Please rethink the Champion changes

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 wrote:

The only reason champion needed nerfed is because casters/minion/bow players were using it. It wasn't broken for the archetypes that fit the champion fantasy. Its just the inherent power of having fortify without using melee skills.

But the fact was that all those archetypes did use it, because they could. If GGG gives players the option to abuse a mechanic they will do exactly that. Nobody cares about "fluff". I considered those TR Champs pure heresy but it was the No. 1 meta build back then. And they are going to do it again this time. And it's going to be way worse then it was before because now, on top of 20% less damage for free, they get scaling options on top to the point of equipping a haste, grace and determination aura all in ascandancy node. That is too much, it's too much to the point of being stupid. I mean, just celestial brace and the ascendancy means 60% increased attack speed, 30% MORE armor AND 30% MORE evasion. You can get additonal strikes from a mastery if you are playing strike skills at all and there are plenty of sources for rage on hit, nothing you mentioned is even remotely valuable enough not to take this absurd power bargain deal.

The only result i can see from this going live is Champion having absurdly high usage numbers, everyone and their mother crying and bitching about it and then GGG completely overnerfing it next league.
A cycle anyone in this forum should be very familiar with and yet, somehow, people keep forgetting about it every single league. Introducing something so busted that it's beyond clear from the start that it will need to be nerfed later makes no sense to me whatsoever. Would be one thing if the players were happy about it but they'Ll just end up whining cuz "champ OP plz nerf" as they always do.

You are looking at this from a HC perspective so those gloves might look like a big thing to you but for people in SC they are cheap, 20c atm, likely availabe for a divine even a week after league start.

As a side note, I find it rather curious that you, as a HC player, are complaining about blitz being removed when you get Gore Dancer instead which gives 30% instant leech to any skill/weapon. Zerker still has a ton of speed scaling via rage and purely in terms of damage the rage path always tended to be better. At least in my experience. There is also defiance which is basically a defiance of destiny with a bit of variance. Well i guess you don't want that variance in HC but still, you could just use it on top of defiance of destiny.

The rage on hit on the tree doesn't do anything unless you are melee. If you're playing bows and stuff you will have to do shenanagins to get rage. Like the timeless jewel keystone with mana regen stuff. I cant remember if the lethal pride is rage on hit or rage on melee hit. Timeless jewels are fantasyland stuff unless you're in sctrade.

You really can't take the instant leech for the builds that I play on zerker. I wouldn't be interested in a strike zerker build right now either because without blitz i doubt you are hitting the 25+ aps that zerker used to have with it. You wont be playing slams without rite of ruin and double exerts(in my opinion). To get to the instant leech you have to go through aspect of carnage so the only route is pick defy pain.

The more armour and evasion only works completely well if you take grace and determ which is 100% mana reservation without more investment in the tree. It has a cost to be efficient. If you only have determ you are only getting 30% more armour. This might be broken with armour stackers but I doubt it breaks the game for all archetypes.

Also I forgot they moved the fort and utility node. So you cant just drop fort for melee builds. You have to take both notables always.

Its ok for things to be good though. I still don't see champion being stronger than trickster. Trickster had insane scaling. Champion will be a good mid range safe and easy character to setup but outside of armour stacking i doubt it will be able to do the crazy valdos and t17 maps.

Gore Dancer (30% instant leech) is DOA. nobody is going to pick Berserk for this node, and if you are not there for it then you have already picked: 2 rage notables and Defiance. these are no brainers: rage nodes are what made you pick Berserker in the first place and Defiance is simply amazing

there is no place for Gore Dancer - because you need to path trough Aspect of the Carnage (node that I would not recommend to anyone)

IMO there is only one reasonable 4 nodes pick: 2 rage, Defiance, double exert.

the warrior legacy gimmick is hot garbage (esp now with Lightning Strike nerf), AofCarnage is a disaster waiting to happen and 30% instant leech is undoubtedly cool but it isnt worth the baggage

and if you are into Flash/Flame fishing there are so many great nodes from jugg or chieftain that 30% instant leech just doesnt cut it

on the other hand loss of speed Blitz provided is a huge deal. huge, huge deal.


back to the champion:

i am already switching my animate weapon of self reflection to champion. and given reasonable availability of tattoos to cover up the travel cost - it beats necro on survivability like 3 times. aura cluster is better (area of auras actually is important for minions) and there is unexplored warcry synergy i will spend exploring in the following days.

I already sense a deluge of 'EA Champion', 'Toxic Rain Champion' and 'Poison SRS Champion' starters - having played them all in the past, there is 0 reason to not league start any of them. Trickster is still sick, but to actually get any benefit you need lvl84 well rolled armour - that will take a while

Not using aspect in HC is somewhat understandable but why care in SC? 10% increased damage taken is negligable if your defenses are sound and 30% instant leech goes a long way in fixing one of the major aspects of a good defense, namely recovery. The node isn't suited for slam builds obviously but i'd pick it on a strike build any day. Add a flask like this and you get pseudo DoD.

I don't think i've ever used blitz on a Zerker build, always went the rage route + aspect instead so i am not going to miss it.

Aspects great in HC, very unusual to not be able to get more than 10% damage reduction in return for 40% damage.

I do think the instant leech is probably DoA as you'll likely just source it from elsewhere but being able to stay perma full feels really good once you work out how to approach it.

That parts definitely better in SC though where you can really relax into the instant leech life where you occasionally just eat a death but are invul the rest of the time.

I don't think its bad overall and worth exploring

30% instant leech is worthless because instant leech is still limited by the leech cap. And if you aren't hitting that cap long before 30%, your damage is terrible.

30% is 3% life on hit if enough damage.
150 life on hit on 5k hp

I wouldn't touch that instant leech node unless it also gave overleech/overflow. Losing blitz kills strike zerkers imo. Idk if people were still coping with gen cry bfurry zerker but they are all but giving up on it now I'm sure.

If you haven't played blitz you haven't played a true red blooded berserker strike build. My old zerker from sentinel had 25 aps with 140m dps. It made everything else I played after that feel like it was attacking with a disability. It would phase uber maven in like 3-4s.

I'll continue to stand on what I said though. I like the champ changes. I just wish they did something to make bows and minions less viable somehow instead of nerfing it if they do decide to do something with it before the patch.

I did get really annoyed when EA champ was so good on league start that most people felt like it was a waste of time to innovate. I don't think the way it ships though it will be broken. On league start you won't even benefit from the extra armour and attack speed without investing in a wheel on the tree. Its a wasted point on league start. You will need serious gear.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

30% instant leech is worthless because instant leech is still limited by the leech cap. And if you aren't hitting that cap long before 30%, your damage is terrible.

Depending on how fast you hit it's far from worthless. Sure, it's still limited by the general 10% per hit cap but it bypasses the additional restrictions on the leechrate, it scales directly with APS/number of hits. Not to mention it's synergy with the flask mod i mentioned above. It's a massive boost to survivability on any fast hitting build.

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30% is 3% life on hit if enough damage.
150 life on hit on 5k hp

150 life on hit is still potentially better than the regular 1k leech per second. Just need to hit more than 7 times per second which isn't much for a rage scaling zerker. And in practise you still have the life per second leeched from regular instances on top making it a massive boost to your total recovery per second. You can also just get more instant leech. With 1 claw and the two instant leech masteries you can have 50%. 60% with two claws. At that point you'll only have to worry about getting 1 shot because you recover your entire lifepool in less than a second.

My Glacial Hammer Strike Berserker is definitely not amused about removal of blitz charges for shitty 30% instant leech. I think Blitz Charges were kind of integral part of the berserker identity. But it wont kill my build although it will feel A LOT worse to play.

In my opinion the most important stat for any melee build is attack speed. And the missing attack speed for warrior in POE 2 was the reason I deinstalled the game on early access release day.