Anyone feel like defense is a little too hard to build these days?

Been playing off and on since beta. Came back about midway through last league after taking a few years off from the game.

Last time I played, flasks were still busted and you needed hardly any investment in defense in order to just do red maps. Now it feels like every character I make, I make tankier than the last, but it still feels squishy as hell.

Now I'm not here trying to complain saying "I WANT OLD FLASKS BACK!" but before it felt like you could build something pretty budget and have both good offense and defense. Now, it feels like you either build offense OR defense until you're sweating divines and can dump an absurd amount of currency into a build.

Just looking for what others think (I think this is also an issue melee has atm and is why it's so out of meta for the most part)

Just play Chieftain with 90% all resists

If anything, defense has gotten more complicated. Getting some phys mitigation and max res is a start but that alone barely cuts it in red maps. A few years ago going for 90% all res was pretty difficult, now it's relatively easy but at the same time, it's also worth a lot less. Elemental penetration, something that used to be limited to shaper balls, is now a common mod even in maps causing even 90 all res builds to bend over on the spot if the right mod comes along.

We now have more powerful defensive auras in Grace and Determination, but just slapping them on your build with some max res or spell suppression isn't really going to cut it either. It will be okay for maps, most of the time, but it's a high investment low return way of building defense where you reserve 100% and more of your mana for a bit of evasion and armor leaving you wide open to elemental attacks and any kind of dots.

Good defenses in current POE all revolve around specific unique interactions. Loreweave + eternal damnation + transcendence, Mahuxotl + tempered by war, divine flesh + 4th vow, doppelganger guise or incandescent heart, Kintsugi with high evasion and spell dodge, phys taken as element with lightning coil or cloak of flame, CI + Aegis + max block... there is quite the variety and many of the options above can be combined together but it pretty much always comes down to some sort of combo utilizing "damage taken as" effects often along with armor application to other damage types. "Damage taken as" effects are so powerful because they counter penetration and overwhelm, allow armor to work more efficiently and can even aid against ailments to some extent. (you can't get frozen usually if you don't take any cold damge)

That said, those combos typically aren't all that expensive and they don't have much opportunity cost in terms of damage, only taking your body armor and a jewel slot in some cases. So it is very much possible to get a lot of damage AND good defense for low investment, it's just a matter of "know how".

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Baharoth15 wrote:

If anything, defense has gotten more complicated. Getting some phys mitigation and max res is a start but that alone barely cuts it in red maps. A few years ago going for 90% all res was pretty difficult, now it's relatively easy but at the same time, it's also worth a lot less. Elemental penetration, something that used to be limited to shaper balls, is now a common mod even in maps causing even 90 all res builds to bend over on the spot if the right mod comes along.

Not even gonna bother writing my own response just quote this for emphasis because Baharoth is spot on. What used to be a godmode character is now pretty standard and all the goal posts have been moved further away.

Honestly one of the best responses i've read on here in years, may as well close the thread :p

If anything, it got easier because you're not supposed to get defenses anymore. 6k life, fortify, 10% life regen and 20mill+ damage and nothing will ever hurt you again.

If anything, it got easier because you're not supposed to get defenses anymore. 6k life, fortify, 10% life regen and 20mill+ damage and nothing will ever hurt you again.

@baharaoth15 thanks for the good reply. I'll look into those setups.
I've been doing so much research on building defense since coming back and if you ask my friends, I've probably played more pob than poe since coming back, but it just feels ROUGH trying to build defense and hopefully one of those is a good solution for me.

@adronzh3ro I guess you didn't read the part where I talked about not needing to be sweating divines out of every pore.

best defense is serious offense. im not saying to run with an aurabot or running a 3k life build, but a couple mil dps goes a loong way.

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darsoma wrote:

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Oh, sure, but if you want to complain about defenses being hard to build on a 1div budget, i have great news for you: it simply ain't happening.

Its not really hard to build defenses but it is VERY hard to build defenses and still put out decent DPS.