Dear GGG: Blocking needs change! Here's how you can do it better.

Passive & active blocking in PoE2 creates an interesting combat dynamic, but there is fundamental issues with both that can be very easily re-worked to make shields and blocking more reliable and properly balanced mechanics.

The biggest problem with blocking is that you cannot block a large amount of incoming hits from different enemy attacks. Both from a logic and design perspective it just makes sense to be able to block all hits by default. On the other hand for the hits players can active block the downside of stun buildup is just not enough to feel balanced. Passive block is also perhaps too similar to evasion chance by default and could use a bit more identity.

My primary solution is quite simple really. Make it so for both passive & active blocking players can block all types of enemy hits by default, but blocking only mitigates 75% of incoming damage instead of 100%

Ascendancies, keystones, notable passives and a variety of other block related effects can be easily changed to match this new block design. Since players would still take some damage from blocked hits, the keystone Glancing Blows could instead have a downside such as "You mitigate 50% Less damage from blocked hits" for example.



I also have other posts covering other issues with defensive stats and how they could be re-worked to scale better if you are interested:
Armour:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3667538
Evasion:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3694268
Resistances:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3629096

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LVSviral#3689 wrote:

My primary solution is quite simple really. Make it so for both passive & active blocking players can block all incoming hits by default, but blocking only mitigates 75% of incoming damage instead of 100%

You're asking for Passive block to be a 75% damage reduction against all hits ? Yeah ... right ...


Anyway Grim Dawn got the best Blocking system i played with .
https://grimdawn.fandom.com/wiki/Shields

All you need to understand:

Armor is bad because:
1. Armor formula makes armor weak against big hits.
2. There is nothing in the game that hit hard enough with phys damage to make it worth stacking armor. Xesht does 3k something phys hits, that's all.
3. Current best usage of armor is stacking relatively small amount that will be good enough against mobs in maps. Then stack more life against big phys hits because its simply more effective. That will also make you more tanky against ele hits.
4. As result of first 3 points, investing much into armor is waste. ES builds are far more superior against phys hits because they have much higher "life" pools.

Solution to armor:
1. Buff armor formula, by a lot.
2. Buff all phys damage of all mobs by a lot.
3. Those two things will make armor relevant and worth investing into.

Evasion is op, that's all. ~20k evasion is near 90% chance to evade hits. ~20k armor is joke.

Resistances are fine? Like is that a problem to understand that 75% resistance reduce incoming elemental damage by 75%?

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PaintMaster#2396 wrote:

Evasion is op, that's all. ~20k evasion is near 90% chance to evade hits. ~20k armor is joke.

Everything is "OP" when compared to Armor which became dog-shit due to this new roll/block/evade or die meta GGG cooked . ES is the only "OP Defense" right now because it's the only reliable way for a player to tank these hits that would kill non-ES characters . A 90% mono-evasion character that cannot scree-wipe fast enough will eventually get one shooted by a Rare/Boss , Evasion also does not work at all against DoTs / Burning Ground . So it's hardly OP .

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PaintMaster#2396 wrote:

Resistances are fine? Like is that a problem to understand that 75% resistance reduce incoming elemental damage by 75%?

They ain't fine lmao :
- maximizing them is mandatory or you get one shot but it's so easy to do they have to keep the "D2 lower res on progression" crap which is one of the worst balancing band-aid ever invented
- res overcap is strongly recommended or you may get one shot on maps with "lower res" mods , "dmg pen res" mods , and so on ...
- chaos res is still as hard to cap as it was on PoE 1 even though there's now a meta with much more chaos dmg than ever which makes SSF gearing even more of a headache . That was the #1 reason i ended up with a main CI
- icing on this cake being that stacking any kind of +max res is even harder than capping chaos dmg , and will likely makes no difference when it comes to a Rare/Boss oneshooting you with a non-phys crit attack ( i saw a video last week of an Hardcore char getting obliterated even though he was at 86% Lightning res )

So i'll agree with you GGG should very strongly buff the rate of conversion in favor of physical dmg , the amount of elem dmg a character can take in the face right now is absolutely ridiculous . There's also a big balancing needed around "how to get Chaos res" when it comes to passive tree and crafting . As for Elem res i think the base cap should be lowered at 50% once the meta does a lot more phys dmg , the potency of +max res strongly buffed , +res from gear lowered , +res from campaign quests and res penalties from Acts/Difficulty completely removed .

PoE 2 was the perfect opportunity to have this game ridden of unnecessary bloat and band-aids , it's not too late in this EA to take risks before full release .

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Ashyev#5110 wrote:

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LVSviral#3689 wrote:

My primary solution is quite simple really. Make it so for both passive & active blocking players can block all incoming hits by default, but blocking only mitigates 75% of incoming damage instead of 100%

You're asking for Passive block to be a 75% damage reduction against all hits ? Yeah ... right ...


Anyway Grim Dawn got the best Blocking system i played with .
https://grimdawn.fandom.com/wiki/Shields

??? That doesn't math out. Passive block caps at 75% If you have a 75% chance to take 75% less damage then you only mitigate an average of 56.25% damage assuming you have invested in block chance to maximum.

I didn't mean to imply any change to the passive block chance cap. I'll reword OP to make it a bit more clear.

Grim dawn shield system does look interesting though.

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LVSviral#3689 wrote:

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Ashyev#5110 wrote:

"

LVSviral#3689 wrote:

My primary solution is quite simple really. Make it so for both passive & active blocking players can block all incoming hits by default, but blocking only mitigates 75% of incoming damage instead of 100%

You're asking for Passive block to be a 75% damage reduction against all hits ? Yeah ... right ...


Anyway Grim Dawn got the best Blocking system i played with .
https://grimdawn.fandom.com/wiki/Shields

??? That doesn't math out. Passive block caps at 75% If you have a 75% chance to take 75% less damage then you only mitigate an average of 56.25% damage assuming you have invested in block chance to maximum.

I didn't mean to imply any change to the passive block chance cap. I'll reword OP to make it a bit more clear.

Grim dawn shield system does look interesting though.

I though you wanted a change to block chance indeed , fair enough .

GD shield system was really cool because tons of skills and passive would interact with Blocking . Out of all the ARPG games i played it has by far the most interesting Retal gameplay .