Fixed that for you…
Edit: That said, what about non-ward spell builds? Should all spell builds be forced into ward as a protection?
Nah they kite and eun for their lives. Im ok with that for now
Throwing attacks would be same as shatterstrike. You can throw 8 hammers at a time in all directions and have them chain up to 4 times… That would be absolute crazy since you can have 0 mana cost and never stop spamming
But then again the mechanic is similar to ward and you have to hit hundreds of trashmobs to get tanky. And similar to ward you get immortal with increasing number of enemies going against you.
Maybe there should be a cap of how many enemies can be leeched at. So instead of soulfeast suck ward out of any enemy on the sceen make it cap at a fix number. Make it combine with one of the skillnodes that increase ward gain so that with every point you get +5 targets that can be leeched at per skill usage. (Dont know if these numbers make sense… just as an example). This would cap the max. amount of ward gain possible with the skills and equipment (increased attack/cast speed) and not with the number of enemies on the screen.
Shield Throw already has this mechanic with armor.
This mechanic is actually usable with Lunge. The result is that the only viable endgame build for lunge is as a 4s buff for your defensive stats.
I repeat my honest wish: Make tank characters tanky per se with passives and defensive skills on top. If you wanna be tanky and facetank wave 400 you have to take a defensive skill into your loadout. Else you can choose to take a movement skill or a damage skill instead. More damage, less tanky. But your own choice. Let my sentinel be immortal when taking Rebuke, Ring of Shields and Juggeraut Stance all into the same loadout. But this way I won’t do any damage so it is kind of balanced and not a build to go for wave 1000. But right now you can go full defence and you won’t facetank wave 200 with that loadout.
The ward generators on ward builds are also the main damage source. So you get full defence and 80-90% offence with 1 skill and the synergizing passives and items.
I don’t think that’s the case. Arena should outscale your toon pretty fast right now and still almost every build is viable to reach high waves. Then there are well thought through ward builds that shredd everything. Ward NEEDS a Nerf because it’s stupid to be able to have 30-100x your hp as a shield just because… The other defensive options look pretty good from my point of view but on the other side we don’t have any dev input on what arena level is good and aimed for at the present.
My experience, from my haphazard under geared Sorcerer v my really well built Forge Guard, makes me think otherwise (scroll up)
But that’s cool we all have different experiences and opinions, that’s what makes discussion interesting 
And as you say we haven’t had any input from the devs, and what they think!
To much ward topic
Ward vs other prots (and my post about its mechanics)
Recent GB/CA discussion and some rework ideas …
I’m casual player but the problems of current mechanics can be noticed even in story mode. And I wrote a lot about it also. And I believe that these problems will exists as long as core parameters’ disbalance continues to exist (recovery parameters included).
And that’s a good example.
Also I must note that ward is universal defense layer. It protects against all types of damage and hasn’t a “doom-hit” problem of Dodge when you’re alive till you’re lucky.
At the same time attunement characters are less powerful. Partially because of the fact that this parameter covers only 3 of 7 protections. Strength characters are most vulnerable (in my opinion) because Strength increases only 1 of 7 protections - Armor.
And because of this huge difference of parameter effectiveness a necessity appears, necessity to balance them in item and skill bonuses. And I believe it’s nearly impossible with that difference.
Lets make some calculations, because we need some examples …
(and I repeat - I’m casual player so probably you should check this and possibly correct me)
We have have level 100 character with his 600 health and 11+ items which means 22 suffixes and prefixes …
(most numbers below are average)
~4-5 prefixes for 100% glancing blow (50% damage reduction).
Lets assume we’re unlucky so we need 5. Also ignore Critical avoidance for now.
(17 prefixes left)
Then we want to increases protections to further reducing all incoming damage by 80%.
5 times reduction means that we need 600 * 4 = 2400 protections.
3 suffixes to get +60% armor and protections (19 suffixes left)
4 prefixes (max) with set elemental protection to get +900 (13 prefixes left)
4 suffixes with added elemental protection to get +600 (15 suffixes left)
Summarized ele-prots: (900 + 600) * 1.6 = 2400
~500 base armor we have from items
1 prefix to get +60% increased armor (12 prefixes left)
4 suffixes to get +600 armor (11 suffixes left)
With all this we get (500 + 600) * (1 + 0.6 + 0.6) ~ 2400 armor
And here’s an interesting thing: we can get all three “decay” protections only from Vitality, and there’s only 7 items possible with it, and percentage bonuses are Amulet suffixes only. I’ll ignore idols here because they are more important in other cases (skill modifying). And that means that …
6 prefixes goes to Vitality (including armor slot) to get 52 vit = 780 prots (6 prefixes left)
1 amulet prefix to get +48% void protection
1 amulet prefix (2-nd and last) to get +48% necrotic protection (4 prefixes left)
2 suffix to get +500 void protection
2 suffix to get +500 necrotic protection
3 suffixes to get +750 poison protection (4 suffixes left)
At last: ~2400 decay protection …
With all this we’ll get 90% damage reduction (from GB and prots) which means …
6000 effective health
200 effective health regeneration
But what if we spend same affixes on INT and Dodge ?
12 INT we have from catalyst
7 prefixes to INT ~ 56 INT + 12 INT = 272% ward retention (10 prefixes left)
8 suffixes to add 738 dodge rating (14 suffixes left)
4 set prefixes to get +268% dodge rating (6 prefixes left)
Summarize: dodge rate = 738 * 3.68 ~ 2700 which is ~74% chance to dodge
See?
80% reduction from protections
74% reduction from dodge ONLY. A bit lower, yes, and we are vulnerable to “doom-hits”. But we have +68 INT from the same amount of affixes! (+ catalyst)
And we have 2 prefixes and 10 suffixes left comparing to protection build. So lets take some HP …
2 prefixes to get 130 more health (4 prefixes left)
2 suffixes to get 26% increased health (12 suffixes left)
With all this we’ll get 87% damage reduction (from GB and dodge), +130 health and 26% increased health, which means …
7075 effective health
153 effective health regeneration
… and we spent 8 less suffixes
–
But lets continue this our little research from some more …
We need to find out what level of ward generation we normally can get JUST with the stats above, and compare it with possible increase of HP regeneration on non-INT classes. Mage is simpler in my opinion so I’ll take him as an example …
20+ ward generation you have from catalyst. Other classes don’t have default item bonuses (non-affix) to leech or regeneration.
Mage ALWAYS have some bonus to retention so I’m going to increases it by at least 30%. Lets say other class can take +45% to health regeneration instead.
272% → 300% retention means that character looses 40% / (1 + 3) ~ 10% of max ward every second.
Sentinel may easily get “Ring of Shields” (10 sec duration and 15 second cooldown) which has a nodes:
- adds 2 more shields, orbiting you (2 levels, 5 max shields summary)
- every shield heals you for 20 health every 3 seconds (4 levels)
- increases healing effect by 60% (4 levels)
- heal you for 200 health every time one shield is destroyed (4 levels)
So, potentially, if your shields die after 10 seconds, every 15 seconds you may be healed for total …
200 * 5 + (10 / 3) * (20 * 5) = 1300 health → +87 health regeneration
If shields die fast than effective heal drops to ~1000 health → +67 health regeneration
… which means that MAXIMUM total effective regeneration is …
(20 * 1.45 + 87) * 10 (from damage reduction) = 1160 health per second
… and MINIMUM equals …
(20 * 1.45 + 67) * 10 (from damage reduction) = 960 health per second
On the other side mage has Flame Ward with 10 seconds cooldown and base 300 ward generation. It has nodes …
- 200 more ward (5 levels)
- 200 more ward, sacrificing duration (4 levels)
- 150 more ward, sacrificing retaliation (1 level)
- 30% more ward with increased mana cost (3 levels)
- Double ward granted per duration (1 level)
I’ll ignore short effect of “Flame ward” damage reduction. Lets see on ward generation only which equals totally …
(300 + 200 + 200 + 150) * 1.3 * 2 = 2210
When you’re actively attacked this ward is 100% effective and this MAXIMUM recovery bonus may be calculated as …
2210 / 10 / 0.5 (from GB) / (1 - 0.74 dodge chance) = 1700 effective ward generation
If you’re NOT attacked, with 300% retention you loose 1200 ward per 10 seconds, which means that you are able to cast Flame Ward again, so 2200 - 1200 = 1000 ward per 10 seconds is a MINIMUM ward generation with 300% retention. And effective generation is even greater.
1000 / 10 seconds / 0.5 (from GB) / (1 - 0.74 dodge chance) = 769 per second.
So, with corrected calculations, who is the favorite among “Flame Ward” and “Ring of Shields” - is not so obvious. At the same time I must note that INT build has more slots to be improved, and also 68 INT grant 270-340% bonus to damage of INT-based skills.
And I feel that I reeeeally should remind about “Exsanginous”.
Yes, with it you have something about 50 health on your character and effective ZERO health regeneration. But your ward generation with ((600 + 130) * 1.26) ~ 920 max health increases by 184 and can be increased further via increasing character’s maximum health. And I thing it’s… a lot 
I hope you analyze this with me, people, and mark my possible miscalculations. But for now I think that protections are just a bit weaker and more complicated than dodge, and ward-generation from SOME skills is just too high.
Ah yes, about leech… 
I think that defensive layers must be balanced first. Leech depends on that very much.
But I feel I should create a topic (again 
) about overall mechanics.
P.S. Yeah, probably level 100 character should have 600 health - not 500, which means that character with 2000 protections is a bit weaker (77% damage reduction).
EDITED (21-05-2020): fixed several calculation / affix building mistakes. After that protection build + Ring of Shields became more viable, comparing to INT build with Flame Ward.
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One thing I did notice is that it’s 4-5 preffixes for 100% glancing blow, not suffixes. If you’re going suffixes you’ll need at least 8.
I’m assuming that you’ve checked this at the item level & aren’t potentially double counting affix slots by just treating it at a total affix pool level.
Also, you can’t dodge DoTs, while the protections will mitigate that.
Ring of Shields can also provide % armour ~& protections on heal as well as block protection (& the block chance for 4s on cast). And if you’re a Forge Guard you can have anywhere up to 30-35 shields up at a time if there are enough mobs to prock Shield Crafter (which there definitely is in the mid/higher arenas).
This is why we need something like Path of Building.
Yes, that’s a mistake.
Also I’ve noticed that we can get only 4 prefixes with set protections. And I’ve made few mistakes in my calculations. I’m correcting this right now.
As for a Dodge and DoT mitigation. If fact it does, though it’s not that obvious.
Example: you have 50% dodge and you are attacked for 10 times. Every attack has 100% chance to poison. But half of all attacks are missed, so you get 5 hits and 5 stacks of poison. In fact, all incoming damage reduced by half. Yes, it’s not a direct mitigation, but direct damage is also not mitigated, right?
That’s why I used basic skills with their passives. Every class have some tricks, but my goal was to search a difference between basic skills, because this exactly the place where disbalance appears. All mechanics above should be balanced on its level, in my opinion of course.
Pretty sure is armor and elemental protections not all protections. I’m like 51% positive
Yeah, it used to be all protections, but they fixed it. 
Yes and no. If a skill has the dot tag then it can’t hit & therefore can’t proc any on-hit effects (like crit, future strikes, ailments, etc). So if there was a skill that can hit which had 100% chance to poison, then yes, your 50% dodge would reduce the amount of damage you take from the dot by 50% due to the hit not happening as much. However, if the skill has a dot tag, that can’t be dodged or glancing blow’d. Unfortunately we don’t know the tags on the mobs skills, but some of them will have the dot tag (such as the pool from the Oasian Gorn, pretty sure that has a dot tag).
Yeah, I think this is a problem where you start to bring in skills (Ring of Shields) rather than sticking to the mechanics (dodge, ward, block, etc) as I don’t think it’s “reasonable” to talk about just the basic skills without talking about skill nodes or passives which then opens things up massively…
First: people, I’ve made several mistakes in my calculations. Now I’d wish to think they are fixed. Ward is still stronger (in my opinion) but the problem is more about protection weakness, comparing to Dodge.
First calculations showed that “Ring of Shields” itself if weaker than “Flame Ward”. Now their effectiveness is pretty close.
Agree. I just can’t say how often we face enemies with such skills. I’m not sure I’ve ever met. Anyway, talking about possible PvP, it would be very hardcore variant of rock / paper / scissors, when someone can have DoT / True strike skills = absolute advantage over Dodge competitor. Again, on my taste - it’s wrong. That’s why I’d like to see Critical avoidance (lowers enemy crit chance) replaced with Resilience (reduces enemy DoT and Crit damage).
Hmmm… don’t you think skills should be balanced initially? I believe it makes further balancing - at character passives level, uniques level etc. - simpler. Besides, I’ve compared these 2 skills with nodes - those ones granting strongest recovery bonuses.
Most people will say that balancing is an ongoing process and there are more pressing matters to attend. So if stuff is work but under or overperforming it’s okay to leave it like that if we get MP or the Rogue class sooner ^^.
From my point of view balance is a big part of a game and misstreated and leads to a circle of flavour of the moth builds after release untill everything get’s more balanced.
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In addition to Macknum’s post, I think that balancing the mechanics of defences (armour/protections/block, dodge & ward) is a separate argument from balancing skills, though there is a fair bit of overlap given that skills often provide defensive bonuses (ignoring things like teleporting/shield charging out of the way) and that trying to balance both the defensive aspect of skills while also changing the basic effectiveness of the defenses is just asking for headaches.
Since defenses are the base that skills then modify/build upon, I’d think that it’s best to get the defenses themselves balanced between each other (while allowing for different effectiveness in different situations) first then you can look at the skills/passives.
And it’s not as if we have all the classes/masteries available.
Totally agree.
First half of my post is about Protections vs Dodge, especially about the cost of similar results in “affix amount”. But then I just had to compare skills because I wished to compare natural regeneration with Ward generation, but there’s no natural ward generation mechanics.
P.S. Catalyst grants 25 which is very close to HP regeneration though.
It’s not the ward mechanic that is op in the first place. If a mage only uses flame ward and some items that generate ward he’s capped somewhere. The massive amount of ward generation that we see on the high performance builds come from abilities that generate ward on hit. These skills need to get regulated (nerfed).
For the classical tank characters there should be the possibility to get a similar number of hp and protections compared to ward.
One thing that people often get wrong with the hp+protection mechanic is that they think it’s good to have low hp pool and high protections. This is not the case. The only benefit is that on a low hp character your hp regen works better because it is a flat rate independent from your max hp.
But besides this it is absolutely viable to stack hp instead of protections. It doesn’t matter if you have 600 hp and 2000 protection or 2000 hp and 600 protection. The difference in damage mitigation % between the 2 examples (77% to 23%) leads to the false assumption that the build with 23% is weaker.
So imho it would be a good idea to show the sum of hp+protection for every damage type which is a better value to compare builds instead of talking about damage mitigation %.
But stacking hp is not easy. It’s because the flat values on hp affixes are lower compared to protection affixes. That’s probably intended because hp is good against all damage types whereas protections only cover a single damage type. So this is the planned way to balance these stats. On top of this there are more passives that increase protections by x% than hp (that’s subjective, I haven’t counted them, yet). So it’s an absolutely logical choice to boost the flat values on gear for protections.
Why am I talking about all this, you may ask, dear reader… I just want to say that nerfing the ward generating skills and adding sources for tank classes to gain a significant larger hp pool can be a way to balance the classes. To prevent people from answering “but hp is useless” as I’ve seen many times before, I wrote this little essay.
And last but not least, larger hp pool needs the regen rate to be dependent on max hp.
Right now everybody runs around with small hp pool. Therefore leech feels awkward. With a good amount of resistance and leech you constantly overleech but can’t make use of it. With higher hp pools being easier to obtain we could also make a better use of leech.
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Sadly there is now way or mechanic right now to get a meaningfull HP pool. In times when 30k Ward where a lot things were unbalanced already. Now people throw numbers arround that reach 100k Ward. So tell me how much HP and protections do you need to match this numbers? I still thin protections and HP are in a good spot and Ward is the only and biggest offender here. If you build a full tank you can get a lot done but if you dont you get smashed pretty fast. With ward things are different, if you build for ward gain and retention you become a god that is only killed by player error instead of game mechanic while you don’t need that much defence. On top of that classes like sorcerer get so many o shit buttons, CC and movement skills it’s bonkers to give them the possibility to be the tankiest class ingame by a quartermile.
Werebear with 85% protections and 800 to made wave 500 so to hit 1000 waves I think 90% protections with 1200 to is about where you would have to sit but currently not obtainable. To be equal to 100k ward I think it would come more down to how fast you can replenish life once you achieved the above stats. You would need probly 3-4ooo life a sec generstion
I could also suggest something else that what they did in older rpg’s.
Lets give to melee classes a bigger gain from strength and dexterity where strength would boost hp and hp regen AND protections, dexterity give more dodge AND protections .
Mage classes get bigger gain from int where int give also more protections and perhaps attunement as more mana and mana regen.
Also melee classes could not use ward mechanic/items , mage classes also no melee based items, etc.
I agree with @Macknum - Ward is too strong. But @XLVI_carpo 's words are very true - main problem is the amount of ward-gain on hit. So yes, there is some problems with defense layers and other recovery parameters, but AoE, mob density, average fight distances etc. also have some significant balancing issues.