i love new arctic armour as long as...

When I'm stationary I'm leeching and/or gaining life on hit. When I'm moving is when I'm vulnerable.

But I play softcore. In hardcore you can never have enough defense, so I can understand it.

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Nerdicide написал:

However, due to the stationary target rule, I do think that level 20 AA should be buffed to 15%/15% instead of the current 13%/12%.

Yeah, I'd support that, new AA is a good concept but the numbers could be a bit higher, maybe even up 18%. The main reason being it's 'less damage taken' so it doesn't stack with anything and can't be exploited in any way.

The new Arctic Armour looks awesome for my Scion Incinerate tank, since it relies on facetanking just about everything while passively regenerating ES via ZO rather than on leeching. 11-12% LESS fire and physical damage is huge.

With Incinerate getting a severe nerf to damage effectiveness, I guess I'll just replace the current Herald of Thunder with Arctic Armour (both cost 25% in beta) and pick up some extra damage somewhere else with a few skill points freed up from defenses.


(On the other hand, my Witch Firestormer who uses the current Arctic Armour has gone off to cry a bit in a corner. Please don't disturb her, it is a traumatic experience.)

But seriously do they have to destroy the old AA? Why not have a new skill gem called ice shell or something. I am not sure I will cast the new AA but more like throw it in the CWDT group.

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ariesdante написал:

But seriously do they have to destroy the old AA? Why not have a new skill gem called ice shell or something. I am not sure I will cast the new AA but more like throw it in the CWDT group.

Have to?

No.

But it was pretty clear from GGG comments over the last half year or so that they were not at all happy with where caster defenses had ended up due to combinations of MoM, EB, and AA, as it was possible to get very strong defenses compared to non-casters for a relatively small cost - so strong that entire classes of attacks could be ignored at high levels of AA, and be reduced significantly at lower levels.

So it was not altogether unexpected.

Wow...

Well then, fuck AA, you were fun while you lasted.

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S3ph1r0th написал:

You have to see the bigger picture. New AA is more balanced and more accessible to any build.

thats the worst thing about the change though. What builds could run AA at a level that was actually worth having before? EB builds with huge amounts of mana regen. Why did those EB builds have huge mana regen? Because instead of having high defenses on their gear they had es on their gear that was then converted into mana which offered them no defense...

Before it was a form of mitigation that was limited to builds who were forced to give up a lot of their mitigation, it actually had a purpose, fitted a role, made sense, was unique and interesting and limited to builds that needed it. Now its just a shit aura for any old build who wants to waste 25% reserve. Awful change, in the bigger picture its absolutely awful for a multitude of reasons.

if you read/listen to devs, theyve always said that AA was always intended as a temporary buff, hence the crazy mana drain. of course to old EB being retardedly strong people were able to run high level without switching it off

now they basically reworked this gem so you cant work around its limitation. although only mitigating damage when stationary is extremely harsh- Id do a very short buff (like 1s) without ability to increase duration by nodes/gem, after stopping.

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Pi2rEpsilon написал:

it was possible to get very strong defenses compared to non-casters for a relatively small cost

I dont think thats true, for AA to do anything worth talking about you had to run it at ferocious levels where it took WAYYYYY more to run it than just almost any other form of defense and was completely crap in comparison.

Have you actually played with proper armour + endurance charge builds or evasion builds or hybrid ar+ev builds or lighting coil or block or ci? a lvl21 arctic armour mitigated 177 physical damage when you are hit... 177... its nothing, absolutely nothing, if you didnt have a lvl25 arctic armour with inner force and devotion you might as well have nothing, if you did have that then you were investing a shit ton of resources to fight gargantuan mana drain to end up with a layer of defense that didnt even match 1/2 the power of other forms of defense you could have for less investment if you were a bottom of the tree attacker. Non casters defenses pissed all over caster defenses.

Serious people rolled casters because of how easy their offensive capabilities were, the herd rolled casters because the serious people rolled casters.

Foxtactics from my guild made a crazy mom aa eb arc build in ambush, and he pushed the build further and further and what did it turn into? a lightning coil build, because lightning coil absolutely obliterates cloak of defiance mom defensively. On standard league I still have that mom cloak witch, my gear is a hybrid of the best mom gear foxtactics and me had in ambush, I have both our complete gear sets, the level of stuff that witch is wearing is just about as good as you can expect anyone to realistically get in a league situation. I have 4k evasion, lvl25 AA with inner force and devotion, 5,500 life, 1,500 free mana, over 400 mana regen per sec, legacy cloak of defiance... compared to every single attack build I have those defenses are terrible, not even remotely close to be comparable. Theyre good enough, sure, they should not have been even as good as my other chars because a spell caster should not have defenses as strong as a melee character. Its a powerful build, absolutely faceroll the whole game GG insane caster witch, not complaining at all, but the idea that mom aa eb could even be considered in the same class of defenses as literally every other build I have, and I have tons of builds, is a complete joke. That character is by far the most defensively weak character I have. Its closer to being basically naked with 75% all res jewellery than it is to a coil evasion acro attacker or an armour + evasion hybrid build or a full armour max block max endurance charge character or a ci 12k life pool type setup.

I keep seeing people talk about mom aa eb being too easy to spec and really op defense and I just cant even get my head around why people think that. I know for a fact its a high investment, low performance setup relative to what an attack based ranger, duelist, marauder etc can achieve. Its cheaper than ci and its shit compared to ci. Why was it so popular? Arc op, burn prolif op, xp gear, ladder pushing is easier without the need for a gg phys weapon. Absolutely nothing to do with how well those defenses performed, theyre popularity was merely a knock on effect of spellcasters offensive potential being desired. If 2H mace builds were the most offensively aoe GG and easy new league build option then armour would be the most over used defense mechanic in the game and people would call it too op. As it stands people say armour is shit and yet its twice as good as mom aa ever was. Thats the truth of it tbh.

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Snorkle_uk написал:

was unique and interesting and limited to builds that needed it. Now its just a shit aura for any old build who wants to waste 25% reserve.

+1