HP nodes are too powerful, The true reason is?
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I played different Diablo-style games, and knowing exact formulas for hit calculations makes it possible to analyse this aspect of the game in detail.
To help you deal with enemy damage, there are health and energy shield, armor, block and evasion, health/ES regeneration and life leech/LoH. The most crude model of game process would be considering the fight as a few attempted hits by mobs and player. If we consider only armor and HP, it results in two extreme cases. In details:
Spoiler
On very high damage (compared to armor), 12 armor reduce the incoming damage slightly less than 1. So the chest piece with 1200 armor works like 100 HP would. This ratio is respectively changed by %bonuses to armor and health. Thus with 100% health bonus 1200 armor equals 50 health against hard hitters. With the numbers on PoE gear, this is terribly ineffective. On quite low damage, double armor means half recieved damage. Double enemy damage means quadruple recieved damage, hard hitters WILL surprise you, and weak mobs are not really affected.
Of course, such consideration isn't quite correct. There are Endurance charges, which are crazy against weaker mobs (if you reach 60% Damage Reduction, 6 Endurance Charges get that to 90%, and allow you to tank everything). There is also Molten Shell, so even if you don't have much armor, with a few nodes you get it. There is Iron Reflexes keystone, just get Grace and Determination aura. Passives and gems make this all quite interesting... Short versions: too small values on gear to deal with high damage, needs endurance charges and health to deal with low damage.
Spoiler
The same system was used in Sacred to some success. But that game was easy; the challenge was to fight mobs lvl 130 with your lvl 70 character; obviously, this system prevented fighting even more stronger mobs and gave incentive to farm. In that game, it was good. The instability it created was negated by possibility of quickly levelling up your character.
BUT. Health works against elemental damage and chaos damage. Regeneration nodes work based on your max health. And the main issue: on-hit effects. It's almost impossible to get resistances past 80. So 20% of elemental damage is always going to pass your defences, and then apply: stun, chill, freeze, burn, shock, and the less health you have, the longer is duration of those effects and the bigger is chance. There are like 10-15 nodes to avoid elemental alignment, but 10 health nodes in 100% health on average: much likely to avoid all that crap with increasing health. And that is, IMO, the biggest issue.
Spoiler
There is even more. Unlike damage nodes, the health ones stack multiplicatively with your gear/gem bonuses. And the bonuses are bigger. You need damage? Get health, get proper support gems, and deal with increased cost with blood magic or Eldritch Battery. That results in neglecting damage for the sake of health.
TL;DR: health is too much involved in everything. Its influence should be partially replaced by other factors or reduced; it would be nice to add a few keystones that allow manage enemy attacks in different manner. Last edited by Tirinir on Feb 20, 2013, 10:38:00 AM
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Nice.
FYI, you can ask a mod (particuarly Charan, I believe that's his name) to lock the thread as the OP. Troll Insurance so that if a Dev from GGG decides to read it, they will be far more likely to read a 5 page thread rather than a 25 page thread. Just so you know.... |
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I'm not sure what the point of locking the thread is. I noticed that people don't include the hidden mechanics of the game in their consideration, and it makes impossible to discuss the PoE health problems properly.
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" I think you have made some good points! The secondary benefits of life is what actually makes life too strong. If you consider ES you can also get those 8% nodes PLUS intelligence PLUS ES gear has higher potential to roll high base ES then items which roll life. For instance: Armor can roll 400-600 Base ES while each single item can "only" have ~109 life All in all you can stack more ES then life, I ma pretty sure, still Life is superior, just because of the reduction of status alignments. elemental alignments are not that big of a problem, but stun is. Actually stun is the reason why I dont play a CI, melee, shield witch though I am confident that this build would work well. There is the unique called "Eye of Chayula" but after I observed and asked the trade for A LONG time and NEVER have seen it I gave up the idea. |
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