Why are life nodes required for any build to be viable?

Okay let's break this post down:

Why is |not dying| required for any build to be |playable|

Let's think about that, do you really need to ask why do you not want to die?

They could remove all life nodes from the tree and add it into your character automatically then we can just pose the question "Why is dps nodes require for any build to be viable."

What game isn't "put enough points into not dying and then as much dps as possible."

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RagnarokChu wrote:

Okay let's break this post down:

Why is |not dying| required for any build to be |playable|

Let's think about that, do you really need to ask why do you not want to die?

They could remove all life nodes from the tree and add it into your character automatically then we can just pose the question "Why is dps nodes require for any build to be viable."

What game isn't "put enough points into not dying and then as much dps as possible."

Or... GGG could have taken a better approach to defenses in this game. Maximizing your life pool (ES) shouldn't been your only viable option for survivability.

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trollforum wrote:

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RagnarokChu wrote:

Okay let's break this post down:

Why is |not dying| required for any build to be |playable|

Let's think about that, do you really need to ask why do you not want to die?

They could remove all life nodes from the tree and add it into your character automatically then we can just pose the question "Why is dps nodes require for any build to be viable."

What game isn't "put enough points into not dying and then as much dps as possible."

Or... GGG could have taken a better approach to defenses in this game. Maximizing your life pool (ES) shouldn't been your only viable option for survivability.

There are other options, viz block/spellblock, CI, etc
But those builds will always be harder to achieve than ur average life-based build.

I don't see how POE is different from any other arpg w.r.t this, with exception of D2 medianXL mod, where u had to dump all ur points into ur main stat to get maxblock, more dps etc. But again that mod gave u so much life per level up that stat point investment into vitality was not that much required.

@OP - Honestly? The primary reason any viable skilltree needs to plan for at least 200% life is because players are unable to reliably manually dodge attacks/spells because of horrific desync.

If there was no desync, I'd be perfectly comfortable rolling with 100-150% life to soak up the odd random hit that makes it past evasion/block/dodge. I'm confident enough in my skill as a player to manually avoid/evade projectiles/spells and big windup physical attacks. Unfortunately, there's no realistic way to do that with the extremely common, crippling amount of desync this game suffers from.

As it stands currently, the game is completely unplayable without a massive pool of life (or ES) to at least give you a chance of surviving when (not if, but when) the game decides you're actually three full screen-widths back in a room with 50 enemies surrounding you.

It's an extremely annoying fact of life, and it's one of the reasons I'm not playing as much as I really want to. Ask GGG why they aren't fixing it.

tl;dr

widespread, common desync issues pigeonhole viable builds into a few common paths/themes

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CptLain wrote:

@OP - Honestly? The primary reason any viable skilltree needs to plan for at least 200% life is because players are unable to reliably manually dodge attacks/spells because of horrific desync.

If there was no desync, I'd be perfectly comfortable rolling with 100-150% life to soak up the odd random hit that makes it past evasion/block/dodge. I'm confident enough in my skill as a player to manually avoid/evade projectiles/spells and big windup physical attacks. Unfortunately, there's no realistic way to do that with the extremely common, crippling amount of desync this game suffers from.

I think this nails a big part of it. The places where my life goes low are almost all associated with desynch. And desynch is the major reason I wont even consider playing hard core.

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CptLain wrote:

Ask GGG why they aren't fixing it.

Really, the only answers that add up is either they can't, or doing so would cost too much. Neither answer bodes well for the future of the game.

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nightblade157 wrote:

There are other options, viz block/spellblock, CI, etc
But those builds will always be harder to achieve than ur average life-based build.

No, as mentioned, those builds still need life.

You can run a max block, max spellblock, acrobatics, phase acro, ondars, and atziri's step build (in fact, I know someone who does this) and you STILL need to grab a bunch of life nodes because of various other forms of damage that go through your mitigation (e.g. chaos clouds from zombies, CB, rogue hits from dominus inflicting bleed, or the random on in twenty big hit that goes un-dodged/evaded/blocked).

There is NO build in this game that doesn't require a good health pool, and there are no "other options" to having life.