Life needs a buff

You NEVER balance the game around gauntlet and the top 0.01% sweatslords.
NEVER.

World of Warcraft embraced this idea and look where it is. Retail WoW is dead. There's a bunch of hardcore fans sticking to it and participating in RWF, MDI etc, but the game hardly ever attracts a geniuine new player. It relies on bringing back old quitters for brief stints, such as month of july that buffed all soloable raid mount drops.

POE devs are smarter than that and they don't balance POE around gauntlet meta. Of course gauntlet meta is monolithic, this is a super hard challenge mode that demands you to pick the absolute best build. It has nothing in common with the base game balance. So don't sweat it when you see 70% representation in one ascendancy, this is how it's been.

Nah ES needs its character adding back in, it isn't supposed to be "blue HP but 3x the value"

Life has been really solid since the values got buffed in Settlers its made a huge difference to build viability on HC for those not just playing the prescribed path.

Life and ES were always meant to be different, with life being a low(er) pool, high sustain option, while ES being a high pool, low(er) sustain option with a delayed regeneration. That difference in identity is long gone, and we can now both instantly recharge, regenerate and leech energy shield at the same (and even greater) rate than life.

There's a huge balance job to be done for sure. This job can be done in a various different ways:

- Nerfs to ES
- Buffs to life
- Both of the above
- Balance through mitigation tools/skills/options by making some defensive options "life only" or adding "less ES" penalties on some defensive options.

Is the difference even more skewed this league with Mercenaries letting you scale "only" defenses? Sure. But the base difference is still too large.

CI has always been my favourite playstyle so I'm kinda biased here...
But the people who cry "ES NEEDS A NERF" seem crazy to me. Like, do you want the game to not be clearable or something?

The base game is perfectly doable on both life and CI. Life is clearly ahead on low investment, and CI is clearly ahead on high investment.

Even if you are looking at the gauntlet (which you really shouldn't be, Gauntlet is NOT the base game), you're obviously drawing the wrong conclusions. Yes, the clear was done by Ben on an ES build, but all his farm was done on a Life build.

I'm not sure what people want. Do you want Life to be better throughout all investments?

IMO what should be done is for the new top end bases to have even better life rolls scaling, so that life can scale to just a little bit higher. But I'm all for the "Life is better day 1, ES is better day X" current balance.

Imo the biggest problem with ES is CI. ES is supposed to be an additional/alternative HP pool which in exchange for being larger doesn't cover one damage type. CI flips the whole thing on it's head. You now have a bigger HP pool AND immunity to an entire damage type.

What's more, said damage type has been given more and more impact over the years. 5 years ago there was hardly any chaos damage around and the numbers were low. Plus the ES you could get from gear were much lower than now. Back then, CI wasn't that big off a deal. But today?

Phys as extra chaos is a rather common and very potent map mod for endgame content that massively hurts most builds who are mostly limited to 75% chaos res. You don't see higher chaos res outside of DF builds. CI builds nullify that very potent mod entirely and the downside is what exactly? Trickster being rather potent as an ascendancy doesn't help either obviously but CI is the main issue. Low life builds aren't really an issue by comparison.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

Imo the biggest problem with ES is CI.

I 100% agree with this, but the classic argument in all threads like this one is going to be....."but ES only functions with HIGH investment". But is that really true anymore? I've made mostly CI characters as league starters and farmers because ultimately I find them to be actually EASIER to get out of the gate than life builds or hybrid builds.

I can get a decent CI character online right at map start, with an ES pool of around 5-6k (yes I know, low) with the bare minimum investment. We even have buffed up ES uniques now that are providing pretty much ilvl 75 ES values @ level 20-40. Add a little investment, and you can gear up a full ES character with gear that has HALF of the maximum ES rolls for a few chaos....allowing for 8-10k ES with a proper tree at a low level. So the numbers are already astronomically higher than what is possible with life, with basically no investment. Add to that the ability to now regenerate and recover ES at way way higher rates than ever before, and CI loses both its opportunity cost AND the downside of going full ES. At the same time, like Baharoth said, CI chaos immunity has only become far more important through the most recent years with the addition of a ton more chaos damage sources.

I am not asking for complete obliteration of CI and ES like some other threads, because at high investment these things should be damn good, but it is clear that it has not been "modernized" to what the base game currently is. It remains an outlier in power and utility at all levels of budget. It just really needs a few tweaks to bring it back in line, while remaining extremely powerful at high investment. Meanwhile, life simply hasn't kept up.



I recognize this is a bad metric in multiple ways, but it does help to illustrate the problem a bit at least at a base level.

PoE ninja highest ES value: almost 90k, w/ 1.3 milion ehp (no shenanigans like the cold shield thing)
PoE ninja highest life value: almost 42k, w/ 152k ehp. To get anywhere near this value of lifepool...ironically you are required to use a unique armour that converts ES lol.

Considering it is possible to recover both at pretty much the same rate (actually, ES regen is HIGHER because higher pool), with the only real functional differences being a life potion and progenesis....is that worth having ES being more than TWICE as much as life, while also offering complete chaos immunity at the same time? And then the ehp and maximum hit values actually illustrates the REAL problem and inconsistency here.

Lots of posts say that CI is now too good because chaos damage is everywhere in maps.

But is it actually a good thing? Do we need chaos damage being so common that players are so inclined towards a CI build? As a life player you will almost always equip 2x amethyst ring for free 50ish % chaos resist through the implicit mods (catalyzed resistance). Vermilion rings with % life? Nah, no one uses those.

I'm fine with chaos damage being used in boss encounters where running with negative resistance will feel bad. But does every map needs to be so packed with chaos damage mobs? Chaos resistance is harder to cap than other resistances. Alira perk doesn't provide it and its roll ranges on gear are lower than elemental resistances.

If you keep current chaos damage prevalence i would do the following:
-equalize resist rolls with other elemental resists (46-48% at tier1)
-Alira gives chaos res. Maybe reduce the bonus to +12 for all to not overbuff it.
-add chaos resist clusters in the tree. Especially left hand side could use one, as this is the "life" side. +3% max chaos resist notable there. Ease the pressure to use amethyst ring bases and perhaps use vermillion again on life builds.

life is fine. for once in its existence, life is 'ok' - it isnt great at trivializing most challenging content but can surely beat it. leave life as is, buff Blood Magic as that keystone stinks



CI and ES were a problem since version 1.0. that keystone, that supposed transition of defence layer into primary 'life', has been problematic since then - original CI even had 'more ES' :)

issues with balancing life vs CI/low-life are as old as this game. in very early days GGG introduced Kaom's Heart to the game (1000 flat life, no sockets) - this has been one of the greatest design blunders in POEs history. that unique warped the entire game around itself, GGG was too scared to nerf it (they even drop disabled it at some point) - so the story of 'life is fine IF YOU have this one item' began

because, mind you, life builds and melee were uber doghit for pretty much entire history of POE. playable? yes. comfortable? no. with abuse potential and ready for any surprise - NO.

current ES situation isnt new but it rides on the power creep (mercs, new bases, new item - esp that idiotic ES amulet). right now the problem is numbers or rather:

- new bases. regular Twilight Regalia + a bucket of dense fossils => ~1000 flat ES. if lucky with 50+ INT and few other more or less useful affixes + 2 implicits

this is INSANE. this is budget option, starting chest. it is absolutely batshit crazy

enter 'real' crafting and that 1000 turns into 1300 or 1500 with %increased INT/flat INT, tailoring enchant and stuff.

same story with boots/gloves/helmet - what you can get with dense fossils alone on a 20% base is insane

- proliferation of attribute stacking, the main offenders being INT and STR/INT combos. each patch the ceiling of such stacking raises. last, completely absurd and disastrous addition is misted jewelries - and im not even talking about multimirror simplex variety (however these being mistable i consider stupid) - im talking about regular map found +100 INT rings for few chaos or a div or two if paired with 2-3 good positives.

that and overabundance of sources of %increased attributes from dozens of different mechanics

it all matters because:
- INT gives you flat damage via weapon mod (has anyone seen a non INT stacking wander?)
- INT gives you %damage via amulet roll
- INT gives you damage reduction via chest roll
- INT gives you %ES (more on that later) -> more damage via Energy Blade(battlemage/spellblade)/EE
- INT gives you flat mana
- INT gives you plethora of other shit via uniques and stuff (like crit from inquisitor, Evasion from mastery, accuracy from mastery.. once anyone tries it - INT stackers build themselves, it is so pre-laid and ready to go)

what has been 'okish' when mirrors could get you ~1000 INT is perfectly broken when today's budget options get 1500 and serious offenders get 1500 of BOTH INT and STR with plenty room to spare

- crutches. as many mentioned before, CI/ES/Low-Life were 'worse' than life because ES had worse access to various sustain mechanics - leech, regen, uninterrupted recharge etc. one by one these issues were meticulously patched by GGG providing various tools to circumvent these negatives, in most cases for negligible cost. Trickster rework is one of the strongest cases - but it is not just Trickster's problem. GGG really did their best (i wish they had spent so much energy on 'saving' life builds) to make sure ES players are as cozy as possible. ES can even get instant ES leech - dont we remember what happened when CI and VP (old Vaal Pact) existed together?



so we are left with HUGE pool in a game of multipliers and percentages and we get runaway scaling where due to nature of multiplying small gains we get humongous increases across the board

main and overhemingly BROKEN mechanic is INT providing %ES. this wasnt fair in 1.0, this is completely batshit crazy in 3.26.

2 INT travel nodes, nodes that are objectively a waste, passive tax - equal to 1 regular %life node, that you have to travel to. these INT nodes multiply a larger flat value and you get more, much more of it

this INT -> %ES has to end. i know it would shake the meta (about damn time, seriously) and shrieks would be amazing, but we are very quickly approaching point of no return that led to 2 years of CI+VaalPact idiocy.

remove the scaling. double the mana per INT and thats it. ES gonna be fine.


the second part is 'magic sources of ES' - %mana as ES and other stuff of this nature. that has to be reviewed AFTER ES INT scaling is gone. some of them - when multiplied on a 2000 INT charater provide completely absurd gains


the end result should be that absolute top top top mirror tier gets ~20k ES with far less 'free' perks (starting with removal of %Evasion per INT) and regular Joes hover around 7-8k ES (still higher than life equivalents) and have to think twice before running unid maps



none of that will happen, GGG is very, very affraid of backlash related to ES balance, they always were. but it is nice to dream

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sidtherat#1310 wrote:

current ES situation isnt new but it rides on the power creep (mercs, new bases, new item - esp that idiotic ES amulet). right now the problem is numbers or rather:

- new bases. regular Twilight Regalia + a bucket of dense fossils => ~1000 flat ES. if lucky with 50+ INT and few other more or less useful affixes + 2 implicits

You do realize that other defenses like armor and evasion also received massive buffs, along with life rolls being higher by default, right?
If anything, this kind of take just comes off as another "ES BAD, OP!" FOMO reaction while completely ignoring the fact that ES is just as bad as any other defensive layer without serious investment. But hey, it’s easy to ignore the broader changes when you’re focused on the one FOMO thing, isn’t it?