This reddit post should be required reading for everyone posting outside of tech support/off topic

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Its difficult because some of the post content is good information for people but some of the conclusions drawn are just silly, that final checklist for example has far too many objectives which won't be reached by poor players that actually need survivability help.

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The biggest issue I have with all these threads is I feel like players are trying to make their character indestructible rather than just learning how to play around a few trivial mechanics in most cases.

I do think that poorFishWife was specifically trying to communicate what the defensive requirements are if someone wants to build an indestructible character, so in that sense the comment is accurate. However, I also agree with you that for most players, partial achievement of part of that checklist + better mechanical play + massive DPS will feel much, much better in SC.

It's why I personally always suggest avoidance mechanics as the missing piece; my personal biases are probably clouding my memory, but whenever threads are asking for help with defences and they've got the basics down (stack Life + Resists), it feels like the missing piece has always been protection against burst DPS. No Armour, no Evasion, no Block, no Dodge, no Blind, and I end up extolling the virtues of all of that, because half of the people that say they were killed by "one-shots" aren't talking about literal one-shots, but actually super-fast burst DPS which feels like one-shots because you're dead before you can react - HP from 100% to 0% in less than a quarter second.

Naturally there are other options out there like Minion bodyblocking, Enfeeble, etc. but on my own builds they tend not to make as much of a huge difference as avoidance mechanics do.

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adghar wrote:

I do think that poorFishWife was specifically trying to communicate what the defensive requirements are if someone wants to build an indestructible character

I agree and it matters a lot. When some people say 'end game' they're talking about T14-16 maps. Others mean nothing but peak difficulty in Delirium / invitation content. That's a huge range of difficulty.

I saw someone say recently that 'end game doesn't begin till you allocate your last points into the Uncharted Realms'. Imo an opinion like that is so divorced from the average player experience that they are literally playing a different game. And so when you read things like the list at the end of the OP, you must remember (or try to figure out) what that person means by "this is what you'll want to thrive in the 'end game'".

Pretty much hasnt changed and ive been saying similar for a while now. Thats why when i came back after 4 years and saw the new map modifiers directly targeting defenses and cutting them in half, it left me pretty shocked.

Defensively playing has never been benefitical. Its always been slow. The only "effective" defenses in this game have ever been raw EHP, through Life, Mana, ES and Vaal Pact instant leech. Originally ES was king, that was before all the ES nerfs. Its pretty decent still but no where near the level of mixed raw EHP that is MOM. Moving on, life. As far as im aware life has never been better than any of those, its always been "bad", even worse it has been nerfed before, which makes no sense.

Its hard to obtain without using Kaoms or a Belly of the Beast and requires raw tree investment unless you want to spend an exuberant amount of exalts trying to roll a influenced vermillion rings and items, which at the correct item level, will set you back multiple exalts before you even get to crafting. Same with any other item that has the potential to roll % life. Meanwhile i can roll ES/ES% and Mana, Mana Regen on any piece of gear non-influenced. In addition to this if youre lucky, you can get synth pieces that far exceed the bases.



Its absolutely ridiculous that theres no inherent % life roll standard on gear, it only comes from influences.

I did "The Hidden" the other day, died three times because i didnt have the DPS to kill the first two before the other two came out. Complete bullshit, braindead DPS race. Went back in and killed them but it was a complete cluster fuck of skill spam that damn near oneshots you. Its not even bullet hell at that point.

I decided to look up builds doing it, of course its just busted meta DPS builds with 100m+ DPS and virtually no real defenses to speak of. Burn it before it can even kill you is what the game has come down to, 100%. Obviously that play style is ACTUALLY very limiting when you go into the end game, the build variety for raw EHP and enough damage dwindles down quite a bit, especially for the investment costs.

Like shit, if a max block gladiator, with multiple layered defenses is struggling with that kind of shit, it kinda speaks volumes as to how weak "defenses" are. Gladiator is by no means weak in many circumstances but the fact is, many bosses later on become a DPS battle. It has very little to do with skill and the actual ability to build a good character.

Fuckin' zoomer meta still.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Its difficult because some of the post content is good information for people but some of the conclusions drawn are just silly, that final checklist for example has far too many objectives which won't be reached by poor players that actually need survivability help.

For what it's worth, a little further down he actually provides a pob that manages to reach all these goals with pretty cheap gear while still keeping > 1 mio DPS. So it is possible, even with rather low budget you really just have to put your mind to it.

That said, i also think it's overkill. The higher the percent of content you want to ignore gets the harder it is to pull it off. It's way more efficient to get enough defense to ignore 90% than trying to ignore all of it which, in the end, won't work anyway. Do a Legion encounter with 5-6 rares next to each other on a map with several damage mods and you are dead meat by sheer force alone. Pretty much impossible to scale defense that high. Thankfully, it's also not necessary to do so as these kind of situations can be easily avoided.


@tin_foil_hat i think you are confusing the easiest way to do something with being the only way to do something. Yes, 100 mio dps is the best defense you can have against bosses no matter which boss you pick. Doesn't mean it's needed for any of them.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

For what it's worth, a little further down he actually provides a pob that manages to reach all these goals with pretty cheap gear while still keeping > 1 mio DPS. So it is possible, even with rather low budget you really just have to put your mind to it.

I wasn't indicating that it wasn't possible more that it will severely limit what you can play, skill diversity is very important to my enjoyment of the game so all my responses are jaded if they restrict that because I view it as a bit of a cop out.

On HC for example we deal with this every league - the games like a huge filter list you start with every single skill highlighted and everytime you add a defensive requirement or dps requirement to a build some skills get cut, if you add cost restriction more get cut. If you apply his defensive requirement list you end up with about 10 skills/methods all of which are specifically orientated around a specific OP mechanic.

If your talking about his transcendence pathfinder tree its exactly what I mean, its expensive and its very specific not a general defensive template you can apply to anything else. Also has next to nothing for phys DoT and bad recovery, gonna be in serious trouble vs nullifier.

I'm not saying that insult the guy or anything either its a very solid tree for that type of character but if you played this like it was invulnerable it'd end up dead suddenly like every other character albeit less frequently. The best approach is to learn what defences apply where and get the best return you can - trying to hit that checklist is going to force you down a narrow, expensive avenue where I don't actually think most players will have that much fun.

If that wasn't the tree you meant hook me up so I can look, its always possible i'm missing some big build tips and If i am I want to know! But in my time with PoE i've learned there is no secret sauce.

Players underestimate defence, but they also underestimate learning what the major threats are, there aren't actually that many for a game the size of PoE but learning the danger list and playing around it is a better defensive mechanism than any stat based advantage :p. Like you say legion rare stacks are a great example I feel most players know by now - insanely dangerous even for very stacked characters especially if maraketh.