[Feedback] Address Defensive Disparity: Proposed ES Nerfs for 0.5.0
" I honestly don't even think CI is op. I think it's the amount of affixes that Armour and Evasion have to dedicate to get their defense to the same level as ES or ES + CI. Flat + percent + life + applies to elemental AND some form of life regen. ES get regen for free and doesn't need some extra ES specific affix. Even if ES power is equal to the others, it will still feel stronger. |
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ES is not overpowered. Outside of big numbers nothing is really there. CI does not save you from danger. Big slams can hurt you hard. You still need elemental resistance. Without CI You still need chaos resistance because for example one explosive pod in ritual cap pop your 7000 es pool in one shot. Since OG Grim Feast gone there is not defensive layers outside if crappy Convalescense. With CI you need to stop getting damage and invest in faster recharging. Ignite can easily kill you and nothing you can do about it.
Yeah, one year later because of Armor and Evasion being copium defenses that barely works outside of high end builds, we still blame ES because it's better instead of pushing developers to make change in that regard. And thats why ES wins simply by not being weird. Just stack big numbers that easily understandable compare to what a fk is that idiocracy that are Armor/EV ratings. Last edited by default_mp3#9394 on Feb 3, 2026, 9:16:00 AM
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Armour and evasion themselves are OK. But the life number is low. 3% increasing nodes in tree? Ridiculous! And there are nodes, which decreasing life (Goring, Giant's Blood).
Either, I think, that CI is OK. Just buff life builds. |
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ES like in my OP needs work. You just get too much with very little effort. Something’s gotta give with ES as you just get too much of too many different mechanics.
The devs with ziggy even acknowledged they don’t like its placement in balance either. Life though I think baseline with life rolls on gear… 3-3.5k. without being a titan or needing a shield mod, should be achievable without min max Pretty modest and not over the top buff. Think that’s perfectly fine. Armour needs 0 work done to it. The armour applied to ele mod makes a disgusting difference. Probably my favorite mod in the game. I can’t speak for evasion though. Mash the clean Last edited by Mashgesture#2912 on Feb 3, 2026, 1:09:45 PM
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" Agreed, Mark even mentioned ES is not balanced compared to other defensive mechanics. Last edited by CharlesJT#7681 on Feb 3, 2026, 3:51:02 PM
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I think the issue is that a lot of ES spell builds kill everything in .1 seconds anyways so it doesn't even matter what defenses they use.
I'm playing a CI character with 10k ES and it doesn't seem broken to me. If I try and do 3 damage mod maps, I still die. And get 1 shot if I over-juice expedition mobs. I'm also not playing coc/coa comet though. Last edited by imphilxd#4709 on Feb 3, 2026, 5:34:41 PM
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" That's what I'm asking and saw a lot of people complaign to, armour would be ok IF we had health with it. I just made another character (ES) and ES amount stack so fast its nobrainer. |
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" Considering they were also content with no-revives period on maps regardless of how modded a waystone is, the previous state of armor, and let's not forget their stances over the years since PoE 1, which they all backed down on with sufficient player pushback, I'm just going to say that their opinion on this is moot. The developers aren't infallible and their thoughts on the state of ES's placement isn't the be-all end-all on the subject. If they like armor's current placement, but somehow 8-10k+ ES crosses the line, then yeah I'm going to say they're wrong. Defenses should matter and it should be possible to reach that level without needing to pay ridiculous sums of currency to achieve. Neither armor nor evasion is at that level and should be brought up to match ES. If they're going to invalidate ES after investing so much into passives for it, then you give players less incentive to build defenses. This will invariably shift the meta back around to making glass cannons that nuke screens, because you don't need to worry about getting hit if everything is dead. It's the same problem PoE 1 has, and I want to avoid that. I don't want the best defense to be "don't get hit 5head". Now, there's a big difference between 8k-12k ES, and whatever the hell Abyssal Lich is doing by getting 100k+. That can definitely be looked at. It should be okay to get enough defenses to eat a juiced Zekoa's slam without getting 1shot, but not enough to facetank all of Arbiter's corridor blasts. PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds. Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build! And the winds will cry / and many men will die / and all the waves will bow down / to the Loreley Last edited by Pizzarugi#6258 on Feb 4, 2026, 10:34:26 AM
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Honestly, I think we're arguing about the wrong knob.
If you want to make ES/CI feel less like "god mode", you don't necessarily need to take a chainsaw to ES numbers - you can just make chaos resistance less of a tax paid in blood and currency. Give us more ways to get chaos res on sockets, item implicits, whatever. Right now in endgame, chaos res feels like the single most important resistance, and also the most annoying/expensive to get while still keeping everything else online. That's kind of the core problem for me. Getting any one thing is easy. - Damage? Easy. - ES? Easy. - +skill levels? Also easy. But getting them TOGETHER with good resists (including chaos), and without your gear turning into a suffix-pressure sudoku puzzle, is where it actually gets hard. Example from my own setup: ele res capped, chaos res around 30%. And chaos still hits like a truck. I'm not a glass cannon, but I'm not a walking fortress either - around 9k ES, armour about 30%, resists otherwise fine, damage in the millions. Bosses mostly evaporate in under 10 seconds (unless I deliberately wander into the "juiced to the moon" stuff, which I don't). And yet... some random mob in a random instance can still delete me. It's not even consistent. 99.9% of the time everything is fine, and then one mystery projectile from off-screen like it's filing a complaint with HR, and I'm looking at a death recap that says "trust me bro". So yeah, I don't think defenses need nerfs across the board. If anything, either defenses need a bit more support (especially life/chaos-res access), or monster damage spikes need toning down. Right now it feels less like "build defenses" and more like "build defenses, then get sniped anyway, but with better manners". Last edited by Jyrlep#4788 on Feb 4, 2026, 11:47:24 PM
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" The quantities arent something I am overly concerned with its the mechanics that go with it like I mentioned in my OP. I think that %ES needs to be toned down a bit more reasonable though. As getting a high amount into the 20-40 range is absurd, even on a hybrid 10k ES is a joke of an accomplishment. Its too easy. But its mostly things like CI, MoM, Recharge, Convalescence+second wind, tree investment etc...
Spoiler
•CI is too powerful. Should maybe just remove the chaos damage penalty not completely be immune to it...
Bleed should still work as well •MoM, not even POE1 gives you 100% from MoM. Im not sure why POE2 does. Its stupid broken with mana remnants. •Recharge/Start of Recharge. These nodes need completely gutted HARD. This has to be the most broken part of the entire skill tree right here:  You get access to all within a few travel nodes 1) Recharge 2) Start of charge Both in the same cluster on top of eachother WHY??? 3) Massive ES with even more 2 entire travel nodes from that jewel socket 4) Full thresh immune. Stun and ailment. Both in the same cluster on top of %Increased ES THREE TIMES WHY??? 5) Jewel Socket 6) New Armour/ES Hybrid cluster, which is completely busted. CAN YA GUESS WHAT MODS ARE INSIDE THAT CLUSTER? OH LOOK MORE RECHARGE RATE. AND % ES. 7) MoM 8) And a bunch of damage in every direction for every archetype. Even minions lmfao Anyone who plays this part of the tree, if they dont come up here. Are trolling. Or intentionally trying to make their character worse/fair. These things should be an actual investment to get all of these mechanics. And you shouldnt GET so much either. The values are too high on recharge/start of recharge. On a single mod on a pair of boots you can get fucking 40% ES recharge rate. Thats how ridiculous this is. And these stupid nodes are all next to your %ES nodes on the tree, you dont have to travel at all for these. Comparatively, regen for Armour based builds. You have to actually travel to invest and sacrafice for regen, the nodes are so far out of the way that theres only 1 cluster worth going to. And it comes with HEAVY sacrifice. The others arent even worth going for. This cluster seen here:  With its 10% increased small nodes and the notable. I have to spend 2 travel nodes and then 4 points to get the actual regen from this. You get like 20 life regen on average for a mod roll if you have space for it. •Convalescences+second wind No you dont get second wind with this mechanic. Its a joke, you get one charge of this. And up its spirit cost as well. 30? 30 spirit for full recovery on your massive ES pool? And then you can use it twice? No. Thats just blatantly broken. The mechanics surrounding energy shield are just DEMONSTRABLY unbalanced. And its just not even something we can compare anything to. We are pretty much still at old grim broken with Energy shield. This stuff needs tuned down massively. People may not want my magnitude of nerfs. But thinking ANY of this is reasonable with ES, is just someone that is not concerned with balance. Mash the clean Last edited by Mashgesture#2912 on Feb 5, 2026, 12:39:13 AM
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