Life vs energy shield question

I agree

Endgame should be viable for every class and ascendency.

IMO I don't see ES being overpowered, but IME the Lich Ascendency scales ES by a lot. The gameplay feels fair in endgame, It definitely feels unfair for other classes and ascendancies for endgame.

With Lich to reach godly numbers, it would still require a lot of grinding and investing in expensive gear.

It's not just a balance issue with defensive stats being exclusive to an ascendency, It's also a balance issue with waystone mods & % scaling for the mob stats.

It seems to me that the gap between normal and rare mobs becomes wider. Normal mobs remain weak while rare mobs gain 1 shot potential and can be extremely durable.

"

TwitchGLHFsport#2155 schrieb:

so are you saying with endgame bosses, the amount of physical damage they do is so high it basically makes armour redundant?

yeah on T16 maps the mods can be pretty insane.

Pretty much, yes. Armour is really good for mapping but pretty bad for bossing. I've titan with 50k/60k buffed armour, and it can stand in the middle of breach/abyss/delirium and survive all hits and never die.

However one big boss bonk and he's dead. That's because of armour damage mitigation formula.

So my character has ~2400 hp, but if I get hit with ONE bonk for 5000 physical damage, it's INSTA death. Because thatll hit for 2500. When bosses are juiced a lot of abilities can do way more damage than 5000

As you can imagine, for someone with 12k+ ES, that same 5k physical damage hit will barely even register, lol

"

EVGENIUS#2976 schrieb:

"

TwitchGLHFsport#2155 schrieb:

so are you saying with endgame bosses, the amount of physical damage they do is so high it basically makes armour redundant?

yeah on T16 maps the mods can be pretty insane.

Pretty much, yes. Armour is really good for mapping but pretty bad for bossing. I've titan with 50k/60k buffed armour, and it can stand in the middle of breach/abyss/delirium and survive all hits and never die.

However one big boss bonk and he's dead. That's because of armour damage mitigation formula.

So my character has ~2400 hp, but if I get hit with ONE bonk for 5000 physical damage, it's INSTA death. Because thatll hit for 2500. When bosses are juiced a lot of abilities can do way more damage than 5000

Bro 2,5k Life isn't a Life. Even Companion can reach 4k Life easily. Some things should Devs understand otherwise the game will end up be playable only by ES characters.

For me Classes should start with prefixed amount of defences. When i see warriors with 3,5k life or mercenaries with 1,8k , that is not only bad implementation but also ruining all the RPG regulations so far invented.

wait wth, for someone lvl 90 with no max HP % mods, what range HP does warrior have?

I'm still doing my playthrough with warrior to endgame.

I hit lvl 90 on my Witch in a reasonable amount of time playing solo.

I'm thinking with warrior, there are still a lot of support gems for DEX and INT.

I probably would just get the small +5 points for DEX & INT on passive tree-
Then get as much STR and life on items + the increased max life % mods on amulets.

What do you guys think would be a solution?

I think it would be cool if there was a passive node that had
+25 DEX +25 INT and then the final node is +50 STR

screw it, an abundance of STR wouldn't hurt. but it would clear a lot of the need to spend passive "stepping stone" points on INT and DEX. Aside from that sure there needs to be at least 1 node for % Max HP.

I still need to reach endgame and tank up to see what it's like.

So far the damage is insane with Temper Weapon I can chunk down bosses so fast, we will see if that continues to endgame.

That graph kind of scares me though. Might as well be running around naked.
There's too much sustain in the tree for regen, not enough max life for sure.
but there is plenty of damage.

"

EVGENIUS#2976 schrieb:

As you can imagine, for someone with 12k+ ES, that same 5k physical damage hit will barely even register, lol

Indeed. A change is very much needed. While Armor excels against numerous small hits, it is very weak against Big Hit.

On the contrary, ES is excellent against Big Hit, DOT.

A fair nerf would be ES being weak to small numerous hits while still stronk against BIG.

It would be nice if,

ES will consume a minimum of 5% max ES per hits, where at least 1% max Es damage taken.

Well, something like this. That's still 20 hits minimum. Numbers can be adjusted. At least have some weakness of being swarmed or barraged. Still pretty busted. Still can tank BIG and DOT.

"

Vihhura#2853 schrieb:

I know it early access but realy????, energy shield guys are runig wit 27k shield and I seen one warrior with 6k life, armour is terible all life node removed but there is tens of shield nodes everyware , like where is logic here ?

Shield and Life are not 1:1.

27K seems high. But 6K life is strong in more than point ways.

- Life Regeneration procs instantly. There are ways to make Shield Recovery instant or near instant, they cost passives/equipment.
- Life adds Stun and Ailment Thresholds. This means that someone with 27K shield alone is basically going to get killed by elemental ailments. White mobs can stun lock and erase you. Etc. So basically, if you are going for 27K Shield you HAVE to invest in quite a bit of passive nodes that make Energy Shield increase thresholds. These are points you are not going to spend on other things.
- Poison and Bleeding ignore Energy Shield unless you get Chaos Innoculation. CI comes with a lot other things to consider. I'd say it's a strong build, but it kind of locks you into it. There are other ways to deal with poison and bleed but that's more investment in equipment.

I am not saying 27K is not a strong thing to have. But the 6K life is not really half bad in comparison. You have to notice that all those extra things you'd be investing in to make the 27K work are points/equipment you could be using on extra damage mitigation. So the 6K life has an effective damage cap.

"

A fair nerf would be ES being weak to small numerous hits while still stronk against BIG.

ES is already really weak against sustained small hits. See stun from physical damage. But also the negation of recovery.

"

vexorian#9572 schrieb:

Shield and Life are not 1:1.

27K seems high. But 6K life is strong in more than point ways.

- Life Regeneration procs instantly. There are ways to make Shield Recovery instant or near instant, they cost passives/equipment.
- Life adds Stun and Ailment Thresholds. This means that someone with 27K shield alone is basically going to get killed by elemental ailments. White mobs can stun lock and erase you. Etc. So basically, if you are going for 27K Shield you HAVE to invest in quite a bit of passive nodes that make Energy Shield increase thresholds. These are points you are not going to spend on other things.
- Poison and Bleeding ignore Energy Shield unless you get Chaos Innoculation. CI comes with a lot other things to consider. I'd say it's a strong build, but it kind of locks you into it. There are other ways to deal with poison and bleed but that's more investment in equipment.

I am not saying 27K is not a strong thing to have. But the 6K life is not really half bad in comparison. You have to notice that all those extra things you'd be investing in to make the 27K work are points/equipment you could be using on extra damage mitigation. So the 6K life has an effective damage cap.

"

A fair nerf would be ES being weak to small numerous hits while still stronk against BIG.

ES is already really weak against sustained small hits. See stun from physical damage. But also the negation of recovery.

Get real. ES can scale both ailment and stun threshold with very minimal investment. With like 5 points they can have 60% of ES as additional threshold. With 10k ES, that's 5k threshold.

Meanwhile those threshold is only 50% of HP. Since it's hard to even get 3k hp, that's like 1.5k threshold. That's a huge difference.

ES inherent recharge rate is 12.5% and can be scaled further. In 10 sec undamaged, ES will have a guaranteed full not matter then how huge they are. Both Rate and and Start time can be reduced to a very comfortable amount, reaching thousands per second, all automated.

Life regen is alot meaningless as HP poll are tiny unless you are Blood Mage, which also scales from ES.

In POE2, Bleed bypass ES only IF it's damaging HIT manage to damage your Life portion. With huge ES, you are basically immune to bleed. With CI, immune to poison. and ES is very good to deal with DOT unlike small HP pool.

I'm not going to pretend that ES isn't powerful but every time someone complains about their 2400hp warrior and shows off the armour mitigation chart they always conveniently ignore:

- Guard
- Raise Shield = 100% mitigation for non-red (and some red) hits.
- They can get life on prefixes AND suffixes (str)
- Reduced crit damage bonus with nodes like Bladecatcher where you can get enough of it that crits do less damage to you than normal hits.
- Built-in ailment and stun defense.
- The fact that you can put on a piece of AR/ES gear and benefit from ES too.
- That most of the game is not one-shots where you take 5000 physical damage and a monster politely waits for you to recover.
- 2400 life and 20-30k armour is a baseline.

I mean yes, you have to invest into life and various ancillary defensive layers to make it good. ES mostly just stacks numbers so it feels like "less investment" mostly because it's more straightforward and easier to understand.

This is especially true for players who lack adequate experiential context to wrap their heads around the benefits of/how to use nodes like bulwark or glancing blows, or who think you need to scale ONE thing (ar/es/ev) and that balancing between them is not possible.

I do still think at the top-end, ES builds might be a bit too comparatively tanky (especially when CI exists), so maybe a more accurate statement on life vs es is that in pre-endgame content, life-based builds will be easier and more forgiving to build around, but there is an issue around the degree and relative accessibility by which the defensive capabilities of ES-based builds comparatively supersede life-based builds in the endgame.

"

karsey#2995 schrieb:

I'm not going to pretend that ES isn't powerful but every time someone complains about their 2400hp warrior and shows off the armour mitigation chart they always conveniently ignore:

- Guard
- Raise Shield = 100% mitigation for non-red (and some red) hits.
- They can get life on prefixes AND suffixes (str)
- Reduced crit damage bonus with nodes like Bladecatcher where you can get enough of it that crits do less damage to you than normal hits.
- Built-in ailment and stun defense.
- The fact that you can put on a piece of AR/ES gear and benefit from ES too.
- That most of the game is not one-shots where you take 5000 physical damage and a monster politely waits for you to recover.
- 2400 life and 20-30k armour is a baseline.

I mean yes, you have to invest into life and various ancillary defensive layers to make it good. ES mostly just stacks numbers so it feels like "less investment" mostly because it's more straightforward and easier to understand.

This is especially true for players who lack adequate experiential context to wrap their heads around the benefits of/how to use nodes like bulwark or glancing blows, or who think you need to scale ONE thing (ar/es/ev) and that balancing between them is not possible.

I do still think at the top-end, ES builds might be a bit too comparatively tanky (especially when CI exists), so maybe a more accurate statement on life vs es is that in pre-endgame content, life-based builds will be easier and more forgiving to build around, but there is an issue around the degree and relative accessibility by which the defensive capabilities of ES-based builds comparatively supersede life-based builds in the endgame.

You talking about warrior but what about Mercenaries who play with shit skills and a Life that barely reaches 2,5k without sacrifizing the already low damage skills. If someone plays Crossbow and Mercenary class he will know how bad combination in boss room is. I don't talk about clearings becouse every class can handle it well there.

2-2,5k life even with 90% armour (35k) buffed (55% with Scavenger) is really really really really really really..... REALLY BAD.

So simple to understand so simple to feel it in game. But nah keep it as it is Devs and don't wonder what it will game become in full release...

ES for ever until Life is great again!

"

Vlitasin#5799 schrieb:

Spoiler

"

karsey#2995 schrieb:

I'm not going to pretend that ES isn't powerful but every time someone complains about their 2400hp warrior and shows off the armour mitigation chart they always conveniently ignore:

- Guard
- Raise Shield = 100% mitigation for non-red (and some red) hits.
- They can get life on prefixes AND suffixes (str)
- Reduced crit damage bonus with nodes like Bladecatcher where you can get enough of it that crits do less damage to you than normal hits.
- Built-in ailment and stun defense.
- The fact that you can put on a piece of AR/ES gear and benefit from ES too.
- That most of the game is not one-shots where you take 5000 physical damage and a monster politely waits for you to recover.
- 2400 life and 20-30k armour is a baseline.

I mean yes, you have to invest into life and various ancillary defensive layers to make it good. ES mostly just stacks numbers so it feels like "less investment" mostly because it's more straightforward and easier to understand.

This is especially true for players who lack adequate experiential context to wrap their heads around the benefits of/how to use nodes like bulwark or glancing blows, or who think you need to scale ONE thing (ar/es/ev) and that balancing between them is not possible.

I do still think at the top-end, ES builds might be a bit too comparatively tanky (especially when CI exists), so maybe a more accurate statement on life vs es is that in pre-endgame content, life-based builds will be easier and more forgiving to build around, but there is an issue around the degree and relative accessibility by which the defensive capabilities of ES-based builds comparatively supersede life-based builds in the endgame.

You talking about warrior but what about Mercenaries who play with shit skills and a Life that barely reaches 2,5k without sacrifizing the already low damage skills. If someone plays Crossbow and Mercenary class he will know how bad combination in boss room is. I don't talk about clearings becouse every class can handle it well there.

2-2,5k life even with 90% armour (35k) buffed (55% with Scavenger) is really really really really really really..... REALLY BAD.

So simple to understand so simple to feel it in game. But nah keep it as it is Devs and don't wonder what it will game become in full release...

ES for ever until Life is great again!

I understand your frustration but I'm going to use your post to illustrate my point a bit better because you're doing exactly what I mentioned.

You're bringing up Mercenary + Crossbow playstyle and conflating it with armour weakness and survivability vs bosses while using armour, and say the damage of crossbow skills feel bad and defensively you feel weak compared to ES. But that doesn't necessarily mean anything bad about armour or that ES is better for you. You aren't supposed to play a crossbow character with nothing but 2.5k Life and 30k armour. You're not dying because armour is bad. Armour is just a tool. You're dying because you're using a tool inappropriately in an over-reliant manner while ignoring other tools.

What about:
- The naturally ranged/mobile playstyle associated with crossbows.
- Sorcery Ward - it functions as pseudo ES that scales off of evasion and armour.
- Easy access to evasion and armour scaling.
- Can utilize deflection and armour applied to elemental
- Easy access to culling strike scaling and bonus dmg vs boss nodes
- Easy access to crowd control and slowing skills/scaling nodes
- Easy access to enemy cooldown reduction - you see less boss moves overall.
- Things like "Pitiless Killer" where you can instantly remove up to 30% of a bosses life. When you consider that you can also have a buffed culling strike with this node, this is equivalent to anywhere between a 11-50% MORE DPS boost to the character, before consideration of any "increased damage on low-life" bonuses, which are in effect more often when enemies already start with 70% hp.
- Very versatile weapon swap options.
- Some of the best burst damage (outside of CoC shenanigans) in the game.

Your scenario is not a life vs es thing. It's more of a a playstyle discussion and what sort of defensive layers and offensive strategies suit it.

Also try not to get caught up in paper DPS/Defense numbers that ignore context and scenarios.

All this said, ES (and probably CI) still needs a top-end nerf lol.