It feels like Ward sucks compared to Health

General
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My friend and I play these respectively, so I’m constantly seeing the comparison side by side. I play Mage, he plays Rogue. We’re still new to playing, and are level 94 or so.

It really feels like Ward lacks, because it cannot recover itself worth a damn. Meanwhile, Health-based characters can just leech back up really fast. But Ward has no version of this. If I lose 2k Ward and 50+% of my 1300 Health from a single hit, I can’t get that Ward back. What am I going to do? Pop Flame Ward and get like +300? Shoot some abilities and get anywhere from 30 to 200 Ward back, depending on whatever your build and items are? Compared directly to my friend, who gets chunked to 30% Health, but he’s able to work with Endurance and Leech, so he doesn’t die (despite not having Ward flat values to protect him), and he Leeches right back to full in a second. How does this even compare?

If I were to guess, IF Ward IS actually “good,” then it must be one of two things:

  1. It’s only good at the end game, where, possibly, kind of like Path of Exile’s Energy Shield… you can get such high values that the sheer numerical value is what makes it good.
  2. It’s only good with a specific unique that lets you Leech with Ward, or something like that, I don’t really know.

If it’s one of these, let me know. Cuz I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. I’m about to rework my entire character and just build for Health, cuz Ward aint it.

Let me know your more experienced thoughts!

2 Likes
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Man you should’ve been here before that ward nerf. People had like 30-40k ward or more.

Ward is ok but you have to try and balance your stuff. I play a few classes and my low life lich stygian is ward and health, ward at about 2k and health around 3k ish. What helps me a lot is getting to resistance cap and also building endurance % up so that hits do less damage.

Haven’t played a mage yet, but it’s next on my list. Sentinel, Lich, and Marksman is what I got and they seem pretty good. Mage probably got nerfed bad with stuff recently and needs some fixing.

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Hey there.
Something seems off, like you lack knowledge on how to actually generate ward consistently.
Just to be sure, is this the character you’re playing atm?
SorcOfCourse - unlovable - Character Profiles - Last Epoch Tools

Because if it is, it’s clear you miss mostly all available ways of generating ward through gear.
The only ward-generating affixes you have in your whole gear is the Font of the Erased rings.

I always avoided playing Ward because it was always overpowered, compared to health. They always tried rebalancing ward for it to be on par, and just very recently they managed to get Health to be at least as good as ward.

So, I’m really no expert in ward characters, but I’m almost certain you should have at least one ward-generating affix in each peace of gear.

There’s a whole lot more to it than just using skills to gain ward… But I’m sure someone will be able to give you a better guidance on how to build up ward efficiently. You’ll soon change your mind, believe me.

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Well, that’s because my current setup is the build I threw together AFTER deciding to ditch Ward, lol.

I already tried playing with Ward generation. The cooldowns were lacking. And the no-cooldown sources were also lacking, things like mana spent gained as Ward, or Ward per second, these all lacked severely compared to Leeching to your Health based on a percentage of the hundreds of thousands of DPS you can produce. Leeching a couple thousand Health in about 1 second, versus… spending all your skill points on +7 Ward per cast here and +5 there, to accrue a few hundred total???

It just… doesn’t add up, man. If something hits you for 70% of your EHP, Ward CANNOT recover back to full capacity in a second. Like I said, anyway, at least not with normal gear.

If this Health route falls off, I’ll give Ward another try. Right now, though, no deaths so far.

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Ward can be generated 1,000’s per second.

Ward can be generated on hit, on crit, on cast, being hit, ward on freeze, using abilities, ward per missing life, ward retention, ward per sec, ward decay threshold. I’m sure I’m missing a few but you get the point.

There are some very powerful ward items like Twisted heart or Vessel of Strife as well. I think as you get better and learn the mechanics you will find a way that it feels great perhaps even better than HP.

Heck I even switched to a hybrid on my Pally Auradin with Wall of nothing because Ward is very strong and gives me more EHP.

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Can it though?

Ward generation is highly built into the respective skills and passives, not into gear outside of specific uniques.

For the skills chosen by OP this includes only some coming from Flame Ward, a singular burst, possibly a tiny fraction extra per second and a bit of retention. Nothing major.

And the mage has surprisingly crappy options in-built unless you use melee.

Reactive Ward us utter garbage.
Sun and Storms is worthwhile if you also use Silver Rune, the combined amount coming to a optimal ~50 Ward per second, which is… not much. It also comes with 50% lightning damage… roughly 2 Affixes of value for the cost of ‘8 levels’.

Given that the distinct need for a Mana built is there having at least 900 max mana to optimize Harbinger of Stars it’s not really easy to get into Ward either.

Afterglow is an option for 48% ward retention whenever meteor triggers potentially. Also 48% increased damage. That’s ok-ish.

Mana Shell is a given for direct ward regen anyway.
Lost knowledge is really not that good, even with 900 mana it means at max it produces 30 ward. That’s laughable. And for every trigger it produces less. One absolutely awful passive.

Warder works only properly with Elemental Nova… 120 per element per 10 seconds? Means 12 ward per second, means at max 36 ward per second, kinda crap for a activatet ability too, in OP’s case also only 24 per second since no frost damage is done.

Arcane Insight with Elexir of Knoweldge is actually decent with high int. But only threshold, which isn’t much, even at 100 int it’s solely a measly 500 Ward threshold.

Mana Well is the strongest generating mechanic available, and that’s entirely reliant on mana spending. But that’s a really good one for the investment.

The Spellblade tree is only for melee.

As a Runemaster you can go into Transcendence, which provides 36 per second and health (which can be used for a Low Life setup with Exsanguinous), very strong one.

That’s the applicable ones outside of ‘20 ward for traversal skills’ which is garbage.

On which hit are we generating ward here hence?
On which crit do we?
Which freeze are you talking about?

The amount of applicable options is limited, but @Unlovable if you want to go into Ward I recommend low-life building + high ward retention. Focus on intelligence (helps a bit with mana too), get a Exsanguinous and get experimental ward on missing health on gloves. Then you’re decent, regeneration is higher the more life you stack and the more retention as it allows a higher upper ceiling. Health is primary though.

3 Likes
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Ward has been nerfed af. Mages and Acolytes (ward dependent classes) used to be the strongest classes, now they’re at the bottom list in terms of most played and relevant kills (end game Aberroth). As the community complained, they nerfed them time and time again. I’d recommend you to chill out and enjoy the view or play something else, such as Void Knight if you want to do end game.

2 Likes
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It is funny how discussions can change from Ward OP, make Health better to Health OP make Ward better.

Ward is far more skill/mastery depended, while health can be build with basically everything.
But the classes and masteries that can utilize Ward can still make it very effective.

I think Health is in a good spot right now and we might need some additions for “regular ward” builds, those that are not compeltely abusing certain interactions and synergies.

If you are a build that completely goes into Ward with all the crazy interactions that are available it is still stronger than HP though.

I also think the current meta skews the overall impression a little bit, because VK and Paladin are not the typical ward classes and they can scale health greatly.

4 Likes
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Ward nerfs were too heavy handed and has left mage defenses in shambles. Sure 20-40k ward was too much last time, but I think 10k is absolutely reasonable - but how many builds today can reach 10k ward without going low life on Exsanguinous? Probably none. Name me a build that will find good use of the previously busted Lost Knowledge node. None again. That node has been dropped so hard even on mana stacking builds.

In fact, in terms of EHP, 1k ward on a paladin can be worth 8k on a mage because of the sheer armor, damage reduction paladin has access to. Whereas mage has less HP and armor nodes on the passive tree, still needs to find armor from gear to make that ward worth something.

The nerfs were really not well thought out and designed. Mage absolutely needs some passives to help with ward AND armor. It’s time to stop treating armor like a strength class feature. Every class wants armor, but mage, acolyte and rogue have huge trouble finding it. Insane ward generation helped to plug the gap, but now that peak ward numbers are “balanced”, that ward is getting wrecked so easily and harder to come back up.

Sentinel is showing the rest of the classes what makes a good class. (Excluding forge guard which is still a highly inferior mastery)

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Forge Guard is not that bad as some may think :slight_smile:

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Because it was insanely broken and ruined game design. It wasn’t fun to be required to play Ward.

Sentinel was the worst class in the game for years and finally got an overhaul so people are excited they can actually play Sentinel now. This doesn’t mean Mage or Acolytes are in a bad spot.

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The existence of this video seems to sort of disprove this whole topic:

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Well this showcases what id call as heavy says a “broken interaction”

Mage uses int, and gets lots of passives that buff and benefit said int.

int gives you armor while channeling focus.

This build does not build int, it builds str. Because cleaver solution is a frankly busted item that probably shouldnt exist.

Dont you think its a bit odd, that the character who has potentially 40+ int on passives chooses to get none of them, instead to put str on gear, and get their int that way? str gives 4% increased armor per point. so if you have 150 int on a mage that you built with focus channeling, you get 1200 flat armor. if you instead build 100 str, and put on cleaver solution, you get 800 flat armor, but you also get 400% increased, resulting in 4000 armor.

You literally always gain benefit in this style of build by ignoring every int passive on the tree, and instead putting str on gear and using cleaver solution.

Ward still exists in a state where it is propped up by special items. There is no “ward” classes, cause baseline ward generation in passive trees is pathetic.

nice I have 5k mana, that gives me a whopping… 500 ward per second from my passive in sorc. wow so much ward… Where as with exsang and 2.5k hp, so much easier to get then 5k mana, I get 500 ward per second as well.

They tried to fix it this patch by giving the “ward per second” affixes on certain slots, so ward can be gotten through none unique mechanical means. But its just not strong enough.

Ward is 100% a build archetype that requires you have uniques to generate ward for you.

and I do agree that the main problem facing ward builds is that Armor or evasion are basically missing from mage. So mage gets some mid level ward gen, but has 0 actual mitigation and its a problem.

They have to get really creative in how they deal with getting their mitigation.

Personally whats missing to tie a hybrid archetype together is a way to split damage to health and ward, if you have 50% of damage bypasses ward, items like vessel of strife becomes way better with mixed investment, because now your regen essentially applies to incoming damage in an improved ratio.

This is how inquisitor builds in poe work most of the time, they get damage split, and since regen applies to both ES and HP, they take a 1k hit, but only need 500 regen to heal it up.

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No, I think it actually proves my point. This exactly fits my criteria.

  1. Ward relies on endgame gear.
  2. Ward relies on some specific unique item, or something along those lines.

Everything I’m hearing in here confirms what I’ve predicted. I appreciate the replies. Guess I have to just try to not get hit with those instantaneous spell effects, and keep grinding until I have all the crazy gear.

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Ok, that wasn’t a good example, then. But this one is:
https://www.lastepochtools.com/build-guides/spark-charge-spellblade

Yes, it uses Boneclamor, but not only isn’t it the only ward source, but it doesn’t even stack necrotic res. And it also uses int stacking. It’s not even using strand of souls.

But if you’re looking into building pure ward just from affixes, then yes, it won’t be easy.

Although ward, as it is right now, is very easy to slap on most builds to have on top of health. Which seems to me to be the actual intention of ward.
It shouldn’t work as a replacement of health, but rather as an extra defense you build towards.

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Nah, now you can easily add ward regen for any character to overcome heave dots and this is greate. The one thing is most dissapointing to me is Chronostasis blade, rip friend with current ward limits you are useless ;(

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LOL

Ward is still OP for those who know how to use it.
Health is now pretty neutral / balanced IMO.

As you guys spend more time in Eterra you will understand