Low life offers to great benefits and is unique gated.

"

Your sarcasm is pointed towards my intelligence because we disagree. You're refuting my points with your "logic" but my logic differs. You're assuming you're correct and I am wrong.

After all my posts and you still don't see that I think for the upper builds there needs to be imbalance. There needs to be luxury items to grind for, overpowered item combinations to grind for, item gated builds to grind for. In an arpg there needs to be a reason to grind. You just insult me again saying I'm in love with my shav's and I don't care about balance in the slightest.

Indeed, since your build already does more then required dps (if made correctly) to trivialize content. Nerfing it would have no impact on clear speed or player-experience, other then seeing a slightly lower number. While at the same time open up potential other builds that are currently "unviable".

Like i said before, current content can be done with 10k dps. Why would one need 290k dps (low life shavs flicker strike build) other then for e-peen value?

would reducing that damage to 150k dps have any impact in the game?

I think you know the answer, but just refuse to understand it.

Also i play to play, for the fun of playing that is. Not to grind for some illusive item that enables me to copy the "fun" somebody else experienced when creating a solid build. I rather develop that build myself and experience the fun associated with success when a build turns out to be solid myself.

You seem to be under the impression that nerfing low-life benefits would destroy your build.
I am very sad if this is the case since it would be ridicules.
(all current low-life builds perform equally effective without those benefits, just because they get extra aura support, the low-life benefits are the cake on top of the cherry on top of the cake, like i mentioned earlier in this thread)

but yeah keep believing in stagnant game balance, i am sure you will be disappointed in the future.

Edit : and if this post is "insulting" to you, then you need to grow a thicker skin, since i am just stating facts within the current game design. go check out the low-life flicker strike builds and there dps with and without low-life benefits. Now check out clear speed video's and then get back to me.

"

Boem wrote:

Es/hp hybrids where already viable in the past, the recent changes nullified that.

That's why i made this thread. Since making the low-life buff active at a higher cap% might allow hp/es hybrid to still utilize its benefits without getting one shotted by chaos sources.

(other then low-life buffs, there is very little appeal in a hp/es hybrid builds, full life is basically non-existent in therms of active played builds)

Well that's what I mean, some way to make a "proper" Life/ES hybrid that actually wants to keep both their life and ES full at all times. With the amount of ES that you can get with very little investment and the fact that life mods do roll on ES items, you'd think that was the original intention of ES, with CI being the exception and not the rule. Also, ES recovery. Lol remember that?

Leech being stuck with either one or the other is largely what keeps this from being an efficient way to build though. I've thought of a few ways to do it, but then I always immediately turn around and figure out a much better pure life/ES variant.

My build utilizes frenzy charges + blood rage + blood dance boots to give a very high regeneration rate + a "low life" healing flask.

And my es is regenerated on life leach + natural es regeneration out of combat (need to let blood rage end for that do :p)

Actually what you describe falls under the "full life" builds i keep mentioning, sadly other then the melee gem and the darreso's devotion amulet i think it is, there are no "full life" benefit items.

A new bunch of unique's/gems would need to be made to make these builds appealing.

since currently shav users have a choice, go low-life + benefits or go full-life + benefits.

That's not a choice within the current game state.(specially after the aura patch)

My suggestion would make es/hp hybrids viable again do, not in the way you envision them, but viable non-the-less. and also not "unique item" dependent.(maybe just a mings ring :p really that stuff is beast for a build like this considering how rare the chaos roll is)

It's important to note that all CI melee builds can use full life mechanics - as they are always on full life, or dead.

"

but i wonder, what other builds are gated in the same way like low-life currently is?

Righteous Fire is gated behind Rise of the Phoenix, or Saffles, or getting a metric ton of increased aura effect nodes.

You more or less have to have the shield, or you can't maintain use of the skill (note RotP also has low life benefits, lol).


I think low life builds are unique and very cool, and I run a low life MF char using Wondertraps and Redbeak with PA, ZO, and the like.

That said, I can't really do maps, as any chaos damage is likely to one shot me.
I have a Lorica, but it's ilvl 24. If I could get a shavs or a lorica capable of getting a 4s minimum, I would probably be able to push into harder maps.

I more or less stick to farming Lunaris and Piety Atm on her.

In accords to Boem's orginal post about rebalancing low life, I think the current balance is fine. -That is, the benefits are extremely strong but very difficult to pull off (gated behind expensive uniques).

I think a unique that say, split your life regen between your shields and your life, would correct a lot of the issues that non shavs low life builds have.

"

JahIthBer89 wrote:

If you were in any way honest about this, you would also say that facebreakers shouldn't be BiS for unarmed builds, or that Cloak of Defiance shouldn't be BiS for non-scion MoM. It's fairly obvious that it isn't a matter of you not wanting uniques to be build-enablers, but that you want to play a build style that you may not be able to afford.

Actually, I think the comparison here is instructive. Look at the game without a few specific uniques, and see how the uniques change the picture.

Going unarmed is clearly a daft way to play. There is no reason to expect it to make sense, as it goes against all the principles of itemisation in this game. So Facebreaker is enabling something that was not even theoretically viable before. This is a textbook 'build-enabling unique'.

MoM builds are clearly supported by the passive tree, and are perfectly viable with typical rare items. Cloak of Defiance gives you a stronger MoM and saves you the passive points needed to get to it. That's a significant advantage, no doubt, but it's not a complete game-changer (like it would be if MoM didn't exist). It may or may not be BiS for your build, because there are much better chestpieces if you already have MoM, and the true cost of getting the MoM keystone depends a lot on your build (e.g. you may want IR, in which case you'll be close to MoM keystone anyway).

Low-life bonuses come from Pain Attunement, Blood Rage and a whole raft of uniques. I think GGG knew exactly what they were doing with this concept, and realised that players would stay permanently on low life while relying on ES for survival. It's meant to be a risky way to play. The problem is that Shav's comes along and turns all non-CI ES-focused builds (including low life) into easy mode. This is an example of bad gating: you have a build type that everyone sees evidence for, even pure self-found players who never read the forums, but they can't get at it unless they have exceptionally good gear all round (currently required for non-Shavs low-life) or an extremely expensive unique, but either way it's a way of playing that is practically inaccessible to players who aren't rich. It's a bit like balancing life builds so that you either need exceptional gear all round or a legacy Kaom's. Solaris Lorica improves the situation somewhat by being cheap, but it's still an unnecessary gate for self-found players (who might well have found all these cool low-life items, but be unable to really take advantage of them).

I think the game should be balanced so that low-life builds are viable without Shav's and with similar gear quality requirements to Chaos Inoculation, like how MoM is currently balanced so that Cloak of Defiance is a good option, but not a 'must-have'. Not sure about raising the low-life threshold though - that might make low-life effects a bit too strong.

nah bad suggestion.it will cause me to lose currency value on my gear

"

i dont see how this can be "fixed" short of introducing a "chaos dmg cannot bypass es" keystone on tree. which ggg will not do cos it "affects the economy" where shav/lorica become useless and plummets in value.

Such a keystone would be fine as long as it has a suitable drawback. I think GGG worries a bit too much about the existing loot of rich players, as evidenced by the legacy items issue.

More low-life bonuses on the passive tree ('beserker'-ish ones in the Marauder area, to contrast with Pain Attunement) would also be welcome.

@incompetent, suggestion 1 of upping the treshhold is suppose to happen together with suggestion 2, reducing the benefits.

Shavronnes users still get massive benefits (aka aura's) while the low-life mechanic is no longer gated in this state.(removing shavronnes from BiS state while retaining it's usefullnes overall)



Peace and bumb.

you can take this a little further (the extremes of low life) and apply that to the blood magic keystone which is terrible as it enhances all of these negatives. Chaos resistance nodes nowhere near yet CI has one like 3 passives away?

I agree low life is basically undoable or not worth it without a shavs or lorica. If you do go low life without those you're investing too heavily (I'd assume more so than other builds) towards negating 75% of the major drawback which is obviously chaos damage. This is even worse with the repeated nerfs to life nodes (and wheels).

Also, it does limit your choices which is such a shame because this in turn limits and devalues the uniques meant for low life.

Of course, low life in general could be easily OP since you can use an aura to get low life and then reap all the benefits. Heck, most builds would add 1 or 2 auras to life on top of their mana auras if there was a buff. That would be bad.

I think the key to 'fixing' low life builds is to make the blood magic keystone viable. Puts them really far from pain attunement and such.
Perhaps give it something like 50% chaos can't bypass energy shield or chaos damage converted to a random element. Something, anything. Even if that is an extra node(s) like acrobatics has and CI.