A potential change I'm keen to hear your thoughts on

This change looks very interesting.

Please let it have enough time in beta to get a thorough testing. Don't give up on it because people are having a hard time breaking old habits. I like that this will make EB different to simply having a huge mana pool. I like puzzles and this gives more puzzles to solve :)

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squurellkiller wrote:

Exactly, this node will take away a ton of Defense from casters.

Ironically EB was meant to take away a caster's defense for mana.

I love this change. It makes EB dynamic instead of a boring mana fixer for MoM and AA. I've always felt that AA shouldn't really ever be sustainable indefinitely, it should be situational.

Just put a circle of Mana Regeneration, %Increased Mana, Energy Shield Recovery, %Increased Energy Shield behind EB and AA/MoM becomes viable again without being as broken as it is currently.

It helps that I made a suggestion recently to cover up the naked Mana globe, and a few days later this is brought to light... ;)

Edit: MoM could use a rework as well. Maybe make it something like:
30% of damage taken is removed from Mama before Life. Damage reduction is based on Intelligence instead of Armor. You have no Armor.

Now that I'v had time to theory a few build ideas all I can think is this change is bad if their goal is to nerf MoM or AA.

It'll take a few key unique and specific passive points but MoM might even be more viable if you have them and because you won't need mana to cast your spells a high lvl AA might not be out of the question.

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Rufus82 wrote:

This change looks very interesting.

Please let it have enough time in beta to get a thorough testing. Don't give up on it because people are having a hard time breaking old habits. I like that this will make EB different to simply having a huge mana pool. I like puzzles and this gives more puzzles to solve :)

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squurellkiller wrote:

Exactly, this node will take away a ton of Defense from casters.

Ironically EB was meant to take away a caster's defense for mana.

I know it was meant for that, but it just isn't worth giving life for mana just to cast skills. This is a huge nerf for casters which weren't even op to begin with.

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FunkyFritter wrote:

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Rory wrote:

Damage won't interrupt ES recovery any more, only losing mana or ES will.

This part could use clarification. If you take (non-chaos) damage you lose ES, so wouldn't that still stop ES recovery? If it doesn't, it seems like a massive buff to low life builds, they can cast via blood magic and just have their ES constantly regenerate for free.

The energy shield wont absorb damage anymore. It will be used as mana for your active skills.

This whole thread has led me to glue my face to my palm.

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Felix35071 wrote:

I love this change. It makes EB dynamic instead of a boring mana fixer for MoM and AA. I've always felt that AA shouldn't really ever be sustainable indefinitely, it should be situational.

Just put a circle of Mana Regeneration, %Increased Mana, Energy Shield Recovery, %Increased Energy Shield behind EB and AA/MoM becomes viable again without being as broken as it is currently.

It helps that I made a suggestion recently to cover up the naked Mana globe, and a few days later this is brought to light... ;)

From what I am seeing from this change, its really just MoM that needs to be fixed. I would just reduce mana regeneration to 0 with the MoM keystone, they might have to give cloak of defiance a different stat other than mana regeneration but I think it would fix a lot more problems than changing EB does.

That way, MoM builds would have to rely on leech to get their mana and not be able to support AA.

I think EB was ok the way it was. Witch casters had two choices for defense, either EB MoM AA, or CI ( hybrid life/ES builds suck except for summoners). Now i think it will be only CI and with CI being expensive people wont play witch as much. Just my prediction.

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xThreads wrote:

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Gamer_748 wrote:

This proposed change looks horrible right from the start. EB/AA/MoM is a great source of defense, and is not the most expensive form of defense, but I would not consider it cheap. I say just leave EB the way it is and scrap this idea before you become too attached to it in trying to make it work.

great source of defence....

EB AA MoM (highly reliable, relatively cheap)
CI or LL Shavs shite (incredibly expensive)
Acro Evasion (fairly reliable, occasionally rippy, cheap)
Armour (lol.)


and block can go in there somewhere.


I'm all for making it hard to cap resists and maximize mitigation.
Eventually we are going to be down to a single difficulty game, when that happens everything is going to need rejigging again anyway.

embrace change and give other chest pieces a chance.

I dont think you really have a good grasp of how powerful evasion and armour builds can be. Here is a video I made earlier of an ev+ar ranger running around in merciless lunaris

http://www.twitch.tv/64521xw2/b/650915891

show me an EB AA MoM character than can survive even 20 seconds of the punishment this type of character can just stand still and take literally infinitely without breaking sweat... You can tank damage like that with armour evasion using 15 chaos worth of gear, far less than the price of just the COD chest. What are these sort of defenses going to be like when you are adding fortify to the mix? How tanky you think this gets when I actually use my pots?

This is my cloak witches setup


Foxish MoM Cloak Arcer



Ive tried doing this with her, she can take 2 big hits from brutus and then I have to warp away on the edge of death and nuke him because I would die, very very quickly attempting to tank like this a moment longer. Its truly weak in comparison. That ranger is ar+ev, coil ev acro ondars setups are also ridiculously strong compared to COD EB AA. When foxtactics made his cod arcer, he evolved it into a lightning coil arcer because the coil was literally twice as good when it came to damage mitigation. then you take that same coil and add 10k more evasion on top, and then add ondars guile, and then add acrobatics and phase acro, and then add a larger life pool with triple the life regen, then add way more life leech and damage, then add more endurance charges, now add the new fortify buff and you have what south of the tree builds are capable of defensively. Its lightyears beyond what MoM casters have going on.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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CalamityAOE wrote:

I'm thinking EB now says you spend energy shield as mana???

Since Rory does seem to have actually clarified the mechanic at play here (that I can see), I'll take this one.

The new Eldritch Battery currently being tested has two stats (wording not final):
Energy Shield protects Mana instead of Life and
Spend Energy Shield before Mana for Skill Costs

Energy Shield protects Mana instead of Life means that your ES is over your mana, and not over your life, as seen in the screenshot. Since it's not over your life, damage that's doing to your life isn't intercepted by ES. Since it's over mana, damage going to mana (Mind over Matter, etc) will hit ES first, except in the case of Chaos Damage, which bypasses ES and would go straight through to mana.
You will no longer have the 50% chance to ignore stuns for having ES, as that's a property of ES protecting life and doesn't apply when it's over mana instead.
Life being lost will no longer impede the ES refresh, but Mana being lost for any reason will, as of course will losing ES as it always does.
Effects which just make you lose mana, such as Arctic Armour or Sapping flasks, will not be affected, just as ES doesn't stop Caustic Flasks from removing life.
If you take the Blood Magic Keystone, you'll have no mana, and ES will be protecting your empty mana globe. Mind over Matter will still try to divert some damage to mana, and this will be able to be absorbed by ES, but once ES is depleted of course, no damage can be taken from mana and will will all go to life.

Spend Energy Shield before Mana for Skill Costs means that for skill mana costs (not reservations) you pay with ES until you run out, then start paying with mana. Mana reservations are not costs, and will still be paid directly with mana.
Blood Magic still switches you to spending life "instead", so you won't be able to pay with ES if you have blood magic and this stat.

In all other respects, ES behaves exactly the same - it still has the refresh mechanic, and anything that references ES still applies to ES.

Im not one to shy away from complexity, and Im not just saying this because I had a bad initial reaction to the change, but that does sound awfully complex mate. I can see myself trying to explain this at length to new players in forum posts, and failing. I get it, and that does work slightly differently to what I first thought where MoM would hit mana directly beneath es from all damage, but basically what this means is you have to get ZO with your COD, and then its still a must have except now you must have Qarls new amulet to go with it otherwise you are making an obligatory trip to the marauder zone for your es regen unless you spec Reaver and then loose all your life leech? I mean, thats not actually quite as bad as I first thought but thats still a pretty heavy set of mechanics, I dont want to say convoluted or cumbersome but almost, its almost on that level.


I dunno, I really think were going to have to try this out to know for sure how its going to come together, all the fears expressed may be bang on or they may be totally misplaced. I dont think its fair to make a complete judgement on it from pure theory like this.

Honestly, you guys may think "no, just no" but with something like this I dunno if I could really test it and give honest feedback if I dont have my current gear to actually see how it works at high levels. I would need to get a COD and a full endgame specced out high level witch with atziri belt and all manner of stuff on the beta server to be able to tell you how I feel about its real impact and I dont see that being realistic on a realm with constant wipes and updates etc where we wont be able to port our characters over to properly test endgame specs with realistic endgame gear, fully leveled gems etc. Any way of giving us like, 1 day or a weekend with a few ported over chars on the beta server to really give this a go at some point?

this change has my approval

keep up the good work! :)