Buff More Than Nerf

First of all: How is a PVP fighting game video even relevant when talking about PoE, which is a mostly PvE ARPG game? O.o

Now, my thoughts on balance:
Imho, one could argue that life is fine.
Evasion and armor are not.

If you have to chose between life and secondary defense (if it's not ES) on a piece of gear, you will ALWAYS chose life due to the fact that the other defenses are not worth anything against spike damage, which is the number one killer in PoE.

But then we have the problem of characters potentially becoming immortal due to imbalanced Life/sec that you can get with leech or flasks... even regen.

To be honest, the dynamic of the game needs to change in order for the game to be balanced, but that's never going to happen, so yeaaaah.

But if they were to do it, it would require:
-changing how armor and evasion work
-rebalancing monster damage so it's not 0, 0, 0, over 9000, 0, 0...
-substantially nerfing the life/sec one can get

Then you wouldn't even have to nerf ES.

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guggelhupf wrote:

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We are also still working out our plans for Energy Shield and related mechanics (and Keystones). Changes to this defence affect Hand of Wisdom and Action builds significantly, and there may not need to be a nerf to Hand of Wisdom and Action if ES and Vaal Pact based build-options are changed significantly.

PLEASE dont nerf ES, instead BUFF Life etc !!!

Analysis: Why We Should Buff More Than Nerf

That is a pretty meaningless video in this context though, cause it talks about Street Fighter and similar games, rather than a player-versus-monster game like PoE. PoE won't become more fun if everything flops over when I use the right mouse button. It will become less fun. It actually has already done so, which is why I have not played in quite a while.

Player damage is out of control, and getting one-shot isn't particularly fun (or, in most cases, challenging). Now if you don't like challenge, that is fine, but let me express my view: I do like challenge.

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Ravenstrider wrote:

Imho, one could argue that life is fine.
Evasion and armor are not.

fun stuff, i think you are 50% wrong. life is not fine - it has too low ceiling and the scaling from gear/nodes right now FORCES players to literaly scrap every f.. life node there is

on the other hand armour and evasion are PERFECTLY fine at what they do. what is not all right is the level of understanding of these mechanics among players. some want to stack EV or AR to absurd levels (like 30k+), some think that EV + life ALONE is enough. some other jokers think that 45k AR and 80% phys reduction is enough. it isnt. this stuff should be mixed. it is basic math right there.

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the fact that the other defenses are not worth anything against spike damage, which is the number one killer in PoE.

it isnt

you remember these ONE hit deaths because these are most often spectacular. but what kills players is first and foremost stupidity, then lag/lack of situational awareness and then quick succession of small hits. ofc this assumes that the player has at least 4.5k hp available when the one hit connects


game where one is immortal and immune to any damage (like current ES + VP + damage builds - the sponge) is not a game. life builds, properly built are viable but ofc MUCH weaker than ES/VP. but they expect players know what they are doing. there is a handful of players who can do the math and see what % of AR/EV/block/dodge/flat reductions etc give eHP increases. a hint: 30k Evasion is as good as 10k Evasion (ignoring QotF/Dreamfeather) becase of this thing called diminishing returns

My BIG hope is, the nerf is to the 'more' ES rolls behind CI.
Maybe to 'chest pices'.

As Shavs/Low Life isn't 'as crazy' and allows lots of build enabling intersting stuff.

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Bweaty wrote:

My BIG hope is, the nerf is to the 'more' ES rolls behind CI.
Maybe to 'chest pices'.

As Shavs/Low Life isn't 'as crazy' and allows lots of build enabling intersting stuff.

my low life, low budget, shavs build (all unique guardian build) has 10k ES... and quite a damage to support it

mathil had ~9k ES without a chest! he used EV chest (cospris) and still had 8.7k ES! ES scaling is broken! (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTeItbVI9NQ)

if i can get 5k life without life on any gear piece - then it is 'not crazy' but right now ES scaling in general is BROKEN

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sidtherat wrote:

if i can get 5k life without life on any gear piece - then it is 'not crazy'

what do u mean by this? Im not sure I follow

English is my third language so sorry about that

i meant this - if CI or ES in general is considered 'not crazy' when you can get 9k ES without a chest (MAIN ES source) THEN i expect to be able to get 5k life without any life roll on my items.


this second thing sounds crazy? sure it does because it is crazy. somehow people are 'A ok' with CI being able to achieve bonkers numbers and it is still somewhat 'understandable' because CI 'has drawbacks' (sh.. drawbacks in fact, if one can call stuff you solve with flasks and a ring anyway)

issue with CI/ES (one of MANY) is how easy one can get significant ES numbers without even trying and how strong all the 'ES tricks' are - vaal disc, Eleron jewelry 20% ES rolls (WTF!!), int %ES scaling, essences (just compare the impact of Woe vs Greed). it is as if GGG really believes (or believed?) that 'life is better than ES' and tries to 'support the poor ES players' with goodies time after time..

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sidtherat wrote:

power creep

ggg for last 2 years buffed everything (i know youll point out voltaxic and some other stuff i know) - it is not an accident that we do 10-20 times more the damage players did in 1.0

you can buff all you like when your game has linear scaling. poe has both linear and exponential. once you mix these two YOU CANNOT buff at will because relative impact of these two scaling method will go wild

currently poe is already way overtuned with %more multipliers.


and the CI vs life. most players have no clue about the game they are playing because they do not need to. CI + vaal pact is a braindead solution for coach potatoes. you stack damage and some buffer and you are set. i understand why people like it so much - it requires ZERO thought. but poe, before we got 20x multiplier to our damage worked fine with defences we had - armor, evasion, block/dodge. but these look bad (to general populace) because CI+VP is just miles better. remove this cancer and youll value stuff that left more. otherwise these non-CI+VP mechanics can be as well as removed. see. build diversity can be obtained by removing stuff - but some are so worried that they will be 'weaker'. but it is all relative. there will be faaaar more B-class options while A-class options will get removed. this means.. hold on.. more A-class options because this is now the top-power-level.

Haven't read the whole thread, just hit here and had to say....

We have bricked all the defenses for life since 1.0. We destroyed mind over matter, destroyed block builds multiple times (and no block build can do GOOD damage anymore, ever.), we destroyed evasion and arrow dancing and all that... we keep destroying defense mechanisms. ES is the only one that is still mostly intact and is only the MAIN solution because of the ridiculous spike damage in this game. You can facetank 90% of the game 99% of the time with a 5k life build. True story. The problem comes in the guardians/Atziri/Shaper/etc. You through full block on that and you can afk in any map. The problem isn't that ES can hit 20k+ and still do damage, it is that life can only hit 15k, does shit damage, AND all of it's defense mechanisms are crap and DESIGNED to only work on stuff that doesn't kill you anyway.

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BJWPDaemonSadi wrote:

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sidtherat wrote:

power creep

ggg for last 2 years buffed everything (i know youll point out voltaxic and some other stuff i know) - it is not an accident that we do 10-20 times more the damage players did in 1.0

you can buff all you like when your game has linear scaling. poe has both linear and exponential. once you mix these two YOU CANNOT buff at will because relative impact of these two scaling method will go wild

currently poe is already way overtuned with %more multipliers.


and the CI vs life. most players have no clue about the game they are playing because they do not need to. CI + vaal pact is a braindead solution for coach potatoes. you stack damage and some buffer and you are set. i understand why people like it so much - it requires ZERO thought. but poe, before we got 20x multiplier to our damage worked fine with defences we had - armor, evasion, block/dodge. but these look bad (to general populace) because CI+VP is just miles better. remove this cancer and youll value stuff that left more. otherwise these non-CI+VP mechanics can be as well as removed. see. build diversity can be obtained by removing stuff - but some are so worried that they will be 'weaker'. but it is all relative. there will be faaaar more B-class options while A-class options will get removed. this means.. hold on.. more A-class options because this is now the top-power-level.

Haven't read the whole thread, just hit here and had to say....

We have bricked all the defenses for life since 1.0. We destroyed mind over matter, destroyed block builds multiple times (and no block build can do GOOD damage anymore, ever.), we destroyed evasion and arrow dancing and all that... we keep destroying defense mechanisms. ES is the only one that is still mostly intact and is only the MAIN solution because of the ridiculous spike damage in this game. You can facetank 90% of the game 99% of the time with a 5k life build. True story. The problem comes in the guardians/Atziri/Shaper/etc. You through full block on that and you can afk in any map. The problem isn't that ES can hit 20k+ and still do damage, it is that life can only hit 15k, does shit damage, AND all of it's defense mechanisms are crap and DESIGNED to only work on stuff that doesn't kill you anyway.

Just a correction, you don't facetank the game with a 5k life build, you just shit on all the content because almost nothing but the very top end of content is challenging. The only challenge with 5k life is not getting 1 shot basically, which is why people go CI so they can get 10K life (or more) via ES.


The defensive options you listed still work and some still stack and interact, the problem becomes when its unreliable, then what? Also would love to see this 15k life build without a legacy kaoms, I've never seen anyone over like 10kish with non legacy gear.


In terms of buff more, no they need to nerf EVERYTHING, all of the numbers need to go down so that the scope between the low end and most extreme is better defined by gear, rather then just inflated numbers from things like passive tree or ascendancy classes. Gear should be the most important aspect of character power and its not really at this point, because its pretty much guaranteed.


Games gotten too easy for most content with the 1% of 1 shots and the 1% of the challenging content, that isn't an ARPG game thats just a shitty MMO game with inbalanced boss fights.

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BJWPDaemonSadi wrote:

We have bricked all the defenses for life since 1.0. We destroyed mind over matter, destroyed block builds multiple times (and no block build can do GOOD damage anymore, ever.), we destroyed evasion and arrow dancing and all that... we keep destroying defense mechanisms.

are you sure? are you really trully sure that you know what you are talking about?

MoM is STRONGER than before. currently you CAN turn MoM into 30% damage reduction. flat. it can be done. it wasnt possible before. whats more - you can turn it into ~43% reduced damage (all, except degens but there are not that many degens that matter anyway). it is costly, it is tricky and it requires Hierophant. but it is 43% reduced damage. constant. flat. all the f.. time. add fortify to that and you have a tank worth talking about. people do not know that nor explore that because it is easier and cheaper to get 800ES regalia + Vaal Pact
MoM is stronger than ever. you might mention AA with flat mana - sure, i liked it more as flat mana cost but only because it was the only mechanic like that. note: MoM + ZO + EB combo is suicide.. but i know some streamers play it so it is 'good' but for me it is a prime example of hype over matter

block.. block works EXACTLY the same way as before. what changed is the cost to reach the 78/75% block/spellblock. previously it was just too f.. easy. and a hint: 50% block is still a 50% block. it has a good scaling etc so 75% is ofc twice as good as 50%. but 50% is still great. appreciate how easy it is to get 50% with all the new uniques and jewels.

evasion destroyed? lul wut? it works the same way. there are some questionable mobs with RT but they are minor annoyance. i have a 4.8k HP, low damage raider life/evasion and i can pretty much double beyond T13-T15 map and roll over it. why? 5 end charges + basalt flask cover the only weakness evasion builds have. 'but it is costly to take extra charges'. yes, power for a cost.

arrow dancing was BROKEN. right now it is situational and it is still used.


fun fact. you claim that after that it is still not reliable. but block in 1.0 was also 'not reliable'. people, some very stingy people, are still moaning about their 'viable' ev/dodge/block builds. but these builds were the same stuff we have today - they were just hit once every 500 hits instead of once every 50 hits. but you were hit no matter what anyway. no changes there at all.

it is all hearsay 'evidence' thrown around by people who never really tested things. understandable, when 90%+ builds are life builds or crappy life+uberDPS glasscannons. people are smart with damage multipliers but there are bricks with better understanding of defenses than some of these guys have