And as a Spellblade who doesn’t abuse this method (and I don’t mean this in a disparaging way), I feel like I’m actually running with a balanced amount of ward vs all my other defenses. That’s why I do agree ward should be looked at, but I don’t want to see it nerfed into obsolescence either.
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I guess you talk about ward here as well. Right now I’m of to play a Shaman because people seem to think the class is bad but for my spellblade… It works fine in the very early stages of the game because the dmg is craycray then it falls back in the midgame untill you accumulated some gear and it’s beastmode when you have good stuff. I just think Spellblades progression is such a mixed feelings story ^^.
The ammount of mana you can get right now is completely stupid indeed I don’t know why the devs give in to the mana crybabys and changed it. To me this is a complete downgrade of the game because it’s rather brainead now as if they increased mana to PoE or D3 stupid levels of regen.
Ward helps with dps? Seems like I missed something but I haven’t played Ward builds in ages untill 1.0 arrived.
What is he abusing and what is a balanced ammount? I run a LL ward Spellblade right now and it feels far away from Paladin and Warlock ammounts of ward crazyness.
I just mean “abusing” in the sense that he clearly knows it’s busted but uses it anyways. I don’t disparage him for doing so because Spellblade needs all the help it can get.
Balanced defenses, from my experience, is not having so little ward that it’s easily removed, but also not having so little health, % endurance, armor, CSA/crit damage reduction, stun avoidance, etc., that you can maintain an optimized one-shot EHP without it.
Again what is busted? What he discribed is the way to go with spellblade if you want to get far. A balanced approach with my crap gear isn’t doing me any good so far and playing a SB feels tedious right now because I’m in a equipment hole ^^.
You have to use a tad bit of stuff to maintain your ward on your SB and you need affixes and/or special gear to do so. I think the tradeoff is big on this class because you can’t stack 300 int like whatever end gear Lich/Lock/Mage can do. SB is even the most Ward centered class from the getgo but still the worst in maintaining it by the passives and skills offered. It’s a “soso” kind of thing for me because SB can be strong but the investment is far to high. All the stuff I need to skill so my Shatterstrike is finaly freezing enemies is kind of stupid ^^.
Ok, so maybe we interpreted his comments differently, because the tone of his remarks made me think he thought it was busted, and what I read sounded pretty busted to me, as well, but this isn’t the point I wanted to get hung up on. Agree to disagree, I guess.
However, I don’t know what you mean by "what he discribed is the way to go with spellblade if you want to get far. " I have gotten far with my Flame Reave Spellblade build, not as far as others, but I got to the point it became so easy I got bored (~215 corruption, I think). I just re-rolled a new one on HCSSF for more of a challenge.
Thats a matter of perspective, if you genuinely believe ward is fine (i doubt) then yes, EVERYTHING ELSE is bad.
If you consider everything else is okay, then ward is definitely BROKEN.
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No, but how you can build for it doesn’t inhibit building for DPS at all. You can stack absurd amounts of mana, allowing you to spam high cost skills, which translates into massive ward generation (and high DPS output), which is just too easy to replenish with a couple of seconds of a mana gen attack. Hell, you can even get crazy and throw in some %dmg comes from mana, if you wanted an additional defensive layer.
While stacking massive amounts of HP or Leech doesn’t help with your DPS one bit.
it isn’t even the most busted mechanic the accolyte has for survival(looks at lich)
The solution is relatively simple; cap ward at a max that’s reasonable compared to health (let’s say ward cap can be X times max health) and cap ward gain per second with a max of a certain percentage of the ward capacity. That way devs can scale it to a required amount and tweak it much more easily as needed.
you forgot endurance & endurance threshold here - those are really important aren’t they? Not to mention crit strike avoidance & reduced crit damage.
I am playing a ward mage build, and basically, I would rather have no ward and good armor, people freak out about ward, but 8-10k ward in monolith is basically 2 hits or 1 good spell fromrandom mobs and your dead. EHP is what matters, not numbers of HP.
We don’t have endurance and armor layer to protect us, the HP pool is non existent and meaningless. Ward takes time to build up but it also decays like 2000 per second, instead of regenerating. I cannot generate ward when I run out of mana, which happens often in intense fights, making it much weaker.
I think ward overall is fine, apart from few bugged interactions, and bugged items. It is definitely won’t be a usable thing if capped at 2x hp, ward is nothing like HP. It is alright at 5-10x HP.
Ward by itself is fine. The support to ward from some items(twisted heart for example), and class passives/skills is the problem. For health, the access to health sustain(life leech) is pretty much equal between all class, but for ward some classes have way better tools to sustain a high ward pool(INT based class can scale both their DPS and ward sustain very easily) resulting in the class imbalance
Endurance isnt very great. its 20% of health at essentially 2.5x effect. its essentially 30% more hp when you cap it(well its good for health builds, but its not that overall powerful stat in the grand scheme). Flat endurance threshold is almost never worth it unless you get from some other mechanic like runemasters ability to get some for free if they stack mana.
Armor isnt strictly for non ward, it does work for ward, whoever told you otherwise tricked you. Armor is actually even better on ward builds when they can get it. Because its a layer which effectively multiplies health. if you have a global 40% reduction thanks to armor, all ward is 66% better. You are basically getting 1.66 ward per point of ward instead. it works out to be the same for health, but since ward comes in much higher values it leads to an equal percentage increase, but a much more real applicable increase.
Also for most builds its just a non starter. For example, assuming you have 3.5k health, and 40% armor global dr, and endurance. You get 3.5 x 1.3(Endurance) / 0.6( armor) = 7.58k ehp. getting 10k ward with 0 other defensive stats is better lol if your gen is good.
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I don’t mind some options being abit better than others specially in the late game, the problem is that these ward items is easily found through the campaign - and with an offensive investment you endup getting 10x more defensive?. This doesn’t make sense at all, also ward does not scale with health like “similar” mechanics does in other ARPGs which i think is a shame.
I would like to see the ward items get 10x rarer, or the mechanic scaleable with your maximum health.
So one dude says it’s the ward on hit/cast that’s busted.
Next dude says it’s bugged/OP class skills or passives that’s busted.
Another dude says it’s the unique items that’s busted.
And then comes another dude and talks some nonsense about building 10k mana.
Sounds to me like y’all need to do some fact checking and proof providing.
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I had this problem with “ward is too strong” within last week but then i startet to think about it and was totally relaxed after all.
It is just not true. If u only compare hp and ward in numbers, ur point. But that is not how it is working.
Example:
3k hp, 60% endurance at 50% Life, 70% armor red, 20% dmg reduce from bear, berserker dmg reduce, 20% dodge and so on. Those layers of defense are multiplicative.
3000×1.3×1.7×1.2×1.4×1.2 = (13,4k ehp) and so on. U got the point. If u go full ward u dont have all those multipl. Not armor, not endurande and so on.
Also the hp reg and lifesteal has to be multiplied. 400 hp/s reg means like 2000 ehp/s at least. Adding life steal and life on hit and u r fast at like 10k ehp/s without panik buttons.
Reaching 30000 ehp with life and zero ward is no problem at all and u will have a sustain enough for untill ur mental shenanigans are solved.
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Ok first of all HP builds work as well.
Then again for example. I wear only the life to ward transfer gloves on my paladin for example. I have all the DR you talk about in one way or the other as well with block on top and 50k ward. But as you said that’s not a problem at all shotting from ~15k ehp to almost 200k ^^,
I’d like to say that Ward matter a little.
And eHP / sustain is only factor.
Inflated hp/ward/es pool means noting (Every PoE player know that).
But game have VERY nasty DOTA to the point brokeness.
And eHP vs DOTa is weak on HP builds.
Game need few adjustment.
- put DOTa under control
- remove bugged mechnic (which is in progress)
- nerf some interaction like absurd amount DR on Mage combine with very high ward generation.
- ofc Healing Hands are also completely over the top
There will always be some frontrunners for a single mechanic. Only one thing bothers me, the low life mechanics all over the place. This has to be a high risk high reward mechanic but actually its a low risk high reward mechanic. And this is due to ward. This has to be adressed. Otherwise im totally fine with ward whatsoever.
Oh and, like in any arpg, dodge is superbad^n. Never ever put ur life in front of a russian roulette ICBM. Any Arpg should ban dodge or rename it the to Dumbstat.
The thing is LL ward builds mimic some kind of chaos inoculation PoE 1 max hp Playstyle just in a different form. I’m not realy a fan of ward or against ward but I want both methods of gaining HP or temporal HP to be at least in the same balance universe yet better in the same star system.
I simply wish to play some builds with nice interactions. Healing Hands is so awesome but every time I play my Pala I feel dirty after 2 monos ^^. I like the idea behind the skill but the result is not to my liking. That’s why either ward needs to be balanced accordingly or HP only defenses like Endurence needs to be buffed drasticly.