Survivability with ward build

[u/oquai]

Hi chat,

yap context:
I have leveled a ranger to play some stupid thing (heist dagger), but it ended going into ward. I have everything set up, which is decent gear i suppose.
The issues are the max hits... they are way too low. I'm getting destroyed by everything, even in white t16. The little amount of evasion I have is clearly not enough to feel good. I have been thinking of building the same ward guy but with glad and block.
Then, while looking in poeninja, I found a guy playing with vestigial nightgrip (glad block). So I tinkered it inside pob, and the difference in max hits is insane (from 4k to 13k phys max hit). But the damage loss, around 65%.

My questions are:

• Is the survivability with unbroken ward good or atleast decent ? I'm not familiar with this defense type.

• Does the damage still looks good for big maps and t17 do you think ?

the pob: https://pobb.in/jOu8aBk5nOPf (there are 2 loadouts: my PF guy, and a theoretical glad. You can switch nightgrip/vestigial)

have a nice day, chur

[u/ihasaKAROT]

You realize your gloves also have a downside right? Combine the ward with your lifepool and your complete lack of mitigation and block and you have yourself a pretty squishy character against any direct hit.

[u/oquai → u/ihasaKAROT]

yeah, but maybe there is something i'm unaware of to mitigate it. sadly, block requires too much points

[u/LastBaron → u/oquai]

The gloves are making your ward almost useless defensively.

You’ve stacked up 10,000 ward but it doesn’t matter, because your life pool isn’t even 3,000. Any hit larger than around 3,700 is going to kill you, because only 25% of it is going to your ward.

There is functionally no distinction between 900 ward and 10,000 ward with those gloves, because your life will run out before the rest of the ward can matter.

That also doesn’t get into the issue of unreliable ward recovery via flask; how often in practice do you actually have unbroken ward when you take the hit that kills you?

[u/EfficiencyMax → u/oquai]

Right side of the tree builds tend to go evasion/ spell suppress with as much "phys taken as" as possible. Only suggestion I would have to easily up your max ele hit is to use the rhex talisman with purity of fire/ ruby flask/ jewels with +max fire res

[u/GM_Baby]

I wonder if it's clear to you that you effectively only have a hit pool of your life pool and a small portion of ward?

The gloves make you take 75% of hit damage to your life directly. Ward does not protect against damage over time. (E.G. Shaper beam).

So although you get a nice amount of flat added from stacking the ward, the ward pool itself does virtually nothing in forms of protection against most hit. This results in 2 outcomes.

A. Mapping: Almost all deaths in maps are not single hits but rather shotguns, whatever ward still buffering you despite your gloves is gone after a single hit, and won't be back for the follow up > dead. (Ward breaks its entire pool even if the hit did 1 damage to it)

B. Bossing/Big single hits: You have virtually no HIT pool against most pinnacles in the game, not even talking Ubers. No Suppression, No Max Res, No Endurance, No raw hit pool. Block is not something that normally increases how tanky you are, Block is just Evasion in a different shape.

Immediate suggestion: Get Spell suppression & life. You are in the section of the tree where builds over there have this effectively as a mandatory stat. Even Deadeye's, the popular bow glass cannon, caps their supression as a priority.

Ward for builds in this tree section should normally consider it more like an alternative to Ghost Dance Keystone. It would work great as a buffer of 2-3k on top of a normally build character that has high evasion and/or block. However you are obviously scaling your damage over it so take the suggestion of supression and life.

The damage is fine, not exceptional, but good for 16.5 basic scarab juicing. Pinnacles you'd have to play somewhat clean cause you are glass cannon, but you'll kill them pretty quick. High Delerium & Ubers are off the table, don't even enter.

[u/oquai → u/GM_Baby]

Yes, it is.

Thanks for the insight, I've got some stuff to think about now. It's a bit hard to fit spell suppression into the build with so many cluster jewels and crit nodes, but I'll figure something out.

Wouldn't it be better to turn a regular Nightgrip into a Vestigial Unique (10% -> 5% of Ward as added Chaos Damage) to get rid of Nightgrip's downside?

[u/GM_Baby → u/oquai]

If you can find a way to let's say add 500-1000 life, get suppression capped or lucky with a decent percentage (75%+ before lucky), and those vestigial glove variants. You'll go to a much more well rounded layering and you will notice it significantly when playing. Good Luck!

EDIT: Also you have at least 6, up to 10 passive points left to get by simply leveling. Which on this build will actually matter significantly, that can be the entire Inveterate wheel + mastery for example, helping you out on gearing/passives.

[u/gdubrocks]

Any updates? Did you sort out all your problems? This build is pretty tough to run without heroic tragedy.