No life on the passive tree in PoE 2
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So I understand there will be no life nodes on the tree:
Reasoning was given = its not fun to simply pick up %life nodes, and removing them entirely allows for a much more interesting passive tree My counterargument = How is that going to change? Instead of life nodes, players are now going to have to take defense nodes in much the same way. It will STILL be inefficient to take multiple sources of defense, rather than focus on strengthening one to the max. So those %life nodes will now be %armor nodes, or %evasion nodes, etc. Nothing has changed fundamentally in terms of "interest"... I'm hoping to see if I'll be wrong, but this seems like a really weird oversight from the devs. Last edited by jsuslak313#7615 on Aug 5, 2023, 5:33:35 AM Last bumped on Aug 6, 2023, 1:32:32 AM
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You'll still have to invest in defenses but you'll have more freedom in which defenses you want to invest in. POE already made a big jump in the right direction with this in the defense rework in 3.16 by providing us other defensive layers aside from life that are worth investing in by buffing base defenses and adding stuff like spell suppression. But even with this, a certain amount of % life from the tree is still pretty much mandatory, it's something you'll see on literally any build aside from pure ES builds. It's boring. If that is gone you can just pick 2 or 3 layers you like and focus on them without dragging that mandatory baggage along all the time.
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But my point is (and you even described the same thing) is that: life is mandatory in PoE 1 pretty much no matter what your defense of choice is. In PoE 2, there is no life to choose which makes defense nodes the new "mandatory". Sure you have more choice, but given what we already know about defenses in PoE 1, you will not have more choice on your CHARACTER. Therefore, instead of mandatory life nodes, it simply shifts to mandatory "defense of choice" nodes. It doesn't really get at the core issue of having boring "mandatory" nodes you will inevitably be forced into. It is simply a sideways substitution rather than a true innovation.
As an example: in a current armour build, at some point the life nodes become more useful than the armour nodes for ehp. You aren't going to suddenly start taking evasion or ES nodes. In PoE 2, you just have to take more armour nodes to make up for the life nodes lost. So instead of 5% life nodes at the end of the tree process, you will be taking x% armour nodes. You STILL won't be suddenly taking other defenses you don't synergize with. Last edited by jsuslak313#7615 on Aug 5, 2023, 6:10:43 AM
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Its a smart and very good choice because right now what life nodes created is a heavy imbalance between ES and life at the high end where ES is heavily favoured and its unfixable.
With the new system where enemy damage is balanced around natural life gain of levels and gear with it being less variable its possible to streamline balance a lot better across different defense types and resource pools. I really think its the best of all solutions for the life nodes problem. |
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" ^I'm interested to hear what you mean by that... You say that ES is heavily favored even with life nodes on the tree...they are removing life nodes but keeping ES nodes in PoE 2. Wouldn't that INCREASE the favor for ES, if it already exists WITH the nodes making the overall system even more broken? And if the system we have is "unfixable", wouldn't the new system make anything other than ES irrelevant? I don't see how their balance around natural life is going to change anything...they even said now they have to factor in tree defenses. So if players now get higher defense numbers from the tree they will simply balance more around that, and make them EVEN MORE mandatory in future updates. Again...it changes nothing, it just moves the importance FROM life to stacking a single defense type. All my worries could be for nothing if they rework the entire defensive structure of the game in ways I can't predict...but they have stated that the base systems from PoE 1 will all exist in a very similar or exactly the same fashion in PoE 2. Last edited by jsuslak313#7615 on Aug 5, 2023, 6:31:39 AM
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" I mean you aren't wrong, as long as you don't want 6 portals to be your only defensive measure some sort of defense investment will always be "mandatory". But isn't it better to have a large set of possible choices available to cover this instead of having that 1 thing you absolutely need on every build? Imo the answer is clear, sure it's not some big innovation, more like a low hanging fruit they've ignored for years but it's a step in the right direction. As for your example, even on an armor build you'll have complementary layers worth investing into once more armor investment falls off. Spell suppression being a prime candidate. It's pretty hard to find a build where you couldn't substitute life nodes with something else to complement your build if they aren't mandatory anymore. |
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" Well you missed the part where they control how much life and potentially other resources they can grant on items and that the game will be balanced around that. You are still thinking in the PoE 1 system when you ask those questions. From what I understand the balance points in PoE 2 will be vastly different. |
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" this doesn't make sense to me...if that were true then life wouldn't be mandatory in PoE 1. We have plenty of other options, such as spell suppression already. The problem comes AFTER suppression/block/secondary defenses are maxed: currently that results in life being mandatory otherwise the defenses simply don't hold up. In PoE 2, it simply removes life as an option and forces you into stacking your primary defense choice MORE. Sure, life outperformed armour or evasion nodes because they had diminishing return but removing the life nodes doesn't suddenly make for better choice: it just lowers the top end of ehp and forces you to invest MORE heavily in the primary defense of your choice, rolloff or not. Last edited by jsuslak313#7615 on Aug 5, 2023, 6:42:22 AM
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The thing is in a world where pretty much all mitigations are hardcapped you always need a certain amount of buffer to deal with what little damage makes it through your mitigations. Right now you need a certain amount of investment in life on the tree to reach that minimum buffer. If they remove the life on tree and adjust base life/item life mods accordingly this will no longer be neccessary and you'll be able to use other mitigation layers if you like while maintaining the minimum buffer required. They won't just remove the life nodes on the tree while leaving everything else the same in terms of life, they'll tie that to character progression in form of levels or gear to some degree.
Last edited by Baharoth15#0429 on Aug 5, 2023, 6:59:26 AM
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I believe their reasoning is that life nodes are just simple. All the nodes just increase your life pool and thats it. Where as defense nodes can be designed to be far more interesting. The idea of this is interesting to say the least.
We don't really have enough information to determine if this works or not. Crafting, currency, energy shield, difficulty, endgame, etc. It's kind of why this Exilecon was so weird imo. The game still being so far out just leads to more questions and people wanting answers now. When in fact, we are still a long ways away. |
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