Wow, determination.

Yea I'm really glad to see determination buffed but oof, this is overboard. I would have totally settled for a mana reserved reduction. Like knocking the old determination down to 20% reserved.

Edit: On the other hand...it being so strong now might actually make blood magic less appealing for once.

Yeah, I actually think I like the overall change, now. It's exactly what you said about giving more benefit for retaining mana. I like it.

This was a very poorly explained post.

Don't just say "determination" in the title, introduce what you're talking about in the post aside from just mentioning a word( which has more than one meaning) in the title. It also makes sense to inform people what you're referring to— a recent patch changing determination. Your points 1,2, and 3 aren't explained in advance nor afterwards what degree of impact they have.

Your ideas aren't following each other well, and explanations are not fluid. It's a big mess, and really does a poor job at convince me(or someone else) at what you're trying to convey.

What seems to be the biggest issue is that you hardly seem to link any of the information said throughout the post to determination (particularly a lack of final verdict about determination based on the presented information), which I'm assuming is what this whole post was supposed to be about.

Your math may be right, but your overall post structure and explanation is in shambles.

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pneuma написал:

I believe this says more about Granite Flasks than Determination.

seems that way to me as well; well not just granite flasks, but endurance charges and granite flasks

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Zakaluka написал:

Armour gets more valuable, the more you have.

Unless I'm not fully understanding the mechanics of armor, I'm pretty sure that's a misleading/incorrect statement when said on it's own (armor alone). You have an explanation proving otherwise somewhere?
As I'm sure you know, if you have more additive damage reduction (ex. endurance charges), then each point in armor is more effective, but not when you're talking solely about armor as far as I know.

The case where more of X makes +X better is with resistances and block (and dodge) chance — not armor or evasion.

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With regards to determination, I never used it or followed it much, but I suppose I assumed it was a multiplicative bonus rather than additive (or maybe not); regardless, additive would just suck.

While determination could use a bit of a buff, I'd agree that 32% multiplicative at level 1 seems like too much

Hey, the thread's title was just my reaction to the determination buff. Wow. Big buff.

If you haven't read this yet, I got a bit snarky at you. Then I decided my second reply was better. Edited this out.

I was genuinely pleased at this buff, still am. A bit baffled, though.

Xapti's right on one count: Zakaluka's post method and structure is nightmarish...but I think his aptitude for math and skill at applying it to the higher functions of PoE more than make up for it.

Speaking of peer-reviewed, my main criticism of any Z post is 'more clarity please!', with maybe a 'I see you're smart, but I'm not really appreciating it' here and there. You can tell he has something important to say most of the time but it's buried underneath the working.

This is fine if you're writing for other math people, but some of us just like to click shit until it dies.

Despite this, Zakaluka's posts are showing marked improvement. I understand some of them now. The distance between his calculations and my grasp of what they actually mean, what they signify, shrinks significantly with each post.

So while Xapti is kind of flaming (to use the existing term in this thread), I can't call it 'trolling' and I think there is a point to the observation.

I guess I'm just trying to soften the blow a tad by seeing both sides and saying, hey, you're both right.

These things are like gold nuggets to me. That armour exhibits increasing gains on effective health, not diminishing returns - that's gold. By the way, my assumption is typically that people with lots of armour will have endurance. It just kind of makes sense, for all the reasons you've pointed out. If you have armour and your armour isn't providing increasing gains - well, you should look into endurance. One is tied strongly to the other. The big question is, how many endurance? And all of this information in the OP goes towards that question.

That GGG would give determination such a strong buff, more gold, but you need the first bit of context to see it. And I want people to see this stuff because it opens up all kinds of underused playstyles.

If the math and crazy depth seem like me showing off, then we just got off on the wrong foot. I'm trying to share my gold.

If there's a big logical mistake I make in these posts, it's that... well, they're LONG - and I have an attention span for such things from other people, but typically they do not from me.

And then I turn into no-face.

Anyway, hope I do better for you in the future.

Hm. So a duelist running +170% IAR%, +70% evasion, Determination/Grace, and 4 endurance charges might be an overkill build.... :P

Will keep that in mind for when I return to armour-land.

Armor being more valuable the more you have of it is an absolutely correct statement. If you disagree, you need to re-read the mechanics thread or try playing a character with low armor.

If you have a low armor count for your level, it's basically worthless.

If you have a low armor count as a Marauder (I mean around 10-20% DR), it's almost worthless, though it has some meager value.

If you're using endurance + granite + a few +% armor nodes + enfeeble curse - now we're talkin'. Now you can actually reduce damage.

I would argue that armor in its current state needs a formula change of some kind. This determination buff was huge, but only when you apply it to the worst case scenario (granite + endurance charges + enfeeble) - in a normal case, where you just have DR from items alone - this buff is only adding a decent amount of DR (worthy of a 40% cost), instead of a paltry one (which was the case before).

Determination will probably be scaled back, but I'd much rather see armor re-worked as a whole. Right now, I think it's more benefifical to stack life, life-regen and life-steal over armor, because getting high DR is simple if you use granite+enduring cry. You could try to stack armor and further reduce your damage, but you won't really need to at that point, you'll have such a high damage reduction on-demand, that you'll be able to get more balanced stats on your gear and from your passives.

Short of changing the armor formula though, what they could do is:

Make granite flasks 1 drink before needing total refill
Raise implicit value of armor on non-chest piece armor items

Right now, the chest piece gives the most armor. When I tried running a Witch-templar build (leap slamming witch), I wore chain on everything but my chest and I had a meager <10% DR for my level. It was pretty pointless compared to just using pure cloth. I did a Marauder-witch build (firestorm marauder), and I used pure armor pieces except for my chest, and had similarly awful base armor. Even with a good chest piece though, you probably aren't looking at more than 20%~ base DR from your base armor.

The only thing that makes me uneasy about armor is how the damage reduction is based on incoming damage, and not on monster level.

For a given area level, it makes your armor less effective against elite/rares, in that your %reduction goes down against their attacks. So not only the boss monsters hit harder, but your armor loses effectiveness! I't a double punishment. It seems to me it would be easier to balance a game by making the % damage reduction relative to monster level only.