My 2 (dozen) cents about "players prefer glass cannons" (interview reaction)
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The Zizaran interview Marks answer was that people generally prefer damage over defense and when the topic was pushed forward he called the "mmorpg playstyle" that would not be possible in PoE mechanic and vision...
I am one of those player who prefer defensive playstyle and here are my current issues: Defensive playstyle in poe is technically non viable. Escalation and powercreep. In the endgame its not optional, its mandatory to have - all 4 res capped - your class defense maxed out (dodge/block) - high healthpool The endgame expects every player to have 75%+ mitigation. And at that point why is a firemage with 80% fire res and 75% other is more defensive that a warrior with the same stat? And every mobs and late map is technically a "statchecker". Proves that uberbosses are just bullethells with invincibility, because seems there's no other way to challenge players while swarm mobs are designed to "oneshot or oneshotted" In my opinion maybe endgame you shouldn't even let everyone to hit so much res. I think the only class that should have all res cap hit should be the templar. Because here is the reverse question: How can you make meaningful combat if every players are baseline demigods? How can you design enemies against mechanics that nullify damage? And here my issue is that there's 2 type of characters: a) glasscannons b) Ruper-teardrop builds. And yes, I agree your only option is to just make oneshot mechanics everywhere, because how else you supposed to give challenge to players who - 75% block - 40% dodge - and have such regeneration level that in 2 sec 4k hp is back? But if I want to have endgame technically 1hp build I would have play Binding of Isaac with the Lost... Mark mentioned the regeneration is the big problem. I personally think block shouldn't be a "dodge with triggering thorn" mechanic. You have the "guard" mechanic already. Use that for shields! Yes, as a warrior I want to survive a few shots. And you say defensive playstyle isn't preferred. Not true! Theres just no other option! Especially that several endgame mechanics actually punishing you if you have low dps. (delirium, breach and rituals are on timers) mark raised the question: Should it be possible to players just to AFK bossfights? yes, but actually no. Yes, it is goofy and fun for a while, but lets say an ideal, well balanced bossfight should be 3-5 minutes. Doing it for an hour while cooking dinner is not too efficient either. And in the end I/We want an ARPG not an idle game or auto battler... But if you're worried this much, counter mechanics exist: - straight counters Player have too much armor? Send minions or boss use armor brake skills. Meaningful combat can be making decisions. As a warrior with high armor I need to kill armor brakers first. Since I have shields and def nodes against ranged attacks possibly those enemies arent bothering me, but a fragile mage possible want to kill ranged enemies first... Too much regen? You have a rare mechanic already: prevent regeneration above 50%. (well... in the endgame doesn't matter, because everything oneshots you anyway, so it doesn't matter if you die twice from the same damage) But you can have stacking debuffs Each stack reduce regeneration. Again... you give players meaningful encounters. "Soft-bullethells" Avoid goos on the floor. Yes, you can get 8k hp reg/second so you could technically stand in lava and poison essence to dps, or you can have less regen and get actual dps stats... Give bosses soft enrage mechanics. If someone doesn't know in WoW there's enrage mechanic, aka boss gets 1000% damage after timer goes down, aka oneshotting any tank. And there are soft enrages that just makes the fight harder with time. WoW at least was good at this. After so many years tbh they couldn't just use the same cookie cuttings. But in PoE2 there's forgemaster. You have to kill the boss before you run out of arena. I thought the Giant in act2 supposed to be similar when I saw left side of the arena crumble. Boss can have so much soft enrage mechanics. A stacking debuff, swarm enemies on timer. Like in tower defense games. Each round more mobs coming... But ok... I get it, you don't want PoE becoming like an mmorpg, and at this point you fundamentally have to redising the game to even consider shields having guard stat instead nullifying damage. I still say it should be considerable, because again... endgame even warrior just go up max defense, and lose armor, since its a useless stat. If you're oneshotted anyway, evasion > armor. So you can dodge damage than have a chance to null damage. Maybe the question should be approached from a different perspective: Are there any dual wield builds? Did anyone even tried out Dual-Giants blood? Because armor seems so useless every warrior Ive seen on stream doing 2handed mace - shield combo. And again... because shield doesn't reduce damage, it nullifies it. And don't know how many times I should repeat that this is just bad. It should be a key node like acrobatics. But another reason why players go glasscannon in the end: because armor does not give dps!~Why bother becoming defensive when even 20k armor, 75% block, 30% evasion, 4k hp and 2k regen and you technically play "chicken" with enemies where the endgame becomes a statistic calculation of how many hits you can dodge or "dodge with thorn" I give the question: Add a key node that turns armor - damage. Again... you have it with block Even twice. [Lay Siege] and [Offensive stance]: each % block chance = 1% extra damage. But we don't have nodes with defense. You have Brute strength (str = extra damage) But you don't have armor turns into damage So sorry Mark, but this is biased. People don't have defensive builds, because you don't give them defensive build options. Add this key node to the skill tree and see how builds will shift. Check how many players pick the [Iron Reflexes] skill (all evasion turned into armor) Just proving how bad armor is. Just a sidenote, but I was thinking would it be possible to create a Berzerker Warrior? Dual wield (maybe dual 2 handed wield) And use rage - life leech with Berzerk Spirit gem but Overheal would result Guard stat? Even getting [Vengeful Fury] (each rage gives extra armor) Is this even a valid build idea? How about give a Str = Reduce incoming damage? The only passive-aggressive skill is the reworked [Revenge] (3% of body armor = thorn) Dont have that skill yet, but that's what I am building. In 0.1 it was bugged, because armor increase buffs and skill did not interacted with this node. Only baseline armor was turned into thorn, did not matter if you had [Vengeful Fury] [Stone Skin - Titan ascendancy] or [Sturdy Armor] in fact I even doubt Scavanged plating was counted either, since that skill gives both armor and thorn, but I don't think the extra armor looped back to thorn. And don't think its considered OP, because without the Pale King unique any thorn build is useless. Just adding another key node that should be on the skill tree, where the unique power would be to "free up" skill points. And even thorn builds getting lackluster endgame, since the purpose of that build that you have to facetank any damage, but you cant, because endgame things oneshot you anyway... But ok... I get it. Your vision is not to become an "mmorpg" style game. You like that a combat is technically 2-3 second decision chains. But how about I give you plenty of ideas how to make defensive playstyle fun and optionable: - I already mentioned the "Berzerker" build above. Give Berzerker Spirit gem the guard mechanic what the unique flask has. (overheal = extra life) More shield skills: Here I am not sure if 1st cast would be channel, second use is use? Or would it be possible to have 2 way to use skill? Like it has two use icon/hotkey. Because the following pattern would give you options: "Thug of war" Channel skill to block incoming damage. Secondary use is to release stored stacks as damage... "Shield bash" Stored damage is given back as stun. (I know there's a raise shield mechanic, but that is so overwhelmingly bad to use, as soon you get resonate shield you replace shield raise. "Knockback" This is as defensive as it can get. However as thorn warrior I hate knockback. Im a masochist. I want enemies to hit me more. XD But other builds could use this. We can go through the whole debuff: shield attack give bleed, stun, armor brake (we already have that as resonate shield). What about more offensive shield uses? "Throw shield" And here it could be two different version: a) "Captain America" or WoW-Paladin style. A ranged shield attack but you lose those defensive stats while you get your weapon back. b) you must recover your shield wither by picking up, or run far away until it "teleports" back to you. And even with leap slam Im sure that time can feel long. (and now I envisioned having weapon swap 2 shields for the mad Draven players from league of Legends XD) So these are some "retaliation" skills. Since you often say you want meaningful combat Im sure these could fit the bill. But there are pure defense mechanics that sounds boring, but with cooldowns/charge mechanics I am sure it can be turned interesting: - last Man Stand Your hp cant go under 1, become invincible for x seconds but regen disabled too. Could be broken, maybe those players who play those 1hp spellcaster builds can tell us how a melees can be interesting with this. - flat boring stat checks: reduce incomingdamage by a huge margin but on long cooldown. - Taunt and debuff warcrys? As a thorn warbringer this would be such a bless. Effected enemies turn towards you (thinking of coop game) Enemies have reduced damage, but increased attack speed. Sundering. Ah... the good old warrior skill from wow. Enemies have slower attack speed, reduced melee damage, etc... How about skill gem for the Shield Wall skill? Personally that skill is such a wasted potential. On description it looks like a defensive skill, but in reality its just extra explosion. I only found that skill useful in Act3 boss under the camp pyramids bullet hell phase... You already have a support gem to make it a full circle. How about adding another gem to make it casted on range? Trap enemies - slam them Another support gem where your thorn stats also given to your shield wall? A warbringer with Anvil Weight could have delay enemy swarms while the thornwall shreds their armor until you get a second pack... I can give more: Shield wall that pushes enemies away? (Azir ulti from LoL) And with this it could be a combo setup. Drop hammer of god, push enemies to impact zone... Bit better than an impractical granade what it has now. Not to mention its gem upgrade. Seriously... who have time to raise 4 walls?! I know this is a long wall of text, but just couldn't let that go. Hope you guy add something to add, expand the idea or maybe you can point out that some ideas already exist just did not found the build for it Last bumped on Apr 12, 2025, 2:58:10 PM
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" Didn't feel like reading your entire essay, but I totally agree here. Defense is so terrible. I just ran a T1 endgame map with monsters having +100% stun chance against me. That was the only buff they had on that map. It was the most annoying, sluggish, unrewarding experience I've had so far. I'm a smith of kitava with stun threshold and armour passives on the tree already, AND have around 350 strength with maxed elemental Resistances and 35% chaos Resist with armour that mitigates chaos damage too. I also use a shield for extra block and armour and stun threshold. The fact that every other hit is small stunning me out of my already slow abilities is insane. It's unfortunate that they nerfed everything into oblivion and made almost nothing viable through most of the game Utterly unacceptable Last edited by SpaceFoxyFū#3839 on Apr 11, 2025, 12:54:19 PM
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Yea, that's a bit of a read but I'll add to the "No, that's wrong".
Players go glass cannon when defenses don't work or there's not enough fight duration to force the issue. Defense/Sustain value is a direct product of kill time. In both PoE games players push damage because they've been given tons of options with little diminishing returns. At the same time Defenses often have 2-3 counter stats/mechanics involved with them. Damage is faily reliable while defense is not. A mechanic example from PoE1 is SS Vs Max Res. A lot of parroting of SS being strictly better but that wasn't true. Least not until GGG added Exposure to enemies then it became true. GGG needs to stop playing with big numbers. Especially when the game isn't even out. An armor character should have 20-30% DR but it's reliable. None of this big hit vs small hit nonsense. They literally said Resists were balanced around having 0% so why is armor treated so differently? "Never trust floating women." -Officer Kirac
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" Have fun picking them out and targeting them in 7 packs of mobs and 20 visual effects while trying to avoid all the orbs that follow you and explode + other target you from the edge of the screen and stun you with ranged attacks. |
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" Well... in campaign it is more or less doable. Best horror area is the damn River Hags. As soon as you hear her sound you turn into a predator. Campaign and Endgame becomes two different game. But with progression (power escalation vs powercreep) we gladly exchange mechanics for convenience. Worst offender is the Raise Shield mechanic. (I opened a thread, but nobody answered to it.) We have gems now for Raise Shield but I am not sure how 8useful they are? I mean is it only works when I use raise shield or when we exchange the skill? Because as soon as I got Resonate Shield I instantly replace the skill. Why would I try to time my block and release for a questionable damage when I can just channel Resonate shield that also holds up the shield as active block? As Warbringer we even give that up, because Turtle charm only works for passive block, and Anvils weight we get the armor brake that would be the main job of the skill. Why bother with active block anyway when you have a 75% chance to block why not doing anything? This is why maybe it would be considerable that passive block should be x amount of damage mitigation while active block nullifies damage... The dodge mechanic is more useful, but as we get closer to the endgame the movement speed and evasion overrides it. Evasion (and acrobatic) will nullify damage and with high movement speed if you can run away from projectiles. Or... as Thorn warrior this was my experience. Even though heavy armor slows you down (unlike any other armor in the game) I had to stand still so my Pale King thorn kills ranged enemies. My slowpoke speed just "walked out" from danger. So again... escalation... after some point with enough movement speed you literally walk away from danger. In fact the dodgeroll is a hindrance, because its slower than your running speed... Crowd control could be also tools to counter enemies: Examples: same crowd control handles monsters differently. Like a slow that can effectively catch speedsters, a slow moving juggernaut walks through it. We should get tools to handle problems, otherwise the meta will change that "you need this amount of stat to become endgame viable" Looking at threads seems stun resistance will be the new thing to collect. |
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" https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3757653/page/1#p26081147 Watch my videos for the monk. After these videos, I bought 2 gems with 20% protection from the energy shield camp. There were no changes after that. Three white mobs can easily shoot down all my melee attacks. It's not okay. What kind of defense or level can I talk about if I just can't hit a mob properly, and the only defense is a somersault? Or are you suggesting that I carry a second set of weapons to kill ordinary monsters? Then why was the battle staff created? Content Update 0.2.0 -- Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Nerfs
"Fixed a bug where existing items and skills did damage." |
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