Physical Damage Reduction Issues

Players do not have enough access to Physical Damage Reduction for enemies to have as much physical damage over time as they currently do. This is an issue present from the Act 1 boss applying Corrupted Blood, but has been exponentially heightened by the inclusion of the Abyssal enemies which regularly have radial effects surrounding them which apply massive physical damage over time.

The passive skill tree at this time (Rise of the Abyssal) only has two notables and four small passive skills which provide physical damage reduction. None of these apply to players. One notable and one small passive apply to totems, and the other notable and small passives all affect minions. Totems, just from the nodes on the tree and not including their implicit damage reductions can gain 32% physical damage reduction on tree, and minions can gain up to 52% just from the tree (though any minion is unlikely to have more than 44% from the tree due to node placement).

Warbringer has access to jade stacks which can provide up to 10% physical damage reduction, and with a timeless jewel player's can access Martyr's Might which provides 5% additional physical damage reduction if the player has more than 150 devotion. There is one unique "The Hollow Mask" which provides players with 15% physical damage reduction and 13% chaos resistance in exchange for their helmet slot and -10 all elemental resistance.

Armour only provides physical damage reduction against hits, and endurance charges no longer provide any passive effect at base (though even with Charge Regulation they only provide a buff to defences which again does not affect physical damage over time).

This means that for any non-warbringer the only real option that players have easy access to for true physical damage reduction is the strength shield exclusive mod that can provide up to 8% physical damage reduction, and the body armour corrupted implicit which can provide 3-5% additional physical damage reduction. This would provide a maximum of 13% physical damage reduction.

The Abyss monsters which feature physical damage area of effects will absolutely melt a player if they are in range of them. This is a problem specifically for melee players which make up most of the players attempting to leverage armour at the current moment. These area of effects are usually very sizeable, likely to make them any threat at all to ranged characters, and can be attached to mobs with effects that make them teleport to players, or the executioner effect that stops players from healing above half health.

These mobs are a problem, but high armour players not having damage reduction against bleeding effects or corrupted blood is also a problem, and its one that players are left without much of a solution to at the current moment. In a game as big and complex as Path, being left without effective solutions to problems can feel really terrible!

My suggestion therefore is to solve this in one of a myriad of ways: either tone down these physical damage effects that bypass player's armour, or make armour effect them, or provide players with more options to deal with physical damage over time, whether on tree, on flask effects, on charm effects, or some other solution.

Thanks for reading, and have a nice day :)

TLDR: Players dont have enough access to physical damage reduction effects which apply to non-hit sources of physical damage and GGG should provide players more options on this front as they removed several which were available in PoE 1 and have yet to replace them.