08-28-2023, 07:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-28-2023, 07:14 PM by RainIsABirb.)
Energy shield sees plenty of use by holy users, seeing as it's essentially an invulnerability can move in. Running in with holyshield is essentially an easy way to win all trades you make especially with the typical 5dr those holy users also have.
Other shields don't see much use because they're objectively worse and typically have a normal invulnerability on bar.
However I can say with confidence that a build without an invulnerability is extremely difficult to play, if only because of the aforementioned 40% combos that most builds are capable of due to the steadily increased damage numbers on already heavy hitting spells. While this has pushed them into viability and has indirectly nerfed the kite autohit meta, it's difficult to play without some sort of defensive option- which many builds do lack!
The issue of stacking is exacerbated by where you find these defensive options as well:
- Wind has no invulnerability, and while Twister is good, you can't block during it making it more of a mediocre speedup for dodging.. and just worse shadow walk
- Water has mistform which is dipped often
- Fire has magma invulnerability, the worst in the game
- Earth has sand invuln and earth aura
- Bio has ribcage and smog
- Ether has holyshield and dpalm, occult leads to shadow
- Meta has shadow walk, chronos
- Armed has Quickdraw which isn't really an invuln so much as it is a damage and gapclose
- Unarmed has demonstep. An entire thread could be made about it.
- True Counter is limited in availability but is a good defensive for any build. It's fine.
Most of these defensive abilities- most importantly, the good, more problematic ones- are concentrated in bio, ether and meta. Elemental trees (except mist) are unanimously shafted, not to mention Time and Shadow are both awesome trees in their own right.
This problem will only be exacerbated once Fortuna becomes more widely available with 2 of its spells being very potent defensive options.
Tl;dr invulns are important for counterplay options and keeping the game dynamic and winnable, but the best trees have the best invulns on top and many trees lack defensive options outright. If invuln stacking is rightfully nerfed, there should be more defensives added to elemental trees to help compensate (not necessarily full invulns).
Other shields don't see much use because they're objectively worse and typically have a normal invulnerability on bar.
However I can say with confidence that a build without an invulnerability is extremely difficult to play, if only because of the aforementioned 40% combos that most builds are capable of due to the steadily increased damage numbers on already heavy hitting spells. While this has pushed them into viability and has indirectly nerfed the kite autohit meta, it's difficult to play without some sort of defensive option- which many builds do lack!
The issue of stacking is exacerbated by where you find these defensive options as well:
- Wind has no invulnerability, and while Twister is good, you can't block during it making it more of a mediocre speedup for dodging.. and just worse shadow walk
- Water has mistform which is dipped often
- Fire has magma invulnerability, the worst in the game
- Earth has sand invuln and earth aura
- Bio has ribcage and smog
- Ether has holyshield and dpalm, occult leads to shadow
- Meta has shadow walk, chronos
- Armed has Quickdraw which isn't really an invuln so much as it is a damage and gapclose
- Unarmed has demonstep. An entire thread could be made about it.
- True Counter is limited in availability but is a good defensive for any build. It's fine.
Most of these defensive abilities- most importantly, the good, more problematic ones- are concentrated in bio, ether and meta. Elemental trees (except mist) are unanimously shafted, not to mention Time and Shadow are both awesome trees in their own right.
This problem will only be exacerbated once Fortuna becomes more widely available with 2 of its spells being very potent defensive options.
Tl;dr invulns are important for counterplay options and keeping the game dynamic and winnable, but the best trees have the best invulns on top and many trees lack defensive options outright. If invuln stacking is rightfully nerfed, there should be more defensives added to elemental trees to help compensate (not necessarily full invulns).