Can we please get some minor updates to runewords that are useless when compared to other builds.
For Obsession runeword I’d like to see the following update
Increase Maximum Life 15-25% (varies)
and
Increase Maximum Mana 15-25% (varies)
It’s not for every sorceress build, but it’s a great runeword for end game ES nova sorcs. I’m not against smaller buffs like further increasing mana regeneration though.
This is mana pool dependent and small buffs to survivability will increase terror zone farming with this item.
With the elusive Zod rune, the developers should consider significantly buffing Obsession as follows:
Obsession
- Increase Magic Find to 100%
- Add +10-15% To Cold Damage
- Add -10-20% To Enemy Fire Resistance
- Add -10-20% To Enemy Lightning Resistance
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Hard to really comment about this in relation to terror zones, it’s an experimental feature that for all we know may not end up making it into the final version of the patch, and which in its current form certainly won’t.
Still, an obsession nova sorc can reach 3.5k+ mana while having reasonable mana sustain, while being the second highest DPS option in areas such as cows and arcane sanctuary… With a blue orb with +6 lightning skills, 20 FCR and 2 facets outpacing it, but also being incredibly rare.
I don’t think a Zod is honestly all that elusive. Runes for an infinity for example are not that much easier to find, and in a trading economy a Zod is worth about a Lo so not that hard to come by.
And anecdotally, I found one last night while doing some metal grid iron golem testing 
With obsession, the rarest part is the base itself that needs to spawn with +3 skills to at least 2 complimentary skills, for example Nova + Lightning Mastery. That said, a plain or 6 socket one is fine.
Once you find the base, the rest is all relatively easy. The runeword doesn’t have any varying mods that affect DPS, so you can get away with not having to reroll the stats to get a viable roll on it.
The additional mods suggested will push obsession from being second highest DPS option to being the highest DPS option in cows and arcane sanctuary (over something much more rare) and push this into being the highest DPS option in chaos sanctuary and even versus lightning immunes over self wield infinity options.
It removes the choice and sub speciality aspects of best in slot ES nova sorc setups, while throwing off end game balancing compared to the rarest item options for her.
No. Obsession is fine as is. It’s a decent runeword - if you find the right base. In particular I object to adding those modifiers to enemy resistances as it’s too similar to Mong Song.
There are many other items and runewords that need help before trying to buff Obsession.
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the problem with your logic is that the economy is your main factor
if we start balancing based on the economy, it just means that the game itself is not the priority
zods are “cheap” bc they dont have better uses
if you make a meta weapon with the rarest of runes, that needs a very rare base for the most played class in the game, zod’s value perception sure will change
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Did you read my post? Other than 1 aside mention of Zod trading for a Lo rune, the point made was about item rarity based on drop rates.
The problem is that the runeword is “just fine”, while being hard as hell to have a ZOD rune and the right base for it. It’s way easier and cheaper to have a 4 socket flail, a 4 socket monarch and the runes for a Spirit Shield and a Heart of the Oak weapon.
I would personally bump a +1 to all skills to make it worth the trouble, but any other suggestion is obviously welcome.
but zod is 1/2,5mil on cows and 1/3,8mil on any other trash
besides cubing 2 chams, you cant target farm a zod
the fact that you can get a zod for a Lo is the only thing that makes obsession as “easy” to make as it is now
my point is, take away the market and obssesion becomes one of the hardest rw to make, maybe behind only of LW
that said…obssesion, just like LW and BoTD could use a buff to justify the difficulty of making them and who knows with that make them better and more valuable than things like grief
Certainly harder than most I agree, but it’s a BIS item for people that want to roll this runeword. Rune rarity or even the bases required for them isn’t the only factor for making runewords. The variable rolls and how much they vary also factor into the runeword making “difficulty”.
For example, a Faith made in a Grand Matron Bow that rolls a level 12 fanaticism (25% chance) is considered a dud roll.
Grief (notwithstanding how imbalanced this runeword is), Pride and Infinity varying roles will to a lesser degree directly affect farming speeds of your builds.
For making an Obsession, everyone says the base is so hard to find, sure. But once you find a Zod and a decent base, there are hardly any game shifting varying roles on Obsession that would necessitate for the runeword to be rerolled to help improve the efficiency of the build.
And you don’t need to find a perfect 3/3/3 base by the way, even a 3/1/X base (nova, lightning mastery, and optionally ES) is good enough for a nova sorc to have a runeword that will out DPS most other setups and is practically the #1 DPS slot item for cows and arcane sanctuary.
For an Infinity, it’s hard to get a perfect -55% role (1 in 11 chance, for something that uses 2 Ber Ist Mal) that self infinity nova sorcs would use.
i completely agree but thats a secondary concern
a bad (insert any rw here) is better than no rw at all
not to mention that obssesion rolls 15-25% bonus life, a very rare affix to find and use
but my point is, its much easier to say than to do
i personally would never spend a ssf zod in any base besides a 3/3/x
well my logic is simple
i ask my self
whats the hardest item to make/find for sorce?
obssesion
so it needs to be BiS, plain and simple
but being the second best for 2 areas isnt good enough imo
I haven’t explored the use case for other sorceress types, but extra life on a ES nova sorc is just gravy and helps reduce the chance of going into hit recovery, but doesn’t make you farm any faster. A single roll on Obsession is more than fine, in this case anyway.
Where as for a self infinity build, you will likely want to burn an extra 2 Ber runes for a chance of a higher -enemy lightning resistance roll if you happen to have a low roll the first time.
Actually, a blue orb with +3 lightning skills with +3 nova +3 lightning mastery and 20 FCR and 2 sockets (Larzuk) is rarer than Obsession. Much rarer.
So of course such a rare orb deserves to eclipse Obsession in DPS (and hence why I said Obsession is 2nd BIS - because it’s second only to this).
Obsession from this perspective is a reasonable stepping stone towards this orb, while also having magic find, gold find, and a number of survivability stats on it to help you.
If you look at other options in absense of all the above, Eschuter’s and Lidless or Spirit is your closest equivalent, but doesn’t really measure up. Obsession is a suitable upgrade from this.
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i dont know, if you are not running gerke+Gbane a bigger health pool will make you less likely to die and therefore have less interruptions by death
and it becomes progressively valuable the more +life you stack with charms suffix
if the point is to stack -Lres on the sorce, why not leave the poor rolled infinity on merc and use a crescent moon combined with a monarch with 4 lite facets? its not like a ES sorce needs to have insight on merc and it sure is easier than find another 2 bers and burn those problably with a normal base polearm/spear
yeah, you are completely right
i tend to completely forget about ultra-rares bc finding one is like winning on a lottery
i dont know about the “stepping stone” thing as its possible to spend a life playing d2 and never find one of those rare orbs
its not something one can count with, especially when it comes to ssf
The problem isn’t with the rune word Obsession. The problem is with Staves in general are disadvantaged compared to Shield and a one handed item (like HotO or a rare Orb).
Obsession actually does a fairly good job of dealing with that by adding massive Resistances, and the Chance to Cast Weaken. But it’s still not quite enough.
I have a thread on changes needed to base weapons over in the General thread, including Staves. Here is my proposal for Staves:
Staves are of course targeted primarily at Casters, and suffer from two problems. The first is that a one handed weapon and shield can provide more modifiers than a single two handed weapon. This is particularly important to Casters as the two most important mods for them are +skills and Faster Cast Rate. Not much can be done about this except to buff staff stats to be competitive, similar to the new Obsession runeword.
However, there is also the second problem that shields provide block, and two handed weapons do not. This does not simulate well the fact that one of the ways a staff was historically used was to parry attacks.
Essentially, we need a “new” mechanic that allows a staff wielder to negate a melee attack either when attacking, or when standing still. I put new in quotes because in fact this mechanic already exists in Diablo II. It’s called Dodge, a skill on the Amazon.
I propose cloning that code, calling it “Parry” and give a % chance to trigger when being attacked when wielding a weapon with that attribute. For Staves I’d suggest something like 20% to 30% for the Normal Staves, 30% to 35% for the Exceptional Staves, and 35% to 40% on the Elite Staves.
I go into more detail in the thread about how this would interact with Amazon using Dodge, etc. But the important part for Sorceresses is that quoted above.
If you implemented that change, suddenly you could get an Obsession base that also has up to 40% chance to “Parry” as well, and that really would make Obssession BIS for a Nova Sorceress. It would also continue the aspect of a perfect Obsession base being a really rare find, but at the same time allowing for some less than perfect bases to still be better than HotO + Spirit.
For Changes to Obsession itself? Maybe, maybe increase the Faster Cast to 75%. That would allow reaching the last break point with only one Faster Cast ring and make its Faster Cast rate equal to a HotO + Spirit.
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I don’t think that’s really necessary if you have a large enough mana pool that has decent mana regeneration, which you can get with points into energy, frostburn, 2 SoJ’s (or at least +mana rings), silkweaves and if on a budget, a shako, and then any CTA, assuming you have a high enough ES and the telekinesis synergy maxed as well.
Note that prayer mercenaries are used to heal up excess health lost during your runs.
That’s another option too, though your merc will then be using a weapon that deals low amounts of raw damage, and although crescent moon (CM) does slightly more DPS than self infinity in cows, a CM build has less mana regeneration and sustain than other ES nova variants, so it’s not really an upgrade but more like a side-grade.
CM is not a bad option if you’re in the pre-infinity stage of budget/stage of life though.
Yeah in a SSF setting, you might as well as treat it as though it doesn’t exist. Obsession from that perspective sits well as a viable end game SSF item. It will still take a long time to get, but it’s at least in the realm of reality.
If staves and other 2 hander weapons (other than bows) were designed with this in mind from the start, I think it would work well.
A few things:
- The parry % chance for incoming projectiles should be 1/4 for these parry weapons
- Because it requires using 2 hands to parry, it should realistically take longer to recover from this than say using a shield to block and then following up with a 1-handed weapon attack or a spell cast
- With the second point in mind, ES sorcs might actually prefer to not parry but instead just let energy shield absorb the hits so that they can teleport out or keep their damage output up
So, I wonder if just making staves more potent in terms of spells would be better, or work in addition to this?
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thats a fair point but i think now we are just discussing how we play our Lsorce
dont forget that weapon block can block skills too, different from shield block