Nerf to ward is not justified

Its the main defensive ability of mage.
Maybe manastrike builds have plenty of it.
But sorc based builds didn’t have enough ward before and now even less.
Having like 1k ward is not enough to survive.

2 Likes

That is more than most classes have HP.

2 Likes

The ward will go further if you stack some armour/protections as well.

2 Likes

Also new high level mage gear has built in ward retention

I am really sad to see ward get such a heavy beating. Its been hit left, right and centre. Reductions are to far. But that’s just mu opinion!

You’ve got the reduced effectiveness of ward retention. Coupled up with the increased CD on Flame Ward(something I always felt needed its CD reducing). So my base ward on my level 65 mage went from 350-175. And cap 2k to less than 1k (that’s in combat). Gone from being solid to rather squishy.

Yes it was strong in 0.7.7, but now its weak. Not sure how I am going to work some protections into my mage without sacrificing else where.

Reminds me of Goldlocks and the three bears. It’s now on the too cold side!

:disappointed_relieved:

#edit - Before you all jump on me. I will point out my level 56 Forge Guard, has an average of 2.5k in each protection + 500-600hp. So that’s the same as 3k worth of ward (while he is stood around doing nothing). And my level 65 mage now has a 1/2 of that (buffed up in combat)!

3 Likes

my ward went from 7k to just under 2k, making it useless since i have no protections :slight_smile: gear was mediocre at best now it’s all pretty much getting shattered

1 Like

I agree with you bro, and it hurts a little bit, but we got other defenses buffed.

So it sounds like 50k ward builds will still have 15k+ left ^^. I’m eager to see how this will play out in the end but right now it’s good to cut the op ward possibilitys down.

2 Likes

Yes top end was crazy. But rather than just going for a flat hard nerf like they have, they should have gone with diminishing returns.

As a result they have made it a lot harder to start a new character, as they will have hardly any ward what so ever.

With diminishing returns the low level/ characters wouldn’t have seen much difference, so a level 40 with 2k would have only have saw a loss of 200. But once you got to level 100 with full T5 gear, the 70k would be more like 10-15k.

1 Like

So, Spellblade and Glacier builds did not suffer at all because they have alternate means to gain ward
I was working on Frozen Orb and you can NOT stack other prots if you are trying to go crit strike avoidance and dodge. There’s not enough slots on gear.

This basically killed my build for protections. How do you stack other prots if you need the spots for Glancing Blow, Crit Strike avoidance and armor and prots and we get NOTHING protections based anywhere. I would love to know. Especially when Crit strike avoidance is 3 suffixes total, thats not going to be enough to help.

If this is going to be the change, they need to adjust the values on dodge to make up for it so we dont have to eat suffix and prefix slots

2 Likes

There is so much going on in this patch. This ward nerf was needed. Mages are not meant to be tanky. It’s ok when a mage is more squishy than a Sentinel. This is the typical RPG constellation. The mage has better movement and higher damage potential.

Also just because the mages we have in stock aren’t top notch anymore does not mean that there’s no way to make them viable anymore.

My mages are specced into int and… int and some int, Exanginous and also int. In comparison to my sentinels finding/ crafting proper gear to make a viable build was laughable.

Now we come to the point we can actually compare defences, because the numbers are closer toghether. Protection may be usefull now on ward builds.

Lets see ward not as the main and only defensive mechanic for caster but some nice addition. This is what it was meant for right from the beginning, I guess.

And of corse people struggle now. We dont have the items equiped that make the new builds viable. It needs some time to figure out what the setup has to look like. I would bet money that at the end of the week we already have some build guides that explain the changes and help peolple to adapt to the new situation.

There are new passives, new trees, new skills and skillnodes, new items. What about to have a look, play for a week and see where it is going.

Everybody of course is free to offer his opinion, so please don’t get me wrong on this.
I don’t think it is justified to complain about the changes with the patch out yesterday. If it is 1-2 weeks in and all mages die on wave 50, there is a reason to complain. But not because somebody locked in and saw the numbers on his stat sheet are smaller now.

It’s a nerf for ward build. Thats true. But this doesn’t mean mage is unplayable or laughable week now. The goal is to bring ward builds to a similar level like protection builds and that means “nerf”.

Let’s talk about all this, when the patch has settled down.

Peace! :v:

9 Likes

Even though the ward nerf was overdue, I think it may have been overdone. I too think the main change should have been towards diminishing returns as builds getting 20-75k+ ward in the arena is not balanced. However the change has been a huge, flat one in the sense that ward retention was hit so hard, even ward based classes are considering opting out of it.

I was playing a mage in hardcore at 94 which had 5-8k ward in combat, while being heavily spec’d and geared towards int, ward gain from passives and amulet mod etc. However after the change I would sit at 1.3k-2.5k ward in combat, essentially losing 2/3rd’s of my EHP for no real return. (A small increase on damage reduction from flame ward is the only thing I can think of)

I’m even considering holding off playing my mage for a little while until I figure out exactly how im supposed to gear it as I don’t see any way I’m supposed to gear towards a shield instead of an aegis / protections now, as there are virtually zero support for protections in the tree/skills, and reaching glancing blow / crit avoidance cap and ~50% dodge already took up most of my slots. I don’t see how its feasible to add in protections so I really have no idea where to go next and it would be a shame to just ‘randomly die’ for no reason because the changes were overboard.

Even with 60 int and every ward retention passive taken, I couldn’t really maintain above 2k ward consistently and actually had more EHP replacing my exang with a 20%hp/105hp crafted chestpiece. The ward changes very well may have been overboard.

I’ve benched my mage for now. To me its no longer fun. And as someone has pointed out, there isn’t enough slots on gear to add protections too. Do you go Glancing blow/ Crit strike avoidance or armour and protection.

I know some of you hard core gamers will try to do the best you can…I wish you all good luck!

Well my HC mage juste get one shot by a boss jumping on my face from outside screen.
I believe that reactive use of flamme shield instead of spamming is cool but in harcore you have to learn it fast :cry:

That’s happened to me on my tanky Sentinels with lots of protections as well…

1 Like

My channeling ele nova fire mage just got done on 2nd Monolith so yes this ward reductions is completely unjustified.

The problem is that ward relient builds that not benefit from onhit ward gain are hit hard yes. Outside of this people might realise now how OP the machanic was before. Now it seems like ward users need GB/CA and protections as well and are in the same spot as protection classes. It still seems like onhit ward builds still perform well so we might see the same problem in some weeks again ^^.

2 Likes

There’s only a small percentage of players who do well with ward. The ones who have time to invest in getting all the BiS gear with full T5 items.

Go try make a new mage now in solo HC, masochist and watch how fast it dies! (unless you’re going to play it super cautious)

While I agree SOME players where strong ( mine certainly wasn’t), it shouldn’t have been a flat nerf. I would have preferred to have seen diminishing returns, the more ward you got!

I see the complaining about sentinels have such high ehp compared to a mage now, well they dont without a lot of gear investment and time spent, before this nerf you could activate flame ward and beat the shit out of most sents. Give it a few days people will learn to adjust gearing and play, and hopefully on a more balanced playing field. And i think you will still have it easier than primalist and bm in general.

1 Like

Honestly I don’t see how we can adjust gear!

Not when you consider you have to spec heavily into intel, set glancing blow, set dodge, CSA, dodge rating etc…there isn’t many spots left for anything else, not without compromising the other defenses :frowning: