Alternatives to adcth meta

[Maya]

I wouldn’t mind ADCtH stacking so much if stacking passive health regeneration through skills like Vindictive Flame or “chunk heals” like Dryad, Giant’s Blood, Wayward Soul etc. was as strong.

I’d like to see more character builds implement high health + high health regeneration to create more diversity rather than the current standard that is using ADCtH + weapon damage or ADCtH procs like Bat.

Ideally, passive recovery or leeching should both be viable forms of recovery and it is up to the player to build their defense in one or the other.

I agree with this.

[sir_spanksalot]

The problem with ghoul is that it can be used on casters. I personally think it’s fine on auto attacking builds.

Maybe lowering the affinity yield from 3 purples to 1 or 2 is a good fix.

[idontwannaknow0]

The problem with ghoul is that it can be used on casters. I personally think it’s fine on auto attacking builds.

Maybe lowering the affinity yield from 3 purples to 1 or 2 is a good fix.

I don’t see that as the problem. Say you want to make a bwc spammer; the problem to me is that such a caster can feel pigeonholed into finding some %WD (flame torrent, bat etc.) to go along with ghoul and maybe revenant too in order to survive. I am not fixated on min-maxing but the degree of inefficiency caused by not taking ghoul+other adcth is annoying.

[sir_spanksalot]

So what do you reckon a fair fix would look like?

[RektbyProtoss]

If something must be removed from it, remove the attack speed.

This. Don’t touch the phys res imo, remove attack speed and reduce the lifesteal by maybe 10%. For me Ghoul is supposed to be a good circuit breaker for heavy weapon damage based characters and default attackers (for which a lower %lifesteal is enough to heal up to 100%). Currently it is so strong that it is the best healing option even for Panetti’s builds with like 18% WD. This is also because behemoth and tree of life are in a very bad state atm. I would love the behemoth proc to be changed to a circuit breaker, so e.g. to proc at ~50% HP. Atm behemoth is not gonna help any caster. It gets randomly activated, when you don’t need the heal and whenever you would need it, it’s on CD because of its high CD. It is especially useless in HC, because of this unreliability.

[somnium]

The problem with ghoul is that it can be used on casters. I personally think it’s fine on auto attacking builds.

Maybe lowering the affinity yield from 3 purples to 1 or 2 is a good fix.

I would argue that most spam and channeling casters(excluding stuff like DE who do not need it and PB + CT that are kind of OP with it) have just as much a need to heal as auto attack builds and that it is not a problem that such casters have access to it.

[idontwannaknow0]

So what do you reckon a fair fix would look like?

What myself and madlee suggested on first page. make the health regen significant on behemoth (base regen of 1200 at least, which is similar to 12/12 wendigo totem effect after health regen% added). That plus adding a defensive stat like phys res or DA or armor. With the CD being significant and the healing per second much lower than ghoul potential it would still be inferior but it would be a start to creating more viable alternatives and greatly help no/minimal %WD casters out.

[sfbistimg]

Health regen is no where near as bad as people say. On my stun jack’s pyromancer With only a little effort has over 1.7k regen per second and over 2.8k per second when Giant’s blood is active (which is around a third of the time). I also have the blood of dreeg heal around every 12 seconds.
And you can still can add ghoul for more sustain.

Obviously not all class combo’s can reach these numbers with as little effort, but regen is definitely a useable form of sustain.

[sir_spanksalot]

Health regen is no where near as bad as people say. On my stun jack’s pyromancer With only a little effort has over 1.7k regen per second and over 2.8k per second when Giant’s blood is active (which is around a third of the time). I also have the blood of dreeg heal around every 12 seconds.
And you can still can add ghoul for more sustain.

Obviously not all class combo’s can reach these numbers with as little effort, but regen is definitely a useable form of sustain.

GT link please? And when you say viable…under what circumstances if I may ask?

[Zantai]

The upcoming Hotfix 2 (v1.1.0.2) is going to include some additional tuning before the preordained expansion release next week.

It does include a pass on Health Regeneration on Tier 2/3 Constellations, among other things.

I suppose we’ll review Ghoul while we’re at it.

[idontwannaknow0]

Health regen is no where near as bad as people say. On my stun jack’s pyromancer With only a little effort has over 1.7k regen per second and over 2.8k per second a third of the time when Giant’s blood is active. I also have the blood of dreeg heal around every 12 seconds.
And you can still can add ghoul for more sustain.

Obviously not all class combo’s can reach these numbers with as little effort, but regen is definitely a useable form of sustain.

This is where you need to compare regen to life steal. Life steal is literally of global access and value right now even on casters without much %WD. Health regen is typically niche that requires specific items and stat stacking, which often comes at the expense of damage and automatically excludes a lot of gear and sets in the game.

Even if by buffing Behemoth some random person could achieve 7k health regen for a short time it is not a valid excuse to keep behemoth bad for everyone else because near-immortality has existed for a while in GD with tanks with 7k armor and 1k flat absorb etc. I think near-immortality possibilities are only considered problematic in this game when it coincides with great dps, because that feels too unfair. Somehow I doubt these high regen builds you talk of have great dps also.

The upcoming Hotfix 2 (v1.1.0.2) is going to include some additional tuning before the preordained expansion release next week.

It does include a pass on Health Regeneration on Tier 2/3 Constellations, among other things.

I suppose we’ll review Ghoul while we’re at it.

Thank you for the response. I look forward to seeing what you have in mind for the healing constellations

[sfbistimg]

GT link please? And when you say viable…under what circumstances if I may ask?

under the circumstance of playing the game
I’ll post the character when I get home later, no access to it right now

This is where you need to compare regen to life steal. Life steal is literally of global value right now even on casters without much %WD. Health regen is typically niche that requires specific items and stat stacking, which often comes at the expense of damage and automatically excludes a lot of gear and sets in the game.

Even if by buffing Behemoth some random person could achieve 7k health regen for a short time it is not a valid excuse to keep behemoth bad for everyone else because immortality already exists with tanks with 7k armor and 1k flat absorb etc.

Yet not all builds can use life steal, or have to stack tons of it as they get very little use from it as they have low %weapon damage

and I don’t recall asking for behemoth to be buffed as it has no need to be. It is a devotion best used with regen builds.

[mad_lee]

I suppose we’ll review Ghoul while we’re at it.

You guys are insane. Why would you ask for a Ghoul nerf? Why fix something that is not broken? Just buff regeneration procs, don’t touch Ghoul. It’s not oupie, it doesn’t make builds immortal, doesn’t make bad builds good or even passable.

You do realise that all 2h-melee builds rely HEAVILY on Ghoul’s proc attack speed? And the reason is that 2h-melee meta is still lagging behind dw-melee, 2h-melee builds are worse then dual-wield melee just about in every department be it damage or sustain or defenses. If you remove attack speed from Ghoul you are going to hurt a lot of 2h-melee builds.

A lot of weaker casters that are not Inquisitors rely on Ghoul too.

Frankly, I am a little mad that people are asking for Ghoul’s nerf without realising how negative the consequences will be. You should try assembling caster Witch Hunters or Defilers or Spellbreakers and challenging endgame content with those builds and see how far you can go without Ghoul. Sure, fat Soldiers and Inquisitors probably might not even notice, but all the weaker classes like Druids, Spellbreakers, Witch Hunters, Reapers will suffer immensly. And all the semi-dead classes like Defilers, Elementalists, Warlocks will become fully dead.

Just buff the bad stuff first, see how it works together with Ghoul, if it’s really oupie or broken, then ask for Ghoul nerfs or better for more elegant balancing solutions. Don’t ask for preemptive nerfs goddamnit. You haven’t even tried playing Shattered Realm.

[idontwannaknow0]

Yet not all builds can use life steal, or have to stack tons of it as they get very little use from it as they have low %weapon damage

and I don’t recall asking for behemoth to be buffed as it has no need to be. It is a devotion best used with regen builds.

Take for example this build Ptiro posted a few days ago. The sheet weapon damage is only meagre 4-9k. When ghoul procs and the lifesteal from ghoul, bat and some auto attack causes him to heal huge amounts per second. Even when ghoul is down the life steal is far better sustain than healing/health regen alternative.

Compare it to something like Spank stun jacks video which has much lower life steal and he has to kite a hell of a lot more :p. This may be a different build but you can see the inefficiency (but in Spank case spam skills were taken with no %WD so good use of ghoul is harder, I guess still possible with %WD devo and ghoul but harder)

Edit: This is another stun jacks build by John smith, more comparable to Spanks build but it took ghoul and bat. Not sure how fast it cleared crucible but I would definitely bet on ghoul being pretty high on the life steal even with the low weapon damage of 4k or so. https://www.grimtools.com/calc/Q2z7EjAV

[Ceno]

You do realise that all 2h-melee builds rely HEAVILY on Ghoul’s proc attack speed?

If 2H builds are relying on the Attack Speed granted by a Devotion proc with limited uptime that only activates when at low health, that speaks more to a problem with 2H needing work elsewhere and less so to the necessity of Ghoul remaining as-is. An AS/CS buff to Kraken, for instance, wouldn’t be unwelcome, would it?

[idontwannaknow0]

If 2H builds are relying on the Attack Speed granted by a Devotion proc with limited uptime that only activates when at low health, that speaks more to a problem with 2H needing work elsewhere and less so to the necessity of Ghoul remaining as-is. An AS/CS buff to Kraken, for instance, wouldn’t be unwelcome, would it?

Ghoul might have a low up-time but boss die pretty fast in this game and it often procs at times where it is really needed. E.g wave 170 of crucible. The attack speed will be a significant boost to dps and dps boosts that allow for Nem to be killed faster can significantly improve odds of surviving.

Removing AS from ghoul hurts 2H quite a lot more than it does dual wielders.

[Salazar]

… Sure it is only 6 second duration but that becomes pretty darn useful when boss die fast as they do …

I get what you’re saying but please don’t forget that some of us can’t kill bosses quite so quickly.

[mad_lee]

If 2H builds are relying on the Attack Speed granted by a Devotion proc with limited uptime that only activates when at low health, that speaks more to a problem with 2H needing work elsewhere and less so to the necessity of Ghoul remaining as-is. An AS/CS buff to Kraken, for instance, wouldn’t be unwelcome, would it?

Dude, I am all for buffing 2handed melee. But why not do that first, then fix Benemoth and Tree of Life, then fix the issue of low physical resist/very low armor on a lot of caster builds and only THEN consider doing something to Ghoul?

I get what you’re saying but please don’t forget that some of us can’t kill bosses quite so quickly.

Without Ghoul in its current form, those “of us” that can’t kill bosses that quickly won’t be able to kill them at all.

[idontwannaknow0]

I get what you’re saying but please don’t forget that some of us can’t kill bosses quite so quickly.

I think if anything buffing Behemoth will be a nice improvement for people that don’t kill boss fast because the healing per second is not related to dps like life steal is. Respectable life steal of ~4k or more health per second under ghoul buff can be obtained by most non-optimal builds (only ~32k dps of weapon damage is needed vs a Nemesis boss)

However removing physical resistance will most negatively impact lower dps and/or %WD characters since even under ghoul they may not be healing their entire health pool as rapidly and the phys res mitigation helps. I guess past a point of dps builds may not even bat an eyelid at the loss of physical resistance because of the sheer leeching power obtainable.

[sfbistimg]

here’s the character Sir Spanksalot
other stats not shown in pics
14k Life
2900 OA
2800 DA
200% Cast Speed
2190% Lightning damage
once expansion drops I’ll be able to get more -rr as Ill put points in Thermite mines

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lNky0M6V

With Giant’s Blood

Without Giant’s Blood