Nerf Berserk, Arcane Cloak, Arcane Surge, Agnostic, Low-Life, Righteous Fire, and Fortify

lol self casters are already shit and you want to nerf them. You know indigon+mana flask is the only problem .

Sometimes I wished GGG took the time to explain to people in detail why they are 100% wrong

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vmt80 wrote:

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sidtherat wrote:

in short - nerf that or make it expensive. because it is FAR too late to make 'regular' defences worthwhile. Armour was deemed thrash (and rightfully so) in 2013 already..

They could buff armour and evasion mechanic-wise to make them more viable. I don't see why those other defenses need to be nerfed in a game with paper defenses already.

I mean, isn't it kinda hard to stack all of different defense types on a single char, so buffing these overlooked things would give players more actual options to go for?

I've been playing with 20/20 Grace aura and it does feel lacking for all the investment put in. It's kinda sad.

they cant 'fix' it

It is as much about mechanics as it is about content we face. Evasion is pretty much 100% useless in endgame. Pretty much eveything bosses do is either SPELL or DEGEN. And if it is spell it is pretty much ALWAYS phys(converted to whatever) - that rules out Armour too.

You could go into Maven with 0 evasion and 0 armour and you wont really feel a difference.

On the other hand 'less damage taken' and spell dodge/block are of incredible value. It boils down to pretty.. polarising boss design: spells, ground degens, DoTs. Noone is going to stack AR gear for 93 levels to realise at Maven's fight that it is all for naught (unless you go Transcedence.. ). The AR is so bad, that even Imbalanced Guard is worthless. People consider 1 point spent on it a waste.. for a reason.

You really cant 'fix' it. the same would happen if all bosses in endgame dealt cold damage only. you would run with -13 fire, -22lightning resistance and not feel a difference. you kill mobs before they can make a move anyway, dont you?

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sidtherat wrote:

It is as much about mechanics as it is about content we face. Evasion is pretty much 100% useless in endgame. Pretty much eveything bosses do is either SPELL or DEGEN. And if it is spell it is pretty much ALWAYS phys(converted to whatever) - that rules out Armour too.

You could go into Maven with 0 evasion and 0 armour and you wont really feel a difference.

Maven is about memory game and beams, and those two doesn't care about defence mechanics at all (thank you, -10% max resistance and regen negation). Other attacks barely deal damage.

GGG seems to design bosses around being unable to facetank them unless you're dedicated specific boss killer build. But in the maps high evasion is kinda decent with Dread Banner-Generosity on top of that. I am effectively immune to regular monsters' attacks.

Armour is a meme tho.

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_Daybit_ wrote:

But in the maps high evasion is kinda decent with Dread Banner-Generosity on top of that. I am effectively immune to regular monsters' attacks.

Armour is a meme tho.

Evasion is same meme tier as armor is.
It's not that you are wrong in general, but it's mostly about certain conditions and standards:

1. game mode, is it HC or SC
2. is it high lvl content/endgame (15-16 maps/endgame bosses) or lower

EV is as useful in HC as it didn't even exist. It's the defensive layer you get on-the-go with 0 investments given, because why not. Working around it is recipe for disaster, no one does.
It's disliked even on SC, when we are about real endgame. No +95 player commits death like it didn't happen, it always hurts. There are not much high tier SC evasion builds.

What matters nowadays in poe is flat damage reduction in all shapes and forms, followed by gigantic HP pool and regen.
Basically mitigation.
Anything else is just an add-on, considering builds on the top of the food chain.
EV, AR, block and dodge are mostly gimmics shaping the final form of a high mitigation build.

Game is blatantly disbalanced and it's not news, it's what it is.
You either follow the few mechanics that will rocket-launch you straight into the club of smart kids, or you bite the dust and stay there.

So related to OP - nerfs are not justified. Proper balance is. Unless the latter doesn't happen, no nerfs thanks.

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torturo wrote:

What matters nowadays in poe is flat damage reduction in all shapes and forms, followed by gigantic HP pool and regen.
Basically mitigation.
Anything else is just an add-on, considering builds on the top of the food chain.
EV, AR, block and dodge are mostly gimmics shaping the final form of a high mitigation build.

Game is blatantly disbalanced and it's not news, it's what it is.
You either follow the few mechanics that will rocket-launch you straight into the club of smart kids, or you bite the dust and stay there.

So related to OP - nerfs are not justified. Proper balance is. Unless the latter doesn't happen, no nerfs thanks.

I feel like this text is core to the design principles of GGG. You get teased by mitigations like armour (and its lol formular) and Evasion and then there is Transcedence which is straight out better than armour and you "skip" the original purpose of armour for something better while replacing it at the same time with flat damage reductions. It always boiled down to "skip this mechanic as there is a much better one".

Evasion is as much worth as a chance to blind suffix from some piece of gear or Flesh and Stone you get it and thats about it for Evasion. At best its a nice to have addon. But if you are smart you stack that maximum elemental resist/and or flat phys dmg reduction/Fortify/play Pathfinder and piano press flasks for 60k armour almost free and pair it if possible with aura effect and reduced mana reservation - thats the point when it starts getting "smart build design".

To top it all off you just put some baked cheese over this to fix dps issues like Poison that hands you damage almost free or Blade* (Fall,Blast,Vortex) or if masochist to a lesser degree slams.

Edit: Just to give another picture. Why play berserker and invest into cluster jewels and Ascendancy nodes for Warcrys? Just grab that Chainbreaker Keystone with 3 mana regen suffixes from gear and lol over the whole Ascendancy and its Warcry concept.


My forecast how GGG will bandaid fix evasion: Keystone for: Chance to evade Spells instead of Attacks. For sure id try that out but its like Transcendence "replace this mechanic with that better mechanic".

GGGCent --- Balance

Pick one.

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zzang wrote:

But if you are smart you stack that maximum elemental resist/and or flat phys dmg reduction/Fortify/play Pathfinder and piano press flasks for 60k armour almost free and pair it if possible with aura effect and reduced mana reservation - thats the point when it starts getting "smart build design".

Wrong patch. Budget aura stackers had 4.5K ES in previous one, now it's even worse (since most of ES comes from Discipline). There are much better builds for the cost of mediocre aurastacker (it's still 500ex+). See Fire BV without single RMR/aura effect item.

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Anton___Chigurh wrote:

...nerf...defenses...

Hey, isn't impersonating a GGG employee against the ToS?

I'd much rather GGG made armour and evasion worth scaling instead of nerfing other defensive mechanics.

Or nerf those mechanics while nerfing all monster and boss damage at the same time, because it's way too high in general and requires builds to stack a very specific set of defensive mechanics to overcome.

It's like when people talk about nerfing flasks: of course the piano flask gameplay where flasks have 100% uptime while mapping is silly, we all know that. But for most builds flask defenses are mandatory, 100% of the time, or you will die nonstop.

So if one mechanic gets changed, we can't have a waiting period of several leagues before the rest gets rebalanced around it. Unfortunately, GGG tends to create those waiting periods so that game balance in one aspect or another is perpetually sitting in a bad state. When one issue is finally addressed by step 2 of what should have been a simultaneous 2-step process to begin with, several more issues are created by a different change.