So basically a lot of Stun/Freeze resist and Armor Absorption are located on Soldier items and constellations. Which is a bit suboptimal since Soldier already has access to cheap and effective stun/freeze res and armor absorption on his passive Scars of Battle. And a lot of classes really struggle with those stats, because not only they lack them on gear or constellation but because they also have to cover basic resists first.
So let’s see which sets offer Armor Absorption:
Warborn
Justicar
Stoneguard
All those sets are Soldier sets. And while it’s kind of useless to Soldier, it’s also unfair to all other classes that are struggling to put together a respectable amount of armor/armob absorption.
Let’s look at the devotions that offer stun/freeze res and armor absorption
Bear
Obelisk of Menhir
Shieldmaiden
Empty throne
Sailor’s Guide
3 out 5 are Soldier devotions. Empty Throne is out of the way for a lot of builds and offers just 15% stun resist.
Same with Slow resist, it’s kinda scarce and a lot of melee builds really struggle with it (except Soldier of course).
My suggestions:
Increase Stun resist on Empty throne to 30. Add 15% stun resist to couple of other devotions (like tier 3 ones)
Add armor absorption to some other sets
Give Soldier devotion something else instead of armor absorption and stun res - like elemental res or aether res.
This suggestion looks reasonably. I’d like to see the stun res, slow res or absorption not only on Obelisk and Ishtak, but also on Unknown Soldier or Leviathan, so they can be more decent. Imo
I agree. Crate has IMO too much of a tendency to design items/devotions around certain themes.
This would not be such a problems if those stats weren’t so vital due a lack of alternative play styles other then face tanking and that there is only 1 skill that removes debuffs.
One other problematic stat(though rather the reverse) is poison resist on acid/poison themed oculist items.
This, 100%. Especially Leviathan is very underwhelming from my experience. All cold builds go ultos+murmor+crown+amatok(+dying god/Chariot+harp) right now. There is no reason to ever use Leviathan. It needs a buff imo. With unknown soldier I don’t have enough personal experience to judge it properly tbh.
Agree on everything except Armor Absorb. It’s less important than stun, and while it’s a bit more important than freeze, it’s not as annoying to not have armor absorb. I think it’s fine that we keep it as a soldier (and oathkeeper in the future) theme.
This is not just a problem with Leviathan alone, this problem is much, much bigger and connect in whole bottom-right sector of skies, that look very weak and super unimpressive right now
We (I, Mad_Lee, Autentist, Strannik, Veretragna, John Smith) after discussion about this problem are even make this funny (or not) picture that describes the whole situation:
No, like, for real, on left we got a super-quality and good devotions as Ultos, Rattosh and Moggy (just Affliction are not good).
And what we got in right side?
Seru? Imp are outperformed her (tier 1 devotion are better than tier 3, lol)
Levi? Cmon, Amatock are much cheaper and deal a bigger amount of damage
Boar? I hear about retaliation damage changes, but nowadays nobody use boar, it’s are completely waste of devotion’s point
Oleron? No, do not misunderstand me, Oleron “in vacuum” are good, but road to him is avful (it if to forget about the fact that the tests in the crucible of the characters with its Empirion showed a better time than with Oléron).
Armor absorb will remain Soldier’s theme, but bonus armor absorb from Obelisk of Menhir is a useless stat to soldier for sure. While every other class could use it.
There is a reason why casters use Justicar pieces for caster builds.
Soldier can still get the same effect with increased armor% and high physial resist% much easier, and allowing other masteries to get high armor absorb easier isn’t going to break things.
I never actually cared about freeze resist at all, as we have the potion, so I’d rather skip this one.
Stun resist is really important for defensively weak characters, so here I for sure will agree.
Armor absorption is possible to get from components, which is okay, however, sometimes it’s like a must to pick a certain component(s) or swap one component for that stat, which is actually fucked, because armor absorption is one of the most important stats. I’d have to agree to add some more possibilities of getting armor absorption aside of components.
I have never thought that Leviathan proc is weak. I love how the PFX looks, and I try to pick it on every cold-based build, and I never regret picking it. You say Blizzard is better, where it does one tick of damage and has 3.2 sec recharge, while Whirlpool does damage per second for up to 6 seconds and has 3 sec recharge. 32% WD, 868 cold damage, 900 frostburn after two procs of Blizzard, this is 6.4 seconds, Whirlpool 2520 cold damage, 2040 frostburn over 6 seconds. Whirlpool even has a higher chance to proc, because, on average, you have 20% chances to crit (or at least I have in my builds) and Whirlpool has 30% chance to proc. Oh, wait, you actually deal 3780 cold and 3060 frostburn over 6 seconds with Whirlpool if you proc it again after 3 seconds.
I assume you just looked at the stats and compared these, but you also have to take in account the efficiency. For casters, Blizzard will most likely be trash, because they don’t usually have high WD, on two handed weapon characters you can pick both, Whirlpool and Blizzard, so you don’t even have choose between these.
That’s my two cents.
Well, you have this point. I can say, on practice Whirlpool is outperformed by Blizzard when used by melee. I tested Ultos+Amatok and Ultos+Leviathan, and Amatok outperforms Leviathan on practice in campaign, Crucible and dummy kill.
Casters? Sure, Whirlpool + Elemental Seekers can generate lots of VZHUH and even make the build work. But the point of Leviathan is presence of flat cold damage on its nodes, so I think it’s intended for melee.
I don’t know what does VZHUH mean, but other than that you might be right that it is intended for melee. I would not say it needs a buff, though, I’d rather say change. WD, RR (or maybe not, lol), DA shred, damage reduction. To me Whirlpool is somewhat of a defensive skill, you know, a huge blob of water on the floor that slows the enemies as well as damages them. Or it can be hyper offensive, on the other hand, both make sense.
Anyway, I would not mind it getting buffed or changed. I just believe it’s a good skill as it is right now.
You don’t have to be a soldier to use Menhir. The large absorb bonus is there for exactly that reason. To help chars that desire the tankiness of Menhir and get their wish via absorb as well aside from DA and other stuff and personally I’ve found it useful… My point is that there are more non soldier class combos in the game than there are soldier combos. As convenient as it would be for Soldiers to have another that than absorb there, it would be less convenient for many others. It’s like a non soldier complained that it can’t make use of the 5% block on it or something like that.
Absorb is relatively easy to get these days with AoM changes unles you want 2x Sanctified bones on all your chars:) I’m surprised Slow res isn’t here since it as a real issue for a lot of chars that can get Sailor at most and not stuff like TD nodes or Ishtak.
Either that or the problem is how virulent Slow effects are vs articular chars. Same way Fumble is so high and screws melee sometimes.
Another way to ‘‘fix’’ enemy slow effects problem is to make it less potent.
In general gd mechanics go both ways. What enemies can do to you, you can do unto them in some form.
Yet with Slow it’s a double standard like %life reduction. Understandably both are far too exploitable in the hands of the player if enabled vs bosses but at least make it less potent vs player.
I never actually felt like I need slow resist. I either have a character that has a defensive move or enough damage to fix the slow. Well, there’s also a third option which is to jump in a huge group of enemies and wonder if they’re enemies or allies, because that’s how much damage they deal, or rather don’t deal.
In crucible there are chars that go as far as taking rare affixes like “Arcane Winds” It can be a real thing in there. Any enclosed space with lots of bad bosses can be a big problem if you are slowed and the Buffs does not affect this CC type. If you play with less or no buffs, not having over 50% slow res is a roll of the dice with many (not all) builds.
For example I don’t care about stun res beyond 40% no matter the environment. I guess it’s easier to tell when you are stunned rather than slowed sicne nothing happens when you are stunned other than taking damage
