You know what happens when your Reflexes turn to Iron?

"

ghostcub wrote:

"

Zakaluka wrote:

Gosh, I've derailed this thread so thorougly. I'll quit it now :b

No, please keep up the derailing, you're one of the people the devs SHOULD listen to about this. I want evasion more viable, and that little change to the skilldrassil would be amazing and maybe people would stop going "Evasion sucks" all the time.

Seconded.

I actually had a play with the current Skilldrasil last night and I've noticed that there is a LOT more life to be gained while traveling to evasion nodes. I think your suggestion, Z, might already be in place. I'm not sure yet, but we'll see.

"

Zakaluka wrote:

no, no! 20% more life. let me quote myself again :)

"

Zakaluka wrote:

The biggest improvement that I think could be made to "pure evasion" builds is to make life an even cheaper pickup for us than it is now. We need 8% life nodes to be worth 10% instead. You can't put 10% life nodes in the ranger tree, though, because duelists will just build into the ranger area. No, wouldn't work. What you could do, though: complete the dodge circle with two new life nodes. These would be very unique points; rather than reading "8% increased life" they would read "10% more life". Problem solved: life is suddenly a 20% cheaper pickup for pure evasion builds. If you bought those two points, every 8% node suddenly becomes worth 9.6% of base/bonus/worn HP instead. Biggest plausible problem in that gets averted, too: only pure-evasion characters get to pick it up.

What do you think about this.

(And I don't think there's anything wrong with CI. Other than, maybe ES mods go too high. Life flasks are so powerful...)

Gosh, I've derailed this thread so thorougly. I'll quit it now :b

I imagine every marauder and their dog would beeline those % more life nodes. % more life nodes would just make specialising heavily into life even more rewarding than it already is, and cause people to take even less evasion nodes. Just look at the similar increasing returns from CI with it's % more modifier.
edit: err I re-read what you wrote. Do you mean put the % more life nodes inside the the acrobatics chain?

"

Zakaluka wrote:

I say all this because even balanced evasion builds need a shitton of life. This build I just linked has 132%, and that's LOW for HC. It's a bit build stifling, that need to rack up life nodes. My proposal would relieve a little of that, maybe give me back three of my skillpoints (take the 20% more, drop 40% incr)

It's not just evasion characters, every non-ES character needs (or at least wants) a ton of life. There's a fundamental asymmetry in the three primary stats, in that strength and intelligence both give a HP bonus. For strength it's +life, and for intelligence it's +%ES. The +% evasion from dex is weak by comparison, a 300 dex ranger is getting +60% evasion, which probably only works out to a few % chance to evade in most cases. But even if that bonus was much stronger it still would not increase HP like the other two.
With 132% increased life, the difference between 300 dex and 300 strength is 348 life, which is significant. If you had a choice between +350 life, and +5% chance to evade, which would you choose?

"

Malice wrote:

I imagine every marauder and their dog would beeline those % more life nodes.

Malice, I always want to hear from you on these things. However, on this point you've missed one detail: the "more life" nodes are INSIDE acrobatics.

Nobody but a pure-evasion character can take them.

"

Malice wrote:

It's not just evasion characters, every non-ES character needs (or at least wants) a ton of life.

Don't worry, I got the rest of your points. You make valid points. But on this one bit I disagree.

I contend, no, I know from experience, that this is only the case because very few people are using armour or endurance in such a way that they have efficient synergy. I'll take my balanced armour/life staff build over a life-stacking regen build any day. The benefits are profound, and you don't actually need amazing gear to make it work. You just need a clever strategy.

When I can stand in a level 62 brutus' bloodslam, and watch only a sliver of my life go away - pretty much only Xendran can compete with that. And I had pretty garbage gear before the migration.

I was over-capping DR against everything in level 64 incr. monster damage maps with 3k character screen armour, perfectly happy to never get more than my 2500 life. (had to edit the bit about bosses out, there were still a few that scared me) The community is very stubborn on defensive systems, and nearly everyone builds the way you're describing, but it isn't actually the most efficient way to build. It just happens to work well without a whole lot of strategy.

Defensive builds outside life take strategy beyond the skilldrasil.

I've written volumes about this, though. It's just something that will take time to come into the spotlight.

"

Zakaluka wrote:

"

Malice wrote:

I imagine every marauder and their dog would beeline those % more life nodes.

Malice, I always want to hear from you on these things. However, on this point you've missed one detail: the "more life" nodes are INSIDE acrobatics.

Nobody but a pure-evasion character can take them.

This would definitely make A/PA that little bit easier to bear. I'm not sure the 4% extra chance to dodge is really making that much difference compared to a solid 36-40% life.

edit: now that I read your actual 'more' suggestion, I think it's a beautiful idea but terribly confusing without sufficient explanation. I can't see GGG introducing something that complicated explanation-wise when the game already needs about 1000% more clarity for most people.

Looks like you got in before my edit :)
OK, so ingore that part. But, this would still encourage life stacking instead of evasion for acrobatics characters. I mean, it's encouraging acrobatics users to get more life, and doesn't really affect evasion at all. Which is good I suppose, since there's nothing wrong with evasion.

I'm just wary of encouraging people to take even more life than they already do, if they do it will probably be at the cost of taking evasion nodes.
On the other hand maybe it will mean people don't need to take as many life nodes, freeing up points for other stuff.

You may be right, malice, but in the end I'm encouraging people to spend fewer points on life. Well, that's the intent, anyway. What's the point of running around with 7k life and not one point spent on offense? My eyes would bleed to death. Yeah, people will do it but I wouldn't worry about it.

Here's the big difference between the way you look at defense and the way I look at defense. Regarding defensive bonuses:

"

Malice wrote:

But even if that bonus was much stronger it still would not increase HP like the other two.

There are two aspects to defense. First is enough buffer to survive large damage spikes. Second is how you are going to heal the damage you take.

Evasion and armour are extremely good for your healing. Healing and avoidance become the big central concern after your buffer gets big enough. The reason armour characters like percent regen and life-stacking so much is the bonus regen. It does considerably less good on a pure-evasion build, where you're either full life or spamming flasks.

The problem in evasion land: our defense is super efficient, mathematically. But flat regen is inefficient under evasion. Flasks are where it's at (also, leech/life on hit). We need a big enough buffer to allow manual healing, moreso than any other defensive approach.

----
And charan is right. It's too complicated for people to understand. But I think somehow life needs to be 20% cheaper per skillpoint for A/PA builds, without allowing others access to that. Right now life is very accessible, but it's still just a bit too expensive.

One last comment on es+eva, the es investment really is quite minimal. The gear I left off with was:


Discipline and Grace were doing a lot of heavy lifting as well. The important thing is that any better gear I got would only be better on the evasion side as the amount of es I had was sufficient.

Done digressing. :)

"

Zakaluka wrote:

"

Malice wrote:

It's not just evasion characters, every non-ES character needs (or at least wants) a ton of life.

Don't worry, I got the rest of your points. You make valid points. But on this one bit I disagree.

I contend, no, I know from experience, that this is only the case because very few people are using armour or endurance in such a way that they have efficient synergy. I'll take my balanced armour/life staff build over a life-stacking regen build any day. The benefits are profound, and you don't actually need amazing gear to make it work. You just need a clever strategy.

I was over-capping DR against everything in level 64 incr. monster damage maps with 3k character screen armour, perfectly happy to never get more than my 2500 life. That includes bosses. The community is very stubborn on defensive systems, and nearly everyone builds the way you're describing, but it isn't actually the most efficient way to build. It just happens to work well without a whole lot of strategy.

Defensive builds outside life take strategy beyond the skilldrasil.

I've written volumes about this, though. It's just something that will take time to come into the spotlight.

2500 life is no joke. This example might not be typical of the player base as a whole, but this is fairly typical of how my builds seem to end up:

Character level 64: 50 base life, +6 per level = 434 base life.
about 100 strength (not unusual from a notable or two and some random gear) = 434 + 50 = 484 life

Now with 130% increased life from the passive tree, you'd end up with 1113 life.
To get to 2500 life, this example character would need an average of +75 life on every non-weapon gear slot. I'm not seeing how you can say 132% is a shitton of life, but 2500 life isn't.

It's a difference of perspective. I play hardcore only.

In hardcore land, 2500 life for a self-proclaimed tank is laughable. Like, a complete joke.

Also in hardcore land, nearly everyone aids oak. Every single time. This won't change even with the resistance tweaks. You can still cap resists from gear, or fill holes by sacrificing some dps from your build. Most players wear 2 coral rings, a leather belt, and an onyx amulet. Most people that will spend any amount of time in melee range get way more percent life than I do.

If you want to see a "typical" HC build, look at xendran. Granted, his gear before migration was way over 50% budget. But he had 7k life and 900 regen. This is how most people in HC think.

In this context you can see that 3.5k life is actually pretty easy to reach with half-decent gear, for most builds. I'm glass-cannon tanking. 2500 life for a tank is unusually low. Someone who wants to stand still through map bossfights, I'd expect more than 4k in a more normal build.

"

I'm not seeing how you can say 132% is a shitton of life, but 2500 life isn't.

That's not what I said; I said A/PA builds need to buy a shitton of life.

From the same perspective as above, my 132% incr life ranger is considered a complete glass cannon. Every time I've asked to see someone's A/PA build on hardcore, the link I get is something amazing: 180% life or more, with golem's blood, troll's blood, blood drinker, and blood magic. On a ranger.

My ranger build is a glass cannon compared to what everyone else is doing in HC league. But I've done it, and made it work before. I was suggesting that life should be cheaper, so people don't feel the need to spend quite so many points on it. If my archer build is considered a glass cannon, I should be spending fewer than 15 points on life for that label.