Salvaging CI - Suggestions open to discussion

Hi,

First off, let me say that I believe the CI nerf was entirely justified. (The +%ES was not only OP, it was also boring, in the sense that it did not feel the "special mechanic" feeling of the notable passives.)

However, CI is now lackluster, especially for casters who cannot benefit from Ghost Reaver, and find little benefit in using Blood Rage (which requires much dexterity, in any case). The vulnerability to stuns/status ailments, impossibility to use flasks/quickly regen*, loss of HPs, etc. are debilitating drawbacks, even with the chaos immunity kept in mind. I am not saying that CI is currently non viable for casters; with massive investment in +%ES and -cooldown nodes, it may still be worth it. Still, the player will have to kite a lot.

I have here two distinct suggestions, which, I believe, would make CI even more interesting, and somewhat stronger, without making it OP.

1) On lvl up, characters get a bonus to maximum HP (+6?). This is lost with CI, which means that, in a sense, CI's opportunity cost increases with every level. To make up for this (and the points listed above), CI could offer a +ES flat bonus depending on hero level. (4/lvl? That brings us to +300 ES at lvl 75, which is great, but not overpowered.)

2) After the usual delay, ES regens instantly, instead of gradually.


Comments are welcome!


(*As a side note, I don't believe the new Zealot's Oath notable passive can make up for this. The player will be better off leaving the combat and waiting for ES to recover normally. Far away +life regen nodes require too much investment, and vitality aura requires a lot of mana and of strength...the point of CI is to not have to invest in strength.)

Messing with the core defense systems of the game is silly. CI should have been removed; Acrobatics and Iron Reflexes should be removed or reduced to notable generic +% evade/armour nodes.

Having nexus points out in the boonies that are all upside, where you have to burn a dozen points to get to unless you just happen to actually use the stuff in the area it's located in, is bad design.

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Kostrowicki wrote:

Hi,

First off, let me say that I believe the CI nerf was entirely justified. (The +%ES was not only OP

Whelp thread over.


You can't jump into an energy shield discussion with invalid facts. Sure players running around with twice as much energy shield as other players had health looked unbalanced. But in reality they had 0% mitigation, making them twice or three times as squishy as other tanky players who invested all their points into passives.

CI was perfectly balanced for tanky specs, but the issue and reason it was nerfed was because it was drawing people to it from across the tree and proving it had a downside too easily worked around with the energy shield boost it was giving. It wasn't an overpowered node when you look at what the energy shield actually did, but it was far too enticing compared to other keystones with similar drawbacks.

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mack1510 wrote:

"

Kostrowicki wrote:

Hi,

First off, let me say that I believe the CI nerf was entirely justified. (The +%ES was not only OP

Whelp thread over.


You can't jump into an energy shield discussion with invalid facts. Sure players running around with twice as much energy shield as other players had health looked unbalanced. But in reality they had 0% mitigation, making them twice or three times as squishy as other tanky players who invested all their points into passives.

CI was perfectly balanced for tanky specs, but the issue and reason it was nerfed was because it was drawing people to it from across the tree and proving it had a downside too easily worked around with the energy shield boost it was giving. It wasn't an overpowered node when you look at what the energy shield actually did, but it was far too enticing compared to other keystones with similar drawbacks.

Well, if CI was drawing people from across the tree, was too enticing, and had too-easily-worked-around drawbacks, then I guess that means it was OP? Anyway, this changes nothing to the discussion. CI was nerfed; we can now discuss if it should now remain as is, or not.

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mack1510 wrote:

You can't jump into an energy shield discussion with invalid facts. Sure players running around with twice as much energy shield as other players had health looked unbalanced. But in reality they had 0% mitigation, making them twice or three times as squishy as other tanky players who invested all their points into passives.

The core of the CI build did have some issues with mitigation; however, crafty players quickly figured out ways around this weakness, making the build extremely OP.

The core of the closed beta CI build treated the damage types like this:
* Physical: No built-in mitigation, but a very large health pool. Below average, at least as a starting point.
* Chaos: No argument, flat-out immune.
* Elemental: Much tankier than average, due to large health pool and equal capacity for max resists.

So the only weakness really was physical. So the frills of the CI build were:
* shield and shield blocking. Since almost all physical was (is?) from attacks instead of spells, this was extremely effective. Since casters don't use weapons directly and ES shields add spell damage, this was an easy fit.
* granite flasks. These could add tremendous amounts of armour in closed beta, and really made a mockery of armour builds by instantly granting equivalent mitigation. CI builds were further optimized to use these since they had no use for health flasks.

I understand that CI builds were only wearing ES items, but if you had 0% mitigation with your CI build you were doing it wrong. Those who were doing it right were tremendously OP.

The CI nerf was entirely justified because closed beta CI allowed for extreme tankiness against all damage types except for physical. The new CI only offers that option for one damage type (chaos); it fixes the elemental tankiness issue.

I'm going to post this. It was posted in the other thread, but I think it's a particularly brilliant suggestion for a set of keystones that would appear after CI, or anywhere else really. Their mere existance would do good things for all ES builds, and CI especially. The numbers might need to be tweaked a bit, but the overall suggestion would work fantastically well, as it would keep ES as a unique source of defense without just making it into blue health, and would make CI builds just as viable as the huegstronk HP/Regen/Armour builds that all marauders, templars and duelists seem to be based off. This would also give shadows something new to play with.

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mack1510 wrote:

My Suggestion:

Keystone: each point of missing energy shield reduces incoming damage by .1 points; You no longer gain damage mitigation from Armor.

Possibly followed elsewhere by:

Keystone: each point of missing energy shield reduces incoming damage by an additional .1 points; You can no longer Block with Shields.

Keystone: each point of missing energy shield reduces incoming damage by an additional .1 points; You no longer gain Dodge from Evasion.


I think that might really be underpowered value-wise. But it would be a very very interesting set of keystones, since the downsides are so harsh i personally might not even use any of them but the armor one.

Essentially that would mean a player at 1k Energy shield total, when near 100 Energy shield would start absorbing 90 damage off every hit they take. Just flat out gone, it's not a percentage based absorb just a flat reduction. If they had all three keystones it would be 270 damage just flat out absorbed. Ideally this would mean as energy shield players get low, they can either run away for safety and regen, or stay in combat if the mobs aren't hitting hard enough to surpass their absorb values, and regenerate shield until the point they get hit again. It would completely change the way energy shield specs are made and played. You would be tankier at lower health, but also more in danger of dying instantly from an errant crit or some hard damage.

I had not seen that other thread; thank you for posting, Gearheat. Without having reflected much upon it, the idea seems to me quite interesting as well, and I'd be eager to try out those new passives (although, of course, I have no idea if the numbers themselves are balanced).

Energy Shield was allowing too much schennigans, the 50% more ES was too much and although it was not as nearly as OP as Kripp or some players were professing, it had to be changed for the betterment of the game. The nerf to CI was too harsh though and it needs some buffs that involve not giving it any +% more ES.

This discussion I feel is rather pointless, numerous suggestions and discussion has gone on about CI. Everything to be said about it has been said. It's up to Qarl to decide what should be done.

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anubite wrote:

Energy Shield was allowing too much schennigans, the 50% more ES was too much and although it was not as nearly as OP as Kripp or some players were professing, it had to be changed for the betterment of the game. The nerf to CI was too harsh though and it needs some buffs that involve not giving it any +% more ES.

Well, this is exactly the starting point of the thread.

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anubite wrote:

This discussion I feel is rather pointless, numerous suggestions and discussion has gone on about CI. Everything to be said about it has been said. It's up to Qarl to decide what should be done.

Fair enough. I just thought perhaps players might have interesting ideas as to "what should be done".

CI might be fine as it is, as long as pure ES casters get other means of getting that missing third of their ES back.

Right now pure ES casters are too squishy, be it phys damage with CI or chaos damage without. You won't have enough buffer to reliably survive in the endgame. Versus a CI witch, a similarly geared HP tank will have more buffer and flasks, incombat regen & leech...