@GGG Power Creep & Life Vs. Energy Shield

This will be my 1st post in a series about the current state if the game, and how I would like to see it improved. At the very least this gets the issues out there. GGG can choose to fix them or not fix them how ever they see fit. I will still play the game even if no changes happen, I would enjoy it more however if the base game continues to improve.

Power creep is ruining the game due to the inability to scale monster life, as this makes weak skills with low base damage obsolete. Recently a few mechanics have vastly given us a huge increase in power yet the difficulty remains the same. Specifically mob hp can not be scaled up any more, but mob damage has increased. This inflates problems in other arwas of the game. For example life vs energy shield problems.

Energy shield is very good. Its only downside is that there are no flasks to instantly regenerate it, and passive energy shield recharge rate is hard to obtain (110 % if you get every passive node, if thats possible). Energy shield recharge delay also can only be increased by 15%. What Energy Shield benefits from is from how it works, and how much can be obtained. 10k energy shield is an easily obtainable amount with decent gear at end game, while over 30k is possible on an aura bot.

Compared to life, it is very very difficult to get 10k life, and in the process you sacrifice so much damage to obtain it. ES characters dont have to sacrifice much at all.

This is where the balance of the game in relation to steady increases in power is causing problems for life based characters (via power creep and balance changes to try to give us challenges for the power we are gaining). Monster damage has consistently gone up, while monster hp is pretty much at a point it can not be increased ( without buffing all low base damage skills to keep them from being obsolete).

For life based characters this means worse and worse survivability as time goes on compared to ES simply because you do not die when your ES runs out, and it can be recharged in less than 5 seconds by taking no damage. Life how ever takes more damage and dies when their life reaches 0. Life doesn't have any inherent stun prevention while having even 1 energy shield gives you a 50% chance to resist stun. Energy shield also takes damage after physical mitigation and resistance reduces initial hit damage. For survivability ES is better because you can get recharge rate down to 1 sec and less than 2 sec delay meaning you only have to avoid damage for a few seconds to completely regenerate your ES.

Life has flasks but those have charges and in boss fights you can easily run out. Life regeneration will not save you, its far to slow and to low compared to your life pool. Chaos damage can go through ES but that can be fixed easily.

The best way to play a life based character is a juggernaut with lots of endurance charges and manually casting immortal call for physical damage immunity, but its useless for spells and resists only mitigate so much.

Life and ES has had this trend forever. Life is for survivability with the armor gained from gear you would use on a life based character, and life gained from each point of str.

Energy Shield is for characters foxusing on damage. ES is a buffer for survivability but is useless once depleted in an ongoing fight where you are going to find it difficult to avoid damage.

With increases to the amount of damage we can obtain now, ES is more valuable. You can have a higher pool of damage mitigation with a much larger ES pool, and a much higher damage output, combined with chaos damage immunity (CI), and innate 50% chance to avoid stuns.

What does life got going for it? Less survivabity due to constant monster damage increases, less survivability due to armor being less effective the more you gain, and less survivability due to only being able to effectively dampen physical damage via immortal call, which is based on endurance charges. Without IC life is horrible.

This is all a problem due to power creep and was not much of an issue to me before the introduction of jewels and Ascendancy.

Armor effectiveness needs to be increased and str needs to give more life for investing in it. Being killed in 1 hit with 20k or more atmor, 8k + life, and capped resists as a life based character shows how unbalanced life and ES is. It doesn't matter that life based characters have flasks if they get 1 shot. The chances of getting 1 shot as ES are unlikely and changing play to regen ES for a few seconds is easy.

Finally stop releasing uniques or new mechanics that increase our power substantially. New uniques should never out perform end game unique options, and certainly should never be better than Mirror worthy rares. Instead of constantly releasing new skills tjat are superior to similiar existinf skills, buff existing skills to be more viable.

We have seen how successful a good buff to a skill can be with shield charge. We want that for all skills, and you can make that happen GGG.

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Jgizle wrote:

Power creep is ruining the game due to the inability to scale monster life, as this makes weak skills with low base damage obsolete. Recently a few mechanics have vastly given us a huge increase in power yet the difficulty remains the same. Specifically mob hp can not be scaled up any more, but mob damage has increased. This inflates problems in other arwas of the game. For example life vs energy shield problems.

Monster life has been scaled up in maps recently, as in when AOW was released.

"

Jgizle wrote:

Energy shield is very good. Its only downside is that there are no flasks to instantly regenerate it, and passive energy shield recharge rate is hard to obtain (110 % if you get every passive node, if thats possible). Energy shield recharge delay also can only be increased by 15%. What Energy Shield benefits from is from how it works, and how much can be obtained. 10k energy shield is an easily obtainable amount with decent gear at end game, while over 30k is possible on an aura bot.

Umm... well... You're a bit inaccurate here. In almost any scenario ES-builds need to pick the alchemist wheel, so there's few more passive points into that, and if you want to leech, you also need ghost reaver. In case you want regen, you need zealot's oath. So the downside is that you need certain keystones to make ES behave the way life does when it comes to leeching, or regenerating (not recharging).

"

Jgizle wrote:

Compared to life, it is very very difficult to get 10k life, and in the process you sacrifice so much damage to obtain it. ES characters dont have to sacrifice much at all.

Not saying ES isn't generally stronger than life, but what you also want to consider is that ES-gear is just way more expensive by way of nature.

"

Jgizle wrote:

This is where the balance of the game in relation to steady increases in power is causing problems for life based characters (via power creep and balance changes to try to give us challenges for the power we are gaining). Monster damage has consistently gone up, while monster hp is pretty much at a point it can not be increased ( without buffing all low base damage skills to keep them from being obsolete).

Just want to add: There are still skills in this game from way back when. And at that time this game was completely different. So there will be obsolete skills, no matter how much you buff their damage, they don't fit this game mechanically anymore.

"

Jgizle wrote:

For life based characters this means worse and worse survivability as time goes on compared to ES simply because you do not die when your ES runs out, and it can be recharged in less than 5 seconds by taking no damage. Life how ever takes more damage and dies when their life reaches 0. Life doesn't have any inherent stun prevention while having even 1 energy shield gives you a 50% chance to resist stun. Energy shield also takes damage after physical mitigation and resistance reduces initial hit damage. For survivability ES is better because you can get recharge rate down to 1 sec and less than 2 sec delay meaning you only have to avoid damage for a few seconds to completely regenerate your ES.

Play a CI character and tell me what happens when your ES is down, low-life is pretty much the same deal. Hybrid kind of gets away with what you said.

Life builds take less damage than ES builds, because they have armour, or evasion/dodge, the issue is that ES can afford to take more damage because of its ridiculous pool.

Life HAS stun prevention, because stun treshold is based on life, rather than ES.

And believe me, no ES-character relies on the stun prevention that is provided by ES itself, or the occultist ascendancy, at least nobody that I would consider "reasonable"

Oh, and every life based build can get like +1ES on a ring or whatever, so that stun argument is.. well.. It's not an argument that you should actually make.

"

Jgizle wrote:

Life has flasks but those have charges and in boss fights you can easily run out. Life regeneration will not save you, its far to slow and to low compared to your life pool. Chaos damage can go through ES but that can be fixed easily.

Flask charges run out for ES builds too, and ES builds need their utility flasks to not get ripped to pieces.

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Jgizle wrote:

The best way to play a life based character is a juggernaut with lots of endurance charges and manually casting immortal call for physical damage immunity, but its useless for spells and resists only mitigate so much.

Errrm, Juggernaut is cool and all, but chieftain's also pretty hefty. Well yeah, ES wins against life based builds when it comes to elemental damage. That one I can agree with.

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Jgizle wrote:

Energy Shield is for characters foxusing on damage. ES is a buffer for survivability but is useless once depleted in an ongoing fight where you are going to find it difficult to avoid damage.

Umm... Now I kinda wanna know how many ES-based builds you personally have played, like, ever.

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Jgizle wrote:

With increases to the amount of damage we can obtain now, ES is more valuable. You can have a higher pool of damage mitigation with a much larger ES pool, and a much higher damage output, combined with chaos damage immunity (CI), and innate 50% chance to avoid stuns.

ES was better since, like, basically since it existed, give or take.

Nope, you can't have more dmg mitigation than life builds do, because ES gear rarely ever has any other stats on it, if we ignore resists at this point.

Errrm.... ES has nothing to with damage output, ES has to do with how much you can take.

50% stun avoidance is nothing anyone ever banks on, and again, you can just have 1 ES on top of a 6k life pool and enjoy your 50% stun avoidance.

Not all ES-builds are CI.

Just wanna ask again, you did play ES-builds in the past to like level 90, and you also played those builds in higher tier content?

"

Jgizle wrote:

What does life got going for it? Less survivabity due to constant monster damage increases, less survivability due to armor being less effective the more you gain, and less survivability due to only being able to effectively dampen physical damage via immortal call, which is based on endurance charges. Without IC life is horrible.

That thing about armour can be said about evasion as well, it's called diminishing returns, and it's in the game for a reason. If it wasn't the way it is, life based armour builds would be immune to physical damage all the time, even without immortal call. Oh, and immortal call and endurance charges, or even fortify, are available for ES builds as well, just a reminder.

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Jgizle wrote:

This is all a problem due to power creep and was not much of an issue to me before the introduction of jewels and Ascendancy.

And what would jewels and ascendancy have to do with ES? Oh wait, now it's about power creep. Well, yeah, I mean... What did you expect to happen?

"

Jgizle wrote:

Armor effectiveness needs to be increased and str needs to give more life for investing in it. Being killed in 1 hit with 20k or more atmor, 8k + life, and capped resists as a life based character shows how unbalanced life and ES is. It doesn't matter that life based characters have flasks if they get 1 shot. The chances of getting 1 shot as ES are unlikely and changing play to regen ES for a few seconds is easy.

Umm... Now I'd like to know what it was that onehit you, let alone that ES builds can also get oneshot (shaper bullet hell, maybe shaper slam, uber atziri storm calls, and whatnot). You don't need to mention capped resists, we all know that this game expects the player to have those capped in high-tier content.

Well, I mean in general I'm in favour of allowing life-based builds to get to higher life pools, nothing wrong with that in my point of view.

"

Jgizle wrote:

Finally stop releasing uniques or new mechanics that increase our power substantially. New uniques should never out perform end game unique options, and certainly should never be better than Mirror worthy rares. Instead of constantly releasing new skills tjat are superior to similiar existinf skills, buff existing skills to be more viable.

Umm... well, if they put in new end-game uniques, they better be worthwhile. And, basically, mirror gear is still waaaaaay better than any unique that's been released, if we ignore skyforth's at this point. Other than that, no unique chest piece has as much ES as a half decent vaal regalia does, for example. Starforge looses to any properly crafted exquisite blade. Slivertongue looses against any mirror bow.

Name one unique that is not skyforth's, which outperforms a mirror-worthy piece of gear in every way imaginable.

As for skills, I've said my piece about that already. They might as well just remove those relics of old, and replace with something decent instead.

there are many issues with that - all attributed to GGGs careless approach to 'balance' (it seems that several people do balance at once without really talking with eachother, noone is supervising it and certain crucial decisions are made few hours before release + 'we do no balance changes mid league' fiasco)

1) power difference between builds is not like 95 and 105 (with 100 being the 'target power level envisioned by devs). it is more like 95 and 5000. try to balance something when players (with well crafted builds, with proper gear for these builds) have such carrying power. well made 2h RT melee build compared to BV flaskfinder - this is 95 vs 5000. builds like BV flaskfinder should NOT be possible if the game is to survive as a 'diverse' game

2) ES is too strong due to instant leech. 12k ES is ENOUGH to survive endgame without leech. Mathil did that with his trapper, i do that with my EK ghetto occultist. but on top of that we have instant leech that turns well-designed defense mechanic (ES + recharge) into Sponge with buffer and instant leech

this turns ES into Better Life. so why would anyone play anything else? (do not bring costs into that, 750 ES chest is like 40 chaos in standard, cheaper in leagues). this gear is enough for 12k ES without Discipline and with not that many %ES nodes, nor ES on jewelry/jewels:


life would be much 'better' if ES lost their instant leech potential. people abusing Sponge would have to play and build differently and the power gap between life/ES would go down. why not 'just buff life'? because entire game is balanced around current Life values. - it is the CI that needs correction (recent ES items boosts were 100% unnecessary.. they were just making bad worse)

3) players need to learn a thing or two about how to build characters and should NOT feel entitled to attempting and completing highest level content without understanding these. stuff like flaks (on all characters, not only pathfinders), Evasion (entire math behind 3 defence sources), how to do the Dodge/EV/AR/Acro etc math in general. people without understanding these can brute-force the game with 12k ES and instant leech. it is the only way for them to do so. there will be casualties. but if the game is to survive as a diverse, not boring, game there have to be choices. lots of them. currently ES builds offer Best Choice and a choice less-skilled players can safely take and steamrol the game

4) currently this game is lost on character creation screen.

youve selected 2h RT melee marauder? great for you, T10 is your plateau (for normal, non-die-hard players)
youve decided to copy BV flaskfinder? here is your Dying Sun for effort

this makes this game very very shallow when one wants to play 'for effect'. why play all these builds when there are options with 5000 power rating?

i know people want power - they want it because they somehow associate this power with them. but truth be told - these builds play themselves and they are doing great not because of the player but despite him.

gamedesign perspective this game is at its lowest point ever - it is getting shallower and shallower every patch. it got so shallow recently that i wonder why we still pretend there are 'skill tree and myriad of choices'. we should have pre-made classes by this day already. it is what we have. premade skills (every f.. one uses the same supports) premade characters. why the masquerade?

"

sidtherat wrote:

4) currently this game is lost on character creation screen.

youve selected 2h RT melee marauder? great for you, T10 is your plateau (for normal, non-die-hard players)
youve decided to copy BV flaskfinder? here is your Dying Sun for effort

this makes this game very very shallow when one wants to play 'for effect'. why play all these builds when there are options with 5000 power rating?

i know people want power - they want it because they somehow associate this power with them. but truth be told - these builds play themselves and they are doing great not because of the player but despite him.

gamedesign perspective this game is at its lowest point ever - it is getting shallower and shallower every patch. it got so shallow recently that i wonder why we still pretend there are 'skill tree and myriad of choices'. we should have pre-made classes by this day already. it is what we have. premade skills (every f.. one uses the same supports) premade characters. why the masquerade?

I agree to this. 10/10 - would quote again.

i was playing with 8k ES 40% evasion in sacrifice of the vaal expansion, more than 2 years ago

now i am playing with 10k ES and 35% evasion

but i used to play lvl 75-77 maps and now 78-81, monsters had they damage increased and deadly map mods has been added


i dont really understand why everyone complaints, get stuck into traps in the labyrinth as ES, with life you don't die, ES you die if you do a mistake


LIFE and ES are balanced, get 5k-5,5k life with acrobatics and dodge+evasion, it's like to have 10k ES, the problem is just the oneshot
but you have armor, endurance charges, fortify, damage taken on mana, as life build to mitigate the damage taken while ES builds have NONE except leech


everyone complaints now because BV is broken and it's an ES build, but i see life melee builds killing so easy T16 bosss with a very small cost


the leech is the most broken thing in the game atm, this should be fixed.
warlord mark should be nerfed to 0,5% life and mana leech, nerf to 20%charge on crit the pathfinder.

make the shaper non-tankable with just leech unless if you are full mirrored with insane gear/damage ( more damage=more leech )

i have 10,5k es and get oneshot by vaal in maze map, so why is everyone saying ES is op?

"

InAshesTheyShallReap wrote:

LIFE and ES are balanced, get 5k-5,5k life with acrobatics and dodge+evasion, it's like to have 10k ES, the problem is just the oneshot
but you have armor, endurance charges, fortify, damage taken on mana, as life build to mitigate the damage taken while ES builds have NONE except leech

well..
i have just that 5k life, acro/phase acro, 6 end charges, fortify, 1000AR, 12k EV melee 2h Raider (phasing/onslaught) character

and i have a 12k ES no-leech (whatsoever) witch (45% faster start of ES recharge, ZO - Doedre's Elixir for charges)

the difference is one shot. other than that the ES character is simply immortal. i can spam Doedre's Elixir mid-fight with impunity. on the other hand i loose my End Charges on the melee character and im dead.

if i was to play POE for money, for prizes or just for real competition i would not pick life build EVER. lack of life flasks is a miniscule disadvantage compared to sheer power the 'pool' gives

there are no choices. ES at this point in time is THE way to play. more than it has ever been - and essences yet again boosted ES substantially while giving life builds some sh.. +10 flat life


not to mention that ES characters have Alchemist's wheel and their flasks give them more than enough EV and AR on demand. why carry it all on you when you can just chug a potion and have the same?

telegraphed hits should kill no matter the defences. tanking untankable damage should go. why people expect to live trough their blunders (vaal smash, touch of god, shaper's slam & lazor)? it teaches them to be lazy and expect to be simply immune. game in which players are immune is more of a joke than real game sadly

"

Ahfack wrote:

Deathless Shaper

https://youtu.be/KTrYr760sWo




lol

Got the idea to use bloodlust on my totem from Norse. Totally legit.

he has legacy kaoms but he has done other hard boss with no chest armour at all and said himself that was a sloppy run (2h RT melee)

6k instant heal flask not powerful? Eternal flask granting 3k/second not powerful? People were complaining about es builds with like 15% regen like 3-4 leagues ago weren't they wow 3k es regen/s too OP 'blue life' not intentional

Although I think in general ES is a bit better than life, es is not broken.
It's not instance leech that's broken... never has been. But I agree there could be some downside to CI vaal pact more than 'no zealot's oath'...

Player damage being insane is the problem...

shaper is a mechanical fight. just like atziri and uber atziri. you know it and you just do it.

in the second gif the movie cuts just before a ball of death is about to hit him.. just saying.

yes 6k or 29k instant life flasks are cool. but not if you are already dead. btw 6k instant? i thought it capped at around 2800 with non pathfinder yet with all flask effect and life recovery mods.

and life regen is again very cool unless you are already dead. 12k gives a lot of wiggle room. 6k life? not much of it

with the budget he used on that legacy/mirror rt life build you can get 3 stronger CI ones.

make a race to 100 with big physical rewards like 10k $ or such and tell me that youd play as a life character in that. noone would as it is simply the WORSE option. strictly inferior.

I think the flask heals that much cuz he got most of the life flask nodes and is using a bloodgrip as well.

A regular seething flask would heal about 1.5k? but panicked flask heals a lot more

yeah the dudes' gear is pretty insane but you can do similar without that expensive stuff, his axe was made for purpose of mirror for his own build, but now with existence of voidheart it's not even that insane, and even before that disfavour isn't that much worse. Better weapons (if we ignore the bleed on hit) have occured in temporary leagues.

Looks like a lot of the expense in his gear went to stuff like +1 curse bloodgrip and vulnerability on hit corruption on gloves, which doesn't really matter that much, and capping out chaos res because it is relevant in pvp, i never checked out shaper so idk if he does chaos dmg in that fight though I have noticed more bosses are doing chaos dmg at high level maps so I agree CI has better value compared to like a few leagues ago. Outside of pvp, can you really call having boots that have haku craft life on it anything close to 'BiS'?

Another thing is the existence of vinktars... fuk that thing.

Well I'm pretty noob and I've pretty much never broke 6 digit damage numbers (tooltip) yet... but if you doing like 100k dps then you are instant 2k/second leeching on a single target

Obviously vaal pact starts mattering at around this point aside from letting you play more mindlessly in huge packs.

You need about 7,5k life or es to reach similar rates without vaal pact and with a leveled life leech gem and no other leech investments assuming your dps as high... I never investigated life leech much but if it's still same as after 2.0 then obviously the other advantage to vaal pact is ignoring the stupid leech 'rampup' times where you need to stack leech instances or whatever, which honestly shouldn't exist and I think didn't exist prior to 2.0.

Wat vaal pact does aside from that, is let you get away with having lower pool to have efficient leech, and obviously get ridiculous leech rate on large packs (more into the 'playing mindless' but its against content that typically doesn't matter already unless you are melee)

idk, typical numbers just don't tell me vaal pact combined with a high pool is the problem broken outside of multiplying your dps by like 10 and having things like vinktars ... Does the whole community really have 200k+ real hit dps on single target if it turns out 200k dps is norm maybe I guess i'm wrong.

Vaal pact to me has always been more about other mechanics such as fine tuning your build to surviving reflect, and getting away with lower pool values for making use of leech.

But I agree for real though I feel vaal pact is in shittest spot for life right now just because all the incentives to get vaal pact as life has been reduced stuff, like labyrinth it hard limits your mistakes counter to your flask count... If you have just 1% life regen you can stand in a safe spot for a minute if you fuck up real bad... reflect so irrelevant and methods of countering elemental reflect so absurd since elemental resist flask nerfed and our promised other sources of max resist never came, it's better to just 'play slow' when you finally encounter a reflect mob... if you're not already a trapper/miner/totemer/dot

Blade vortex is not a good example... a spell that lets you ramp up to 18-20x damage when it seems having 4 stacks (4x damage) is strong enough to clear content, or rather a good example of enabling stupidly high damage.

I'm not arguing that energy shield is not stronger than life, but I don't think the differences are that ridiculous and there are plenty of advantages of life builds, and that vaal pact in addition with a high es pool CI is not one of the problems of energy shield-life build imbalance.

And a lot of problems they are facing right now is specifically high bosses being fairly ridiculous (at least from stories I hear on forums) and more importantly fairly new to everybody (few know the fights well. Thank you low lvl zana for providing training grounds).

Seriously though, if non vaal pact leech still has that bullshit rampup I'd like it to really go... it's totally arbitrary in what builds it benefits (ironically blade vortex would do pretty well despite it wouldn't it) not all melee builds want to use multistrike just to feel a bit safer with leech, especially because leech stops occuring if you hit max life/es and you gotta 'build up' leech stacks again after you take a hit

i actually agree completely.. i play the game for some years now.. and as far as i remember ES always had better potential as late game or for rich or end game comncept.
but patch after patch i see how ES becoming easier and easier and life getting harder and harder.
right now without super expensive gears and without much troubles to look around for ES nodes on passive Tree a CI build can easily have 17k ES. while getting 8k with life is very hard on tree and also need very expensive items such as Kaom's heart.
most life builds can not get enough life to survive without Kaoms heart .
as for Leech. ES downside was supposed to be the regen or not having flasks but lets be honest.
if you can waste 2 points on tree to get Leech as ES its enough regen for you to keep your self alive untill the 4 seconds you need to wait for ES recharge to start happening.. making it once agian much easier than life. not having potions? ohh cmon i find it as advantage not disatvantage.
maybe its easier in early game with life potions. but when you have 8k life and a flask gives you
1k life instantly. while monsters hit atleast 6-7k damage. these life potions are almost useless..
while ES build do still have potions.. even mroe useful. so yes they dont use 1k recover useless potions. but instead 3k armor potions with increase duration and 100% more armor which alone gives them alot of damare reduce. they also use the 20% phys damage reduction flask which is much more affective than 1k potion. they can offer mroe movement speed flasks to avoid damage and recover fully.
max element resists flasks . and such.. what mroe immue to shcock ignite and bleed that remove damage over time and help them regen ES and immue to shock that last long enough to save your life.
im not saying that there are no life based builds that can do end game concept but only very little.
they must have kaoms heart and probably 2H weapon to make up for the 6 links.
and super expensive items to make up for the damage because they cant take enough damage nodes on tree so they can take 220% life. the problem is getting base life.. each item gives you max 100 life
while helm alone gives you probably more ES than all your life items. someone here said ES is more expensive? i do not agree. Kaoms heart has 500 life. and look its price.. 700 es body armor is how much 5c? so whats more expensive really? i think that Kaoms heart needs to be once again easier to get. because life based builds just cant play without Kaoms its a must item. and i think they need to make more items with high base life.. or make it possible to carft and get higher life rolls on items.. clearly the game need higher flat life . also making str give more life is good idea..
but ES and life balance is broken at the moment.. im Hybrid witch now.. i have 14k ES and 6k life. if i would've gone pure life i would have reach max 8k? thats 20k against 8k. life needs a buff and everyone in game knows that.