Defenses are So bad!!!

"

sidtherat wrote:

10K AR + 10K EV is enough. it is cheap, easy to get (almost), and leaves passives free to take one or two more additional layers

This.

Also, when aiming for 10k armour + 10k evasion, the prefixes that so many people seem to neglect really start to matter.

Have 2k armour on your chest and shield? -> You don't need determintation to get 10k, you can use Hatred instead.

"

sidtherat wrote:

the key is 'moderation'

10K AR + 10K EV is enough. it is cheap, easy to get (almost), and leaves passives free to take one or two more additional layers

ill take 10K AR/10K EV/ 40% Block character over 50k AR one ANY DAY. the cost is similar, effectiveness isnt

overstacking and not understanding basic concepts like 'enough' makes people do stupid build decisions like 'maxing AR' at the cost of everything else..

'but one shots' - name me non-telegraphed phys oneshots that you HAVE to take. cmon, ill wait. truth is there are none. bursts? oh.. these are solved with EV

you guys underestimage Pantheon (what a stupid name..)

Yeah, you are 100% right. My point again is that AR + Eva which are the hardest to stack (as i said, top armour/eva chest needs 3 T1 rolls), feel supplementary to other layers of defenses that are extremely easy to stack, instead the other way around. If anything i think that the side layers of defenses (charges, block, dodge, fortify etc.) which are very very easy to stack, especially in gear, are much more powerful than the primary defenses.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

"

astraph wrote:

I talked about this. What does NOT feel right is A TON of investemnt in gear and passives will do the same thing as 6 endurance charges will do.

it doesnt do the same as 6 endurance charges, the individual hit damage levels you are calcing against are so rare they virtually dont exist.

You are a good player. You know that extreme spike damage is not infrequent at all in the end game. Sure VERY HIGH armour will be very effective against small hits by trash mobs, but you also know that these mobs get one shotted even by low DPS characters to the point they virtually do not exist 99% of time.

Im making my way through all 3.0 content with zero armour and close to zero evasion but 12k life + energy shield - i never rip.

It works very well for me and i will avoid with all power shitty armour and evasion as long as those skill nodes dont come with %life or %dmg.

"

astraph wrote:

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

"

astraph wrote:

I talked about this. What does NOT feel right is A TON of investemnt in gear and passives will do the same thing as 6 endurance charges will do.

it doesnt do the same as 6 endurance charges, the individual hit damage levels you are calcing against are so rare they virtually dont exist.

You are a good player. You know that extreme spike damage is not infrequent at all in the end game. Sure VERY HIGH armour will be very effective against small hits by trash mobs, but you also know that these mobs get one shotted even by low DPS characters to the point they virtually do not exist 99% of time.

spike damage yeah but not 10k physical damage in a single hit. What actually does 10k pure physical in 1 hit? Shaper slam and....? A vaal oversoul slam in a tier 14 maze map when you have vulnerability on you maybe. Thats it, I doubt I have ever been hit with 10k phys in a single hit while mapping ever in 12k+ hours played.

Very high armour will be effective against small hits, yes thats true, but its also true to say medium amounts of armour will be effective against large hits. Its like saying 1 million dps barrage can kill a white crab, its true but if youre saying in a way that suggests that is all it can kill then it becomes extremely misleading, it paints a false picture overall. Builds with mid amounts of armour like 20-25k trivialize virtually all physical damage while mapping.

I dont think stacking something like block is as easy as stacking evasion for example, I think evasion is actually really quite easy to stack. I can hit 20k+ evasion without spending a single point on evasion itself or running an aura, just what I get from life nodes and dex traveling passives. You say 3 passives for charges, you have to take the duration nodes before them so its 6 passives to have 6 endurance charges, vs 0 passives for 20k evasion. I have a marauder who has over 20k armour and 14k evasion at the same time, total passives spent on exclusive defense nodes is 2 passive points to get cloth and chain, I run 1 aura which is grace. It doesnt take a ton of passive investment + 2 auras to make an effective armour character, it takes 2 passives to make an effective armour character and 2 passives + 1 aura to make character than has effective armour and effective evasion.

I dont think the investment is anywhere near as bad as people make out and I dont think the incoming damage per hit is anywhere near as large as people make out.


I know theres a lot of spike damage in endgame, but I personally experience hardly any at all. Evasion builds are pretty shit and so are armour builds, I never really play either of these things seriously because theyre trash. So should they be buffed? Yeah perhaps they should. But I do use both armour and evasion a lot, just not on their own. Should they be enough on their own? Maybe, but theres also a train of thought that says crit strikes are not enough on their own, does that make crit shit? In order for crit to be good you have to stack it with increased damage, increased attk/cast speed, several layers of more damage, you need not only crit chance but also crit multi, so does all this add up to crit being shit because just stacking crit chance is not enough on its own to carry your damage completely? Armour doesnt carry your defenses completely either, you also need endurance, and probably a flask, some life, either block or evasion, fortify, and were making the case that because we also need these other things that armour is shit. Well, theyre there, and everyone using armour properly is stacking all these things just like everyone using crit chance is also stacking a ton of other damage layers.

I think theres a middle ground where armour and evasion should probably be a little better, but I dont think they should be massively better because they can and should be stacked with other things and they are already functional in that role, they shouldnt carry your defenses alone. They nerfed basalt flask, and this is more where I think a good balance should be made, basalt was nerfed, should maybe be slightly nerfed again to say 12% and mob damage maybe slightly nerfed to compensate so that they remain about the same for non armour characters using them, and then vaal pact needs to go. I dont even know if you need to buff armour and evasion after that, maybe slam an extra 2% on to every node that has armour or evasion and call it a day.

I think they could do something like that which would make them rly good and people quite possibly wouldnt even notice. I think the big changer might be vaal pact, if you remove that source of overpowered sustain then youre going to force people to use mitigation. People said life was shit, unplayable, and they destroyed es now everyones playing life, the extra 20 life on ur gloves and boots we got only just makes up for the 40 life we lost from oak and now everyones doing just fine with life. It hasnt improved, all the people who said life was too shit to work are now playing life and shapers are still going down, atziris are still being killed, and they havent actually buffed life, essentially they made it worse because to escape the oak nerf you lost defenses on your items.

"

sidtherat wrote:

"

h3llraiserlol wrote:

hello i have 7khp, 6k armor, all resists capped, 3end charges up and fortify, also im a cyclone slayer with insane leech, but guess what, sometimes this game says fuckyou and you get oneshot from nothing in the middle of nowhere.

if you die - try to guess what had happened. was it elemental? was it a spell? or was it careless, off-hand driving? were your resists capped? (curses in maps can be naaaasty)

if you have 0 evasion (popular with Unwavering Stance) youll get gibbed by exploding porcupines etc. if you rely on the ultimate noob-trap (CwDT+IC) then you do not really have your endurance charges etc etc

defences are about finding weaknesses and fixng them

guess what happened - its a nice joke. we have no logs to investigate and make some conclusions. all we can do is just guessing. haha, all misery of about playing this game in one phrase - "guess what happened"

it would be much funny, if it were not so sad.

but on the other hand we have xbox, and mtx releases weekly.

ps: 110% all res let's me dont give a fuck about ele curses. also i have ~3keva, always 3 end charges and vaal grace 19lvl (33% to evade shit).

I think GGG already did a good job linking almost every %armour or %evasion node on the tree with something useful, usually life, life regen or resists. You naturally get a bunch of armour just by grabbing the life nodes in marauder start and all around him.

Next step would be to just remove the pure armour nodes, and work them into some damage clusters. Like "Blunt Instrument" between Marauder and Templar. That way you naturally get better defenses when you grab your weapon clusters. The percentages don't even have to be lowered, "15% sword damage, 12% armour" would be fine for a skillpoint.

Then I'd lower mob damage by the amount fortify protects against monsters, so we can change it:
Reduce fortify duration to .2 seconds, so you only get its benefits when you constantly use a melee attack.
No longer a mandatory thing to have, but when you are melee and when you sacrifice a link in your main attack, you get pretty tanky.

"

People said life was shit, unplayable, and they destroyed es now everyones playing life, the extra 20 life on ur gloves and boots we got only just makes up for the 40 life we lost from oak and now everyones doing just fine with life. It hasnt improved, all the people who said life was too shit to work are now playing life and shapers are still going down, atziris are still being killed, and they havent actually buffed life, essentially they made it worse because to escape the oak nerf you lost defenses on your items.

Isn't it always like this? I find that quite funny.

"

Peterlerock wrote:

I think GGG already did a good job linking almost every %armour or %evasion node on the tree with something useful, usually life, life regen or resists. You naturally get a bunch of armour just by grabbing the life nodes in marauder start and all around him.

Next step would be to just remove the pure armour nodes, and work them into some damage clusters. Like "Blunt Instrument" between Marauder and Templar. That way you naturally get better defenses when you grab your weapon clusters. The percentages don't even have to be lowered, "15% sword damage, 12% armour" would be fine for a skillpoint.

Then I'd lower mob damage by the amount fortify protects against monsters, so we can change it:
Reduce fortify duration to .2 seconds, so you only get its benefits when you constantly use a melee attack.
No longer a mandatory thing to have, but when you are melee and when you sacrifice a link in your main attack, you get pretty tanky.

"

People said life was shit, unplayable, and they destroyed es now everyones playing life, the extra 20 life on ur gloves and boots we got only just makes up for the 40 life we lost from oak and now everyones doing just fine with life. It hasnt improved, all the people who said life was too shit to work are now playing life and shapers are still going down, atziris are still being killed, and they havent actually buffed life, essentially they made it worse because to escape the oak nerf you lost defenses on your items.

Isn't it always like this? I find that quite funny.

So instead of admitting, that armour itself is too weak, and often isnt worth nodes or gear investments, and so buffing armour directly, you suggest to add a "side effect" to all armour nodes so players will actually pick them for that "side effect", not for armour (that still remains useless)? It's a very poor fix, you know.

"

MortalKombat3 wrote:

So instead of admitting, that armour itself is too weak, and often isnt worth nodes or gear investments,

Armour isn't too weak, it's doing its job just fine: Lowering incoming physical damage, trivializing the small attacks, significantly reducing the big ones. In some content, like against minotaur or uber lab, armour is actually quite op.

The most important question to me is:
If an armour build struggles, should the answer "just add more armour" make him struggle less?

I'd say no.
There's a ton of different ways to protect a character against different types of damage.
Use one of them.

I don't think changing the way armour works in this game, so that it is enough to use this single defense (let's say "each 1000 armour reduces incoming elemental and chaos damage by 2%" or "adds +1 max resists") would lead to a more healthy game.

"

What actually does 10k pure physical in 1 hit? Shaper slam and....? A vaal oversoul slam in a tier 14 maze map when you have vulnerability on you maybe. Thats it

There is also at least Core Malachai that hit harder than shaper slam :



That's not something most of builds are supposed to tank though.