unique items *no longer updated*

Honeslty i must agree. This item alone will make aura stasking even more abusable. Its bad atm (auras) - will be even worse.

Auras mechanic should be toned down and balanced (curses are, totems are, traps are, why auras arent ffs? did D2 allowed to run with disco-seven auras whole time and faceroll the game with basic attack? not rly? :) ).
And Diamonds should be also not allowed to make insanely OP items. This is one of them.
If this one will have drop rate like Kaoms/Lionseye expect 50+ exalted price after some time. Or even more. I dont think its good way to go.

From one hand im happy that uniqes are good and unique from other hand - there is TOO MUCH unique mods of them and this alone makes rares bland and rares are 99% of game itemization, they are also so OP with certain combinations.

Put Anger, Wrath and Grace into that helm and you will deal a ton more elemental damage while adding tons more evasion. Any elemental attack build should use this helm.

Tbh I think the new unique helm is being made a much bigger deal than it actually is. Those of you who were here from closed beta will remember how flat cost auras used to cost less mana and how some of them had their bonuses nerfed (discipline, anyone?)

People like using auras, both for the idea of having a constant buff on their character as well as having the cosmetic effect of it. Auras are fun, this helm helps in that regard, I find it hard to hate it.

The fact that the 5% to all max resists on Purity has been scaled to Level 23 rather than 22 shows that GGG are concerned about game balance and aware of the implications that adding this helm would bring. I imagine they would also already have done extensive internal testing (hence the purity issue) so I'm not too concerned.

This helm looks awesome (and would be even more so once it's 3D effect is introduced in-game) and is going to help CI Melee characters alot. (Face it, they are the ones who will benefit the most from the CBF/CBC mods as compared to a high HP/Iron Reflexes character (which due to their high HP already have defense vs status ailments)

Considering the number of threads on forums I've read recently complaining about status ailments and CI, I'm astonished how a unique that is able to help in that regard can get shot down so rapidly.

Mind you, I've never been a fanatic over game balance. I've always been much more concerned over the fun factor. If it means anything though, I personally don't find anything overly OP about that helm considering auras scale linearly and the only aura that would potentially have provided OP bonuses (+1% to extra max resists, which is unattainable on a normal rare) got fixed such that it wouldn't be an issue.

Remember, this is a level 64 base item after all. I don't know about you guys but I find this new trend of having useful and powerful high level uniques in the game rather than ordinary/otherwise useless ones refreshing

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KarraKurri wrote:

Honeslty i must agree. This item alone will make aura stasking even more abusable. Its bad atm (auras) - will be even worse.

Auras mechanic should be toned down and balanced (curses are, totems are, traps are, why auras arent ffs? did D2 allowed to run with disco-seven auras whole time and faceroll the game with basic attack? not rly? :) ).
And Diamonds should be also not allowed to make insanely OP items. This is one of them.
If this one will have drop rate like Kaoms/Lionseye expect 50+ exalted price after some time. Or even more. I dont think its good way to go.

From one hand im happy that uniqes are good and unique from other hand - there is TOO MUCH unique mods of them and this alone makes rares bland and rares are 99% of game itemization, they are also so OP with certain combinations.

You apparently never used the aura runewords. It wasn't uncommon for non paladin players to benefit from 2-3 auras depending on what they wanted for gear in D2.

Admittedly it was expensive as all hell and hard to do. But it wasn't uncommon. Last I checked I have a build that runs triple "holy" auras plus converion on a paladin. My "basic attacks" hit for ridiculous amounts.

Most people also made a mountain out of a molehill for Shavronne's Wrappings which was a build completer. This helm really does give CI users that much needed love, particularly with mana reservations and their lower pool compared to their EB brethren.

This is from kinnidian on reddit and I think it sums up the hat quite well:

"

Well you have to consider that, on it's own, this unique is strong. You'll notice that the trends for uniques is that some affixes are really strong, but it lacks other affixes (or those affixes are just weak) which means that there's a significant trade-off when it comes to gearing yourself.

For example most people would only run with 1 or 2 of these trade-off uniques because of the negatives (for example no hp and low single resist), so there can be balance in the game and running with a unique in every single socket just doesn't work, you have to carefully choose what to run. On it's own, with mostly rares, yeah this will be a sweet unique for certain builds, but not every person can take advantage of it and this is one of the really nice things that GGG have done with uniques because equipping every best-in-slot unique in the game isn't the instant I-WIN button, in fact it's not really feasible.

The thing about the head is that it simply goes against the idea of uniques. It has two powerful mods that rares cannot get. AND, it has no drawback, even its base defense isn't terrible.

Uniques are supposed to either be somewhat niche, or have drawbacks to balance out their uniqueness. This head has neither. Every build wants CBF. Every build uses auras. The only limiting factor is the fact that it's an Evasion head, and not all builds can afford to trade a high armour/ES roll on head for these other mods.

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SoujiroSeta wrote:

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Dynas wrote:

If you actually one-shot yourself, instant life leech wouldn't fix that. You'd still take your entire hp globe in damage and be dead before life leech could apply. This isn't mtg.

Secondly - No matter what your build is, you want to maximize the damage it deals. No one wants to create a character that's painful to clear with. Furthermore, no one would want to group with a character that can't deal damage. Why would I want you in my run if you will give my enemies 50% more health and you don't do damage?

This is an interesting item, but at level 62 it's horrible unless the damage scales better.

Actually, instant leech would save you. Once you have a high leech, the reflect aura would have to be more than your leech for you to even feel it. If you deal 10k, and the reflect aura is 40%, and you leech back 40%, your life won't flinch. You'll deal 10k, leech back 4k, and take 4k as well. In other words, 0 dmg.

The reflect aura would have to be substantially more than the leech % when it's instant. That's why instant leech is very strong. If you're physical based, and your physical leech is high enough, it's almost impossible to kill yourself on physical reflect, because as long as you aren't running around with 2k hp and 24k dmg (glass cannon), you won't have trouble with reflect at all.

Vaal pact would be broken and mandatory for any leech build, only thing stopping it from being godlike is that you can't use life flask. This is practically vaal pact, but with no kicker.

Here is some basic math that you don't seem to be able to comprehend. If you have 4k health as you propose and have enough leech to gain 4k on hit; you must go to 0 in order to gain 4k health. The moment you reach 0, you will be unable to gain any health because you will be dead. If reflect is 1 shotting you; you will still be dead.

If reflect is not 1 shotting you, your death was your own fault and cutting your damage in half is not the answer.

"

0nin wrote:

The thing about the head is that it simply goes against the idea of uniques. It has two powerful mods that rares cannot get. AND, it has no drawback, even its base defense isn't terrible.

Uniques are supposed to either be somewhat niche, or have drawbacks to balance out their uniqueness. This head has neither. Every build wants CBF. Every build uses auras. The only limiting factor is the fact that it's an Evasion head, and not all builds can afford to trade a high armour/ES roll on head for these other mods.

Lose +Life and +Chaos Resistance. Need to gear accordingly to counter these losses. Most beneficial on a CI user whereby CI users lose ES in exchange for more potent auras.

Immunity to Freeze is a negligible bonus on life-centric builds due to the fact that the freeze time is absurdly short (moreso for those using Kaom's Heart) and the fact that all life users carry "of Heat" suffix flasks.

For Blood Magic users (on your core 3 flat auras, GraceWrathAnger), you save some 40 reserved life and gain a substantial boost in DPS (particularly for elemental builds) in exchange for a complete loss of potential 30% Chaos Resistance (the most desired and difficult stat to get) and some 99 Life (compounded with the typical 200+% Life nodes).


Fair trade-off if you scrutinize it properly. I thought about using this helmet on my ranger, but I'd have to consider losing just about 300 life which could be the difference between life and death in maps for me (and do I really need that DPS boost when 40% reflect packs already nearly oneshot me @ 5.5k life?)

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Dynas wrote:

"

SoujiroSeta wrote:

"

Dynas wrote:

If you actually one-shot yourself, instant life leech wouldn't fix that. You'd still take your entire hp globe in damage and be dead before life leech could apply. This isn't mtg.

Secondly - No matter what your build is, you want to maximize the damage it deals. No one wants to create a character that's painful to clear with. Furthermore, no one would want to group with a character that can't deal damage. Why would I want you in my run if you will give my enemies 50% more health and you don't do damage?

This is an interesting item, but at level 62 it's horrible unless the damage scales better.

Actually, instant leech would save you. Once you have a high leech, the reflect aura would have to be more than your leech for you to even feel it. If you deal 10k, and the reflect aura is 40%, and you leech back 40%, your life won't flinch. You'll deal 10k, leech back 4k, and take 4k as well. In other words, 0 dmg.

The reflect aura would have to be substantially more than the leech % when it's instant. That's why instant leech is very strong. If you're physical based, and your physical leech is high enough, it's almost impossible to kill yourself on physical reflect, because as long as you aren't running around with 2k hp and 24k dmg (glass cannon), you won't have trouble with reflect at all.

Vaal pact would be broken and mandatory for any leech build, only thing stopping it from being godlike is that you can't use life flask. This is practically vaal pact, but with no kicker.

Here is some basic math that you don't seem to be able to comprehend. If you have 4k health as you propose and have enough leech to gain 4k on hit; you must go to 0 in order to gain 4k health. The moment you reach 0, you will be unable to gain any health because you will be dead. If reflect is 1 shotting you; you will still be dead.

If reflect is not 1 shotting you, your death was your own fault and cutting your damage in half is not the answer.

I don't know how reflect damage/instant leech is applied, but SoujiroSeta was suggesting that they are applied simultaneously, so the instant leech would cut down the reflect damage before being applied to you. So you wouldn't take reflect damage and then immediately after leech back, they would essentially cancel each other out.

I have no idea if that's how it would work though.

New items are up on the wiki with Min/Max values for those who care

Alpha's Howl
Bloodseeker
Thousand Ribbons
Chober Chaber - Oops.. I spelled it wrong when creating the page.. it's actually at Chober Caber for now.