I took a hiatus from the game, and coming back I’m wondering. As I said I’m not really up to date, but from what I see none of the high end builds are running them. Like, any of them.
I remember when they were first introduced there were some that were semi-popular, but they seem to since have fallen out of favor. The problem with DIII is and has always been that damage trumps everything else. Everything. Bane of the Trapped and Bane of the Stricken are borderline mandatory for most builds. Why? Crazy damage boost baby!
What saddens me most is Mirinae. I really loved the unique mechanic of this gem. Then they turned it into a semi-defensive gem, basically a death sentence. But since some players didn’t get the message they decided to also nerf it for good measure. And voilà: Mirinae has successfully been obsoleted. By design. Great job again.
So what is everyone’s thought on this? Are you running defensive gems, and how could they be saved from the rubbish heap?
Some people do not use them because they just blow past everything and they do not care how many times they die (no strategy whatsoever). HC players might use them. I hope they do something about this in D4. Give some type of bonus to players who are not dead all the time. Death should have meaning if the game has defensive skills and gems.
I quite enjoy Esoteric when playing Barbarian. But that was pretty much only for that period when you don’t need Stricken for the RG, then I realised I can just die sometimes instead of not killing things.
But I did see a guide by some well known youtuber (meaning someone who does know what they are talking about usually) that said you could get away with it on Frenzy builds. Think that was only with this season though and not high end pushing.
Yes, very funny. I’m a solo player, so having zero damage would be self-defeating, no?
Molten Wildebeest’s Gizzard is also my favorite defensive gem and the one I default to should I feel like it. The reason for that is because it offers creative uses to play around with.
I think the flaw with many gems is the boring “+X%” buff mechanic they’re designed with. Either the buff is high enough so they’re best in slot, or it’s not so they’re useless. Very disappointing.
If you think zdps play defense gem you probably have not played much zdps. The goal is always to help the dps characters so you should be using things like gogok, toxin, iceblink which don’t exactly qualify as defense.
Back a few years no one exactly cared but defensive gems are seem to be most foolproof way to climb higher GRs after such power creep for years. Just as a flaw, their diversity seem to be limited on certain classes. Esoteric and Molten widely favored thanks to absorb and resistances while Mutilation Guard only seem to appear at very specific classes. Still all of the defense items see some sort of use besides one.
Moratorium was bugged since start of the days for disabling cheat death triggers when used (staggered damage still going and fatally damaging you twice). I still believe Morat gem was intended for Brawl sessions but now that scene is defunct anyhow, nobody ever bothers with it besides dupe and augment.
Rest of the gems besides damage boosters are used in speedfarm or zdps builds as stated before. At some extend you can damage proc gems at general damage boost Set builds (Natalya, Immortal King, Inna…) or at LoD/N setups but that’s it. My assumption would be that they were designed with Brawl in mind just like Moratorium and now it’s in ruins, they barely have any point to have around.