Shoju's 1.0 Stuff.

[shoju]

OK, so while I'm at it, I figured I would go ahead, and post progress.

I'm 70% of the way through 82. Things are slowing down terribly XP wise, but that's to be expected. They say the real grind doesn't start until 80+, and I'm starting to feel it.

As I stated in the post above this one, you can go to that thread, and check out my current gear, and build. For the future, I have some plans in place.

#1.) Level 85. This is where I will be build wise, at 85. This finishes off my planned defensive nodes, with 2 more 10% Armor / 6% life nodes. With those 2 nodes, I should climb over 5K HP even in my current gear, and when wearing my "armor" type pieces, I'll be over 8K armor, unbuffed by aura.

#2.) Leve 90 This is just finishing off that Mace Cluster. More damage, more control. This will I think, make even my LMP'd Spectral Throw a good stunning ability.

From there? I haven't the foggiest idea what I'd do for the last 10 points. Originally, I had thought about just biting the bullet, and working towards Iron Reflexes. I can get there in 9 points, and I'm pretty sure I'll never take off Belly of the Beast, so It would be worth it. COupled with the current helm I'm wearing being such a monumental upgrade over the last helm I have, I could see myself wearing more hybrid pieces.

But then, the 1 week race happened. And GGG realized, just how good Iron Reflexes is. It's jaw droppingly OP. It allows you to use 5 of the 6 armor styles, and gain physical mitigation from them. Why were they so surprised that it was so widespread?

When you look at the gear available, it comes in 6 flavors.
Armor
Amor/ES
ES
ES/EV
Evasion
EV/Armor

You have essentially, with Iron Reflexes, allowed a character the ability to use all but ES gear, to improve their armor.

This, coupled with the fact that EV is found in greater quantities on gear than Armor, a flat 1:1 conversion of EV to Armor, in turn makes gear sporting EV better at being armor, than armor gear is.

And this doesn't even begin to cover Grace, which compounds the problem even further. Why running an Evasion Aura + a Keystone passive gives you more armor than the Armor Aura does, is absolutely confounding. I just respecced my ranger in Standard to IR to give it a whirl, and see how it worked out for the char.

Then, I realized my formerly pure Evasion / Acrobatics Ranger was now sporting more armor than my armor specc'd marauder To even compound that further? The marauder is pretty heavily invested in armor. The ranger? only has the hybrid EV/HP nodes, and IR.

But I digress.

At this point, my clear speed on my Scion is good. I'm working on filling my coffers as much as possible from maps. Buying the new 2h'er was a very cool thing, but it did set me back a fair chunk of my wealth (3 ex, 2 pure and 1 muddled). So, I'm running maps, hauling things out, and just focusing on filling up my coffers, and I'll probably be self found for some time into the future, unless I happen to find some piece that I just can't seem to live without.