Path of Exile 3.16 Balance - Part 2 - Core Character Defences and Recovery

Ugh, why??? These intended changes read like:

''We buffed underused defensive mechanics by 20% up to 50% and to offset this we nerfed used mechanics by between 50% and 100%. To access these new mechanics you can use the skill tree more than before, but to optimize them, you can use the skill tree less than before and need to rely on crafting gear for which there is no reliable method. Player retention btw.''

Maybe i'm just a pessimist, but i see hardly anything worth getting excited about in here. No new defense mechanism for ES other than ''dont get hit so ES recharges faster'', still no real viable life recovery for mages. No damage mitigation for witch, shadow. No more spell dodge in favour or reduces damage taken from spells which feels more like glancing blows than an EV mechanic (as you get hit by EVERY spell damage hit and dont generally have access to the on hit/block recovery mechanics since they have negative synergy with evasion for attacks. Yea, some buffs in here, but nerfs across the board. Still feels like the devs understand very well how their game works technically but don't understand how it feels to play it. ES should just have ''damage doesn't interrupt recharge'' period. Having several seconds of downtown on you life pool with no flasks to restore it is enough of a downside/trade-off. And for the love off; please replace ''spell damage x is leeched as energy shield'' with ''damage is leeched as life''. ES has recharge for casters in that area of the tree, Life does not, and if you play an elementalist you get 0 ES from that ascendancy so that suggests life builds in that area should have viable recovery mechanics (especially with the golem effect stacking nerf).

Gah. Flash changes seemed an improvement. This? Not so much sofar.

@GGG make sure to have fortify also work for melee based characters which dont damage with big chunks of hits but alot of very small ones.
E.g. a character with very high atttack speed that applies the same total amount of melee damage in a given time than another character that hits once every x seconds with one large hit.

A system that accumulates melee attack damage in a short timeframe and gradually builds up based on the damage in that "fortify grace period" for example would be good to ensure all kinds of melee character benefit the same way

looking worse than 3.15 wow

holy fuck

The Wind Dancer Notable description means no one, even high evasion Characters, will take Wind Dancer.

I really like all the changes trying to bring all defences to a similar level of power per investment and spreading options for def and recovery more around the skill tree.

Yeah, losing acro/phase acro sounds very bad but the skill tree changes so much that there should be a good solution to replace that. hopefully some of the new def nodes are in or directly adjacent to the ranger part of the tree. I'm looking forward to testing out new builds.

The removal of quality from veiled mods and thus increasing the cost of 6-linking rare body armour is stupid. hope that was an oversight and will be compensated for.

Goodbye Memory Vault

just falling down more and more with every GENIOUS patch.Good bye poe,good bye!

It'd be nice if you took a look at staff/warstave defenses in the top left of the tree. Capping block on staffs is simply inefficient and pathing to the right side for evasion is absolutely horrible. If you're not going MoM LL you don't have ES, your only options are life leech, life on hit, a measly amount of block that barely tumbles over double digits and armour - which still isn't all that great for when you need it to tank bigger hits.

So..... Aegis Aurora and Memory Vault are dead
Aegis was my fav item....