Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Thoughts on Death Proof characters - Page 5

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Omg, did you just say BO is weak because you have to cast it?




I said BO is just a spell. Hence, not automatic. Not a passive skill. Persistenly exists. If you die, you probably die WHILE BO is active. You won't cast BO the moment you die. Is this really so hard to understand...


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You die, you respawn with 30% life a few moments later, you die again to the exact same mob. Whoo.




If I had DP in HC I'd probably never die, because most of the situations are not at all the situations where you totally can't get out, drink a rejuv and you're fine, DP = rejuv instantly cast the moment you die to give you the crucial extra time to survive. Unless DIII is super-ultra-hard, DP is going to make HC a cheesy ride. And if DIII is super-ultra-hard to compensate for DP, as I have said before - I don't like that balancing.
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If you play a Barbarian, keeping BO on is like breathing to you. I haven't seen a single Barbarian beyond level 50 in Diablo 2 that had the skill and didn't keep it up 100% as a reflex. It's not exactly a monumental task of concentration and attention to keep it up permanently. In fact, it takes more concentration to pay attention to DP because it's guaranteed to not work for 6 minutes after it gets used.




Um, OK, so how does BO SAVE you from death? It gives you more life, right? So, if you die while BO is active, you're not saving yourself, are you? You just have a lesser chance to die in general because you have more health? Or what?

I can understand the chance to block save thing but this is just silly. BO doesn't function like DP at all.
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Why would Blizzard balance an entire class based on a skill that only works every 6 minutes and is functionally identical to a shield block followed by a heal?




This skill is OP for any HC character unless it's balanced against, that's why. No proper HC player will die with DP on... so everyone will go max it besides the people who like variety (same people that don't max BO). And, it's not functionally identical to block and I explained why above...


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Do you really think they expect every Barbarian that took this skill to just stop playing for 6 minutes every time it gets used to wait for the cooldown to flush?




An HC player in DII never needed to do that. You are not in a life-threatening situation that often.


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That's assuming there even is a respawn. The way it's worded implies that it will do nothing more than replace character death with an x% heal, meaning there is literally nothing stopping an attack following the killing blow by .001 seconds ripping you a new one.




Killing blow that would kill 30% of a barb's health? LOL|||Quote:




Um, OK, so how does BO SAVE you from death? It gives you more life, right? So, if you die while BO is active, you're not saving yourself, are you? You just have a lesser chance to die in general because you have more health? Or what?




...

YES. More health means you can take more damage before you die! If a Barbarian sustained 1000 damage in a fight while having base 900 HP and over 1000 with Battle Orders, Battle Orders saved him from death. Are you actually going to argue basic arithmetic?

That's giving you a bonus HP reserve that SAVED you from dieing. As in, if you didn't use it, you would DIE and NOT BE SAVED by it.


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Killing blow that would kill 30% of a barb's health? LOL




You are grasping at straws here. It doesn't have to be one hit. It can be an entire barrage of high attacks following a disable. There is a perfectly good possibility that there will be monsters that fire off high damage attacks that will kill 30% or more of even the better equipped Barbarian's health.|||What is so hard to understand? Seriously. Please explain, preferably referencing the flaws in my post. BO may as well be passive, it lasts about 6 minutes itself. Hell, in current patch, your current health/mana/stamina even adjusts along with your max. What's the difference between having an extra 30% hp and recovering 30% once when you would o/w hit 0? _Unless_ you lose more than 30% hp in a single attack, no significent difference at all.


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Do you really think they expect every Barbarian that took this skill to just stop playing for 6 minutes every time it gets used to wait for the cooldown to flush?




I think that's a genuine concern in HC. More likely just quit and rejoin but we don't know enough about D3 to make any assumptions in that regard.|||Sigh.

Barb A has 1K life and casts BO adding 30% life. He takes 1K damage, doesn't die. He takes 300 more damage and dies. He respawns, recasts BO and takes 1.2K damage and doesn't die.

Barb B has 1K life and 30% DP. He takes 1K damage, doesn't die. He takes 300 more damage and dies. He respawns, takes 1.2K damage and dies. This is better how?|||Quote:








* You assume that 'taking 6-8 hits at 30% life' will happen again in D3. In D1 6-8 hits by anything just killed you.

* Of course you can run out of there, but if you just cast low level BO which gives you 30% more life, you can also run out of there when you run out of natural life. Death Proof is pretty much the same as a low level BO with the caveat that it only works once every 300 seconds.




Laz, that's the problem. You're saying DP is alot like BO from d2, so no worries. Well wouldn't you agree that BO is terribly wrong and overpowered? Anyone who does not max BO is nerfing themselves and is called a noob, and therefore almost every last barb has 20 fewer skill points to administer because they pretty much have to put 20 into BO for every last barb build. It makes for some boring barbs. The main concern for me, and maybe Gigashadow, is that DP is going to end up being the next BO. It's going to be the no-brainer skill that everyone maxes out. You're saying it's ok to have DP in there because it's not much different from BO (which is a game breaking skill).

The barb can also jump-skill out of there after his DP warning goes off...so he wouldn't take enough hits to get him killed unless it was a terrible palyer up against a boss he shouldn't be fighting in the first palce.

Since we're getting into differences/similarities of skills, I'd like to bring up the issue of your 500 life barb being hit with 20k of damage and surviving it no matter what with DP. BO could never do that. With BO, you can still get killed with a huge damage attack. With DP, nothing in the whole game will kill you--the 20k attack has to happen twice in a row. Hell, just for argument sake, let's make it 100k of damage. BO can't save you from that. DP can.

Shield block has the cap, so again, it won't automatically save you like DP does. Shield block will remove 100% of the damage, but if you're unlucky it won't remove any of the damage so you sure wouldn't totally rely on it in HC. But DP has a 100% chance to block 100% of the damage.

So DR capped has a 100% chance to block 50% of phy damage.

Zon's passives have a <70% (approx) chance to block 100% of phy dam.

Max shield block has a 75% chance to block 100% of phy damage.

If you have 1 hit point left, DP has a 100% chance to block 100% of phy damage, or any ele damage...therefore it's way more overpowered and different from all those d2 mods.

...unless we're interpreting the skill wrong or they change it.



The biggest difference of all is the AI involved. With DP, the game is saving your life at the last perfect second instead of the player doing it.

I just can't get this image out of my head: Your barb is standing there with 1 hit point left. A dueler hits him for 50k of damage. The barb then gets 30% of his health back.

So...that 50k blow is actually HEALING the barb from 1 hit point to 30% full health?? Some guy spent 1000 hours getting his damage up that high only to have it massively heal the guy he's fighting>?|||The real problem is, DP is weaker than BO by a large margin. Any Barbarian worth his salt will take a skill that adds a 2.5x multiplier to his total life (as well as his party's and OTHER benefits) over a specialized back up ability that will save you only in very specific situations. It conveys only one functional advantage - a guaranteed full block of an attack and is inferior in every other way.


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Since we're getting into differences/similarities of skills, I'd like to bring up the issue of your 500 life barb being hit with 20k of damage and surviving it no matter what with DP. BO could never do that. With BO, you can still get killed with a huge damage attack. With DP, nothing in the whole game will kill you--the 20k attack has to happen twice in a row. Hell, just for argument sake, let's make it 100k of damage. BO can't save you from that. DP can.




A Wizard's Temporal Armor spell can do that. Diablo 2's block could do that. Any form of attack evasion, present in both D3 and D2 can do that.

@bolded part: A monster fires a barrage of attacks that literally kill you in 1 hit. Suddenly, you die regardless of the vaunted DP. And what if that so-not-gonna-kill-you-attack occurs during DP's downtime?


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I just can't get this image out of my head: Your barb is standing there with 1 hit point left. A dueler hits him for 50k of damage. The barb then gets 30% of his health back.




I just can't get a similar image out of my head. A dueler is wholly incapable of adapting to DP. Nevermind using an incredibly easy to hit with low damage attack to trigger DP and then following up with the mighty 50k damage attack.


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Shield block has the cap, so again, it won't automatically save you like DP does. Shield block will remove 100% of the damage, but if you're unlucky it won't remove any of the damage so you sure wouldn't totally rely on it in HC. But DP has a 100% chance to block 100% of the damage.




Shield Block doesn't get disabled for over 5 minutes every time it triggers. Something like shield block literally saves you hundreds times your life worth of damage taken every play session.


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The main concern for me, and maybe Gigashadow, is that DP is going to end up being the next BO. It's going to be the no-brainer skill that everyone maxes out.




I cannot fathom how anyone can justify maxing out a specialized skill that is, in general, will save you far less often than something like the example skill I put above.

What would a rational HC Barbarian do? Invest a significant portion of his total skillpoints, expecting to suffer a killing blow every 6 minutes? Or maybe put one point in it and gather up superior survival skills? At most this will be equivalent to D2's teleport - every sorc was required to have a point in it, every Barbarian will be required to have a point in this. And even then I don't see how any Hardcore player will rely on a skill that will trigger only when you put yourself in suicidal situations, which the Hardcore player avoids in the first place at all costs. Yes, this will save a lot of people who deserved to die for stupid mistake. But it will not save them from every such mistake, nor will it save even the smart Barbarians from every mistake they make. There are plenty of ways you can die as this skill triggers.|||Quote:








Sigh.

Barb A has 1K life and casts BO adding 30% life. He takes 1K damage, doesn't die. He takes 300 more damage and dies. He respawns, recasts BO and takes 1.2K damage and doesn't die.

Barb B has 1K life and 30% DP. He takes 1K damage, doesn't die. He takes 300 more damage and dies. He respawns, takes 1.2K damage and dies. This is better how?




Diablo II: barb has 1K life + 30% from BO. He's hit for 2k and he dies. BO doesn't save him from death. If you're hit for 2k nothing will help you.

Diablo III: barb has 500 life and that's it. He's hit for 2k and he survives. It doesn't matter that you have 500 life, or 20 life left, you still won't die. And nobody would get hit the second time they'd just jump out.

Is this really so hard to understand?

Life-adding skills do not save you from death because they prevent death from happening in the first place...
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Shield Block doesn't get disabled for over 5 minutes every time it triggers. Something like shield block literally saves you hundreds times your life worth of damage taken every play session.




Have you ever played HC, seriously? No decent HC player relies on Block to save them... but with DP... you can go around the place totally like "meh I have DP for now so I can just totally mess around.... oops, DP worked, now I need to be a bit more careful for 6 mins."

Besides, DP doesn't eliminate block, evasion, BO. It's not "instead". It's 'after". After all those you are finally killed, you survive...|||Quote:




Diablo II: barb has 1K life + 30% from BO. He's hit for 2k and he dies. BO doesn't save him from death. If you're hit for 2k nothing will help you.

Diablo III: barb has 500 life and that's it. He's hit for 2k and he survives. It doesn't matter that you have 500 life, or 20 life left, you still won't die. And nobody would get hit the second time they'd just jump out.

Is this really so hard to understand?




A. Barbarian playing Hardcore isn't going to play with expectation of tanking hits that kill him in one hit. He invests in a skill that allow him to survive a large variety of situations, i.e. the damage reduction skill or the dodge bonus skill.

B. Barbarian playing Hardcore with DP will be playing with expectation of being able to tank a hit that will kill him in one hit. He is identical to the other Barbarian in every way except he invested points in DP instead of one that will generally improve his survivability.

Guess which Barbarian will have a vastly shorter life expectancy against a variety of threats? Which Barbarian will be more willing to take risks and suffer from failures as a result?


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Life-adding skills do not save you from death because they prevent death from happening in the first place..




Prevention of death is functionally identical to saving you from death. The purpose and outcome of both is your character not dieing.


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Have you ever played HC, seriously? No decent HC player relies on Block to save them... but with DP... you can go around the place totally like "meh I have DP for now so I can just totally mess around.... oops, DP worked, now I need to be a bit more careful for 6 mins."




Have you? Max block is the golden goose of 99% of builds that utilize a shield. Are you going to tell me with a straight face that Max Block isn't one of D2's most powerful tools to prevent death?

"meh I have DP for now so I can just totally mess around... oops, I just died because a x% heal was completely inadequate to save me from this situation as I died a moment later. Damn, I shouldn't have played like an idiot, should have I?

Oh wait, if I put those points from DP into the dodge skill, I actually could have survived more than one of those super scary high damage attacks! Or those points would have improved my killing speed and the monsters wouldn't have had a chance to kill me in the first place!"


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Besides, DP doesn't eliminate block, evasion, BO. It's not "instead". It's 'after". After all those you are finally killed, you survive...




Yes, it does eliminate some other benefit to your character. A point invested in DP is a point NOT invested somewhere else - and it's a point that doesn't do anything except when you get dropped to 0 HP.

You might also be interested in knowing that block and BO are, so far from the information we have, non-existant in Diablo 3 in form that they were in Diablo 2. Block no longer stops infinite damage, BO is simply not there.|||Gigashadow: You're going on the assumption that D3 monsters will have lots of 1-hit kill strength attacks. D3 is actually veering away from that, preferring a more "war of attrition" mode of challenging the player. Also note that the DP barb that would otherwise die in one hit would still probably be put into hit recovery or a similar state, leaving him wide open for that second attack to finish him off.|||Quote:








Gigashadow: You're going on the assumption that D3 monsters will have lots of 1-hit kill strength attacks.




No, I'm not making any assumptions at all. I am saying that treating DP like BO is dumb because their functions are not the same. One is a temp buff that must be cast, another is an instant reactor to an event. No matter the game or situation those two will not be the same thing no matter how you tweak it and turn it.


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Also note that the DP barb that would otherwise die in one hit would still probably be put into hit recovery or a similar state, leaving him wide open for that second attack to finish him off.




Why would a second attack finish him off? Even in DII, most of the time if I drank a rejuv at the right moment, even a small one, I'd be all right and have enough leverage to run away or jump or teleport out.

If you're surrounded by 50 extra fast monsters or something... maybe... but if you are maybe you shouldn't be playing HC yet, because you don't get yourself into situations like that, lol
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Have you? Max block is the golden goose of 99% of builds that utilize a shield. Are you going to tell me with a straight face that Max Block isn't one of D2's most powerful tools to prevent death?




I thought the golden goose was building your character properly, walking carefully, being smart in battle, watching your health and making sure it's always high...

An HC player would not rely on block. I personally use block to decrease overall damage dealt to me. But 75% block chance doesn't give me a feeling of safety at all. If I have 1 hp left I won't be hoping that block saves me, no I'm drinking that rejuv or TPing the hell outta there.

Block saves you if you screw up. Maybe. Are you telling me those 99 people risk all the time because they rely on the shield block to not die? LOL


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oops, I just died because a x% heal was completely inadequate to save me from this situation as I died a moment later. Damn, I shouldn't have played like an idiot, should have I?




Not viable. You are structuring a situation in which only an SC player would end up. HC players don't end up in situations where they can't get out...


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Oh wait, if I put those points from DP into the dodge skill, I actually could have survived more than one of those super scary high damage attacks! Or those points would have improved my killing speed and the monsters wouldn't have had a chance to kill me in the first place!"




If you rely on dodge to survive you won't last longer than past level 30.


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Yes, it does eliminate some other benefit to your character. A point invested in DP is a point NOT invested somewhere else - and it's a point that doesn't do anything except when you get dropped to 0 HP.




Dropping to 0 HP is the biggest concern of all HC players.


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You might also be interested in knowing that block and BO are, so far from the information we have, non-existant in Diablo 3 in form that they were in Diablo 2. Block no longer stops infinite damage, BO is simply not there.




BO may be there, just weakened. Shield will be there, weakened. DP will be there, not at all weakened, unless they nerf it, which I'm sure they will. DP will either just die as a skill or turn into something else. It will be either useless or too useful.

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