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

"

Problem:
Fortify is intended as a defensive benefit for being a melee character, but can often be obtained by spellcasters using melee weapon types that don't actually engage in melee combat.

From https://pathofexile.fandom.com/wiki/Hardened_Scars:

"

Hardened Scars is a notable passive skill that grants increased Life Recovery from Flasks and Fortify while recovering life from any Life Flask or Hybrid Flask.

Conclusion:
GGG sees a problem with non-melee characters having Fortify after giving Fortify to everyone, including characters using Enduring Hybrid Flasks without any melee weapon.

I love how everyone is commenting as if their opinion matters, thinking it will be considered lol.

"Phase Acrobatics no longer exists." The Perfect Form unique armour has Phase Acrobatics. I wonder if anything else will replace this, or will it just be deleted, lowering the value of the armour? What about chance to dodge enchants on boots?

"

AxiomOfAnarchy wrote:

"

groink19 wrote:

"

Berylstone wrote:

And whether you think block need buffs or not, the supposed purpose of this patch was to make block more powerful for everyone but gladiator. That's what it said. And their "solution" is to add a keystone that cuts your maximum block chance by 25%? That's makes no sense and weakens block.

What? It gives you easy access to 50 % spell block for the price of 33 % less possible attack block. Especially with glancing blows this is incredibly easy 50 %/50 % for MANY characters.

And I hope I don't have to clarify how incredibly strong the block mechanic is.
To clarify nontheless: this keystone is easy 50 % less damage (I know, the real maths is a little less and you can't use GB) taken!

And you guys talking about how they don't change oneshots from rares: how do you know they're not adressing it?

The level of cluelessness demonstrated here is astounding.

For anyone investing in attack block without scaling max block and who wasn't already a gladiator and who is getting their attack block up to 75%, the new keystone gives you a tradeoff of 100% more attack damage taken for 50% less spell damage taken. That's a lot of conditions, and a pretty big tradeoff. Also, if you're only getting your attack block up to 50% or less, then the new keystone literally does nothing, so it's not an "easy 50 % less damage" as you've repeatedly claimed, it requires investment, and even then it's not just less damage taken, it's less damage of one type taken in exchange for taking more damage of another type.

Mixing glancing blows with it is just laughably wrong in almost every scenario; GB doesn't increase your max block, and the new VC keystone already reduces it to 50/50 from 75/75, so the only scenario where VC+GB would maybe make sense is if you only had 25% attack block, no spell block, a lot of passive skill points to waste on this bullshit, were doing it to trigger some sort of gain-on-block mechanic, and could handle that you're going to be taking 30% more damage per hit on average because of the GB downside. At that point you're not even really using block as a damage avoidance mechanic, you're just using it as part of some elaborate recovery mechanic.

This also all completely ignores the fact that it also comes as a massive nerf to the gladiator ascendancy. For gladiators, the changes equate to 300% more spell damage taken for the same investment as before, or 100% more spell damage taken at the cost of spending additional passive skill points (and that's assuming they at least follow through on adding the "lucky" attack block ascendancy notable to replace VC... if they don't follow through, then it's a cost of both passives as well as the same 100% more attack damage taken everyone else gets with the VC keystone). In all cases, the gladiator also gets significantly less frequent on-block triggering, so gladiator recovery is nerfed in addition to being hit more frequently for significantly more damage. And this is on an ascendancy no one ever plays for damage, because it barely has any; the whole point was the defense.

Finally someone with brain, who explain it very well.
I'm tired of noob wannabes, who just see a character/Ascendancy they never play, but think they are strong, or have a strong mechanics, and come crying for nerfs, or how the things will be alright. Oh, but you have 80% block chance, yeah, but i waste 6 Ascendancy that gives me no t***** Damage at all, just DEFENSE, and you also need to invest heavily into your tree to get a good block chance as well. Which also mean you are losing Damage/HP passives big time.

Main reason for the Gladiator play was, it has a good defense, but DPS s**** big time.
Now this is a 500% dead Ascendancy.

And why in the blue hell you are totally DESTROING - Craiceann's Carapace ????
When you are going to understand, that totally destroy an item, is not a balance at all? You are just destroying an item, that will no longer be used.

And exactly the Craiceann's Carapace, an armor and a set, that pretty much noone was using? How many build out there were using that chest/set???
I want someone from GGG to answer to this.
What exactly was OP on that armor, that you are going to destroy it ???

You can get way more HP on a rare armor, you can get more flat Armor on a Rare, Bleeding was a crap mode, cause not cover Corrupted Blood, and Bleeding immunity was easy to get from pretty much everything, and this is a crap mod.
Resist mods are f******** T5 for god sake. Dogs****.

And you are going to destroy the only so so good thing about this Body Armour - the armor completely ....
Do you even play your game for god sake?
Your game is a mess, and the only things you are doing is to make it even more of a mess.

"

hyyyben wrote:

"

xxANGAxx wrote:

"

hyyyben wrote:

I have a feeling that you havnt read the entire post..
They want to give you a variety of options, when it comes to defence.
It makes sence that if youre investing heavily into EVASION that you will get certain benefits when it comes to effect of, lets say BLIND.

The chages makes you able to specialise into certain types of defence.
Ofc the changes will not suit everyone, BUT, live goes on mate.
If GGG arent changing things once in a while then nothing new will happen.

Ive said it before, you have to adapt to change or die (not litterally die...)


Im sorry to see that youre throwing in the towel that easily :/

LOL, I have the honour to inform you that most of the players are not GGG simps like you, they dont have to improve adapt or change, they just wont to have fun!!! fun!!! fun!!!, not a second job. GGG and you dont understand this so POE is losing player base.
Why do you think they a posting all of this, yes they are losing money(POE is non just a game it's a business). And now GGG is doing the same mistake like blizzard with WOW. Not the player base should adapt to the game, but the game should be adapted to the player base desires.

Why dont u prove this and real

Dude hitting lvl 100, is not hard..lvl to 90 by yourself, just breachruns / rotas till you hit lvl 95, then join 5 way runs, hosted on global 820..youll be 100 in no time.

As ive said earlier, i like creating builds / messing around with pob.
If you took your time to actually read the 3 part series, and then started using pob, then you would realise that not much have changed, only now its actually possible to to specialize your defence.

If you dont find the game funny, then leave.
Right now youre just insulting GGG and me, without letting GGG know what bothers you.

So listen up...stop acting childish. Write down some constructive critisism, that ggg actually can use for something.




GGG is a game from Gamers to gamers, and ofc its a business to, i never denied that.
THey are doing the exact opposite of what Blizzard has been doing..they are listening to their playerbase, they are creating content..the exact opposite of what Blizzard does...
Stop comparing GGG to Blizzard, when you clearly have no clue about how Blizzard has been handling business..


Second of all, gg has the final say, then decided to make changes..its up to you to decide whether youre going to adapt to the changes, or act like a spoiled brat and quit the game.

Its your job to adapt, it works like that in any game..you need to adapt to change. It works like that with everything in life...so grow up dude :)

I dont know who indoctrinated you that playing a game is actualy 2 job where u have to adapt, overcome something, and not about having Fun. Why dont u prove me wrong and level at least one of your character to level 100, improve, adapt overcome !!!
Because i tried and never achieved this goal, you know why, cose after level 97 if u die u have to do hundreds of maps just to recover 10% lost experience. That my friend is half of day of gaming.
Half of day not staying with your kids, wife or friends.
And all of this is because of 1 shot mechanic, and it doesnt mater if u have 3000 life or 9000, 5000 armor or 50000, -20% resistances or 75% u will still be 1 shotted. Community asked GGG to do something about this. Did they listened to their player base? No they didnt(like blizzard).
Is not all:
- Clunky trading
- Clunky NRG Crafting (heavy demanding of 3.14 harvest deterministic crafting)
- 1 mln clicks per map.

Did GGG listened to community and tried to address this issues? No they didnt.
Only empty, mostly useless words, posts and podcasts. The game is not Fun anymore. In this moments are coming absolute GGG simps like u and telling everyone to shut up and play it anyway cose a game shouldnt be fun, and if u dont agree with this u are spoiled brat.
Prove me wrong, next league level one of your character to level 100.[/quote][/quote]
Why dont u prove your words and level a character to 100.(improve adapt overcame).
See people like u who a just messing around, killing a few white mobs cannot understand the 1 shot struggle of achieving end game goals like:
- reaching level 100
- 20 waves of simulacrum
- reaching 500-1000 depth in delve.
- do 36-40 challenges
Try to do this and u will see how Fun POE is. When u are killing a few white mobs of course u can adapt and overcome.
If its so easy to reach 100, prove it, reach 100 char in 3.16.

I appreciate the effort and some of these are great changes, but you're taking one step forward and two steps back here.

With these changes, evasion is not worth playing. Even with dodge, blind, Wind Dancer, and whatever else you could scrounge in the life-starved right side of the tree Evasion was unreliable.

All of these additional layers evasion characters needed to be viable have been ruthlessly gutted, and you haven't raised the evasion cap.

As a result, high-investment evasion is strictly worse off than it was before. It's one thing to get 80% evasion, push that to 90% because of Blind, effectively double your EHP with 50% dodge/46% spelldodge, and run Winddancer to take the bite out of the big hits that get through. With potions and a bit of regen that kinda worked - not reliably enough for hardcore, but you could shrug off a few deaths and brute force it in softcore.

However, without blind, which is now laughably bad, and without dodge, which has been literally removed, and without winddancer, which is, just, why would anyone ever take it in its new state - why would anyone even consider an Evasion character?

It does not matter if evasion is twice as good as a raw stat. If the best you could possibly do with evasion previously was 95% and, with zero other options for defensive layering, the best you can possibly do today is 95%, evasion is strictly worse - and it wasn't a strong contender to begin with.

I understand it's too late to change course now, but all Ranger and Shadow ascendencies are in a really bad spot due to these vicious nerfs.

<<<<< GG DEV TEAM >>>>>

First of all, let me thank GGG devs their great effort to put this info here and working hard to make the game playable and enjoyable. There are many great changes incoming but some are a bit disconcerting as there is no or very little info on them. One of such areas is the block mechanism / gladiator class ascendancy rework.

My concerns are:
[1] tree / gladiator ascendancy nodes provide too little block chance
The new item affix can now provide 16%, which is such a high value that there is no reason to allocate skill / ascendancy points for +2% block chance.
Will GGG rework / buff all of these nodes to the same level as the affixes?

[2] block mechanism still too RNG
Evasion got a huge rework / buff with the additional layer of spell suppression.
Will GGG add some similar to the block mechanism? This could be applied to any DOT damage that does not hit. Something similar to spell suppression, halving all dot / non-attack damage (including chaos damage)?

[3] gladiator class boxed in with builds with the current ascendancy nodes
You either go bleed build or block build. If you go any other build you can only allocate 4 points from the ascendancy nodes to make sense: the challenger charges and the dual-wielding nodes, although the latter still leaves the class boxed in in dual-wielding.
Will GGG rework the gladiator ascendancy nodes so that it is more general and broadens the gladiator build choices? e.g. Outmatch and Outlast node could also apply to two-handed weapons, sword and board and not just dual-wielding. Or the block chance nodes: Painforged, Versatile Combatant, Violent Retaliation. since the block mechanism will be more available to anyone with 16% block chance affixes, will we see more general stats on these nodes that can be used in multiple builds, not just block? e.g. recover X life when block, more damage when block, immunity to whatever when block, etc?
Also on this note, when re-working these ascendancy nodes, I hope GGG will consider more generic block chance buffs that are utilised in every situation, not just +X% block chance when you are hit and stuff. It is hard to min-max block chance when the stats provided are not generic but kick in in various situations (when you have been hit recently, when you have not been hit recently, when you blocked recently, how many times you blocked recently and stuff). Also block chance should be more non-weapon generic all across the tree not just the gladiator ascendancy nodes, so that it is easier to max staff block for example.

PS: I still feel armour is lacking compared to other defence mechanisms such as evasion or ES. When a boss crits you, 5 times the armour or 10 times the armour will no make a difference in the formula.

Dodge removal is going to be the biggest mistake you'll ever make.

Heed my words.

"

Ydoum wrote:

Dodge removal is going to be the biggest mistake you'll ever make.

Heed my words.

^
This. You can stack Evasion as much as you want, but without second layer of defense (such as Dodge) it's useless, because of the Evasion mechanincs itself. Well, rip dodge, i hope it will be compensated enough to be playable