Blue life - Red life

So, for some reason, I'm wired so that i don't like 'blue life'.
I just don't.
You might say that its 'Energy Shield' but that train have left the station quite some time ago. You can get constant regen (Zealot's Oath), leech (Energy Leech Support), on block, on hit refills, even goddamn flask regen (!?!) with Supreme Decadence for energy shield now. And I doubt there is a build which uses energy shield anymore. All of them use 'blue life'.

Now that ggg decides to kill off an interesting mechanic so they could have the one they already have in different color is one thing (one might argue they could have just sell a blue mtx for the life bulb but whatever).

The problem is this two picture:
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?sort=life
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?sort=energy-shield

Energy shield always had a better scaling with a downside of missing regen/leech/ etc. so the fact that you miss out on armour and evasion would matter. However blue life have none of those downsides, and have only upsides. That its scales into the stratosphere. And they can still get secondary defenses that are just as good as armour or evasion (dodge, block, avoid, resist, reduced damage of type are all available to both in the same degree)

And now, obviously, ggg is forced to plan the end game around the fact that any build which goes for 'blue life' will hit 7-8k hp quite early and 11-13k hp will very regular, with 15-20k (30k... jesus...) players closing it off. Also 14k blue life is not some rarity for guardians and strength stacking geoffries/ shapers touch chieftains. Those get the 24k blue life...

Now. Red life cannot do that. Even if you throw in every skill point and min max your gear, you will not even be in the ballpark.

And thus in a world where you had to plan to make the game challenging for 20k+ blue life the 10k red life cannot really compete on the same level.

I don't want blue life to be nerfed to sh@t, I just want to have the same possibilities. The same 'Healthy mind/ Grand Spectrum, Energy from within, Geoffi, shapers touch ' shenanigans for red life

Am I wrong in this and just wanted to rant about how I will never facetank the Sirus meteor with my life build. Or do you guys also see this as a problem?

Well.

I think Life and ES had quite some history. Both of them had nerfs (life when they made Kaom 500 instead of 1000, even at cost of game lore, ES when they lowered it in base amounts in items and took the more ES nodes from CI. In both cases they let people have legacy variants, though). Heck, GGG even wanted to start the trend "Don't know what to do with 1k ES? go Eldritch Battery! And we will change ES accordingly for it, even if this means change ALL uses of ES"

Let's also remember that they are aligned (naturally, not talking about Shaper's touch) to different attribute - STR for life, INT for ES -, though they are absolutely not on polar opposite sides of the tree. Not to mention life leech has always been about attack, while ES had to wait Synthesis before having a ESLeech for spells - thus even more separating those sides as "life for warrior, ES for mages"

Perhaps it's better to make a pro/con of both aspects, even the most obvious, and leave this to pros and streamer

LIFE

Pro:
* Flask can instantly regen it since the very first breath of the character (ES needs more advanced techniques to do that)
* Mind over Matter can serve as a second pool of life (Unless/until they make a MoM that works for ES), and Mana is easier to build than life on passive tree (though it too has received the "let's buff it for a league before we take that buff away the next" treatmen in... Delve-Synthesis, if I recall correctly). Of course this requires a different mana management
* Can be found everywhere on the passive tree, though of course with less density around Shadow area
* Natural resistances against stuns, shocks and chill/freeze

Con:
* Cannot reach the same pools of ES
* Nodes are overall less effective than Mana or ES (5% vs 6% on small passives, just saying)
* Craft-dependant - either an item boosts your Life or it does not help making your pool grow (see first Pro for ES)


ES


Pro:
* It is a global defence, and as such it is literally found inhertly on items. Heck, you can even increase it with Scraps. We had to wait for Fertile Catalyst to have a Life Quality, and even then it can only be crafted on baubles only
* Natural recharge is 20%, and it is always granted. I dare you to find a lv1 character that has 20% lifeRegen - heck, even find a character that has so much lifeRegen without actually looking for it in passive nodes (Jugg perks/RF builds)
* ES cannot go "Flask-out" like Life, thus making it naturally better for boss battles, being them long-drawn or, even better, without many/any minion mobs to kill for flask refill (Baran, Eradicator, Atziri...)

Con
* Chaos Damage bypasses it by nature, but this can be fixed by not letting it to (Lorica/Shav, Esh...) or making the character immune to chaos damage via ES
* In order to recharge, character should not receive damage, making it terribly weak against DoTs. Players can once again circumvent this by using specific equipments and pantheons, or right away ignore the matter by using massive amount of leech - which is now an option more easy to reach
* Naturally vulnerable to stuns, freeze and chills but it can be fixed via Pantheon, passive or equipment (Auxium, Skyforth...)

I thought ES was in a good place. Is there a reason to nerf it?

Um...

"

kartacs wrote:

I don't want blue life to be nerfed to sh@t, I just want to have the same possibilities. The same 'Healthy mind/ Grand Spectrum, Energy from within, Geoffi, shapers touch ' shenanigans for red life

I too don't want it nerfed, even though it's been a long time since I did an ES build. I don't think people actually want in their right mind to make the game purposely more difficult - if not those who see this not as a timekiller but as a, or another, challenge.

I would not cut my hand to say I am in par with Leo. I'd rather ask Mastermind if she could kindly restore him to a point of life when he had both hands

So they need to buff life so it does the thing that would cause them to nerf it.

#Logic

Let me say what some of us is saying for years. Dont nerf ES, buff life.

It seemed to me like ES wasn't even supposed to be the "life of other color" but a magical defense that gives spellcasters something to protect them in place of evasion and armor.