WHY is the Defense System Like This?

I think the logic behind the resistance penalties is because they're the only defensive stat that doesn't scale; 75% at level 1 stays 75% until level 80. It's a way to force characters to continue investing into gear upgrades that boost your resistances further, just like you have to continue investing in more HP, more armor, more evasion, etc.

I don't really like that logic though :/

Ok my post is basically about two main points. Sorry if I have some of the details wrong, but I think it doesn't take away to much from the main idea.

1. The three defenses I states have close to no effect on elemental damage, which is dominant in most main dungeons and strong enemies. You can go into, for example, the Pyramid, and those three defenses will have no effect on whether you survive or not, only Life/Es, and resists. I feel like they are simply ignore for at least half, if not majority of the game, which I don't think is fair for the people who invest in it.

2. The second thing is the resistance penalty. Why focus on elemental damages? Why not a straightforward scaling of all damages received by your character? By end game, it pretty much becomes, get Life or resists, or die. Armor, evasion, etc simply just doesn't make enough difference to matter anymore, even if your build centers around it.

It would be nice if I can get a developer's answer on this.

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tinghshi wrote:

Ok my post is basically about two main points. Sorry if I have some of the details wrong, but I think it doesn't take away to much from the main idea.

1. The three defenses I states have close to no effect on elemental damage, which is dominant in most main dungeons and strong enemies. You can go into, for example, the Pyramid, and those three defenses will have no effect on whether you survive or not, only Life/Es, and resists. I feel like they are simply ignore for at least half, if not majority of the game, which I don't think is fair for the people who invest in it.

2. The second thing is the resistance penalty. Why focus on elemental damages? Why not a straightforward scaling of all damages received by your character? By end game, it pretty much becomes, get Life or resists, or die. Armor, evasion, etc simply just doesn't make enough difference to matter anymore, even if your build centers around it.

It would be nice if I can get a developer's answer on this.

1. "physical defense seems useless"

* Plate armor will not protect you any better then leather against a bolt of lightning or fireball, it's not logical to make armor protect against elemental damage.

* Yes, resists are important. The good news its not that hard to stack them (even with the penalties), it's certainly easier than stacking armor to get high DR. You can get spell block, but good positioning and movement allows you to get out of the way of the majority of the projectile spells anyway.

* Having a decent amount of DR is still important as many melee mobs come in packs and tend to swarm you. With low phys defense it's easy to get stun locked, even if you have a high life/ES pool (especially if you rely on ES). It's easier to get away with less DR though because kiting, curses, and totems make avoiding phys damage simpler.

* High life/ES will always be the best form of defense. High life allows you take more burst damage before dying (armor is terrible vs burst damage), gives you more time to escape from danger, get stunned less, have shorter elemental status durations. Apart from CI it is the only reliable defense against chaos damage.

Personally I think it should be easier to get higher levels of DR without needing a shield or taking Iron Reflexes, but I don't think it needs to mitigate elemental damage to be effective.

2. Resist penalties:

* This (or some system like it) was necessary. It was much too easy to stack resists before and having max resists makes areas like the pyramid effortless.

* A "straightforward scaling of all damages received" is not so straightforward in terms of dev time and complexity. It's much simpler to have a resist penalty than adjust the damage balance of all the monsters and spells in the game.

* Because we have a percentage resist system instead of a rating system penalties are a way of extending the scaling with better gear and item mods. Extending the range without extending the cap so to speak.

"

Ok my post is basically about two main points. Sorry if I have some of the details wrong, but I think it doesn't take away to much from the main idea.

The problem is your main idea. But it's not actually a problem.

RPGs have operated like this for decades, this game makes no exceptional change to this long tradition. It's really quite a simple and obvious concept:

Melee characters have high hit power and lots of HP.
Rogue characters have unique skills and dodge the hits with average HP.
Wizard characters specialise in elemental damage and buffs, very low HP.
Cleric/Paladin/etc characters are mainly physical but have some elemental power. Above average HP.

Throughout the game any player can accumulate additional bonus's to their own specialisation. This specialised ability make some monsters hard and some easy, but all will find different monsters difficult/easy.

As a seperatre bonus, all player types can collect Elemental Resistances - the ideal way to take on a Wizard/Cleric character, the most commonly expected foes towards the end of a level.

The weighting of the max limit and difficulty to acquire Elemental Resistances is still, like the other individual resistances, more attainable by some classes than others - just like the specialised skills, making each character stronger or weaker in some areas.

It makes absolutely logical sense to have it this way, after all - Wizards and Clerics are far more likely to know the very element they themselves specialise in.

Have you any idea how frustrating it is to be a Wizard only getting either daggers crappy wands all game. Not everything negative about one character makes all the others have 100% awesome.

And as a matter of fact Marauders top the leagues on an almost constant basis.

I'm sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what this thread is all about other than someone getting butt-hurt because they don't know how to play RPGs.

No offence, but I'm a blue banana if you can't grasp this concept.

"

Never_nou wrote:

"

Ok my post is basically about two main points. Sorry if I have some of the details wrong, but I think it doesn't take away to much from the main idea.

The problem is your main idea. But it's not actually a problem.

RPGs have operated like this for decades, this game makes no exceptional change to this long tradition. It's really quite a simple and obvious concept:

Melee characters have high hit power and lots of HP.
Rogue characters have unique skills and dodge the hits with average HP.
Wizard characters specialise in elemental damage and buffs, very low HP.
Cleric/Paladin/etc characters are mainly physical but have some elemental power. Above average HP.

Throughout the game any player can accumulate additional bonus's to their own specialisation. This specialised ability make some monsters hard and some easy, but all will find different monsters difficult/easy.

As a seperatre bonus, all player types can collect Elemental Resistances - the ideal way to take on a Wizard/Cleric character, the most commonly expected foes towards the end of a level.

The weighting of the max limit and difficulty to acquire Elemental Resistances is still, like the other individual resistances, more attainable by some classes than others - just like the specialised skills, making each character stronger or weaker in some areas.

It makes absolutely logical sense to have it this way, after all - Wizards and Clerics are far more likely to know the very element they themselves specialise in.

Have you any idea how frustrating it is to be a Wizard only getting either daggers crappy wands all game. Not everything negative about one character makes all the others have 100% awesome.

And as a matter of fact Marauders top the leagues on an almost constant basis.

I'm sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what this thread is all about other than someone getting butt-hurt because they don't know how to play RPGs.

No offence, but I'm a blue banana if you can't grasp this concept.

You have no idea what this thread is about because you obviously did not take the time to read or understand it. Your post has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I've played RPGs since forever, and I'm well aware of that custom. I'm all for the class specializations, which is what I think makes this game great.

What I'm saying is that some specializations just aren't worthwhile, or example, as I've state, armor, block, and evasion. They are pretty much pushed to the background as the game forces you to specialize in Life/ES and resists. Of course Marauders dominate the game, since they specialize in Life, which completely overshadows all other defenses.

This system actually discourages the classic RPG specializations you love so much, since it make most of them so much less viable. Why do you think Marauders and Witches dominate the rankings? For the exact reasons I stated.

"

* Plate armor will not protect you any better then leather against a bolt of lightning or fireball, it's not logical to make armor protect against elemental damage.

* Yes, resists are important. The good news its not that hard to stack them (even with the penalties), it's certainly easier than stacking armor to get high DR. You can get spell block, but good positioning and movement allows you to get out of the way of the majority of the projectile spells anyway.

* Having a decent amount of DR is still important as many melee mobs come in packs and tend to swarm you. With low phys defense it's easy to get stun locked, even if you have a high life/ES pool (especially if you rely on ES). It's easier to get away with less DR though because kiting, curses, and totems make avoiding phys damage simpler.

* High life/ES will always be the best form of defense. High life allows you take more burst damage before dying (armor is terrible vs burst damage), gives you more time to escape from danger, get stunned less, have shorter elemental status durations. Apart from CI it is the only reliable defense against chaos damage.

Personally I think it should be easier to get higher levels of DR without needing a shield or taking Iron Reflexes, but I don't think it needs to mitigate elemental damage to be effective.

Sure it has some uses, but as you've said, and as I've constantly repeated, Life/ES and resists are so much better. Not just that, but those others are useless for half the game.

Maybe it doesn't make sense for armor to mitigate spells, but what about blocking and evasion? Think about it.

"

* This (or some system like it) was necessary. It was much too easy to stack resists before and having max resists makes areas like the pyramid effortless.

* A "straightforward scaling of all damages received" is not so straightforward in terms of dev time and complexity. It's much simpler to have a resist penalty than adjust the damage balance of all the monsters and spells in the game.

* Because we have a percentage resist system instead of a rating system penalties are a way of extending the scaling with better gear and item mods. Extending the range without extending the cap so to speak.

Of course scaling is necessary. What I'm saying is, why focus on resists? Saying its harder to do otherwise doesn't make it a good system, or even logical. I still don't see why the penalty can't be extended to all damages.

You can block spells in this game, just have to get what you need to do it.

Path of Exile definitely doesnt work exactly like you might think or want it to. Just have to roll with it. I also was surprised that I couldn't just stack armor into oblivion and be ok. But oh well I will figure out what works and make it happen. Life and ES are the best besides resistances. Its pretty crazy how much life you have to stack in a lot of builds.

I didn't read every post but it seems everyone is picking apart details of the OP rather than addressing the overall theme.

Life/ES are vastly better than armor and eva. Armor works well in normal mobs and is easy to get enough to handle most situations. I've had no issue being able to handle normal damage with only 6k armor. The problem is to be able to handle burst damage with armor you need north of 50k which is impossible without an iron skin granite. So armor becomes less effective in situations where you need it more. To counteract this tanks stack life over armor.

Eva is simple, even if you have 95% chance to evade, you will be hit and it will be the full amount so you need to stack life to prepare for this.

From my experiences with both I think that eva should have a glancing blow effect which puts in some amount of DR then puts the damage as DoT. This way at least evasion users will have a chance to respond rather than getting unlucky against brutus or vaal to be a victim of a one shot because of RNG.

That would be a huge buff to eva making it much better than armor, so lower the modifier on armor. Rather than having it multipled by 12, drop it to 6-9 so that you won't need such huge amounts of armor to handle large burst damage.