WARD is ruining the game

kinda looking forward to the “they nerfed my ward” tears flowing in future

1 Like

Ward build being better than a non-ward build, literally what i’ve said.

Top spots are objectively filled with ward builds.

I will stop claiming this in the moment a ward build is not above a health build. Its not the case.

2 Likes

So if there is other better ways to survive at 1k+ why is no one doing it?

So all those people pushed way higher then us are just stupid and clearly they should be life based?

1 Like

i’m gonna start a melee character and try life/endurance build so I have a clue in this debate. My current is a mage, level 89, uses about 1.5 ward, is fun to play, and no way in hell can he do empowered monoliths yet haha.

edit: i’m thinking about void knight, any recommendations?

#1 is a health or non-ward build in all of these.

That is a health build being above a ward build every example, or are we about to move goal posts?

First link player has 3 ward items, should i keep checking them?

Then you just posted sorcerer ladder mentioned they aren’t based on ward? are you kidding me? trolling??

1 Like

I like ward.

Just because an item has Ward doesn’t mean the entire build is a “Ward Build”
15 Ward on hit and 13 Ward on pot use is all it takes to be a Ward build for you?

And do go on, because the Sorcerer top rank is a “damage dealt to Mana before Health” build which … doesn’t work on Ward.

But don’t worry, I’ll give you a few months to really go through them.

that sorc build is also lower arena waves then previous worse geared sorcs…

there have been sorcs in the past to get well into 500+ range of waves. anything sub 300 is not real imo.

I played a really shitty abomination build that could get 300 back in 0.9, like with 2k life and barely any recovery.

did they make arena harder? if not, I think anything sub 300 is like barely trying. like babies first arena.

There are games that are by design competitive - PvP games.
In a game that is essentially a PvE game, competition boils down to comparing size. Who is faster, who endured longer.
There are some people who care for participation, a few others who cheer for someone, and a lot more people who just play the game for fun, because there is no competition in the basic gameplay loop.

Having a competitive aspect doesn’t hurt anyone who doesn’t want to participate, so overall I think having a good competitive Leaderboard can only be a net gain. But broken leaderboards won’t decide if the game survives as a successful title or not.

By all means: I would love to have many classes more in line with others. I would love to play some builds without them being so overtuned.

The ward mechanic is fine on a base-level. The decaying shields are great.

I would not give an upper limit to the ward based on max health. Builds with few MaxHP (not high maxHP but current low life) should be able to get a good amount of ward.

The current formula for ward decay is: 0.4 * current ward / (1+(0.5 x retention))

Current Ward Increased Retention approx. decay
1000 150% 177
10000 150% 1777

As one can see, decay scales linearly with the current amount of ward you have. This could be changed to scale exponentially. I’m not sure about the fine-tuning. But just let give the example that at 10k ward, the decay would end up as being 3554 - double the amount you would have in a linear formula.

Its not an item.
Its 3 items.

He has flame ward 100% talented into ward buffs. You just posting randomly.

That’s why I find the %mana spent->ward mechanic more troubling than LL builds. With the ungodly amounts of mana that can be achieved, and how quickly mana can be replenished via a mana gen skill, it’s infinite sustain, that I find much more powerful than leech.

well, that may be true, but so far my 89 mage definitely does not have infinite sustain. He’ll need a hell of a lot more mana and damage for that.

They did make Arena harder, because most classes did used to do double those numbers atleast, which got really boring to do.

And the argument was not that certain classes are low on Waves, but that Ward-focused build are better in all ways. That single Sorcerer proves it isn’t so. I mean, it’s literally stated by the devs that atleast 2 of the 3 overall builds are running on unintended mechanics. That’s like saying Druid forms were OP back when Culnivar’s worked on Rage and basicly gave you permanent 70% DR. It used Druid forms, didn’t mean that they were to blame.

I dont remember seeing this in patch notes, but if thats the case interesting.

My spellblade has 800ish mana, and I can face tank anything except 1-shot mechanics. Can fully regenerate with a quick 2-3 second burst of mana strike, and keep going.

Now, I’m not saying the entire thing is OP, but ward…imho…is a much more friendly mechanic than hp/leech, once you get the hang of it. The only major downside, since I’m not running LL, is that I have a smaller EHP pool if I’m not hitting anything…and that’s the only time I feel vulnerable.

I think that’s mostly true, which is why I wouldn’t personally ask for everything to be balanced equally. Anyone expecting perfect harmony is a fool. People would just have to learn to deal with imbalances at some point.

That said, I don’t think what LE currently provides is a reasonable level of balance. I don’t expect perfection, but I do think EHG can do better.

ARPGs have had leaderboards since D2. Diablo 3 had leaderboards, and most recently, D4 added leaderboards due to massive demand. PoE has a very competitive ladder system as well.

If you had said you don’t think ARPGs need or should have leaderboards; that’s fine. Grim Dawn, one of my personal favorite ARPGs of all time, has neither a leaderboard or multiplayer. Therefore, I think it’s a plausible argument that ARPGs don’t actually need them. But to suggest ladders don’t belong or shouldn’t exist within the ARPG space is what I would actually consider to be the niche opinion.

I would also consider the fact that LE had a very low population count prior to 1.0. Judging by your account history, I can see you’ve been around. So, I don’t have to tell you the average player count prior to 1.0, at best, was maybe 2-3000 people. There is a much larger playerbase both now and to come as the game continues to grow. Therefore, I think you can expect to not only see more emphasis on leaderboards, but also more emphasis on competitive content in general.

That mechanic is still bound by mana generation though.
Plus maximizing mana generation is not a survival or DPS tool of itself and is designed to be limited.

Both the Warlock & Sentinel Ward generations are unintended scalings.

In general, Low Life may be an issue, because it scales directly off of Intelligence & Health.
Give anyone enough of those 2 stats and they are both invincible and nuking enemies.
Unlike Mana regen, it’s not likely they designed to never give players more than a certain amount of these stats.

that’s interesting. My mage is a sorcerer and at 89 has about 400 mana and uses Focus to replenish. But yea, he needs work :slight_smile:

I don’t want to ruin anyone else’s fun, but here are some pro-tank suggestions tht would be easy to hot fix:

  1. Make +health items easier to stack. It’s very hard to get a lot of hit points early on for some reason. Balancing resists, DoT defense, etc, makes putting life on stuff harder than it needs to be. If tanks ran around with 5k hps and could avoid big bonks, I think everyone would be happy.

  2. Tone down enemy damage-over-time in general or allow armor and resists to work better

  3. More cross class skills on items. Instead of 99% of the item base having necrotic damage or skills, make more generic bonuses all classes can enjoy