How about just dropping monster damage by 20% and forgetting Fortify completely?

Fortify is now gated behind...honestly ridiculous requirements for anyone except Champion. A fast melee attack-at least 4 hits per second-and either Ascendant with Champion ascendancy, or a support gem.

The problem is, Fortify has been basically a must for everyone for a long time, so the game was balanced around that. Now that you've killed ways of obtaining it for most builds, they'll be much more vulnerable to damage, more than negating all the "improvements" to base defenses.

The game was never balanced around fortify. It was just something added to the game because it sounded like the right thing to add to melee which made sense. Overtime other builds found ways to putting it in there builds even if they weren't melee.

You have more options now in being able to use Armor Evasion ES and Mana as your defense. Take the new ES armor keystone and go hybrid will make up for fortify. ES Evasion Ghost Dance will make up for fortify. Mind over Matter is still great if you can get it working. Pure energy or hybrid life/ES is better now. ES gets a big win from the random boost up to 20% on ES items.

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e1337donkey wrote:

The game was never balanced around fortify. It was just something added to the game because it sounded like the right thing to add to melee which made sense. Overtime other builds found ways to putting it in there builds even if they weren't melee.

Not directly, but it ended up that way. Because after people started adding Fortify en masse into top tier ranged/caster builds, GGG had to take that power creep into consideration when making next round of new and updated content. And this way, it went for how long? It was around when I started playing. 20% less damage taken from hits is huge in this game where the biggest danger are oneshots.

Armour affects only minority of really dangerous damage. I'm not at all sold at the supposed "buff" of evasion. Wind Dancer lost damage reduction against spells and gained very dangerous debuff after being hit. In many dangerous situations, for example Rituals, Ultimatums, and from the look of it now Scourge, the amount of incoming attacks was so high that even with capped evasion, you got hit every second or two, so WD is now nearly permanent 20% more damage taken from attacks at times when it really matters. Blind was changed to be a less effective buff to evasion instead of straight up additional 50% miss. Out of curiosity...can someone do the math comparison for old eva+old WD+old blind vs. new eva+new blind? I have a feeling it will not end up at all favorable to the new system.

Oh, and Ghost Shroud? There's a catch. The damage reduction isn't something innate to Ghost Shroud. It was a part of Trickster's Ghost Dance passive. The new keystone, however, doesn't have that line. Either it's oversight...or it's now only ES replenishment method.

Melee is death avoid this, use spellcaster or minions for win easy this game.

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ExiledSarin wrote:

Fortify is now gated behind...honestly ridiculous requirements for anyone except Champion. A fast melee attack-at least 4 hits per second-and either Ascendant with Champion ascendancy, or a support gem.

The problem is, Fortify has been basically a must for everyone for a long time, so the game was balanced around that. Now that you've killed ways of obtaining it for most builds, they'll be much more vulnerable to damage, more than negating all the "improvements" to base defenses.

There are so many options to improve the game that they do not ask for them and choose to criticize changes that do not cause the death of anything.

Dale2021, are you working for GGG? Every single thread you are going and defending their ridiculous decision.

They nerf Fortify big time. If they actually wanted to make it melee, they could have restrict it to melee.
Fortify should have been a Passive in the melee zone without drawback, not to waste a GEM for it(i have never tho, used on my movement skill).
Fortify should have been Melee specifically and give the melee the rightful tankiness advantage melee should have compare to everything else. And it still won't be fair to melee, having in mind by how much X million time Caster/Ranger outdoing them in terms of DMG and clear speed, and also being cheaper to make.

But GGG hates melee, and that's it.

There was a Dual Strike once, Double Strike once, Heavy Strike once, Molten Strike(for a lot of builds), and so on and so on, and probably their next gut will be Frost Blade.
They just hate everything that is Strike Skill.
You never could make a full balance, but POE doesn't even know what that word means. It's one thing one to be stronger, it's completely another so much skills to not be Viable at ALL, compare to how easy is to do with certain skills.
If X outdoing Y by 100 or 1000, or 10k, no problem, but when it's outdoing it by 100x million time, then that tells you a story about POE balancing ....

P.P. I'm still waiting to tell me from where i copy my build. :D [Removed by Support]

I think it's really hard to judge defense until it's played with.

Personally when it comes to Fortify I would have done the opposite with it. I would have allowed everyone to gain access to fortify. Add nodes across the tree for spells to gain it or ranged attacks. Take away the support gem. But maybe base fortify is only 10% so mages and ranged characters could in theory get like a 10-20% reduction in damage -if- they invested into it. While melee would easily get 20% and could get up to like 30-35% with the nodes near the melee area.

Strike skills should have access to strike only fortify via skill tree or support that grants them a massive foritfy without having to invest heavily into it. So the actual melee characters gain full access while everyone else has to invest into it.