How do you feel about lifesaving skills?

[Dishonor]

I think they're fine in theory. Like has been said, the classes that don't have them DO have other mobility options (teleport, vault, leap, etc).

The main thing to remember is that these things take up a valuable space in one of your skill/passive slots. Which means you're sacrificing combat ability in order to cheat death - potentially making you more likely to have to cheat death. And yeah, when it comes to locked-in boss fights, it wont save you.

I agree, but it is only true for average HC player and average gear. If you consider top players (not me) and top gear, this skills completely remove random deaths and make them immortal. Especially in team play, where you can relay on others help. I'm not saying, that it is wrong or good. They make some unbalance between classes in HC.

[Cerzi]

I'm not so sure, top players with top gears should be the ones who die least to random deaths, especially if theyre using mobility skills to avoid any chance of a random death. If you mean dying to lag/crashes, then maybe, although I imagine that if you're not in control of your character then these death-avoiding skills will just delay death for a few seconds, nothing more.

But yeah, if you really know the capabilities of your hero and the capabilities of what youre fighting, legit random deaths should always be avoidable. Dying to an unlucky wall-in isn't a random death: you know you're fighting a waller, so you have to take that into consideration in how you position yourself and play.

[AurelianZ]

Wizard has force armor, which is the most overpowered skill in the game. And people don't ***** about that.

[Toque]

I think they give you a false sense of security more than anything. Since experienced HC players run into less and less risky situations as time goes on, those skills essentially become useless in 99.99% of play. I don't really see them as any sort of advantage in HC play.

[Red Verix]

I see your point OP. I've felt the same while browsing some classes skills, especially passives like Spirit Vessel, or Near Death Experience.

I also have some negative feelings towards the possible overpoweredness of Mirror Image + Fracture + Illusionist in HC. The best thing you can do for yourself in HC is to get enemies to fight something else, this is doubly true for high DPS long-range classes like the Wizard. Considering that MI can be runed to increase the life of duplicates to 100% of your own, and the 100% uptime of this spell combo, you literally have a massive self-tanking setup.

I hope this doesn't make other builds more or less pointless or invariably riskier.

Since HC players progress so cautiously, death is only really due to the one rare split-second incident. Even though D2 had alt-F4, you had to be fast enough to hit it. These skills, on the other hand, save your butt FOR you, giving you plenty of time to completely escape the situation, portal, whatever, then come back when the cooldown finishes for another round.

This would be a beautiful fix IMHO: Make it a 50% chance to work. No HC player is going to count on that as a fallback, but it's still a viable option for saving your arse. It's the "100%" failsafe auto-lifesaver that's the problem here.

[Helpoing]

Wizard has force armor, which is the most overpowered skill in the game. And people don't ***** about that.

It would be interesting to know at what point is that damage reduced. Before all other resistances and reductions are calculated or after them.

I think they give you a false sense of security more than anything. Since experienced HC players run into less and less risky situations as time goes on, those skills essentially become useless in 99.99% of play. I don't really see them as any sort of advantage in HC play.

Well, if I had a similar thing to Spirit Vessel on my HC chars in D2, then I'd probably avoid every single death I've had.

This would be a beautiful fix IMHO: Make it a 50% chance to work. No HC player is going to count on that as a fallback, but it's still a viable option for saving your arse. It's the "100%" failsafe auto-lifesaver that's the problem here.

Haha, even a 75% chance would stop most HC players from using the skill. But then you need to add some flavor to those passives in order for them to be competitive with other choices.

[Red Verix]

Well remember, most of these skills come later levels (30 for Spirit Vessel, 58 for Near Death Experience). 30 is still pretty early to have a skill like Spirit Vessel, but for other classes they'll have to make it to around 60 before they get that skill, which we may need just to step into Inferno anyway.

[HardRock]

I've said this before, but I think NDE is weak, while Spirit Vessel shows potential. Both of these skills basically give you extra HP when you most need it, but after that NDE becomes completely useless for 90 seconds. Spirit Vessel has permanent bonuses at least and quite good ones. I would take Guardian's Path (if I dual-wield), Seize the Initiative (with 1k+ DEX) or Resolve over NDE any day.

But WD turns into a fast invincible and invisible spirit for 3 seconds, so he can easily run away from mobs (and if 3 seconds aren't enough, then he can cast Spirit Walk right after he comes back)

First of all, we don't know whether Spirit Walk (or when it activates Spirit Vessel) turn you invincible. Maybe it does, but the tooltip doesn't say anything about this.

Also, the 3 seconds duration isn't guaranteed. If Spirit Vessel really works like Spirit Walk does, then you leave behind a physical body when you enter the spirit realm which serves as a decoy (this is why I don't think either skill makes you invincible), which has half of your HP and when monsters kill it your Spirit Walk will end. Given that you just died, I think the decoy will often die before the 3 seconds is up.

cast TP, heal and re-group in town for a minute and a half, then go back.

I'd rather find skills that constantly work in the field than to go back to town when the going gets tough. Over time, that will be a much less efficient way to play I think.

The Barbarian doesn't have these options

Yes he does. He has Relentless, which doubles his HP below 20%, effectively giving him 10% extra HP. Unlike Spirit Walk however it doesn't have a cooldown, but it's immensely powerful defensive and offensive bonus (no Fury cost for abilities) activates only below 20% HP as well.

While we're at it, the Wizard has Unstable Anomaly as well, which may save you more times than NDE could.

The Demon Hunter is the only class that doesn't have a similar skill, but at least she can make enemies regret their decision to kill her with the Grenadier passive.

Wizard has force armor, which is the most overpowered skill in the game. And people don't ***** about that.

Some people do.
http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/s...le-quot-Wizard

Considering that MI can be runed to increase the life of duplicates to 100% of your own, and the 100% uptime of this spell combo, you literally have a massive self-tanking setup.

You assume that monsters will behave as in D2. That's not the case at all. Enemies often ignore followers and pets in D3. Still, projectiles can be easily "absorbed" by them even like this.

These skills, on the other hand, save your butt FOR you, giving you plenty of time to completely escape the situation

Except NDE, which revives you in the place you died. If you couldn't save yourself before what makes you think that you'll be able to survive at 35% HP and Spirit? Honestly, I think NDE blows. I would prefer a skill like Unstable Anomaly instead of NDE.

This would be a beautiful fix IMHO: Make it a 50% chance to work. No HC player is going to count on that as a fallback, but it's still a viable option for saving your arse. It's the "100%" failsafe auto-lifesaver that's the problem here.

No, the real problem is people's misperception of these skills. They are simple heals with a really long cooldowns. This means that using damage reduction skills could be much better alternatives to them. For example, Spirit Vessel heals you for 10% of total HP when you would otherwise die, at max every 90 seconds. However, Jungle Fortitude adds 25% to your effective HP at all times, meaning that unless you already have +250% EHP from various sources (some combination of INT and STR for example) Jungle Fortitude will be simply better at increasing your life pool. To be honest, I would still prefer JF even with more EHP since it's always active, unlike SV and that will save me many trips to town and waiting there for 90 seconds. Of course, SV's permanent bonuses complicate things.

In any case, adding a chance to these skills would make them even less useful and completely unpredictable and so I really doubt anyone would use them like that.

[Red Verix]

Great points HardRock.

What I DON'T want to do in HC mode is:

1. Constantly hot-swap spells to counter the next pack of monsters rather than have a stable build.
2. Have to take no-brainer spells like Mirror Image + Teleport + Fracture (if it is as good as it looks) over builds I come up with.
3. Logout/Login to reset monster stats.
4. Overlevel content to be safe, to the point where you're ahead of the curve enough to re-create the over-leveled EZ-mode beta effect.
5. Be able to run from most fights rather than be forced to improvise a solution.

While of course I could NOT do any of these things and make it harder on myself, I prefer the game to impose the restrictions rather than me. I've yet to play a game that really puts my thinking and creative skills to the test. (Except for SC2 ladder, but it's not really my type of game, I found out.)

[HardRock]

1. Constantly hot-swap spells to counter the next pack of monsters rather than have a stable build.

Doing this (the hot-swapping) will be a really inefficient way to progress I imagine, or at the very least risky. While the skill switch cooldown is only 5 seconds on Normal, it will most likely get higher and higher on the later difficulties. With the 6 skill limit, losing even one of your skills for extended periods of time could be really dangerous later in the game and if you wait for the cooldown you lose efficiency. I like this solution, because you can still experiment whenever you want, but the cost of that will get progressively higher, which is good incentive to eventually learn what works and what doesn't.

2. Have to take no-brainer spells like Mirror Image + Teleport + Fracture (if it is as good as it looks) over builds I come up with.

That combo definitely looks good, but I think the MIs will be kinda unreliable for reducing incoming damage, due to the AI's tendency to ignore them. I don't know how effective they will be compared to other defensive options, but I always preferred controllable skills. For this reason Frost Nova/Cold Snap with Evocation and/or Critical Mass looks much more attractive to me.

3. Logout/Login to reset monster stats.

There's a 10 seconds logout timer in D3, so if you can escape the dangerous monsters you've just met you can do this, but unless you cannot circumvent them somehow I wouldn't risk it.

4. Overlevel content to be safe, to the point where you're ahead of the curve enough to re-create the over-leveled EZ-mode beta effect.

The way the Diablo games are set up, this could happen anytime if you get lucky and find an amazing item. Overleveling can be easily avoided if you don't like to do it, but frankly I bet that many Hardcore players will err on the side of caution and repeat quests and areas. Now that there will be D1-style random quests and events everywhere this could be quite a fun thing to do.

5. Be able to run from most fights rather than be forced to improvise a solution.

Honestly, I think if you bring even one defensive skill with you (and who wouldn't in Hardcore) and you can deal at least two types of damage, then you'll be able to kill most enemies, even if in a really inefficient way. I think after weeks or months of playing everyone will have favorite builds for the different areas of the game and they will be based on past experiences in said areas. So while you may not be able to improvise solutions mid-battle (because of the possibly too restrictive respec cooldown) over time you will do just that. This is how I imagine things anyway. I'm really curious to see how varied people's builds will be.