Nerves of Steel and Templar Guardian redundancy?

Noob here playing on Hardcore. There is something I cannot test myself regarding Nerves of Steel and Guardian.

Both skills protect from death or so-called fatal damage and once this condition is detected they are supposed to trigger.

The problem is I don’t know if they both proc at the same time, or if one of them procs first priority and then the other procs once again if fatal blow is detected.

If they proc at the same time, then clearly this is redundancy and I should instead choose something else than Nerves of Steel. If one procs before the other, then this means double death protection so it makes sense to have them both in case two fatal blows in a row occur.

Anyone know how these two skills really interact between them ?

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The follower “cheat death” has a cooldown of 120 seconds.
The hero’s “cheat death” has a cooldown of 60 seconds.
The game uses them in order of longest to shortest cooldown, one at a time.

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Cool. So they don’t proc at the same time. Then I guess I should keep them both active in case I get fatal damage twice in a row.

Honestly the Templar Guardian is superior to Nerves of Steel and most likely sufficient; maybe I should switch away from Nerves of Steel while Guardian is active. But hey on Hardcore … you got to have nerves of steel to switch away from it.

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I’d keep them both. I have had half a dozen times this year where both were triggered seconds apart. Saved me from some waller / explosive death mobs for sure.

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Pretty risky business if you accidentally join a group and your Follower disappears. This is fine if you’re playing solo and restrict other players joining. Good luck.

I did it, hehe. Just finished RoS on hardcore expert difficulty. It wouldn’t have been possible without the Templar because his Guardian ability saved me 3 or 4 times during the whole game.

I have no idea if Nerves of Steel ever triggered. Maybe it did but I haven’t seen any indication or icon.

Finished at level 70 plus 30 Paragon. From Act 4 to the end of RoS I played entirely with Hammer of the Ancients ability because early in Act IV I got a powerful drop - Gavel of Judgement. My DPS suddenly skyrocketed with it, plus unlimited Fury, and the build became extremely fast with devastating crits one-shot entirely everything, 2 shot elites, over 50% critical chance and using Rolling Thunder rune for AoE effect and speed.

This build is probably very inefficient for Torment difficulties but for the campaign mode it is likely the fastest imo. Much faster than Whirlwind barb in campaign mode; if you get the Gavel of Judgement drop.

Interesting ending of RoS. Hints that the nephalem might have absorbed Diablo’s soul.

Looking forward to Diablo 4

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I think Blizzard gave this to us, so that we could use a different passive. I see no need to use both. It could only be a seasonal thing, so take advantage of it now.

Rumour has it that it’s all permanent. There was no event buff for this season.

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The changes to followers were added to the game before the season started, are a permanent change to the game and are also available to non-seasonal heroes.

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I can confirm that Nerves of Steel triggers independently and AFTER Guardian. And also yes it has a status icon showing when it triggers. Happened to me yesterday on T8, both trigerred one after the other. I was almost toast end of journey.

I have to be careful on torment. Problem is that my DPS is high enough to tackle high torments (unlocked Wrath of the Wastes set). While my DPS is huge the problem is the monsters deal huge damage too and can kill my barbarian.

This is the major bottleneck. Not my DPS, but my defense is bad on high torment. I keep pumping elemental defense but only so much.

EDIT: Oops … my barbarian died to Malthael on T8. End of journey.

Actually even the Templar died too. He died first and without his Guardian I died too.

I think another reason helped me die is that some bosses are designed intentionally to stop taking damage. They enter some kind of stupid animation (phase transition) and start talking; during this time they don’t take any damage. So I couldn’t heal via Whirlwind Life per Hit. You can keep channeling but since the boss is by design immune to damage during animation you don’t heal at all just waste Fury. It is questionable design because Life on Hit is screwed during this boss mid-fight animation.

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Keep them both- They wont proc at same exact time but ive had both going many times in games.

Having two cheat deaths is WAAAAY better than only one.

The reason is that if you only have one and it procs you MUST go to town if you don’t want to risk dying like an idiot (looks at myself).

If you have two and one procs you can keep playing just be a bit more careful. That gives you a HUGE extra safety net and ends up saving you a ton of time you’d be wasting in town.

Also the follower cooldown reduction tokens DO WORK on their cheat deaths so you can bring it down to 1 minute if you build a very tanky follower without immortality (it takes a lot more effort but it’s possible - I do it every time now so I can use their better tokens).

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you can test it,
thats what softcore exist
is easy
make a character build whatever you think it may work,
try it
?
proofit

dont relly on Death cheat Skills, they wont protecto you 100% of times