A solution to one shots - doesnt this make sense?

I think a very often thing hated on topic of survivability is that you get one shot. From 100 to 0. Because otherwise you regenarate all damage you took so fast that the only danger is when you are one shot.

Why not make a system where if you take attacks from enemies recently, you take more damage in the next 60 seconds, stacking? A few hits should should mean you took good amount of damage but not enough to finish you off, but a few more and the next might one shot you. This way normally one shotting big damage rolls with a crit won't one shot you, but you won't be able to heal everything so quickly so the stronger you are under attack the more dangerous it becomes for you.

Alternative to decrease regeneration (or enemies applying DoTs) that the real danger of enemies is getting constantly hit.

With the debuff, the enemy damage should go down to like 1/3rd, and it will feel more natural getting surrounded by enemies is dangerous but not a random stray hit.

This is something I never understood in PoE1. We never had a very high max life, but a lot of ways to regenerate health, so the only danger in game is getting one shot. I never felt how healthy my character is, while in some other ARPGs I could. Not talking about PoE-likes but in a game like Hades, for example, I always felt how much I am being hurt. The big HP pool with lack of regeneration options make it so much more significant.

Is there any ARPG that actually did survivability feel good?

(Edited)

There is a dev interview from slightly before the POE2 launch where they got asked about the death times and commented on them, saying in POE2 they were aiming on them being slightly longer, from fraction of a second to 1 or 2 seconds. I may not be quoting it correctly. I think it was the interview where they talked about the game having pause functionality and how they were changing totems to help melee (uncertain).

My opinion is that it is largely related to logout mechanics. If the player can just log out or portal to avoid sustained amounts of damage they will never die, unless the damage happens in an amount of time that is so quick the player can not log out. So the game has been designed in a way that damage happens really fast to make the game challenging for people using logout as defense. Logout is the most powerful defense in the game if used quickly.

Here we go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvyR3vn741c Timestamp 29:50

So to clarify on rewatching. Jonathan does mention the death times were being looked at from increasing from .5 seconds to 2 seconds. They also mentioned what you are suggesting, with having less recovery, so the player is perhaps surviving the first hit, but then vulnerable on sequential hits from being at a low health pool level.

It also seems like largely it is Ziggy and questions from his community that are raising the concern. Although the Dev's are aware of it and say they are working on it, they don't seem to be particularly focused on it at that time. Jonathan specifically mentions it will not be a game where the life pool level will be slowly effected, but rather rapidly effected.

I have not played it yet, so unsure, but from what I've read and seen, it does seem pretty close to what Jonathan is describing. Whether or not this death time has been increased at all someone else will need to say. Difference between .5 and 2 seconds is pretty big when relating to human reaction times. I would say one of the side effects of these quick deaths is also that it makes it very hard for people to learn the game. If you are dying faster than you can react, it is often not possible to know why you are dying and makes it hard to learn from the dying and improve if the player can not absorb the information that has happened in that fraction of a second and can not research it if they do not know what it was.

Also been watching some of the recent interview and noticed them talking about this versus attrition based combat and they have a much longer conversation about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiFLwjFI4S4 Timestamp 1:13:35

Great idea! Encourages pacing, tension, and tactical positioning over bursts.

The issue isn’t one-shots, it’s that many players prioritize offense over defense, which leads to quick deaths.
Unlike other games, in both Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2, survival comes down to investing in the right defenses and being more thoughtful with movement and gameplay.

When you focus more on defense and play smart, true one-shots become rare to non existent.

This also isn’t an incentive to go full ZDPS mode, as you can build both defense and offense in balanced ways to create a well-optimized character.
Strong enough to deal plenty of damage, but durable enough to take hits, even heavier single hits.

What’s often called a “one-shot” is actually multiple hits landing at once, not a single hit, causing weak or poorly built defenses to fail quickly.

The proposed stacking damage debuff would only continue to overwhelm players who are already struggling, leading to the same number of deaths once regen isn’t enough to sustain multiple stacks of heavy hits caused by inadequate defense or misplayed movement.