Feedback on Armour Mechanics in Path of Exile 2

Quick patch Idea:

1. Armour Buff Ideas:

Elemental Damage Mitigation: Consider allowing armour to apply to elemental damage as well. For example, 50% of armour could mitigate all elemental hits. With the "Heatproofing" notable (doubled this in effect), this could further extend to 50% against fire hits.

Blackbraid Fur Plate Synergy: With the "Blackbraid Fur Plate" unique item providing an additional 100%, and "Heatproofing," 200% of armour could apply to fire hits. This calculation should be applied before resistance.

2. Alternative: Armour Formula Adjustment:

Order of Damage Application: Adjust the order in which damage is applied to enhance the effectiveness of "Heatproofing" and the "Blackbraid Fur Plate" unique item. Heatproofing should synergize with this unique armour.




Full Rework Idea

1. Armour Impact on Speed:

Movement and Action Speed: Armour should reduce movement speed by 5-10% and action speed by 3-6%, but in return, provide significant protection.

2. Expanded Damage Mitigation:

Physical and Elemental Hits: Armour should offer damage mitigation against all physical and elemental hits. For instance, bleeding and poison applied via physical hits should be less effective against well-armoured opponents, while poison applied via chaos hits remains deadly.

3. Fully Broken Armour:

Duration and Effect: Fully broken armour should last 8 seconds, reducing armour by 80% (instead of 100%) and briefly stunning the player when applied.

4. Mitigation Caps:

Soft and Hard Caps: Implement a 0-75% soft cap for mitigation, with a maximum hard cap of 90%. This change could potentially increase the effective hit points (eHP) of primarily life-based builds by four times (e.g., 3k life -> 12k eHP vs. physical and elemental hits), which seems balanced.

5. Armour Calculation Based on Monster Level:

Formula Example:
armour(L)=100⋅e^(0.07⋅L) #EDIT: (0.1*L) was a bit much...
to calculate the required armour for different monster levels (L):

Level 1 Monster: 107 armour for 75% mitigation

Level 20 Monster: 400 armour for 75% mitigation

Level 50 Monster: 3300 armour for 75% mitigation

Level 65 Monster: 9400 armour for 75% mitigation

Level 70 Monster: 13k armour for 75% mitigation

Level 75 Monster: 19k armour for 75% mitigation

Level 83 Monster: 33k armour for 75% mitigation

Level 100 Monster: 110k armour for 75% mitigation

6. Special Attacks and Boss Mechanics:

armour Break Mechanic: All slams and special attacks from enemies should automatically have armour break.

Bosses that fully break your armour should enrage*, gaining 40% more attack speed and damage, and 20% more movement speed for 4 seconds after hitting with a slam attack.

With these changes, players would survive the first slam of "Mighty Silverfist", but he will eat em still afterwards.

*EDIT: Another cool name would be "coup de grâce" instead of "enrage" xD



Thank you for considering my feedback. I believe these adjustments would enhance the gameplay experience and add depth to the armour mechanics.

Best regards

ArC

cool idea!

The problem is not formulated, so it is not clear what you want to solve. Everyone says "The armor is bad", but it is necessary to explain exactly what it is, then it will become clear what you are driving at. Why resist the Elements here? Maybe it is necessary to edit them and not the armor then?

By points:

1. "For all the good against all the bad." No specifics.

2. Bleeding "as if" is reduced by armor (the damage of the initiating strike is reduced). Poison is not affected by armor, but only by chaos. You propose to introduce a third entity (more precisely, to introduce one and the poison that is already split into two). That is, there will be a sort of Poison from phys (which will decrease with armor, as well as Bleeding), and there will be poison from chaos damage (which will decrease with resistance). Well, what will it do? Duplicate mechanics, unnecessary complication, and minor effects.

3. The armor is currently unable to provide such a level of reduction against attacks for which it is important. So why this restriction? Is it a nerf?

4. The problem is that the mechanics are the same for both Monsters and the Player. Monsters have a level. Their damage is determined by level, plus bonuses, plus rarity. The player does not have a level, he can use different weapons with different damage. So in this case, you will have to calculate the damage for the player and for the monsters differently. And What about PvP?

P.S.
Armour staff need to produce HP. That give us more eHP, which will solve most of the problems.

"

Radonegsky wrote:

The problem is not formulated, so it is not clear what you want to solve.

"

my wrote:

Class Balance

Melee (Mace) feels kinda balanced (a bit underpowered maybe in terms of defence)

while other classes outperform melee by far in terms of damage to the point of Oneshotting everything...

"Armour" seems to be in a bad spot atm, compared to "Evasion" and espacially "Energy Shield" (some player got a "overflown" ES over 21k),

as it is very good in mitigating small hits but practically useless vs strong physical hits (which is intended, i know).

The crux is that most Armour based builds have a relative low life Pool too (e.g. i have 3k Life atm with Lvl93) which results in a "bad combination" xD

Also "Armour breaking" on some monsters can strip my 10k (18k Armour buffed) to Zero in a few hits, while e.g. "Evasion" can only be lowered by 30% (Maim) in comparison.

A older Post of mine regarding this topic
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3665771

Imho the combination of armour (in its current state) plus the fact that builds which use armour mostly relay on a (relatively small) Life Pool is the issue.

As armour (in its current state) is basically useless vs. big-physical-hits
pairs pretty bad with the low life pool (e.g. 3k Life for "normal" builds max; 4k for Titans; i dont count endgame uniques [Morior Invictus & Mahuxotl's] in this equation).


...

"

Radonegsky wrote:

The problem is that the mechanics are the same for both Monsters and the Player.

Player have a level too (which could be used in the formula for monsters.

If u wanna fight a tanky Boss underleveled, better bring some armour breaking skills.

@PvP
Afaik this uses special calculations anyway.

Imagine hitting ur opponent for millions of damage; this would not be "fun" without some "special" pvp scaling.

"

Radonegsky wrote:

P.S.
Armour staff need to produce HP. That give us more eHP, which will solve most of the problems.

The "new" Armour Formula does exactly this.

It increases the (physical & elemental) eHP of the Player (with Armour) by a fixed amount (relative to the monsterlevel);

while the "current" Armour Formula only offers a huge boost to physical eHP vs very small hits (which is semi-useful) and practically no eHP boost vs big-phy-hits.
Combined with ur low basic life bool, u just outright die in one hit.

Furthermore Armour in the current game does not do anything against e.g. Fire Ball, or Lightning Bolt (u just drop dead cause low life pool).

Cant tell if the issue is in the armor formula, enemy scaling, item scaling or the other defenses...

Armor have a calculation formula that results in turning incoming physical attacks to wet noodles, but a slight increase of incoming damage is still deadly.

(source poe2 wiki)

As you can see you can start stacking armor, and in fact you MUST stack armor, but it has a diminishing return. After a point its not worth to get armor, too much investment and you wont survive the scaling enemy damage anyway.


But resistances are capped at 75%. Once you hit the res cap (with the special increase max res stuff) The point is you can start exchanging res stats to something else. You swap gears around. You know its "enough", but in case of armor you wont do that. Well... unless you start to do "path of math" and you start learning stat value.

Enemy scaling could be a source of issue aswell.
And this goes back and forth with endgame stats technically turn you immune:
- armor:
damage either tickles you or oneshot you
- resistances:
you either get small damage or you're dead
- evasion:
0 damage or full damage
- block
completely block damage or you get full hit


So how do you want to make enemies meaningful if the incoming damage either does nothing, or pops you out?
Because I run with a 16k armor warbringer. T11-12 maps are a walk in the park unless I get an annoying rare. Tried a t13-14 map and felt like my "tank" just jumped into a grinder.

Movement speed itself have a problem too.
Its a hidden defensive mechanic, because if you step out from the enemy attack it wont connect. Or you understand it better if you playa reflective build. Often you MUST stand still to kill enemies. I have the unique that reflect thorns to ranged attacks and spell hits too. I so often actually have to stop to get rid of a few annoying enemies...
MS builds just explode the screen and the time the projectile lands the player is already at the end of the world... Unless you want to argue the danger is they actually pick up stray bullets XD


Theres one path left: more hp and damage.
You want to outlive oneshot damage but you want to kill the enemies before they can do anything.
And classes who doesn't rely on armor outshine here. Their scaling is better. Especially if you're in a party, warriors become dead weights.

Not to mention that how is it even possible that a squishy mage have higher HP and better damage mitigation than a "tank"?!


HC runs can be summarized: map clear tap skills zoomings and if they see anything dangerous instead of fighting they just log out. Coping that the true skill is identifying the danger and press "esc-log out" in a splitsecond the "the" skill...

And this is the world setting. Theres no turtle-tank mechanic. The true tank playstyle does not exist in endgame, because 4 mechanics actually revolves around with a time counter:
delirium and breach
Ritual and expedition are on soft timer (you will be swarmed if you don't kill fast enough)
And endgame bosses from video stream seems to be aoe-nuke-DanceDanceRevolution mechanic while the boss is invincible.




But instead just complaining I already gave feedback about this, but ofc who cares about anything page1 in this forum where everyone creates a thread of their own?

Warriors should have [Guard] as baseline mechanic:
Guard absorbs all damage from hits until it is depleted
Maybe berserker spirit gem and other no shield builds should have them. Excess life just turns into.
Well... I would argue maybe shield builds could have it, if the investment is good enough to make it balanced.

Shields instead of completely nullifying damage should reduce incoming damage
I think this itself is a bad mechanic due to the endgame scaling. Block is technically evasion that can trigger thorn.
With high enough block I've seen endgame warriors who just give up armor completely. The incoming damage would kill them anyway, so why waste your stat on armor?

And we see here ironically that merceneries have better shield builds than the warriors?!

Shields should have baseline stat that with successful block it reduces incoming damage by a value.
I would even go beyond that give crticial block chance. A node for crit shield builds? Crit mechanic would apply for this value.
Maybe this would shift enemy endgame escalation and powercreep. However the math geeks can tell you after you hit a block chance threshold, the stat will be translated "technically you reduce damage by value" (look up birthday paradox )

And give a special node that turns block mechanic to the current one.
Ie: block now nullify damage, but you cant use active block anymore.

And here's the other issue:
active block and dodgeroll. These two mechanics just become non-existent in endgame. Whats the point of raising your shield when your passive block chance does everything for you anyway?
So Active block could be guard mechanic again. That staggering should be looked at anyway, because I cant recall I EVER got stunned by holding resonating shield skill for too long. And I don't even have stun threshold stats or skills as I recall...
Chance of getting oneshotted is much greater...

Why dodge, when you can run faster? Dodging literally takes more time than killing the enemy or just stepping side :D

"

Puente wrote:

cool idea!

tyvm :)

"

Kraivan wrote:

So how do you want to make enemies meaningful if the incoming damage either does nothing, or pops you out?

This is one issue of the current armour formular;
small hits (even many of em) gets almost negated (90% reduction) while "stronger hits" almost get no reduction (and kill u, cause the combination of a small life pool).

This can occur at any point in a Map, cause some Mobs (even white Trash mobs)
can "hit" rly rly hard.

"

Kraivan wrote:

Because I run with a 16k armor warbringer. T11-12 maps are a walk in the park...

Can u test a "Riverside" Map (T12) challenge the Map Boss (its a nice friendly Dude);
depending on ur damage output u might want to increase the Map Boss Difficulty a bit (via Atlas Tree) to prevent "oneshotting" the boss before he can do something.

After that iam not sure if ur still happy with ur 16k armour in the current game implementation.

(My Infernalist had 3k life, 10k armour & Cloak of Flame; i barely survived...and now i dont go there anymore xD)

"

Kraivan wrote:

Movement speed itself have a problem too.
Its a hidden defensive mechanic,...

True,
and as its almost impossible to scale movementspeed as someone who is not a "Deadeye" or at least at the "Ranger-Side" of the Passive Tree -
everything which decreases movementspeed should at least have a rly strong mechanical buff otherwise.

"

Kraivan wrote:

Theres one path left: more hp and damage.

HP (Life) is almost not scaleable thou... (without Endgame "Tricks") compared to e.g. ES.

"

Kraivan wrote:

Shields instead of completely nullifying damage should reduce incoming damage

&

Shields should have baseline stat that with successful block it reduces incoming damage by a value.

Thats why i came up with this armour formula variant; its basically exactly what u described for ur shield-variant (but only as armour-variant):
Its a direct multiplicator to eHP (no "binary" ON/OFF condition, like a 75% Chance).

e.g.
If u fight on a T11 Map (Monsterlevel 75) and got like 19k armour
ur Lifepool will be multiplied by x4. (3k Life = 12k eHP)

If ur armour gets fully broken thou, u will still die pretty fast.



The current PoE2 armour formular was based on PoE1,
imho to simulate "armour-penetration" via "hard-hitting" physical hits.

Before (PoE1 2.20? dont remember...) introducing "overwhelm"
(a very controversial PoE1 mechanics to reduce/negate ur armour mitigation) there was basically no form of "Fully broken armour"
in PoE1
-> just "hard hits" which almost negates ur armour mitigation.

In PoE2 its a similar armour formular (similar to PoE1), but we got "Armour Break" Mechanics too (in addition to "hard hits") - which is kinda overkill imho.




[EDIT:] I tuned the armour formula a bit, for better numbers.

People are just overcomplicating things. They don't need to rework any mechanics to make armour fine. It is just a matter of numerical balancing.

Let's suggest an average build with only rare items, not using OP uniques that we know well.

Currently:

My SSF Titan, for example, reaches around 4.4k life / 79% resist / 12k armour

That would be 21k eHP for elemental dmg and it could handle a hit of 5.3k dmg of pure physical dmg.

An average endgame ES build might get around 8k ES / 76% resist / 0 armour

That would be 33k eHP and it could handle a 8k dmg of pure physical dmg.


If they make some small balancing like:
- add a 1% max resist on Warrior region
- apply PoE1 armour equation (5*damage instead of 10*damage)
- increase general source of life in about 30%

We would have:

A Titan with 5.7k life / 80% resist / 12k armour

That would be 28k eHP for elemental dmg and it could handle a 7.5k dmg of pure physical dmg. Which is just 15% worse for elemental dmg and 6% worse for physical dmg.

In my opinion those numbers would be pretty much fine as long as they nerf Grim Feast and don't add leech for ES easily. It is fine for ES to be a little better numerically than life base builds as long as they have to deal if ES Recharge or some other specific combo.

I know I didn't make calculations for other classes based on life, other than Titan. I don't have enough experience with evasion based character yet. But I can say that my Blood Mage (life + 34% damage on mana) has bigger eHP than my Titan, so I guess it would be fine on the Witch section for those that don't want to go ES or MoM (100%).

Also, I know that many chars can reach a lot more than 8k ES. Many Chars are reach a lot more than 4.4k life too. It is just the numbers that I consider average, that you can get with average items. Be free to estimate your own numbers. Regardless, it is just a matter of numerical balancing. They don't need to make a full rework of armour mechanic.

The way they're going I'd not be suprised to see armour gone and replaced with "armor shield" all the ES nodes on the left renamed to armour and then 100% of players using armor or energy shield lmao.

Nice post OP - im down for ANY changes I made a big suggestion too similar to your resist one weeks ago, hopefully they keep it simple and just sort it out.

ATM - heavy armor = movement penality - no defence
ATM - big shielf = movement penality - sometimes block

Overall - huge penality, no buff, no defence, ridic. Movement penality for strenght chars shouldn't be a thing if they can carry extra fkn chests for items surely they can carry a shield and not have 6 move speed.