So is Armour useless or not?

"

Skjuld wrote:

All defences in PoE are borderline useless, except for those that do flat reduction. (IE Resists, HP, End charges)

The reason is simple : GGG designed a system where defence can get "swamped". Armor absorption reduces with damage, Evasion is reduced by accuracy and is vulnerable to multiple hits, Blocking gets swamped by multiple high value hits through stuns.

Then they proceeded to inflate mob stats to the point where they would systematically "swamp" every form of defence. Leaving only those that are NOT subject to reduction by mob stats effective.

The base idea is interesting and "realistic". However, it's extremely sensitive to scaling. Which has been pushed, i think, far over the limit of what the system scales to.

Like someone else said, if GGG plans to add more acts of scaling difficulties, what headroom have they left the way mobs are scaled now ?

Closed Beta was very fun and allowed tons of interesting builds. It was nicely scaled too. OB is not. It feels like GGG tried so much to make the game "Hard" that they ended up sacrificing their own mechanics, build diversity and fun to reach that goal.

The result, IMHO is rather underwhelming. Hope they'll come to their senses some time.

Great post, and I agree; the biggest problem is ridiculous mob damage in Merciless. Everyone is arguing for them to go about fixing armor and evasion and to devalue HP to solve the issue (all perhaps extremely time consuming and convoluted solutions), when the issue is that Merciless is overtuned.

"

bhavv wrote:

IRL if someone catapulted a tree at me, it would have like a 90% chance to miss because catapults are highly innacurate, and even of the shot was accurate, Id simply jump out of the way it coz its a freaking massive tree that will have a slow travel speed and be easy to see and dodge.

Nope... Because he wouldn't throw one tree at low speed. He would fire a burst of trees at arrow speed. Which is a case where "realistic" armor wouldn't help. Because it has not been designed to compete with giant ninjas out of an anime :)


You'll have to be a demigod or something like it. Which is what the HP stacking achieves : Someone that can withstand a whole forest thrown at its face while standing in shirt sleeves and survive :)

"

bhavv wrote:

IRL if someone catapulted a tree at me, it would have like a 90% chance to miss because catapults are highly innacurate, and even of the shot was accurate, Id simply jump out of the way it coz its a freaking massive tree that will have a slow travel speed and be easy to see and dodge.

Kind of like Vaal's slam ability?

"

Obsidus wrote:

"

Skjuld wrote:

All defences in PoE are borderline useless, except for those that do flat reduction. (IE Resists, HP, End charges)

The reason is simple : GGG designed a system where defence can get "swamped". Armor absorption reduces with damage, Evasion is reduced by accuracy and is vulnerable to multiple hits, Blocking gets swamped by multiple high value hits through stuns.

Then they proceeded to inflate mob stats to the point where they would systematically "swamp" every form of defence. Leaving only those that are NOT subject to reduction by mob stats effective.

The base idea is interesting and "realistic". However, it's extremely sensitive to scaling. Which has been pushed, i think, far over the limit of what the system scales to.

Like someone else said, if GGG plans to add more acts of scaling difficulties, what headroom have they left the way mobs are scaled now ?

Closed Beta was very fun and allowed tons of interesting builds. It was nicely scaled too. OB is not. It feels like GGG tried so much to make the game "Hard" that they ended up sacrificing their own mechanics, build diversity and fun to reach that goal.

The result, IMHO is rather underwhelming. Hope they'll come to their senses some time.

Great post, and I agree; the biggest problem is ridiculous mob damage in Merciless. Everyone is arguing for them to go about fixing armor and evasion and to devalue HP to solve the issue (all perhaps extremely time consuming and convoluted solutions), when the issue is that Merciless is overtuned.

Noooooo. This is reminding me of d3. I was having a blast progressing through inferno in the early stages of the game, then everyone complained that the game was too hard. I was up to act 3 when they nerfed the shit out of it. I then proceeded to down diablo in an hour, and quit the game.

"

walk wrote:

"

Obsidus wrote:

"

Skjuld wrote:

All defences in PoE are borderline useless, except for those that do flat reduction. (IE Resists, HP, End charges)

The reason is simple : GGG designed a system where defence can get "swamped". Armor absorption reduces with damage, Evasion is reduced by accuracy and is vulnerable to multiple hits, Blocking gets swamped by multiple high value hits through stuns.

Then they proceeded to inflate mob stats to the point where they would systematically "swamp" every form of defence. Leaving only those that are NOT subject to reduction by mob stats effective.

The base idea is interesting and "realistic". However, it's extremely sensitive to scaling. Which has been pushed, i think, far over the limit of what the system scales to.

Like someone else said, if GGG plans to add more acts of scaling difficulties, what headroom have they left the way mobs are scaled now ?

Closed Beta was very fun and allowed tons of interesting builds. It was nicely scaled too. OB is not. It feels like GGG tried so much to make the game "Hard" that they ended up sacrificing their own mechanics, build diversity and fun to reach that goal.

The result, IMHO is rather underwhelming. Hope they'll come to their senses some time.

Great post, and I agree; the biggest problem is ridiculous mob damage in Merciless. Everyone is arguing for them to go about fixing armor and evasion and to devalue HP to solve the issue (all perhaps extremely time consuming and convoluted solutions), when the issue is that Merciless is overtuned.

Noooooo. This is reminding me of d3. I was having a blast progressing through inferno in the early stages of the game, then everyone complained that the game was too hard. I was up to act 3 when they nerfed the shit out of it. I then proceeded to down diablo in an hour, and quit the game.

Blizzard are a bunch of hyucks; it's possible to fix these problems via targeted nerfs to things such as monster crit chance and crit damage modifer, thus leveling out spikiness, for example, without watering down the game and making it easy mode.

It's not really a matter of "difficulty" since any build relying on HP stacking, resists and/or ranged AOEs can get to the endgame. It's the fact that the current mob stats, when used with the current defence formulas, pretty much tend to funnel you down that path.

I'm not saying it should be less "difficult". Just that mob stats should be in sync with the formulas used to offer more than one choice.

And don't forget that ACT III isn't meant to be the last act.

You can balance a game and make it difficult. If something is unbalanced you don't leave it alone just because fixing it might make the game easier for some builds. I don't think anyone is suggesting an overall damage nerf to everything, just physical damage smoothing out a bit.

Fair enough. You guys make valid points. Just scared me a bit, and brought back memories. D:

"

Antigegner wrote:

too many toothsticks throwing trees at you

Ha ha ha... that was great!

';,,;'

Ive got a duelist that focuses on a mix of armor/dps/health/regen at 60 I can farm any zone in merciless act 2 or under. Fighting vaal takes some practice but basically never stand still for 2 seconds and you'll be fine. It is also possible with a decent party to just stand back and lightning strike. Who should be tanking vaal you say? ZOMBIES AND SKELETONS of course. They are expendable and almost anyone can spec their gems to cast them

I havent bothered with act3 much ill probably tackle it at lv 63-65 after this duelist tree change. My chaos resist is fairly high so im not worried about 60% of act. Just for the last few zones

But as far as tanking goes my guy does great with poorish health (1300ish) (lack of hp from gear but good res + chaos res) against mass mobs and 99% of yellows. You do need to be careful of the odd heavy hitter like those yellow rock golems. Block may save me if I get unlucky but I'm best of not risking getting hit by such big mobs without having molten shell + endurance charges up. But even then the mob can crit.

So the way I see it Health = good against elemental damage + moderate against physical but it'll only last so long if your armor is too low and heals from potions/%steak/on hit are less effective compared to an armored/block build. Health regen from % is buffed. For health builds this regen is what most people consider their natural damage mitigation. And to be honest it works fine if you don't run into large crowds of mobs.

Now the advantage of armor/block = Great defense against 90% of physical mobs and some elemental monsters are weapon elemental like damage so some phys and can be blocked. Life % steal and life on hit is stronger as damage per second recieved is lower. There is the difficulty of having enough buffer hp not to die before your health regen kicks in but in this case potions are stronger to heal you then someone with more health but less mitigation.

Also skills like molten shell + lightning shield are more powerful the more damage mitigation + block you have. Health regen totem is stronger the higher your mitigation. Skills like enfeeble that lower enemys ability to deal physical damage become more powerful.

A lil example here

e.g 5000 damage - 34%(enfeeble lvl 20) = 3300 dmg

2000 armor 3300*12 = 39600 + 2000. 2000 / 41600 = 0.048 or 4.8% dmg reduction or 158.4

= 3141.6 damage taken

30000 armor 3300*12 = 39600 + 30000. 30000/69600 = 0.431 or 43.1% dmg reduction or 1422.3

= 1877.7 damage taken

A armor tank here with 4000 hp can take 2 of these hits and possibly more if he blocks or regens

A health tank on the other hand with 8000 health will die in 3 consecutive hits just like the other guy but the ammount of health he needs to recoup after each hit is much higher. Over the long term he'll have to heal more. Question is can he ? % health regen is nice but it isn't going to recover 3000 damage anytime fast.

I could go on about more skills that help benefit armor tanks over health tanks. But that isn't too hard to self educate.

So the way I see it. Armor tanks are viable but they need health. Not 100% life node health like health tanks but they do need to be beefy otherwise all the dmg mit goes to waste when you get 1 hitted.

As for HC. I'd argue going full tank with health/res/armor is best.

Oh and I'd also say there is a magic number with armor somelike like 100.000 just like with health (10000ish). I mean other then maps with vaal as boss I cant think of mobs that do like 8000+ dmg in 1 swing. Altho i've only had 2-3 end gamers. So I probably don't know :O how heavy all the map bosses can hit