Nerfing Defensive Archnemesis Modifiers

Since this post is on the topic of Archnemesis mods, I won't parrot the rest yelling about loot and harvest. It still feels a bit off in general but hopefully that will get tuned. Definitely needed more testing.

No, I want to talk about Archnem. While these defense nerfs do help slightly, they don't address certain outliers or really the main issue with their defenses, which is stacked layers of defense. Soul Eater being the most egregious.


If information on the wiki is to be believed, rare enemies by default have a 33% damage reduction modifier.
Damage(1)*Resistance(0.25)*RareDefault(0.67)*SoulEaterDamageReduc(1-0.05X, assuming 90% cap(which is only 18 stacks...) so 0.1)*Block(0.76/0.6/0.4)

Soul Eater, Resistance mod, Sentinel, capped block (75%, 80% effect(60% less average damage))
1*0.25*0.67*0.1*0.4 = 0.0067 -> 0.67% average damage taken

Soul Eater, Resistance mod, Sentinel (50% block, 80% effect(40% less average damage))
1*0.25*0.67*0.1*0.6 = 0.01005 1% average damage taken

Soul Eater, Resistance mod, Bene Guard (30% block, 80% effect(24% less average damage))
1*0.25*0.67*0.1*0.76 = 0.01005 1.27% average damage taken

Soul Eater, Resistance mod
1*0.25*0.67*0.1 = 0.01675 1.67% average damage taken

Of course these values are before resistance reductions and penetration and ignoring all other sources of mitigation or increased damage taken, but you get the idea. If I've got something wrong here, apologies.

Soul Eater stacks ramp up very quickly and have NO CAP, though I assume that any damage reduction is capped at 90%... Right? Maybe? (doesn't feel like it.) In most scenarios there is no counterplay to avoid them getting ridiculously stacked. They'll pour out of an abyss, a breach, in the middle of an expedition or incursion, get all roided up with 40-100 stacks instantly and become near unkillable murder machines. If it also has leech or regen, gg.

In my humble opinion, Soul Eater archnem mod on rares should cap at 10 stacks, or 20 with damage reduction reduced from 5% per stack to 3%, or 2% like the unique boss version. (please cap their stacks too, I hate having to deal with burial chambers when playing minion instability builds. Soul Eater is simply anti-fun to play against.) If you don't want to cap their stacks, please at least have the stacks fall off similar to virulence, that way players can at least have some means of counterplay by avoiding the enemy for a short time.



I would also like to see Lightning Mirages be changed to either spawn randomly around the player at a certain radius (maybe 1/3rd-ish distance to edge of screen?) or to spawn from the monster itself. Having them spawn directly inside the player model, especially with mtx going strong, they are easily missed and if the sound effect is lost in the cacophony of other combat sounds, the player can simply explode without warning. Not fun.

Lightning Mirage and those annoying dark crystal lightning pylons that cluster around you and explode are extremely oppressive for non DoT builds that don't just run circles around things without having to stop. Crackling lance has been an absolute delight to play with these. The pylons spawn far too rapidly when encountered as a magic pack, they also seem to spawn well off-screen from the monster that created them, even when not in combat with said monster.

My two cents.

Good changes. Looking forward to the next announcement. I'm sure the whole office has to be stressing out hard over all this drama. Keep up the good work.

Good stuff :)
League enjoyer here, looks like it will get even better for me!

Can you comminicate with the community to discuss the current game problems?

so still getting deleted in seconds by some modifiers

What needs to be nerfed is the damagea and: movement speed, projectile speed, jump speed, and increase reaction delay of these monsters.

The loots is still massively diminished. It was all an anchor bargain tactic.

This is a great improvement!

the lake has improved, dropped an ex and a divine in the first lake. tks GGG

What about the state of minion life, you can't have perma minions even with all defensive, they die right and left, can you adresse that ASAP its unplayable no matter how many layers of defensive you put in.

[...] We're sorry for the delay on this, it has been a bit of a week.


You had 3 months to develop it and test it properly. Nobody has forced you to release the core gameplay changes in 3.19, if they are not ready to be released. The daily patches clearly evidence that it was not ready. Not only your week w.r.t. POE is a bit of a week as a consequence of your actions, decisions and choices.