How do you all like the current implementation of the ward mechanic?
My take: After 250 hours in game I generally do not like the overall feel of the ward mechanic and I have narrowed it down to two reasons.
Firstly using ward makes you feel like you have to always rush to maintain it, if you stop to loot or take your time between monster packs you lose EHP every second adding to the constant feel of rush.
Second as a HC player I don’t like the “swingyness” feel of EHP, One second I can feel like a god with 10k EHP and 5-6 seconds later I am in one shot range. Swinging between an absolute tank and a glass cannon all the time does not feel good.
I would be interested to see what everyone else’s opinion is on the ward mechanic as I haven’t seen it openly discussed on this forum yet.
Not only has ward retention been reduced in effectiveness by 50%. People will argue get the high end items, with retention on it…er what about the low level toons guys?
Plus my level 65 mage had 345% Base retention in the first place (81 intel +idols) and now has a highly laughable base ward of 160ish down from 350ish. Use to max out at 2.8k, now its more like 1k. So with HP that’s a total EHP of 1500 in combat.
Now compare that to my Forge Guard, level 56. HP 600ish, and average protection of 3.8K in combat. That’s an average EHP of 4.2K!
But also ward gain has been serious reduced. Like Flame Ward. Now has a 20 second base CD…seriously?
The only reason it got nerfed is because a very small number of people managed to get high up on the ladder. Not everyone has 1000s of hours spent fine tuning a character. This nerf also compromises new character creation. As new players will be put off by how quick they die.
The why my mage was working was good. I had actually found a game where I didn’t want to just stick with the plate wearers. To me mages should be strong! why? because they are using magic, and not just ordinary metals!
To me it looks like several people had their hands on different things and altered stuff, without knowing what the others where doing. And just all threw it into the patch!
Really really sad to see how they have killed mages. I certainly won’t be doing HC with one, that’s for sure!
How did I feel. I personnel felt ward was working okay, for the average player. Playing on my mage was fun. And that’s why I play games, for fun and enjoyment.
And I feel it’s only been nerfed because a small handful of people had the time invested to make there wards extra powerful!
Now I feel disappointed! My mage is no longer fun, it’s more stressful watching him die so fast.
Generally i like the mechanic, as it feels “interactive”, but i agree on the point that you Always have the feel you need to rush.
Maybe just add an additional affix that give you XY amount fo ward that does not decay. I would feel like that would be an affix that is not need on all ward builds but can make the QoL whiel leveing a bit better.
Not sure if an additional affix would be fun for most People as it is one mroe Affix in the pool that you may want. Was just a quick thought i had
But overall i like that ward can be very powerfull but you have to “work” for it
This is a very good take. Indeed I always feel bad when the next pack to feast on is to far away.
But I a big part comes from imagination. You don’t want to see a stat decreasing. Seeing ward decay makes you wanna stop the drain which is only possible by rushing to the next pack ri Feast or hammer the flame ward button to get that next boost.
When I think of other classes there are also mechanics that do the same. For example Sentinels also stack damage increase when getting hit and you also don’t want that to run out when you have a decent stack of it. But this buff is not that present as the ward bar/ bubble.
Temporarily minions also are a reason I rush through the game. Forged weapons of Sentinel, Summon Wraith… You wanna hit the next wave as long as they are still up.
But I agree. With a ward build you only get a high amount if it with on hit skills. So you need something to hit to get more survivability what’s very risky when you start with a low ward pool.
I am curious what the new builds after the patch look like. I’d imagine that damage on mana before health also is something that gets more important now.
In the end I don’t think that a mechanic is needed that works like hp or protections only with another name and class specific. Ward is a refreshing mechanic and not easy to balance because it works very different than the other defences. In summary I like its flaws.
Agreed, while it is kinda a unique mechanic never been done before in any similar game and it might be hard to balance and probalby not perfect, it is refreshing.
And as you said even with it’s flaws, i like the foundation.
I do NOT want an “Extension of Health”, that is kinda boring.
While similar systems for example Energy Shield from PoE have it’s place i never felt it was “cool”, just another Name for Health with slighty different basic mechanics.
I have no expertise to evaluate if it was good or bad to nerf ward.
But I agree with the idea of Rushing : I don’t like the idea that players rushes monsters and ignore items, just to keep their ward up. This is not a good gaming experience.
I like the ward mechanic, but I think it’s gonna see a lot of tuning before it ends up working out. My mage, like many others, took a noticeable hit in survivability after the patch and will definitely need some rethinking.
For fun, I started a new mage and completely ignored ward and focused on freezing. Made it to level 34 without any survivability issues, so I could see my way to trying a wardless build. House lost power while playing and that character went poof but I’ll restart it eventually.
Was playing a 94 mage in SSF HC with exang, prior to the changes I had around 6-8k ward in combat. Post changes, I sit at around 1.5-2.5k ward, so I basically lost 2/3rd’s of my EHP. I switched to a crafted chestpiece with 9int/20%hp/105hp, still barely able to maintain 2-3k EHP in combat.
Went from crushing 60 depth monos to getting chunked out in a fresh mono with no mods. Felt I had no choice but to temporarily shelve my mage and play something else because I was legitimately going to walk around a corner and my char is going to fall over and die. Little bit like going from one extreme to the other, kind of bizarre.
I knew ward needed some changes, but it was on the top end to do with diminishing returns, I think the nerfed was a bit over the top, and now even maintaining a small ward pool on top of my regular health pool feels almost impossible.
It’s a decaying overheal shield that’s nothing realy new but never used to this extend. I realy don’t like the mechanic at all but now when it is more in line with other protective means it might get intresting again.
Agreed, ward shouldn’t be the only layer of defense, it’s just one of many factors coming together. Different Kind of defensive layer combined really make cool build(one build may use ward as “main” the other Maybe just some small ward burst(new mage’s flame ward give REALLY good ward Bursts, which might be interesting evne for non ward builds)
Well i did play alot of arpg’s and i can say i dont know any “deyaing shield” on the top fo my head. Only thing that comes close i think is overleech/sec from PoE, but thats not really a shield as it doesn’t protect from big hits. But im glad if some1 can widen my Knowledge and give other examples.
Ward doesn’t make any sense. its like the devs want a secondary eHP mechanic so they copied PoE but didn’t copy the GOOD parts of Energy Shield and now you have this strange temporary barrier that can be 5-7x more than Life for some reason, decays, doesn’t interact with leech at all, needs Unique items to feel good etc etc
I think Ward needs to be redesigned completely, I don’t really have any ideas as im not that invested in the game but as someone who has played every aRPG pretty much, Ward just seems its there to just be ‘unique’ and the only reason people will play Ward as its numerically broken
I feel like ward mechanic generally suits mage very well. It feels like a spell, temporary burst of defence where you have to manage your cooldowns - classic mage thing.
PS. Some people use it for constant stable defense and, for what I understand, its not intended way to use ward, it was possible only because some numbers was broken. Now that fixed and some people disapointed that ward is not what they thought it was. But its more fun this way.
I like ward as a mechanic. It is neat that it is basically pre-regenerating in that there isn’t a max ward like there is a max HP. I just wish HP regen was stronger to maybe even it out a bit. Leech seems strong, but max HP isn’t even close what the levels of ward people get. Even if you take the most tanky HP and Protection build possible, your survivability isn’t close to the uber ward gain builds. 70k ward is absurd, and it is constantly healed up almost instantly because of the way it is gained.
I still think ward on the top end is way too powerful. Ward retention has nothing to do with it. It is ward gain/leech that is the problem. Maybe as a way to counteract that, they can introduce damage that ignores ward.
I like the mechanic actually. It’s a combination of Overleech and Energy Shield in PoE, which I’ve never thought that they would work well if combined but it’s actually interesting. We have Health, Block, Armour, Protections, etc as passive defensive mechanics so it’s good that we have an active defensive mechanics as well.
With that being said, I’m quite unhappy with the latest nerf to Ward. It’s a bit too overdone where they nerfed Ward Retention AND Ward generation of many skills. Numbers can always change though, so I’m not too worried.
However, I do think that they probably should cater to different ways to generate/maintain ward. At the moment, having Ward is kinda playing a berseker character where you always have to rush and attack the enemies. I would like an alternative way to generate/maintain Ward that does not punish slower playstyle.
