I’ve read in a few places that tortoise was not a really good devotion, and I rarely see a build that has it… and I’m wondering why.
On paper it seems pretty good though.
If you compare it to tier 2 circuit-breakerss like Giant’s blood or Chariot, both of which I often see featured in caster builds.
Let’s take Gian’t blood as a point of comparison:
Let’s assume we have a beefy 20K health character and we’re able to bind Gian’t blood to a skill that procs at X% health to ensure it only procs when we need it.
It would give you 5200 health on a 25 seconds cooldown
Tortoise doesn’t need to be bound to a specific skill: it already procs 100% of the time at 50% health. It gives the same amount of health (or more for most characters under 20K health) in less than half the cooldown.
And while it doesn’t actually “heal” you, the result is functionally the same, in some circumstances it can also temporarily increase your total health, and will never interfere with other forms of healing.
It’s also a tier 1 devotion that gives back as many points as it costs and each node gives solid, all-around defensive stats that benefit just about every character.
So why isn’t it used more ?
Am I missing something ?
Well… Giant’s Blood (And the entire Behemoth constellation) also provides a ton of regen. Which if a caster build doesn’t have %WD on their skills, is the primary source of sustain.
While Chariot’s proc also gives a bunch of Armour and DA, while the nodes in the constellation also provide a bunch of OA.
I don’t think comparing just the heal does GB/Chariot justice and when you include the 10s of 440 flat regen and 7s of 130 DA and 150 armour both of these outshine Turtle’s just 5k damage absorbtion.
I have used Turtle in few of my builds but I can’t say it’s particularly good. End game enemies deal so much damage that if you blink, you’ll miss the proc. And nodes aren’t good enough to justify using the devotion.
When I use it, is usually on CDR casters with other sources of absorb as well.
During early leveling Turtle can be really strong, even OP but you don’t need it, better to start with something you actually would use in end game and level it’s proc instead. Plus blue/yellow nodes are rarely you major route (except some tanks or tanky pets) so in the long run taking Turtle isn’t recommended even for leveling.
It’s been buffed repeatedly, I’d say it’s in a “fine” position for a T1 on CDR casters - nodes have lots of health/DA/armour, the proc while just a shield that’ll take 1-3 hits still can have decent uptime with 20-40% CDR - you could compare it to getting a heal chunk from Word of Renewal or Blood of Dreeg but more frequent at that point.
I don’t think it sees much use as of now because a lot of people already have their own methods of building defense prior to Turtle getting buffed and most don’t feel the need to experiment with it outside of what they already know works.
This is a bit disingenuous since this value scales with health regen bonuses, so it’s usually substantially higher than 5200 total health.
By comparison, turtle absorb scales with nothing (besides CD reduction, but so does every other cd devotion skill). Because the flat absorb doesn’t scale upward, it falls off pretty hard lategame. Add this to subpar nodes (since it’s T1), 5 points required, and a meta that favors offense, turtle is underwhelming
I don’t think it’s disingenuous, I was just talking about the initial heal. And I gave the example character 20K health, which is far above the average character… so if anything it’s way less…
If your character has a significant investment in health regen from other sources, then the comparison stops as even the other nodes in Giant’s blood become very interesting, and the proc’s duration start to matter a lot.
But a lot of builds I have seen don’t have any such investment and mainly use it as a quick heal, where the increased health regen afterwards is meaningless. Same with Chariot. Sure the nodes in chariot are better and the armor and DA bonus are nice, but the healing is also significantly smaller than Gian’t blood (or Tortoise)
I used to use it on some physical build, but like others have said above, OA is a more desired stats to get on devotion and not many build going with white devotion. Besides panther give the same number of devotion while only costing 4 point and give flat and percentage OA.
