Spell Blade & Ward

Feedback and Suggestions
21

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.

22

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

23

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.

24

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.

25

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.

26

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.

27
  • generally rares will have between 10-50k hp at 100C and scale accordingly. Can easily measure this through single hit big crit builds such as void cleave. Smaller mob packs have no where near that amount.
  • As a rule of thumb I would consider 100k dps on dummy to be a good mark for meeting reasonable clear speed unless you’re pushing corruption extremely high (500+). Keep in mind ailment tick frequency is twice per second. Monsters will have roughly 90% damage reduction when compared to the dummy.
  • Ward is terrible as EHP because it lacks the recovery of other high EHP pools. Compare the recovery of high armour, high damage reduction sentinals with 2-3k hp equating to ~50k ehp to the spellblade that may have a 20k ward shield and enough damage reduction to have that equivalent 50k ehp. There are enough monsters in the game now that quickly do 10-30k effective damage through hard to avoid damage profiles. In these instances, recovering that ward shield that was build up off of multiple packs is near impossible when facing those dangerous enemies - especially when considering how quickly the sentinel would recover in those situations.
  • Where ward is good is building up a buffer on easy packs to give you some safety against those harder hitting enemies so long as you are still building your other defensive layers such as hp and armour and generally just getting passive ward generation through on hit and ward per second in the SB passiv etree.
  • There is still a SB build that is able to generate sizable ward such as my frostbite shatter build - contrary to many of the points you raised in your original post and what you stated when you came into my stream and said that the build wouldn’t work . Multicast shatter does apply ailments on recasts, and can be used to generate 10k+ ward on single target and a stable 15-20k in monos, peaking as high as 43k in arena. The build is doing 70-100k frostbite ticks as well making fairly timely kills of rares and bosses. However this is reliant on the frostbite shackles gloves to generate sufficient ward retention, which is a big ask for a new player. I would anticipate these levels of ward to be a ‘good’ amount to make ward a competitive defensive layer that can be invested in.
28

And how to get that much Ward for those who do not play from Frostbite Shutter?
It turns out that the entire Ward system of Spell Blade works for one specific build. It is difficult to call it effective mechanics.

29

Yeah, but if a mob has 10k hp & you have 7.8% leech you’ll “only” be leeching 780 hp over 3 seconds. My point was that you’d only get 7.8k leech if the target had 100k, which I assume is the case for bosses.

Also, is that 100k damage on the dummy or a mob? If the 100k is on the dummy, you’ll likely be doing ~10k on mobs, maybe less.

I’m not saying that the defensive balance is “good”, I’m just trying to make sure your numbers are reasonable.

30

Surge on dummy do over 1 milion easily
If I remember corretly i saw over 1.4 mil on a dummy.
It is a skill that wipe everything on the path, higher damage than flame reave.

You forget about rare enemies, medium size enemies and big enemies. Especially big monsters (not boss) have a lot of health.

Also as I wrote in the answers previously, 7.8% leech with only 5 points and a craft, so a minimal investment. Leech can definitely be increased.
A full ward spellblade build can’t even compete decently with those “5 points and one craft”.

A Life / Lifeleech Build have more than a Ward Build:

  • more armor
  • block chance
  • 60-70% more dps with just 1 sword
  • no 15% more damage taken because two sword
  • less damage from nearby enemies
  • leech
  • more mana to use before you need mana strike,
  • a little bit of dodge
  • attack speed is not a must
31

That’s why I said I assumed that bosses would have that much hp (or more).

32

If I remember correctly, I said that dont apply on hit effect but I think I was referring to the Ward and some talent trees proc as Elemental Burst…
However I am 99% sure that it does not apply on-hit effects more than once per cast because it is considered a single cast … otherwise 100% crit from firebrand should not work on all reps. (unless EHG did not make some changes after I did the report)
Also during the streaming I didn’t complain that the build didn’t “work” but that shattering strike had few range and burned a lot of mana because you had to invest most of the points in attack speed and frostbite so It was painfull when enemies are scattered
From my first post:

"
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.
"

33

Here is what I can find as to the absolute maximum amount of ward you can generate per hit:

Section 1: does not scale with # of enemies hit

SB Mastery: 4
Passives
Arcane Warden 8/8: 40
Arcane Shielding 5/5: 20 ward per second (its applied on hit, so I’m counting it)
Essence Duel 5/5: 15

Total ward on hit (not per enemy): 75

Section 2: scales with # of enemies hit
Skill: Mana Strike:

  • Ward Strike 3/3: 9
  • Arcanists Blade 3/3 & Transfusion 4/4 & Mind Warden 2/2 & Mana Drain 4/4: 56

Items
4xIdol 13% chance to gain 20 ward on hit: ~52% for 20, or approx 10 per hit.
Dual-wield Humming Bee w/max rolls: 14

Total ward per enemy hit: 89

Grand Total: 75+(89x#enemies hit) = 164+(89/enemy beyond the 1st)

I fail to see how that can compete with Health Leech (straight up), much less compete from an investment point of view (18 passives, 16 skill points, 6 items).

2 Likes
34

The ward from the Humming Bees and idols will scale with number of mobs hit, as will the ward from Transfusion/Mind Warden.

35

OK, its hard to tell with wording sometimes.

1 Like
36

I am not sure why we now compare Ward to leech, but Ward and leech are 2 essentially different mechanics.

Leech does solely serve as a sustain and does only make you tankier for certain situations.

Ward is mainly a mechanic to increase your eHP, while also providing sustain. But most importantly, Ward does increase your eHP, which protects you a lot from spikey incoming damage, especially big hits like telegraphs and crits.

I don’t wanna derail this topic about how OP leech is, but the latest nerfs too access ability from generic sources of leech was defi itely the right call.

I think 600-700 Ward Regeneration from a fairly low cooldown(3-4seconds) ability, that is also a movement ability fairly amazing.
Sure, standing still and attacking with fast hitting attacks will give you more Ward, but surge is basicly a on demand quick burst of Ward, while also an evasive tool.

Standing still and attacking might generate more Ward, but you will inevitably cause you to also take some more incoming damage.

I am not sure what you would call “a lot” Ward, when speaking about Ward generating abilities.

But if you can sustain 2000-3000 ward you are fairly save and surge alone also gives you like half of that if you keep it on cooldown(which you don’t need to do if you have other sources of Ward generation)

37

I don’t really view them as different. They are both “Health Buffers”.
Leech: You take the damage first, and buffer back up to full.
Ward: You get the buffer first, and the damage removes it.

Mechanically, they are different (leech is almost completely a % of your damage dealt, ward is 100% static values based on hits), but ultimately serve a similar purpose.

38

But it’s the mechanics that make them different. If you had 2k hp & could leech back to full “instantly” you’d be able to survive multiple 1.999k hits. But if you had 2k hp & could generate 2k ward “instantly” you’d be able to survive the first 3.999k hit where the leech wouldn’t. That’s the difference between having an additional hp “bar” (or bigger pool if you prefer) compared to “just” being able to heal back to full very quickly.

1 Like
39

Leech and Ward are the two only mechanic to sustain a melee combat.
Why I compare Ward with Leech ?
If you check Spellblade Tree and Abilities Tree, Spellblade is focussed to be a ward char, but Life / Lifeleech Spellblade build is infinitely better with few investment. Does it make sense to you?

2-3k ward and you are faily save? Did you ever played it ? How much corruption ?
My third build can reach 7k ward on single target, but often my ward generation is not enough vs pack because I dont instant kill / kill in few hit them anymore so they hit me and i cant sustain their dps. I am talking with 250-300 + corruption.
While with Life leech you can do without many problems.

If you think that “3 hit to charge 100% crit + heavy hit spellblade build (ward)” is good, wait to be oneshotted very often or wait your Flame Ward for every pull.

40

While I agree that Ward and Leech are the only reasonable sustain methods for a Spellblade, the numbers you are giving sounds like a issue of not having enough DR.

I did play several Spell blades on high corruption, that “only” sustained 2000 Ward, but still survived and facetanked almost everything.

Ward is not necessarily about how much peak you can achieve, but how reliable you can regenerate it and how much eHP you have.

There is a huge difference between 2000 Ward with a lot of DR from other sources and 7000 Ward with no to little DR.

I don’t know any specifics, but I can savely say, that Spellblade is one of the most reliable and tanky melee characters IMO.