"Must have" stats / passives / etc...

I wonder if things considered by the community to be "must haves" should exist at all, because, at the end of day, they only serve two purposes:

1. Gatekeeping (you need to know that you need to cap it)

2. Wasting affixes

Best example: resistances. You are, for all practical purposes, required to max them out.

In my opinion, such stats should simply be removed. To compensate, number of possible affixes can be reduced as well.

(I see the same thing currently in Last Epoch as well.)

Any reason why nobody questions this?

Yeah, lets make players immortal so life/ES also wont be mandatory. Lets also make players deal bilion damage so rolling damage mods on items wont be mandatory. We should also make everyone base moveement speed 500% so we dont need to roll speed on boots, flask etc.

NGL Ive seen many stupid threads in here over years but this one might take the crown.

Removing resistances homogenises the damage types. Now, granted, so does having all the resistances maxed out, but at least as long as the resistance stats exist there is design space to work with, to (hopefully) build a game where a character can have strengths and weaknesses rather than just the feeling of a mandated flat line.

I feel like to do that you would probably have to slow the game down, which I imagine makes it a POE2 kind of thing.

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navigator4223 wrote:

I wonder if things considered by the community to be "must haves" should exist at all, because, at the end of day, they only serve two purposes:

1. Gatekeeping (you need to know that you need to cap it)

2. Wasting affixes

Best example: resistances. You are, for all practical purposes, required to max them out.

In my opinion, such stats should simply be removed. To compensate, number of possible affixes can be reduced as well.

(I see the same thing currently in Last Epoch as well.)

Any reason why nobody questions this?

Resistances are very much mandatory in LE as well, the increase in damage taken is lower compared to POE due to how they are calculated but doing endgame with no resistances isn't going to work there either.

It's simply not possible to design a game without "must have" stats because you need to draw a baseline somewhere when setting values be it defensive ones or offensive ones and the stats needed to reach whatever baseline you have decided on will be "mandatory". The only way out would be to design the game in a way where your character is already fullfilling all the requirements by the time to start the game but in games that are all about "getting stronger" like ARPGs that's not going to work either. Just imagine what kind of game POE would be if endgame bosses were balanced around level 1 twighlight strand characters while players had all the current tools to get more powerful. It wouldn't even be a game anymore.

The best approach to somewhat accomplish an arpg without "must haves" would be to give players several options for any given tasks. Like multiple ways of mitigating elemental damage other than resistances. Wouldn't really change the fact that you'll still need some way to mitigate them though so there is still a mandatory aspect to it.

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navigator4223 wrote:

I wonder if things considered by the community to be "must haves" should exist at all, because, at the end of day, they only serve two purposes:

1. Gatekeeping (you need to know that you need to cap it)

2. Wasting affixes

Best example: resistances. You are, for all practical purposes, required to max them out.

In my opinion, such stats should simply be removed. To compensate, number of possible affixes can be reduced as well.

(I see the same thing currently in Last Epoch as well.)

Any reason why nobody questions this?

Your implication that nobody questions this is wrong. I also disagree with your "simply remove".

But you do have a point. I dont agree with this "complicated for the sake of complicated" design. Which is basically the point of making resistances (and thus resistance affixes) work in the way they work.

On the DPS side you dont have any such "everybody needs X% of this" either. So clearly its possible to design game in such a manner that there are no obligatory (overwhelming quantity of benefit) stats.

my only real problem here is that defences are overspecialized and as such we are shoehorned into having to max a lot of stats

*having overcapped elemental resistances
*at least 20-30% chaos resistance
*spell supression
*large % physical damage reduction or physical to elemental conversion
*large HP buffer (life, ES, etc..)
*high recovery mechanism (regen, life leech, etc..)


it's either that or play a glass cannon and kill everything from offscreen.

not expecting 1 stat to rule them all but would be nice if defences had secondary effects to give them added value outside their current role, something one can build around.

for instance make resistances give:
1% chance to take 50% less damage from that element every x overcapped resistance of that element.


this means one can replace supression and the need of a big HP buffer with large amounts of overcapped resistances.

If you think you need all of those stats in single build you clearly never seen actual tank build.

I'd also like to point out that, right from the start, you DON'T need maxed out resistances for every build.

There are MANY builds that do not cap resistances, and work out their defenses in OTHER ways (conversion, timely flask usage, avoidance, etc.). There are also some builds that benefit from NOT having maxed resistances.

There are also playstyles that make maxing resistances not totally necessary. If you have the ability to play without getting hit, then resistances aren't really needed. For this entire league, I played with a build that had 68% lightning resistance and I didn't even notice. Totally forgot that I was going to craft a piece to get that sorted and just...never did. Didn't miss that missing 7% at all, it was NOT mandatory.

What players SEE as "gatekeeping" stats can merely point to inexperience or lack of build creativity. "This is how I've always done it, so it must be required". I regularly come across players that criticize others for not having any "block" in their builds, because block and recovery on block is "mandatory". Well....no...it isn't. Armour on an evasion build is not mandatory. Endurance charges aren't mandatory. etc.

Nearly all stats are dependent on three things:
1) the build
2) the player's ability
3) the content being played

These 3 things can vary wildly between players, and I would argue there really isn't a single stat in existence in this game that is truly "mandatory" to max or even to have.

It's true that the MAJORITY of builds max out resistances, and attempt to overcap them as well. But a majority does not automatically equal "mandatory".

As for why stats designed like this are necessary: imagine what the game might look like if we DIDN'T have these stats. What would be the difference between fire/lightning/physical attacks or enemies? What would be the difference between having a bulky armor vs evasion? What would be the difference between a 400 dps weapon and a 1200 dps weapon? Literally EVERY stat can be slotted into the OP because, at some point, they will feel MANDATORY to some player. It takes you 30 minutes to kill the shaper? "why is added damage mandatory for builds?". You constantly die in Xoph breachstones? "Why do I need overcapped fire resistance?".

It is not "complication for complication's sake": but rather, it is ensuring a varied gaming experience with as many different encounters and interactions as possible. Even if they functionally do the same thing, having fire resistance and lightning resistance as totally separate stats ensures that both fire and lightning builds and enemies have a place in the game. Generic resistance or a total removal of resistance makes these archetypes....meaningless.