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.
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
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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
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
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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.
Resistance, are very easy to come by and it’s not even mandatory to get them from teleport on any Spellblade or Sorcerer Build.
Surge offers HUGE amounts of ward, we are talking up to 450 Ward per use and even more with per hit/per crit.
If you want surge to mainy generate ward, you can easily reach 600-700 ward per surge use, if you hit a few enemies.
600-700 Ward for Surge is not a lot. Maybe a single hit from a “grey” monster with 200-250 corruption.
Surge 100% Crit with Blade Weaver hit easily over 100-150k on enemy
A Spellblade Lifeleech can healfself for 100k / 100 * 7.8 (Leech on Gloves + Rift Bolt) = 7.8k heal for each monster hitted in 3 seconds = 2.6k heal for each monster hitted each second
5 Sorceres Passive Tree Points + a Craft on Gloves
VS.
10 Surge Passive Points + 13 Spellblade Passive Tree Points + Some Idol (probably) + Spellblade Passive Bonuses and you still have ward degen
Assuming the mob’s HP is higher than 7.8k, yes, but leech in general is capped at the leech % of the mob’s hp. I have no idea how much hp mobs at that “level” have.
Already at 100 Corruption, mostly monster have more or less 5k health i think.
With 200-250+ Corruption + some Mod., i think everything have more than 10k health. Maybe only Rat or stuff like that have less health.
I think the problem with Wards is that one mechanic works for different characters in gameplay.
What is enough for Sork, is not enough for Spell Blade.
What is enough for a Spell Blade will be overkill for Sork.
That is, for Ward to be effective, you need to change his work specifically on Blade. So that he doesn’t have to spend as many resources on Ward as he does today.
By the way, I like the mechanics on some items that translate HP to Ward every second. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to introduce something similar for the Spell Blade in passives.
If the growth of Wards depends on our HP, we automatically get a progression as we increase our level and equipment.
At the same time, it will not matter to us how many times we hit the enemies.
Also, we will not need to make too much effort directly on the methods of obtaining Wards.
It is enough to increase HP.
That is, something like this looks like this.
When hitting melee, we restore Ward in N% of our HP. Fires once every N seconds.
It won’t matter to us if there are many weak enemies or 1 boss. We kill them with 1 hit or many.
We get stable protection that can be predicted.