Fixing Dexterity Defenses

Dexterity:
- Evasion
This is the main defense for Dexterity-based characters, and it is quite good. However, most archetypes in the game get a near-equivalent defensive layer that is functionally identical through block. Strength characters are even allowed to use Giant's Blood to still be able to use a two-handed melee weapon while using a shield, which is fundamentally broken. Acrobatics and Blind are also fantastic supplements, but they're just further investment into one defensive layer. You need more, and there is little opportunity beyond.
- Flasks
Flasks are also powerful, but every character has them, and they are so innately powerful that the only real advantage that investment provides is more passive regeneration of charges during boss fights. Mind you, anyone can get passive regeneration of charges through Alchemist's Boon, a belt base, and the flask suffix modifier-- the Dexterity tree just provides a little bit more and flask charge gain increases at a colossal passive point investment.
- Charms
These are fundamentally underpowered in the current game iteration. The guard and life regain mechanics they provide are almost nonexistent. The passive recharge gain options are so little compared to charges used that they are negligible. I imagine these are going to see an overhaul soon, especially with Huntress coming, but it's still the case that all characters get them by default and because they provide mainly unscalable bonuses there's no compelling reason to invest into them.
- Movement Speed
Obviously an amazing stat in this game, but the amounts available in the Dexterity section of the tree are minimal. When boots provide a 35% increase yet the rare appearance of it on a notable node gives 3-4%, it's a nicety but not worth writing home about. There is also mitigation for slows, which can be good, but other archetypes have some amount of access as well.
- Ranged
Being able to damage enemies at range is also almost a non-factor in this game due to monsters inevitably getting close to you and arenas being small. Almost all abilities in the game can be used at range other than basic melee strikes, and the gameplay necessitates all player characters to get both close and far depending on the situation, so this isn't something exclusive to bows.
- Damage Type Shifting
There's a single node on the tree that provides this stat, and none on gear other than a body armor that gimps your potential evasion. Currently, it's a non-factor.

Strength:
- Armor
Armor is very good, and many mechanics can scale off of it. The more you have, the better it is, and there are ways to shift damage so you can increase its effectiveness drastically. It benefits more from Damage Type Shifting than anything else.
- Maximum Resistances
This is by far the best mitigation stat in the game, and it might've been foolish to not have either cracked down on it or taken the opportunity to provide a replacement design for resistances entirely. The increasing returns for stacking maximum resistances is fundamentally broken. It might've made sense if the game was balanced around 60-70% default maximum resistances and 80% cap for maximum resistances stacking, but oh well.
- Block/Shields
This may seem weird to be grouped as a Strength-aligned defense, but all the support for it is made available through the Strength tree and interacts mainly with other Strength defenses. Plus, the Giant's Blood interaction I mentioned, which (I repeat) is fundamentally broken. This will change with Huntress, but I will just evaluate the current game state. Shields themselves provide all the best mitigation stats, such as base defenses, block, maximum resistances, life. Them providing so many base defenses also allows someone to replace their chest with something like Cloak of Flame, Blackbraid, etc. and have plenty of armor to hit a soft cap. A good shield is arguably better than the entirety of a bow character's base defenses. Giant's Blood probably should probably only be for dual-wielding and also give an attack speed penalty, otherwise you might as well let every other archetype have an equivalent node for each type of two-hand weapon and it'll be all anyone uses.
- Life
It just doesn't make sense that Strength-oriented characters are allowed to stack so much more life than Dexterity-oriented ones, because the latter needs it even more than the former. Strength-stacking provides an absurd amount of life, and because any life-based character should be doing it, it being a requirement for anything (namely Giant's Blood) is essentially a non-factor. Dexterity-oriented characters are at a disadvantage by needing to stack both stats (i.e. get enough Dexterity for requirements then dump the rest into Strength) so they will have severely lower maximum life. The nature of having non-existent mitigation stresses the necessity of high HP to match cases where Strength-oriented or Intelligence-oriented characters can survive.
- Regeneration
A very good stat, but you guys cracked down on it so hard that it's only notable at extreme investment. Meanwhile, you can get as much recoup as you want, which makes no sense comparatively.
- Leech
This was also cracked down upon so hard, but it can be pretty good at the extreme levels of damage output.

Intelligence:
- Energy Shield
Absurd. It's supposed to be a buffer/barrier resource that provides roughly equivalent to mitigation or avoidance, but it has so much multifaceted support through granting it various mechanics and gimmicks. It just is blue life, but better, as it's always been. There was speculation that base values would be much lower when we saw how high the scaling, but they're ... Just the same. You cracked down egregiously on all life recovery, and slightly nerfed energy shield recharge, but there is so much support for recharge and you can get so much maximum energy shield, that it is the "whole package" and then some. This is obviously going to be addressed, but how did it get to this state in the first place?
- Recoup Damage Inflicted
People always dogged on this stat, but it is broken. It has always been good; by design it is as good as the damage taken. Just avoid getting bursted and you're fine once you reach 100%+ cumulatively across your HP resources. And, for some reason, this is easily possible, and then some. When a damaging ailment is applied, you can stack enough beyond 100% for makeshift immunity due to the way damaging ailment base damage works now. Only problem is it not affecting pure damage over time or direct life loss.
- Resource Shifting
Very powerful and flexible mechanic that allows you to expose damage taken to multiple resources, allowing their respective mechanics and recovery to be permanently relevant. For mana in particular, you can invest in it for both offense and defense, so it is highly efficient and effective. This actually is in a pretty decent spot balance-wise by itself, but when paired with recoup and energy shield it just takes those broken mechanics even beyond.
- Damage Stagger
I don't think this should be an Intelligence-oriented stat, and I'll explain further below. However, it is only available in one form, and that's on Blood Mage, so it seems to be underutilized and perhaps they don't know what to do with it.

Cross-Attribute Synergies:
- Evasion / Energy Shield
This combination is the main crutch for the Evasion archetype because of their immense inherent synergy. Energy Shield provides the buffer that is necessary to tank unmitigated hits, and Evasion provides the avoidance to allow Energy Shield to start and potentially finish its recharge uninterrupted. It also has Ghost Dance, which is extremely powerful to incentivize dual investment (though it favors evasion investment by far), as well as some of the best hybrid defense nodes in the game. Seriously, the helmet energy shield -> evasion one is so good that I find it mandatory for any character stuck in the Dexterity tree.
- Armor / Evasion
This combination is also pretty good because physical hits are the bane of the evasion archetype. However, the support for it isn't that great in this game because the nodes aren't particularly good and it's too hard to get enough base amounts from gear. So, at best you are getting enough to mitigate small hits and shave a little off large ones, at a great cost to your potential evasion, especially when Acrobatics is involved. Invoker's node is fantastic, but it's because you get to focus on evasion+energy shield and pure evasion nodes which are far superior and have better surrounding nodes. There is also the timeless jewel which makes Dexterity scale armor, which seems half as good as the Invoker node and requires an extreme investment to truly see the benefits.
- Armor / Energy Shield
Really, it's not a particularly good combination unless you have a gimmick available like Aegis Aurora or an equivalent modifier. The two defenses don't really synergize well at all. This will likely get addressed when Templar/Druid are introduced. With neither of them in, this has virtually no support, so it's not worth addressing.

Other:
- Stun/Ailment Thresholds/Recovery
Nothing really worth talking about here. Everyone has some kind of access to mitigating crowd control or ailments when necessary, though Dexterity has slightly more support for ailment mitigation.
- Proactive Crowd Control
This is very powerful, but is prevalent across all archetypes, just in different flavors that align with certain damage types or positioning. So, no one really has an advantage other than in isolated scenarios, or when it's woefully unavailable. It is worth noting that while Dexterity tends to focus on slows, Intelligence also does but in a generally more powerful way through directly affecting action speed. Pinning can be good, though.