Armour is getting a bandaid fix

Developers acknowledged that Armour is the worst defensive stat in the game. They also acknowledge how it is completely useless when it is needed the most. With that in mind, they have decided to put on a bandaid for now until they can address the issue in depth in a future patch.

This is the only game I am aware of that has such a defensive system where larger hits make your defensive stats substantially less valuable. Without fixing this core issue, Energy Shield will always be the better option for maximizing effective health as monster damage will only scale higher as the game progresses. Having the damage be a part of the denominator of the equation will always make Armour and Evasion be useless when it is needed the most. There is no bonus damage delt if the player has a large ES pool so why is such a regressive scaling system present for Armour and Evasion?

If you are keeping builds in the game that can literally 1 shot end game bosses, there should be mechanisms in place to allow for tank builds that can withstand massive hits.


"Dodge or Die" has no place in a game that has a hardcore mode. Defensive stats have virtually no value in late game.

The fact that evasion doesn't actually reduce the damage of hits that do hit you means that, with the "entropic" evasion that guarantees a certain number of hits and misses, you're functionally doing zero damage mitigation to the large hits that kill you. Especially when you add in the fact that evasion doesn't apply to entire attack types. Armor also doesn't for that matter. ES protects against every damage type. It protects against every attack type. Technically bleed and poison bypass it, but MoM redirects damage to mana, which regenerates for free, and is something ES builds will be focusing on anyway.

It's just absurd how much better ES is than every other defence. To the point where I avoid it on purpose.

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Paimon001#6701 wrote:

The fact that evasion doesn't actually reduce the damage of hits that do hit you means that, with the "entropic" evasion that guarantees a certain number of hits and misses, you're functionally doing zero damage mitigation to the large hits that kill you. Especially when you add in the fact that evasion doesn't apply to entire attack types. Armor also doesn't for that matter. ES protects against every damage type. It protects against every attack type. Technically bleed and poison bypass it, but MoM redirects damage to mana, which regenerates for free, and is something ES builds will be focusing on anyway.

The solution, from the developers prospective, is to nerf ES. Because their core philosophy for this game is "dodge or die". They don't want people creating tanky builds that can survive the built in 1 hit mechanics on every boss fight. Their desire to have a "Elden Ring" type of game is going to be what leads this franchise to fail in the end. Players have already shown signs of burnout just a month into the game. An ARPG isn't meant to have you hyper focused the entire time. The game becomes exhausting when everything can kill you easily. If someone wanted to play Elden Ring, they would play Elden Ring.

Don't worry, fam.

They made PoE2 to fix melee, and they'll actually get things fixed and balanced around 3-4 years after launch. Please contain your excitement.

Come up with an improved system for armor and defensive layers before launch?

Oh hell no, nerf that shit to the ground so it's hot garbage, act surprised it's hot garbage despite like a 50% nerf to armour effectiveness, and then slap a few band-aid fixes on it that become long-term fixes that end up requiring "bad" solutions and then they'll be talking about "we want to solve melee and armour in path of exile 3" and it's gonna be so exciting for the same process to begin again in like 2030.