[Feedback] Address Defensive Disparity: Proposed ES Nerfs for 0.5.0
" Mark in last interview with ZiggyD mentioned ES is not balanced and overtuned. Why is this still an argument when GGG even confirms as much? Last edited by CharlesJT#7681 on Feb 1, 2026, 10:28:55 PM
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" Dunno you can ask the gigachad Exploit early exploit often bozos.
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I actually don't think ES needs to be nerfed. I've been playing around with chaos inoculation on a witch (I would not recommend). While it's stronger, It's not that much stronger. I think power wise ES and armour are pretty close. However life sucks and armour takes more affixes to build.
If it becomes easier to get life then they will be close to balanced. Evasion still sucks though. Last edited by darrenrob82#3531 on Feb 2, 2026, 12:22:47 AM
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these threads don't stop xD
complain when something is in a good place and demand it's nerfed into the ground is insane ES is fine, armor and evasion are not. you can't just spec armor, or just spec evasion and be fine = something wrong with these, not ES. |
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Nah we just need life nodes on the tree and boost for evasion/armour % and everything will be fine.
Right now, life builds are failing to one shot attacks from uber bosses compared to ES builds that can tank run and reset the ES. Why do life builds have to suffer death when ES can survive anything? Last edited by SaKRaaN#0012 on Feb 2, 2026, 8:03:00 AM
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Disagree. I think if you invest a significant portion of your passives on ES, you deserve to feel tanky without needing to spend hundreds of divines.
It's not ES's fault that you can't invest similarly in armor or EV to get that same feeling. And if tankiness can't be achieved, then what's the incentive to encourage people to build towards it and not double down on glass cannon? Think about that. Defenses hardly mean anything in PoE1, and because they don't, players have more incentive to nuke everything. I don't think we should retread the same pitfalls as the predecessor. PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds.
Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build! And the winds will cry / and many men will die / and all the waves will bow down / to the Loreley |
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HP builds outside of those very high HP warrior builds are the issues. Evasion and Armor are only good if you have the HP to support it which in most cases is insuffisant.
Tech guy
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" We either need a buff or rework of the armor or to have more health with armor with node or other synergies. |
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I'm not sure that ES in general is over powered, I think it's mostly CI.
I think a better approach would be the following - break CI up into 3 passive point investment instead of 1. Leading up to it, you could have nodes like this: - 25% less chaos damage taken, -5 to all attributes, 5% less energy shield - 25% less chaos damage taken, -5 to all elemental resistances, 5% less energy shield - CI would remain unchanged It gets closer then to matching the relative suffix pressure experienced by non-CI es-centric builds by demanding increased attributes and elemental resistance investment but retains the lack of any requirement for chaos-related suffixes on gear. The increased investment into ES commanded by the 10% less ES on the leading nodes would add larger impact to the opportunity cost of 2 additional passive skill points being required as well - two points that might have otherwise gone to increased %ES are now decreasing ES, and they will need additional points to mitigate the less ES. It would mean the impact is closer to 4-6 passive skill points, even though it's just 2 additional pathing points. I think that some of the "increased ES" notables towards the left side of the INT section could also be changed: Heavy Buffer - change the 40% increased ES to 20% increased ES and add 3% increased life. Calibration - change the 30% increaesed ES to 15% increased ES and add 3% increased life. Spiral into Depression - change the 25% increased ES to 15% increased ES and add 2% increased life. I think there's some changes that could be made to hybrid ES/EV nodes as well. As for "bringing life up" for non-ES builds, I think the sole increases to armour and evasion related prefixes on AR and EV gear (NOT the hybrid prefixes) could be adjusted to also include "x-y% increased life" added to them. I also think there should be a hybrid thorns prefix with "x% less bonus damage received from critical strikes" for all gear. Or maybe some variations or riffs on these ideas could be what they finally replace rarity with in the affix pool. |
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