An elegant way to balance Cast When Damage Taken

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ggnorekthx написал:

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JohnNamikaze написал:

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RogueMage написал:

I think that would provide a significant motivation to level-up the gem, in spite of the fact that it would then trigger less often.

In that case, I would prefer to manually cast my defensive spells since I have nothing to lose.

This is precisely my point.

I think the gem is fine as-is, any more costs and it would probably fall into obscurity.

Yes, that's exactly the type of cost-vs-benefit decision I think the gem should make you consider. Currently, CWDT is not just free, it has a negative cost - it actually reduces the mana you would have to spend to cast the linked spells manually, and it reduces their casting time to zero. I think the zero-casting-delay feature is crucial, but the 100% discount on casting costs is far too generous. With no mana costs and no significant drawbacks, there's no reason not to use the gem wherever you have a socket to hold it.

Note that I'm not claiming you should have to pay the full manual casting costs of the linked spells. I think it should start off with a sizable discount that gets significantly cheaper as you level it up. Even at lvl-1, it would still be cheaper than casting the spells yourself.

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There are two problems with the gem right now, and some others with the skills used with it.

The gem is totally fine if used with curses or enduring cry. Both are just tedious to always maintain as a melee-char and cwdt helps with this problem.

Forcing people to level the gem, might seem as a good idea, but will only limit it to certain characters. If you have to level it, the cap at which it procs increases, meaning that it is only useful for characters that can actually take that much damage.

Right now if someone runs around with this gem and you see molten shell explosions all the time this just means that he took 400 damage. Thats easy to maintain as a leech-based char. If you force people to level the gem, it wont hurt these chars that much. They simply level it to the point were it still procs almost permanent, because the skills used won't cost them that much life.

There is a simply eqation that has to be made, which is very easy for blood magic. With the gem at lvl1 and lets say even 100% Mana-Cost a proc costs not even 200 Life with Molten Shell, IC and EC. Since 400 is a way too low cap and the spells proc much too often it is easily affordable to level it a few levels, which will reduce the amount of unnecessary casts and reduces the life required to cast them. A Mana-Cost in the worst case just means that every it over 400 HP does 200 damage more, because you have to cast the skills in that case. Not such a big deal.

It is a totally difference for a ranged char who isnt required to stand inside enemies or a mana-based chars. While taking 200 more damage (while still preventing a lot with the permanent IC, Molten Shell etc.) might be not a large drawback people forget to see that the spells arent free already. To get off cwdt you need to take 400 damage. In case of a ranged char he propably wants to avoid them completly. So to make use of the gem at all he needs to get hit and lose more than 400 HP. He propably wants this gem as some kind of escape, as which it should be usable.

Mana based Melees have the largest problem with any introduction of mana-cost to the skill-gem. While taking 200 more damage is not so problematic losing 200 Mana in a lot of cases is. Life-Leech and HP-Reg for most Bloodmagic chars far outclass Mana-Leech and Mana-Reg of a Mana based Melee. And since Cyclone Life-Leech Marauders or similar heavy life-leech builds already had few difficulties (except against some precise counters to exactly this) a lot of more niche mana-based melees would actually suffer from this change a lot more.

The ability to get endurance charges and curses on enemies during a battle made melee a lot more appealing at least for me. Before it was not that much fun to watch curse-timers, endurance charges, your life and propably even the enemy. You don't want your endurance charges to run out, neither enfeeble or propably even your HP for some other reason. It was just so much more work to get the same out of it than with most ranged or totem-builds.

I agree that arctic armor, molten shell and IC are problematic... curses and enduring cry are not.

Immortal Call never really feeled like the skill it should be. Because you lost all the charges and you won't cast it again very soon. So there actually is no reason to not put a simply CD on it. I would also increase it's cast time, so that it is more worth casting it in the right time. Because in a lot of situations casting IC actually decreases survivability because the player loses the resist from endurance charges.

Arctic Armor is very similar. The skill was never really a problem because always recasting it for 3secs... not worthy. But if it automatically renews it is pretty strong for bloodmagic, because there is no drawback to it. I would do the same here. Make it simply not worth casting it over and over again. Make Arctic Armor better the longer it runs. Recasting it every few milliseconds would not make sense than at all and it could even be buffed for chars who actually build at maintaining arctic armor for a very long time.

Molten Shell is propably the most difficult one, since I believe that there are builds who actually utilize it as a rather strong damage-source. These builds propably rely on it to pop very often and reapplying it very often. But there is propably a way to change MS to still be useful for damage while reducing it's effectiveness with cwdt.

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JohnNamikaze написал:

While there is plenty of strawmans being thrown around in this thread, Real_Wolf, I see that you are pulling a red herring. You are derailing this thread by questioning players, that will most likely not answer properly, because there is simply no answer. The only one that can answer your question is GGG. Why, because they are the ones that came up with this support gem. There the ones that made up this mechanic for this support gem. I understand you are frustrated, but please try to not call other people strawmans when you are red herring at the same time.

Its not so much a red herring, rather directing the discussion to the issue with the gem.

The primary problem is a gem that is better level 1 than level 20. This is not a red herring, its a fact.


The posts asking members to explain why they feel this is good, or asking them to say the reaso nfor it, is not a red herring but rather responding to htem ignoring all arugments proposed regarding why rthis is bad.

I explained in detail in a number of posts WHY having a skill gem that is better level 1 is against hte games basic logic, bu tno one responded to it with an argument besides strawmans

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Real_Wolf написал:

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JohnNamikaze написал:

While there is plenty of strawmans being thrown around in this thread, Real_Wolf, I see that you are pulling a red herring. You are derailing this thread by questioning players, that will most likely not answer properly, because there is simply no answer. The only one that can answer your question is GGG. Why, because they are the ones that came up with this support gem. There the ones that made up this mechanic for this support gem. I understand you are frustrated, but please try to not call other people strawmans when you are red herring at the same time.

Its not so much a red herring, rather directing the discussion to the issue with the gem.

The primary problem is a gem that is better level 1 than level 20. This is not a red herring, its a fact.


The posts asking members to explain why they feel this is good, or asking them to say the reaso nfor it, is not a red herring but rather responding to htem ignoring all arugments proposed regarding why rthis is bad.

I explained in detail in a number of posts WHY having a skill gem that is better level 1 is against hte games basic logic, bu tno one responded to it with an argument besides strawmans

Well the question is... is it better? I argue it is better with lvl2 than with lvl1, maybe even lvl3.

There is a simple use to leveling the gem. Controlling when certain skills are cast. I have one cwdt with Frost Nova, Molten Shell and Enduring Cry and another one with Immortal Call which I'm leveling because I don't want to lose all my endurance charges for every 400 damage I take. So right now it pops at about 1k damage taken, which is still a bit too less, I think I go for 1500 or so. I'm not sure if I should also use discharge here, but not sure which of the skills eats the charges first or if they are both cast as if I have 6 charges. For most skills it simply doesn't matter. How often they are triggered or you actually want them to trigger more often. I might also try using Immortal Call + Decoy Totem on heavier hits to get some time, but just using cwdt to spam IC seems not only odd, but also isn't as effective as much people think, molten shell + EC alone are quite good against physical damage, IC just decreases your survivability against elemental damage while increasing it further against physical, which is not always useful.

Also people look at the gem from the wrong perspective. Leveling the gem is all about deciding when it procs. The increasing damage is completly unrelated. The reason why the damage goes up is because it actually can, because the gem procs less often. But the main part is deciding how often it activates and in which situations. You could automatically cast enfeeble if enemies hit too hard, by using it with a different cap and manually use other curses. There are lot of option within this gem that actually make leveling it useful. I'm pretty sure that GGG is totally aware that the skill is mostly used with utility and damage-scaling does not matter that much. Some people might even level it even higher and link it with a portal gem. They could have ignored all this option and make it like empower with just a few or even just one level. But why? Why denying players of alternative options even when a majority uses it differently.

Emphasy, I don't think you are quire understanding my problem.

I have no problem with different levels of the gem being more effective, as in your example for immortal call.

My issue is that its only a very small subset of skills that you don't want cast as often as possible.

And that based on the fact you primarily want your skills cast as often as possible, a level 20 gem is going to be terrible (and indeed I know of no one who has a use for it).

If for example we changed the scaling around to hte opposite, then you would still have the same dynamic interactions you have a tt hemoment that you enjoy.

Lets say that level 20 is 400 damage taken, level 10 is about 1500 damage taken, level 1 is something like 2000 (random numbers)

This would mean in your example, you can have the gem at level 10, for your imortal call. it won't activate all the time every 400 health, but it will still activate when you want it, after a ton of damage.

And for the enduring cry/whatever you want as often as posible, it casts ever y400 health

But lets say you can only level the gem to level 18, because youa re a low level at the moment. Your enduring cry activates every 700 health. Thats still okay, but not nealy as much as you want. So you want it to reach level 20, and you are encouraged to get that level for the gem.

Most skills work this way, where you are encouraged to level the gem as it gets better.

But htis one isn't. At the moment, using the same numbers, if your enduring cry activates ta level 400, you do not want to level the gem because it would activate at health 700, which is far less often, and would suck.



And thats the same for 90% of gems, with few exceptions of immortal call, or molten shell if you want the explosion effect