Welcome to non-ward playstyle.
Short term solution: Play Healing hands divine barrier + HP convert to ward item, you will feel game is more balanced around this
Long term solution: HP builds should be buffed to perform closer to ward builds
3 Likes
I will have a try with this. how much ward you can mantain during the battle? is more than 1k, 2k?
I have 2.9k HP and sustain like 8k ward through high attk speed. I have around 550% healing effectiveness.
You can have more ward through healing effectiveness, atk speed + divine barrier+seraph+4/4 clericās hammer.
that is huge indeed. do I need to take also that node of HH tbat says āif you not heal an ally HH eill cast centered on youā ?
If you pick seraph you donāt have to
Manual healing hands cast with āUnbroken Prayerā make me hit 22k ward, but it decrease fast because i donāt play with garbage axe one handed item which gives intelect equal to your strengh
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not all melee skills are the sameā¦ Druid Werebear for example FEELS AMAZING to melee with compared to Rogue, Sentinel, etcā¦ Heck even Wizard Spellblade melee feels pretty greatā¦ But ya some melee skills like Werebear swipe are very NON-clunky. You should try some more melee builds for feel
a bit strange the ward/barrier strategy of this game. e g. Diablo 4 has slso barrier but is feels like a barrier and not more important than life pool itself. here you have 3k life and 8k barrierā¦ was really this intended in this game? cause lot of performing builds are doing this. or devs lost control over ward?
thematically it is totally out of place, when a warrior depends on a ward system to play
but thinking only about the gameplay, I feel like itās the game design, after I started using healing hands with divine barrier the game seemed more balanced
2 Likes
tried it, currently Ican sustain 1k ward max during fights. some questions:
I have 6 attunement, should I gain more? it helps for Divine Barrier?
Do I need to takes the HH nodes: Divine Catalyst, Synthesys of Light(ward based of Healing Effectiveness), Urgent Healing(HH restore more health upfront)
EDIT: with some adjustments mangaed to maintain ~3k during fights. Took only Urgent Healing(increase healing upfront) node besides Divine Barrier.
Adding my two cents.
Iāve also noticed that Fire+Physical attacks from mobs seem to be WAY overtuned.
Consistently the only damage that threatens me in otherwise completely manageable echoes (like when Iām leveling a new monolith and in low corruption, so it should be pretty much a stomp) is meteorite, flaming axe attack, and other such fire+phys combos. The void+physicals hit WAY above their paygrade too.
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exactly, also Cold+Physical combo, even the thematic cold meteor that falls onn some monotliths from time to time almost one-shot me.
might be these combos are bugged and apply like double damage or more, e.g. Fire+Physical should apply half fire and half physical but apply 100%fire+100%physical.
EDIT: tried again on Arena, no probelms until ~wave 150 got a blow(āBlow of the breathā or something like this was the attack name) of Fire+Physical which one shooted when I had ~3k ward + 2.5K full heath. died effectively in less than 1 second. for sure this combo attacks are bugged, it is not possible to survive without any problems to all other attacks besides these combo fire/coldā¦+physical
Ward was never balanced and now after global launch it is indeed safe to say that control over ward was lost.
Before 1.0 LE had like 500 players count maybe. People that came from other aRGPs (notably PoE as itās very focused on mechanics/math) instantly identified Ward as the best and easiest to scale defense mechanic. And I am not talking about buggy or broken interactions - just base Ward generation/retention fundamentally. Within 2-3 days the flaws of Ward became obvious to anybody that played main aRPGs in the last decade.
Seasoned PoE players know that Energy Shield mechanic is balanced on a premise that it is not easy to replenish; it requires not taking dmg to start the recharge and investment in specific stats on gear. It also can be vulnerable to Chaos damage and you cannot have Armor/Evasion if you go for big Energy Shield pool (bigger than Life). Itās more advanced playstyle and not recommended to start with for new players. In Diablo Barries are mostly temporary and serve as a health buffer and not main or only defense.
In LE Ward total pool can be few times more than maximum Life pool - if you truly utilize everything good about Ward - it can be 8-15+ times of average Life Pool (that alone is fundamentally imbalanced). You get to stack Armor on top of Ward which will protect your Ward; you can keep taking damage to generate Ward and itās incredibly easy to just get even more Ward by hitting things. It also has no drawback to any dmg type and the way Ward generation works - it trivializes any dmg over time taken.
Lots of basic formulas/mechanics are not balanced at all in LE and Ward is one of them. Leech for example has no cap on each instance of leech and seem to happen instantly.
You hit something for 50 k while being on 200 hp and you are back to full 2700 hp within 0.5 sec.
All these balance issues appeared in PoE many years ago and were solved. If your mechanics are fundamentally problematic to balance - exactly same issues will arise as in PoE 5+ years ago.
It just might take some time but now that more people play the game - it wonāt take long.
2 Likes
Sure let me just re-roll the entire campaign to see if I like something.
Yaā¦ Thatās a big part of ARPGsā¦ Trying new thingsā¦ Kind of the point, to some folksā¦
So you want me to play the campaign for 5+ hours to see if I like the way lets say, Avalanche works.
When I could determine that I do not like Avalanche within under a minute of using the skill.
ok bud.
I never said 5 hours. Where are you getting that information?
Welcome to ARPGs. I see by your response that this is your very first time trying one. I really hope you enjoy the experience and adapt to this genre. Itās a great genre to enjoy!
Clearly your first foray into ARPGs has come with some challenges, but you will learn that this is they way. Try. New. Things.
Was there any actually conversation about melee in this thread? You know, ways to toss melee a bone in terms of boss fights? I personally enjoy playing both, but I find melee in this game, especially in boss fights to be quite a bit more challenging than ranged.
Given that melee always has to close to range and run from bad patches, my suggestion to EHG would be to be more liberal in adding move speed boosts to melee passives and skill nodes.
In a game thatās all about enabling player choice as much as possible, I think just saying something like, āmelee needs to take a traversal skillā, is against brand. Just give melee the tools it needs to close the gap and escape danger.
2 Likes
movement speed bost for melee would help, but, there are 2 type of melees:
- stationary melee, e.g. stay and hit mobs with Vengeance
- moving melees, e.g
using Warpath
I play Vengeanxe now and staying still to hit mobs means you are a target, and, I got 1 shooted in high Arena waves even from offscreen ranged mobs which I even not seen and who shoot a meteor fire to me, so, I would need more than movement to play stationary melee.
e.g. I would like more to have āreduce damage from ranged attacks by 50%ā than movement speed.
I feel your pain. I have felt your pain. Iād argue that is actually an issue with the viewport. āSouthā (toward the player) is shorter in the viewport than mobs in the game think it is.
I can get behind them adding different mitigation for different classes/skills. Like the Sentinel getting nodes/passives that do what you said. Shaman getting damage reduction added to the totem. Melee rogue having something movespeed or dodge based. It doesnāt have to be on size fits all.
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If you think the melle build is bad, imagine the channeling builds that require you to literally stand still. Furthermore, most have an animation time that by the time you start casting, the enemies have already cast some magic at you. Like any new ARPG, everything beyond movement speed and area damage is just decoration.
Solution: Add to the melles, and channeling skill trees, a passive that guarantees a large amount of damage reduction every X seconds for hits that take more than 30% of life.
Like: Frost armor: You gain +20% damage reduction every second for 4 seconds. If you receive damage that will cause at least 30% of your maximum HP, Frost armor is activated to defend the attack (20% to 80%), then shatters, returning to 0% reduction, and begins to reform itself.
This type of skill would prevent builds with less mobility from dying to massive damage skills that, due to screen pollution, they often couldnāt see. So you would probably reduce 80% of the first impact, but if you were careless to the point of remaining still, or attaching too many massive skills to yourself, you would die before the skill recovered (for example, the attack of those birds that form a rune on the ground and A ball of fire falls from the sky.
This way, melle and channeling builds can take advantage of their mechanics a little more, choosing to reposition themselves only when they perceive imminent danger.