despite his expertise with the game, his 560 waves is about 44% fewer that the top spot at 1001. There are only 13 forge Guards in the top 100 in the Soft Core ladder, while there are 33 Lich. In HC the forge guard doesn’t even crack the top 25.
I watched how long he took to kill those 3 golems. 7 minutes. Sit and stare at your screen for 7 minutes. That is a long time to kill three mobs. In my opinion that is the penalty of being so strong defensively. Not only that Lizard skillfully navigated those guys. Not every one will have that same result.
What I would really like to know is how long it took Lizard to get to 560, vs how long the lich took to get to 1000. I’m sure that information is out there. Did Lizard finally die, or did he give up in boredom?
I think they fit in their role. Tanky and low dps. I hope they don’t get the crap nerfed out of them because a high profile streamer deemed them over powered.
That’s an interesting question (possibly for a different thread, who wants to derail a thread afterall… ). Where do you draw the line between more powerful & more popular? Is the higher number of Liches compared to Forge Guards due to the Liches being more powerful, easier, more enjoyable or just perceived as such? If they are actually more powerful or easier, that can be changed by either numerical or mechanical changes. If it’s just perception, then maybe the Forge Guard (or Sentinels in general, it’d be interesting to see the split by class as well as mastery, like GGG do a month or two in to a league) just needs a bit more advertising?
I definitely get bored while doing monolith (as one reason why I only ever did reasonably well once).
I would say it does not have to be equal for different classes. What if Lich is stronger? Is that bad design? You can still take up your own challenge with other classes, be the highest ranked in that class or whatever. I do not see a real problem in one class being more suited for ladder then others.
It depends, if Lich (or any given class) is a few percent stronger than Forge Guard (or any other class), I’m ok with that. But if one (or several) class was significantly stronger than another in one aspect & comparable in others then I think that’s an issue. I know that “balance” is an aspirational target, but I think the devs should still aim for rough parity between classes/masteries over all. That’s why I wondered whether the greater numbers of Liches were due to a real disparity of power or just the perception of one. Is it something the devs need to be concerned about (a real & significant difference in power) or not (people just think the Lich is “better” so more people play it & therefore it forms a higher % of the population).
I can answer these two at least. It took exactly 4 hours to get 560 waves and he died with an ill-timed Volatile Reversal, which I think may have been done on purpose so he could go eat. Honestly, it looked like the build could go on for near eternity…IF he played well the entire time which is still no easy task at those waves. He also has some of the most impressively rolled gear I’ve seen so it’s not like just anyone could reach that level without some serious time investment. That said, it was still pretty impressive to watch…for me anyways.
I would like to see block balanced so that 2-hander and shield builds can clear similar content.
On my pally, if I use a 2-hander, I get about 50% more damage and my prots stay about 5k with or without the shield. With the shield, my DR changes from 89% to 93%. I go from taking 11% of the damage to 7% of the damage.
With crappier gear, I had 3k prots. In that situation, I go from taking 17% of the damage to 10% of the damage.
I don’t know what numbers would feel good. You deal and take 30% more damage with a 2-hander?
With 90% block chance, health/ward on block is essentially flat damage reduction after your other damage reduction. If an archer hits you for 600 before DR, you may take 60 without a shield or 30 with a shield. With 30 health/ward on block. Now you take 0.
Health/ward on block, leech, healing, etc… need to be taken into consideration when balancing the numbers. I think some of these are too strong. Holy ward can give 30 ward/health on block and the Forge Guard passive tree can give 16 health on block/on hit. Maybe thats too high.
A lot of passives give around 10 or 15 EHP per point. Some Sentinel passives are very strong compared to that. Just a few examples:
Gladiator on Sentinel tree - 50 block effectiveness with 90% block is 45 EHP
Rallying block on Forge Guard tree - Assuming you block 10 times in 4 sec, 1 point is 50 EHP. And this scales.
Honour and Resolve - 100 block effectiveness with 83% block is 83 EHP
I really like the suggestion about the extra layer of DR.
I like it becouse you can make the DR get better with gear (better shields) and rework block effectivness passives into bigger DR. So you can start with 15% and raise it up to 30% with BIS shiled and passives.
Gave up due to boredom, it also didnt felt rewardign at all for me. The feelign of acomplishemnt is what maked me wanna push, and that just didnt felt meaninfull to me!
The lich pushed using a BUG that will be fixed and confirmed by the devs. Did 4 Million hit damages due to numerous bugs. That skill is not meant to work like that and will be fixed next patch.
Sentinel on the other hand, is working as intended, build uses no bugs.
Every lich at 300+ waves used a BUG related to Dead Seal to push.
Dead Seal was doing 2 million hits (4 Million crits), and with so much leech from those huge hits that you cant die if you play properly.
This bug will be fixed for 7.9 confirmed by the devs and those numbers wont be possible. Lich is crimally underpowered (for high waves) aside from the mentioned bug ^^
). Where do you draw the line between more powerful & more popular? Is the higher number of Liches compared to Forge Guards due to the Liches being more powerful, easier, more enjoyable or just perceived as such? If they are actually more powerful or easier, that can be changed by either numerical or mechanical changes. If it’s just perception, then maybe the Forge Guard (or Sentinels in general, it’d be interesting to see the split by class as well as mastery, like GGG do a month or two in to a league) just needs a bit more advertising?