Devs, lock the thread please.

"

IceDeal wrote:

DoT
They should have their damage reduced by 30-50% in pvp, especially bleed and poison. It's too easy to scale those with tree, gear and crit to unreal levels designed around monster life pool and not players.

Supported Trap and Mines
Reduce or Cancel the dmg buff by supports. You can already stack them and "shotgun" people with a stack. It's strange enought that you can put any ranged attack or spell in a trap, why boost them with a "more" multiplier on top of it. Regular traps are fines.

Crit
It's too easy to stack immense amount of crit and multiplier in this game. Crit pvp dmg and/or chances should be reduced by 15-30% in pvp. Crit reduction mechanisms like deceiver or the cluster on tree should be adjusted around this change.

Animated Guardian in Sarn
An old trick still used today, animated guardian in sarn can be used without limitation as you can recast them as soon as they are dead. There is a few tricks than you can do with thoses but the main one is punishing melee physical dmg users by making the guardian wear Bramblejack to reflect the physical damages and Abyssus, Oro and other items to amplify the damages taken. Most people on shot themself on those.
Another trick is to give them Shackles of the wretched to get frenzy charges on the guardian death.
A simple fix would be that guardian in sarn interact the same way as they do in 1vs1, you can't call them more than once until you leave the area or die.

Rumi's Concoction
yes I said it, this flask did massive dmg to pvp balance once it was introduced. People didn't have to build for block anymore, they just use that flask and burst other players during it's effect. Everyone can use it an gain superiority if their opponent is not using BCR wich created a meta where litteraly everyone is using BCR as their six link. Some players even run 3 or 4 of those.

"

ShinFuuma wrote:

Frost wall in general is actually not a bad skill in terms of balance. It's the AOE overlap exploitation that comes with it, which of course relates to other skills outside of frost wall. If there was some kind of frostwall downgrade because of skills that abuse this AOE overlap it would not be fair for anyone that actually uses it. In a perfectly balanced game. "Main goal" Casters and ranged characters need defensive mechanics too. Not to mention removing frost wall is futile, considering actual walls will still exist.

Frost wall is not the problem. Here are a list of skills that abuse AOE overlap.

Explosive arrow
Lightning arrow
Firestorm
Icestorm (It's post nerf damage seems to be tailored around the AOE overlap, I do not consider this a problem skill)
Molten strike (Normally in conjunction with discharge, cast on crit, Mjollnir ec...)
Arctic Breath
Fireball (Arctic breath)
Ice shot
Blast rain
Kinetic Blast
Spark (To a lesser extent, considering it is not an AOE but gains function from a wall nonetheless, I do not consider this a problem skill)

Perhaps I missed a few. Not really sure. However, the point still stands. Aoe overlap needs to be removed. Also, the above skills need to be adjusted to compensate. Some to a greater extent than others.

Whirling blades: i'll admit that WB is effective in open areas (Sarn), however it is also necessary to address the fact that it's not very, or as effective in most 1 v 1 arenas. I think it should better than other movement skills, but to a much smaller degree of variance.

Tempest shield: this is a very strong mechanic because of a few reasons. Mainly, it's because of the static T value it has for pvp damage. It's also defensively oriented but provides automated offense. Anything that removes the player from actually playing the game needs to be under close scrutiny. (CWDT recieved -25% less damage pvp scaling for a reason)
I believe that as tempest shield triggers more, it's T-value needs to dynamically go down in relation to triggers. A form of T-value entropy. I also believe that it should have a lower minimum damage floor, but not to such a low degree that Lori's lantern>tempest shield.

Molten shell: We can't talk about molten shell without also talking about discharge. Per hit, these are your strongest potentially per hit spells in the game. However, they are still under the same pvp damage hardcap rules as everything else. Molten shell has never hit me for more than 5k per hit. Or anyone else for that matter. Although, given a low resistance rating there is room for variance (Cursed shocked EE ect.). I do believe that discharge and molten shell need an entropy based T-value. It maintains power for tactical casts, but loses a lot of power for fast triggers. Also, the real problem gentlemen. Is the Damage over time "DOT". When fire based discharges or molten shells cause an ignite. It seems to do burning damage based on the actual damage not the scaled damage (Also, double intergration...Fire damage=Elemental Damage=Burning damage)(Poison damage and the new updates made this a lot more apparent, however this interaction or flaw per se has always existed in relation to DOT effects. Which leads me to my next point.)

Damage overtime: It does not follow pvp hardcap scaling. As in, there is not a max damage floor per DOT. It is about the same in practice as AOE overlap. As you can bypass the pvp hardcap scaling to potentially deal much higher multiples of damage. Damage overtime needs to be adjusted in conjunction to per hit damage. This is the reason things like puncture, puncture traps (bleed), burning arrow traps, ect are so powerful, and yes even flame dash (This is how you counter grievel/tempest shield, Rlowe, haha). Or even a weapon with a chance to bleed and a high crit multi. This is actually as old as EA and just as bad in a different way. Righteous fire is the only skill to receive special attention to it's DOT damage, however the entire DOT mechanic needs this attention.

Traps: Nothing about traps is fair nor balanced. Next to EA this is the most glaring issue that remains unaddressed. They can stack. Hit for 5k with a comparatively low weapon/investment, and can come in a variety of flavors. Even if they were not able to stack. They would still be an issue, especially for melee based characters. With the introduction of mines, minion fodder are
completely useless as a workaround as well. Mines/traps are completely uneffective vs ranged though. This type of game interaction should not exist.

Crit vs RT debate

Critical hit mechanics should "always" (under any conditions in equal circumstance (Items)) outperform (Dps) non crit. This has more to do with opportunity costs vs item mod investment vs tree investment. also potential counters (Blind, unyielding, deceiver and to a lesser extent enfeeble (Enfeeble doesn't effect crit chance vs players as it says it does. It also has an affect on non crit too))Comparatively, critical hit/multi outperforms noncrit builds in terms of dps currently. This is ok and expected. What is not ok however is the gain in utility and function that indirectly comes with 95% critical chance. Status effects, surgeons flask and an extremely high damage ceiling (Bleed is a huge culprit and poison now too. Considering it takes full advantage of the high crit ceiling (Damage over time vs pvp scaling)). Ever wonder why a low damage hit from say whirling blades would bleed you to death? This is why. Just for the record, if there was a change to crit chance/multi it would also be necessary to adjust the avengers mod on flasks.

In optimal circumstances non crit can potentially hit the hard damage cap numbers per hit (mirrored weapons) with the added benefit of a more solid ehp rating and hard counters to crit via tree and loadout. A few things to consider is this. There are a lot more unoptimal players than optimal ones, and yes going critical chance/multi is a much easier investment/payout. Does that
mean legacy crit based mods are ok? Well, no, but that is an entirely different discussion and frankly not something I care to talk about. If there was a hardcap on crit chance and multi, legacy items would simply save some passive nodes in opportunity costs. People that earned these items deserve to use them. At the moment, critical mechanics are superior in function/dps. Non-crit is superior in opportunity costs/staying power. Our problem is the dps gain and function is >greater than> non-crits staying power and saved points in opportunity costs. I'm just pointing out that the perceived discrepancy is not as large as people make it out to be, but there is a true mathematical advantage at the low end, however it begins to disappear at the high end. As heavy crit multi damage stays on a plateau (Damage on hit, not bleed. Bleed is a problem), non crit eventually starts to catch up without the stipulations of hard critical damage counters.

ECT

Dynamic pvp damage scaling needs to be implemented. Right now it's around 5k. This is one shot potential against people with low ehp, but at the same time simply not enough against full tanks. AOE overlap, DOT exploitation and trap stacking can of course kill them, but if these exploits are removed, of course other changes need to be made to accommodate this.

Some of the new skills are too powerful to be certain. All the people that are abusing them however are not very good. I do believe that once the league ends this problem will fix itself. Blade vortex, blast rain ect is a train wreck waiting to happen, no point to even discuss it.

Also, and lastly. It's not like people don't know a lot of the problems with pvp. Some do it unknowingly. Some do it intentionally and pretend there isn't a problem. All the while people would rather stay politically correct than openly call other players/problems out, because they would look hypocritical at best. Perhaps, if the 5 people that constantly haunt the pvp forum started being real, then maybe player based choice will prevail in light of exploitable mechanics. Explosive arrow is a choice. So is frostwall. So it crit/bleed/DOT, traps, tempest shield ect. Things like reputation....good/bad/don't care....really don't matter. All people can do is simply observe and come to their own conclusions. If your openly exploiting mechanics what else is there to expect.

Do you think that people care what your items/pvprank is when your just another EA/trap/AOE whatever build? No. In fact most people just wait until the game slaps them on the wrist just to later watch them leave POE. Or at the very best notice they no longer exist after a while/if at all.
Remember all of those pre 2.0 shotgunners? I don't either, but I do remember beating them and others that beat them without it.

"

ShinFuuma wrote:

Frost wall in general is actually not a bad skill in terms of balance. It's the AOE overlap exploitation that comes with it, which of course relates to other skills outside of frost wall. If there was some kind of frostwall downgrade because of skills that abuse this AOE overlap it would not be fair for anyone that actually uses it. In a perfectly balanced game. "Main goal" Casters and ranged characters need defensive mechanics too. Not to mention removing frost wall is futile, considering actual walls will still exist.

Frost wall is not the problem. Here are a list of skills that abuse AOE overlap.

Explosive arrow
Lightning arrow
Firestorm
Icestorm (It's post nerf damage seems to be tailored around the AOE overlap, I do not consider this a problem skill)
Molten strike (Normally in conjunction with discharge, cast on crit, Mjollnir ec...)
Arctic Breath
Fireball (Arctic breath)
Ice shot
Blast rain
Kinetic Blast
Spark (To a lesser extent, considering it is not an AOE but gains function from a wall nonetheless, I do not consider this a problem skill)

Perhaps I missed a few. Not really sure. However, the point still stands. Aoe overlap needs to be removed. Also, the above skills need to be adjusted to compensate. Some to a greater extent than others.

Whirling blades: i'll admit that WB is effective in open areas (Sarn), however it is also necessary to address the fact that it's not very, or as effective in most 1 v 1 arenas. I think it should better than other movement skills, but to a much smaller degree of variance.

Tempest shield: this is a very strong mechanic because of a few reasons. Mainly, it's because of the static T value it has for pvp damage. It's also defensively oriented but provides automated offense. Anything that removes the player from actually playing the game needs to be under close scrutiny. (CWDT recieved -25% less damage pvp scaling for a reason)
I believe that as tempest shield triggers more, it's T-value needs to dynamically go down in relation to triggers. A form of T-value entropy. I also believe that it should have a lower minimum damage floor, but not to such a low degree that Lori's lantern>tempest shield.

Molten shell: We can't talk about molten shell without also talking about discharge. Per hit, these are your strongest potentially per hit spells in the game. However, they are still under the same pvp damage hardcap rules as everything else. Molten shell has never hit me for more than 5k per hit. Or anyone else for that matter. Although, given a low resistance rating there is room for variance (Cursed shocked EE ect.). I do believe that discharge and molten shell need an entropy based T-value. It maintains power for tactical casts, but loses a lot of power for fast triggers. Also, the real problem gentlemen. Is the Damage over time "DOT". When fire based discharges or molten shells cause an ignite. It seems to do burning damage based on the actual damage not the scaled damage (Also, double intergration...Fire damage=Elemental Damage=Burning damage)(Poison damage and the new updates made this a lot more apparent, however this interaction or flaw per se has always existed in relation to DOT effects. Which leads me to my next point.)

Damage overtime: It does not follow pvp hardcap scaling. As in, there is not a max damage floor per DOT. It is about the same in practice as AOE overlap. As you can bypass the pvp hardcap scaling to potentially deal much higher multiples of damage. Damage overtime needs to be adjusted in conjunction to per hit damage. This is the reason things like puncture, puncture traps (bleed), burning arrow traps, ect are so powerful, and yes even flame dash (This is how you counter grievel/tempest shield, Rlowe, haha). Or even a weapon with a chance to bleed and a high crit multi. This is actually as old as EA and just as bad in a different way. Righteous fire is the only skill to receive special attention to it's DOT damage, however the entire DOT mechanic needs this attention.

Traps: Nothing about traps is fair nor balanced. Next to EA this is the most glaring issue that remains unaddressed. They can stack. Hit for 5k with a comparatively low weapon/investment, and can come in a variety of flavors. Even if they were not able to stack. They would still be an issue, especially for melee based characters. With the introduction of mines, minion fodder are
completely useless as a workaround as well. Mines/traps are completely uneffective vs ranged though. This type of game interaction should not exist.

Crit vs RT debate

Critical hit mechanics should "always" (under any conditions in equal circumstance (Items)) outperform (Dps) non crit. This has more to do with opportunity costs vs item mod investment vs tree investment. also potential counters (Blind, unyielding, deceiver and to a lesser extent enfeeble (Enfeeble doesn't effect crit chance vs players as it says it does. It also has an affect on non crit too))Comparatively, critical hit/multi outperforms noncrit builds in terms of dps currently. This is ok and expected. What is not ok however is the gain in utility and function that indirectly comes with 95% critical chance. Status effects, surgeons flask and an extremely high damage ceiling (Bleed is a huge culprit and poison now too. Considering it takes full advantage of the high crit ceiling (Damage over time vs pvp scaling)). Ever wonder why a low damage hit from say whirling blades would bleed you to death? This is why. Just for the record, if there was a change to crit chance/multi it would also be necessary to adjust the avengers mod on flasks.

In optimal circumstances non crit can potentially hit the hard damage cap numbers per hit (mirrored weapons) with the added benefit of a more solid ehp rating and hard counters to crit via tree and loadout. A few things to consider is this. There are a lot more unoptimal players than optimal ones, and yes going critical chance/multi is a much easier investment/payout. Does that
mean legacy crit based mods are ok? Well, no, but that is an entirely different discussion and frankly not something I care to talk about. If there was a hardcap on crit chance and multi, legacy items would simply save some passive nodes in opportunity costs. People that earned these items deserve to use them. At the moment, critical mechanics are superior in function/dps. Non-crit is superior in opportunity costs/staying power. Our problem is the dps gain and function is >greater than> non-crits staying power and saved points in opportunity costs. I'm just pointing out that the perceived discrepancy is not as large as people make it out to be, but there is a true mathematical advantage at the low end, however it begins to disappear at the high end. As heavy crit multi damage stays on a plateau (Damage on hit, not bleed. Bleed is a problem), non crit eventually starts to catch up without the stipulations of hard critical damage counters.

ECT

Dynamic pvp damage scaling needs to be implemented. Right now it's around 5k. This is one shot potential against people with low ehp, but at the same time simply not enough against full tanks. AOE overlap, DOT exploitation and trap stacking can of course kill them, but if these exploits are removed, of course other changes need to be made to accommodate this.

Some of the new skills are too powerful to be certain. All the people that are abusing them however are not very good. I do believe that once the league ends this problem will fix itself. Blade vortex, blast rain ect is a train wreck waiting to happen, no point to even discuss it.

Also, and lastly. It's not like people don't know a lot of the problems with pvp. Some do it unknowingly. Some do it intentionally and pretend there isn't a problem. All the while people would rather stay politically correct than openly call other players/problems out, because they would look hypocritical at best. Perhaps, if the 5 people that constantly haunt the pvp forum started being real, then maybe player based choice will prevail in light of exploitable mechanics. Explosive arrow is a choice. So is frostwall. So it crit/bleed/DOT, traps, tempest shield ect. Things like reputation....good/bad/don't care....really don't matter. All people can do is simply observe and come to their own conclusions. If your openly exploiting mechanics what else is there to expect.

Do you think that people care what your items/pvprank is when your just another EA/trap/AOE whatever build? No. In fact most people just wait until the game slaps them on the wrist just to later watch them leave POE. Or at the very best notice they no longer exist after a while/if at all.
Remember all of those pre 2.0 shotgunners? I don't either, but I do remember beating them and others that beat them without it.

"

dalb3 wrote:

Hey we're all friends here. Maybe just hard to establish tone while typing quickly :) All is good!

Guys, there's some really, really good stuff here and I appreciate everyone typing out all the long stuff so I don't have to. I agree with basically everything in this thread.

I've been playing for 3 years and I've been melee this whole entire time until Talisman league, and it's because Melee is COMPLETELY DEAD in this game for pvp with no hope whatsoever, that's why Sith and other melee gods quit/are quitting. (Not trying to be dramatic, this is what it looks like to an experienced player). Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one stupid enough to still be 2h RT in this game. One thing I do know I am is hard-headed, and I choose to believe that GGG will address these issues in the future, so I don't want to divvy all my gear up I've worked so hard to put together.

Just to preface, I'm not gloating in this next line, and the point of my post isn't to complain about losing. I have said this time and time again: I'm not invincible, just very strong! :) But there's a certain point where you get tired of trying to kick water uphill, and I think that's where everyone is at right now.

I just want to paint a picture much like rup did. I have 10k life WITH acro/phase acro (14k life w/o), overcapped res, great chaos res, 6 perfect jewels, all good life regen nodes, the best weapon in the game, leg kaoms (obv), 100% freeze/chill immune, all the items I could want for this character including weapon/ammy/boot/flask swaps etc... I use multiple melee skills, not just Cyclone. Static strike, Heavy, and Double I carry on me at all times depending on who I am fighting, and I incorporate PA/CA on my offhand.

With all these things, I have very little chance. It's still possible to 1shot me offscreen before I can even see you, kill me with 1 op trap/mine, or just walk into me for 0.1 sec with blade vortex - all while wearing a tabula and barely investing any exalts at all. Don't even get me started on EA. LOL.

The first two things that needs to happen is make Frost Wall self-cast only, and decrease duration of Whispering Ice.. No FW totem, no FW cwdt. People are abusing this like crazy, and everyone knows it. This is an easy fix that GGG could fix in minutes.

Would type more but running out of time!

Oh and one more thing, there's a guy in pvp talisman that is abusing spark/knockback pretty well. He can crash everyone in the entire arena because there's too many instances of knockback hitting at once. Probably just nip that in the bud too.

<3

"

MullaXul wrote:

First off, Sith was really late to the 2h party. He was 1h/axe then started 2h after repeat stomp-age from some MullaXul guy. Nothing against Sith I really liked the guy but there's only 3 original 2h that I know of. One quit (Bigdaddyslam), 1 I never see (XDominus) and the other is me. Google had more of a hand and time vested in 2h then most others too, can't forget Tommie either.


As for balance and crit.

45-80% chance is actually very easy to obtain for a bow user, dagger user, spell caster.

The "ehp" difference between the Templar,Marauder/Duelist trees versus the Witch,Shadow,Ranger trees is mute. A few % more regen and barely a few % more hp does not substitute Acrobatics,status avoidance and the ever potent crit potential. What kills troll tank builds that are primarily based on the survivability provided by the western side of the tree? Critical damage. One side of the tree completely counters the other and not vise versa. RT ignores evasion but the damage output even with the absolute best gear possible is still shit compared a mediocre crit spec. Add the fact ranged + crit go hand in hand so perfectly and the argument that RT builds get better ehp,staying power versus a crit spec evasion,hp,acro or crit es (which retains the insane damage, block and generally higher or equal "life" pool to that of a legacy kaoms 2h with perfect gear) is just flawed. Honestly even if you find a medium between damage output and survivability on the western side of the tree no spec, be it melee,bow,trapper,caster is going to out dps nor out survive a similar build that is built on the other side of the tree without running and abusing life regen like a little whore...that is if you aren't dead within the first 1-2 shots first. Only exception to this is Explosive arrow builds in the non FFA arenas because well..its Explosive arrow.

Like already mentioned too, crit damage is why DOT effects are so strong. DOT is perfectly fair in RT or Poison arrow form because they can't crit. Add crit multipliers to a puncture arrow, regular melee hit that can bleed/poison and you're looking at 1.5 to 6x more damage on average.

So it's really hard to just say nerf this by x %. Because without crit most everything in this game is balanced already except traps (too many MORE multiplier supports) and EA. If people would just get their heads out of their asses and stop defending crit multipliers they'd see that too. One of the smartest things we've gotten recently was the Controlled Destruction support that makes non crit spells more potent and viable. Still does nothing for the rest of us but it was well deserved for IW,non crit spell users.

Also, cannot be evaded but can still do critical damage mods basically said "fuck that" to the old idea that evasion was an option to almost....almost deal with crit melee,bow damage. Almost as in...if they didn't get lucky and still kill you immediately in 1-2 button pushs. Only answer to crit spells is block or dodge, brilliant. Enfeeble is great and all but with 8sec + warding flasks the norm now adays you'll be hard pressed to keep this on someone unless you want to run around in circles for a few minutes til they no longer have flasks so it then contributes to your survival. Blind goes hand in hand with evasion and is pretty much worthless now adays and will be even more worthless come Ascendancy....except for the crit user themselves because they will do even more damage to you if they blind you instead woooooooooooooooot talk about sticking it up your ass.

"

hauntworld1 wrote:

Stop worrying about existing mechanics, ascendancy worries me more than anything already existing in pvp right now. Besides the problematic builds right now, ea, untweaked released skills, offscreen crit damage and whatnot.

And 45-50% crit on a caster is not an easy task, I barely break the 50% mark with top notch gear, matter of fact crit is fine on spell casters, bow crit worries me a lot more. Iceshot,la secondary damage offscreen shotgun crit is over everything atm. Remove shotgun from these since they removed them for caster, also fix arctic breath shotgun possibility. Anything that can shotgun currently is a mechanic bug/abuse that hasn't been addressed by GGG. The fact that some skill secondary damage doesn't get reduced is alarming. EA secondary damage is probably not even reduced at all.

Tempest shield is fine, you probably havent seen it pre 1.3. It will hit three times if your 3 shotgun projectiles hit the enemy at the same time, remove shotgun from ur LA and it wont hit you 3 times in a row anymore, a broken mechanic for another broken mechanic.

I posted a thread about BCR clusters for generalized 2h users, that would help.

And the meta right now is about sarn arena, most people build their characters around it and end up with super squishy spec with most damage possible, ofcourse that's advantageous in wide open arenas, but it will never be as good in real 1v1 environnement. There are so many builds that do good in sarn because of their spike 1 shot damage with offscreen possibilities. But when the 1v1 arena comes these builds are bad, they are easily getting hit and die way too fast due to their low defenses and poor area control. I see a ton of these sarn builds, people need to wake up and make real 1v1 characters. An exemple is my firestorm build, its a true 1v1 spec that relies on controlling the area in closed environnement. In fact its pretty bad in sarn arena due to how much space there is to run and evade but when I play 1v1s I can really see the true potential of it.

Another thing is that they should make it mandatory for EA users to have BCR gem, since they dont rely on it due to their secondary form bypassing any dodge/block mechanic they can add another powerfull gem, removing that possibility would decrease their output and make it more balanced.

"

Márkusz wrote:

I feel I have relatively low playtime in hld, I started pvp about a year ago, but the one thing I see permanent and overused is EA. IMHO the fact that so many people are using it shows that it's problematic, and imbalanced. Matching the same thing over and over is frustrating and it scares away most of the people who would actually disagree with the wide poe community's opinion that hld is bad and such, and actually tries it for fun, where I also started.

My idea and suggestion to change EA would be to apply a penalty to the secondary damage of the arrows which didnt hit any actual target (stuck in the walls), and it could be even buffed if it is shooted into opponents, so this way of using it would be much more competent and skill requiring than just spamming the walls.

Talking in more general what pvp and hld need is more people playing it, which is affected by the below things that came in to my mind:

Gearing and cost of builds including legacy gear in standard is problematic, and creates margin between players. I recall that GGG's opinion on legacy gear is that it's the feature of the league so I dont see this changing in any way for pvp, but felt Id mention it, because it is greatly part of the balance, so maybe someone has a good suggestion in this.

PVP getting more attention, and good balance changes is heavily affected by it's popularity in the game. I don't see it as negative as some people do, because it may only take some good ideas to greatly improve the state of pvp from where it is right now. A good example of this is the duel video posted recently on reddit, where much more players see stuff than on the official forums, and many people enjoyed watching this based on the comments. We should create more content like this, because this is an easy way to increase the popularity of hld, and let new players have a view of this part of the game.

Many people have good enough gear in standard to try hld, who quitted the game or barely playing because pve got boring for them, but they don't dare to try pvp because they don't know where to start, how to learn, or just afraid to try, these people are the unexploited fuel for hld. Among us there are some who are very helpful to new people in hld, so I'm asking your opinion on this, what could we do to get this people into playing pvp?

"

RunawayFixer wrote:

I'm not going to talk about the high end of balance changes, but about the base for a change:

Ideally pvp would be accessible for all functional pve builds, but in my experience the difference between pve and pvp is so vast, that perfectly viable pve builds become totally unviable for pvp. This alone creates a pretty big barrier to entry.


Some examples:
1) There is pvp damage scaling, equalizing damage somewhat between different builds (in a pretty unbalanced way, but it deserves a thread on it's own imo). This damage reduction scaling is only applied on the the base damage, without taking defences of the target into account. So despite there being damage equalization in place, a new pve player with low chaos resist will get into a lot of totally onesided matchups.
Another consequence of this, is that lowering enemy resists (EE+double cursing) to increase damage is a lot more effective in pvp than in pve. An experienced player will have significantly overcapped fire resist, a new player trying pvp will not. Similarly builds that stack penetration will do comparatively better dps in pvp than pve.
An example in the other direction: chaos damage versus CI.

My suggestion: Some kind of base defense equalization that is applied after debuffs+penetration.

2) The "your enemies cannot leech" modifier. Leeching is one of the most popular defences in pve, but pvp builds on marauder side or rich players with a corrupted helmet can 100% negate it without any significant sacrifice. This makes it easy for a new player to kill himself on another's defenses.

You could say that it's the same in pve, where the majority of builds get stuck with cannot do mods at high tiers of map levels, but imo that is also an example of bad design. Modifiers like this should be making the opponent/map harder, but not impossible.

My suggestion: no more 100% immunities, but multiplicative reduced effectiveness modifiers (also in maps :p).

3) If you are ranged and your projectiles have 0 pierce chance, you cannot pvp since cwdt+frost wall is easy to link and will be up 100% of the time.

My suggestion: make frost wall destructible or give it an innate chance to be pierced.

4) Builds with ramp up or high start time: minions, charge based builds,...

I don't think there's an easy change to make pvp more accessible for them.



Not related to the above, but still a pet grieve of mine:
Asocial players who shut down sarn arena fighting through their actions. I suspect we've all seen it happen. It only takes 1 asocial player with a build better than the rest, to shut down any possibility of fights occurring between everyone else. Dead arena in a minute or 2.

My suggestion: vote kick + temp ban for entry.