New Skill Development - Part 2

The simple solution to the entire EC/IC problem, including its abuse with CWDT is to make EC a War Cry and remove its cast tag, but keep IC as a cast and give it a much longer duration, separating it from EC. This will allow many builds to survive unavoidable spike physical damage (I'm looking at you, devourers).

Maybe give IC a 1 second base duration on its own (at level one) without relying on enduring charges? This could be further augmented with the 90% duration nodes on the tree and increased duration support gem. It won't reach broken levels (especially with a long cooldown), but will make you immune to physical damage during those surprise buttsex moments.

While we're on the topic of surprise buttsex moments, can we talk about devourers? I think many of the fears concerning the removal of CWDT/EC/IC setup would be removed if devourers could be interacted with BEFORE they unburrow. They will not unburrow for any reason except the player's character. Why is this? Players should be rewarded for their creativity, and allowed to circumvent extremely dangerous traps by casting totems, minions or arrow clones ahead of themselves as a sort of "mine sweeeper" against this toxic monster type. Leapers and chargers can be avoided or thrown off with this method. Why not devourers?

With the frequency at which these monsters are encountered in certain maps (and the fact they can appear in maps many players wouldn't even think possible albeit rarely), there needs to be a solution to surviving what can be a near-instant death (unless you would rather everyone in Hardcore just cope with the problem by using escape macros).

CWDT/EC/IC/ID is a problem, but it is not THE problem. Literally unavoidable spike damage is THE problem.

I just want to start off saying i love this game i play with everyday. I no 100% there is going to be nothing but negative comments to this post and it is what it is.Does this game really need another skill or effects? there are far more features to fix in this game then to worry about a new skill. I play this game everyday and its just the same thing over and over grinding maps all day. can you try adding something else.Something that's not going to die out after a week. A lot of my friends have stopped playing and streamers who promote this game have stopped playing because it's the same thing. there is nothing else to do in the game once you hit maps.I understand there is an Act 4 coming out but that will die off after a week when people realize they cant do anything else yet again but go back to maps. This game is going to die if something big does not happen soon.

i think the bottom line is that if it's not instant cast it'll slow you down.
much of the appeal of trigger gems like CWDT, is that they make stuff instant cast = no downtime = faster clear speed.
any stop and cast mechanic(which is pretty much everything besides them trigger gems) is slowing the clear speed. it's why people don't even curse these days.
sure, 0.25s it's a fast cast time but it'll still root you for that period and as a melee, it's not like you'll get spell casting speed from the tree.

also, about vigilant strike: there's nothing stopping casters or ranged attackers(with some weapon switching shenanigans) from using it. as a SRSer or summoner i'll use it for sure - 25% mitigation, + a host of increased buff duration nodes, PLUS it can't miss.
i won't make it a priority to use it as a spell caster class but often one find himself in melee range; then just click it, get the buff, enjoy the op-ness. scepters, daggers, staves they'll do fine.

Well I already got rid of Mind over Matter, to reclaim a ton of points and trade them for increased endurance charges/regen with charges and minion regen for my chaos golem.

Now I see that cwdt enduring cry is going away, and I hear that EB is getting whacked too, so there goes my Arctic Armor.

So with all my defenses pretty much gutted remorselessly, basically I'm hearing I need to toss my wand and Rathpith in the trash, put on my Belly of the Beast, and learn to love fortify.

All I want to to is speed around with AA on, blasting ball lightning, clearing screens with ice nova and watching them shatter and explode then lightning rain down around me, warping all over, with frost walls and enduring cries going off if something actually hits me and not die. Like I've been doing till lv92.

Is that so wrong? Q_Q

I actually don't mind EC cwdt going away, as long as Ice Nova and Ball lightning and HoI/HoT stay groovy and chaos golem kicks ass.

I cannot express how little I care about melee. It would be great, fun even, if there were a significant shift away from sheer numbers of mobs to smaller groups of more powerful/interesting ones.

As it is I only stop shocking and shattering mobs en masse if one has reflect or corrupting blood. Thats it. Only 2 types of mobs other than devourers to even warrant a thought apart from bosses. Now why would I want to wade through 90 mobs hacking and missing and only killing what is immediately nearby (or cop out and use CoC) when magic exists?

Guess we will find out when we get to play the expansion..

EDIT: Well I dropped AA MoM EB and enduring cry from my build. I gained like 600 hp, 1500 es, some armor, and some mf. Working out great so far. I might pick Inner Force, but I am not sure it even works with HoI/HoT but I know it boosts clarity. Was hoping to run tempest shield too but mana is at a premium again. The incoming changes, unless they are really bizarre won't break my build too much.

Disabling triggers for war cries (and totems for that matter) make them a catch 22 for melee characters (the classes for which they are intended). When facing significant monsters, melee characters are either hitting or they are dying (dependent on leech and/or LGoH). Cries are designed to scale based on number of monsters in your vicinity, however, a large number of significant monsters in your vicinity is exactly the time when you can't afford to cast a war cry. In short, if you can stand there and cast a war cry and defensive totem, then you don't need them. In situations where you need them, casting a war cry and totem will likely result in your death.

War cries and defensive totems are nearly useless if they can't be triggered. If I wanted to cast then I would make a caster and stand on the periphery. Casting defensive buffs doesn't work when you attack monsters face-to-face.

I'm still confused on how this breaks CWDT+EC+IC?

You just manually cast EC every second or two and let IC trigger as usual with CWDT? Same effect? Am I missing something?