Nerf life nodes... while boosting base life so life itself isn't nerfed

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Getting free passive points while having the same stats as before is a pretty huge buff. But that's not really what's happening here. Right now non-ES builds generally stack every life node they can find. Under my suggestion, to get your life that high, you'd still need to stack every life node you could find. If you're really of the mindset that these things are "forced"

I am aware that you would need to stack life nodes just as much to get equally high HP. However, you would get an acceptable amount of hp without stacking nearly as much.
I never said that after your suggested change, one would still be forced to take those life nodes - which was actually kinda my point. now you are forced ... well at the very least it is really important - with your suggestion implemented you wouldn't be nearly as much anymore.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

If every balance change to one system requires giving a corresponding change to all other systems, then what's the point? If everything increases by the same amount, none of the relationships actually change, the numbers just get bigger.

I agree with you completely. This however wouldn't be a balance change. Life already is the best form of defense. Marauders with HP/STR based builds are already ruling the hardcore ladder. Almost every Ranger is already stacking life with blood magic.
If you buff the strongest - you cant leave the "others" out.

The biggest problem here is your suggested HP gain from strength. To make strength as an attribute so much more appealing, without compensating the other two is just not going to work.

I'm not even entirely against a small buff to HP (not to strength however) - but i think i should be done without freeing up passive points.

I enjoy this discussion btw :)

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GutenTag wrote:

I agree with you completely. This however wouldn't be a balance change.

It's definitely a balance change. It's just aimed at the passive tree; it has to do with how people play the passive tree game more than how people play the monster-slaying game.

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GutenTag wrote:

Life already is the best form of defense. Marauders with HP/STR based builds are already ruling the hardcore ladder. Almost every Ranger is already stacking life with blood magic. If you buff the strongest - you cant leave the "others" out.

You still have who's getting buffed and who's getting nerfed utterly backwards.

The more life nodes you decide not to get, the more this benefits you. ES builds are in the best position to take less life nodes, and get other things, like ES nodes, instead. Although lots of builds benefit from this suggestion, ES builds are clearly the biggest winners. The only real exceptions to that are CI, which still wins but not nearly as much as life+ES, and ZORF, which gets outright nerfed.

Is ES synonymous with CI from your perspective?

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GutenTag wrote:

The biggest problem here is your suggested HP gain from strength. To make strength as an attribute so much more appealing, without compensating the other two is just not going to work.
I'm not even entirely against a small buff to HP (not to strength however) - but i think i should be done without freeing up passive points.

In terms of Dexterity, I posted a separate suggestion for a complete overhaul here. It wasn't well received, which kind of boggles me, because I thought the stat was pretty weak.

In terms of Intelligence, that stat is closely tied to the mana system. The state of mana right now is: Running BM/EB/leech pretty much automatically solves you mana issues, while slapping Clarity on your character by itself isn't enough, if you want to actually avoid carrying mana flasks you need to spec into it reasonably hard. A lot of people want to solve this by buffing Clarity, etc.; I'd rather solve it by nerfing the things that allow you to quick-fix resource management issues. You could do this by adding more wording to BM and EB, but I'd rather solve it on the other end: double all sources of base mana, Intelligence included; double mana and flat reserve costs; double Clarity regen rate; halve charges-consumed and time-to-recover on mana flasks. That last one is tricky; it gives you the option to activate "half a use" by today's standards, giving more control to mana flask users. The net effect would be that "standard" mana would feel about the same, but BM/EB/leech wouldn't be as automatic anymore.

However, these are really separate systems and not directly related to this suggestion; I just like talking about my own suggestions, even if they're off-topic. As I said earlier, a balance change to one system does not demand every system receive some "compensating" benefit. The life node, Dexterity, and mana system suggestions are all separate, and I think I'd be alienating a lot of people who support this change if I bundled these unrelated suggestions onto this one.

In any case, the Strength "buff" was actually a required consequence of another proposed change; because level-based base life was increasing, the old Strength value would been worth less proportionally, so it needed to be increased by some amount, and if you think the "new" Strength would feel twice as powerful, you're wrong, it would feel about the same as the +0.5 we have now.

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GutenTag wrote:

I enjoy this discussion btw :)

Not so much here; I'm a little confused as to why exactly I am taking the time to reply. I guess logically I must be enjoying it a little, or I wouldn't bother.

ok, last post

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

It's definitely a balance change. It's just aimed at the passive tree.

to balance something means to bring something that is too weak up to par, which is not the case as life/strength already is very strong - if not the strongest.
And of course it's aimed at the passive tree. didnt you notice that i'm talking about freeing up passive points the entire time?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The more life nodes you decide not to get, the more this benefits you. ES builds are in the best position to take less life nodes, and get other things, like ES nodes, instead.

As I said in my previous posts:
buff to life/str builds >>>>>>> buff to ES builds
while acknowledging that it would be a very small buff to ES builds - the BALANCE would be upset.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Is ES synonymous with CI from your perspective?

no, i spoke of ES based builds and i spoke of CI seperately.
you just don't want to see what freeing up passive points will do for builds. you seem to lack the imagination.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

You still have who's getting buffed and who's getting nerfed utterly backwards.

Don't mistake others for yourself

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

In terms of Intelligence, that stat is closely tied to the mana system.

ES aspect would need to be buffed - not mana.


Well, you clearly don't want to see the possibilities of having more passive points. you clearly don't want to see which buff is bigger by a large amount. So this was all pretty pointless i guess.

On a different note - I think your death penalty suggestion is far worse than this one :)

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GutenTag wrote:

On a different note - I think your death penalty suggestion is far worse than this one :)

There's an important difference there: I retract the death penalty suggestion, but I still believe in this one.

It's been some time since this thread was bumped, and some time has given me a fresh perspective on your objections.

If this suggestion was about buffing life overall, I'd agree that it wouldn't exactly be fair from a CI standpoint at the very least, and perhaps (although not necessarily) from a ES perspective overall. However, this suggestion is not about buffing life. It is, as the thread title says, about nerfing life nodes, and then boosting base life so that life itself isn't nerfed -- which means, so life as an overall system is neither buffed nor nerfed. I'm definitely not trying to make a very powerful defense like life even more powerful; and I'm not crazy enough to take a system so many people depend on and try to make it weaker.

What this thread is about is a civil war within the life system between life nodes as a source of life, and base life as a source of life. I'm trying to make the primary secondary, and the secondary primary. To use an ES equivalent, it would be similar to a suggestion that nerfs the "increased ES" effect of Intelligence while simultaneously increasing base ES available on gear -- such a suggestion would clearly not be about making ES more or less powerful defense relative to life, but instead about where ES should draw its strength from. The same principles apply here. (This is also why I said it's a passive tree balance issue, not a game balance issue -- there should be little effect on the actual gameplay, but a notable effect on how people spend their passive points.)

I still stand by my argument that, in terms of side effects, the suggestion has only positive effects for ES builds. However, those side effects are exactly that -- consequences separate from the core of the suggestion. At its core, this suggestion has nothing to do with ES; ES is not a participant in the conflict.

this needs to be done!! would make builds way more diverse !! currently its more like Path of Life Nodes espcially on HC

also important side effect ! it would make Kaoms Heart less OP !!!!! because currently it's somehow a must have if you want to play Hc and do very high maps

+1 to original post

I think changing 8% to 4% is too harsh though. They should be 6% maybe.

bump

cos i love this idea

I was about to say something like this just now. I thought I would add to this. I agree with it. I didn't read this hole post but, I would like to offer my idea for the situation (if it hasn't already been said).

Perhaps make the nodes 6% but, with 4% chaos resist each. Or 6% with 10 health attached. The thing I continually complain about is the inflation. I know I do it a lot but, it's the truth. It's an uphill battle just to get the equipment at any level.

I am seeing Level 40 Yellows going for as high as 2 G.C.P. The Portal Gem is 2 G.C.P these days. It's like really? This is terrible. I am now level 62. It took 62 levels just to see ONE G.C.P drop. I have only seen 5 11% quality gems in that time (worth 2 G.C.P). I have not even seen a 6 link item.

It costs 40 G.C.P or 8 Exalts just to get a perfect Leu Hoop of All ring pair as an example. I can't even find one Exalt.

THIS IS BETA. The currency will crash when this releases. Your items won't be worth so much. So why force people like me who are busy with life to farm so much just to do one freaking experiment?

Show some kindness. Help others out with their experiments and finding their way in the game. Quit hoarding all the currency.

It would be nice if the game made it so you are not item reliant due to this reason. If you could make it so that the nodes were 6% with 10 health or the chaos idea then it would mean less armor with health mods needed to achieve the goal of 4K Hit Points (bare minimum for a melee unit these days).

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dreatlan wrote:

I was about to say something like this just now. I thought I would add to this. I agree with it.

Thanks.

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dreatlan wrote:

Perhaps make the nodes 6% but, with 4% chaos resist each. Or 6% with 10 health attached. The thing I continually complain about is the inflation. I know I do it a lot but, it's the truth. It's an uphill battle just to get the equipment at any level.

The % life + base life passive node idea is way too powerful to be a generic node. Base life and % life synergize with each other very well (part of the reason why Kaom's is so powerful), and putting that on life nodes, even with a light percentage nerf, would make the life node dominance worse, not better.

Probably the same thing with chaos resistance.

The suggestion already has the consequence of giving you more base life to work with when you're undergeared, as well as making life affixes on gear have less of an impact on your final life. Life gear wouldn't become worthless, but it wouldn't be nearly as dominant. That should be adjustment enough, and if somehow it isn't, I could suggest more changes after this suggestion is adopted. However, there needs to be a limit to how much you change at once, otherwise you might make the pendulum of balance swing too far and find yourself in a position where life affix gear was actually underpowered. I don't want that because I feel this suggestion is radical enough as it stands.

reducing the amount of % you get from life nodes will not help this problem at all but in fact hurt it more.
Maybe not for default players but hardcore player will suffer immensely from this because they still need a shitload of hp and would need the same amount of nodes if not more with this change to get as high hp as they need.


My suggestion: instead of reducing the amount you get from life nodes I would increase the amount you get from life nodes, and reduce the amount of life nodes available on the talent tree.
That way you could get still get a satisfyingly high %life from the life nodes in the tree and have more point to spend on other things like damage and such.