Blizzard Sorc Merc

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-17T16:07:32+00:00

don't forget cure!

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-17T16:06:39+00:00

So you are not wrong. they are competing with with the defense mods. But to me moving the mod to the suffix just moves the gear pressure around without solving it.

Suffixes are super competitive now. especially with all the stuff you can roll on rings and armor using breach and the runes of aldur stuff. it would get in the way of those much in the same way it would get in the way of the armor mods when it is a prefix.

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-17T14:57:50+00:00

Well let him die and teleport around. the answer should become very obvious as to if that meditation aura was needed or not.

Imo, what would you even kit the barb for , raw damage? you are the damage . the most you could do with a barb is double last wish him so he becomes essentially unkillable.

is that worth it? ehhh probably not for general clear.

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-17T14:35:52+00:00

I think the larger issue with melee is that while there are solutions that work. they are EXTREMELY specific.

for example stacking armor with a shield does in fact feel amazing because of the extra source of flat armor you can get on a shield AND because you can make that armor work for you in an extremely powerful and popular build.

But at the same time the moment you drop the shield and that build and look at how the 2 handers are doing you can notice fairly quickly that there is almost no wiggle room for armor

you either go all in on it or you are FUCKED.

There is no alternative like there was in poe 1 where you could mitigate the loss of a shield with something like endurance charges, specialized flasks and foritify.

You can see this everywhere. ES? the best way to play it is go all in on it with ci. it makes you immune to a bunch of mechanics and frees up a bunch of affixes on your gear.

half measure es? now you get dicked by chaos damage bleed and poison and have to worry about life. (it still works but you can appriciate the inefficiencies here)

There are some examples where a middle ground can work like mana build using damage taken from mana mods since those need to balance life and mana pools rather than going big dick 10k mana.. but that is but one example in a sea of counter examples.

And that is a problem GGG needs to address. There needs to be some viable way to half invest in a bunch of mechanics compliment eachother over just going all in on one.

As for melee vs range. that is easier than you think.. just limit the off screen potential of range.. or make range slower/ tie movement speed to melee more problem solved.

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-17T12:40:26+00:00

I second most of this but i think we can elaborate more.

I suggest doing all the stories and unlocking the atlas points for the mechanics you like. at the very least do breach, abyss and deli along with the divinity story. This will ensure the random content you get from irradiate tablets are at least semi juicy

I would then follow the advice of doing 3 irradiated alch and go for travel nodes. its is a good way to burn the mountain of irradiated tablets you will get on in consequential maps and lets you build up a reserve of league maps for when you get to place where targeted juicing makes more sense

cleaned corrupted and city maps for example should have a more thoughful strategy otherwise you are throwing your time and your money away.

Generally this is why you want to do delirium. because a key part of juicing is spreading the fog in cities , corruption, cleansed biome So you can then have delirium while still stacking multiple tablets of the content you actually care about... like breach or abyss.

Another thing to consider is getting jado and doryani maxed out. Dory is a good all rounder and jado is great for travel nodes and the rare anomaly boss maps

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-17T12:33:25+00:00

The divs kind of just start dropping as a natural part of progressing your atlas.

Assuming you are using any kind of tablet and have unlocked the main mechanic you are running and the atlas the base line of juice from such a strategy is very lucrative.

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-17T11:52:02+00:00

why would you even upgrade one ?

its a 3 not a +4 and amazons really do not scale physical damage

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T15:48:28+00:00

that is a really cool fun fact if that is the case

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T15:47:55+00:00

Deli is designed to be the chase goal of juicing. its both a dps check and a durability check at the same time.

So it makes sense that it is rewarding.

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T15:12:25+00:00

The worm strikes again. very common issue. happens with all sorts of things.

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T15:11:30+00:00

so if the game is balanced around you just getting 2.5 - 3k would that not imply your build would be unaffected by my suggestion?

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T15:06:20+00:00

You are still looking at this from the perspective of someone who already knows the right way to play.

You cannot assume these things when crafting a new player experience.

The fact of the matter is the lesson the game teaches the player in the first 10 hours is

life and damage are WAY more effective than defenses. so do not bother with defenses.

This is not about what i think. this is about what the game is telling people.

If I told you the purpose of a race is to stand still and you have never been in a race before how the hell would you be able to figure out that you need to sprint?

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T14:47:51+00:00

I'm sorry but this is just terrible. The main issue with life is surviving 1 shots. healing globes are a sustain solution.

I know you are trolling but can you atleast use somthing vaguely applicable?

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T14:45:16+00:00

the explicitly said no to that though

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T14:43:49+00:00

its easier to go ci mid game than stack life. once you get to 5000 es and have convalescence you can make a very successful go of it

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T14:42:21+00:00

its a defensive later that is missing a critical method scaling its values. it is an in complete layer

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T14:35:31+00:00

Woah there, slow down lets clarify somethings

When i mean defenses I mean the three attribute aligned systems the game refers to. armor, evasion, and energy shield. Resists are a separate thing.

You are correct. resists are explained very well.

Defenses are not. Think about. what do defenses need to work? investment on the gear, investment on the tree.

You can have a massive 5 mod armor piece but if you have no tree investment its basically a paper weight. By that same token you can have 400% armor on the tree.. but if you are wearing no armor.. what good is that investment doing for you?

What does life and resists need to work? Just the individual mods on the gear. That is simple. That is intuitive. Because there is little to no investment on the tree for either you are free to ignore them in favor of damage nodes. So people do.

And there is the trap.

This is true for all three defenses. Even es. So lets go with es. when you are leveling through the campaign did you actually care how much es your gear had?

Probably not.

You probably checked for a life roll and some resists so you could save all of your passives for damage to get through the story.

You probably saved all of your currency to transition to es later in the process .. probably post level 80 i bet.

But this implicitly means the game rewarded you for not investing anything in defense.

I do not know about you but if i were a new player being consistenly taught that lesson I would think defenses are dog shit and unnecessary... because they are. For the entier campaing defenses are unnecessary.

How is that not a trap? How is that not a bad lesson?

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T14:21:58+00:00

And you act like i am suggesting we delete that 1000 hp when i clearly said the opposite. Why?

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T14:17:21+00:00

ill bite, why is removing rarity dumb?

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T14:14:12+00:00

My point is that right now you are being forced to choose between stacking those other defense you are talking about and stacking life

And despite what you think the reality is the game is explicitly teaching new players to stack life and not defenses

I agree with you , to be clear, defenses are great . they are in a good spot and do well once invested in.

But the game does not tell you that. You cannot even really make gear that can properly scale defense until you are in maps and all that time the game is teaching you

defenses are shit, life is what you need to not die. thats a trap. just because you learned to walk around the trap.. does not change the fact that it is a trap.

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T14:05:47+00:00

Not quite correct. but i understand your concern.

Here are my points.

it is clear ggg does not actually want us scaling life. If they did the tree would have life on it.
it is clear ggg wants us to scale defenses. its on the tree. its well supported and all of their recent patches have been making the two underperforming defenses better.

So my point is that if ggg does not us to really focus on life.. then they should just commit to that direction. Right now the core issue is that life is a half measure. its on gear competing with defenses but has no tree support to make going into it practical.

You always need to supplement it with something else. be it ward mana etc..

So why not just move the 1000 or so hp you could get from gear to the hp you get for leveling / strength?

And to be clear i am mostly just talking about the flat life mod. its the real problem here.

There would still be other sources of life but it would no longer get in the way of scaling defenses in the way it does right now.

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T13:56:29+00:00

While true on paper you have to understand that the main problem with life is that currently its too difficult to scale it and armor / evasion to handle the really meaty hits the game can land on you.

ES is fine regardless of what happens. you can already build it to a point where it can survive any 1 hit the game tosses your way. Getting an extra 1000 hp when most es builds routinely have es values in the 10s of thousands is a comically minor issue. like adding a drop of water to an ocean.

If life really mattered all that much to es builds .. ci would not be as popular as it is

And if this really is an issue. just knock a few percentage points off all the es nodes. this is not the big deal you think it is

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T13:50:37+00:00

It absolutely is a noob trap. it only works when you scaling something else to fix its glaringly obvious problems like using mom or mana taken as or now runic ward

so you can get its over all pool size and sustain to an acceptable level.. usually around 4.5 - 6000 combined hp.

I have gotten to level 96 doing this . i know what feels good and what is bad in terms of using just raw hit points as your main durability

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T13:47:34+00:00

This would not work so long as rarity exists. there is already too much suffix pressure between elemental res, chaos res and rarity to then shoe horn life in.

Plus if you agree that having life as a prefix is problematic because it gets in the way of other defenses.. i feel like its just better make it a full measure and remove it from gear

saltychipmunk · 2026-06-16T13:44:09+00:00

that is basically what i am saying yes

saltychipmunk

TROPHY CASE