Please Improve Trickster's: Ghost Dance and Escape Artist

This idea of an EV/ES character is too cool to not dream about, but the nodes leave MUCH to be desired since ES characters need ES EVERYWHERE.

I propose that the node that gives ES and EV based on chest and hat be changed to include ALL gear. The values could be adjusted downward if necessary. I haven't looked at all the available items and abuses thereof.

Notable items are:

Any of the high EV chests: QotF, Fox's Fortune, Hyrrie's, Cospri?, Carcass Jack, Shroud of the Lightless, Restless Ward, and rare Carnal Armors, Atziri Splendour

Hats: Vertex

Shield: Atziri's Mirror but so few of them, Apep's

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LumpsIsHigh a écrit :

This idea of an EV/ES character is too cool to not dream about, but the nodes leave MUCH to be desired since ES characters need ES EVERYWHERE.

I propose that the node that gives ES and EV based on chest and hat be changed to include ALL gear. The values could be adjusted downward if necessary. I haven't looked at all the available items and abuses thereof.

Notable items are:

Any of the high EV chests: QotF, Fox's Fortune, Hyrrie's, Cospri?, Carcass Jack, Shroud of the Lightless, Restless Ward, and rare Carnal Armors, Atziri Splendour

Hats: Vertex

Shield: Atziri's Mirror but so few of them, Apep's

Ghost dance is pretty amazing IMO although I'm not happy about their choice of defensives. I can't argue the node is "bad" though, because it's not.

But yes, as I was explaining to Fruz in the other thread about defensives, I wouldn't take escape artist if it was a free point on my way to a +10str. It's the ascendancy badmageddon. I actually would just take another +10 int over escape artist and choose to go full es. The bottom half I'm pretty sure is never up for anybody who actually needs it when they need it. EV/ES combos have never been realistic in POE and this node doesn't do much to change that. It's always better to just go pure ES or pure life+armor.

If they did flat damage reductions per 50es on helm and per 500ev on chest I could maybe see it being useful. Even then it would still be better to just go pure ES. The hybrid ev/es thing just isn't working.

I've theorycrafted some stuff with devouring diadem and there are some interesting things to be tried there with ghost dance, but escape artist is just SO.... BAD....

TBH, if you're going for any form of ES-based character, you generally don't use a unique helmet, but a rare one, instead: only around 25.2% of CI or LL builds in Betrayal are using a unique helmet, compared to 40.2% of everyone else.

Moreover... While Escape Artist is arguably rather NICHE, it's hardly "bad." The niche just is that... It's what makes it possible (at all) to do evasion+energy shield, but that is also exactly the only build that ever has a reason to take it.

Compare to the old "shade form" it replaced, it's not as much of a freebie; Shade Form gave us a free easy 500 evasion and 250 ES, which was absolutely insane; even if you didn't build evasion at all it made it mandatory for any ES user. (and part of why the only good ES ascendancies were really Occultist and Trickster)

If you want to take a look at what you definitely CAN do (not just theorycraft) with Escape Artist, take a look at my guy Wuru. (my characters are always public, so feel free to load them into PoB!) He was my only character for Incursion, and I had little trouble running all content with him; 8.4k ES and 17.9k evasion made him surprisingly tanky. (tankier than all the "meta" EH users who were wearing a damn Kaom's, lol)

Keep in mind that with enough evasion, the mix of bonuses between Ghost Dance and Escape Artist is enough to mitigate most issues with stuns; it does mean that you rarely get hit, and when you do, it can't stun, and hits you for less... And you're probably going to not get hit again in the next 4 seconds anyhow.

So it's definitely not BAD at all; it just isn't a stack of easily-used freebies like, say, almost anything in any of the Ranger ascendancies are.

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ACGIFT a écrit :

TBH, if you're going for any form of ES-based character, you generally don't use a unique helmet, but a rare one, instead: only around 25.2% of CI or LL builds in Betrayal are using a unique helmet, compared to 40.2% of everyone else.

Moreover... While Escape Artist is arguably rather NICHE, it's hardly "bad." The niche just is that... It's what makes it possible (at all) to do evasion+energy shield, but that is also exactly the only build that ever has a reason to take it.

Compare to the old "shade form" it replaced, it's not as much of a freebie; Shade Form gave us a free easy 500 evasion and 250 ES, which was absolutely insane; even if you didn't build evasion at all it made it mandatory for any ES user. (and part of why the only good ES ascendancies were really Occultist and Trickster)

If you want to take a look at what you definitely CAN do (not just theorycraft) with Escape Artist, take a look at my guy Wuru. (my characters are always public, so feel free to load them into PoB!) He was my only character for Incursion, and I had little trouble running all content with him; 8.4k ES and 17.9k evasion made him surprisingly tanky. (tankier than all the "meta" EH users who were wearing a damn Kaom's, lol)

Keep in mind that with enough evasion, the mix of bonuses between Ghost Dance and Escape Artist is enough to mitigate most issues with stuns; it does mean that you rarely get hit, and when you do, it can't stun, and hits you for less... And you're probably going to not get hit again in the next 4 seconds anyhow.

So it's definitely not BAD at all; it just isn't a stack of easily-used freebies like, say, almost anything in any of the Ranger ascendancies are.

Well, your character does use the node mostly as it was intended, but I certainly wouldn't run that character in HC when there's simply a strictly better option in occultist. IDK how you have 18k evasion on that build when you've got 100% increased evasion on the tree and about 2600 from gear/ascendancy.

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Legatus1982 a écrit :

Well, your character does use the node mostly as it was intended, but I certainly wouldn't run that character in HC when there's simply a strictly better option in occultist. IDK how you have 18k evasion on that build when you've got 100% increased evasion on the tree and about 2600 from gear/ascendancy.

This.

18k Evasion isn't saving you in HC (I play HC) and particularly in this league. Even more so before the nerfs to Fortification spawns. That character would die instantly.

But moreover, look at the rest of the gear you are wearing. It's all ES. So if I'm going to wear all ES gear, as said, I'm playing Occultist. Which I do almost exclusively.

So like I proposed initially, have it work off of all gear and lessen the values. That way you CAN and can be REWARDED for wearing hybrid ES/EV gear.

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LumpsIsHigh a écrit :

18k Evasion isn't saving you in HC (I play HC) and particularly in this league. Even more so before the nerfs to Fortification spawns. That character would die instantly.

If you are relying on one single defense mechanism to keep you alive, then you are doing something wrong.

If you are not, then you can include evasion in many builds and optimize it, and it's quite strong.



Ghost dance seems very strong to me, escape artist ... niche.
I guess escape artist could be made attractive to more builds somehow, make it apply to the whole gear with lower value would not achieve anything though imho, it would make node much more gear reliant and could likely be somewhat abusable or not good enough imo.

Wasn't the Eldrich battery change direct buff to this type of character, direct buff to Ghost Reaver - you decrease the ES recharge to have better uptime of the attack speed buff (40% is kinda insane when considering other ways of getting that huge IAS buff)

Probably going with MoM, instead of Restless Ward , going with Cloak of Defiance for better defense scaling. At that point i would not even dismiss going for Acro and give up the 30% of ES pool and just go for dodge cap.

It's probably not something which would go mainstream as it is not that clear how to build or what skill use in that combination of weird stuff.

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LumpsIsHigh a écrit :

This idea of an EV/ES character is too cool to not dream about, but the nodes leave MUCH to be desired since ES characters need ES EVERYWHERE.

But it isn't for "ES characters". It's for ES/Evasion characters. And it lets you have ES everywhere, by changing a high evasion chest into a high evasion+some ES chest (or, I guess, an Evasion/ES chest into an Evasion/a-bit-more-ES chest, though I expect that's less optimal).

I'm not saying it's ever really a high priority pick for me as a Trickster (though I'd say that's mainly because other nodes are better rather than this one being super-awful or anything). And honestly, yeah, just aesthetically I would prefer something that didn't want me to switch away from ev/es gear. I just don't think "we need ES everywhere" is much of an argument here.

Ghost Dance has always seemed a good node to me, not sure what the problem is supposed to be there.

I think the problem with the node is more that it's focused on certain defensive combinations which has clear issues, without actually giving anything to overcome it.

EV/ES has anti-synergy with Dodge, which is almost essential for any evade build. It's super easy to get a decent amount of chance to evade from just flasks set-up, combined with the downsides of evasion (doesn't work on spells, etc) that actually sacrificing ES on gear for evasion rating is just not worth it.

Even if you would treat ES as a different life pool, you still struggle with restoration (especially as the rest of the ascendancy is focused on dot damage and you can't leech from dot). It looks good on paper, with ES giving a larger life pool than life normally could, and evasion providing windows for ES recharge to kick in, it just doesn't work in reality. To many dots, unavoidable hits, fast attacking enemies, etc., just interrupts or even make it impossible for ES recharge to kick in.

Life/ES/EV has the same issue that it has anti synergy with Dodge (to a lesser extent), as well as the hybrid issue of restoring both life and ES at the same time.

The trickster in general has some small perks to somewhat overcome these problems (like the restore life/ES on kill), but it's not close enough to make EV/ES or Hybrid/EV builds feel good.

It just need something added to it.,like:

- ES less modifiers do not effect you
- Any life restoration above max life is applied to ES instead
- evading an attack has x% chance to start ES recharge
- ES recharge isn't interrupted by damage over time
- ES recharge isn't interrupted when you take hit damage if you haven't been hit recently.

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Legatus1982 a écrit :

Well, your character does use the node mostly as it was intended, but I certainly wouldn't run that character in HC when there's simply a strictly better option in occultist. IDK how you have 18k evasion on that build when you've got 100% increased evasion on the tree and about 2600 from gear/ascendancy.

If you'd actually checked in PoB, it gets you the number: I'm also running Grace, since, as an Elemental Hit char, the meta offensive auras do next to nothing. (Hatred does absolutely nothing, while Anger and Wrath are a drop in the bucket)

You'd figure that HC players would know that defensive auras exist? I mean, beyond Discipline (which is effectively mandatory for all ES builds now) and the individual purities for LL and/or RF, (for fire alone) but for some reason people seem to forget that grace and determination exist.