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

so that would either be a slight nerf needing a different approach or a nothing changes, I think I dare to carefully take up my favourite caustic arrow build again and thread the waters of this patch in combination with flasks not being ripperoni again.

(Sadly, while criticism is merited, of course most players miss the real points, and just fall back on "But muh build that I've been cloning for the past 10 leagues will get nerfed?!" Of course, to y'all saying that... Just shut up and wait for the streamer you blindly ape off of to tell you what to build next; you'll be okay)

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Community_Team wrote:

Problem:
Evasion provides no defence against Spells.

Problem:
Characters who rely solely on Armour are not protected against Elemental Damage.

Already, we see the theme: "the balance team has no clue how Path of Exile was designed, or played;" these particular gaps are by design. What next, "problem: Energy shield provides no defence against chaos damage?"

To be honest, these changes are just going to result in a lot of things feeling very "same-y," contradicting part of what was the game's whole appeal, that you could build a class out of mechanics that felt wildly different; with all other games, you either only achieve that through a fixed, hard-coded class system; every other "build-type" system either offered zero choices like that, or the choices felt all the same. Guess GGG decided it's time to join that latter category.

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Community_Team wrote:

Builds wanting to invest in both Armour and Energy Shield have no mechanic that gives a synergy between the two.

There was; it was called Aegis Aurora, and then for some reason the "balance" team decided that pure life builds should get all sorts of more flexible options that provided all the same benefit, as a reward for picking Gladiator. And naturally, rather than reverse that nerf (that absolutely destroyed any value in items like Rainbowstride and Stone of Lazwhar) you... Just messily spread a mechanic around in a way that'll invariably feel worse for everyone.

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Community_Team wrote:

Block is a pretty fundamental form of defence available to characters, seeing as it is available on Shields, but the Gladiator Ascendancy is far more efficient for Block investment compared to any other class because of the Gladiator's "Versatile Combatant" notable skill that grants as much Spell Block as you have Attack Block.

Yeah, this happened back in 3.4 when you intentionally decided that only Gladiators should have block. Kinda weird that this was somehow okay for over 3 years and only now it's being addressed... And rather than "oh, maybe that nerf to make it a hard-coded one-ascendancy mechanic in practice" apparently the lesson is "that mechanic should be spread?"

A real shame, since realizing how bad that change was (it's true: since late 2018 block has been a "only viable for gladiators" option) really sucked a lot of the build variety out of the game. And instead of having a reason to ever take uniques ("fill every slot with jacked-up double-influence items" has been the meta for a while now) instead our block option will be a keystone that, in practice, will be weak and costly to reach, to where for most classes this will be tantamount to not accessible anyway...

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Community_Team wrote:

Make Blind synergise with Evasion so that it's more powerful only if you have built a very evasive character. The power level of the new Blind is significantly lower than before, but has more opportunities for further investment if you want to specialise in it.

Good that you labeled it as opportunities for investment, and not improvement, since with that change... Blind is entirely obliterated.

Given the scale of accuracy rating vs. chance to hit, a 20% cut barely does anything. To achieve the goal of "make it non-viable for non-evasion builds" (a legitimate concern) you changed it to... Do next to nothing for evasion builds anyway.

And the reduction to their own evasion rating? Absolutely stupid; whoever thought of that has clearly never played anything that relies on accuracy; any viable attack-based character (that doesn't prevent enemies from evading their hits outright) will still build enough accuracy rating to get 100% chance to hit, making that effect meaningless.

* * *

All told, while none of the above has any appreciable impact on any of my existing builds, (with the caveat is that this, pending the values, it might make a few of my builds wildly overpowered) it does feel like the game is going to wind up feeling a lot more "same-y" with the choices, continuing well on the trendline of less and less interesting build diversity.

ohhh I did not expect this in years, they really put themselves fully into changing the defenses, now I see a better future and that investing in defense will finally serve a purpose.
Block suffered many changes, I must test it in the game to verify those numbers, it will be more complex

I mean... I like tanky chars, in any game.

Let me tell you, this is a massive nerf across the block.

Armour is still complete garbage and useless (vs 2k hit? lol). Transcendence nerfed? ROFL. Even on 500k armour if you don't get 8+ endurance charges extreme physical damage will wreak you. And that means you're basically full armour with shitty damage.

Dodge was the go too because 1. we do need damage & 2. all other forms of defenses cost too much investment. This hasn't changed here.

Evasion is still useless as long as your "entropy" applies.

Block, gutted on Glad and some half-baked block given to other classes. Right.

In the end, you're needlessly complicating Defenses in order to salvage the 3.15 fiasco, and those changes (e.g. block on other classes etc..) will either prove terrible or absolutely mandatory because you built your game like that. Zero or One, no in between when making a build.

I'll go buy some popcorn, and prepare it for the first week of the league when everyone will realize they've been conned.

Edit: TLDR, if SC build dmg defenses useless, if HC might be ok'ish still if u no 24/7 streamer say goodbye.

Promising no nerfs and then removing my 2 favourite defensives layers?
So you dont want me to play your game ? gotcha!
another 6 year long (spending) costumer gone.

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Ageless_Emperion wrote:

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lalove91 wrote:

God bless you guys for changing the status quo. People forget why they're playing this game. To overcome the challenge we are presented. Not to whine constantly about our favorite builds. Make a new one. Survive, you are an exile not a hero.

I play this game to play a fucking game.

You want a challenge? Go dumpster diving for hypodermic needles without contracting some life ending illness or plan yourself a one way trip to some forgotten part of the world and try to get back to where you live.

There is no mechanical challenge in path of exile as a game. The only challenge here comes from understanding the game and willing to make the time investment to see things happen in the glorified build simulator that it actually is. Fucking with the core of the game, the builds for the sake of creating 'diversity' instead of actually putting in the effort to innovate and create more interesting content is a sure fire way to piss everyone off.

So stop playing it, you have clearly either forgotten why you started playing or you should have never started in the first place. Go play Diablo 3 if you want something mindless.

This is just net positive all up and down. I definitely felt the crunch on Armour/ES where the two didn't really meet up, and I wasn't really happy with every evasion character being told to "Get Phase Acrobatics ASAP because Evasion is a trap stat", so this will definitly take the point crunch pressure off those characters.

I feel it's also good long term, higher base defenses mean bosses and encounters can be balanced around things besides 1 shots. I love dying, the threat and inevitability of a crushing loss are what keep me playing HC (and ARPGs at all), but it'll be good to die due to more often to complexe mechanics rather than "Oops, you miscalculated your armour coeff, good bye!"

Or by going into a Heist at all.

And sweet lord it's good to have Ghost Dance be available to Witch and Assassin/Sab. BLESSED.

My feedbacks and questions -

- There are still few ways to mitigate chaos damage - especially direct chaos damage(and the article hasn't mentioned many if not any).

- Variations from base item types are better to be innate quality modifiers(like a "superior" claw has 15% innate quality which can further be increased to 35%) than multipliers of base values, since the latter one will make an item 10% flat stronger than another one.

- Lethe Shade provides a good method to mitigate damage over time beams - can it also be used to mitigate Petrified Blood degen?

- Don't think Fortify should be based on melee damage, instead of melee attacks. Under this philosophy Fortify can be changed into, say, 4 stacks of 5% less damage taken over 5 seconds. Some melee weapons and skills can apply extra stacks of Fortify and some reduced stacks. Like some slow 2h mace can have +1 maximum stacks of Fortify and Vigilant Strike can have +3. An attack that hit multiple enemies can still apply 1 stack of Fortify.


Edit - add a new one - the article doesn't mention Ward as a defensive mechanic as well?

Edit 2 - add an extra one - Suppression can become a new keyword which means x% chance to take 50% less damage from hits. Like the effect of Soul of Solaris pantheon can be rewritten as "20% Area Suppression".

GGG/Devs thanks for your hard work into this lovely game, i am happy now cause my new girl is born today and i became father😁.

I whish you all a sweet and happy life, see you in the new league🙂

Joo, dont forget Viper strike in your fortify nerf. Viper strike still is melee but hits like a wet noodle, dont screw that over