Blizzballer - Is ES worth 4 points???

[bodis]

Building a blizzballer to try and do Baal runs and just to try it out wacked a ES Ormus on yesterday... I was impressed

ES was at level 13, which is about 65% damage to mana, yes mana bulb goes down quick enough but red one stays where it was, Include CtA and Insight and WOW.

Blizz Ormus would do me more good I think than ES for damage.

Yeah I know you would need Kelpie on your merc for Baal, but if wack remaining skill points in energy instead of Vita...

Any thoughts on that???

[krovak]

I would never use ES without points in Telekinesis. With instantly emptied mana bulb, you are not going to tele out when surrounded.

[Heskla]

As Krovak said: Some TK needed!
As for your question; Some energy can't hurt. But, how much life do you have right now?

[bodis]

1.9k with 700 mana after BO

Insight helps mana bulb keep full, but I guess I will have to swap for Kelpie for Baal running

[Jaedhann]

ES without telekenisis is both awesome and very dangerous. Like Krovak said it is dangerous because you can't tele out of a pack because of constant manadrain. Agains ranged monsters however it will save you most of the time because they won't kill you in their first volley. They don't surround you, so you can always walk away. It also negates many stray shots or single monster that take a whack at you.

I wouldn't use ES in places with many hard hitting monsters. It's just like any pack is manaburn in there. In places without hardhitters however it's very practical.

-Jae

[maxicek]

If you want to mess around with it, make 'Memory' in a +3 Energy shield staff for a +9 Pre-buff.

IMHO ES isn't worth the effort unless it is a dedicated build. I used ES from an orb for my 2h Sword Enchantress, but the mana loss was a big problem in Hell. I think it is best for dedicated builds, I have an ES Orb sorc in Hell A4 and she is doing OK at the moment.

[Heskla]

Bodis, you realize how MS/TK works, right? I guess. :smiley: 1.9 Life in SC(?) have to work perfectly. To get rid of the sometimes-to-appear-issue of mana loss, I'd put some points into energy, even thou most guides "ban" it...

It's quite hard to tell when not playing the char myself, but 1.9k life just seems more than enought...

Edit:

As the posters above mantions, a non-ES dedicated build as blizzballer don't have much spare skillpoints, right?

[bodis]

Right I can feel the mutual feeling about the question :)))

I wont bother with it for now, I will try to remove insight from my merc and see how I do with mana then, on the other hand, should I change the merc to defiance one as well??? I use Prayer one atm, works well with insight :)

Thanks

[Heskla]

Right I can feel the mutual feeling about the question :)))

I wont bother with it for now, I will try to remove insight from my merc and see how I do with mana then, on the other hand, should I change the merc to deiance one as well??? I use Prayer one atm, works well with insight :)

Thanks

For boss-running I like defience better than HF, but I don't know about prayer...

[maxicek]

HF Merc with Reapers = Monsters hardly moving. Lister & Co are HF immune though, so they can still give him a clobbering.

[Colorless Green]

Just to throw my voice into the crowd:

ES w/o TK = basically pointless.
one hard point in ES = huge waste.
If you must use ES, use a memory staff. It will basically be a hindrance without TK to synergize, though.


IMHO ES isn't worth the effort unless it is a dedicated build.

My thoughts exactly.

-CG

[nebux]

not even a single point in es. why? mana burn monsters, lots of them in wsk, gloamz00rz

[Ugla]

Yeah I know you would need Kelpie on your merc for Baal, but if wack remaining skill points in energy instead of Vita...
I'm a bit confused here :scratch: Do you refer to having mana issues without 'Insight'?

My vanilla blizzballer has 45 hardpoints in energy and could use a bit more, but since she's a blocking one I didn't go overboard here.

TK won't save you from mana drain, since the WSK "offers" elemental damage mostly. I generally disagree that ES is useless without TK, but it's simply too expensive for a blizzballer (4 points) - she needs every point to do some decent damage. Use some DtM in any case (e.g. Tal's belt) for safer teleporting.

Lister&Co. can be frozen by GS, and fall quickly under Blizzard - the second wave is the worst one, iirc. My sorcie has an HF merc - to prevent the waves from spreading :undecided: (haven't played her for a while).


Who's General Failure and why is he reading my disk?
nice one :laugh:

[Ugla]

too late to edit..

Lister & Co are HF immune though, so they can still give him a clobbering.
This is apparently not true. I just made a few runs with HF merc to check. They turn blue and move slower just like the others. Only Baal seems untouched by HF.

[krovak]

TK won't save you from mana drain, since the WSK "offers" elemental damage mostly.

If I understand the TK synergy correctly, hard points in TK reduce the "mana cost" of every point of damage the sorceress receives(2 mana instead of 1 life with 0 TK, 0.675 mana instead of 1 life with 20 hard ponints in TK). The type of damage does not matter, does it?:shocked: :scratch:

[maxicek]

This is apparently not true. I just made a few runs with HF merc to check. They turn blue and move slower just like the others. Only Baal seems untouched by HF.

I wasn't 100% when I wrote that - so what is immune to HF?
Gloams, ghosts.... ?

[Colorless Green]

The big walking pillars of ice that breathe ice on you and certain types of frenzytaurs. No version of either gloams nor ghosts is HF-immune to my recollection.


The type of damage does not matter, does it?

100% correct. However, it's possible Ugla was referring to the fact that ES is applied before resists, so it is commonly considered a poor solution to elemental attacks. A less-abused upside to this is that it's applied before negative resists as well.



-CG

[Ugla]

My point was that physical damage is "scaled" to ~0%DR, while the elemental damage is more appropriate to ~50% resists, which means the ES takes almost 4-times more damage from elemental attacks (8-times more without TK) than a body would take (resists don't count for ES). This is simply too much.

@CG: no matter how poor your elemental resists are, they are still better than those -100% the ES "has".

@maxicek: ghosts etc. have CBF by default :wink3:, They are not immune to HF (much like the characters).

[Colorless Green]

ES has 0% resist, not -100%.

Well, technically speaking, ES doesn't have any resists. ES is applied before resists are factored in to things.

ES considers elemental damage to be four times higher than the damage that would go to your life pool with 75% resists. If you have 0 TK (so 1 damage = 2 mana), then you would indeed take 8 points of mana from your mana pool for every one point that would otherwise have been taken from your life pool if you have max resists.

Per your own post (http://forums.diabloii.net/showpost.php?p=6117032&postcount=16), the same is true for physical resist (PDR%), so if you have 50% PDR, twice as much damage will be run through ES and eventually hit your mana pool as would otherwise be hitting your life pool.

As for..

@CG: no matter how poor your elemental resists are, they are still better than those -100% the ES "has".

Since ES is applied before resists, if you're up against a blizzsorc (or some convicting gloams or whatever) that has your resists below zero, less damage will be run through ES to eventually be applied to your mana pool than would otherwise be applied to your life pool, since the damage in question is calculated before resists. If you, for some reason, are playing an ES sorc and dueling a cold sorc with maxed CM and you didn't bring a psapph shield, this is a quite helpful feature.


-CG


edit: All that being said, the original question was "is it worth it", and the point where we got sidetracked is TK. Completely regardless of the source of damage, having zero TK will be a vastly larger drain on your mana pool.

[Ugla]

ES has 0% resist, not -100%.
Even on Hell? I always thought ES uses the base resist value based on game difficulty (i.e. 0%, -50%, -100%)

to update my previous post:
Souls appear to be immune to HF, but can be chilled by cold attacks. Well, I'll stop testing stuff like that, since I don't like dying during the MFO :angry:

[Colorless Green]

ES is applied before resists are factored in to things.


Q: What is the energy shield bug?
A: It doesn’t exist. This ‘bug’ you might’ve heard about, is simply an intended change from blizzard. This change is that energy shield is now applied before resistances, meaning your mana gets drained four times as much as it used to with maxed resistances.


The power of Energy Shield and importance of Telekinesis become more profound when looking at the damage resolution order. If damage is inflicted on a character, certain steps are resolved in a specific order before final life loss is determined and applied. For us, the following steps are of importance:

* Energy Shield: This is where the damage is redirected by Energy Shield and mana loss due to Energy Shield occurs.
* Damage Reduced by X/Magic Damage Reduced by X: The damage that is not redirected by Energy Shield is reduced by the appropriate amount and possibly nullified.
* Resistances: Resistances are applied. This phase does not just include the resistances listed in the character screen (Fire/Cold/Lightning/Poison) but also Magical damage and Physical damage (gained from equipment like Shaftstop). This phase is also where curses like Lower Resist, Amplify Damage and Decrepify are applied, as is Conviction.
* X% absorb: %-wise absorb is applied here. I won't go into details here, since we aim to avoid this phase.
* +X absorb: See above.
* Damage Goes to Mana: Mana is gained based on the amount of damage still left at this point.
* Ouch: Damage is applied to life.
* Mana Burn: Technically not part of the damage resolution, but part of the hit resolving that occurs after damage resolution. I mention it here to indicate that it will not take down Energy Shield before Energy Shield gets the chance to redirect the damage.


- Energy Shield is applied before resistance equipment and absorb. Huge elemental attacks will drain your mana pool far faster then anything else.

-CG

(ten chars)

[Klæmint Vágadal]

Since Blizzballers are already strapped for Skill points, I say use em' for more Blizz dmg, because when you get good at Baal running, you won't need ES to survive.

[MYK]

I'd like to mention a little bit of info.
ES even with maxed TK is dangerous for teleporting purposes. A high level teleport with a low mana cost (Insight makes this pretty easy with a good sized mana stock) is way more beneficial when combined with ES even with a single point in Telekinesis.