To compare it with what I consider the closest related skill, mirror is just “push the button and you’re safe”. Granting COMPLETE immunity. 23s CD, 3s uptime when maxed. This is a 10 mastery point skill.
Mark of torment, which is a lvl32 skill. Has when maxed, 20s CD and 5 second duration. It “only” absorbs 50% damage.
The damage portions of these skills are highly irrelevant. Because their primary purpose is a strong defensive cooldown manually activated.
So are these fairly balanced like this? Mark of torment has a bit more duration, and a bit less CD. But you need to go 32 deep into the mastery.
Now here’s the problem. For survival, especially in HC, even a fraction of a second can mean life or death. For mirror, you just click. But Mark of Torment is of much worse QoL to use, much more dangerous to the player. Let’s say you are dead in 1.5 seconds if you don’t react. Mirror is one click. Torment means you have to - in the same timespan - read the danger, locate enemy, hover over enemy, click skill, and hope there isn’t something disrupting you - or that it’s out of range or just bugs out.
Also if there is no enemy nearby, or there is a dot on you and the enemy is dead, or if there’s environmental damage… Mark of torment isn’t going to do anything at all. On paper - these skills look very balanced and similar. But in practicality - the flaws of mark of torment makes it a much less reliable oh shit button. It’s more of a “oh crap Im going to die where is the enemy there it is now to click it oh it didn’t avtive let me click it again oh I’m dead”. compared to mirror’s “click. Done, I’m safe”.
So now to possible solutions.
- make the skill weaker by capping out the %damage absorb at a lower value, and add a minor flat absorb as well. But make the skill automatically link to nearby enemies when clicked.
- Rename the skill to chains of torment and make it a buff that persists until you or the marked foe is dead. Like linking yourself to an enemy like a chain, so that the two of you are locked into a certain range until either is dead. Make the absorb weaker, and maybe stronger over time. Or maybe heal you when you place the link.
I’m not really that creative with ideas here I know. But the core problem with mark of torment, is that despite it having a small edge on duration and CD, it doesn’t make you immune like mirror. Worse, this survival skill is situational at times - and is even risky to use. Mark of torment can easily get you killed due to the fact that you need to process so many more variables in your head in a short timespan and react to it.
Maybe this:
- Nerf MoT absorb, but increase the duration.
- Increase the absorb AND increase the duration, but cause the skill to degen your life.
I mean… I don’t know guys. But sif there is any skill I think needs rebalancing badly it’s this.
For a long CD short duration survival active, mark of torment is such a pain. We have survival CDs to save us quickly in a pinch. But because of the mechanical functions of MoT, it is highly unreliable. Some sort of automatically tethering to the closest nearby foes. Or foe - prioritizing bosses. Could work I guess. The issue is that the player, when we need an oh shit button right NOW… it may often be too late with MoT.