Can we all agree that armour needs this buff to even the field.

Maybe a good solution would be to rework endurance charges and giving value to defensive passives in the tree.

Endurance charges are broken atm. Especially for armor based char, it's too good that it simply add up flatly to a normally Dimishing return stat but in the other hand it is not even THAT gud in the end.

Hardcore life based 2handers always take endurance charge, most think (and for good reasons) that they are the priority over other mitigation nodes because these are way more efficient.

Plain facts:
- Any life node is superior to armor (or even evasion node)
- Soul of steel cluster: garbage(because mainly you get for 4pts + pathing an endurance charge worth of shit)
- Cloth and chain cluster: heavy buff in theory for hybrid char but nobody proeficient at the game takes it because there are endurance charges on their pathing

Armor and Evasion are fairly equal at the moment, some would sooner say equally bad than equally good, but they probably work as good as it can be expected, considering there are so many other forms of defense in the game.

- evasion works on attacks of any kind
- armor works on physical damage only, but it works on attacks and spells

Now, ES is something else, having double buffer size is effectively the same as having 50% damage reduction to everything, attacks, spells, dot, all of it regardless of damage type, which is clearly an advantage. The sponge concept where a high amount of life subs for mitigation is no alien to other games, however it is usually balanced by healing being available only in flat amounts.

So, this is the problem, you got 1k life on one character that gets hit for 500 with mitigation absorbing half of it so you take 250, a quarter. The sponge has 2k life and gets hit for whole 500 damage, which is also a quarter. However, you run into a problem when you need to heal both, you will need to use twice as many spells or potions because a sponge soaks healing as well as it does damage.

That's the usual drawback to sponges, and it doesn't work in PoE because too many replenishing methods are percentage-based. Regen is percentage (at least the useful kind), and leech is kinda funny, it's limited by both amount and percentage. However we do so much damage the fixed amount limitation is a non-issue so we got only leech rate, which is percentage again or no limitation in case of vaal pact.

^The problem with leech is only made worse since you can only regain a % of your full buffer size, which a sponge also increases.

Though generally they go vaal pact, but if we imagine you strip that option away from them, they still gain huge leech advantages both in therms of investment in the passives for leech as in the defense itself.(a sort of defensive double dip)

Which is "amusing" i think the right word is.

Honestly i think where at a point where

- hard-line defenses (initial layers) might require an additional function entirely to make them worth while.
- passive tree hard-line defense investment needs to be more rewarding(considering how dps oriented the game is)

That function, could be gated behind high investment though.(high threshold requirements for it to proq)

Examples ->

15K armor grants 4% flat phys mitigation/+1 all max resistances (30k = 8%/+2 max etc etc)
25K evasion grants "fake death" (a killing "hit" is negated and restores the char to 40%hp once every 60 seconds, 50K evasion would reduce the 60 seconds to 50 -> 75k evasion to 40 etc etc)
5000 ES grants 5% reduced recharge delay time (yes i purposefully fucked over vaal pact users, come at me)

You wouldn't necessarily get these bonuses, but it would promote specialization in them.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Boem wrote:

^The problem with leech is only made worse since you can only regain a % of your full buffer size, which a sponge also increases.

Though generally they go vaal pact, but if we imagine you strip that option away from them, they still gain huge leech advantages both in therms of investment in the passives for leech as in the defense itself.(a sort of defensive double dip)

Which is "amusing" i think the right word is.

Honestly i think where at a point where

- hard-line defenses (initial layers) might require an additional function entirely to make them worth while.
- passive tree hard-line defense investment needs to be more rewarding(considering how dps oriented the game is)

That function, could be gated behind high investment though.(high threshold requirements for it to proq)

Examples ->

15K armor grants 4% flat phys mitigation/+1 all max resistances (30k = 8%/+2 max etc etc)
25K evasion grants "fake death" (a killing "hit" is negated and restores the char to 40%hp once every 60 seconds, 50K evasion would reduce the 60 seconds to 50 -> 75k evasion to 40 etc etc)
5000 ES grants 5% reduced recharge delay time (yes i purposefully fucked over vaal pact users, come at me)

You wouldn't necessarily get these bonuses, but it would promote specialization in them.

Peace,

-Boem-

I'm going to take this opportunity to shamelessly plug my evasion reform concept.

Basically, if you fail to evade a hit the system compares the monster's hit chance against your evade chance, and scales the damage based on that. The idea being that if a monster barely manages to hit you, then you still avoid most of the damage since it was a glancing blow. But if you utterly failed the evade roll, you'll take the full brunt of the attack.

As a side note, I just had an idea for a potential keystone. Imagine a passive that causes all damage taken to be drained from your health over time, rather than instantly? Damage calculations occur as normal, but the damage is dealt over time. It would give you a window to recover health when you take a large hit, and it would make regen hugely valuable. Heck, maybe make it a reverse Vaal Pact which disables leech and forces you to rely on regen and flasks. Then just slap it right in the middle of the Marauder area of the tree.

"

jeerinho wrote:

Having to spend that many jewel slots, and with the drawback of higher chance of getting shocked, ignited, frozen from crits, means the armor isn't overpowering at all. Unlike Kaom's which is a built-enabler for many 2H-based builds because you can take less life nodes.

When TS said "spell damage" can be evaded, from context he really meant "elemental damage" from "attacks".

With the juggernaut's Unstoppable being frozen will do nothing to you. There's also items that make you immune to freeze, or just using a flask.
And you can have a flask of Grounding or wear these gloves to ignore being shocked.

Also, the jewel sockets are not a waste at all. You're going to have a high block chance even with the 30% reduced chance to block from the armor.

You wouldn't want to run this chest like this in a 2h build unless you were using a staff, which can block. Otherwise a shield (like Aegis Aurora) is far superior.

I guess you aren't really seeing how good the armor is when you can't see past the 'downsides' which can easily be built around with other gear pieces.

Cheers
-Savage

"

AkuTenshiiZero wrote:

Imagine a passive that causes all damage taken to be drained from your health over time, rather than instantly?

You cant do this in a game that allows logouts. This would make every character in the game completely immortal.

The funny part is, why we have seperatly, elemental x% resists and armor that is x value calcualted to x% physical resist on the end.

Basicaly they all are the same, yet one of them is handicaped alot comparing to others. Wheres the logic behind it? Most mobs in such case should do only physical damage to make it worth the effort, otherwise its unbalanced greatly.

"

herflik wrote:

Basicaly they all are the same, yet one of them is handicaped alot comparing to others. Wheres the logic behind it? Most mobs in such case should do only physical damage to make it worth the effort, otherwise its unbalanced greatly.

Should be obvious but ok, the reason armor works like this is because physical damage is much lower than elemental, and physical damage is much lower than elemental to allow for builds that have zero phys mitigation. Everyone has capped resists so there's no problem with Atoll boss using a 12k Ice nova.

"

raics wrote:

Everyone has capped resists so there's no problem with Atoll boss using a 12k Ice nova.

IKR, that thing hurts.

But if you're ranged this boss poses little to no threat even with that attack :/

"

zSavage wrote:

But if you're ranged this boss poses little to no threat even with that attack :/

Aye, don't remind me.