A Few Thoughts on the Game's Defense Mechanics

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arandan#3174 wrote:

None of it will enable you to build a character capable of taking 20k max phys hit with a 3k hp pool and no other defences. Even heavily investing in armour will not get you there.

Poe1 has 10x more phys dmg taken to elemental conversion options and you'd struggle to pull it off there with that life pool.

The simplest way to fix this disparity is to either add more life scaling options, or add actual phys mitigation nodes to the warrior side of the tree.

My poe1 character this league has 61k phys max hit on poeninja with 4800hp so it definitely is possible.

About the topic: I think even if they lower the max hit gap between the worst defense types and ES, ES will always still come out ahead in this regard. They are supposed to be asymmetric, with ES having higher max hit but less recovery and survivability against sustained hits.

I'm interested in this game providing basic mitigation options to every archetype, especially with the wealth of experience this studio has in designing intricate systems.

This is one of my characters from ~1 year ago:
https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/arandan-3174/hardcoressf/character/sdftgsyh

There is no way I would ever be able to build something as tanky on the left side of the tree.
Sure you can play trade and shop around for multiple uniques and put something together, but that is the outlier, not the norm.

Imagine how unfathomably unintuitive it is for average players to scale defences on pure life builds.
Adding some more armour to the tree/sockets/gear will not fix that in any way/shape/form, but that is all that's been announced so far.

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arandan#3174 wrote:

I'm interested in this game providing basic mitigation options to every archetype, especially with the wealth of experience this studio has in designing intricate systems.

This is one of my characters from ~1 year ago:
https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/arandan-3174/hardcoressf/character/sdftgsyh

There is no way I would ever be able to build something as tanky on the left side of the tree.
Sure you can play trade and shop around for multiple uniques and put something together, but that is the outlier, not the norm.

Imagine how unfathomably unintuitive it is for average players to scale defences on pure life builds.
Adding some more armour to the tree/sockets/gear will not fix that in any way/shape/form, but that is all that's been announced so far.

I think the Q&A mentioned that it was recovery that high ES builds like that one were using as a crutch - things like convalescence along with the 2sec energy shield recharge and enhanced recharge rate on that character go a long way for powering through scenarios that would otherwise make ES feel terrible.

Personally I hope they do a bit more because I think max hit is a larger component here. Huge amounts of ES feel a bit too accessible.

Being able to soak a mistake instead of straight up dying, even if recovery from that mistake is "slower", is an inherent advantage to players who only make the occasional mistake compared to other defensive archetypes. The same mistake by a separate defensive archetype will result in only one of them living to make the mistake again another day. Not necessarily bad, but in the case of max-phys hit, it seems like this one is tested quite often.

It feels like a tricky thing to balance to be honest. I had an idea about recovery scaling as a factor of ES compared to life - that the closer your ES amount is to your life amount, the lower your base ES recovery start time/rate.

It would mean that if your build had 3k life it might now even be able to benefit from an amulet with 70 ES on it by giving it a low recharge start time instead of being a practically wasted affix.

CI builds or people that just scaled ES to huge amounts would need to really bring investment into reduced start time/recharge rate into more serious consideration.

Not sure what the ratio or factors would be but I feel like it would be an elegant way to prevent ES scaling from just being infinite upside and make it a more conscious decision. Maybe some more options for a little more physical damage mitigation across the board for all players too. It would really decrease the incentives to build to such high ES numbers and probably bring the typical "max phys hit" you'd get in a well-rounded build in more alignment with other defensive layer capabilities in terms of the investment required for comparable effectiveness.

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karsey#2995 wrote:

I had an idea about recovery scaling as a factor of ES compared to life - that the closer your ES amount is to your life amount, the lower your base ES recovery start time/rate.

I like that idea, and I agree that substantially lowering es recharge start and rate on high es builds is the only plausible solution.

The character I linked doesn't really need to use convalescence, since it has something like sub 2 sec recovery start and 6k+ es recharge per second iirc. That is blue life, just scaled 5x, and that's in mediocre gear.

I crushed my balls in a vice while going melee (actual melee) warrior, and then i rolled a Lich and nearly fell asleep from how easy the game became.

Anyone saying that theres no problem with balance can be ignored immediatelly.
And "warrior stronk"....yeah, when you play melee char without actually engaging in melee yet for some reason still consider yourself playing melee.

I just dont want to be one-shoted easily.
Is that so hard to get?

Like... I'd rather be death because I rushed a bit and got myself surrounded and couldnt keep up the dmg instead of avoiding something like a matrix reflex or onee-shotting all screen to dont get dmg