Oh, we're just winging it...

...the guys who actually planned their builds are over in room 7.

True story from guild voice chat. I decided on my skill of choice when looking at the quest reward selection. Mostly I did it because apparently FP got a buff and I already knew what the skill gems were. I finally sat down to make my plan at level 49, with 5 points to allocate and with a decent idea of how much %HP to aim for.

proposed skill tree

FP - GMP - LL - something something. It's been lovely so far.
IS - increased crit damage - PCoC - increased crit chance? Got ICD from act 1 normal reward at Merveil, found out it freeze-locked really well, never looked back. The others I don't know about. In particular, I hate having to deal with power charge generation by single target.
Herald of Ice has been awesome. Might run Clarity, might run Discipline, go for AA, the usual EB MoM thing.

I have a problem with the skill tree update.

If you're reading this, you probably got here from one of my two guides on the main forum. They've made it through multiple skill tree revisions more-or-less intact, though the original classes they were posted under are no longer the optimal ones for them (go figure). When I respecced characters for it, I went with the ones who were already geared up, so I knew the stats both before and after.

And now I have a problem. 

With the same gear, the former 220%~ HP and the new 160%~ bring me to roughly the same number, which is about 4.5k. I'm short 150-200HP from before. This is a bit distressing, considering I'm using a legacy Rain and some really good HP gear, but there's always that circle below Scion and there's DW block there too.

I specced my ranger with all the easily reachable HP nodes, and am down 600HP from before. (The difference was in the nodes below and in duelist, my builds are fairly similar otherwise.) Whoops, 3.5k, not going there. I guess there's still that circle below Scion, gonna take a bit of juggling to get there though.

"There's always that circle below Scion." Why do I have to go for that? This isn't a complaint post about having to change, because change can be good; it's a complaint that I now have to stretch further to meet the same requirement, so I lose flexibility in other areas. I've already taken all the HP-relevant nodes in the areas I pass by.

Oh, we're changing up how HP base and skilltree interact, so you should have less worries about taking HP in the skilltree, and can take damage. Turns out the exact opposite is true, isn't it? I have to reach more HP clusters to get to the same value of HP as I did before. Reaching more HP clusters takes travel points too. Before, I was able to more-or-less pick and choose which clusters to take and what my routes should be. Now, I have to take all of the reasonably reachable ones, and some unreasonable too, and work the rest of my build around them. (Which I'm aware is how most regular HCers always did things, yes. Those builds regularly made 300% HP. My point stands and you can use logic to work out why.)

What gives, GGG? Don't you have someone who can do math?

A build working against itself

It's the last couple weeks before another big reset, and I have a couple of characters to play with. One's a witch and I specced her to a CWS setup. Link to example

Might notice that's an old thread. Specifically, skill builds are gone. I decided to try something else - stun goes through whether or not the damage is blocked, so I figured I could do a high block build and take minimal damage. What damage I did take, I figured I'd leech it back, or use other methods like Shavronne's Revelation, Aegis Aurora, Zealot's Oath, etc.

It might have worked, but for the fact that Aegis's effect requires armour to function effectively. More armour = less stuns. GG Kiri.

In other words, I can't realistically do docks, even with auras turned off. I've been stunlocked to death on an Aegis character (including Grace Determination) on 74+ vulnerability maps with 5k hp, so it's not completely impossible, but this is the first character I've made which has a lower level limit of zones rather than an upper one.

Getting triple shockstacked in Barracks helps, but not nearly enough. I'm thinking I should go for a Shackles of the Wretched.

I could just drop the Aegis idea. Got a shadow hanging around, and enough pure ES gear to give it a shot. Meh.

Wait, there's a comment spam filter?!

I just clicked the tab on my email that I never click on, by accident, and it turns out all the comments have been going to spam and I didn't even notice. Goodness. Turns out to all be spam, but still, I didn't even notice!

Meanwhile, I've been poking around back in the game. Computer's not fixed yet, but I've found a workaround - it's been stable throughout my 1MHC play time, so hopefully it will stay that way! Life is good right now and I'm really looking forward to 3MHC...and yes, I'll probably start posting again. Soon(tm).

If you're wondering why those two updates are concurrent, it's because I checked my email when my guild leader told me to. Yeah. Round of applause for current #1 and #2 in 1MHC, by the way. They're crazy, but awesome. Edit: RIP