Post 1.0.3 Rune Switch From Force to Prismatic Armor?

[magicrectangle]

I think Galvanizing Ward and Energy Armor effects need to swap. Energy Armor should give innate life regen boost, Galvanizing Ward should give all armors the % DR boost. At least there would be some entertaining variety to armor choice.

That would be nice, the fact that nobody ever uses anything other than energy armor ought to give them a clue there.

I'd love to use storm armor / scramble, but there's no point to it if it just gets me one-shot.

Prismatic Armor was even prepatch way better than Force Armor, it just didn't give instant reward like Force Armor did, you needed good defensive gear to support the skill - and apparently most people just couldn't bear to have less than 20k dps or even 30k dps to actually survive stuff decently.

Many people like to actually do damage (or stack MF!), and that is okay. Yes, there was a defensive gear level for which prismatic was better than force before the patch, but it was pretty off the deep end on defense stacking, which most wizards don't want to do. Now the point at which prismatic outclasses force is much more reasonable.

Prismatic was not better than force before 1.03, and it is not better now, either. They each are "better" for a particular range of gear. Prismatic for defensively stacked gear, force for all other gearings (damage, MF).

[viech]

Many people like to actually do damage, and that is okay. Yes, there was a defensive gear level for which prismatic was better than force before the patch, but it was pretty off the deep end on defense stacking, which most wizards don't want to do. Now the point at which prismatic outclasses force is much more reasonable.

Prismatic was not better than force before 1.03, and it is not better now, either. They each are "better" for a particular range of gear. Prismatic for defensively stacked gear, force for offensively stacked gear.

I was pretty cynical there, of course I understand the desire to deal as much damage as possible, especially in a game like diablo where getting high numbers is essentially a huge part of the motivation to play the game.
I still think though that "high damage" is relative to what is needed for survivability - for decent survivability 30k dps+ is very high and it's not like that 30k dps are slow in terms of killing speed. If someone doesn't care about that and just wants to have as much dps as possible he can't really complain about being one-shotted or the difficulty of inferno in general - just a general remark to the whole damage/survivability-topic.

And yes, of course the choice of rune depends on the setup. I just overexaggerated to make my point that Prismatic Armor has always been better in term of high end defense.

[PhoeniX Skye]

Ugh, so..

With 20k HP you need 65%/65% DR to survive the hardest hitting attacks in Inferno without energy armor.
With 30k HP you need 60%/60% DR to survive the hardest hitting attacks in Inferno without energy armor.
With 40k HP you need 50%/50% DR to survive the hardest hitting attacks in Inferno without energy armor.

Looks like the oppression of 5 skill slot gameplay is here to stay for a while. God damn I hate energy armor.

Is this considering the hardest hits from regular mobs (Oppressor charges), or bosses as well (Rakanoth tele-smash, Belial poison pots)?

That's some good information. Was it based off of EHP calculations?

[Deced]

On a quick scan of a handful of posts in the topic linked, I gathered it was the hardest hits from regular (non-champ/boss) you'd likely get hit by. Like Oppressor charges and Phasing Hulkbeasts hit. They ignored things with incredibly slow windups that anyone with a pulse should be able to regularly dodge like Skeleton Great Axe swings, and the tall, long-legged monsters guarding Rift Oculuses in Act4.

[PhoeniX Skye]

On a quick scan of a handful of posts in the topic linked, I gathered it was the hardest hits from regular (non-champ/boss) you'd likely get hit by. Like Oppressor charges and Phasing Hulkbeasts hit. They ignored things with incredibly slow windups that anyone with a pulse should be able to regularly dodge like Skeleton Great Axe swings, and the tall, long-legged monsters guarding Rift Oculuses in Act4.

Ah ok thanks, I didn't know it was based on the links.

[konfeta]

I was pretty cynical there, of course I understand the desire to deal as much damage as possible, especially in a game like diablo where getting high numbers is essentially a huge part of the motivation to play the game.

Understatement of the year. Act 3 for me, with anything less than 40k DPS, is obscenely grindy and boring. Champions with 2-3 million HP are a regular enemy/target, compounded with neccessity to kite certain affixes across several screens. The disparity between champion and regular monster HP is absurd.

[magicrectangle]

Understatement of the year. Act 3 for me, with anything less than 40k DPS, is obscenely grindy and boring. Champions with 2-3 million HP are a regular enemy/target, compounded with neccessity to kite certain affixes across several screens. The disparity between champion and regular monster HP is absurd.

Extra health + shielding = lol if you're sitting at 20k damage, that's for sure. The attack speed nerf dropped me to 36k damage, and that seems okay, although I'd still like to get back up over 40k.

[Zekareisoujin]

Understatement of the year. Act 3 for me, with anything less than 40k DPS, is obscenely grindy and boring. Champions with 2-3 million HP are a regular enemy/target, compounded with neccessity to kite certain affixes across several screens. The disparity between champion and regular monster HP is absurd.

I notice that the number of champions/elites with hp below 2mil are pretty high: Molok, heralds of pestilence, fallens, fallen shaman, blood clan spearmans, skeleton archers, soul rippers/lashers. And then there are those who barely reach 2mil hp: blood clan warrior (pretty slow), fallen mongrels. The only exceptions are those that naturally have high hp like Hulking Phasebeasts, Tremor Demons, Fallen Overseers etc...

40k DPS is actually pretty decent, I find myself killing them within 45s given easy mods with just 40k dps.

[konfeta]

I've seen too many 2+ million HP "fragile base" champions. 45 seconds of almost non-stop DPS mode on a single champion pack is not "fast paced" from my perspective. The problem I have with those kind of fights is that they don't make an encounter more difficult. They make it tedious - you solved the fight in he first 15 seconds, now you just repeat same zero risk solution until it dies. Contrast it with fighting a fragile champion pack in a dungeon with Arcane/Frozen/Waller/Nightmarish Archers/Goatmen/Bloodcrushers or something - high risk of death at every point of the fight, but monsters fragile and burn down very fast when you get the shots off.


*Edit - oh that was FUN. 3 million HP Hellbat. SUPER FUN.

*Admittedly it made up for it by giving me a 1.4 million HP Mortar-Teleporter-Illusionist-Molten bats. Had to dodge a billion projectiles and bats that teleport right on top of me with molten, now this was actually an entertaining fight. Need more of that and less of the other.