About Enduring Charges! I need someone to reason with me here

I need someone to reason with me here. This is in relation to a ranged character focusing on lots of armor and %life for invasion.

About Enduring charges!
Since cwdt is a thing that exist these days is there any reason for a hp/armor sponge to not just link cwdt+endcry+ic+something instead of keeping lots of enduring up? Seems to me that speccing lots of enduring charges might be completely wasted since I could just link up a cwdt (not sure on lvl) with IC instead.

At first I was thinking, "man it's gonna be sweet with 6charges for 24% additional mit after armor". Then I was like "why not just IC it right away for immunity?", and then my thoughts were "why even spec enduring charges in that case?".

Pre cwdt era everyone would obviously spec endcharges due to the extra mitigation and you'd have a selfcast IC when you needed (with a high chance you wouldn't react fast enough when you actually needed it). Now tho, is there any reason to ever selfcast this stuff as a armor/hp sponge with cwdt being available to us?

Maybe it makes more sense to just skip the endcharges nodes and get more hp or something instead? Although that would mean we wouldn't have endcharges and the 24%mit on the true onehit deaths. Do they even happen? And would 24%mit prevent them? Isn't it mostly just a few bigger hits in quick succession that kills us?

I'm a bit conflicted what to do as I'm about to do the bandits in merc soonish. At the moment I'm leaning towards to just ignore more endcharges and link IC up with the cwdt link instead. Am I wrong in my reasoning here?

Again, this is for a high life/armor char in Invasion without block/evasion.

A level 1 IC on cwdt is pretty useless since it lasts a fraction of a second. It's only useful to counter physical reflect. If you want consistent damage reduction then you shouldn't link IC with that. If you have reflect issues then you should.

If you can get consistent endurance charges then putting IC+duration on a higher level cwdt is pretty good.

Yeah I wouldn't link the IC with a lvl1 cwdt. Since I'd have lots of hp I could have a mid/highlvl cwdt to let it proc relative often and definitely when I'd need it to proc.
Maybe toss a inc duration in the last slot with it to increase the IC.

Still can't come up with a compelling enough reason to use permanent endcharges over a cwdtIC link.

I had IC at about level 8 I think, with increased duration it lasted 3-4 seconds which was more than enough for what I needed (Phys reflect).
But no, there is no reason to manual cast anymore, especially as a melee seeing as it's just un-needed micro management.

Well I normally prefer to only use IC when it is absolutly necessary or if there is sufficient ele-damage to get new charges. Against a pure physical enemy losing all E-charges is actually problematic, because you have 0 when IC ends (unless you manually bring them back up, which keeps you from using the IC-Duration for damage).

I had that problem with Colonnade more damage on boss and vulnerability. I survived the fight without problems due to having enough e-charges. Unfortunetly IC kicked in and used up all e-charges and I almost died because non are generated while IC runs.

My stance on IC in general is the other way around. If you are armor-based anyway a bunch of charges provide you with enough phys-mitigation that you don't need IC anyway. However as an evasion-based char I would strongly recommend using IC, even if cwdt is only partially reliable because it doesn't really work well if you take few strong hits.

Reliable uptime on echarges also mean that you can safe on resistances, which can be another benefit not provided by IC. Also against a single enemy 100% uptime is really tough. EC can only be used every 4sec. To get IC to 4sec duration with a single charge you need a lvl21 and 300% increased duration, which is impossible I guess. Even with quality 20 you still need about 230%.

So while IC works well against groups it is very problematic against single enemies and in that case people might prefer if there is danger to hit&run until they have 6 e-charges and use IC then when they actually get a reasonable amount of time to do something. 6-echarges with increased duration can make up for around 7sec invulnerability, which is a duration you can actually work with.

Also cwdt has 250ms cd, which is the duration of IC without charges. So without increased duration IC can't proc again before it wears out, because cwdt doesn't accumulate damage while a skill is on it's internal cd.

I personally consider a lot of E-charges safer in general, since they are a reliable constant mitigation, while cwdt with IC isn't that good against single enemies, because you get hit, it procs for 0,5s (less propably) without charges and wears out before the enemy deals the next blow and there are rarely any group-scenarions where there is mainly physical damage as a thread.

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Still can't come up with a compelling enough reason to use permanent endcharges over a cwdtIC link.

If you're going to use a higher level IC then you want more endurance charges, for a longer IC. It's quite simple. Endurance charges are only useless when IC is linked with a level one cwdt.

Damnit, can't decide on what to do still. Emphasy mentions some good points but I'm still very afraid of the ripvaders roaming around Invasion, like the tittybitch one that can do some heavy phys burst dmg. Constant enduring is nice due to the resist aspect as well for whenever there's curses being thrown at you (unless you overcap with that in mind).

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kasub wrote:

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Still can't come up with a compelling enough reason to use permanent endcharges over a cwdtIC link.

If you're going to use a higher level IC then you want more endurance charges, for a longer IC. It's quite simple. Endurance charges are only useless when IC is linked with a level one cwdt.

The IC would not be on a lvl1 cwdt but it wouldn't either be there to function as an active immunity to combat stuff but rather a burst prevention mechanic from certain Invasion bosses. Something like a 2sec IC would be enough to react to the boss I might have missed to logout.

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Lysithea wrote:

Damnit, can't decide on what to do still. Emphasy mentions some good points but I'm still very afraid of the ripvaders roaming around Invasion, like the tittybitch one that can do some heavy phys burst dmg. Constant enduring is nice due to the resist aspect as well for whenever there's curses being thrown at you (unless you overcap with that in mind).

Not playing Invasion myself I could just skim over some of the bosses and check their abilities and many of them seem similar to the corrupted ones (or actually are the same). And from what I have seen so far I really wouldn't be afraid to die from physical burst. Yes Chaska does a lot of physical damage, but from my experiences so far it isn't too bursty if I compare it to some other enemies (and as far as I noticed it isn't purely physical, but not sure about that).

You could simply try out a 3-charge IC and see how it works. It propably works if you just want to survive and logout/run away. A lot of constant charges won't help if you just need a window of opportunity, however I still think they are stronger if you actually fight.

If you are really afraid of burst aim for a 95% all-resists build with a lightning-coil... no need for e-charges or IC in that case :P

Reaching those resist numbers isn't possible as EA sadly.
I can see 75+4+5 and some more from +gems/aura nodes. But then I would have to somehow get enough regen to sustain ~450resource cost/second on mana while still having enough defensive stats otherwise. The build I'm going for atm use bm keystone and got around 300%life, 260% armor and 6.5% regen. EA is so easy to gear and build up.

You might be able to do an EA burn build differently with some VERY high end gear and go the route you were suggesting. Would probably be based around a lvl4empower, +3bow with high base speed and +speed. Maybe some extra arrows thrown in with these new corrupt mods. That would be an entirely different build however, and it wouldn't be what my current build is for. A cheap build for a first char in a new league :)

I think I'll just have to test things out, probably start out with a ~16 cwdt echarge+IC link and see how hard stuff ends hitting me for. Then I could scale back to permanent echarges if I feel the bursts isn't coming from phys but rather insane ele/-res stuff. Could very well be the case that once I get some higher tier gear the armor values might scale high enough that I could sacrifice the IC for constant enduring and drop some overcapped resist for more chaos res and rely more on enduring resist against curses. Would be pretty awesome to manage capped chaos res too.

Invasion bosses is the corrupted area bosses you guys got, only you get one in every new zone you enter, including maps. And since they scale with maplvl and the mapmods.. they can get pretty insane.