Block is OP

Feedback and Suggestions
1

EDIT START
I decided to push block on stream to showcase its power, ended up at wave 560 (died trolling)
You can find a video of the final waves of the push on the link below.
Block push 560
The same character with no shiled is the one who gets murdered by wisps in “Clip 1”.
EDIT END

EDIT 2 START
In order to prove that the problem is only Block and not Vengance or any other sentinel mechanic. I decided to push a “bad” skill with and without block, one push each, without using vengance.
The selected skill on sentinel was Rive, as its considered not capable of high pushing.

The results:
Block version: wave 400
Non Block version: wave 180

To put it in perspective, it will be like comparing a 1000 push to a 200 push on patch 0.7.7, so an 800 wave difference on previous patches. It is worth mentioning I actually had to play way better and focused on the no shiled version.
EDIT 2 END

Block is uber broken at the moment, specially on sentinel
It is so broken that removes any skill needed to play the game at the top level.

The main reason of it beeing so OP for sentinel, is that you can fully benefit from 90% block and 3000 Block Effectivnes with just using the passives and skills avialable.
This means that, regardless of the gear and resources you have invested into your character, you will be immortal to hits, specially the dangeorus ones that will end your run, like the necrotic wisps.

To illustrate how broken this is, il share this example.
In both clips, the two characters have the same gear, necrotic conversion to physical (85%) and necrotic % protections. The only difference, is the sentinel on Clip 2, is wearing a shield with T5 Block Chance, but all the other mitgations don’t change.

Clip 1:
On this first clip, you can see my Rank 1 Forge Guard getting hit by necrotic wisps at wave 400 in arena.
Wisps vs NO block
As you can see, even with the vengance DR active, we just get 1 shoted for beeing out of position. I made a mistake as a player and I died for it, as it should be.
In order to succed with this build, I had to play and build like a god, felt very rewarding and requiered many attempts. I got deleted the first mechanical mistake I made.

Clip 2:
Making use of my free 90% block and 3000 Block Effectivness obtained from my passives and skills, I am now immune to any hit damage, including the wisps that previously murdered me with a few hits.
Wisps WITH Block
I just stood there like a bot, and took no damage (they actually healed me with holy aura). Denies all skill involved and rewards low engangement and skilled combat.
It took me 1 attempt while standing still doing nothing to break 440 waves. I felt like I was cheating.

I think block needs to be revisited and hard nerf. Block Effectivness is uber broken as it gives you 3000 protections for free when normaly, you can’t even reach those numbers for necrotic protection with T20 GG gear without a shiled.

Once again, thanks for reading and hope it helps for the balance of the game!

4 Likes
2

Have any ideas for a solution to the problem?
Cap block chance? I dont like this! but maybe 80% cap is needed just like dodge and make a blocked attack do 0 damage?
Reduce block effectivness or replace it with maybe just a Damage reduction amount on a block?

3

I would make block way harder to get, or maybe cap at 75% or 50%

Nerf block effectifness by 70% on its values. having 3000 of every prot is just crazy, considering you get it for free. Id say block effectivness should cap at 1000 max, and it woul still be really good, considering how hard is to gear 1000 of each prot on gear. Or rework it into an extra small layer of DR like you suggested.

Also all the passives that proc stuff on block, might need a cap, going from 1k armor to 20k armor cuz ur blocking archers is a bit bonkers.

4

Totally different idea here to bounce off of ypu, what is block reflected damage. Say you take 25% less damage on a block. You take and reflect the other 75% damage

5

Or we can just have block be actually treated like Dodge. cap at 70% with no protection value, just purely the chance to mitigate hit damage.

6

That would be more OP than it is now… Imagine 70% chance to block all damage, if that fails you can still have another 80% chance to dodge… lol. THose would stack 2 well together not to use. Both maxed there would be a 94% chance on every hit thrown at you to not take any damage… lol thats WAY more OP

7

My only concern about this is that any change would affect the lower end of the scale as much (if not more) than the upper end, like how the changes to ward retention hurt the builds that had some ward generation but not the higher end builds that used to have ~10k ward.

I also disagree that block is OP, compared to Dodge that entirely negates a hit. IMO, I’d probably make it a bit easier to get higher amounts of block but harder to get much above 80% then reduce the block effectiveness some (but not 70%). I don’t see why heavily investing in block is a bad thing if heavily investing in ward (which is at least as efective) or dodge isn’t a bad thing.

3 Likes
8

Ohh you are right, sorry i’m getting tired, and not thinking correctly, so yeah nerf sentinels overall block chance scaling to around 60% with max value investment, and decrease the block effectiveness max value to 1000 also nerf vengeance damage mitigation by 30% Remember devs also only want us to be able to do 300waves max and no more! :slight_smile:
60% chance to Block, 1000 block effectiveness, and 30% nerf to vengeance damage mitigation. Might need a nerf to rebuke as well.

9

Not sure if sarcasm or not… Especially with most of it bolded.

1 Like
10

No sarcasm, I just like mixing up bold, and non bold in posts, sorry.

1 Like
11

That would totally gimp block though, compared to dodge. If you’re at dodge cap, that’s (on average) 80% damage reduction against hits. If you capped block at 60% & block effectiveness at 1,000 that’s on average an extra 600 protection against a hit. Assuming you’ve got 1k hp & 50% protections normally (ie, 1,000 protection), your suggested block changes would give you an additional 12% damage reduction (from 1k protection to 1.6k = ~62% damage reduction). Compared to up to 80% from dodge.

Currently block effectiveness gets your protections up into the 80s, maybe 90s if you’re using Rallying Block which all block-based Sentinels absolutely should.

1 Like
12

yeah but sentinel already gets near full access to dodge with just two affixes from gear.

13

I really do not like any mechanic that gives you x% to avoid 100% damage. It leads to being invulnerable until one-shotted.

IMO all protecting mechanics should give a set and/or percentage damage reduction. It should never be ‘all or nothing’. Block could be like this, just keep its damage reduction under 100%.

2 Likes
14

Really? That’s not something I’ve experimented with, could you go into a bit more detail?

15

also fun fact. if you use vengeance then use rebuke, for a full two seconds you get 111% damage reduction while channeling…

16

Which it is, due to the nature of the diminishing returns of protection.

I agree that mechanics that make you either invulnerable or dead aren’t great.

17

i dont believe there additive

18

Correct, damage reduction is multiplicative. So 2x sources of 50% would give you 75%, not 100%.

19

well both the skills state the damage reduction is mulplicitive with other modifiers so why would it not work?

20

So if you had 75% reduction & 36% reduction, that would give you 84% reduction not 111%.