One of the things becoming increasingly apparent to me as I accumulate more experience with the game and how to actually not get stomped in ultimate is that sources of constant healing (health regen, ADTcH, healing procs that trigger on hit/attack or circuit breakers, steady healing sources like wendigo, insta-heals like Pneumatic or BoD, etc.) are so, so essential for seemingly every single type of build out there to do really well.
The result to me is frantic health bar which is going up and down and up and down and back to full. At a glance it looks like a chunk dropped by maybe 25% to 33% but back to full 100% again before I can really even tell…
It’s a bit different from, say, Diablo 2 where only melee characters late game absolutely needed to have the life steal and crazy HP fluctuations to survive. Ranged might benefit, casters often had health that dropped more predictability and steadily down to 0 (though rather quickly in hell) without it dancing from like 60% health to 100% in the blink of an eye – healing maybe only coming from potions or slow and steady life regen when they kite and run to a safe place.
The result to me is that almost every ultimate-viable build results in a health bar that is fluctuating like crazy – and I find a lot of deaths are like WTF because I was at 100% health the majority of the time (maybe 70% for a fraction of a second but 100% again) and then it dropped to 0% out of the blue.
How do hardcore players find predictability in this situation when your death really means the end of your character? How do you even play it safe when your hp bar is dancing like a madman from full to not full, full to not full in a way that makes it difficult to even tell how much damage you’re receiving and whether you’re healing more than receiving damage? All I can do to kind of mitigate that and play it safe is that if I can notice the health dropping in the blink of an eye to a lower level than usual (like 50%) before it almost-instantly goes back to full again, I run away and kite. But I imagine hardcore players must really have a lot of experience at not being surprised as constantly as I do when it does go to 0%.
I want to learn how you guys manage it. For me life and death seems binary with a lot of these builds except my tankiest ones (ex: w/shield) – either I’m at 100% most of the time (maybe 72% for a fraction of a second, 100% again, then 82% for a fraction of a second, then 100%) or 0% with a total surprise. Is it a reliance on circuit breakers and not looking so much at the health bar but mostly checking to see if the circuit breaker icons show up? A deep understanding of every damage type an enemy deals and what to expect even if the health bar is mostly going to jump to 100% so fast?
For me it’s simple. Once I created char on HC I know he’s dead (true for any game). It’s just the question of time and the thing that he’s still running around doing shit and killing mobs is some coincidence. It’s even funnier when you start HC without completing the game on SC.
Truly, on a boss fight I look not on the animation of my char (as intended in such kind of games) but more on a health bar and on some spooky bosses with one-shot abilities at signal of “OH SHIT PRESS HEAL AND RUN” moment :rolleyes:
Try playing a sword and board soldier with full Shield Training and Overguard. Mine has 75% block rate and isn’t fully geared yet. Zero hit point instability.
Problem with that is that the dmg output is low on ret tanks, and even if you go for a cadence build you will struggle with killing things until you get like uber boss gear.
Cadence witchblade with shield and overguard has been my most successful build so far, not exactly breezing through ultimate but the only death I’ve had on that character was in Hargate’s Lab against the slith of all enemies (easy) where I ran into an acid area on the ground that I thought wasn’t acidic and wasn’t paying that close attention to realize that I was still taking damage.
I play softcore but try to pretend like I’m playing hardcore, still getting really depressed when my character sheet shows a total number of deaths greater than zero – kind of preparing myself for hardcore but still keeping the option to keep going and not lose that precious gear.
Ranged characters I also do better with in ultimate if they aren’t wearing a shield since I don’t even take the chance of face tanking and just kite like mad.
The ones where I tend to die sporadically of all are ones involving nightblade and dual wielding, like a blademaster or saboteur. It’s easy to feel invincible in normal and elite with ADCtH and spamming pneumatic burst where my health bar is 100% full the vast majority of the time with only blink-of-the-eye fluctuations to the bar…
Then in ultimate I try to shadow strike into a mob and it might be fine for the first few seconds then wham, health bar went to 0% before I know it. Then I’m like, “What the heck happened? Did that flesh hulk get a crit on me?” – hover over DA, shows 0% crit chance… so then I’m not even really sure what happened and what ended up hitting me so hard, or what combination of hits ended up getting me to zero.
Anything involving nightblade/dual melee to me is incredibly tough in ultimate (but deceptively so since the damage output and life steal is often high enough to make it seem easy until I’m suddenly dead) – though my gear is often far, far, far from BiS. I envy those who do it hardcore since my blademaster has had like 30 deaths already and most of them have that mysterious nature where I’m not even sure what killed me and how. I’m feeling like maybe I should study all the damage types different types of enemies deal to focus on certain resists (too hard for me to get anywhere close to cap on ultimate without very well-coordinated gear, though I might be able to improve certain resistances for different areas).
Even with a cadence witchblade, as invincible as you feel, sometimes your luck runs out and you are just at the wrong place and time. In crucible I blitzed somehow right when Zantarin started his Barrage attack.
Instand Death with full health and full vitality resistance. Caught all the purple blobs with my teeth I think :). And no time to react because you are locked in blitz animation which is very fast anyway.