you can say the same about warlolds, running around with 7k armor. Except binder’s don’t gain anything out of RR and warlolds free some SP.
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The sustain devotions haven’t bothered anyone until this topic, because nobody really needed it. Lots of builds took unconverted Bat, and it was enough to survive.
Now the game is much harder, you need all the defensive mechanics possible.
That’s why acid builds sacrifice damage procs to take Scales
That’s why Spellbinders might sacrifice Dying God stats and Imp damage proc to take Wendigo
The only thing I don’t get - why it’s such a problem for someone? (especially, for players who haven’t been active for a long time)
7 Likes
It’s more “don’t give unnecessary nerfs to stuff because some people have a weird ass definition of broken”. Saying something is broken because a bunch of people use it (i thought that has always been a good thing) is a big knee jerk reaction, specially when the builds using them aren’t even overperforming.
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Imo only energy-solving side of Scales is too strong. Putting that aside, it doesn’t differ much from what Wendigo, Bat or Ghoul provide per point invested.
Now if you go and remove every thing listed above, you’d have rather inveresting situation where any caster without 40%+ cdr and weapon damage on its skills would be a dead man walking in endgame.
Life sustain part of Scales is as “OP” as any other leech source, but the thing is these 4 “OP” constellations enable a lot of builds. So in a way this balance offset constributes to the diversity more than it takes away from it.
Also one important thing to mention: there is only so many things you can have in the game.
Would you say Torch is OP for fire because every fire build takes it?
Would you say any RR constellation is OP for the dmg type because every monodmg build takes it?
If you consider a life sustain constellation as a mandatory part of a successfull endgame build, just as much as RR constellation is, all the sudden there is no balance problem. I think at this stage of the game we should seek diversity elsewhere.
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As I never played casters and a lot of non-melee builds, my opinion is limited though always playing melee means that considering survival options at top priority because I can’t basically kite.
There are a lot of build I used scales to just get RR because I have not extra skill to use revenant or acid spray and if I can, I take both ghoul and scales except elemental damage builds. And I never experienced a situation that scales made kept me alive without other proper defense mechanism or enough lifesteal/hit damage ratio in SR boss rooms.
It has already a hard to get requirements 6 yellow + 6 devotion points atleast, single target RR, only main hand based weapon damage and not so op vitality damage. If there is a problem with vitality damage in general, to solve the problem we should look into the vitality builds and their skills not the devotions almost every build uses.
If scales>revenant, then revenant needs some more love that’s all. I mostly invest 4 points to revenant to get %6 adcth instead of using seal of blades etc if I already invested red affinity nodes because of the components provides more damage than 4-5 point mid tier constellation investment.
Now if we act like oh there is something used by almost everyone, let’s nerf that; there won’t be any creativity because then people go for the next best thing. Now If the goal here is to create some diversity on the basis of survival, then we need to buff other lifesteal based survival devotions or other sources of life sustain like health regen here to not force players to take X-Y or both in every build.
The thing is offensive devotions like Spear or Ultos have Weapon Damage compartment. So with % life steal you leech even from them. So stuff that needs you to make offensive sacrifice needs to be good to even consider using them. And you need to do content that requires that amount of defense.
And some of the sustain options like Bat, Ghoul and Guardians’s Gaze are T1, which makes them more accessible.
Scales and Wendigo requires some sacrifices, like the mentioned by @dmt acid build giving up acid procs to take Scales or aether throwing DG for Wendigo. But they are not OP, nor overused.
If you go to this rabbit hole, then Aeon is too OP too? See what can do with Binders or Sorcs and other CDR builds. Even securing permanent Ascension!
Health regen? That thing without absorb, damage reduction and stuff it’s really underwhelming. I made Elementalist trying to survive on regen+precious Ghoul AND Scales. But it dies quickly. Remade it with damage absorb/damage reduction added and suddenly can survive.
So devotions like Phoenix can be good for sustain. Health regen is for Avenger or if you’re ready to give up lot’s of damage/other stats to reach insane numbers of regen. Dryad is niche devotion, I am up for buffing it.
1 Like
I agree 110% with buffing Dryad. Its a fun devotion, but comes with that steep yellow investment. Having that buff would definitely make the investment feel more reasonable.
I know it wont happen, but ive always wished Dryad would provide 3 Yellow and 2 Blue affinity upon completion as well. Since that wont ever happen, buffing it seems fair.
3 Likes
Because it speaks to a broader problem with the game’s balance. You shouldn’t “need all the defensive options available” just to survive, that robs characters of any build diversity. It creates a scenario where there are no durable builds, no glass cannon builds, no controller-type builds, just builds that die in 1-2 hits and ones that don’t.
If one specific mechanic (life leech) is so good that EVERYONE goes out of their way to get it, that’s a problem, especially if there are other mechanics that do the same thing (regen, etc.) that don’t measure up. To put it another way; if life leech is straight up better than it’s alternatives, why do those alternatives even exist in the game? There’s no actual choice there.
Also it’s really weird to me that people are so incredulous about this being brought up for discussion. You’re in the Gameplay Discussion forum for god’s sake, what were you expecting?
1 Like
May be repeating but:
In what context is “balanced” or “OP” being referred to here in the end?
SR 50?
SR 65, 75+
CR in sub 6?
MC?
Clear times?
Those 4 constellations being “OP” is a symptom of there being no other option to reach a reliable sustainability for gear/class combos that lack certain options or stats.
Moving away from them or needing them…whatever but give more options to not have to use them…nerfing them will just swing everyone back to a different must “take” meta like ghoul or whatever else people find.
Taking ghoul as a caster sucks to me imo, unless it is a part of the devotion path I am going to run.
The same could be said for hourglass and having to take it to survive. Sure don’t think anyone wants it nerfed further or again or whatever.
As it stands right now I hate having to take DG for every vit build or it lacks a good portion of damage. I wish there was other options to reach a decently similar damage threshold without it.
Dryad: I don’t have an issue with the node bonuses. I think they are decent if you are building out of the box. The proc needs work as with every other on proc chunk heal in the game as it is hard to use and clunky. Maybe make it a universal damage shield on proc with Cooldown or make it spawn a pseudo pet that does no damage that heals you for a period before despawning. Make it look like a dryad. Make the AI smart so it heals correctly.
Chariot’s proc needs work to imo. Behemoth has its place but an argument could be made about its node bonuses and how much hp/s gives as you need to dip hard into the stat for it to even meet the same threshold as say Wendigo Totem. I use hp/s a lot and because of it the builds usually always suffer from long fights and less dmg then offensive builds that are taking some of the four sustain constellations and wrecking shit.
I for one dislike taking the same paths with small deviations. More options is always a better solution, unfortunately it leads to more work and balancing and sadly we are likely past that point with GD.
In the end I suspect not much will change because for the average player, these issues won’t or don’t exist.
1 Like
If we’re being honest here and given how the game is designed, life leech being instantenous makes it the best option by default. I haven’t played a game in this genre where it wasn’t the best choice for survival because you can’t beat instant heal.
So even if you buff the alternatives, they are still gonna be worse since they take more time to accomplish what life leech does unless you buff health regen to an insane degree, like 10k health regen per second (and even then i doubt it beats it and most likely comes at a big cost of damage), it’s never, ever, gonna beat life leech.
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You mean those warlords with Gladiator belt and Scales? 
Words of wisdom eternal. Except that last bit might be wrong. They are over performing. Triple digits in SR on things like melee dervish or melee binder - not exactly your megatank archetypes - is a little over the top imo.
Unless defense is not a part of game’s balance, ofc.
But it’s not just life sustain part. It’s sustain, energy and rr in one. That’s why I dare say it might be a bit over the top. Besides it’s passive and 100% cc-proof. Numbers are also kinda big.
My experience might be limited but I used Scales on the last 3 builds I posted, and defensive gains from it where always game changing. Certainly not proportional to the cost in damage you pay by not going full offense devos.
Can you drop a link, please?
What I’ve not seen discussed in all this is the opportunity cost of converting from Vitality in the first place. It’s obvious that Acid Dervishes are going to take both Mythical Pack of Deadly Means & Magi Ring of Shuroth because they have stupid good stats (flat Acid, 100 + 4% OA on a Dual Wield Nightblade) and amazing skill bonuses. Night’s Chill for RR and massive number of points in Path of the Three for CDR? That’s amazing. Vitality to Physical is done through Mythical Gladiator’s Distinction, which gives flat damage, Crit damage, 80 + 4% OA, and huge Armor bonuses, since the best Physical builds are going 2H to help bypass the physical going through enemy Armor design? Vitality to Aether going to Bonemonger, which may make certain Aether builds viable due to the great modifiers, 14% Attack speed, and 9% Physical Resistance? That says more about much certain item slots pigeonhole particular build concepts rather than “Vitality to X HAS to be the meta.”
Then you give Vitality conversion to both Nightblade and Arcanist belts, both classes known for being super offensive and needing help defensively, so why not go for something like Wendigo in the Aeon + Spear path? If you have the means to take the conversion, that means that the devotion constellations are actually pulling their weight instead of being a chore done out of necessity. I’d like to see other defensive measures like Chariot (7 nodes for an overcrowded Red + Green affinity and a proc with really bad uptime without CDR? Ew.), or Phoenix (somewhat awkward affinity requirements and not so impressive flat absorption if you’re not combining it with Inquisitor Seal) get buffed.
In actuality, I’d like to see things get more flat damage, or things with off-the-beaten path requirements like the purple-green constellations and the blue-green Korvaak route get huge amounts of flat damage, because the concept of removing a lot of things with flat damage, then making Crucible so that a player has little time to kill anything before getting swarmed with multiple Nemeses or a gargantuan pile of Hero mobs at once was a little off in timing, I’d have to say.
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Can’t be more accurate.
Although, GG + bat are still very still solid in vacuum, where you can efficiently proc them. But in practice, dervish has very limited options for proccers.
Again, very precise depiction, the only thing - flat phys damage is redundant, since it’s not converted phys.
Uh. A lack of forum posts doesn’t mean there is no problem. Plenty of players don’t use this forum, and not everyone would post or be bothered to make the topic. Additionally there have been previous topics about sustain, I know I made one, but it gets rather dull rehashing the same debate, especially when not all that much changes.
I feel the lack of sustain diversity, and for the different damage types and builds, has been complained about before. Taking Bat and such on non-vit builds is something not all enjoy and it isn’t thrilling design either.
Regen and health restore still requires way more investment than adcth, I get it is more delicate to balance but it’s sub-par, and frankly more and more skills/devotions end up with adcth rather than these underpowered alternatives being buffed.
Other alternative to sustain are mostly trash, eg. DA, Turtle. Shield block is rubbish too as it requires obscene investment to do something useful. CDR as a form of defence is OK but only for mastery that have active skill defences, and many devotion you might want to use with CDR like Dryad or Behemoth end up being significantly worse than the standard adcth options.
Imo it is a bit boring that adcth is the primary focus, and gets the most support and patch updates. Scales is merely the latest piñata to bash out discontent about sustain/damage mitigation choice.
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Those are both really great SR climbers but using them in an argument that Scales isn’t op because they don’t use them is not right.
They are both kiting casters. You don’t wanna get hit so scales just don’t fit in that. Instead, look at the melee builds that go as high as this, and they do facetank stuff in there, thx to Scales.
And it supports my point from the other thread: vit conversion is over the top. Not only does it do what it does - immortality unless one shotted - but also often comes with gear that would be BiS anyway.
Melee builds have higher armor, phys res and ADCtH with massive weapon damage to facetank enemies
I would be glad if regen get buffed. But, at the same time, I’m ok with the fact that sustain is an important part of the endgame. Stacking sustain on builds for me is the same as stacking weapon damage on autoattackers
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Same can be told about https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/9320 wrath of ascendant for binders. Not only it has a -%RR proc with 15% rr, racial dmg to humans, cast speed AND +1 to both masteries AND someone put conversion mod on it.
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