This is a very good take. Indeed I always feel bad when the next pack to feast on is to far away.
But I a big part comes from imagination. You don’t want to see a stat decreasing. Seeing ward decay makes you wanna stop the drain which is only possible by rushing to the next pack ri Feast or hammer the flame ward button to get that next boost.
When I think of other classes there are also mechanics that do the same. For example Sentinels also stack damage increase when getting hit and you also don’t want that to run out when you have a decent stack of it. But this buff is not that present as the ward bar/ bubble.
Temporarily minions also are a reason I rush through the game. Forged weapons of Sentinel, Summon Wraith… You wanna hit the next wave as long as they are still up.
But I agree. With a ward build you only get a high amount if it with on hit skills. So you need something to hit to get more survivability what’s very risky when you start with a low ward pool.
I am curious what the new builds after the patch look like. I’d imagine that damage on mana before health also is something that gets more important now.
In the end I don’t think that a mechanic is needed that works like hp or protections only with another name and class specific. Ward is a refreshing mechanic and not easy to balance because it works very different than the other defences. In summary I like its flaws.
Agreed, while it is kinda a unique mechanic never been done before in any similar game and it might be hard to balance and probalby not perfect, it is refreshing.
And as you said even with it’s flaws, i like the foundation.
I do NOT want an “Extension of Health”, that is kinda boring.
While similar systems for example Energy Shield from PoE have it’s place i never felt it was “cool”, just another Name for Health with slighty different basic mechanics.
I have no expertise to evaluate if it was good or bad to nerf ward.
But I agree with the idea of Rushing : I don’t like the idea that players rushes monsters and ignore items, just to keep their ward up. This is not a good gaming experience.
I like the ward mechanic, but I think it’s gonna see a lot of tuning before it ends up working out. My mage, like many others, took a noticeable hit in survivability after the patch and will definitely need some rethinking.
For fun, I started a new mage and completely ignored ward and focused on freezing. Made it to level 34 without any survivability issues, so I could see my way to trying a wardless build. House lost power while playing and that character went poof but I’ll restart it eventually.
Was playing a 94 mage in SSF HC with exang, prior to the changes I had around 6-8k ward in combat. Post changes, I sit at around 1.5-2.5k ward, so I basically lost 2/3rd’s of my EHP. I switched to a crafted chestpiece with 9int/20%hp/105hp, still barely able to maintain 2-3k EHP in combat.
Went from crushing 60 depth monos to getting chunked out in a fresh mono with no mods. Felt I had no choice but to temporarily shelve my mage and play something else because I was legitimately going to walk around a corner and my char is going to fall over and die. Little bit like going from one extreme to the other, kind of bizarre.
I knew ward needed some changes, but it was on the top end to do with diminishing returns, I think the nerfed was a bit over the top, and now even maintaining a small ward pool on top of my regular health pool feels almost impossible.
It’s a decaying overheal shield that’s nothing realy new but never used to this extend. I realy don’t like the mechanic at all but now when it is more in line with other protective means it might get intresting again.
Agreed, ward shouldn’t be the only layer of defense, it’s just one of many factors coming together. Different Kind of defensive layer combined really make cool build(one build may use ward as “main” the other Maybe just some small ward burst(new mage’s flame ward give REALLY good ward Bursts, which might be interesting evne for non ward builds)
Well i did play alot of arpg’s and i can say i dont know any “deyaing shield” on the top fo my head. Only thing that comes close i think is overleech/sec from PoE, but thats not really a shield as it doesn’t protect from big hits. But im glad if some1 can widen my Knowledge and give other examples.
Ward doesn’t make any sense. its like the devs want a secondary eHP mechanic so they copied PoE but didn’t copy the GOOD parts of Energy Shield and now you have this strange temporary barrier that can be 5-7x more than Life for some reason, decays, doesn’t interact with leech at all, needs Unique items to feel good etc etc
I think Ward needs to be redesigned completely, I don’t really have any ideas as im not that invested in the game but as someone who has played every aRPG pretty much, Ward just seems its there to just be ‘unique’ and the only reason people will play Ward as its numerically broken
I feel like ward mechanic generally suits mage very well. It feels like a spell, temporary burst of defence where you have to manage your cooldowns - classic mage thing.
PS. Some people use it for constant stable defense and, for what I understand, its not intended way to use ward, it was possible only because some numbers was broken. Now that fixed and some people disapointed that ward is not what they thought it was. But its more fun this way.
I like ward as a mechanic. It is neat that it is basically pre-regenerating in that there isn’t a max ward like there is a max HP. I just wish HP regen was stronger to maybe even it out a bit. Leech seems strong, but max HP isn’t even close what the levels of ward people get. Even if you take the most tanky HP and Protection build possible, your survivability isn’t close to the uber ward gain builds. 70k ward is absurd, and it is constantly healed up almost instantly because of the way it is gained.
I still think ward on the top end is way too powerful. Ward retention has nothing to do with it. It is ward gain/leech that is the problem. Maybe as a way to counteract that, they can introduce damage that ignores ward.
I like the mechanic actually. It’s a combination of Overleech and Energy Shield in PoE, which I’ve never thought that they would work well if combined but it’s actually interesting. We have Health, Block, Armour, Protections, etc as passive defensive mechanics so it’s good that we have an active defensive mechanics as well.
With that being said, I’m quite unhappy with the latest nerf to Ward. It’s a bit too overdone where they nerfed Ward Retention AND Ward generation of many skills. Numbers can always change though, so I’m not too worried.
However, I do think that they probably should cater to different ways to generate/maintain ward. At the moment, having Ward is kinda playing a berseker character where you always have to rush and attack the enemies. I would like an alternative way to generate/maintain Ward that does not punish slower playstyle.
tl;dr - Ward needs to stay, but it needs a real overhaul. Make it genuinely different than “just a different coloured health bar”.
I agree completely. Not that I personally think some form of rush/decay mechanic needs to be in place, because I think it does. However, I think it should be in the form of movement speed. ie the faster you move, the quicker it depletes. This way if you are standing still picking up loot, you don’t lose any ward. A scaling factor based on movespeed would be a simple way to keep the decaying mechanic without punishing people that take a second to pick up loot or scratch their ass.
I think the “swinging” feel is actually good. Although I do feel it’s a bit too “swingy”. It simply swings too fast.
The important thing to me is that ward needs to be distinguishable to health. Why pick ward over health? If they add a mechanic like this, it really needs to be different to the alternative and not just feel like a blue health bar. If I choose to go ward over health, then it should come with a distinct risk reward mechanic. Something like immunity to crits, or 100% glancing blow when opting for low life ward build would make more sense.
I think ward should stay. I also think it isn’t in a good place. Give a REAL reason to choose that mechanic, and make it genuinely different then its health counterpart. Currently it just feels like a different coloured health bar that really doesn’t change the way I play the game. And the lack of visual clarity for how much ward I have (or don’t have) makes it feel worse.
I see where you going there, a “more constant/consistent” smaller ward pool.
I guess this whole ward thing can be pretty easily balanced with some number/formula changes.
I think the most important thing is that it’s not getting out of hand like pre-patch where you could basically sustain 10k+ ward almost permanently
I view the ward mechanic as another mitigation tool at our disposal. But it is only one part of it. Pre patch, people were able to generate such crazy amounts of ward that there was not any need for any other resistances at all. I am running ward on my Lich build primarily. So for refrence, she is lvl 75 running a low life build with Exanguinous. I have my ward retention at 382%, and in addition to that I run GB at 100%, and I started using the set elemental protection which gave me a total of about 800 resists each, which is about 65% mitigation. I just wanted to put that out there as a reference. Just sitting still, I sit at a steady 1K ward. That is double what my current HP pool is.
Now using my skills to generate ward while I run monoliths or arena I can get up to 2K but a lot depends on the types of mobs that are there. So tie that into my other resists and mitigation that’s a comfortable place to sit (for me at least).
But look at the mechanics in a different light. Say I drop below my 1K ward level, it will regen pretty fast. How much HP regen would I need to get it back to that level? I would need to double my HP pool and my HP regen as well. So its just a different way to play. Overall I am comfortable with where ward is. I wish it would not scale down so fast, but yy the formula, the farther you are from your base HP, the faster it drops, so I get it. I worry a lot less about what my “max” ward is, but more so what I can sustain using ward retention and +ward per sec items. Everything above my 1K is just a buffer for me. I am actually running a lot better now than I was prepatch since I started focusing on resists a bit more, and balancing out my mitigation.
