thank you for talking through actual examples of the reductions! im a pretty new player so the order of operations for damage reduction was totally new info to me
Damage shifting is also amazing with this skill. If you damage shift from physical to elemental, then it boosts PDR from armour, makes the flat physical damage reduction more relatively valuable, and allows double dipping on the flat reduction from elemental damage. EDIT: I missed that the elemental flat reduction is for spell hits only, so you don't double dip on phys to ele shifts. As well, I'm pretty sure the way the flat ele reduction is worded, it means each element will have the flat reduction applied. If you can shift from physical to multiple types of elemental or from one element to another, then you can potentially triple or quadruple dip on the flat reduction. The new Taste of Hate and Dawnbreaker come to mind as working quite well with Barkskin. I also wanted to give a shout out to Imbalanced Guard. It's a fantastic keystone for splashing some armour into your build, and just got an indirect buff with the newly added base types making a few thousand armour without Determination totally reasonable.
It won't work that way though... :( the flat damage reductions are either for physical attacks or elemental spells. So you won't be able to double dip by using "damage taken as" mods.
@@aezzsqdq9717 Well dang, I failed the reading comprehension test. It should still work to double/triple dip on spell hits when using something that shifts damage between elemental types such as Taste of Hate or Tempered by War. Good call out on that.
One item I am keeping an eye on with regards to Barkskin is "Kintsugi" 35% less damage taken if you have not been hit recently will go great with the flat damage from Barkskin and the 100% increase evasion if you have been hit will go amazingly with the more evasion modifier. Kintsugi also allow you to take 15% life mastery with no life on chest.
Yeah I think everyone's massively underrating these nodes - they're okay if you don't build around them and cracked if you do (Oath of Spring is the same, and maybe Summer too?) Teachings + Lesson + Wind Dancer + capped suppression + high evasion/armour + endurance charges + guard skill + freeze + Dawnbreaker + phys pantheons (among other options) is nutty. Not sure about Kintsugi though - think you wanna go with rare armour/evasion chest and take the eldritch phys taken as mods. I'm loving this so much more than Raider because I can be just as tanky if not moreso but have a ton of damage. And playing around with tinctures will be fun assuming I go that route.
I love it. They really took a skill that was great as like a hybrid armor/evasion sort of deal, and made it mesh so nicely with the evasion/spell suppress on the right side of the tree.
@@destroyermaker No, Flesh and Stone is still fine for Ranged Builds, they just have to be close to the enemy. If you have the damage reduction stance on then it still helps you if you get mobbed.
I really love this breakdown! I'm surprised you didn't discuss the potential interactions with Iron Reflexes: 1) Guarantees that you'll be hit more often, which means you'll typically have no bark stacks, and will take less damage to remove them. 2) powerful synergies with fourth vow, allowing another layer of defense against chaos hits, which are otherwise only mitigated in spell form. I think we could absolutely see warden armourstacker builds coming up, even ones simply using the formless flame helmet, that would be legitimately viable for the archetype.
Ush, sitting there in act 3 and taking on barkskin, you are pretty much unkillable at max barkskin -300 phys taken. That is a ton. At that point then you have maybe 1000 life. So just think of negating hits that can take 1/3 of life. Crazy!
I'm going to directly compare it to the old Raider node which just gave +10% chance to evade when you have Onslaugbt (which was always). If you look at it this way, the old Raider node was simply better in terms of raw power, since no mana reservation even though Barkskin is mechanically cool. I wish Barkskin maybe costed a bit more mana reserved and was more powerful?
As a Warden you actually want your barkskin to be at 0 stacks to benefit fully from 20% chance to evade + 20% prevented spell damage, but if you get hit playing a evasion based character you are already dead, so the 10 stacks is basically useless
This is very informative, thank you! It's got my gears turning for good synergy ideas. Like, is there a good way to self damage yourself to consistently stay at 0 bark that is good with Warden? Maybe Trauma? Maybe some sort of forbidden rite or ward loop build?
The mana reservation is so low (especially after reductions) it might as well not be there. I wouldn't worry about it - it doesn't affect how many auras you can use or anything
i feel like you want 0 stacks all the time, the mitigation at 10 stacks is pretty minimal and the variance makes it a pretty unreliable defensive layer
If you want to go all out on that kind of defensive setup, then other defenses that synergise with it as they follow the same theme include the Wind Dancer keystone, Wind Ward on Deadeye (from Forbidden jewels) and Kintsugi body armor.
The problem with Barkskin is that its benefits are most easily understood and at first look best when you have exactly zero barkskin. More chance to evade is very good as a defense layer for an evasion based character. Is this pendulum effect of swinging between 0 and 10 barkskin then worth it? My gaming intuition with Poe says that if I had to invest more in making the swinging feel good, it's properly not worth it. I must say though I am intrigued with the mentioning of Persistence and would love to try to see how far into the campaign/maps you can get with this while feeling kind of immortal,
Anything that makes you not take damage from a hit, or ofc not take the hit at all, will preserve them. The ideal setup would have max evasion, max spell dodge, max block and spell block and perhaps even some damage avoidance. That's excessive ofc, but the point is that in those cases the Crab barrier will always be up and ready to help you tank the rare hit that gets through. Other similar defenses include the Wind Dancer keystone, Wind Ward on Deadeye and Kintsugi body armor.
@@ArawnOfAnnwndont forget elusive scaling. check out aer0's "ward as a defence" video from a couple leagues back. he uses replica mistwall to get max block, paired with 95% evade chance, max spell dodge, elusive, and 1700 ward. its actually a really neat concept id like to see explored more
@@2fat4airborne44 Of course you will sacrifice some of these options for damage (and still be very tanky). It's very possible, and the other ascendancy nodes open up many options
Barkskin is neat, and I think with some tweaking it can be a decent defensive layer. I just don't agree at all that it reserves mana. Just make it always up like Ghost Shroud or something, I don't want to be paying to use my ascendancy points again.
I have a feeling that if you wsnt to use this defensively, going to 0 stacks and trying to stay there is the way to go. As powerful as evasion is, if you can spell supress cap and get it to 73-76% damage prevention, that is roughly the equivalent of 10 endurance charges ( by going from 50 % to 25% damage taken) against ele damage.
my first tought was more like barkskin / persistance / cloak of flame / 90%fire res/ 3-4+ endurance charges / the formless flame / 10k+ armour. (maybe tempered by war too if only your fire res is that high) vs a mid/big phys hit you would split alot of the damage making the armour you have way better at the end you remove 400flat phys and even another 200 vs fire and since the 40%of the hit is fire vs your 90%res and endurance charges the -200 flat will be alot, vs a mid hit it will prolly put it down to zero in alot of chases and if u want to (assuming u play mostly evasion based and ur ranged or somehting) its prolly good to take the other -150flat ele + spell supression but im not sure if that even works if the base hit is just phys and u convert that damage to fire spell supp dosnt even do anything right ? so not sure if its worth, also that would be 4 points.
@@spuryaas yeah for sure, kinda imagined a bow charakter while writing that :D im personally hyped about the new lucky block shield, i think it could be awesome on a witch ? just the tempest shield/bone offering&the 12%spellblock on that shield itself, should be pretty easy to get to 65/65%block thats somewhere arround 88% or somehting with lucky. thats double the blocks then 75%, kinda crazy if u think about it. @dreamcore (u prolly know that kinda shit) can i supress a spell and than still block it to get +50es on block and +50on spell supress at the same time dosnt work right ?
I think it's ok, but i don't get why it has a reservation. It feels like an ok defensive layer that you need to spend your points on and then you need to reserve too. Should inquisitor's need to reserve pious path? Then for 4 points, you get more, but that's half your points. 10% is really low, but still ... Feels weird. I think it should have given 200 armor per bark. Then you could scale increase defenses, flask, and some other things to make it significant. I'll probably still take it, but it feels weird to even need a reservation
11:19 there's an example about mitigation with eater of world beam... If I would have tempered by war... The conversion light to fire will occur before suppression or after?? Does it convene use lessons of the seasons with tempered by war?
When it comes to the sheet at 5:40min, when would damage conversation apply? At the very start, and then split the damage into x different branches of this damage-taken calculation chain, correct?
I think why I will have their uses still is a bit on the weaker side of defenses, especially when most Rangers build tend to have low HP especially in softcore and for newer players, most of the time the Eater beam would 1shot or leave you with so little HP that any other hit will kill you, and while 2 hit in a row aren't pretty common Evasion is entropy based and the luck in the draw can make it happen (Shaper 3 balls would definitely kill you), I think GGG will revisit this nodes when this league ends, as a closing thought no one would anoint "Persistence" (in a real scenario) first of cuz is a niche defensive layer and second cuz a lot of builds have more desiderables Nodes, I think Barkskin could work in theory as an early defense until you get better gear and obsolete in Yellow Map (without thinking that those 4 points compete vs other more stronger nodes)
yeah, I have a melee raider using snowblind grace, fortify, kaoms belt (which I believe is bugged based on personal testing), and I would use the first barkskin node. second seems like a waste (probably gonna reroll pf tho tbh)
They each already have wiki pages. In short Penance Mark makes enemies spawn phantasms, which is great for skills that want additional enemies to proc stuff. Affliction is used to manually explode your minions and get a bunch of regen for yourself. And Pacify is solely for tough boss fights, where it serves to nullify their damage for a while after some time of them being cursed.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn As well as Bardskin has wiki page. But I`m here for practical application. I managed to play a little with Penance mark with Arc of Oscillating as it chains between two targets, so each phantasm chains to boss at some point.
i think barkskin is most underrated skill atm. prevent 20% with inveterate+mastery make 1/4 damage taken by spell, 20% more chance to Evade also crazy. you can lose bark by spell damage so easily get 0 bark every single moment.
People underestimate evasion all the time so I'm not surprised. You can absolutely be very tanky with good damage on ranger if you know what you're doing. I'm excited to play with these new options
Hmmm, hopefully having 0 stacks isn't so good that people leave the skill off until they are about to be in danger before turning it on, or toggling it off and back on to remove stacks. Might be too annoying even if it is technically worth doing.
Yes, you get reduced damage when you have bark.Trauma hits don't reduce bark, only enemy hits do. Now I'm seriously considering persistence along with trauma support. -100 flat at level 90 is quite noticeable even for high trauma values.
Base barskin that only affects attacks is very confusing, very build dependent... The spell part is a lot more straight forward. If you don't have barskin you take less damage, if you have barskin you take less damage. I mean yah it's a lot more deeper than that and you should still keep an eye on the stacks probably. But in practice it's good enough to forget about it.
Most downplay this skill because its conditinal or lets say not static so the fraun upon this just for the sake of it. I hope there will be some build that makes decent damage and is nicely scalable. Nice to see someone giving it some love.
@@davidanderegg1232 Calling it conditional is a bit wrong though. When you think of conditional defenses like Heartstopper, it's timer-based. It's condition has nothing to do with how you're playing the game. The condition here is that at max bark, you're much less likely to get a big physical hit and as you take more small hits, you greatly become less likely to be hit again. So the condition is direct feedback from what is happening in game and not at all random. Also, if you're not okay reserving 10% mana for that, then you probably shouldn't reserve any defensive aura's because those stats are just way better than anything else you can get for that value.
@@gunz300 you have some control but not complete, It’s definitely conditional. But like I said, ignoring that, it’s still bad. Because the difference between it and auras is auras don’t use ascendency points. Ascendencies are a 20-30% more multiplier usually (either offensive or defensive). At best this is 20% defense but just attacks and at the cost of mana.
@@davidanderegg1232 Well it is good funny enough. Depending on youre setup in can provide up to 16% damage reduction due to the way the math is handled as people found out. Nothing to sneeze at.
when i first looked at it i took the old values and decided its bad but this with 10% reservation is really good. actually ascendancy point starved on warden
The problem with borkskin is that you very rarely want the flat damage reduction, because the stuff you're afraid of comes in the form of huge hits. A 4K HP character isn't going to be dying to 10 hits of 400. They're going to die to a crit, or to 4 hits of 1000, and so on. And against the big, scary, fatal damage, barkskin just goes out to lunch. Basically, it feels like an insurance policy that insures you when you DON'T need it, and leaves you entirely exposed when you DO. Couple that with the fact that the opportunity cost of taking barkskin ascendancy notables is NOT taking the wildly spectacular elemental damage notables, and that seems like a recipe for utter disaster.
Actually, often when you die it's from several hits or a sequence of things, unless you have absolutely paper defenses. The flat reduction is very powerful at mitigating smaller hits so they don't deal a lot of chip damage to you, which is quite good on builds with lacking life recovery
@@dreamcore_gg a warden is a build that needs to hit 50x in 2 seconds. With 46 LGoH from an imperial claw, that's 2300 life in 2 seconds = 1150 life recovered per second from just the claw implicit. That gets doubled with the instant leech mastery, and then there's leech recovery on top of that. Add a 25 LGoH claw mastery on top of that, and that's another 625 life/second. I don't think claw wardens at a proper hit rate has any issues with recovery. Bow builds, on the other hand...might have more issues with recovery.
Also Wind Dancer keystone. Can even grab Wind Ward from the Deadeye using Forbidden jewels, if you have Tailwind boots. And Aspect of the Crab on a ring or something.
The warden was the worst wildwood ascendency because it had draw backs for every upside. Sure it was net positive, but not with the opportunity cost. It’s looking like it’ll be the same now. If the node said 20% more chance to evade, that’d be a reasonable ascendency. But 10% mana reservation and only getting the evasion sometimes? No thank you. Same thing with tinctures. Losing a second flask slot and doubling the mana burn? What other ascendency has downsides like that?
wow, the wording on the spell suppression part was HORRIBLE. i honestly wouldnt have known what ggg meant by that. why cant they just write "2% additional spell damage prevented per missing bark"
dogshit skin. glad is getting lucky block, chiftin got 90% all res for almost no investment, inq has free conc ground and double regen, necro has bone amour and trickster has escape artist while your boy is getting -300 phy for 10% mana reservation is this a joke?? good thing his offensive abilities are fairly op
You get a lot more than that. You're just deliberately ignoring the avoidance defenses in favor of damage reductions. Why even play a Ranger if all you want is to be a tank? The whole point of that side of the tree is avoiding damage, not tanking it.
@@ArawnOfAnnwnif you got crazy evasion your gonna have the bark stacks though. It’s a terrible design where you get what your build doesn’t want. Best way to do it is no evasion spell supress but that’s four asc points for one effect (and 10% reservation)
