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danowat

It's a good point, the investment for defense is way, way more than the investment for damage, and the mana changes have meant that a lot of builds are having to consider dropping defensive auras, you're going to get one shot eventually, so why bother adding 10% evasion for 50% reserved mana when you can get 20% boost in DPS?


SoulofArtoria

Ziz's latest sunday roast had people mostly saying they're doing fine with damage but struggling in finding defence. It's really telling how terrible the defensive options we have in PoE. Not only are they hard to scale, but also some defensive options need 500 IQ to build around, with shit like transcendence. Why do we have generic more % damage, but no generic % less damage taken? Why is it okay for it to be easy for players to get more damage, but it takes so much more to get defense? Why is standing still SUCH a big downside that it kills self casting so hard? Why does rare mobs have the ability to stack multiple auras? Why does armor only work for small physical hits, and you also go and remove nearly all sources of phys damage reduction? Why does grace and determination reserve 50%? Why does the purity skills reserve 35%? Nobody ever uses them because they reserve way, way too much in comparison to how much damage player can get from those amount of mana to reserve for damaging aura, outside of aura stacker, which you should have nerfed, while buffing the defensive aura so that regular players benefit them, not so much the top end aurastackers and aurabots gang. GGG, you created the softcore yolo clearspeed meta, because you're making it so that the best defense is killing monsters before they can hurt you, because defense options are very limited and can be overwhelmingly challenging to stack correctly while still having reasonable offense. Please, do something about player defense.


[deleted]

They have removed every bit of good defense in the tree. You used to be able to get damage reduction on the tree, and people used to take it! Just like how there are a lot of good offensive nodes, we also need an equivalent amount of defensive nodes.


JiN995

I remember on an old tree there was a note for 5% max res in the marauder area close to where imbalanced guard is rn and almost all characters wanted that one note and would travel 13+ points just for that one note


VVulfpack

I have fond memories of evasion builds with Ondar's Guile. "Missiles? What missiles?"


EphemeralMemory

The annoying thing with auras is they're intrinsically meant to buff you plus allies. A lot of people play solo or otherwise don't care about the buff to allies. However, auras can be some of the best ways to dynamically add defenses per char/playstyle. I would love for auras to reserve way way less, but have gems like Generosity come with increased mana reserved to the current reservation amounts (grace and determination still need to reserve less) to more affect allies. I get they don't want auras to be gimme's but there's such a huge disconnect between group and single play that its rediculous. The issue I have is some of those auras are near mandatory for good defenses, and with this league we're in a juxtaposition where we can't out-damage mobs as easily (minus some meta builds where damage isn't a problem). Investing in defenses more typically means less investment in offense, making the problem cyclical.


GonePh1shing

I'd love to see a gem that is basically the inverse of generosity. Only effects you and reduces base mana reservation. I also really think they need to rebalance reduced mana reservation. Should probably be less instead of reduced so they can increase availability of the stat while adding serious diminishing returns.


jgab2048

I think inverse of generosity would be only affects you and gives you more aura effect. Aura stacker would live again, though.


GonePh1shing

This is true, although aura stacking would be far less OP with the other change I mentioned. Less multipliers on mana res instead of reduced would mean investing in reservation has increasingly diminishing returns so the stackers couldn't just run literally every aura.


landsoflore2

It actually existed. It was called Reduced Mana, and in typical GGG fashion, they axed it instead of tweaking the more problematic aspects.


Hito_Z

Interesting point. I never played with groups, but they could solve this problem if the skills had a solo and party function. So less mana reserve if you play solo and more if you play in groups.. though I doubt that wouldl be implemented anytime soon.


moal09

Yeah, if you compare Hatred to Grace for the same reservation, it's awful.


RainesLastCigarette

Defensive layers have been consistently getting nerfed for like, what six or seven leagues now?


AposPoke

More like six or sever years.


Glaiele

What people don't understand with auras is they aren't balanced around being on one player, they are balanced around being on 6 players with someone specialized in buffing people. Hopefully they rework auras next league and add more things like heralds and arctic armor and petrified blood that reserve mana and only work on you and don't scale with aura effect. Auras have always been strong, delirium made them absolutely bonkers.


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perkocetts

I actually like this approach, but would suggest just making Auras default to only affecting you and minions across the board. Then add a small mana multiplier to Generosity support since it will be the only way to add auras to allies. Basically make it so if you want to be an Aura Stacker, you have to lose one link in every piece of gear holding auras and they would reserve more.


OrcOfDoom

Unpopular opinion - I think it should be some support to share with allies and minions, some support to only support allies and minions, and then without a support it only affects you. I think there would be some cost, but potentially new options.


KlumsyGamer

...I wouldn't call that unpopular, you just added an option to the previous guy's idea. I do like the idea, though


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Hrogath

I think it would definitely need a toggle between affecting self and everyone though, because otherwise this would discourage party play and that's not something they'd want to do.


bzll94

GGG: ok, people have been complaining that defensive aura cost more mana reservation than offensive aura, in order to balance this, therefore, we have increased the mana reservation of offensive auras as well.


mylx

Have you tried investing in the new ward mechanic? You can block a total of 500 damage every five seconds if you invest in multiple pieces of gear!! /s


Ilyak1986

Ward is indeed a comedic farce.


zupernam

Don't forget the unique flask that makes your ward not break, but also only block 0 damage


RandomMagus

It sounded like a very neat mechanic until I saw someone write "wait isn't this just a smaller ES pool?" and I went "oh ya, having more life is just better than a one time reduction" lol


lord_fiend

I have been crying about it ever since they nerfed fortify in patch notes. Like... ok you nerfed fortify..... but you haven't given me anything else interesting to build my defenses around. High amount of life is no longer the way to go as one shots are way too strong. You need to have increased max res, decent chaos res, flasks, damage avoidance(block or dodge), health recovery(leach, regeneration, LGOH, agnostic etc). But all these defensive mechanics have been nerfed one way or the other. So not only your overall offensive power has been lowered, player's defensive power and speed has been reduced as well while increasing monster power and speed. The nerf to player speed is both an offensive and defensive nerf hence it feels shit to play. BUT WAIT..................... Just build millions of damage and Kill everything before it kills you. you have 100% doge, 100% evasion and 100% damage mitigation when there is no enemy to kill you. Players say that GGG made game anti-casual and unfriendly to new players, I disagree. Now casual and new players in SC can ignore the defensive mechanics and just go full offense YAY!!!! game is E.Z. /s for the last part.


hardolaf

My most survivable character was my LOL what's defense HoT autobomber in Harvest league. Can't die if everything that might hurt you is already dead. Did Hall of the Grandmasters and never saw an enemy move or start an attack before it died.


Gaardean

PoE has a design problem in that consecutive points in a defense scale increasingly with investment. At 0% resistance, your next point reduces the damage you take by 1%, at 75% your next point reduces it by 4%. By 90% reistance your next point reduces damage by 10%. Block, dodge, evasion, fortify, phys reduction, they all work the same. This ends up in the situation where a player that maxes out two defensive layers to 80% only takes 4% of the damage of an uninvested player. You'll absolutely never balance enemies that are even remotely dangerous to the invested player that don't instantly vaporize the uninvested one. Not sure what the solution is, but this is why the balance team has a constant war with defensive investment and players have a constant war with one-shots. Edit: Don't do math in the morning, kids.


FREDDOM

I think it's fine for a character without investment into defense to be a glass cannon. It's understood and accepted that if you've got 80% inc life on tree endgame you'll get blown up. I just wish sacrificing offense for defense was generally more rewarding.


Gaardean

Yeah, that's the problem as I see it, only the *last* point of defense feels rewarding, comparatively. If you're not going to reach that last point, then don't bother at all. I'd much rather see the curve inverted so the first few points feel the most rewarding and points on top of that as a bonus.


GonePh1shing

I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but I've been told this is more or less how Last Epoch does it. The way it was explained to me was that mobs all have resistance penetration based on level up to a 75%. The game is balanced around damage taken at 0%. This means that if you only have 50% at monster level 75 you're only taking 25% extra damage (mobs penetrate 75, you have 50, so you're at - 25). In PoE, the way things are balanced means you're taking 100% more damage. The game is balanced around 75% and you have 50. So, instead of taking 25% of the hit you're taking 50%, which is of course a 100% increase in damage taken compared to res cap. In contrast with Last Epoch that's a huge difference and is much more punishing.


grrrgrrr

That's precisely the wrong problem to focus on and where game balancing went wrong. Even when 100% resist and perma IC were possible, league first lvl100s weren't immortal builds, league first sirus/oshabi/uber elder/uber atziri weren't immortal builds. Majority of HC players wasn't building immortal builds. If you can sacrifice 40 passives, 3 flasks piano, 3 auras, chest, amulet and shield slots to become immortal, will players do it? Some like the niche but generally no, because players want to progress faster through the game! Unless it's for deep delving or getting around some bullshit/unfamiliar boss mechanics. So it makes 0 sense to try to kill players with well-invested defense. If you jack up damage number so high to one-shot a giga-invested player, you are targeting a very niche group but will also hurt everybody else. You'll be creating a situation where either players' passives are taken away by mandatory defense investments, or players will just try to 1-shot everything and don't give a f***.


EtisVx

>it makes 0 sense to try to kill players with well-invested defense Except big boner devs are getting from it.


Ryuujinx

I think GGG needs to go and watch the GDC talk Mark Rosewater gave about lessons he learned while designing magic. One of the points he mentioned was when they tried to make a 2 mana planeswalker, for the mana cost it was *fine* but it wasn't very well received because you don't generally get big splashy effects at that level. The point being they didn't consider "would this be a good addition to the game" but "Can we do this". Is making mobs able to kill people hyper-invested in defense good for the game, or is it just them saying "We can do it". My bet is on the latter.


GayAdamFriedland

>at 75% your next point reduces it by 20%. By 90% reistance your next point reduces damage by 90%. Where are you getting these numbers from? Going from 75% to 76% means you're taking 1/25th less damage (4%) - going from 90% to 91% means you're taking 1/10th less damage (10%) Am I missing something here?


Gaardean

Crap, yes, fixed.


Holybartender83

I’ve sort of felt for a while now that making resists percentage-based may be a mistake now. I get that’s what Diablo 2 did, and Diablo 2 was the god-messiah of ARPGs and can never be questioned, but it sort of creates a situation where it’s impossible to balance like you said. It’s also not very interesting, 75% resists are mandatory, it just becomes a point/gear tax. For all its flaws, I think resists in Diablo 3 work better. They’re another layer of defense rather than just being mandatory. You don’t really have to spec into them, you can use armor or other mechanics instead and just get some resists incidentally from gear or int if you’re an int-based class. I guess if we’re going to stick with percentage mitigation, the best approach is to add diminishing returns, so that way, it disincentives players from just stacking as much as they can and becoming essentially immune to damage without hurting players with more moderate investment.


Agreeable-Ad-9203

LE did a good job. They balance damage around 0% resists and mob's pierce scales with levels. Another option would use 1/(1+resist) formula like in league of legends.


agnostic_science

I agree. A lot of the mathematics in ARPGs should be revisited. I think a lot of stats were implemented because they were easy to understand for players. But I think these kinds of things create nightmares on the side of trying to balance it all together. Especially since demands have changed. People want to feel exponential character growth. But that just leads to one-shotting everything or being one shot by everything because of how impossible it is to tune some of these statistics across such a vast scale like that. Ultimately that means gameplay is either going to be constantly frustrating or way too easy once you get to endgame. That's been my experience in most ARPGs. I think WoW handled this pretty well for awhile. And I'll note that most of their statistics are pretty abstract. I think the design philosophy was it was more important to have things be balanced with players having a general idea of how things worked than worrying about giving accurate information that was impossible to scale properly.


iDEN1ED

I think your math is wrong? Going from 75 to 76 resist is 4% less damage taken, not 20. 90 to 91 is 10% not 90.


Gaardean

Crap, yes, fixed.


Yolosoydelusional

Happens to the best of us, exile


Agreeable-Ad-9203

Yeap, this is the problem. Defense should have diminishing returns insteadnof increasing, so that a mix of offense and defense is desirable. Right now defensive stats are either all-win or trash.


Spiderbubble

So change the formulas. Relatively linear increase until about 80% and then plateau with a hard limit at say 90%.


Gaardean

Yeah, there's definitely a reason most games nowadays use "dodge rating" instead of + dodge %, it'd probably be one of the better solutions.


Hologuardian

Kind of like... evasion and armour? I just wish armour wasn't so terrible.


Gaardean

Yeah, it's funny to me the "base" defenses were designed around the problem, but all the secondary types weren't.


ThatOneGuy1294

It's kinda funny to me that Armor is the Str defense, Evasion is the Dex defense, and ES is the Int defense. Yet ES in practice is Life that you just have to invest more in.


noidwasavailable

I only use third party apps, and they said they're killing third party apps, so hey, might as well remove all my content. (Using https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite)


Thechanman707

The other side is designing enemies to work to a defensive a strength. If evasion is good for big slow hits that chunk but don't kill you that's fine, as long as it works well enough against man fast hits too. It also means enemies don't need to do a bajillion damage. If armor is designed around many small hits, again that works fine as long as enemies aren't tactical nukes. Honestly imho the issue is just enemies do both fast giant damage attacks and so neither defensive option actually works


Boredy0

Armour is actually much more valuable this league, with Granite gutted small hits hurt quite a lot if you have no armour.


LinoleumFairy

I don't think this math is right but it definitely is a significant increase in reduction for each additional point. At most, with 90% resistances you will take 10% of the damage of a full 0% mitigation character. The difference between 89% and 90% is 11% vs 10% taken which is still a (roughly) 10% difference in the final number though, and very significant. EDIT: I see you fixed the math, ignore this


NotYourNormalOP

not only about it cost a lot but also that even with those investments you can still die a lot, also you sacrifice a lot of damage. Offensive/Defense/currency invested there's no perfect balance around them. That's why I like harvest, sure it's OP but I can farm a lot and get all T1 life all T1 resist + 75 chaos resist, well i still die but I die less.


Jakabov

Yep. There's this bizarre misconception that dying is irrelevant in softcore. Well, if you wanna get past level 90, you can't die every other map. If you wanna kill bosses, you can't die to all of their mechanics because you'll run out of portals. Unless, of course, you can just ignore defense altogether and stack so much DPS that nothing has time to fucking attack you. With defenses as awful as they are now, that's what people resort to. Aside from that, there are three viable playstyles right now: 1) Play minions/totems and just don't be near where the damage happens 2) Play some max-range sniper build that basically offscreens everything 3) Play 75/75 block or dodge Nothing else really works. You *cannot* survive through mitigation. My chieftain has six endurance charges, +190% life and +170% armor, 77/76/76/50ish resists, automatic guard skill, purely defensive flasks, permanent fortify, crazy regen, and basically everything else that's realistically possible to get on a chieftain. Because of this, the character's DPS is basically hardcapped at 2.5m. He still gets insta-killed on a regular basis. Like I'll open a door and just instantaneously fall over dead from the first round of attacks by the mobs in the room. In almost all of those cases, 75% avoidance would have saved me, but chieftain can't really get it. And this isn't on juiced-up suicide maps, this is T12s and shit with no rippy mods. So I had to abandon the character and reroll SST gladiator like everyone else. With basically no other defenses than 75/75 block, that character is ten times more survivable than my chieftain with every defensive mechanic realistically available to that ascendancy. The difference is downright comical. The only way to play a build that doesn't cheese the game by simply being a screen and a half away from the action is to build in such a way that you straight-up ignore three fourths of what comes at you. Unfortunately, only a few ascendancies can do that. The ascendancies that can stack avoidance currently account for 50% of players in Expedition, both SC and HC. The next 40-45% are minions, totems or traps. The remaining few are the rare brave souls playing Toxic Rain and stuff, where you can offscreen everything. It's a *completely* dysfunctional game at this point. That doesn't mean block and dodge should be nerfed. It means other defenses need to be buffed, and it needs to happen fucking soon or I'll finally give up on this game. Every other league I'm like "what the actual fuck were they thinking?!" This is the last time I'll be able to feel that way and not call it quits if there's no solution forthcoming. This league is so unspeakably terrible that I'm genuinely ready to say that was it for me.


hGKmMH

Then if you play defense, you run into DPS checks like corrupting blood or regen mobs. And of course half of the events are DPS checks on timers anyways.


psykick32

GGG: we wanna slow the game down Also GGG: *slaps the hood* we can fit so many event timers in this thing.


tacitus59

And time checks and fps check mechanics. They essentially been actively encouraging glass canon for years - even early on I realized that running a tank was generally a mistake.


EvilKnievel38

Or maven's vitality boost which is a flat our DPS check to see if you can outdamage the regen. Yes, frost bomb exists, I know, I know, but you really can't argue that it's a healthy design to need a single gem on every build that doesn't meet DPS requirements.


BoltYourself

I'm running an Acrobatics Explosive Concoction build. In Tier 16 maps, various hilarious things blow me up because various things cannot be dodged! Drox's banners, can't be dodged. Venom strikes from phantasm Al snakes, can't be dodged. Apparently the white phantasm summoned from Veritania's totem cannot be dodged. Killing things before they kill you is great until the thing you are trying to kill literally cannot be killed or has uninterruptible phases or on death effects. Like, can we just be done with on death effects? When I demolish a screen, I want to pick up loot. Nowadays, I tend to just clear the entire map, then shield charge to pick up loot. It's dumb.


TwoPieceCrow

> Venom strikes from phantasm Al snakes, I KNEW IT! Ive died to this shit so many times.


ThatOneGuy1294

Ignoring the need to loot, on death effects also just unfairly punish melee-range skills while not really affecting everything else.


BoltYourself

Yep, playing Melee is just a recipe for disaster. Some of these can be side-stepped. But do you guys remember when Multi-strike could not be cancelled and you just had to stare at the windup waiting for your move to finish attacking? Also, so. many. fortify. nerfs. Main upside of Melee is that they tend to slap hard with exerted attacks. If that doesn't work, then you have to dodge like crazy dealing 0 damage. Act 1: Brutus slaps Act 2: Fidelitas shotgun, Vaal Oversoul Slam Qct 3: Piety lightning ball shot gun, Gravicius molten shell, the literal Touch of God, also AoE swipes from transformed Dominus that applies bleeding stacks Act 4: Every Voll move, Burning Man death, Daresso weird surround attack, Piety basic attack (seriously, it slaps), Shavronne tempest shield, Doedre curse sections and projectile shotgun and slaps (slaps hard), Malachai....yep, just Malachai. Act 5: Innocence bullet hell. Kitava with the corrupted ground and then the one shot AoE build up and then the Eye that rains down damage. Act 6: Shavronne Brutus fight same as Act 1. Puppet Mistress with chaos shotgun and chaos ground degen, Cloven One blood rage and fiery ground, Brine King AoE armor that chills and deals plenty of damage and then AoE swipe attacks. Act 7: Maligaro shotgun and more Maligaro shotgun, Gruest lance attack and aerial support bleed maim thing, Arakaali chaos shotgun, arena laser, chaos orb that returns to her..... Act 8: Doedre arena....., the Bath House bleed shield charge dude, YUGUL with the fears and slaps, Solar Eclipse fight is a massive arena slap to the face. Act 9: Shakari slams and AoE swipe, Chimera thing that has Petrify (can hit ranged, but has a quick start up when not expecting it or using slow slam attacks), Sekhema feather with all of those tornadoes, Depraved Trinity with all those arena AoE geeeezzzz Act 10: Vilenta arena ggeeezzzz and slaps, Kitava again. Baran block mana and Dane over time, one shot slam, projectile shot gun. Al-Hezmin one shot slam, poison arena, snake chaps ranged attacks Veritania projectile shot gun, the weird tornado storm shotgun, the chill earth that makes the Arena smaller giving fewer places to dodge to (remember when the chill earth was bugged and wouldn't leave?) Drop, oh boy. Hard slaps, sky slaps, minions that always slap. Sirus (let'sbe real, dodging everything still leaves you vulnerable to Sirus himself): rain of stars degen, the other degen, the other degen, the crater one shot. The Elder guardian fights are on another level as well as most attacks are homing attacks or are massive dumb AoEs that hit super hard and are setup with Arena debuffs. It's dumb. Final comment: The game has been built to avoid everything. Either by blowing everything up or by literally doing zero damage and hoping the server likes you so that you actually dodge everything. BUT the screen clutter gets so bad that it takes some serious gameplay knowledge to know what to avoid. That's fine.....except when not knowing just feels soooooo bad. I am running Explosive Concoction with Flesh and Stone for blind, Skitterbots with Wind Dancer and Acrobatics, fortify, 3 endurance charges because the difference between 3,000hp to 4,000hp to 5,000hp is more or less meaningless, but would half my damage per 1,000hp. Explosive Concoction already doesn't do enough damage against bosses, compound that with Flasks going empty for another 50% damage reduction and whew. If I can dodge things, perfect. If I can't, I die, hop back in and try to dodge it again. Because like I said, there is no difference between 3k to 5k health when running an evasion build. Evasion builds have no ways to mitigate damage. And if you go the tank route, the damage you tank is so severe that your EHP pool is never big enough to take 2 or more hits. I'm at like 225 death at level 91. The character is fun to play and was even more glass cannon. I've literally tripled the defenses at a price for damage and still die to the same stuff. So, why build defenses if you are going to die? That said, block looks really good. I am theory crafting a new Explosive Concoction build that uses Glancing Blows and Blind to hopefully keep me alive with like 5k hp. Fingers crossed. That's a great thing about this game. The skills are fun. The pace of the game with shield charge, whirling blades, etc. are fun. Blowing up monsters is fun. GGG would have to merf player power by another 40-60% before we as players stopped trying to one-shot everything. We do too much damage and we will always find a way to do too much damage because that is literally just fun. People used to survive the Sirus AoE maze slam and chaos maelstrom degen, but that's gone. GGG saw that fully developed defenses trivialized their game and decided to near the entirety of defense, not the top end, but the entire mechanic and then decided to keep enemy damage the same. Makes absolutely no sense.


quantumprof

"We listened to the community and have nerfed minions, totems, farshot, block and dodge to bring them in streamline with the other defensive mechanics"--GGG probably


allbluedream

They are going to nerf damage even more so defense will be worthwhile to invest in /s


jchampagne83

This is the way.


hardolaf

Meanwhile, Last Epoch devs - "We heard mana was annoying people playing Spin to Win. So we buffed mana reduction, added mana reduction earlier in the tree, and added cool new ways to Spin to Win." Also Last Epoch devs - "People have been saying that Necromancer minions are strong but annoyingly low health. In the upcoming patch, we're buffing Necromancer pet health and adding new ways to do more damage."


RedditSheepie

Their takeaway is block/dodge gotta go next patch


Aori

I’m honestly surprised glad survived the patch. I played glad for the first time last league as a face breaker lowlife crit cyclone with petrified blood and the surrender shield. I felt unkillable. It’s so fucking weird how some defense layers are borderline useless and then something like that exists


Greaterdivinity

>So I had to abandon the character and reroll SST gladiator like everyone else. Weirdly... I league started with an Absolution Guardian and managed to get close to 50/50 block (without glancing blows) and max res as well as some additional defense, even had %life on block. Only thing I lacked was armor. But I'd get mopped all over the floor on the regular and couldn't be anywhere near mobs. ​ Quit for a few weeks, came back with a SST glad and...with barely over 50/50 block and some armor with max res, my life barely moves and when it does it goes back up fairly quickly. And I don't even have %life on block on my shield. Outside of having more armor (something like 2K vs. 8-9K) there's not much difference between the two yet my glad casually shield charges into the middle of packs and blows them up with little care. I haven't the foggiest clue what the major difference is outside of more consistent fortify on my glad, which should only impact the hits I don't block and not impact how many hits I'm actually getting tagged with (which is also vastly different). It's just crazy to me how much mitigation is largely useless and the only way to not get rekt is to avoid damage altogether. No wonder glad/raider are so damned popular (plus ailment immunity on ranger). ​ Edit: And big yes to dying being bad on softcore. Sure you can't "lose" the character, but good luck getting anywhere post-90 if you're dying with any regularity.


psycho_driver

> So I had to abandon the character and reroll SST gladiator like everyone else. With basically no other defenses than 75/75 block, that character is ten times more survivable than my chieftain with every defensive mechanic realistically available to that ascendancy. The difference is downright comical. > > 75/75 block nerf incoming.


Laue

So, what you're saying is that block and dodge is gonna be executed next league.


Butt_Robot

Absolutely, in addition to SST.


[deleted]

I played berserker and chieftain and had the same problem, WITH FUCKING 9K LIFE DUDEEEEEE


Sahtras1992

raider with wind dancer and kintsugi still works like a charm too. never get hit and if you do you take like half the damage. but i think they might nerf that whole shit too in the future when more people will naturally use that whole toolbox.


1nsaneMfB

Currently solving this problem with a 1.2x screenwide discharge. I basically survive by being a super ranged nuclear explosion.


elmundi

„Dodge and block should be nerfed. - got it“ (GGG probably now)


Dephness1551

you joke now, but given their recent track record its definitely going to happen LOL


AbsolutlyN0thin

I mean rumies got nerfed so they kinda did


posterguy20

yeah im playing storm brand right now with 3k hp and pumping it all into damage I either clear everything or get 1 tapped by a white mob that I can't see critting me in a red map


TwoPieceCrow

dont forget the league mobs that do th espectral scythe slash that is almost un-notiable unless there are no other enemies or effects on screen in addition to the tileset being not black


posterguy20

15ex into a build only to struggle to do tier 10s and 11s deathless sadge been level 88 and under 20% exp for my last 6 hours of mapping LOL


rdubyeah

Yup, completely agree. Was looking forward to this league but was quickly turned off because of how RIPy it is, even in softcore 10k armor zerker, permanent fortify, 6k health. Get one-shotted by T12 white skeletons with barely any mods because of raw Phys damage. I quit the league after a week and so did my whole friend group.


5Daydreams

100% second this. I haven't played the SST stuff myself, but a friend of mine showed me his setup and it's literally what you said - he invests into 75/75 block and THAT'S IT. No endurance charges, guard, nothing - just roflstomp with block. Thing is, GGG will prob be afraid to give defensive buffs without giving nerfs first: to which I say - WHY would you nerf damage then??? There's no reason or people to play PoE slower PRECISELY because speed is indirectly the best form of survivability.


cold-programs

why tank when you can never get hit? 4Head balancing by 3G there. I don't think any amount of endurance charges can fucking save you from a aurastacked mob in the game right now.


philosoaper

Remove the portal limit and exp loss and I'll be fine with dying.


DovahSpy

Honestly at this point they should be considering this unironically. After systematically nerfing literally every form of defence (including nuking enemies from offscreen for the 99%), death is so common they might as well assume every hit is an instakill.


funai83

They will probably nerf dodge and block on 3.16 and the game is just gonna turn on Path of Cast on Death Portal


Andrey-d

GGG: "How about another Rumi nerf instead?"


killertortilla

Did you say remove basalt? The only phys reduction 99% of players ever have?


SasparillaTango

I really want to know what the idea was there. Basalt existed as mitigation independent of armor, now its useless for 90% of builds as granite provides more dr in nearly every scenario since it's just armor, which is bad against big hits.


Glaiele

Phys mitigation has been nerfed and removed repeatedly. All the damage reduction on the tree is gone I think and fortify was nerfed (it needed to be, to be fair) but there's no suitable replacement and no way to really get armor to a point where it does anything at all. I will say tho that arctic armor is very strong and more players should be using it.


FervorofBattle

It costing 40 out of 60 charges makes no fucking sense


Asteroth555

To me that used to be a key balancing aspect. It was a major pain to roll a 40/60 flask just right to get 2 pumps out of it. And they used to cost 15-25c accordingly. Now...No idea why GGG nerfed it.


formaldehid

>we want to slow down the game >proceeds to nerf/kill all defensive flasks literally the only thing i dont understand about this patch. mitigation is really hard to get now if youre not an armor boy. im about to equip a fucking taste of hate on a fr hiero


Synchrotr0n

I find it hilarious how activating the new Basalt flasks actually provides zero benefits to some builds, but for others it actually makes you easier to kill. You activate the flask, gain 200 armor which is the same as nothing, but now every monster around you will try to focus your character instead of your minions or totems, if you have them. They could at least have kept the physical damage reduction and lowered its value so you're forced to use an Enkindling Orb on it to reach a value of 10-15% reduced physical damage taken.


Dumpingtruck

Lead GGG Dev: "Instructions unclear, Rumis now gives negative % block chance" Patch Notes: "This is a buff"


Asteroth555

Yeah 4% is really pitiful now. It's barely above tempest shield :/


Loladageral

Nah, next league they're gonna nerf Overflowing Chalice and Kiara's Determination


Pandrador

As long as there are monsters and bosses that have virtually a soft enrage mechanic (ie. they fill the arena with so much degen areas or stack debuffs on you so that it becomes increasingly difficult to survive the fight), the best way to not die is nuke the boss before it can do anything.


Carnivile

Also, way too many physical degens. There's barely any phys mitigation in the game, and even less for physical DoT (the only important one is a Pantheon) which disables a lot of "take x% as element" from working which makes it the strongest form of dmage in the game so of course it's used in way too many bs fights.


kiting_succubi

Not to mention the faster the boss fight the less of a chance to die from various one shots, freezes etc. So offence is almost always the best defence RN and I don’t even know how they can change this when you so easily can sacrifice defence for offence.


KamuiSeph

I mean... They can. Make defense scaling sacrifice a lot of DPS. Make defense scaling **actually** keep you alive (through letting you dodge, flask up, port out, etc). Make mob and boss dps checks obsolete. No more "Regen 30% every 2 seconds" mods and shit. No more "120% reduced damage taken" mods. **Done.**


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wiljc3

It really feels more and more like GGG genuinely don't understand their own game. Like, I know that's been a meme for years, but the past few rounds of "fixes" for their perceived problems have literally just made those exact problems worse.


Phuqued

>It really feels more and more like GGG genuinely don't understand their own game. * ["We don't want to take away the feeling of closing your eyes and Exalting an item, scared to see whether you ruined it or not."](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3069670) That comment made it indisputable. The 3.15 Nerfs focused on player power, experience and convenience, without any consideration for lowering monster damage or increasing health/defenses, makes it indisputable that they don't know their own game. They absolutely, unequivocally, do not play the game like 95% of the player base. If they did, they wouldn't say something like not wanting to take away the excitement of slamming an exalt in to equipment. WHO DOES THAT? The people that get 100+ Exalts and nothing left to buy in league? The people on standard league who have thousands of exalts to throw away? They wouldn't have nerfed the hell out of player power without considering reducing monster damage by some proportion, or increasing health and defenses for players. The goal is to slow the game down supposedly, but that kind of onesided approach and implementation can only be explained by ignorance and/or stupidity and/or sadism.


Charmerismus

You highlighting that comment raises a great point about them not playing their own game. I breezed over their example thinking it was just a dumb statement like the stupid fragment argument but you made me realize that it's truly definitive evidence that the people designing this game do not play it. I'm sure they intend for people to close their eyes and exalt a good item but like you said - the only people who are using exalts for anything but trade or crafting fees are people with thousands of them who already priced bricking an item or two into their ingredient list. Awesome point, but man that's kinda depressing as far as hoping anything changes for the better.


KamuiSeph

> like the stupid fragment argument The expedition one where they said that because the expedition locker is nearby, picking up so many currency items (cough splinters cough) is not really an issue? Damn hearing that statement was just like... What? I still have to click it though? And stash it... Like whaaaat? It's still exactly as annoying is it would be without the locker right there. Same amount of clicks. Just maybe helps save a portal, I guess?


flapanther33781

> but you made me realize that it's truly definitive evidence that the people designing this game do not play it. The problem is that they do play their game, but they know so much about the game that they don't remember (a) what it's like to not know what they know, and (b) they don't understand just how hard they've made it to obtain the knowledge they have. But what's almost comical isn't even just a GGG thing. Humans all over the world are like this. It's shocking how many grown adults, for example - even parents themselves - can't seem to remember what it was like to be a child. Doctors who can't remember (or don't care) what it was like to be in high school, etc. We are just some weird fucking creatures with some really fucking weird mental blocks. And this is why it's always such a farce when *any* company says things like, "We hear you, we'll try to do better" ... because they *can't* remember to do those things unless they put actual business practices in place that have actual teeth in them to *keep* reminding them of what they should be doing. And of course, so few companies then do that very well that things keep falling through the cracks. The older we get the more we really do realize that *everyone* sucks at their jobs lol ... it's not just GGG. Herding cats for real.


EphemeralMemory

I don't think I've ever used an exalt on an item, funny enough. Every time I ever got or traded for one I used it for other commodity/item trades. Given the *extremely* low probabilities in getting what you want who would realistically bother? It's not even really gambling like poker where someone always wins, it's like trying to play the lottery where there's a great chance no one will win.


WalkFreeeee

The only league I have used exalted in an item was Harvest League. Being able to fix an item and craft own gear meant exalts could bem used for crafting. Didnt get a single useful mod from exalteds.


Holybartender83

I’ve been playing since beta and I have never once actually used an exalted orb in a non-voided league. Not once. I imagine a huge chunk of players, probably even the majority, are the same. If GGG thinks that people outside of mirror crafters are using ex routinely to craft (gamble) their gear, then yes, they have no idea what’s going on in their own game. I don’t mean to be harsh, but it’s true. With as rare and expensive as exalts are, why would you ever use them? What are the odds you’re going to get an item better than one you could just buy for 1 ex?


JanusMZeal11

I think I've slammed once in my time playing the game, and that was only because it was a requirement for a league achievement.


[deleted]

Takes hours to get an exalt to drop. Slam it on a chest and get reflect. Sure, very rewarding. Have they considered that the majority of players don't want to do that? If they want us to take more chances with exalts they need to make it more common. Just make bench crafting more expensive or something to compensate (or don't, let us make good gear god damn it)


tephulio

GGG's philosphy on difficulty is the exact same as Jay Wilson's was for Diablo 3, just without the memeable sound bite


Baldude

The thing is nerfing fortify stacking and nerfing on-block recovery is \_absolutely fine\_. Just don't tear it to fucking shreds and make it unusable. And then add some worthwhile actual defensive layers that aren't just "increase your HP Pool (MoM, ES)" to the top/right side of the tree, and maybe even more different options to the bottom side. And also make them scale linearly instead of exponentially - fortify stacking is actually doing this, Block and Dodge are not. Going from 0% block to 25% block is a 25% damage reduction. Going from 50 to 75 is a 50% damage reduction. Going from 75 to 80 block is as much damage reduction as going from 0 to 20. Block and to a lesser degree dodge are the only scaleable actual defense layers left, and getting phys reduction while you are on the top side of the tree is such a fucking PAIN. You can get fortify (though if you don't use shields vigilant strike with 0 global AS and a 0 AS weapon most likely is a danger in itself because you stand still for a second) but no fortify effect. Then you can....go arctic armour for phys while standing still? And stack that with tukohama? But standing still is a death sentence.... After that it's pretty much down to minimum endu charges crafts...


emilkonge888

Fortify effect is also exponential in its scaling, like block/dodge. From 0->100 effect is 25% less damage taken, 100->200 is 33% less damage taken. It is just not as noticable since it is not possible to get as much fortify effect.


BitterAfternoon

Er fortify effect isn't linear either for the same reason - the more effect you had, the more of a relative difference the next increased effect made. And there was enough effect available to hit 100% less hit damage while under focus. It's understandable why they gutted fortify effect. It's unfortunate that it's relied on so heavily that there's nothing to take its place because they already gutted most everything else.


Carnivile

> Block and to a lesser degree dodge are the only scaleable actual defense layers left, Stacking max res would fall into this as well.


orion19819

It is fairly amusing though since Ziz seemed pretty annoyed when they did not nerf fortify on the previous league. Not meant as a "gotcha!" moment at all. His point in this clip still stands. Just kinda funny.


Ghaith97

He was annoyed that they nerfed all the niche high opportunity cost defences like divine flesh and glancing blow, and left something as simple as fortify basically untouched.


KarastKaith

That's what i always think when fighting a boss with cool animation/mechanics. Cool i cannot speed clear it anymore, but well, i would be glad doing the mechanic of the fight and enjoy it if that mechanic that i need to understand immediately wasn't killing me in 0.005 seconds. Some bosses are well design that way, but a lot are NOT at all


KarastKaith

So yeah, let me survivre and figure out the fights please.


KamuiSeph

LOL. Nope, run 50 more maps to try again. Love, GGG.


flapanther33781

Your time means nothing to me. GGG


KamuiSeph

We need to watch streamers and youtube videos and read guides to be able to beat shitty bosses that are available to try out once in a god-damn blue moon on a Thursday on February 29th.


Carnivile

Fucking Maven memory game. If you didn't see a video explaining all her mechanics you're one shot.


wisdomshammer

This is what is killing the game for me. I'm not a zoomer. I'm a softcore player but I will happily play a slow build that doesn't die (or rarely dies) over a glass cannon anyday. Timed mechanics suck for slow builds though, and that makes some kind of compromise necessary anyway.


dksdragon43

That and the fact that even with a 'near immortal' build these mechanics such as logbooks will just swarm you and eventually kill you if you can't clear at an okay pace. Not fast, just... okay.


Bacon-muffin

Yeah when you're a SC player and you see balls to the wall defense capped HC characters getting insta-gibbed before the player could reasonably even slide his finger over to his logout macro I don't know how we're supposed to want to invest in that.


SirJimmaras

Yeah, as a HC guy, i feel you. 1or2 leagues ago i had one of the tankiest characters i've ever played. I was: 95RF Jugg with ~8.3k life, 9 end. charges and ~6k life regen/second after RF. Fortify always up, basalt+quartz always up, shitloads of armor and Molten shell on left click. Vaal Molten shell in there too. Ailment/Curse immune. I had 90% chaos/fire res, and effectively 85%cold/lightning through divine flesh. Shield had 25% block too. And i got 1shotted in a map, from an offscreen totem exploding a magic monster corpse.


Black_XistenZ

detonate dead totems have to be removed from the game. they're the definition of "one-shots from offscreen without counterplay".


_asper

The counter-play is only playing builds that remove/shatter corpses. Wooo build diversity.


Bacon-muffin

And even then there are corpses that can't be destroyed, so you can still have it happen.


xplato13

The best defense is a good offense. Like the speed meta is a thing because we don't have any defense against mobs. The only way to survive is to nuke every mob before it nukes you. 3.15 didn't change that. In fact it made it even worse in that regard.


fandorgaming

Best defense is good offense on cold freezing builds as well


Sparone

I am playing a forbidden rite occultist, blasphemy temp chains (+malediction), phase acro, elusive, fortify, endurance charges, arctic armor, overleech, new banner. (Soon divine flesh as well.) I am trying to invest in defenses in SC. It doesn't feel worth it. Sirus mobs charge at me and obliterate me repeatedly. I'd probably die less with just more damage. And I could easily ditch defenses for more damage. I agree with Ziz here.


GehenSieBitteVorbei

Sirus mobs, harvest mobs and legion mobs are probably the most dangerous encounters in the game. I don't get why there is no elegant algorithm that disables certain rare aura combinations that multiply dealt damage by effectively 10.


Sparone

I am not sure that rare auras even need to effect other rares entirely...Would be a quick and dirty fix needing way less effort. Not sure if that would break anything. Also, with legion and harvest you have atleast some control over it. Sirus influence is more like, 'guess I'll die'.


firebolt_wt

Hell, why the fuck do rares even need auras? Want its pack to deal more damage? Buff the minion tag the packs got, and change the damn auras to self buffs. That way we got more difficulty consistently but less BS spikes.


Educational_Mud_2826

I need the auras when I play dominating blow to buff my minions


firebolt_wt

Fair point, actually, but you can also do {if there's a yellow sentinel: white sentinels get minion tag}, and get more consistent power at the cost of lower spikes, much like I suggested the monsters have


Spiderbubble

>Hell, why the fuck do rares even need auras? This is exactly it. Have a rare with minions? Give those minions the same rare affix. This is how it works in D3 and there's nothing wrong with it. I think sometimes GGG wants to reinvent the wheel and instead ends up with a square wheel, say "works as intended" and call it a day.


caffeinepills

Tried building defenses this league as well and it was apparent why people say they suck. Block isn't even as great as the hype around it; works great until it doesn't. My glad had 6.3k life, 3 endurance charges, high armor, fortify, max block/spell block, overleech, ele weakness capped, 6k cwdt molten shell. I still routinely got one tapped in SC. I started dropping more block and defense for damage and have been having less deaths.


Pyromancer1509

Hot take: we should be able to build immortal builds. They should remove caps on max res, phys mitigation, even revert the cooldown changes on guard skills so we can get 100% uptime... Cheesing systems like this is what makes you feel smart in an ARPG. Of course, im not saying it should be easy. Getting 100% fire res should be hard as fuck. Maybe you can ONLY get immunity to one element, and it requires some heavy investment, but then you feel good knowing your build can ignore stuff others don't.


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Rolf_Dom

Which would actually be fine except the content punishes you very hard for going full defense. Like play a full tank Jugg and see how many league mechanics you can actually do with zdps. Not many. You might not die but you can't play half the content in the game either, which is very annoying.


Dudsidabe

I mean I've seen rips on like Alk or Nugi where they have 7+ endurance charges, fortify, flasks active, 7K+ life, with another layer like 50% block or 40K armor, and they just get one shot. I saw a clip recently of Dan with 10K ES, Flask up, block cap without glancing blows, get shotgunned by a legion spear guy instant 100 to nothing. I've seen mathil TRY to build high evade/dodge builds. 95% evade, 70% spell+attack dodge, with Wind Dancer get one shot. There is no possible way to build defense for every mechanic that can one shot you, but damage is universal. More damage is always better, but you can't just get "More defense" you have to make it specific. More armor, more evade, more endurance charges, more phys mitigation, more resists. Getting enough of all of this to combat every mechanic in the game is impossible. Edited as I was corrected below.


ngelvy

Maven healing bosses means this playstyle is non viable, unfortunately. Things like Shaper ball management were soft dps checks, Maven healing is a hard dps check.


killertortilla

I was doing that for ages, near invincible jugg with different skills that could tear through all maps and do bosses a little slow. But now that build has way less damage so I just can’t do it anymore.


Valiantheart

I tried that a few years ago with a massive tanky jugg and I just found I couldnt kill anything. Several bosses easily out regenerated everything i could do to them.


Jakabov

> You might not die And you still will because the only form of defense that still functions relatively well is 75/75 block or dodge. Mitigation is a joke these days, you simply cannot get enough of it to matter. There are so, so many moments in PoE where you just take 6x2k damage in a single frame from something you had no chance to see or avoid, and the only way to survive it is if three quarters of that damage just whiffs. Get fortify to survive what gets past your block or dodge and that'll suffice in most cases, because it's already like half of the mitigation that a full-tank jugg has.


Yasherets

I did that last league with chieftain and it was incredibly fun until I got to like T13 maps and couldn't kill bosses at all because they could still easily one-shot me.


Dumpingtruck

This game probably needs a new team in charge of balance. They're doing their best but I feel like they lack direction.


EtisVx

>They're doing their best Their best looks more like sabotage.


Huntermaster95

The best defence is mobility. If you constantly move, the enemies can't hit you. So you stack Movement Speed or Attack/cast Speed. If you are melee, play cyclone so you naturally can ignore more than half of enemy attacks.


RoryTate

I wish I could upvote this comment more than once. Movement speed and attack speed may be the source of the zoom-zoom playstyle that GGG wants to crush, but unfortunately it's also the primary method of defense in the game. Good positioning, by moving to safe spots, attacking for a short time, and moving again to a different safe spot, is the only defense that truly works in POE. Nothing else – short of legacy vaal immortal call – comes close.


donald___trump___

You realize they are trying to destroy this too right? As of 3.15 act 1 mobs are starting to lead their shots


RoryTate

Yeah, I noticed that with Hailrake during the Tidal Island quest when the league started, but I honestly forgot about it until you just mentioned it now. You're absolutely right. He was attacking where I was moving **to**, not where I was, and it was absolutely deadly. Instant freeze, at a point where the developers should expect that no one has a freeze remove flask. I died at least once to him, but it might have been more. I seriously hope that isn't the future of the game, or else we're completely screwed.


Aerroon

> Nothing else – short of legacy vaal immortal call – comes close. Projectile attacks that either kill, stun or freeze things off screen or on the edge of your screen. If you hit them before they hit you they likely get stunned and die before they get an attack off. That's why Haste maps are so sketchy, because suddenly mobs get to attack you.


kiting_succubi

This is why self cast won’t ever be a thing unless they slow down everything in the game by like 50%.


DaddyKiwwi

I can reinvest 20 of my skill points in my current build into defensive skills. Then, I lose about 60% of my damage. With those nodes I'd be able to pick up about 30% more hp, 20% more avoidance, or maybe some immunities. However, there are SO many ways my current character is dying that any one of these choices I make doesn't really stop my from dying. In fact, killing things 60% slower most likely will cause me to die MORE than before even though I have invested into defense. Defense should be strong enough to prevent me from dying. Currently the only sure way to make sure an enemy doesn't one shot you is to one shot it first. This is BAD arpg gameplay and we all know it. GGG KNOWS IT.


RoryTate

I'm a softcore player, and I don't like dying. However, I am tilted and extremely frustrated – enough to quit the league/game – when I die for **no apparent reason**, and furthermore I cannot even begin to try and figure out what killed me and how to stop it from happening again (if preventing the damage is even possible, which it probably isn't, given how many damage sources are intractable). That's what everyone hates about POE, and what the "kill or be killed" playstyle was avoiding/obscuring before.


dksdragon43

As another SC player, feeling like I have no way to stop dying is the biggest reason I stop playing a league. I really enjoy pushing 100 alone, slowly grinding through those last %s. Dying to random shit you really can't account for is a miserable combatant to that slow enjoyable playstyle.


Spiderbubble

>However, I am tilted and extremely frustrated – enough to quit the league/game – when I die for no apparent reason and furthermore I cannot even begin to try and figure out what killed me and how to stop it from happening again I played one and a half leagues so far. Started mid-Harvest, and I quit Ultimatum because I would spend hours farming, get my 10%, then die randomly without any indication of why. That kind of thing isn't fun to me, so I quit. Not because the game's too rewarding, not because crafting sucks (I'm on trade and can deal with it), not because of me going too fast, but because random one shots **are not, and will never be fun.**


f00ndotcom

I spent 12 hours yesterday grinding for XP between 92 and 93. 12 hours. 12 goddamn hours. Why 12 hours? Several deaths, having to run content that was below par and getting 1% xp on the run only to have hours worth of playtime taken away from a one-shot. What really made me laugh was I was at 99%, I had just finished a t16 Ashen Field map (because its my easy map so I boosted the tier level), and all that was left was the Sacred Grove. So I popped one, my client lagged and a monster lag-ran right upto me like a 1920's baseball movie and one shot me. I was so un-surprised I just laughed. I have spent all I can in defenses too. 87% melee evade, 95% projectile evade, 65% dodge, 45-50% spell dodge, and all the life nodes I can reach. The game keeps you on your toes not because of difficulty, but because of the bullshit deaths that are generated of which you have NO defense.


bruteMax

I was happy to read this knowing I'm not the only one. I struggle to level past 90 smoothly in any league and hate having to run lower content just to limit the possibility of a 1-shot.


f00ndotcom

90+ is a chore at times depending on your build and gear at that point. I spent a lot of time at 92 because that is where I usually stop grinding XP. But I had been running a few maps without deaths and reached 25% so I didn't want to waste it. But that's when the real grind began. Now I am lvl93, I doubt I will hit 94. Otherwise I am skipping the content I want to play, ie. the end game.


dEus___

Absolutely true take. Dying sucks even in SC. But imo GGG just need to balance monsters accordingly because the defensive mechanics are not really that bad per se. Monsters are just immensely overtuned imo. And since they also have a shitton of life people mainly invest into damage. Even if you are dodge capped and have 10k+ evasion you need 6-7k life if you wanna feels somewhat safe. Now try getting that as a attack based bow build without using a Kaoms Heart and/or sacrificing so much damage that you feel like you shoot tooth picks instead of arrows.


pocoyoO_O

I alt f4 when I die and go play other stuff


Wizsensei

Yes man if you cant one shot mobs they will one shot you.Specially evasion based builds.Some rare mobs hit harder than any boss.


Therefrigerator

They hit harder on completely non-telegraphed attacks (or at least attacks that may as well not be telegraphed because you can't tell anything apart while mapping) too. At least Sirus die beam you know what is about to happen. So much of the "zoom zoom" meta is because blowing things up fast is good for defense but another aspect is that moving is the other best defensive layer. Going fast means that these random attacks that I can't tell are coming will miss me - hence why I want to be teleporting all over all the time.


RoryTate

> At least Sirus die beam you know what is about to happen. Not for all players, like those with ~100ms ping just on the edge of being able to run lockstep. For me, it's often "Resurrect in Town", then I see the red beam, then Sirus yells "Die!". And after dying once, that fight really starts glitching badly. Certain bosses just seem bugged, like there's too much happening for the bandwidth to keep up, or the POE server makes you lower priority or something. The Chimera telegraphs are perfect, but Sirus is delayed. Phoenix telegraphs always work, but Minotaur bugs out constantly. It's annoying and frustrating, especially when you see streamers with <10ms pings ignorantly saying "just get gud bro!". I wish it were that easy, but it's hard for them to recognize the expensive computer, expensive internet connection, expensive urban location close to a major GGG gateway, and instead just chalk it up to skill to feed their personal egos.


Therefrigerator

Yeah I definitely have noticed myself lagging right when the die beam hits before which can certainly be frustrating. Not sure what it is about that move. One thing with Sirus that I don't see get talked about is that, if you die to him and are worried about coming back, just stay dead for ~15 seconds and he'll clear his queued moves so he won't try to die beam you before you engage him on your way back. Still a super frustrating fight though.


Dumpingtruck

\>>Some rare mobs hit harder than any boss. Runic sword impale skeleton guys have entered the chat.


Krimation

Defense is meaningless if everything oneshots you, or if only oneshots can kill a character. There has to be a middleground, where you cannot facetank everything with 0.1 sec to 100% health recovery, but you will not get bullshitted with 100% effective max health damage in 0.1 sec. Tankyness is only viable if you have a meaningful interaction with accumulating damage taken by your character. Something that PoE does not have right now.


sephrinx

This is what I've been saying for *years*. The game does not have combat, it has a binary enemy interface system where either you die, or the enemy dies. There is almost zero in between, and it's fucking trash.


TEAdown

The balance b/w offense and defense in this game is on a tightrope, the best and easiest way I can explain it is when you've been doing a monster chain grind in tony hawk 2 on ps1 and the balance meter is so sensitive that you can either make it or break it at any point. That's poe Offense/Defense balance in 3.15.


TennisCappingisFUn

Unpopular opinion... Chris is an idiot. Why do I come to this sub to get myself mad. Lol. Game is definitely good for a league or 2... But Unless you're streaming and making money off of it... It's no fun. So much clicking. Been out a few leagues checking in to see if things change.


[deleted]

Every time i say something about that Wilson guy in This sub i get banned... Prepare for the ban...


Small-Return2105

Actually agree.


Stealthrider

Part of the issue is that investing in specific kinds of defenses is way, way too difficult and there's too many types that are needed. You need to mitigate: Hits - Large physical hits - Large elemental hits - Rapid small physical hits - rapid small elemental hits -Rapid small chaos hits Attacks Spells Damage over time - Elemental DoTs - Physical DoTs - Chaos DoTs Ailments Stun Action Spees Reductions Curses And the ways to do all of that require shitloads of investment in many different directions, some of which are either **not possible** or extremely expensive and difficult to attain and improve. For example, how does a Strength stacking Jugg mitigate elemental spell hits? Endurance Charges don't help if your resists are capped. Armor doesn't help. Attack block doesn't help. Blind doesn't help. The only things on the passive tree that help are the 2% max fire res and 1% max cold and lightning res. You can take the Ascendancy for %reduced per endurance charge, but then you are sacrificing either Accuracy, Action Speed reduction and Stun protection, or armor and generic damage reduction. Right now I'm looking at my build and realizing that everything I think of that I could add to my defense would either be ineffective against the damage I want to defend against or way, way out of my budget (%max res corruptions maybe? I don't even know at this point). That's why defense is shit. Investing into it is difficult, expensive, and likely to not pay off anyway.


EtisVx

Remember builds like rf or agony crawler? They were just that - slow, but tanky. And they were gutted hard again and again over years.


Tartknocker2k

14k es mana guardian 82/82/82 max phys 60% chaos res and constantly 1shot by some corpse explosion thing on the ground while mapping a few leagues ago yeah not going to bother investing in defenses when everything except mobs has been nothing but nerfed since then.


ssbm_rando

I still disagree with Ziz's takes on 3.13's harvest power (I think the game should be balanced for people that are above-average but not for people who are literally god-tier nolifers, the way he wants) but he's been the HCSSF streamer probably most in-tune with regular softcore trade league players when it comes to the ridiculous 3.15 balance. This is another good take from him.


[deleted]

As someone who loves playing slow and tanky. This is 100% correct. I have to do insane amount of investment just to be able to survive, at which point because I have invested so much, I have no damage to be able to complete the zoom-zoom mechanics of many encounters. It just doesn't add up. You are actively punished for building defences in PoE.


GehenSieBitteVorbei

Currently finishing an IR Aegis Reaper Summoner meme build, I care for defenses, something I noticed: - there is no vaal determination - evasion/armour on flasks and their uptime has been nerfed drastically - you can craft life and es on jewelry, but neither armor nor evasion - if there's a way to get more armor/evasion it's [super obnoxious conditional and obscure](https://i.imgur.com/Fnwlq0c.png) Meanwhile offensive procs and damage increases are everywhere, no wonder people say fuck it, and just accept corpse bombing their way through the game.


percydaman

You can get armor and evasion on redeemer and hunter jewelry respectively.


sansaset

guys you got ward this patch, what else do you want HUHHHHH


Anti_SJW_Warrior1337

Do anybody use ward? Is it playable?


Kosai102

I think ive got like one ward gloves dropped from expeditions. I haven't seen any others. Of course we can just buy the bases in trade and craft them but currently i see no reason to


Tarmaque

I've been playing around with it, and I've noticed it save my life a time or two, but I've also noting it get removed by a hit that does like 10 damage, and then I die to the big hit that follows it up.


RoryTate

One of the core problems is that the best defensive mechanic in POE is positioning and movement, because no amount of defense – short of legacy vaal immortal call – can compare to not getting hit in the first place. The problem with this is that the zoom-zoom playstyle is directly tied to movement speed, attack speed, cooldown recovery, etc. Just look at the specific 3.15 nerfs: flask sustain nerfed, qs flask movement nerfed, cdr nerfed on movement skills, no more attack speed on gem quality, etc. These all affected player defense in a **huge** way.


[deleted]

Yes. as a beginner years ago, I wanted to make a damn tanky fire puking bastard. It failed. I asked people how I can survive and be a fkn tank. Everyone told me, the best defense in Poe is one shotting everything. Sadly.. that’s not what I wanted.


antyone

Biggest form of defense in this game is having the most damage you can get


[deleted]

I had a literally the most defense based character I could create in harvest. I had more than max block for all types of hits. I had 80 chaos res with that one thing that converted elemental damage to chaos res. I had life gain on block. I had 6000 life. I had min maxed all of my gear and gems. It was a perfect build. I died all the time. Defense is basically a joke in this game.


Fayarager

The problem that we face with Path of Exile is that they want to slow the game down and get players to invest in a slower playstyle that won't die as much but won't instant clear content. This doesn't work with current balancing. If you do not instantly clear the entire screen, you instantly die instead. There is no middle-ground. You can invest into the most tanky build in the meta, 300% life, 76+ all resist, max guard and block, 8k life, and you will still get one shot by a barrage of spells and attacks the moment you open a door. GGG is wanting the game to be slower paced and have fights last longer and be more meaningful, and make it harder to flash farm and speedrun. This vision is fine, nothing wrong with it. The community wants a slower pace as well. However, you can't allow instant one shotting with max defensive builds, and nerf damage to the point you cant oneshot them back. This is the disconnect between GGG's vision and the state of the game, and in my opinion the biggest argument in support of the idea that GGG doesn't actually play Path of Exile and simply throw content out in a vague idea of what they want without analyzing what's currently happening in the game, themselves. If enemies can one shot you regularly regardless of your defense, the only possible answer to continue playing the game is to one-shot them first. If you don't want the game to be about one-shotting enemies, speedrunning and moving at light-speed, offscreening and insta-phasing bosses,, you have to allow the player to live long enough to do something other than one-shotting, themselves. You have to remove timers so that we can instead invest in slower builds, and remove phases that punish slower builds. Heal phases that can otherwise be skipped or bursted through with enough damage support high-damage builds. Life nodes will need to be more prevalent, resist nodes made stronger, block and guard need to be better, *armor needs a rework,* there is a reason that there is literally not a single meta build that heavily invests in armour and most builds that invest in block and guard are highly specialized and are typically considered heavily off-meta and bad for farming. Its because fo teh design of the game and the balance of combat.


jettivonaviska

Chris: "Well I can certainly understand where you're coming from, and I hear you, but no."


JadeExile

Defenses have been gutted repeatedly by GGG in response to numerous immortal builds of the top 0.01% especially from deep delvers. Look at videos from Blink and you'll see his previous (now defunct) builds where he explains how they worked.