Tuning zealot's oath to hybrids

Interesting concepts. I like the zealots oath changes, though the stun immunity prevention seems rather arbitrary.

Redemption seems like itd be good if incoming damage wasnt so random, and the games netcode worked. As is i can easily see it accomplishing absolutely nothing outside of a few select 1v1 boss battles or pissing off 1-shot builds in pvp.

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Xendran a écrit :

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GusTheCrocodile a écrit :

I think a Life/Armour/ES build both with and without ZO should both be sensible, but different, choices.

This more sounds like the skill just needs a drawback that makes it unique, not just "no."

Of course. There's no "no", just "no in its current form". Adding drawbacks is indeed a good idea.

Having said that, removing the normal ES recovery I feel makes the keystone almost able to be reworded "Energy Shield converted to Life". I think ES and life are already more than close enough, and the game already has more than enough converting X stat to Y stat. Actually conversion is okay, as long as it's between stats of different functions - Eldritch Battery yay, Iron Reflexes nay.

It occurs to me, then, that perhaps I don't like the general idea of Zealot's Oath in the first place, not specifically this suggestion. :P

I'd prefer a defensive keystone that preserved what difference in "feel" ES has from life, rather than moving them closer together. In the spirit of not being "the guy who comes to post that he doesn't like stuff", I've been trying to come up with alternatives, but yeah, it's not easy to rush :)

My first thought is I guess a defensive reimagining of Avatar of Fire, thematically the idea being to have a "hard", reliable shield, but one that's more specific in its application:
-drastically reduce the ES delay
-make something else pierce it - first thought was cold damage, but that's probably not enough. Cold and lightning? What if all elemental damage pierced the shield, would it be too useless? All elemental but not chaos anymore? I don't know enough about high level play to say.

I just kind of like the idea in that it's naturally for life/es hybrids because your life buffer is used in more situations. That also means it's naturally unusable with CI ( because you'll die from the first hit that pierces), and I think that's a good thing.

Oh i hate ZO and Ghost Reaver as well, but i figure since i really doubt GGG is going to go back on their (incredibly stupid) decision to turn ES into Life 2.0, we may as well fix it up since they appeared to have had a LOT of GIGANTIC oversights when implementing a lot of stuff.

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make something else pierce it - first thought was cold damage, but that's probably not enough. Cold and lightning? What if all elemental damage pierced the shield, would it be too useless? All elemental but not chaos anymore? I don't know enough about high level play to say.

Interesting you say that, because i actually had an idea that i never posted:

Burning damage bypasses energy shield

I've always figured something along the lines of "50% of life regeneration is applied to energy shield." would be a much more simple solution.

Edit: With some subtle changes on wording depending upon the intended effect. Change to "life regenerated" to calculate ES regeneration based off maximum life rather than maximum ES, or "converted to (??) Energy Shield Recovery" to modify ES's normal recovery method (?? In some way) by a portion of life regeneration.. Etc..

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I've always figured something along the lines of "50% of life regeneration is applied to energy shield." would be a much more simple solution.

Yeah, that might work but it makes no sense due to its placement. It's in an area for a class that leans towards hybrid life/es/ar, so making it totally useless for hybrids doesn't make sense. Misread what you wrote.

I think a good starting point is adding the second mod: "Energy shield can only be recovered via life regeneration".

That's a change that GGG could test out on alpha pretty easily.

Care to explain how that'd make the keystone useless for hybrids?

Looks like i misread it, i thought it said "applied to energy shield instead of life" like the original keystone, which would have made it completely trash for hybrids.

Yknow... i think if we combine your idea with my drawback we have ourselves a solid keystone that doesn't have 4 really long mods in it. I'd actually buff it past 50 though, since most hybrids have around 60% of the regen of a life build.

Zealot's Oath
65% of life regeneration also applies to Energy Shield
Energy Shield can only be recovered via Life Regeneration

I meant, if you had 6% life regen, 3% would apply to life, 3% would apply to ES. It would nerf ZO for non-hybrid use (Shav's and CI) by reducing the recovery by 50%, and for true hybrids wouldn't appear to do much different than just regenerating life, or just regenerating ES, except to make recovery circumstantially less wasteful. That is, just life recovery is wasted when ES is up and life is taking no damage, and ES recovery is wasted when ES is up and life is taking chaos damage.

Imo, the keystone shouldn't do much more than that.

Yeah, i figured that's what you meant after i reread it.
I agree.

65% is the sweet spot by the way, because you end up with 60% of a regular HP build's life regen, and then 39% of a regular HP build's regen as ES.
It can be situational, but very useful, and makes regen less wasteful, but with the downside of not being able to recover ES the standard way by retreating.

It makes hybrid classes that use ZO legitimately play differently from ones that don't because of that drawback. It also retains its usefullness for CI and Shavronnes, but nerfs it without overkilling it to an unusable state.

I'm not sure where you're getting those numbers from, but then I just woke up, am still waiting for coffee, and am not feeling very mathy as a consequence :)

Another alternative could be to apply (55 to 65%) of life regeneration rate to life, and (55 to 65%) to ES. In this way, the "drawback" is still present, while also offering a buff as incentive to take the keystone--10 to 30% more regeneration rate.

I'm not sure I like removing ES recovery rate from the equation, but as you said in your OP, if there is no other alternative to ES besides Life 2.0... I do very much like making ZO GR incompatible, just as ZO VP are.