Earth Aspect

[Pirikitim]

I’d like to make a suggestion regarding the Earth Aspect. It’s well known that the Earth Aspect is the weakest and less attractive one to players, with exemption of its low price. Because of that, it’s preferable for new players like myself. I think every aspect in the game is meant to be a high-end tool for PvM, each in its own way. Some should be stronger against bosses, some against mutiple creatures, others against a single creature, some provide more tankyness, survivability, etc. The problem is that the Earth Aspect as it is fall behind in comparison to other aspects in terms of high-end gameplay. It’s supposed to provide tankyness, but only against melee damage. There are two problems with that: the two main causes of deaths against PvM are Poison, Bleed, Disease and Magic Damage. Earth doesn’t help with that at all. If you’re 100% Earth like myself, I need to stay in front of a creature and if it’s a spell caster you need to make your way to it what increases the chance of aggroing other creatures... Well, I think there are tools to deal with magic damage, being chain links, magic potions and shield codexes (like mirror stance). But there is no way to deal with disease, bleed and poison, and most the creatures at lvl 3 dungeons apply those effects on you, and since there are stackable, if you get for instance 2 stacks from certain creatures you just can’t survive, there is nothing you can do and being an earth dexxer I can’t even get close to them (so I’m unable to deal damage). Some diseases and bleeds outdamage your healing potential (potion + bandage) with a single stack, like in Ossuary. I know people will argue that I can use the Warding Stance that reduces this kind of damage by 40% + the Barrier Finisher combo. The problem is that if I’m using this finisher which is exclusively meant to deal with that and the warding stance the price that I pay for not using other shield stances (which all give me overall damage resistance) and the Last Stance finisher is too high. I basically can’t farm because of these effects... so the way it is today all the other shield codexes and last stand are irrelevant because there is no way I can let go of these protections against these usual effects. And without the tankyness provided by the other options (stances and last stand finisher) the earth aspect warrior becomes pretty much useless, reason by which no end-game build involves the earth aspect. So I said all this to make my suggestion which I think is very reasonable: the “Reduction to Debuff” effect from the Earth Aspect Armor should include poison, bleed and disease, meaning that at max tier lvl (13), the reduction to debuff time would be 20%+5%*13 = 85%. So a Disease that lasts 30 seconds would then last 4,5 seconds. That would negate most of the damage and simply become useful for Earth aspect players, differently from this reduction to debuff that we have today, which brings no apparent benefit whatsoever. I think this alone would make the Earth Aspect a viable option for all end-game players.

 

[AreYouKidden]

I'm going to like this, just because I can't believe you said all of it, without taking a breath... Oh and because you didn't actually try to change what makes Earth actually decent, just tried to build on it..

I'm actually a fan of earth, love playing an earth build, on both my Macer & my Archer.. It's not a bad aspect, but when you have 6 options for dexxers, everyone is going to pick their favorites, and in a min/max world, anything less than the best is apparently garbage.. even though it may be 95% as effective...

it's far easier to read in paragraphs...