👍 Energy Shield Recharge and interaction with DoT

Ok, share a link to those characters, I’d be glad to take a look — but only HC ones. Standard doesn’t interest me because it’s not a reliable reference. You know, in Standard if you insist you can eventually reach endgame even naked. So I won’t consider SF builds at all.

That’s first. Second, even if you had such characters, that’s not really an argument for this problem, because the issue still remains.

And it’s also not an argument to say that ES is too strong of a defense — that would rather point to a different problem.

I’ll say this: I’ve been playing HC exclusively as Shadow since the very beginning in 2013, and I never noticed my characters having ‘too strong’ defense with ES. In fact, something was always missing, and although I reached level 90, I never actually made it to endgame.

Your post is not about HC specifically, but I'm certain you would be able find HC builds level 100 on HC that are using es recharge as their main defense. Do a search on POE ninja, search by max energy shield. If don't see any at the top, try search for spellbreaker or wicked ward.

If you really can't find any after that, let me know, and I will find you some. I'm sure you can find a video of someone tanking a shaper beam as someone in this post has mentioned, the mechanic doesn't change in HC, only the penalty for getting it wrong.

"

I’ll say this: I’ve been playing HC exclusively as Shadow since the very beginning in 2013, and I never noticed my characters having ‘too strong’ defense with ES. In fact, something was always missing, and although I reached level 90, I never actually made it to endgame.

In 2013, you are probably right, but since the new bases have been introduced getting high ES is much easier. Take a look a my character "RepairBlade" in standard league, level 100 trickster, which I believe I played in necropolis league, even before the extra base tier was added. It is ES recharge defense. Yes it is a SC character, but it is far stronger defense wise than anything else I have played in any league. It did all ubers, and could pretty much tank anything, the dps is modest, but I don't remember it having problems with DOT. Sure some of the gear is good, but I am not a trade tycoon that plays completely min-maxed top end builds with mirror tier gear. The non-ES builds I have played since then will die long before this one runs into any problems.

HC in general is just tough. Unless you are a player that is very good at the game, reaching endgame bossing in HC is difficult. I also have played a lot of HC, and know it is difficult to learn/complete bosses, because you are back to the beach if you make a slight mistake, and have many hours of play to get back to that point and have another try. Since then I have played a lot of SC trade/ruthless and have been able to learn some of the endgame content, faster than I ever would by simply doing HC. It may help me if I ever do those bosses on HC, as I will be more familiar with the mechanics. I do not think this is specifically related to ES though. I see where you are coming from that having ES recharge disabled from dot is very dangerous in HC. I just think that is part of the game. Most builds have aspects like that. RF for example, which I have played extensively in HC, is highly effected by all the mechanics getting added to the game that prevent healing. It's part of the game. Sometimes the mechanics can become unfair and do need adjusting, but often they are necessary to prevent builds for being powerful at everything.

When playing ES in HC, I would definitely be using Vaal discipline, as a failsafe, if I was not playing with logout macro. Vaal skill are clunky and unreliable, I know, but it is a start. Temporal rift might also be an option. It can be extremely dangerous in HC if used incorrectly, but is very powerful at getting back to high health pool when you encounter something such as your recovery being disabled, and also can reduce debuff durations, that might be preventing the recharge from starting.

"

Belegur85#5784 wrote:

A lot of builds will be running all the ES recovery methods, so it is not as simple as saying just recharge needs to be buffed, which I don't think it does. I see a lot of people playing powerful builds that use recharge mechanics.

Where you see it? Can i have a link, pls? Even multi mirror ES stack builds don't use "Faster start ES recharge" and "increased ES recharge rate"

That's a top Trickster/Occultist ninja builds, noone from them doesn't use even single recharge node or affix.

What to say about other classes or not multimirror builds. They don't even aware that this nodes exists. And again why we have lots of nodes on tree and affixes on gear which noone uses?

UPD: ok, i look at your RepairBlade, you actually took some ES recharge nodes on Trickster, i agree with his Spellbreaker + WW it make sense. But what to do other classes? Again why we have nodes that actual only for 1% of builds?

I'm not really an expert on ES builds, I just know that when I played that build it was mega strong, and it was not that long ago. Also in the gameplay section, I often see people using energy shield recharge equipment. It is probably right, that this has a lot to do with trickster being strong, and the mechanic is less viable if not using trickster. Also that the nodes on the tree, probably are not worth taking, since you can get it on gear.

I will take a look and see if I can find anything current that might be a good recharge build. I'm not familiar with the current ES meta, but I will post if I see something that might be a suggestion.

Again, I'm not necessarily saying that recharge is very strong currently, just that in my opinion, ES should be closely looked at to see if it is balanced, because it seems very strong to me, and changes to recharge would only make it stronger, because it is available on all ES builds without needing investment. In the same way, I'm not suggesting to only use recharge. Most builds can leech ES, which is very strong. That build I played could not leech, because of blade trap, but it also used some other recovery like ghost dance and regen, to help, because why not, if it is available without much investment and helps, no reason to take only recharge.

Edit:

Ok, in SC trade Merc, 2% of builds are using wicked ward, which I think is a fair bit. 80% of those are trickster, which does seem a bit imbalanced, indicating perhaps that recharge builds do tend to be largely the domain of trickster currently. To give some context, 30% of builds in Merc trade are CI, which seems high to me. Settlers was 16%. I'm only looking at WW because it is easy to search for. There will be other recharge builds that do not use WW, and some of these builds may not be using recharge, but have it for some other reason. I don't think WW can be reached by a timeless jewel, but who knows, maybe there is a reason to take it without recharge, like EB/MOM for resources rather than just defenses.

Then also I block ES leech support, because they are at least hybrid recover. 38% of the above were using that. I block Ghost reaver as well, there's not really any overlap, but builds using it will not be recharging. Most used build looks to be blight of contagion. Don't know anything about the build, but it would make sense that a DOT build can not leech, so recharge might be good. I do not immediately see recharge being spec'd into, but they likely don't need more recovery. There's about 100 players in this subsection that have over 15k ES, which means with only 5% regen, recovering 750hp per second and with the WW penalty, at base, recharge 2500 per second, and these are hybrid evasion builds as well, not just pure ES. If you can recover 3k ES per second, without further investment beyond just the base defense, and if it is not interruptible, ES builds become basically immune to DOT for general purposes, or your need to balance DOT numbers around those numbers, which will be rough for other builds. That is like having a bottomless life flask permanently turned on. Pathfinder can do something similar, but it still requires getting flask charges.

Other than this, there are some attack based builds, MS, PS, KB, flicker. It might be possible to leech es on those builds in someway, so I wont comment much, but at the very least, they have the ability to recharge. Bane and Ice trap. DOT and trap, so I don't think they can leech. They do not look to be heavily investing in recharge on tree or gear, but there is some, and I just don't think they need to with this amount of ES. They do not look to be getting a lot of regen, so that seems to me like their main recovery method is recharge.

Looking at non trickster players, I will remove zealots oath, as that is an indicator of regen, and aegis aroura. A lot of these builds look to be minion builds, which would not have easy access to leech. A lot seem to be block builds and probably are not getting hit much due to this and the minion protection, so can get to a safe location when they need to recharge. There's not a whole lot there.

In HCSSF, I was somewhat wrong. I have been playing too much SC it seems, and may have assumed it is stronger than it is for HC. I think this is likely not because the builds are not strong, but rather gearing is difficult. However there does still seem to be viable builds. Blight of contagion looks to still be getting played, and other than that the main one is Power siphon with locus mine support, which looks to be relying on recharge to me.

Here's a video of Ziz talking about the Blight of contagion build as a league starter for SSFHC. He says the build is just average, but he said the video he is using is of a player, Shibo, that took it to level 100 HC last season, before it got buffed this season.

Recommends switching to ES from hybrid at 6k es, where the recharge nodes are added. (12:20)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9i9i4NZkNA

POB linked from video, contains WW and essence surge.
https://pobb.in/9gj8clsJ9fIG

HC settlers, Blight of contagion highest level players.
https://poe.ninja/builds/settlershc/?skills=Blight+of+Contagion

I can not recommend the build myself as I have not played it. I can certainly recommend the CI bladetrap trickster I played, I think it would be great for HC, I just do not recommend it as a SSF starter. I had the items and was leveled before I created it. I did not use a guide so can't pass it on, I pieced it together from what others were doing in the meta, after I made the recharge body amour from necropolis crafting. Here is someone talking about a dual wield version they created, and using it to face tank a list of Uber mechanics with recharge, without needing WW. There is a level of RNG with getting it to start, "fairly consistently" is not ideal for HC, but it gives an idea of what is possible, and realistically, you are not intentionally tanking these mechanics in HC, that is the upper end of the build, any protection against those mechanics it pretty good, as most builds will just die instantly to them. It is also possible to have Vaal discipline or temporal rift as a backup if concerned about the recovery not starting when hit by one of these mechanics. Something they also mention is Lethe Shade, which I think might not of been mentioned in the thread yet. It will not help with the recharge prevention, but it can make DOT much less dangerous.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/y8iwve/ephemeral_edge_blade_trap_trickster_solid_uber/
https://pobb.in/92mU9nK4Jdf-

The gear they are using is not min-maxed, and is from 3 years ago before the base tiers increased. They said they only used 20DIV on the build. While not recommended as a league starting build, it is not completely unrealistic for SSF, if you had an ephemeral edge. The only thing other I see that would be unreliably attainable would be the amulet, but I don't think it enables the build, it is just very good for it, a budget rare version could be used as an alternative, and I see Badge of the brotherhood variant being used on some SC builds. It is likely that this build or something similar was part of creating popularity in the meta before and leading up to necropolis, where I saw players were using it. Splitting steel has been more popular, with the leech and Ephemeral edge got a nerf in Mercenaries, but I can see there are some people still using it in SC, I just think there are stronger build in the meta currently.

Merc SC trade. Bladetrap Trickster.
https://poe.ninja/builds/mercenaries?skills=Blade+Trap

Settlers SC trade. Bladetrap Trickster.
https://poe.ninja/builds/settlers/?skills=Blade+Trap&class=Trickster

Settlers HCSSF. Bladetrap Trickster.
https://poe.ninja/builds/settlershcssf/?skills=Blade+Trap&class=Trickster

Make dots reduce ES recharge rate instead of stopping it, or make dots deal double damage to ES. Anything that doesn't stop ES recharge.*
Yes, I know ES needs a nerf, but I would attack CI and EE instead. Specially CI.

*wicked ward could need a nerf on that case

ES has become blue life with higher values and extra perks. May be the solution is going back to the original concept of ES having higher values at the cost of very limited sources of recovery outside the regen when out of combat or at least make access to leech, regen and gain on "x" come with a big penalty.

After clicking on the picture, you will be taken to the video, to prevent this right click and choose open in new Tab:

Why aren't you using a movement skill? Surely you can just port to the corner and get most of your recovery back? Even with getting hit that often, it looks like the shield was starting. An extra second from moving into space will give you a huge chunk of your ES back?

(I see, toxic vines and what looks to be quickstep/ruthless? Playing ruthless runs into extra difficulty you need to overcome, don't know what to tell you, don't think it is a good metric for balancing the game. Your original post is neither about HC, or ruthless. Other builds encounter problems from limited movement in ruthless as well, something you need to overcome. Personally I think it is more an argument for having movement skills in ruthless, or nerfing toxic vine, than changing ES.)

Everything you’re writing about are just alternatives, while I’m talking about a very specific problem. I don’t need advice on how to prevent ES recharge from stopping — I can figure that out myself.

What I’m showing is that there’s an issue with ES recharge as a defensive layer, one that even has quite a few passive points dedicated to improving it — yet it quickly becomes useless, forcing you to rely on other defensive mechanics.

The video shows a fight with just a single monster — imagine how that looks in serious encounters like Delve, Blight, or Trialmaster. You don’t even need a fight — burning ground is enough.

If ES recharge becomes useless so easily, then what’s the point of having so many nodes for it in the Passive Tree or Ascendancy Classes? Isn’t that a design oversight ? Or is it intentional — and if so, should it really stay that way ?