Defenses are So bad!!!

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I'm sick and tired of trying to get any other defense to work. It seems VP is truly the only valid options. GGG sucks at balance.

I think you never tried , or you are just bad at making build tbh.

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Your, constant nerfing of defenses stats patch, after patch.

???

As always it's not armour / evasion that are particularly bad even if they could be buffed (or mob damage nerfed or even both), it's VP which outshine them by far. While AR/EV need investment to be effective , VP need ... one fucking broken node then life/damage. Legit.

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Yesu wrote:

While AR/EV need investment to be effective , VP need ... one fucking broken node then life/damage. Legit.

VP is broken, but to be fair: A well thought-out build with heavy investments into many layers of defenses will outperform a lot of "only life, damage & VP" builds when it comes to survivability.

I'm currently playing a VP berserker with 9.5k life (-10% for increased damage taken), acrobatics, fortify, basalt flask, CWDT-IC.
Sure he can dive into almost everything and cyclone until it's dead, but he is still far from immortal in high end content, there's plenty of ways he can die.
And not only the obvious ways, like me outright playing bad or the game stuttering/freezing.

The gladiator I played last league was much more comfortable to play: max block/spellblock with the help of red nightmare (which also means convenient EC generation for IC), ~6k life, Enfeeble, lots of armour and evasion, basalt, fortify, life regen, life leech, the Surrender shield...
His only real weakness were unblockable effects like Detonate Dead in Poorjoy's and some strong AoE DoTs.
I could be almost certain that if my screen froze in the middle of a breach or some other nasty shit, I would find him sitting in Highgate with the same XP bar I had left him with.

And he even outperformed the Berserker in terms of DpS (but that's another story, crit vs RT).

It's time for some players to show up and say "hey, some builds work even without VP". Man, there will be always some build works without something. You know what? Figure doesn't lie. Lots of players choose VP as VP does make self-attack/cast builds much more easy in end game comparing to other defense.

Is VP that OP? No, VP is not that OP. The problem is we need to invest a lot if we use other defense and it works bad, while we can invest much less in VP and it works great. Of course, VP may need a treatment by increasing the cost rather than nerfing its power. But the core is there should be other reliable and not costly ways to absorb damage, and recover life/es. People will still choose VP even if GGG double all armor and ev value, but at least we get a better defense. The vital thing is we need another reliable and sustainable ways to recover life/es. Almost one-shooting normal attack from a tiny monster is another big problem that push players to use VP.

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Pi2rEpsilon wrote:

Indeed. If your point is that it is bad design when builds can encounter something they cannot deal with, such as no-go mods, since you only want to play builds that can deal with everything and you've only found one type that does that, then I have completely misunderstood your complaints in the OP: You are not complaining about defenses being bad, but about the designers having a different design vision than you do.

Sigh you still don't get it. A build doesn't need to smash everything. But if a build simply can not do it. It's bad design. There should be trade offs. I am complaining about defenses. There are other things that make most defenses even worse. It's bad design yes. But it is made worse by defenses sucking.

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Yesu wrote:

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I'm sick and tired of trying to get any other defense to work. It seems VP is truly the only valid options. GGG sucks at balance.

I think you never tried , or you are just bad at making build tbh.

"

Your, constant nerfing of defenses stats patch, after patch.

???

As always it's not armour / evasion that are particularly bad even if they could be buffed (or mob damage nerfed or even both), it's VP which outshine them by far. While AR/EV need investment to be effective , VP need ... one fucking broken node then life/damage. Legit.

WTF. I think your ass tbh. I 100% believe your a troll at this point. And trolls get angry weather you ignore them, call them out, or even address them. So MR troll show me a build that works, and doesn't one shot the screen. You can't, and you won't be able too. As your defenses will not be able to stand up to it. I beat you can't even show me a build were you take any damage on a regular bases that works well. It doesn't exist in POE.

You either make a build that doesn't take damage. Or a build that kills everything before you take damage. So ya defenses 100% suck in this game.

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WillisTheWillis wrote:

It's time for some players to show up and say "hey, some builds work even without VP". Man, there will be always some build works without something. You know what? Figure doesn't lie. Lots of players choose VP as VP does make self-attack/cast builds much more easy in end game comparing to other defense.

Is VP that OP? No, VP is not that OP. The problem is we need to invest a lot if we use other defense and it works bad, while we can invest much less in VP and it works great. Of course, VP may need a treatment by increasing the cost rather than nerfing its power. But the core is there should be other reliable and not costly ways to absorb damage, and recover life/es. People will still choose VP even if GGG double all armor and ev value, but at least we get a better defense. The vital thing is we need another reliable and sustainable ways to recover life/es. Almost one-shooting normal attack from a tiny monster is another big problem that push players to use VP.

'almost one-shoting normal attack from tiny monster' happens ONLY in heavily modded maps AND with a character with 0 form of damage mitigation. aka: bollocks. the same with the legendary one-shots. most (not all, true) are in fact burst damage from several otherwise harmless hits. stuff that is EASILY prevented with dodge/evasion/block/AR in various proportion. but if one has just the buffer+VP. yes, then it is an 'unfair oneshot'


this was the playstyle of ES CI VP tanks: no mitigation, all buffer. it kinda worked with 8-10k ES and VP. it wont with 6k life


removing VP will make people realise that there ARE in fact ways of mitigating damage to acceptable levels. ways they ignore or are unaware of because VP is 'one-node wonder' that makes these ways pointless

VP removal WILL slow the game down, for sure. the damage/survival node balance WILL HAVE TO CHANGE for most of the VP users resulting in slower game due to lower damage. but just like with 'poison is dead, its garbage' + 'oh, Mathil made it work' - people will adjust after some time

brain usage will go up, defensive values on items will have some meaning, people will think twice before doubling their damage (in most cases pointless) because for the same price they can increase their survivability

some will not like it - one-shot/three-screen meta is hard to forget, but current game is unsustainable in the long run.

over 50% of lvl80+ players use VP. and you say it is 'not that OP'?

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TheLockedGuy wrote:

So MR troll show me a build that works, and doesn't one shot the screen. You can't, and you won't be able too. As your defenses will not be able to stand up to it. I beat you can't even show me a build were you take any damage on a regular bases that works well. It doesn't exist in POE.

I can only repeat:

https://pastebin.com/chsZ0qF1

Does not need to oneshoot entire screen in order to survive.
Does have enough damage to clear whatever you want, though.
Does have a ton of armour and evasion. Would be worse without them.
Does have layered defenses.
Takes damage on a regular basis (every 4th spell, every 8th attack or smth like that).
Still has close to 6k life, which is enough with layered defenses.

---

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sidtherat wrote:

this was the playstyle of ES CI VP tanks: no mitigation, all buffer. it kinda worked with 8-10k ES and VP. it wont with 6k life

That's why we stack our life up to to 8-10k now.

<3

If I were to balance VP, I'd just add a "with attacks" on the VP keystone.
I think melee can keep it, melee has enough trouble in this game.
Also VP is not a 1-point-wonder, it costs a ton of skillpoints to navigate there from the marauder/duelist zone, with nothing along the way except 1-2 jewel sockets and 2-3 life clusters.
Also I only play melee... :p

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Peterlerock wrote:

If I were to balance VP, I'd just add a "with attacks" on the VP keystone.
I think melee can keep it, melee has enough trouble in this game.
Also VP is not a 1-point-wonder, it costs a ton of skillpoints to navigate there from the marauder/duelist zone, with nothing along the way except 1-2 jewel sockets and 2-3 life clusters.
Also I only play melee... :p

Attacks already have craploads of leech, why spells barely have any without Vinktar and Cloaked in Savagery. If you make those 2 leech sources "attack-only", it's actually more reasonable.

Though i cant say, that attacks are so bad compared to spells, that they need instant leech.

I think, that instant leech should be removed completely. Not just for ES, or not just for spells, but for EVERYTHING. It's too good at recovering your HP pool, nothing else can match it.

i dont understand this game become so much easy compare 3 year ago ,i dont see any major issue for pve ,my opinion for this era poe is the best action RPG very easy also this game have no ptw big respect there to GGG peace

Defenses aren't bad, the only problem they suffer from is the intense point constraint from the passive tree. Once you've got 200% life and sufficient damage to kill bosses/map comfortably you basically have no points left.

Its a little easier on scion/marauder they can generally get in a couple of defence wheels due to their proximity to the large health areas (or extra pts in the scions case) but a shadow is basically impossible to get any real defence scaling on while still hitting sufficient health. You could get defence with ES because 10k ES was achievable with like 4 items and 6 nodes but since its nerf they really are back to square one.

The result of all that is people heavily prioritize the cheapest defence solutions, VP is 1pt and covers everything, pots cost 0 though and is everyones #1 defence, potion piano.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Defenses aren't bad, the only problem they suffer from is the intense point constraint from the passive tree. Once you've got 200% life and sufficient damage to kill bosses/map comfortably you basically have no points left.

Its a little easier on scion/marauder they can generally get in a couple of defence wheels due to their proximity to the large health areas (or extra pts in the scions case) but a shadow is basically impossible to get any real defence scaling on while still hitting sufficient health. You could get defence with ES because 10k ES was achievable with like 4 items and 6 nodes but since its nerf they really are back to square one.

The result of all that is people heavily prioritize the cheapest defence solutions, VP is 1pt and covers everything, pots cost 0 though and is everyones #1 defence, potion piano.

Do you know why most builds take all life nodes, even the minor 4-5% ones? And why they skip even major 28-24% armour notables?

If armour/evasion truly worked well, we'd see characters with 100% increased life from tree (with 4k life), but also 300% increased armour/evasion being viable in endgame.
Guess what? They arent. It's far better to take 200% increased life, that 100% increased life and 300% icreased armour/eva. The only exception maybe is QotF build, and only because it gains movespeed from evasion.