Caster defenses still terrible

I'm running a Flameblaster that's focused on MOM for defense. At level 85, I have 5212 life, 2502 unreserved mana, and 744 Energy Shield. I'm running Cloak of Flame to prevent 15% of physical damage. I have Enduring Cry and keep up 3 Endurance charges in tougher maps, plus I have a high level CWDT/Immortal Call/Increased Duration setup to help me avoid bursty physical instadeaths. I'm not running Arctic Armour since I have 20 dex and would have to sacrifice quite a lot gear-wise to run a high level AA (it needs to be high level to make it remotely worth losing 25% of my MOM mana, which it likely still wouldn't be).

Basically, I'm playing an old-style caster build that ran MOM and AA, except AA was turned into something unrecognizable so I no longer use that. Did you ever forget to turn on AA after loading into a zone? Remember how you almost died instantly to the first pack you saw? That's how I feel always.

I ran a 74 map with about 20% increased damage and about 60% added elemental damage. Just about everything took massive chunks out of my life. The rare rakangos (which were 90% of them for some reason) were absolutely ridiculous. One full burst from their tail would kill me if I stood still for it. I gave up my self found ways and bought some pretty ridiculous gear to get over 8000 life/mana/ES due to the new damage. I don't think I should feel like wet paper that gets shredded by a single white monster.

This is a ridiculous situation. I really hope something is being done about this. You took a game where casters were reasonably balanced defensively with MOM and AA, removed AA, and buffed monster damage, all while making map mods deal even more damage.

One easy and obvious fix would be to make Arctic Armour 2.0, which is the exact same thing as the old Arctic Armour, but with a different name. Mana regen requires a tremendous amount of effort to get now. Shouldn't there be a reward for this? Like being able to survive 74 maps? I certainly think so.

Please, GGG, let casters be casters and not 24000 armour Iron Will monstrosities.

You should be able to tell at a glance that new AA is not meant to be used like old AA and will not synergize with MoM.

As surprising as it may seem, 1.3 MoM is not the whole of caster defenses in 2.0. Get a new trick.

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DeviantLightning wrote:

You should be able to tell at a glance that new AA is not meant to be used like old AA and will not synergize with MoM.

What makes you think I don't realize this? The fact that I explicitly said it's likely not worth using even in the best case scenario?

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DeviantLightning wrote:

As surprising as it may seem, 1.3 MoM is not the whole of caster defenses in 2.0. Get a new trick.

Caster defensive options are MOM and ES, the only two options available in the caster area. Both of them are currently terrible. What new trick do you propose? Using some sort of Dark Magiks to make MOM and ES suddenly not suck? Using armour, which is good now, or evasion and dodge, which are at least way better than the defenses given to casters by location on the tree?

Do you believe that it's an acceptable situation that two forms of defense available to players are awful in their current state?

Also, the defenses given to casters by GGG are not "tricks." MOM is no more a "trick" than armour, evasion, or Acrobatics are.

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It isn't anyone's fault but your own that you didn't build your defenses properly.

Cheers!

You seem to have completely missed the point of my post. I encourage you to try reading it again.

Also, since I know GGG's people read these threads, are the people who replied to my thread the kind of people you want on your forum? People who, upon reading valid, well articulated criticism, immediately attack the person posting it?

You are very good at putting people on probation for a variety of reasons. Have you thought about doing that to people like these who make your forum a rather terrible place to visit?

The only reason they posted was to harass me. What does your forum gain from having people like this around?

Honnestly, I don't understand all the whining going on about caster defenses.
I'm 88 on tempest, I'm playing 74/75 maps and clearing them really fast, and I'm not feeling afraid or whatever. Sure, when a map contains Act 4 mobs and dangerous mods, it can be tricky and it requires me to play a bit carefully but I clear maps really fast and I'm Aft-F4ing maybe once a day, not more than pre 2.0 (yesterday was because of a rare act 4 big mob that puncture + corrupting blood, insta massive degen scary).

For defenses, I played until lvl 85 with full dodge + acro + phase acro + MoM + AA + endu charges, and warlord's mark on a Herald of Thunder COH. I respecced to armor (with no really good reasons to be honest, just wanted to try the other side, full eva was fine). Now I have 4 endu charges, and something like 4k armor. 28% block, around 5.7k hp and 900 ES (basically useless but w/e). Also I'm considering to switch to a BL CoH (I also use windscream so double curse but CoH + HoT is a bit unreliable) and to respec my bandit to an additional endu charge to maintain 5 endu charges permanently.
I have ~500 mana unreserved but it's not a problem for MoM, I'm really rarely OOM thanks to double cursing warlord's mark + assassin's mark. Only problem is on bosses, which well be fixed by using BL to apply curses instead of HoT.

As far as I remember, my near death moments on this char were not on physical hits. It was massive corrupting blood stacking (major weakness of BL), thorns on promenade boss, merveil on graveyard map with dmg mods..

Damage wise, I feel fine. My BL has a tooltip DPS of 3.3k with a 5L which is fine, and it improves during map clears with power charges. I should also be able to replace Clarity and HoT with wrath, which will improve my dps.

So yeah, maybe the problem is only in 76+ maps, or I don't know. I feel fine. Which doesn't mean I won't die today, this game can kill you any seconds. But it was always like that.

Edit: my current tree for what it's worth : https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwYAAZEEBwSzBx4HYwj0C2EMXw5IEQ8RlhOeFecWbxa_GNcaOBpsG_Ecpx2DHwIkqiaVJy8pTy0fLdIwWzWSNsU26TpYOtg8BTwtQYdFfEWdSVFMs1NSU6VVS1XGXfJfKmHiaPJqQ2sXc7N8S34zfq9-x3_GgpuDX4PMg9uFMow2jHaNGZBVlSCVLpWHlnSXl5o7muCdrp48n9-iAKKjpJGnCKyXrJivbLc-vOrAVMBmwfPGrsu91abYJNi92V_a3d2M4BLjauQi5Yvr5Ovu7DjtPO988B_wa_DV-ej-Cg==?accountName=Dawmz&characterName=DawmyBL
Next points will probably go to +max power charges or life nodes in the scion wheel.

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Dawmz wrote:

Honnestly, I don't understand all the whining going on about caster defenses.

Okay, maybe I can help you understand the "whining" you've witnessed. Also, as a point of advice, it helps if you don't immediately demonize the people you're about to discuss and blatantly misrepresent their rational discussions as "whining." Honest, rational discourse works well.

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Dawmz wrote:

For defenses, I played until lvl 85 with full dodge + acro + phase acro + MoM + AA + endu charges, and warlord's mark on a Herald of Thunder COH.

I can help you out with this. Those are not caster defenses.

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Dawmz wrote:

I respecced to armor (with no really good reasons to be honest, just wanted to try the other side, full eva was fine). Now I have 4 endu charges, and something like 4k armor. 28% block, around 5.7k hp and 900 ES (basically useless but w/e).

I can also help you out with this. Those, aside from the "basically useless" energy shield, are also not caster defenses.

It looks like you don't understand the "whining" about caster defenses because you're completely ignoring the fact that the complaints are about the uselessness of MOM and ES as damage mitigation tools.

People are not complaining that casters who stack "full dodge + acro + phase acro + MoM + AA + endu charges, and warlord's mark" aren't durable. People aren't complaining that casters with armour and endurance charges aren't durable. When you exclusively talk about these things, you are ignoring the entirety of the arguments being made by the people whose "whining" you talked about.

I guess I don't really understand your problem then.
You have tools in the tree at your disposal, MoM, endu charges, eva, acro, phase acro are all in the tree and relatively accessible for any caster builds. Then again, I don't see why MoM is "useless" since it does exactly what it says.
You also have tools in skills like AA / Curses.
You also have tools in some unique items with conversion and such to further mitigate dmg.
Finally, you have your own skill to dodge stuff.
I don't see why any of this is not "caster defense" ? What I know for sure because I tried it, is that a combination of any of those things works fine to ... defend yourself against monsters in PoE 2.0.

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People are not complaining that casters who stack "full dodge + acro + phase acro + MoM + AA + endu charges, and warlord's mark" aren't durable. People aren't complaining that casters with armour and endurance charges aren't durable.

What are they complaining about then exactly ? That they cannot any more just click the node EB, equip their Cloak of Defiance, their CWDT/EC/IC/ID combo and breeze through maps without thinking while feeling invulnerable like they could pre 2.0 ? Yeah, this doesn't work anymore.

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Jennik wrote:

What makes you think I don't realize this? The fact that I explicitly said it's likely not worth using even in the best case scenario?

You clearly did more than just look at it.

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Caster defensive options are MOM and ES, the only two options available in the caster area. Both of them are currently terrible. What new trick do you propose?

They existed in 1.3 and many are viable, okay or better in 2.0.
I honestly don't have the patience anyway to enlighten people who keep insisting caster defenses suck. And I'm perfectly happy letting you all suffer now that EB got taken away from you.

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I can help you out with this. Those are not caster defenses.

Because you say so?
Hah. Okay.
Pretty sure you're a caster if your dps is from spells.

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Dawmz wrote:

What are they complaining about then exactly ?

People are complaining that traditional caster defenses, MOM and ES, are terrible right now, which they are. GGG is aware of this.

A dex based character can go evasion and dodge, the two defenses in that area of the tree, which work incredibly well together. They can reserve most of their mana, potentially on more defenses in the form of Grace and Arctic Armour, but their defenses require no more investment. Points on tree, evasion on gear, done.

A strength based character can go armour and endurance charges, the two defenses in that area of the tree, which work incredibly well together. They can reserve most of their mana, potentially on more defenses in the form of Determination and Arctic Armour, but their defenses require no more investment. Points on tree, armour on gear, done.

An intelligence based character can go Mind Over Matter and energy shield, the two defenses in that area of the tree, which don't work well together at all. Mind Over Matter doesn't even function if you have energy shield up. They can't reserve their mana without making Mind Over Matter either significantly worse or utterly useless. Even with both of these defenses, though, damage mitigation is worse than either of the other two.

Energy shield still has the weakness that, once it's gone, it completely stops working. Imagine if armour and evasion simply stopped working for a while once you had taken 50% of your life in damage. They would rightly be considered garbage, even if they started coming back once you had avoided damage for a few seconds.

Energy shield has been flawed from the outset and was only held together by the duct tape of life leech. With the leech nerf, the duct tape has lost its grip. Energy shield is simply bad now. MOM was fantastic because gaining that mitigation also allowed you to run Arctic Armour. Now it's simply a massive investment on gear and the tree that gives you something roughly equivalent to Acrobatics plus Phase Acrobatics. Please note that it does so at the cost of approximately double the number of points on the tree and at a significant loss of defense on gear due to needing mana rolls.

Caster defenses are terrible now. If you want to argue that armour and evasion are fine now, that's wonderful. You might want to make another thread for that though where you compliment GGG on the things they're currently doing right. This is a thread about how caster defenses, which are ES and MOM, are terrible right now.