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

Bluetang, paraphrased: Instead of reducing the values on life nodes...
* Reduce the number of life nodes in the passive tree.
* Make life nodes take more than one skill point to get.

Isn't that just a really, really complicated version of my suggestion?

No no no, I don't want life nodes to require more than on point...I want life nodes gone. They are boring and basically required for any successful build so get rid of em and bake the health in.

The "more than one skill point" was in reference to having more interesting passive options in place of the life nodes so that the passive tree wouldn't require restructuring.

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bluetang wrote:

No no no, I don't want life nodes to require more than on point...I want life nodes gone. They are boring and basically required for any successful build so get rid of em and bake the health in.

The "more than one skill point" was in reference to having more interesting passive options in place of the life nodes so that the passive tree wouldn't require restructuring.

OK. Although I kind of understand the "kill all life nodes" sentiment, I think that's a little too extreme of an idea to actually get adopted. Plus, I kinda like (not love, just like) the concept of life nodes, I just despise the current execution.

I really don't like the idea of passives requiring multiple points. The solution there is just to put nodes of dubious use in front of them; you take the "crap" nodes as a cost to get to the good stuff.

If endgame requires XX life,
and XX life takes N life nodes total (w/gear)
and N is the same in both methods
then..

nothing changes, as there will be the same number of remaining nodes for dps et al. That is the exact number of life nodes that will be taken, because it has to be taken. arguing about how to reach XX life in N nodes is pointless.

Might as well concatenate the life node bundles into +24% (or +34%L +20ST, etc) blocks and stick something else next to them that might enable actual build diversity. You'd grab the Life node, but not necessarily the couple of smaller (eg) +Minion Life nodes next to it.

However the interaction of life and damage mitigation is the factor that would increase the value of alternate EHP strategies.

Life provides protection from the RNG (evasion/crits), chaos damage, human error (since Armour only works with endurance and granites) and status effects (hit:maxHP ratios). If alternate EHP strategies cannot provide the same protection then Life will always be taken since its "always on".

B. (Im tired, I may not make sense)

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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OwlRaider wrote:

Massive wall of text which does a marvelous job at evading the real issue and will really solve nothing. If anything, your suggestion will make the game too easy since it will be so easy to stack life that you can do that while also increasing your DPS. At least right now you need to make a choice, whether you stack life or stack DPS, your solutions allows you to stack both things and be superman. It is also a Marauder is UP QQ thread in disguise, seeing that you want to buff strength to the point of strength characters(hence the above statement about Marauders) will be OP compared to dexterity and intelligence characters who will receive no such benefit.

The main issue is not with health per se, it's with the terribly state of all the other defensive mechanisms, which forces everyone to stack health if they want to succeed in merciless difficulty, the end game and of course hardcore. Until the other defensive mechanisms are reworked to be made useful, we can't truly say whether health is balanced or not and whether we should make any adjustments to health nodes, starting health, health gain from strength, etc.

How does halving the effect of life nodes make it so easy to stack life? The whole point of this is to make stacking life less efficient, and my solution couldn't be more direct. Right now, if you make the choice to stack life or stack DPS, and you choose DPS... you've chosen poorly. It's actually not a real choice now, but it would be if life node values were reduced.

Regarding defenses, I've been away from my computer (believe it or not, every single post by me so far this thread has been by cell phone), so I haven't had a chance to do a case study (or maybe studies) on life vs defenses, which I was planning since reading abu's post insisting armour is relevant to the discussion. Although Owl is the only extreme dissenter, many others share his concern regarding the strength of defenses, which I agree are trivialized under the current system. However, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and therefore more than one way to buff defenses, including methods that involve zero direct buffs to defenses. My guuesstimation is that nerfing life nodes alone will be enough to make defenses competitive with lifestacking. You should be seeing the maths on that stuff later, after I spend some quality time with Microsoft Excel.

You said it yourself in your opening post, life stacking like what everyone does now will still be viable as the end value won't change. You're only changing the middle ground, so if people don't want to stack hp they'll have a higher hp than they do now. However you're ignoring a huge point: mob(and especially high end elites and of course bosses) damage. All the hp stacking that is being done today is being done out of necessity, cause without it you will simply die. Your suggestion doesn't make going for DPS any more viable since unless you reach a similar health pool than what we get now you simply won't survive. Thus everyone will still go after all those hp nodes, even if their individual effects would be halved.

Here comes the issue you still fail to understand, in all the threads you've posted in. That the other defensive options are inadequate, or to put it more bluntly, trash. With health being the only viable defensive option for merciless and end game maps, there is simply no way around stacking a ton of health, sacrificing DPS in the process.

Thus I stand by my previous post. This entire thread is based on a faulty assumption that we stack health because it's efficient, not because it's mandatory. You fail to understand that after you beat cruel, you simply can't survive without stacking hp like there's no tomorrow(unless using very niche builds like summoner witch or something, and even than you need a large enough buffer in case things go wrong). Nerfing health won't make the other defenses any more viable, it will only make the end game inaccessible.

Making the defensive options (Armor, Evasion, ES etc) much more efficient (being able to survive without a huge health-pool) would make it so less people would stack health.

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Kwonryu wrote:

Making the defensive options (Armor, Evasion, ES etc) much more efficient (being able to survive without a huge health-pool) would make it so less people would stack health.

They probably do need to be buffed, but not to make Life seem weaker IMO (because that would require too much of a buff), and considering that there are not as many armor/evasion nodes as life nodes, people will still take mostly life nodes on the tree as a way of constantly boosting durability.

ok ofc everyone wants life as much of it as possible but it should not be essential for every build that is considered viable that you have to get 240-300% extra health which translates into more then half your passive nodes

excluding CI builds ofc

I don't read all the 6 pages, sorry if someone already say that:

When you buff the base HP, you buff the %HP Nodes too.
EX:
Base HP: 1000
More HP with life nodes: 100%
Life gained with nodes: 1000
Final HP: 2000
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Base HP: 2000
More hp with lif nodes: 50%
Life gained with nodes: 1000
Final HP: 3000.
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In the second exemple the player had their life nodes nerfed by the half but steel gained 1000 life from life node. Why? because de base hp of all players was buffed.

Thats all.

@edit:
I agree with you that Hp nodes need to be nerfed. But i don't no how.

How about instead of nerfing life, buff defensive skills and certain offensive skilss(such as melee). Moreover, melee skills could have additional small defensive boosts, such as +1 resist all, +3% armor, +3% life.