Could defence be rebalanced to make the gameplay better?

What if instead of offering endless sustain through health potions, the players would need to use more mechanics like regeneration, lifesteal, energy shield regeneration or active abilities to sustain their health?
Health potions could be much more limited and mainly regenerated by killing rare monsters. That means the player needs to survive and fight monsters for a while before getting their healing potion back. Monsters threat could be less focused on bursting down the player in less than a second (before he can drink a potion), since with this change running out of health potions when taking too much damage is a serious threat. Furthermore mechanics to regenerate health like life steal or regeneration could become a more central part of the game: a player can specialize their build into one of them, to make that a vital part of their health sustain. They would need to be balanced to feel impactful without offering endless sustain or near immortality.

Different builds would offer a different gameplay:
A lifesteal focused build could be more risky, because it forces the player to play aggressively to regain their health. A regeneration focused build would be more safe and would allow the player to disengage while regenerating their health. An energy shield focused build would try to limit the contact with the enemy to the short time the energy shield lasts, before disengaging to regenerate it.
Active abilities, support gems and passives could support such playstyles: a passive could increase lifesteal when on low health, a support gem could increase health generation for the next 5s based on the amount of blocked damage when blocking with a shield and 1 out of 3 skill that share the same cooldown could be used as part of the energy shield build (e.g. do I want a protective bubble that absorbs only projectile damage, slow down the attack speed of enemies around me or teleport back to 5s ago, resetting my position, health and energy shield). Such more interesting gameplay is currently overshadowed by health potions and mechanics that offer endless, effortless sustain.

Most of what you seem to be asking for already exists.

My high armour titan uses regeneration and recoup and can ignore the hits of everything on maps except for the bosses.

I have seen energy shield build that recoup more damage as energy shield than actual damage taken.

There are mana stacking builds taking damage from mana first with crazy mana regen.

CI build converting a chunk of damage to chaos.

Life leech build that can recover your entire life pool.

Plenty of ways to play defensive, the problem is usually people focus too much on damage.

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Fyrel#3118 wrote:

Plenty of ways to play defensive, the problem is usually people focus too much on damage.

I really would like someone that says this to show a character anywhere from level 10-70 with actually useful defenses, because I tried putting as many points into defense and recovery as possible, while putting on every gear piece with life and resistance I could find, and it makes no difference.
Actually it made it worse, since I would deal less damage now, so I would take ages to kill anything and still die in a couple of hits.

I know people are getting near immortal in the endgame, but there is no defense progression here. You have a glass cannon that just suddenly has enough points and currency to get defenses somewhere around level 85+.

This game just really needs a readjustment of the general progression. Offense is complete RNG and Defenses basically don't exist.

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Meril#8494 wrote:

What if instead of offering endless sustain through health potions, the players would need to use more mechanics like regeneration, lifesteal, energy shield regeneration or active abilities to sustain their health?

We do all of this already.... You don't?

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AlexiaRP#4088 wrote:

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Fyrel#3118 wrote:

Plenty of ways to play defensive, the problem is usually people focus too much on damage.

I really would like someone that says this to show a character anywhere from level 10-70 with actually useful defenses, because I tried putting as many points into defense and recovery as possible, while putting on every gear piece with life and resistance I could find, and it makes no difference.
Actually it made it worse, since I would deal less damage now, so I would take ages to kill anything and still die in a couple of hits.

I know people are getting near immortal in the endgame, but there is no defense progression here. You have a glass cannon that just suddenly has enough points and currency to get defenses somewhere around level 85+.

This game just really needs a readjustment of the general progression. Offense is complete RNG and Defenses basically don't exist.

I don't have any lower level characters to show you unfortunately but for example sake here is my main titan build for this season

https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/Fyrel-3118/vaal/character/Dasosse

The Brass dome breastplate is by far the highest armour rating available in the game and is available from level 58.
On a titan with Stone Skin and Hulking Form ascendancies if you build out like in my tree taking all the armour nodes out to Made to last and Heavy armour you will end up with around 35k armour just from the breastplate. This will cost 30 skill points total to path.

You can boost that more by finding an amulet or heart of the well gem with % armour from equipped body armour. Mine gives me 48k.

20k armour give 90% against white mobs, 40k gives 90% against blue and will give enough damage reduction to survive everything except the boss.

You still are going to have to find armour vs elemental and resistances on your other gear though.

I'm currently trying out another titan with Time of Need healing. Got it down to casting every 0.32s but my damage is lacking a bit. I can clear T15 with ease, if slowly, nothing but boss empowered attacks can kill him even with only having 1700 hp. It's also really nice to be able to ignore curses.

Time of need is definitely an endgame build it take a lot of skill points to reduce the duration enough.
https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/Fyrel-3118/vaal/character/Posilan

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AlexiaRP#4088 wrote:

I really would like someone that says this to show a character anywhere from level 10-70 with actually useful defenses, because I tried putting as many points into defense and recovery as possible, while putting on every gear piece with life and resistance I could find, and it makes no difference.
Actually it made it worse, since I would deal less damage now, so I would take ages to kill anything and still die in a couple of hits.

My Blood Witch feels extremely durable, it's by no means the fastest killer out there, but it feels fine, even started mapping with sub capped resists because it just didn't matter enough to me and resulted in very few deaths (though I've since found the gear to stablize that). I don't have a link for the character, because I'm lazy and the default site doesn't let me share that. But she's only 77.

I honestly think however, is what you mean by 'a couple of hits'. Are you talking random white mobs like a zombie or werewolf? Are you talking about getting hit by the big fatties with the wheels? Those cannon shots from Doryanni's Elite? Are you tanking red flash hits from bosses as your 'couple of hits'?

Like all these hits do WILDLY different amounts (and styles) of damage, that counter different survival tools. You're always going to need to maintain some level of threat awareness, and avoiding (or killing) things that threaten you, and knowing what is and isn't dangerious. That's honestly the core gameplay.

You're talking about Sustain, not Defense. They work together but they're not the same.

But yes. It could all be drastically improved instead of making the same mistakes as PoE1.

Numbers: Their numbers are simply too high. You should not need a DR cap because it should not be attainable. A well rounded character should have ~30% DR while an invested character should have ~45%. Resistances should work similar. They should not be linear.

No more Big Hit Vs Little Hit When you create a system that's more regulated and balanced in stats you can simply have things you want to hit hard do so. No tricks with diminishing DR values through magic formulas. Be straight forward to the player about their defense capacity.

Active Defense: Dodge is one method however it should not be unlimited. The game should not be designed so you have to spam it either. Likewise Shields should not auto block. They should be manual block. Mechanics like this are already in the game but terribly designed.

Potion Sustain: I mentioned this for years but gaining charges from potions creates a snowball effect. It's barely better than old school direct lifesteal. Passive sustain should be minimal, whatever form it takes. Limited Potion use and healing yourself through conditions is the way to go.

Opposing Stats: Things like armor break Vs resistance reduction are kinda nonsense. Each stat should have an equally effective reduction method. Accuracy Vs Evasion. Armor Pen Vs DR. Curses Vs Resists. Evasion is so scuffed in this game because it doesn't work for many attacks when it should always work for anything with the "Attack" tag.

Band Aid Hybrid Defense: You've seen it in PoE 1. Armor + ES doesn't work without Divine Shield. Evasion + ES doesn't work without Ghost Dance. These mandatory picks can fixed with proper stats. For instance. Deflection now deals a potion of the damage you take over 3 seconds.