Salvaging CI - Suggestions open to discussion

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Kostrowicki wrote:

So, from your replies, mainly anubite and epeli's, I gather that something does need to be done about CI...unless one believes that it should be kept as a very specific niche/marginal keystone?

To be honest, the more I play my CI witch (lvl70 atm) with a non-CI witch friend, the more I feel like the new CI is fine. It's still incredibly powerful and useful, but this time it has an equally strong downside.

Regardless, ES nodes need a buff to make ES tanks viable. This buff doesn't necessarily have to be a CI buff.

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Emphasy wrote:

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epeli wrote:

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anubite wrote:

As it currently stands, CI << ES+Life <= Life. Giving up your life for energy shield results in having less total "health" than either pure life or ES+Life.

Exactly. Not to mention 1 life > 1 ES.

Not sure about that. Although ES can not be replanished with Potions, it reduces the Chance of getting stunned, frozen etc. by 50%. If it would be possible to trade 1 ES for 1 Life it would be rather good, but you normally trade 1 ES against 1 Life and a lot of mitigation.

If you have the same Stats and switch all your Life for ES it would be a very good trade.
Turning from 4k HP and 14k Armor to 4k ES and 14k would be really nice, but it is not possible to maintain the same pool of Life and the Mitigation, which is propablematic.

You are wrong. Please learn the game mechanics before commenting on issues like this.

ES does give a 50% chance to avoid stuns, but this is much worse than having higher HP in the first place, which would avoid most stuns altogether. With an ES or CI tank, your HP will be so low that pretty much every hit would stun you, whereas HP tanks rarely get stunned. The 50% stun resist from ES avoids constant stunlocks, but it is still a gamble.

ES does not reduce the chance of status ailments, quite to the contrary. Due to the aforementioned low HP of ES/CI tanks, they receive more status ailments and any status ailments will be considerably longer than on HP tanks.

1 life > 1 ES.

If just the status alignments and the stuns are the problem of CI right now, why not focus just on those points? For example every 2 ES point count as one life regarding stun and alignments(And dont nag about the numbers its just an example). With appropriate number tweaking this seems fine to me. Solving the actuall CI problems without buffing it again in other areas.

Edit.: Ofc only if CI is taken. Elsewise hp/es tanks might get out of control ;)

Only two things need to be done IMO.
CI should grant stun calculations based on ES instead of health
Base ES nodes elsewhere in the tree should be increased by 15-20%
1 or 2 more "big" ES nodes somewhere in the tree.

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Mugaaz wrote:

Only two things need to be done IMO.
CI should grant stun calculations based on ES instead of health
Base ES nodes elsewhere in the tree should be increased by 15-20%
1 or 2 more "big" ES nodes somewhere in the tree.

You know as ES/HP build I would be happy for extra ES for those increases practically for free.
Why it shuoud ES is just fine with 40% stun prevention. It is not awesome but I'd say it is on neutral ground. BTW maybe full ES/CI is playable in current state, but there is not many incentives to take it over just taking hp nodes, it is just more work to get it on same level as hp,then it worth it now. Making hibryd CI builds is 2x more headache.

Well CI build was OP because of ALL the following conditions:

1. x2-3 more hitpoints with way less skillpoints invested

2. high ele damage and physical damage was pretty low

AND

3. granites could totally resist it

4. Discipline

5. High ES values on armor

6. CI users could afford small manapool due to small rervation of auras and good clarity outcome

7. and finally - chaos immunity, which wasnt that important ohnestly

It is important to note, that most of these pros are working MULTIPLICATIVELY giving the observed OP result. OP wasnt due to one or two of these factors, CI was OP because all of these coinciding. In OB devs cut ALL these pluses except for chaos immunity that resulted in grand overnerf - have you seen a SINGLE person using CI in merciless? I havent seen anyone even buying gear for it - all ES buyers use EB, including me.

Since many are posting suggestions to save CI, I think that bringing back 100% MORE ES (as it was long ago) could barely save CI in the current game state with very high physical damage and serious mana issues. Unless such radical measures are taken we have another useless keystone next to Acrobatics.

Quick and dirty:

Chaos Innoculation
You are immune to Chaos Damage and cannot be stunned, your maximum HP is one.

Stun immunity at the cost of potential damage mitigation and no health pool if your ES runs out.

The way to improve CI for witches without making OP such that all classes go for it is to make it such that the +% ES you get is dependent on your total intelligence.

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Danlev wrote:

The way to improve CI for witches without making OP such that all classes go for it is to make it such that the +% ES you get is dependent on your total intelligence.

You mean like:
"50% more increased maximum Energy Shield"
Only the ES-nodes and the effect from your int gets buffed rather than the ES itself(50% is only a number and no balance suggestion)

500 ES on gear without Int/ES-nodes stays at 500 (750 with old CI)
500 ES on gear with 200 Int and and 40% from nodes would increase it from 900 to 1100(1350 with old CI)
With 500 Int and 320% from ALL nodes (2600-> 3650) it would be almost as good as the old CI(3900)

This way it would work similiar to Iron Reflexes(you loose health/evasion and get more effective defense nodes)

I think GGG needs to really examine ES, Chaos Damage, and CI closely.

Currently, the best defensive stat in the game is HP (unless you count endurance orbs), but the witch has not very good access to HP. I would argue the weakest defensive stat is ES, which the witch has plenty of access to.

CI is supposed to be a tradeoff to give up the Witches HP in exchange for ES, in order to avoid Chaos Damage altogether.

The problem is that you're giving up the best defensive stat (HP) and relying on the weakest one (Shield) in order to avoid chaos damage. In order for GGG to make this passive attractive, they've had to make chaos damage insanely dangerous, to the point that it's causing a lot of frustration for many (particularly melee) characters who don't have access to Chaos Resists (there's a thread on it in feedback I think).

My personal problem with CI is that what you sacrifice and what you gain don't line up well. You eliminate a major vulnerability to a minority of enemies by making yourself significantly more vulnerable to a majority of enemies.

Sure this can be built around but conceptually it's not a good idea.

Take, for example, Resolute Technique - You can no longer miss but you can no longer crit. This is a clear gain because it gives you significantly more than 5% damage output (the chance to hit without it maxes at 95%, I believe), it allows you to completely ignore all accuracy reliance. In return, you can't crit. But baseline crit is pitiful, 5% chance to deal 150% damage. You sacrifice, at most, 2.5% of your overall damage for at minimum 5% increase in damage assuming you build around it.

Unwavering Stance is another example. You can't be stunned but you can't evade. You're losing 5% of your mitigation (always have 5% avoidance from evasion) but the gain is huge in that you can no longer lose control of your character except to freeze.

CI, on the other hand, doesn't really have a benefit that's broadly appliccable, and the sacrifice you make is huge: All your life. Even if you actively avoid all life nodes, and life on items you will still have life you gain each level which puts you at 644 by the end, and additionally any life from strength, which can be anywhere from 10 to 100 more hp. And not only that, you're giving up the ability to use flasks to restore your health and instead relying on a cooldown that starts when you're not being hit. Those sacrifices are huge, and imo with the level of ES attainable they aren't particularly justifiable because ES comes with its own tradeoffs (limited armor or evasion to accompany it).

I'm not sure what should be done, but I just wanted to say that CI really is an iffy keystone right now. It's way too powerful against a tiny fraction of enemies, and it's a huge liability against a majority of enemies.

Just off the top of my head, what if CI added a % of your HP to your Shields? Then the downside would be potentially less health and the ability to restore health with flasks, but you would get a little ES out of it in addition to chaos immunity? I guess care would have to be taken setting the %, so there was no double dipping. But I think it might help.

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Autocthon wrote:

Quick and dirty:

Chaos Innoculation
You are immune to Chaos Damage and cannot be stunned, your maximum HP is one.

Stun immunity at the cost of potential damage mitigation and no health pool if your ES runs out.

I was thinking moving Resolute Technique to the center of the tree might be a fair buff to ES builds, or at least add some options that aren't stack evasion, equip Eye of Chayula or die to archers.

EDIT: What if an elemental debuff avoidance cluster was added behind or next to CI, and CI gained 50% or even 100% more ES cooldown recovery? I feel if there were more accessible ways to mitigate the crippling side effects of a small life pool and a shorter timer on the recharge to make up for it being complete life and death, CI would be more desirable.