Guard skills are in a really shitty state and should be adressed/nerfed next league

There's one clear outlier, Molten Shell. Arguably also its vaal version, but certainly not to the same degree.

Armour:
Molten Shell was the thing that pushed Armour into being good. Now that armour can stand on its own feet, this no-brainer interaction is removing choice. Even casters want this combo going and builds without it are... just worse.

Other guard skills:
* Steelskin takes way too much Strength so it's never used by anyone with a
clue. If you have the requirement, you use Molten Shell because then you
probably also have a bunch of armour. Make it scale with a different
attribute.
* Immortal Call mostly pales in comparison to Molten Shell, as it doesn't reduce
elemental/chaos damage enough. It would look fairly balanced without this
dumb comparison.
* Arcane Cloak is way too niche to be "the caster Guard skill". Something new is
needed here. Giving up a Guard skill is only done in a context where
dying doesn't matter.

Costs:
Lastly, melee characters need to jump through hoops to fix their mana cost wrt. CWDT procs now. I don't think a reactive skill that's supposed to save you is ever supposed to have had a mana cost in the first place - especially not one you could bypass by not casting it yourself.

TL:DR: Mostly disagree with OP, Please remove mana cost, every guard skill is situationally good, would love more options though


While I agree with you that Molten shell is the "clear outlier" in terms of it's potential, it seems that, for the most part, you are the one who is "without a clue" when it comes to the other guard skills.

Steelskin for instance, is amazing for evasion based characters (I regularly use it on my Ranger builds, to avoid burst of damage that the game enjoys to throw at you, for the very minimal investment of strength (usually quite accessible trough either 30 Nodes, or Amulets).

Especially potent against swarms of porcupines, or those tentacle things you see in Eater of WOrlds influence.

Immortal call works in a very similiar way, reducing incoming damage, and works quite well I've noticed if you are playing something that has charge generation (Either trough ascendency, minimum charges, cluster jewel), it's a better steelskin as it lessens damage taken, instead of absorbing hits.

I'll be honest, I don't play casters all that much, especially those that rely on a big mana pool as a form of defense, so I don't know how good or bad arcane cloak is. It's certainly situational, as it gives you an alternative to reserving your mana with defensive auras, which I presume is the trade off you are going for here.



Considering the cost, I agree (Except arcane cloak I suppose, ebcause that one makes sense), because a guard skill to me is like taking a stance to defend yourself, similiar to how I feel about triggers like reckoning. I'd personally would love for the mana cost to be removed, in exchange for the cooldowns increased, so they aren't spammed on left click (something I see often with regular molten shell in videos at least), so it's used to guard from danger, rather than just being another layer.

Arcane Cloak is amazing and needs no changes, if you are a mana build not only does it give great defense, it gives great offense to.

Immortal Call is kind of in the same category, since it is % scaling it is far more effective vs really big hits than the other guard skills, also good for builds that aren't scaling armour at all(*cough ES builds*)

Molten Shell does require investing into armour to be good, this is a common thing which is what makes it an outlier.

Steelskin just needs improvement, it has some uses but is definitely weaker than the rest. Maybe just boost the damage absorbed some or give it some Evasion scaling based off %inc evasion on tree(so grace only users don't benefit as much)

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dorkdude2 wrote:

Steelskin just needs improvement, it has some uses but is definitely weaker than the rest. Maybe just boost the damage absorbed some or give it some Evasion scaling based off %inc evasion on tree(so grace only users don't benefit as much)

I feel like Steel skin deserves to be "weaker" than the rest, because the only investment you have to put into it, is stats and sockets.

Arcane Cloak = Massive Mana pool

Immortal Call = Endurance CHarges + Generation to feel good

Molten Shell = ARmour stacking

Steel Skin = Just some strength

On my rangers, where I use it almost all the time if I have a spare 2L/3L, I usually have it around level 14/15, where it absorbs 1000 / 1150 damage when it procs. And that's a lot of life, especially for multiple smaller hits. And all you need is 109 strength? you easily get that via pathing and a STR based amulet, making it the cheapest guard skill to get into, does deservingly being also the weakest.

Just my two cents

Edit: I completly forgot, Arcane cloak is not only a defense, but also an offense. Damn.

I've heard Bone Armour is bad too, that its useless to use Bone Armour over Molten Shell. That Bone Armour has 80% less defense.

Not sure if its true, tho seeing as most Necros debated the +2 minion gem fix, none of them mentioned Bone Armour, as something to get.

^bone armor = immunity to bleed on top of the defense. It's also exactly the same defense as steelskin. Also, necro builds are generally super starved for gem slots, so having a guard skill in the ascendancy alleviated 1-2 gem slots for a different guard skill.

But even if they don't use bone armor over molten shell, theres also the other benefits to that skill, such as 10% flat physical damage reduction and a multiplicative 20% MORE minion life. Huge amount of recovery rate for life AND es on top of that. Minion builds used to invest heavily into ES and ES regen which benefited greatly from that 20% boost.

Personally id rate the following:

Steel Skin: shit tier only use it if you cannot use another guard skill. The duration is way too low.

Immortal Call: only halfway decent with endurance charges still the duration could use a buff

Archmage: cant comment never played it recently.

Molten Shell: with everyone running determination this is a massive nobrainer. Longest duration and massive extra hp and it has a Vaal Version to double the up time in hard situaions. This one definitely needs tuning downwards.

cleave got buffed yet people still complaining, its melee league lets go

I'm kind of the weird one here in that I use Steelskin nearly always... You can get the cooldown rather low with investment on the tree and enhance (Quality is Cooldown). Being able to recover mana very quickly with the mana mastery and remove bleed/corrupting blood is not bad either.

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e1337donkey wrote:

I'm kind of the weird one here in that I use Steelskin nearly always... You can get the cooldown rather low with investment on the tree and enhance (Quality is Cooldown). Being able to recover mana very quickly with the mana mastery and remove bleed/corrupting blood is not bad either.

Steel Skin just gets a lot of flack because it doesn't nearly scale in its absorbtion as the other guard skills do, overlooking that it's a set it and forget it kind of thing.

I love steel skin (mentioned earlier) On evasion characters specificly on a 2L CWDT (if I have a spare get inc. duration) to get a 1K buffer when I take a burst of multiple hits (Skelly spellcasters / Porcupines / barrage attacks) at once, and it has saved my butt in hardcore more times than I'd like to admit. All that for just some measly, easy to aquire strength!

But yeah, it pales in comparison to literally every other guard skill (Arcane cloak gives you damage on top of it, too! Who knew!)