Spell Blade & Ward

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Hello everyone,

I wanted to leave my feedback on the Spellblade and the Ward mechanics used on the Spellblade.

Ward:

I think the Ward is an interesting mechanic, but not very well suited for the Spellblade currently.

  • Requires huge investment in talent points and equipment compared to leech.

  • Spellblade generate Ward almost exclusively with Hits. So, Ward scale exclusively with Attack Speed, forcing you to focus / scale the attack speed.

  • The Ward is especially strong against single enemies and bosses because you can accumulate enough to take almost any charged hit. The problem is in Echoes of the Monoliths. If you don’t have enough Ward Retantion you often find yourself engaging groups of monsters with 1-1.5k of Ward which is often dangerous unless you use Flame Ward at every single pull. Also if you find yourself fighting enemies whose abilities need to be avoided, when you manage to engage them again you find yourself with extremely low Ward due to the continuous degen.

  • Without the help of the Idols, whether you hit 1 enemy or 100 enemies, the Ward generated is always the same. Making it more dangerous to fight groups of enemies. With leech, this does not happen because if you hit 10 enemies you leech a % of the damage done to each monster.

Spellblade:

  • I found the 0-cost skill dps extremely disappointing. Rive (Void) far exceeds Mana Strike and Firebrand in dps while still costing 0 mana. 4-5 times more dps (Rive easily reaches 100k dps)

  • Elemental Burst (Talent) / Fire Aura (Talent) / Mana Arc (Mana Strike) / Ice Spike (Shatter Stike) have some usefulness initially but they lose it quickly. Their DPS not scales enough. At Monoliths, if not before, it is already no longer worth using them and it is better to invest the points elsewhere. Furthermore, these effects do not trigger on-hit effects, making them worthless.

  • Fire Aura is an interesting mechanic, but as I said above it’s not worth it at the moment. It should be completely revised. Requires a minimum of 21 talent points, specific equipment and Surge but the dps is still low.

  • Elemental Burst besides problems mentioned above has another one. Many times the effect do not hit anything because Flame Reave, Firebrand and Shatter Strike have a greater range / area than Elemental Burst so unless enemies are very near to you, they are not affected. If the Burst happened on the enemy, it would have a better usefulness and reliability.

  • If Ice Spikes were homing they might be useful. Unless you teleport in the midst of groups of enemies (risking death) they are not of much use

  • Whiteout (Shatter Strike): Recasts do not trigger on hit effects. This thing has devalued it a lot personally. I have not used it since I discovered this thing.

  • The Void Knight with only 14 points get 36 Void Melee Damage (12 of which also for the Spells). Spellblade must spend 26 talent points to get 34 Elemental Melee Damage (24 Fire / Cold / Light + 10 of 1 Element + some other bonus that is not worth 12 talent points invested)

  • Using Melee Attack of different elements could be interesting but now the skills at 0 cost are not good and element special effect do not synergize with the others except Ignite → Frostbite

  • Frostbite / Ignite require a big investment in equipment to work and still bring with them problems not to be underestimated:
    (mechanics that require a lot of attack speed to be able to apply as many debuffs as possible)

** Flamereave used to apply Ignite devours your mana and to get the bonus on damage over time you are forced to spend 4 points in Dancing Flame, which kills your range, which forces you to use a 0-mana cost to quickly reach the fourth hit
** Shatter Strike you do not have enough points to increase skill area effect if you want to apply as many stacks as possible to reach a good dps

  • Enchant Weapon: I would completely remove the ability, as it is a simple buff. Give a better ability at Spellblade. The bonuses from Enchant Weapon I would distribute on talents. When I activate Enchant Weapon, I reach the constant dps of the other classes. (Ex: Void Knight with perma bubble + devuoring orb or sigil / perma lich form)

  • The talents to increase the dps of Firebrand must be completely revised in my opinion. Triple Strike = + 10 mana to only increase the aoe (no shotgun effect)? Madness honestly…

Build I have played:

My first build:

Spellblade Ligthning Hard Hitter (Ward)

Very strong against bosses, but during the Echoes in the Monoliths it was “problematic”.

Incineration (Firebrand) + Illuminttaing Fire (Firebrand) + Blade Weaver → 4 Hit (3 Firebrand + 1 Flamereave) → All enemies in my screen dead → Few Ward generated → one shot risk

Engaging each pull without a ward was as risky as pulling half the map, activating the CDs and killing everything in four attacks (rarely anything survives)

Stopped playing due to random one shot (if I was distracted for a second) and due to the “Enemies have a chance to dodge” modifier that made the build unreliable

My second build:

Spellblade Ignite (Life)

Ignite applied by Mana Strike / Firebrand did too few damage, good damage if applied by Flamereave

Stopped playing fast due to how quickly I was burning mana and having to reach fourth Flamereave hit to get decent AoE

My third build:

Spellblade Cold (Ward)

Build that works well in Echos and Monoliths, not good in the arena. The dps is not very high.

Thanks to the attack speed of Shatter Strike and that, it does not kill enemies in one shot; you can generate enough Ward to be able to move from one group of monsters to another safely.

My fourth build:

Spellblade Frostbite (Ward)

95-100k Frostbite tic on dummy. Good damage and survival.

Stopped playing due to Shatter Strike’s poor range, when enemies were too sparse it was a nightmare.

My fifth build:

Spellblade Cold (Life)

Best build I have done.

With only 1 craft on gloves and 5 talent points in Cold Leech, I no longer needed to invest heavily in Ward.

This build is better than the 3rd in all respects:

  • more armor
  • block chance
  • 60-70% more dps with just 1 sword
  • no 15% more damage because two sword
  • less damage from nearby enemies, leech
  • more mana to use before you need mana strike,
  • a little bit of dodge

(if you find 75% void res from the blessing you can raise your health further because you have enough crit for mana strike from idols.)

I’ve played more builds, but these are the main ones.

I hope I have written well enough. English is not my native language so I may have made several mistakes

5 Likes
2

Great feedback! One thing I was wondering about your builds: what level of corruption did you get to on each? Was this one character that you Respecd each time or are these 5 different characters?

3

I did all build on same character.
I started having some problems when I started farming Empowered Monoliths.
Until you unlock them you can play pretty much anything.
With all builds I have played at least 100 corruption, with Spellblade Cold (Ward) and Spellblade Cold (Life) I have farmed in zones with 170-180 Corruption.
I preferred not to reset the Monoliths and do Echoes that gave 40+ stability to quickly unlock the Echo Quests for Blessings.
Ignite and Frostbite I dropped them due to the “heavy drain mana” and “low aoe range” play style. I don’t know how much corruption I could reach with them.
I think Spellblade Cold (Ward) and Spellblade Cold (Life) can easily go beyond 200+ Corruption easily.
I’ve shown the builds I’ve played for:

  • Show that Life> Ward for the Spellblade at the moment even though the Spellblade is centered on the Ward.
  • The Ward forces you to stack attack speed
  • The 3-hit + critical playstyle, makes you generate few ward. Not suited to farming monoliths and the mechanics of the ward itself
  • 0 Mana Skill can currently only be used as a support. If you’ve noticed I use Crit Mana Strike in almost all of my builds to generate a lot of mana in no time and start to use my main ability again. To also take advantage of the “spent Mana converted to Ward”
  • Many passive points, skill passive points and proc abilities are not useful
1 Like
4

It feels like the primary issue with ward is it only act like hp but there are not many incentives for ward specific mitigation. It would be cool to see a node that makes armor more effective when defending ward or something along those lines.

5

i like your feedback and in short i really dislike mana mechanic too

6

The main problem I think is that Ward doesn’t scale on multitarget for Spellblade.
For a ranger build that gets hit a few times that’s enough. Ward gives him time to put distance between himself and his enemies.
For a melee build that gets hit often, ward generation isn’t enough especially when enemy damage increases. Also stop attacking for spellblade, it is same to having a permanent damage over time

7

There is a build that uses Mana Strike as a damage dealing skill but it requires a unique (Dark Shroud of Cinders, which isn’t too hard to get since it’s from Rahyeh) and 1-2 Forgotten Knight blades which are quite rare.

8

I think the main problem is that the 0 Mana Cost isn’t strong enough so you can’t rely on them. If Mana Strike and Firebrand were good as the other 0 Mana Costs, you wouldn’t feel the need to rely solely on Mana Cost Skills

9

This is some solid feedback. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on the various builds. I tested many before 8.3 and started creating new characters for further testing because the blessing swap dance became too time consuming.

I agree that ward for Spellblade is slightly underwhelming when comparing defensive passives available to other classes. However, leech is arguably the most potent form of “defense” in the game so this is an unfair comparison. A bump in Ward Retention somewhere other than Flame Ward would be a welcome change as you mentioned.

I think Fire Aura builds are cool but I dislike the number of passives that are devoted to it. The tree already feels thin due to the 3 elemental types and their supporting ailments. After you obtain your core passives it feels like the decisions become selecting the “least worst” node rather than the most powerful.

I looked over your builds and I hate to nitpick but I never saw you spec into Dual Aegis in Flame Ward or craft an additional charge on your chest. This is an oversight in my opinion. 2 charges is the minimum on any mage that I build.

10

Dual Aegis is very good to pick but if you move quickly in Echoes and keep fighting you almost always have it in cooldown (I use it vs against dangerous enemies or large groups of enemies). Against the bosses it is not strictly necessary.
An additional charge crafted on the chest, is equivalent to further decreasing the dps which is not already very high

11

Got a link to said build? Ive been trying to make mana strike work for a while now and have not been able to get anything cooking. im guessing this focuses on scaling void damage with fire auras?

12

The chest isn’t too hard to get (it’s one of the normal rewards from Rahyeh) but the swords are pretty rare. The aim is to get as many stacks of fire aura as possible to buff the flat void from the swords that get added to your melee/spells.

13

Hello. I agree with your opinion regarding Ward’s problem with melee builds.
In all the games that I have played before, there was exactly the same problem, the ward-barrier mechanics itself is effective only on ranged characters.
Protection from one-time damage, but not from multiple damage.

In the case of LE, the SB should be able not only to quickly accumulate wards, even with single hits, but also to keep them from one group of enemies to another.

Alternatively, you can bind Flame Ward to one of the SB skills.
For example, with the FireBrand skill, instead of points for generating wards from a blow or from stacks.
Make an extension of the work of FlameWard or reduce its CD.

I also like the mechanics of Arkane Shielding and Aegis. Which hints at protection precisely through resists and direct damage reduction. As for me, this mechanic is better suited for SB than ward generation.

Здравствуйте. Согласен с вашим мнением касательно проблемы Варда в сборках для мили персонажей.
Во всех играх что я играл раньше, была точно такая же проблема, сама механика вардов-барьеров эффективна исключительно на дальнобойных персонажах.
Защита от разового урона, но не от многочисленного.

В случае ЛЭ, у СБ должна быть возможность не только быстро накапливать варды даже единичными ударами, но и сохранять их от одной группы врагов к другой.

Как вариант, можно сделать привязку Фламе Вард к одному из навыков СБ.
Например у навыка ФаерБранде, вместо очков на генерацию Вардов от удара или от стаков.
Сделать продление работы ФламеВарда или сокращать его КД.

Так же мне нравится механика Аркане Шилдинг и Аегис. Который намекает на защиту именно через резисты и прямое уменьшение урона. Как по мне, такая механика лучше подходит СБ, чем генерация вардов.

14

I would say that one of the issues with Ward is that its gains don’t scale.

The 4 Ward per hit from Mastery is the same when you have 200 HP or 2000 HP.
Personally, I would add “Ward efficiency” scaling somewhere. It could be healing effectiveness or leech rate, or just replace the Ward Retention on Intelligence with Ward Efficiency. This would allow Mage/Acolyte to scale defensively with their main stat and value ward retention more, as it scales multiplicative with Int, rather than additive.

15

The Spellblade can generate so much ward on demand (mostly on hit) I really don’t think it needs any help in that regard. The Sorcerer however, that’s an entirely different conversation…

16

You’re right, I am currently playing Sorcerer and seeing this issue.

The issue currently is that because Spellblade lacks (unless I’m mistaken) any significant crit build, they all go heavy on attack speed, which is basicly bleeding into ward retention already. Turning Int into Ward generation would equalise Attack Speed vs bigger hits for SB, while also making Ward better for Sorc, who is more of the giant crit archetype. Coupled with the fact that nearly all Sorc Ward passives are flat value,

For Acolyte/Lich it would be very interesting as it turns Intelligence into a sort of Leech.

Overall, I think it’s better for passive values to scale with something, even if it’s Spell damage in a Spellblade tree (like Warden’s Echo), but currently, Ward gains scale with nothing. Separating Ward Generation & Decay would be sorta like having both %Health and Health Regeneration stats being separate.

17

The problem is rather not that Spell cannot recruit Ward, but how he does it and at the expense of what.
As the author of the topic correctly said, If we kill enemies in a hit, or make strong, but rare procs, we will not have wards.
That is, we are tied to attack speed, and this greatly hurts variability.
That is, the task is to be able to collect wards in different ways, while not increasing the total volume of wards.

18

Try playing with 250-300 + corruption.
The spellblade doesn’t generate enough ward because it doesn’t scale on how many enemies you hit and you are in melee.
The sorcerer is a ranged, he must stay in melee range with monsters as few as possible and still has builds that reach 15k ward using the “Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros”
Ward for a spellblade must tank the damage it takes in melee, while for a sorcerer it must absorb sporadic hits

19

In my opinion the best solution is:

  • Replace Spellblade Mastery Passive Bonus (4 ward on hit and mana converted in ward) with:
    • Passive / Skill that generate Ward, will generate Ward for each enemy hitted
    • The ward you gain is proportionally inverse to the speed of the weapon (es: 1 attack at second = 100 ward / 4 attack at second = 25 ward each attack) = attack speed will not be anymore a must and spellblade can use slow weapon as well
    • Ward generate is increased by 100% -125% (tbh need to tested to find the right value )

To be honest I have never seen any major ward problems with the Sorcerer as it is a ranged class. You kill most stuff before they can approch / attack you. You only get hit by a few ranged attacks

1 Like
20

What’s more bad (in terms of survivability) is that we have nothing to replace the teleport resists with.
For example, my build is based on Surge, but they only offer me a little Ward, for a bunch of points. Useless in terms of survival.