Overwhelm on enemies should not give 300% more damage against players

Well...the ignore evasion thing is a real problem I will absolutely agree to that. To completely turn off a fundamental defense is something that shouldn't be in the game.

But overwhelm, and basically any other mechanic apart from that one outlier, doesn't do this. Some modifiers are more dangerous to specific builds, some aren't. Again, how is this bad game design?

If I build a full evasion character with no pdr, then physical damage becomes WAY more dangerous to me by default. Compare that with your jugg, who goes from 90% less to 60% less....its still 60% less damage compared with my evasion character.

You cannot look at these mods in a vacuum, because they don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in an environment with LOTS of defensive tools available. No single mod should completely turn off a defense (so the evasion dude is a problem), but they also shouldn't be equally punishing to everyone.

Take that 90% fire resistance character I mentioned (and yes, thx Art I was using it as a basic example). I run a map with -12% to max resistance. By proportional power, that mod is affecting me a LOT more than it would some other build with 75%, BUT at the end of it I still have 78% vs their 63%. So my investment into that extra defense is by no means wasted. I am STILL more resistant to that damage than the next player. This is true of the Juggernaut example vs overwhelm. And in order to protect against these, there are multiple layers that you can add to your character that mitigates the loss of mitigation.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

But overwhelm, and basically any other mechanic apart from that one outlier, doesn't do this. Some modifiers are more dangerous to specific builds, some aren't. Again, how is this bad game design?

My argument here are the consequences. Whether similar mods exist or no isnt the point. More interesting would be whether those similar mods also have similar consequences upon character building. Can also add that in principle I dislike this "arms race" between defenses and defense-breakers.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

If I build a full evasion character with no pdr, then physical damage becomes WAY more dangerous to me by default. Compare that with your jugg, who goes from 90% less to 60% less....its still 60% less damage compared with my evasion character.

Whether evasion working as it does is good or no may be such an example. A similar kind of complaint about Evasion has been brought up before, IIRC many times. So yes its quite possible that "Overwhelm" isnt the only problematic thing.

Edit: In the Soul Eater or group case those 60% less are not true. You will take a lot less (summary damage per second) on the Evasion build.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

You cannot look at these mods in a vacuum, because they don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in an environment with LOTS of defensive tools available.

Yes. Kind of part of my point.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Take that 90% fire resistance character I mentioned (and yes, thx Art I was using it as a basic example). I run a map with -12% to max resistance.

You dont have to run this map. You cant avoid "Overwhelm" like that.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

By proportional power, that mod is affecting me a LOT more than it would some other build with 75%, BUT at the end of it I still have 78% vs their 63%. So my investment into that extra defense is by no means wasted. I am STILL more resistant to that damage than the next player. This is true of the Juggernaut example vs overwhelm. And in order to protect against these, there are multiple layers that you can add to your character that mitigates the loss of mitigation.

I think you still miss my point: You can typically fairly cheaply outbuild "Overwhelm" with phys-taken-as. Whether there are other bad counters for other builds doesnt play into this. Its the game-necessitated "weirdification" of builds that I dont like. Which can also be unintuitive for newer players.

And adding to the topic: IMO the game should be properly consistent with fluff. An Armour/PDR Juggernaut having this weakness is not consistent with how I see this Ascendancy.

Edit: And this relates to the "intuitive" approach to making builds. Which currently unfortunately doesnt work very well.

On the fluff part: Juggernaut doesn't have that weakness, but everyone knows that an armour so thick may still be penetrated, and blunt trauma exists

I just fundamentally don't see it as weird or even all that complicated.

There are a few questions ANY player should ask themselves when they create a build (defensive)
1) How do I mitigate physical / elemental damage?
2) How do I recover from the damage I take?
3) How can I avoid damage altogether (optional)?
4) What am I weak to / what can enemies do to my defenses?

These are just staple questions that ANY arpg demands answers to in a build. This whole "weirdification" thing ONLY occurs because players ignore #4. You can't just focus on your own defenses, you ALSO need to be aware of what can pierce or lower your defenses. This isn't weird at all: it is basically a part of every single rpg.

#4 is the thing that players, both new and experienced, just completely ignore and yet it is the single most important thing to consider imo. People rely completely on their potions, run into a mob that sucks potion charges, and then complain that this particular mod is OP and needs to be removed. No....you need to be aware that this is a possibility in the game and not rely on ONE mechanic.

We KNOW that overwhelm exists. We also KNOW that armour is great against small/mid hits but isn't terribly reliable against large hits. So we also take the other mitigation available to us: endurance charges, phys as, etc. Hell, we also learn that we need movement skills to avoid big enemy hits and we learn what to avoid.

None of this is WEIRD. None of this is remotely complicated when you just stop and think about it. It's like fighting Sirus without being immune to corrupted blood: you need to learn what the game can do to you and plan for it. Or don't.

Furthermore, the game NEEDS monster mods that do these things. Monsters that just deal varying degrees of damage is boring and lazy design. Monsters that do special things like steal flask charges, turn off or lower our regen, curse us, overwhelm our armour, etc. makes for interesting gameplay. It requires extra thought on our part when we build our character, and it adds DEPTH to the game.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Furthermore, the game NEEDS monster mods that do these things. Monsters that just deal varying degrees of damage is boring and lazy design. Monsters that do special things like steal flask charges, turn off or lower our regen, curse us, overwhelm our armour, etc. makes for interesting gameplay. It requires extra thought on our part when we build our character, and it adds DEPTH to the game.

I think this statement is to broad to defend keeping overwhelm as is. I'm all for interesting fights. But random reflect was removed. Nullifier was removed. Penetration to elemental damage can only be found in very specific content.

Archnem had a huge variety of modifiers that aligned with your argument of having disruptive modifiers. But I felt most of them just limited build variety and looking back it was not popular. While I did not agree with the size of the outrage, I think it tells us what might make a more enjoyable game.

There is a point when a modifier might have to large of a effect on a specific way to build a character. When this modifier might be encountered every 3-4 maps without agency to prevent it, I think it effectively pigeonholes players from building a character in that specific way. If overwhelm instead was a map modifier that would be something a player could skip or try to take on even if they know it counters their defensive setup.

Some other modifiers I think are out of line are "remove charges on hit", I think it should remove 1 random charge per hit, not all of them. And also Embezzler statues should not apply 100% less recovery and should be changed to 100% reduced recovery IMO. These changes will not remove the disruptive nature of these modifiers but bring them to a state where a player has some kind of agency against them, even if you built your character wrong or cannot possibly build it any other way.

As a example I am currently making a trauma stacker in HC. This would not be possible without ralakesh impatience or 2 minimum endurance character jewels because of the common monster modifier of removing my endurance charges.

I have yet to find a way to counter embezzler ghost statues and if I get hit with 100% less recovery my character will instantly die. This is not the case with other reduced recovery modifiers like the green ring or frost bomb from essences as they are reduced recovery and there is ways to get defenses against them.

Thought this current character is not the reason why I made this post. I had previously made a pathfinder character that instead of going with the meta defenses of getting phys taken as. I went with iron reflexes, permanent enduring cry buff and some endurance charges, but overwhelm made the character feel like paper in certain maps at random. Which is a shame because there was no way I found to fix this issue. I could not get more physical mitigation as that would not help at all and the entire physical defense setup of the build had to be removed to get phys taken as ele into it.

^I don't think every single idea for a build should be viable by default...and certainly not in every single game mode. As players we aren't entitled to be able to cobble together anything and have it be successful in every situation.

A build that inherently is so limiting that you run into mobs that can immediately kill you is a BUILD problem, and not a game design problem. Running that Trauma Stacker in HC when you KNOW you immediately die to a specific mob is...kind of your fault tbh.

People can build whatever they want. But not all builds will have the same success. Some builds are weak to more overall mods than others. Some builds are EXTREMELY weak to specific mods that others are not. Again, thats the nature of the game.

Regarding mods that have too large an individual effect: random reflect mobs were a problem because they were instant 1hko to a full HALF of all players. There is not a single mod in the game that even remotely comes close to that. Not a single one. The CLOSEST I can think of is that rogue that ignores all evasion because evasion is one of three core defenses, and that mob completely shuts down basically 1/3 of all builds. But even then, there are ways to avoid that. But things like flask siphon, no recovery, etc. only shuts down a very small portion of builds.


When I run a RF build, and go into a map with -max resists and 60% reduced recovery rate....and I die, that is not the fault of the mods or the game. That is the fault of MY build weaknesses and my lack of planning. There's nothing wrong with that at all. Not every build can or should be equally protective or strong against everything. Proportionally, those mods have a MUCH greater effect on my RF build than they would an overleech slayer. That's a problem of MY creating though.

cant believe people are actually defending this mod. but then again, if the argument is as long as there is one counterplay in the game, it s fine then sure, makes the most boring game alive, everything is fine. after all, just blow up your screen from a distance and you can even handle 100% overwhelm expedition np. and in case of expedition at least you chose that mod. same as the less regen map mod. random overwhelm you cant chose it. so plz send me a video of you checking all mods on a rare before even fighting one of them ;)

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SerialF wrote:

cant believe people are actually defending this mod. but then again, if the argument is as long as there is one counterplay in the game, it s fine then sure, makes the most boring game alive, everything is fine. after all, just blow up your screen from a distance and you can even handle 100% overwhelm expedition np. and in case of expedition at least you chose that mod. same as the less regen map mod. random overwhelm you cant chose it. so plz send me a video of you checking all mods on a rare before even fighting one of them ;)

Proper build doesn't require you to do that...thats the point. Random overwhelm is not 100%, and it's up to you to layer your defenses so that one mod doesn't immediately kill you. If mobs had "ignore physical reduction", I might be singing a different tune but that just isn't the case.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

If mobs had "ignore physical reduction", I might be singing a different tune but that just isn't the case.

Old steel infused did have 100% overwhelm. Then it was changed to 10% iirc and then buffed again to 30% which we have now ^^

But I don't think this is leading much anywhere. I understand your point and I probably agree with you on other mods!