Arctic Armour

I agree. Same with lightning shield.

My few cents.

I agree with those who suggest that it should be made more attractive for melee fighters. Adding Mana leech to it sounds like an awesome idea - at first. But ...

My first attempt in building a melee toon around that skill failed miserably. I was unable to do Vaal on cruel until I was 10 levels above him (HC). You need to stay mobile in this fight without actually attacking anything all that often or you're dead. Since it was an evasion build and had invested so much into mana regen instead of life, the only means to mitigate some damage from those constucts was my finally sustainable AA. Otherwise a volley from them hits harder than vaal himself.

There are countless other situations like that and mana leech would not help at all. There ought to be some other solution ....

Yeah that is why I said I suggested it once, but it doesn't work.

Currently it is as follows:

Melee vs Ranged:

Moves a lot against a build that stands still mostly. Which results in getting the movement penalty which makes mana consumption 6 times worse than ranged.

Has to fight up close and take more damage and/or fights to avoid, due to this has less sustained mana leech to help keep up AA (as you said). Thus you could argue that either more defense should be given on the move, either the defense in generally is too low or the mana penalty is far too high.

Some of the biggest or heaviest attacks are melee (zombies, rock golems, statues, etc.) these attacks are also bypassing the damage more (why the fuck GGG decided to give melee enemies that hit harder than most other mobs in this game is beyond me, really f'n retarded sense of balancing. Just like how the fast attack mobs like void bearers are deadly up close, but safe killing from afar).

Ground chill has a mediocre effect slowing down enemy mobs when running away, ground chill has almost 0 effect when fighting as melee (in fact the only melee mob to consistently getting chilled by AA is the AA enemy mob... just a big f'n lol).

Some of these issues are due to melee and combining that playstyle with this skill, some are very specific to this skill, but overall that is far too many and insanely severe negatives compared to a ranged playstyle. I have little hope this will get changed by now, because attention to this should have been given at day 1 of skill introduction, but people with some mana to spare were too happy about the extra defense and killed all discussion.

I agree, but I cannot share your pessimism, yet. Otherwise I would need to uninstall right now.

Some Ideas:
* Spells and Ranged attacks cost 250% mana while active.
* Spells and Ranged attacks deal less damage with increasing range.
* Switch mana cost ( big drain while standing still, lower drain while moving )

When doing the former, LS ( and similar wannabe melee skills ) needs to shoot its bolts only when a monster was actually hit. I don't get why it wasn't that way from the beginning. Otherwise LS-AA would be way to go.

Your suggestiosn are off, the big issue is that the skill got added and provided extra protection, some builds did not have at the time. Es and evasion or the combination of these can be very potent with AA mitigation. It would be insanely OP if you didn't spend too much into it and got all that mitigation, basically for free and along that mitigation can dodge enemies stay mobile.

This is the biggest reason why it got introduced. Too bad it doesn't quite work out and ranged still win running this skill.

I like one of your suggestion and that is to increase the mana costs of spells and there lies a simple solution actually. If the on move penalty would be a big mana increase to spell/ ranged skill costs. You still got the regen fine, but maybe are out of casts because they are too expensive or because you don't have enough free mana (to much reserved by auras i.e.). Sounds like something that could work.

Which of those suggestions are off then exactly ? ;)
I do not want to decrease overall mana drain on it, just make it more manageable for melee fighters, compared to ranged.

this is just speculation, but I always saw AA as designed primarily for characters heavily invested in mana- which are usually int-based casters. even the chill is more suited towards ranged characters to kite away if needed.

it kinda makes sense (besides the fact that ranged >>> melee in this game) because armor and evasion are easily found in strength and dex node starts, but there is no defense in int nodes besides ES, which is a 'pool' defense.

for melee it was probably designed as a oh shit button against lots of fast attack mobs.

Yeah, so it would seem. Does not make much sense though. The int based toon usually needs his mana for spellcasting - at least he should; and ES provides plenty defense already.

Now if you are evasion based ( non hybrid ), then you are subjected to a vast amount of physical damage sources which bypass evasion entirely.

Melee can also invest a lot in mana not just ranged no reason for there to be so many downsides. Also don;t forget there are plenty of melee orientated nodes in the int area and there are life nodes to be found there too, beyond ES, but ES is not that great for melee, hybrid can work (life +es), but it lacks love from GGG and no special melee builds pop up going those routes.

Frost armor in d3 and in similar games often works very well for melee and is an interesting option. GGG chose the original path, but frankly it doesn't quite work out. Compare the mana and chill to the new Soul taker axe, at least that chills, without taking EB or mana nodes which leaves for more dmg and defense in other forms. Some redesign could make this skill a real competitor and opens far more viable builds.

When I said that your ideas were off, I meant that you want to directly penalize ranged, while it is the ranged + mobility that needs penalized. Currently this is done, but it severely impacts melee far more, than ranged and actually ranged are not that much bothered with it due to mana leech. That is why I changed the penalty and adapted your mana cost in the way I did.

Aye.

I guess we are on the same page then and I choose a wording which would lead to misunderstandings. Those suggestions were just a few thoughts one might base further discussion on.