[Mouse]

i think a lot of people's issues with sustain comes from, as it has always been, being able to stack multiple instances of DR and healing on the same bar to become untouchable. with vines still being the hounds of charon even after the nerf, it's not hard for someone to use spells to keep opponents off of them, of which there are MANY examples, while using chip damage and big heals to protect themselves. there's a reason we see so many nature users right now, because it has the best of both worlds, even after a few nerfs.

vines and mandrakes (the latter to a lesser extent) quite literally never get off of you and do chip damage. nature wave doesn't have insane ticks anymore but still does solid damage. ingrain rooting you doesn't matter if you use it correctly in like 90% of scenarios. you punish engage VERY HARD by planting a garden and using spores when people come onto you alongside deadly bloom.

and that's just in nature. when you add holy (massive dr and decent offense) or wellspring (decent heals and a shield, admittedly not as great as other options atm) it goes from "ok i'll just use curse or hit them hard before they set up" to "oh god they just shielded through my burst combo, now they're sitting under deadly blooms while mandrakes and vines tear me apart, the battlefield has so much shit doing chip damage to me its unavoidable its basically nature volcano, and they're also healing underneath yggdrasil and ingrain"

don't get me started on the absolute fucking MANIACS who spend stat points on mana instead of agi

the problem with sustain is that with the tools given, they can effectively handwave most of the damage sent their way and heal what you're able to do while chipping you down alongside. then if they REALLY want, some armed or unarmed spells are cheap, or fuck, they could go into a third tree w/ what they have left to get actual damage spells and be violent that way

i dont think its any particular build in general, i think its mostly that with the addition of new spells to the game, it's powercrept in a way that nobody really expected it too. it isn't mandrakes or vines or ygg or anything else that makes sustain so powerful, it's a combination of a lot of things all at once that would require a large scale fundamental change in order to """fix""" it, imo.

that said people are only just now breaching 200 rpl, so maybe it'll change and become different when people have access to full builds, jammer spellstones, etc etc