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

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groink19 wrote:

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Berylstone wrote:

That is probably code for they are making it useless.

If this is your attitude, why are you even here? I know, everything is bad, bring back Harvest league, Chris is making everything bad. Sure mate.

Block doesn't need buffs. And the keystone is OPTIONAL.

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Remove Attack Dodge entirely. Substantially buff Evasion so that it is a good option and make sure it is easily available on items

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JoeShmo wrote:

Entropy is a concern because it's a guaranteed death, or a guaranteed nerf to your defense, based on when that hit lands.

If you have 1 10k damage hit and 19 100 damage hits, you could either have entropy prevent that 10k from ever hitting you, or the 19 other hits make sure you always get hit by that 10k one. Or every hit has to wait 19 tries before they land their 20th one, which will always kill you.

A true 95% avoidance has the potential to never land, and is 100% fair.
Entropy is just rocks into a bucket, until the weight makes it impossible for you to hold onto it anymore.

A system where you are guaranteed to die, given time, is not a defensive mechanic. The only reason why evasion "worked" was because of dodge, because it doesn't use entropy; and even if it did .. it basically extended evasion entropy by...like you said... 4x as much. So if you couldn't kill an enemy before the 20th swing, you now can because now it takes 80.

The system only worked by sheer numbers, rather than the mechanic itself being credible. In the same semblance, armor only functioned because of being able to essentially "erase" small damage hits, which would have absolutely killed you if you had survived a large one. It doesn't mean armor works as a defensive mechanic, just that given enough mitigation it allows you the brevity to avoid certain death 99% of the time, so it feels like it works.

Evasion will never work in it's new form, because it still falls back on the same old broken design flaw of "Eventually you absolutely die". Making the evasion values more favorable to players doesn't even move that bar a single inch. The removal of melee dodge and butchering spell dodge certainly does.

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Serdoa wrote:

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Deimarr wrote:

English is not my mother language, so i can be wrong about this but, this all feels like sugarcoated nerfs.

And one thing in particular bugs me, you add all that passives to the passive tree but we still have max 123 passives to spend (and lets be honest most of the ppl are not usually lvl beyond 95, so its more likely 118). So you want us to give up more damage from passive tree to invest in to defences. this is just nonsense.

Yes, that is exactly the intent. GGG has stated that they want to slow down the game and that is still the goal. What most players complained about (and what was stated in the podcasts) was not that the game is slowed down but that without a buff to defenses a slow down by reducing player damage means only more deaths for these players. Players also complained that only late-game high-tier high-cost items would actually provide the defenses necessary.

GGG has addressed these points now, but they did not change their overall goal. Therefore:

- Player damage is reduced (and game therefore slowed down) by virtue of us having to invest in defenses
- Defenses are made more accessible by moving more of it into the tree and make less of it available only on items
- This also means that the curve of character progression will be more towards starting defensive (via the tree) but low damage towards higher damage (which primarily comes from items)

I can't say if the changes will actually achieve these goals or if there will be necessary improvements to them but the overall direction is imo correct. Make it more accessible for people to not die (as often) but have them be slower and progress towards upgrades that improve their kill-speed. Dying twice per map is just not a fun experience for most players, even if you can clear it in 2 minutes (though I think that counts as slow by now...). Going by the comments I read over the last 2 months it seems that most agree that they would rather take 5 minutes per map but be not under constant threat of dying, making the game also more relaxed and enjoyable.

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Ageless_Emperion wrote:

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Serdoa wrote:

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Deimarr wrote:

English is not my mother language, so i can be wrong about this but, this all feels like sugarcoated nerfs.

And one thing in particular bugs me, you add all that passives to the passive tree but we still have max 123 passives to spend (and lets be honest most of the ppl are not usually lvl beyond 95, so its more likely 118). So you want us to give up more damage from passive tree to invest in to defences. this is just nonsense.

Yes, that is exactly the intent. GGG has stated that they want to slow down the game and that is still the goal. What most players complained about (and what was stated in the podcasts) was not that the game is slowed down but that without a buff to defenses a slow down by reducing player damage means only more deaths for these players. Players also complained that only late-game high-tier high-cost items would actually provide the defenses necessary.

GGG has addressed these points now, but they did not change their overall goal. Therefore:

- Player damage is reduced (and game therefore slowed down) by virtue of us having to invest in defenses
- Defenses are made more accessible by moving more of it into the tree and make less of it available only on items
- This also means that the curve of character progression will be more towards starting defensive (via the tree) but low damage towards higher damage (which primarily comes from items)

I can't say if the changes will actually achieve these goals or if there will be necessary improvements to them but the overall direction is imo correct. Make it more accessible for people to not die (as often) but have them be slower and progress towards upgrades that improve their kill-speed. Dying twice per map is just not a fun experience for most players, even if you can clear it in 2 minutes (though I think that counts as slow by now...). Going by the comments I read over the last 2 months it seems that most agree that they would rather take 5 minutes per map but be not under constant threat of dying, making the game also more relaxed and enjoyable.

Yes, but actually no...because the primary source of the death in the game is still one shots. The NPC side of things got no changes done to it to make extra investment into defenses actually viable for end game. Its harder to get viable items now and lets not forget the multimillion dps checks that are the end game bosses.

All these changes do is cripple accessibility to defenses while not doing anything about the underlying reasons why the player base asked for more diverse defensive options in the first place. This is a tonedeaf response from developers that are far more concerned with fulfilling their fetishized vision of an ARPG than actually making a fun, functional game.

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Berylstone wrote:

And whether you think block need buffs or not, the supposed purpose of this patch was to make block more powerful for everyone but gladiator. That's what it said. And their "solution" is to add a keystone that cuts your maximum block chance by 25%? That's makes no sense and weakens block.

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groink19 wrote:

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Berylstone wrote:

And whether you think block need buffs or not, the supposed purpose of this patch was to make block more powerful for everyone but gladiator. That's what it said. And their "solution" is to add a keystone that cuts your maximum block chance by 25%? That's makes no sense and weakens block.

What? It gives you easy access to 50 % spell block for the price of 33 % less possible attack block. Especially with glancing blows this is incredibly easy 50 %/50 % for MANY characters.

And I hope I don't have to clarify how incredibly strong the block mechanic is.
To clarify nontheless: this keystone is easy 50 % less damage (I know, the real maths is a little less) taken!

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Buschkopf wrote:

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Remove Attack Dodge entirely. Substantially buff Evasion so that it is a good option and make sure it is easily available on items

The removal of attack dodge hits basically all evasion/spell characters by removing their only solid defense. a lot of squishy characters have acro/phase acro as their only defensive option and removing it by caling it " too low of an investment" is a hit in the face for a lot of niche builds using uniques, WHO CAN NOT INVEST in evasion. These kind of characters were barely kept alive by having a small amount of dodge relying on blind. by removing this, a lot of builds which were fun to play because of their build intricacies are now not playable anymore.

This is removing the core identity of poe for me, where you could build wanky stuff and make it work. now only generic builds who follow their attribute and tree starting point identity are worth playing.

dont get me wrong im proud of ggg for fixing ailments and flasks and listenening to the community. but the gigantic nerfs to dodge, blind and block are making me wonder if they understand what build variety means.

now people HAVE to play evasion stack/armor stack with gigantic item investment to stay alive. this is just a swap from block stack to armor and does NOT increase varitey.

i am hoping ggg change their mind and keep build variety in mind

sincerely

Buchkopf