devtrackers.gg
I think when Ward items were first announced, many people (including myself) looked at them and wondered about their utility. The numbers shown looked way too small to make any difference. But thanks to u/GivingItMyBest who asked a question about the new Faithguard unique, I've had a relook at Ward and I think it's actually got the potential to be really useful, and here's why.
Some of the points have probably been covered in assorted conversation on the main sub, but AFAIK no one has actually put it all together or really explored some of its subtleties (especially interactions with existing mechanics) so here's my shot at it.
1. Ward's default properties
To recap, Ward works by subtracting its full value from any damage any time you are hit, then becoming disabled for 5 seconds. After those 5 seconds, it then comes back in full ready to take damage again.
Compared to existing time-based defensive mechanics, Ward actually stacks up pretty favourably. There is no mention of that 5s restoration time being interrupted by taking more damage.
In contrast, Wind Dancer operates on a "recently" basis, so if you're hit less than 4s after taking a hit mitigated by Wind Dancer, you don't get mitigation and your next Wind Dancer mitigation gets delayed till 4s later. Similarly, Energy Shield starts recharging after 2s and fully recharges over another 5s, making for a full 7s cycle, which is also interrupted on taking damage (unless you took Wicked Ward and are not in your last second of ES recharge).
Ward also applies regardless of damage type or damage source, but only to hits. It's type-agnostic unlike Armour, applies to spells and attacks both unlike Evasion, and isn't bypassed by Chaos damage in general unlike ES, but will not deplete in response to DoTs, which is probably a good thing on balance but a potential gotcha in certain situations like boss arenas with a heavy DoT presence.
However, Ward does not discriminate between small and big hits, and will completely deplete regardless of the magnitude of the hit you take relative to its pool. So you could lose all your Ward to a hit that's smaller than Ward, then get clobbered by a massive incoming hit.
That said, Ward actually doesn't mind you getting hit when it's down, meaning that even so it's still at least as reliable a defensive mechanic as Wind Dancer or Dodge, and in some senses qualitatively better than all the other defensive mechanics except maybe ES vs non-chaos DoTs. It will always work every 5s however often you get hit. However, it's not likely to be able to reach the sheer numbers of armour, evasion, or ES.
2. Interactions with existing defensive mechanics
For starters, as GGG themselves suggested, Ward is most useful not in isolation but in combination with existing defensive mechanics. According to the order of receiving damage, and if I theorise correctly, Ward counts as a flat modifier to damage taken (5.1 in the sequence of receiving damage), and therefore comes after % reductions like Fortify and Armour's PDR.
Obviously, it pairs well with Evasion, Dodge, and Wind Dancer to reduce the chances of being one-shot. Stacked together with Kintsugi, you can almost guarantee that you will only be hit every 5s. This means that the % reductions from Kintsugi and Wind Dancer (and Fortify and Wind Ward, if you have them) are applied first, then the flat damage subtraction of Ward kicks in to reduce that damage even further, which results in small amounts of damage being taken.
However, if Ward fits into the order of receiving damage in such a way, this actually means that it's not really useful combined with Armour or Block, which operate in the wrong sequence for Ward to be really useful with them. Armour counts at the PDR stage, so incoming damage is first mitigated by Armour, then Ward is substracted from it; it would have been better if Ward operated first to reduce the damage taken (like shifting damage taken) and then that damage was used to calculate Armour's reduction. Both ways you're still getting damage reduction, but Ward doesn't really help Armour's weakness of being worse the more damage you took, so you might have been better off with stacking ES as more HP instead.
Conversely, all damage calculations are performed first before a hit is checked for Block, which means that Ward can be wasted on a hit that will be eventually blocked. This somewhat contradicts what was said in the reveal video, which says that Block is useful with Ward. It's true that if you Ward a hit that is eventually not blocked, that's still less damage taken, but it also means that Ward and Block stack in an overlapping fashion rather than the multiplicative manner seen with Wind Dancer et al - if you Ward a hit and block the next few, that's fine, but you could also Ward a hit that you block and then not block the next hit with no Ward available - which makes it not very reliable when stacked. It's still a net gain overall because you basically gain a chance to Ward unblocked hits, but it's not as obviously synergistic as with Wind Dancer and Evasion.
Lastly, Ward is also pretty good with Petrified Blood by way of reducing the amount of regen you need to overcome the "damage over time" aspect of Petrified Blood.
3. Scaling and Basetypes
The amounts of Ward we saw in the reveal video were quite honestly laughably small. But that was partially because we were shown quite low-level basetypes. To date, these are the Ward items we know of:
- Faithguard (lv25): 43 Ward with 25% increased Ward local mod, which works out to 34 base Ward
- Cadigan's Crown (lv68): 137 Ward
- Runic Greaves (lv28): 27 Ward with 34% increased Ward local mod, which works out to 20 base Ward.
In comparison to ES basetypes, Ward basetypes actually give a good deal of Ward. For instance, the lv 26 Tribal Circlet gives 27 ES. The lv69 Hubris Circlet gives 76 ES. The lv22 Silk Slippers gives 15 ES, and the lv32 Scholar Boots give 21 ES. So it looks like at lower levels, Ward is on a bit more than a 1:1 basis with ES, but then scales to almost 2:1 by the lategame. I'll address this scaling under the Faithguard section.
It's lastly worth noting that the Ward basetypes have equal attribute requirements. This implies that they also can roll all socket colours equally, similar to Grasping Mail and Sacrificial Garb. If they exist for all equipment slots (we've only seen helm, gloves, and boots so far), this can make them decent choices for Evasion-focused builds with multiple off-colour sockets; it's not much of a problem to roll off-colour 4Ls but 6Ls can be a real pain.
4. Faithguard
Faithguard is where Ward gets really interesting, because firstly, it grants 26% faster restoration of Ward, and secondly, allows increases and decreases to ES to apply to Ward instead.
Let's get the faster restoration mod out of the way first: going by the formula (5 x 1/1.26), that means Ward now restores in just under 4s. If there are more sources of faster Ward restoration, we could be looking at pretty good Ward uptime, although of course subject to diminishing returns (100% faster would put it at 2.5s).
Increases and decreases to ES has three main implications. First, all ES nodes on the tree now apply to Ward. If Ward scales 2:1 in the lategame, this implies that if Ward basetypes exist for all equipment slots, we could see pretty nuts levels of Ward, perhaps even into the thousands, which is a significant HP buffer no matter what.
Second, Intelligence applies to Ward, since every 10 Int grants 2% increased maximum ES. A reasonable 500 Int normal build (non-stacker) would have 100% increased Ward. Combined with the previous presumption of 2:1 Ward:ES scaling on basetypes, we could be seeing 1k+ Ward body armours alone, since Vaal Regalia easily reach 400-500 ES on decent pieces, which means we can get 2k+ Ward just on body armour. I don't know about you, but the equivalent of -2k damage taken every 4s sounds pretty damn good to me. That said, we were only ever shown helms, gloves, and boots on the livestream, so it's completely speculative as to whether Ward body armours exist: if they do, that could be absolutely bonkers.
Last, as with the usual increases and decreases gotchas of this type, "more" and "less" don't get converted. But this can only be good news, since there are no "more" ES multipliers. That means the one "less" ES multiplier, Acrobatics, will not apply to Ward. This is fantastic news since the recharge-based nature of ES already paired well with Dodge builds, but the countersynergy of Acrobatics made it a less than ideal combination; Faithguard means that you get to benefit from an ES-like mechanic (which might be even stronger paired with an Evasion build) and Acrobatics at the same time without this countersynergy.
The net effect of Faithguard is to replace ES with Ward as a buffer for life. Obviously, unless you're a masochist, you wouldn't use this for CI and LL builds, since ES is their primary or only source of HP.
But if you run hybrid builds, with ES as spare HP, then Ward is an interesting alternative that is in some sense more "ideal" as a defensive mechanic. With ES, any investment into life recovery is wasted while ES is still active and taking damage, and when ES is depleted, your life takes the full force of any damage. With Ward, your life is directly exposed to damage all the time but the amount taken will be lessened, making life recovery always pertinent.
There's two interesting effects of Faithguard that I can think of.
The first is that some design alternatives are opened up for Eldritch Battery. If you ran a hybrid build, EB was foreclosed to you because you would lose a good chunk of your HP pool. Now however, you can retain some of the defensive benefits of a hybrid build with Faithguard while gaining the ability to reserve your entire mana pool and use Eldritch Battery as your mana pool instead. Discipline gives 217 flat ES, which in combination with some ES leech should keep it permanently topped up. It's a niche interaction, but potentially a neat one.
The second (thanks to u/b-aaron) is that with some interactions that bypass or otherwise render ES useless, Faithguard + Ward is a fantastic way to get some use back out of Int and % ES nodes. These include Divine Flesh (all damage bypasses ES) whether as the Keystone or from Mahuxotl's Machination, and Agnostic (you have no ES). However, Faithguard has negative synergy with CI and LL builds, as well as at least Immortal Ambition (as it increases the disparity between life and ES and hence the rate of recovery of ES.
5. Summary
In sum, Ward may appear underpowered, but that's a function of the relatively low-level basetypes and unbuffed items that were shown to us. At the very least, Ward will be superb with Evasion and Dodge characters, and Faithguard might open up some new design spaces for hybrid characters.
P.S. If anyone knows what's the best way to get in contact with Mark to confirm where Ward falls in the sequence of damage taken (and hence the usefulness or not of Armour and Block), please let me know.
External link →