Damage Balance of Some Abilities

After spending a considerable amount of time in the game (250 hours at the time of writing this post), my personal opinion is that the damage of some abilities is either simply too high or does not match their visual appearance.

For example, some spectacular-looking ability clearly looks like something you should dodge, but in reality it deals almost no damage. Meanwhile, a small hit from a regular mob can take away half of your HP, even when you have around 3k HP and full resistances.

This applies to the entire game, from the campaign acts to the endgame. In my opinion, this is either still unpolished balance or a very strange game design decision.

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DbIH9I#4619 wrote:

Meanwhile, a small hit from a regular mob can take away half of your HP, even when you have around 3k HP and full resistances.

Looks like you need to spend at least another 750 hours in the game, and then come back and answer your own question.

For starters, "full resistances" means +90%. But even before resistances apply, the damage in the game can be reduced by, say, 90% even against unique enemies. Of course, defense that strong is probably not justified because of the DPS loss. But until you understand how that works, I think you still have plenty to do in the game.

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DbIH9I#4619 wrote:

After spending a considerable amount of time in the game (250 hours at the time of writing this post), my personal opinion is that the damage of some abilities is either simply too high or does not match their visual appearance.

For example, some spectacular-looking ability clearly looks like something you should dodge, but in reality it deals almost no damage. Meanwhile, a small hit from a regular mob can take away half of your HP, even when you have around 3k HP and full resistances.

This applies to the entire game, from the campaign acts to the endgame. In my opinion, this is either still unpolished balance or a very strange game design decision.

First, if you have like capped resistances (75%) the big flashy attack being a fire hit, you reduce the damage to 25% of its actual damage which is simple logic, depending on how the skill or the attack of the monster looks like, that makes sense.

A white monster coming at you does most likely deal physical damage, you having 3k life does nothing for the the damage reduction, it only says that the buffer is 3k.

If you have no armour to back that up or any sort of mitigation against the damage you take, then it is no wonder to get to half life after getting hit. Again simple logic.

So if the big flashy attack deals 6k damage with you being on 75% res, it would result in 1,5k damage, the same as a regular mob hitting you for 1,5k damage without any mitigation. So the flashy attack was 4 x stronger, but you are prepared for the outcome.

If you have 90% PDR (40k armour, since otherwise it is not really meaningful) and capped chaos resistance and still loosing half your life from an regular mob, we could start talking about "strange" game design or "unpolished" balancing.

The strange game design in most of these cases starts with displaying 90% PDR on a 7k armour value, while it will be shred by prolly anything that hits you and therefore is most often not 90% but rather 20 - 25%. Also scaling this value effectively without loosing out on damage is a** and not really clear to see.

The actual problem but is, that armour is not pure and can be reduced, shred and destroyed and the value in percentile we see in the character screen section showing us the damage reduction against a regular white mob without any further mods to it.

When rare monsters would actually matter. But the game cannot fetch or assume the regular outcome of phys damage you would receive from the avg of all rare monsters or uniques and therefore it scales from a imaginary value, which is offside of the actual game and the enemies we have to deal with.

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Selous#4040 wrote:

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DbIH9I#4619 wrote:

Meanwhile, a small hit from a regular mob can take away half of your HP, even when you have around 3k HP and full resistances.

Looks like you need to spend at least another 750 hours in the game, and then come back and answer your own question.

For starters, "full resistances" means +90%. But even before resistances apply, the damage in the game can be reduced by, say, 90% even against unique enemies. Of course, defense that strong is probably not justified because of the DPS loss. But until you understand how that works, I think you still have plenty to do in the game.

Playing PoE 1 since beta, most likely more and longer as you ever will and having already 1,6k hours in PoE 2 again.

"Full resistance" referring to 90% (max resistance) is new to me, so please don't make stuff up.

Capped or full resistance is up to the cap, which can be improved further up to the hard cap of 90%.

I would also be interested in the ways of reducing the damage by 90% before resistances or actual mitigation.

If you talk about armour and the "armour to ele damage" value, then you simply talk about a other form of mitigation, which can be used on top of resistances, which has nothing to do with the regular mob hitting him. Except that you have to stack armour to get it.

Which also sounds more confusing as actually helpful. Cause armour is on the same level as resistances for mitigation.

So if you have like nothing to say, why you even commenting in the forum?

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Ondrugs#1147 wrote:

So if you have like nothing to say, why you even commenting in the forum?

Would examples like that satisfy you?
I never played PoE1, and I'm just enjoying learning PoE2.

~2700 Life Concept,to study defensive mechanics beyond the ones you're familiar with.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile2builds/comments/1sivd4g/2700_life_shaman_tank_no_esevarmourblock_stacking/
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile2builds/comments/1sivfdr/shaman_life_tank_arbiter_spinoff/

My main ES+Recoup stacker.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile2builds/comments/1rvhgqb/recoup_build_power_tanky_version/

P.S. Just in case you start saying something about lack of damage, I'll drop this right away.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YJ_liGc2ucM

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Ondrugs#1147 wrote:

"Full resistance" referring to 90% (max resistance) is new to me, so please don't make stuff up.

Capped or full resistance is up to the cap, which can be improved further up to the hard cap of 90%.

Striving for 90% resistances is just as much a defensive layer as Armour/ES/EV—and often even better and easier to achieve.

It's sad that someone with as much experience as you describe doesn't understand that.

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Selous#4040 wrote:

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Ondrugs#1147 wrote:

So if you have like nothing to say, why you even commenting in the forum?

Would examples like that satisfy you?
I never played PoE1, and I'm just enjoying learning PoE2.

~2700 Life Concept,to study defensive mechanics beyond the ones you're familiar with.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile2builds/comments/1sivd4g/2700_life_shaman_tank_no_esevarmourblock_stacking/
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile2builds/comments/1sivfdr/shaman_life_tank_arbiter_spinoff/

My main ES+Recoup stacker.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile2builds/comments/1rvhgqb/recoup_build_power_tanky_version/

P.S. Just in case you start saying something about lack of damage, I'll drop this right away.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YJ_liGc2ucM

Are you for real or is this just ragebait/trolling? :D

The first 2 links show us specific builds which can utilize 2 - 3 mandatory uniques to actually even get to those defenses.

The first link comes up with some "less damage taken" to most elements and about 60% to fire (thats not 90%). Where to get that? It shows some pictures only someone who used that stuff could maybe identify. The last being enfeeble which looses effectiveness the higher the rarity of the monster is.

Most pinnacle bosses reduce curse effectiveness on them.
Arbiter most likely denying around 30% of the curses effect, if not even more.

I still struggle to see the 90% damage mitigation you talked about.

From your videos we see that we can convert damage taken to a element and boost the max res easily with the shield. But how you do that on a staff wielder, a bow character or a crossbow user which is not a shaman?
The body armour can be used universally, but if it only rolls to 60%, it is also only mitigation like armour, which is on the same level as resistances.

Like your video shows that you need shaman, to fully get all the benefits, since only shaman offers some of the nodes.

No worries I am not that much into DPS if the build can handle damage mitigation, besides that we can see in the fights that damage is fine ^^

But unless you can universally apply those effects on all characters especially giving us a damage reduction of 90% from all enemies before mitigation, which you still not shown us how to get, your advice is useless, cause it is bound to a certain archetype of build or character.

"

But even before resistances apply, the damage in the game can be reduced by, say, 90% even against unique enemies.

So where is the 90% damage reduction before resistances? (Besides block or evasion mechanics, which would avoid all damage)

Recoup is no damage reduction, it is sustain, which I believe you should/could have known and which applies after the damage.

So sorry, but I am still waiting?

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Selous#4040 wrote:

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Ondrugs#1147 wrote:

"Full resistance" referring to 90% (max resistance) is new to me, so please don't make stuff up.

Capped or full resistance is up to the cap, which can be improved further up to the hard cap of 90%.

Striving for 90% resistances is just as much a defensive layer as Armour/ES/EV—and often even better and easier to achieve.

It's sad that someone with as much experience as you describe doesn't understand that.

Again just an empty post, filled with provocations and no content?

Sorry but that was really poor ragebait of you. xD

Get to my post, slowly and properly read what I wrote and then try again ^^

"

Ondrugs#1147 wrote:

Are you for real or is this just ragebait/trolling? :D

If you can't interpret the data on mechanic interactions even with the information I've provided, then I suggest you play for another 15 years—or whenever PoE1's beta was.

As for the examples, I specifically selected map modifiers to maximize incoming damage. Most current players—unless they can oneshot at least one screen ahead of them—would simply avoid maps like this.

So the level of defense can be reduced several times to suit your needs. Even if the OP just equips the base versions of Cloak of Flame + Defiance of Destiny, that would likely already feel stronger than what they're playing now. Most newcomers suffer from poor physical damage mitigation and a lack of fast resource recovery.

This isn't the only option—just one of many that I personally tested. So it seems like you're the only one trolling here.

[Removed by Support]

I'm no stranger to the defensive mechanics in this game and I see the point the OP is talking about. I didn't read this as feedback about taking damage in general or not being able to defend against it.

There are a lot of monsters with some pretty scary looking abilities that are easily mitigated by baseline defenses with some recovery and then there are monsters that have much less of a "presence" but will mess you up quickly if you get caught off guard. From an artistic or immersion standpoint I can understand how that makes things seems a little off, so this would qualify as some pretty valid feedback imo.

I think those phys/chaos humanoids from the manor who will discretely burrow their tentacles all the way across the floor and up your character's ass are an easy illustrative example here. Their attack is pretty unsuspecting and doesn't really have a lot of "umph" in it's animation/sound so to me it's damage feels a little bit "unannounced" - which if it's your first time, is also unexpected.

And then contrast this with something like say, the Abyss meteors that do more damage to my ears and the lifespan of my GPU than they do my character.

I don't think it's an argument to make either one of those do more/less damage, and more a comment to make the "danger" of enemy attacks feel a bit more aligned with their artistic visual/audio design.