 | [Barb] CotA:TaO is no longer viable.(1) | Category: PTR FeedbackJune-30-2015 11:01 PM PDT (9 years ago)  |
PTR GR60 video, see edit below: https://youtu.be/WiqwDo4cVrs?t=1740Call of the Ancients: Together as OneIn patch 2.2, CotA:TaO was taken as part of the IK4/WW6 build for 50% damage reduction, allowing use of Convention of the Elements instead of Unity in solo play. Since the ancients take half of your incoming damage, they require a significant source of healing to keep them alive. Since pets only receive healing from health globes, the solution was to use: Battle Rage:Swords to PloughsharesHowever, with BR:S2P changed to the following in 2.3: Battle Rage:Swords to PloughsharesEven with S2P in 2.2, it becomes a struggle to keep ancients alive in GR58 and above. Without the steady healing from globes generated by BR:S2P, anciencts swiftly die even in mid-level content. It's important to note that not only IK4/WW6 is affected by this change but also IK6 builds, which it appears is likely intended as the basis of many of the new Cleave/HotA and Weapon Throw/SS builds. In fact, IK6 builds need CotA:TaO even more since they are lacking the 40% damage mitigation that WotW inherently provides. Not only IK4/WW6 is affected, but also any potential HotA builds, and more generally any build that uses 2-pc IK set. Any build with the IK set playing in GR60+ is going to want the CotA:TaO rune combined, likely, with the new FotA shoulders. Sure, HotA has the Birthright rune to generate globes, but that's great, we're stuck with one viable HotA rune, and even then we need to play chase the globes in a highly stationary build. With IK4/WW6, playing chase the globes is not too bad because WW is a highly mobile melee build and we can continue to deal damage while picking up health globes. Not so with HotA. Instead of reverting BR:S2P to its former glory, I propose an alternate solution. Even though BR:S2P does a good job healing pets, at GR58 and above, ancients still fall over on a regular basis. It gets harder and harder to keep them alive as incoming damage increases, While your player has other healing sources (blood funnel, life regen, life per hit, life per fury spent, life per kill), none of these benefit your pets. Thus, generally, ancients die first due to lack of healing, then you yourself swiftly die due to loss of 50% mitigation. My proposed solution is for pets to receive healing based on the healing received by the player from all sources. This would allow the healing problem to be solved multiple ways, and recovery for pets to scale naturally based on the player's recovery, instead of requiring a health globe generating skill (of which there are very few, and we just lost our best one). Edit: Forgot to mention that this change was omitted from the patch notes! Edit2: Video of GR60 PTR gameplay: https://youtu.be/WiqwDo4cVrs?t=1740 Apologies for the unedited video. First part is me trying out cleave/HotA in GR60 to see how it compares in terms of survivability to IK4/WW6 at same level. Cleave/HotA's survivability deficiency is another discussion... IK4/WW6 starts at 29m mark. I start by showing gear and spec, then jumping into GR60 rift. I'm primarily looking for elites to showcase survivability and to see how long ancients stay alive, not focused on clearing the rift. Against a single elite pack, ancients will normally stay alive longer than the cooldown, but still need to be resummoned often, meaning constant attention must be paid to the ancients' health pool. Against 2 elite packs, ancients started dying faster than the cooldown duration. It's important to note that incoming damage in GR60 on PTR is roughly same as GR50 on live. I tried similar setup in GR60 on live, and without healing from health globes, it was impossible to keep ancients alive. They died within 15s against trash. Thus, I conclude that CotA:TaO will not be viable above GR60 in the 2.3 patch. My preferred solution, as mentioned above, is to share all incoming healing with pets. This would allow more flexibility in choosing where our healing is coming from, since currently in 2.2 if we pick CotA:TaO then BR:S2P is a required skill to generate a constant stream of health globes just to keep our pets alive, even though our character doesn't necessarily need the additional healing. By sharing all incoming healing, it will not only remove the requirement of taking a health globe generating skill, also will be easier to more consistently keep ancients alive. Gameplay will be shifted towards engaging monsters instead of chasing globes. | ||
 | [Barb] CotA:TaO is no longer viable.(47) | July-20-2015 1:44 PM PDT (9 years ago) |
| There was a bug with pet life regeneration where player pets were receiving significantly less life regen than intended. This will be fixed with the upcoming 2.3 PTR Patch 1 scheduled for this week. Call of the Ancients is the most visible example because the Together as One rune redirects a lot of damage to them. In their case, they are intended to regenerate about ~5-6% of max life per second baseline, but previously were only regenerating about 1% per second. | ||
