Path of Exile 3.16 Balance - Part 2 - Core Character Defences and Recovery

New Armour Formula

The new armour formula that makes it more effective per point is great. Armour in general needed a buff and this was a great way to do that without breaking items that give powerful bonuses from high armour values. Very smart move here.

Flat Armour values Changes

The flat armour on determination is nice for builds that struggle to find flat armour since flask nerf to armour. The flat armour value boost on gear in general is much better for the new player community in general. Many new players who invested in armour where not getting their value worth and this makes the game much more new player friendly. It also makes armour make a lot more sense, because before the best builds got most of their flat armour from items that didn't make as much sense in a tank roleplaying game.

Physical damage reduction on bases

Making physical damage reduction mods item specific to strength and armour is great. I hope that strong buffs that only appear on other bases appear in the future as well.


Gladiator passive

This is great that it is finally nerfed some. And giving it to everyone on the bottom left corner of the tree would be nice since it needs some love down there. With 50/50 from 75% investment the numbers look fair. Not crazy but still great for builds that suck versus spell damage. Overall there will be more build diversity and more pathing in bottom left corner which is great.

Evasion Formula

I like this change because evasion alone is weak, but if this is only there to replace dodge then I don't like it. See my opinion on how to fix dodge in things I disagree with.

Evasion buffs

I really like the evasion buffs for leveling gear. Since the flask nerf leveling on evasion was not great.

The grace aura change is nice, as long as that is not there to replace dodge.

Spell supression

I think this should be focused on passives or gear for dex based toons only. Maybe it scales off evasion. As long as it doesn't replace dodge for characters who rely on dodge.

Resistance on tank tree side

I like max resistances on the tank side. Make a keystone in the bottom left corner with 5 to all max resistances and 10 if you've taken a savage hit recently. Builds that get hit a lot and hard need love.


Trickster bonus now on passive tree

This is awesome. Hybrid builds are much rarer and it should open new builds. I love anything that adds new builds and defense.

Large Flat life regen numbers

These are nice because % life regen is either too much for high investment toons or too low for low investment toon and hard to balance around. Not only are those modifiers better for new players with lower life, but they look more useful to new players because it is a large flat number per second rather than percentage.

Removing attack dodge completely.

This will destroy certain builds that can't build their character around evasions or block or armour.

If the value of dodge per item or passive is too high just lower the values by like 20% on all dodge modifiers. Don't nuke any defense modifier please, just nerf them a little at a time and see how it goes.

The biggest problem with dodge right now is that when stacked with evade and block the chance to hit can become INSANELY low with not much investment at all. Just cap Dodge at 50% because it is a weaker side defense and lower all dodge values by 20% across the board. Also the 30% dodge keystone should cut block and evade chance in half so the mechanics can't be cheesed together. The armour reduction doesn't matter since that is not cheesed.

Please remember GGG you are trying to nerf easy cheap cheesey defense mechanics, not nuke an important defensive layer into nothing. Instead of nuking dodge, do all the other nerfs I stated and there will be no cheesey never get hit builds and the dodge will not be as strong on a side mod.

Energy from naught nerf

This item was good for builds that had lots of uniques and no room for flat energy shield. It is not powerful for most builds with lots of energy shield sources. If you lower it to 90 that would be fair, but this will kill some fun builds if you nerf this too hard, cause they can't fit energy shield anywhere else.

varying base values

More variance sounds good in a game like this, but with the current level of complexity this is just one more annoying thing to deal with on the loot filter or when looking through items manually. Also once you add this taking it away could make half the playerbase mad if the other half hates it nobody wins. Remember people got really mad when you took original harvest power away.

This will make it so many crafting bases have almost no value and a few crafting bases have much more value. If most crafters tend to be perfectionists, then now there is less crafting in the game. I think this is a bad thing for item variance and trade markets.

Fortify

The reason everyone wants this is to stop one shots. Petrified blood with life flasks to keep 100% life will fix this, but not everyone has room for life flask and petrified blood. This might limit build choices to avoid one shots, but I could be wrong.

-75% damage over time

75% less Damage over Time if you've started taking Damage over Time in the past second. This is permanent for people who ignite themselves and remove it over and over with certain mechanics. They can do infinite delve darkness with lots of life regeneration is overpowered. Also be overpowered in general cause damage over time is scary and harder to mitigate on gear.

Lower it to 35% and it won't be overpowered in delve or in general. It is 1 node of power, so shouldn't be crazy high.