Resistance Penalty - Consider this.

I am not against the res penalty at all. Being an older fellar that played an awful lot of diablo (2), it isnt but a thing.

However, i feel like the implementation of GGG's Res penalty in POE2, is absurd. It makes sense, when you have finally beat the entity dominating all of hell, and embark on a journey into the next 'prestige' level of the game. I get that, adds a little spark.

But what doesnt sit well with me at all, is incrementally peeling away our resistances as we play through the normal game, for seemingly no fucking reason what so ever, nothing in the story even relates to this, in no fashion or form at all.

Honestly, it just feels like another stab from GGG with the punishment stick. Look, im not saying remove the penalties, but imo, you should really put them back to the way it has always traditionally been done.

Even POE1, though not running you through nightmare and hell modes, uses minimal half way / end points to distribute out the punishment. Not every fucking act, peel some away, and reforce more gear adjustments, etc etc.

Come on guys. I get that you like to add in 'negatives' every bloody chance you get (sigh), but this one just feels so out of touch with game flow.

Just me.

It's not a punishment stick for the sake of it. The way resistances are calculated makes it so that it has increasing returns for every point you get.
So the "penalties" are more or less a soft reset after every act as you level, because otherwise it would feel like res has close to no impact early game and insane scaling late game.