My realization about Ward, and why it feel so good

[Krathemor]

I had a realization today about why Ward feels so much better as a defense than Health.

A quick story tangent for context- I’ve been leveling a second Primalist (Druid, coming from Beastmaster) and I kinda accidentally got myself to 100+ health regen. (combination of unintended suffix rolls, unempowered health regen blessing, and summon spriggan healing aura) Now that I’m in empowered monos on this character I’ve been noticing that I’m dying a lot less than my level 95 Beastmaster with over 70% armor wearing a shield, while my Druid is dual-wielding. I think a large part of that is the health regen sustain helping, especially against DoTs and ground effects. I’ve been wondering to myself “Why don’t more people recommend Health Regen as a defense, if it feels this good? …Well, it’s probably just not worth the affix slots to build it on gear…” And then it hit me.

The thing that makes Ward feel so good is that every single way that you can build into it increases both your maximum ward, and your regen rate. Ward Retention, Ward per Second, Ward Decay Threshold, all make it so you can have a higher maximum effective health, AND give you regen. That’s not the case with Health. All the affixes for max HP and sustain are separated. There is a theoretical maximum health you can achieve (depending on class/passives) because there’s a maximum given amount on gear (I could get to around 14k on the planner with absolute max t7 rolls and all passives/blessings). There is no upper limit to Ward.

On top of that, because of how ward decay works, you effectively have more “net” ward generation at lower ward than at max, making it have a sort of built-in endurance mechanic.

I think this is most consequential against Damage Over Time, which cannot be dodged, blocked, or reduced by armor (except for the new affix, but even if you have 70% armor mitigation, and 20% armor → Dot, that’s still only about 10% reduction against non-physical DoTs.)

In short, Ward feels good because by building any of the stats, you’re increasing both your maximum EHP, and gaining sustain, especially against DoTs and ground effects which are often the most deadly, and hardest to mitigate through other defensive layers. Whereas with health, because building maximum health doesn’t increase sustain, you have to choose whether to use your other suffix slots for mitigation defenses, or for health recovery.

[Makszi]

Ward feels good because it’s WAY over-tuned and way more effective than any other defence right now… I’m hoping they nerf it because it makes other builds feel bad.

[DiceDragon]

Yep, and ward retention is a silly stat.

lets say you have 3.5k health, and are using exsang, last steps, and the glove affix at 10%, this means you generate 45% of missing life per second, assuming you are always empty(you pretty much are), you generate 1575 ward per second. I dont think ive ever seen a regen build even come close to that value.

Then we have to consider, that regen like you said, takes up affix slots. Specifically it competes with health as an affix. You cant run double health belt and still get regen. So regen while not feeling terrible hurts your maximum EHP.

Then we consider ward retention as a mechanic. at default you lose 40% of current ward per second, and the formula is 0.4/1 + (0.5 * ward retention)

So if you have 600% ward retention from say 100 int and some passive investment, you are looking at 0.4/1 + (0.5 * 6) = 0.1 or 10% of ward lost a second which is almost nothing. This means you ward stabilizes when your regen is equal to 10% of your reseting ward. you would be rocking 15750 ward(give or take, the ward calculator gives slightly less, probably has to do with tick rate etc.)

Assuming your health never recovers, if you get knocked down to 1 ward, 10 seconds later you are still regening 600 ward a second. this still a sizable amount of recovery and your ward at this point is 10k…

Now imagine for example if int didnt get ward retention and instead gave ward decay at a 1:4 instead, so with 100 int like before, and 200% ward retention from passives.

You end up with 8.2k stable ward, and at 10 seconds you still are healing 200 ward a second. if we look at a 4 second window of being knocked down to 1 ward, you have 800 ward regen, and are at 4600 ward.

like the reality is that ward retention is obtainable in too high of values. there is people who have managed to hit like 1k thanks to frostbite shackles in combo with good gear.

at 1k retention the above example character rocks a stacking 23k stable ward, and at 4 seconds of being knocked to 0 has 1200 regen and 5.5k ward.