Feedback: Current monster damage SEVERELY undermines the point of defenses.

A yellow tier map, Tier 8, monster level 75, no damage mods, not even rare, one shot by a goat magus' fireball for 4500 damage while approaching it... While having 83 all res. No curse, no exposure. Also 23000 armour without my Rumi's up, just in case it deals some physical... Went back and instantly died again just to check. YEP. And. It. Was. A. Pack of them.

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What the fuck then is the point of defenses, GGG? Does "LaYeR yOur DeFenSes" mean over-cap block and spell block, have 6000 hp, perma-fortify and 90 all res by TIER 8 MAPS?

The reality is baseline monster damage of non-bosses is OUT OF CONTROL... Made much worse by map mods, eldritch alters, random massive crits, "1.5x" more difficult league mechanics, and the just ABSOLUTELY ADORED archnemesis mods. People are not joking when they say that some rares end up more of a threat and harder than pinnacle bosses. I swear, boss slams with two second wind ups are less damaging than some white monsters' default attacks.

As a softcore player, I have no idea why or even how people play hardcore in this game. It's maddening attempting to build a defensive character when you KNOW you are far better off not even trying and just going glass cannon and repeatedly throwing your corpse at everything.

PLEASE stop testing the game with dev cheats, please nerf the shit out of the broken uniques and mechanics that the game is balanced around if you have to, and please fix the damage on monsters.

The... real question is, why go defense as a softcore player? Capped resistance and some life should always be about enough to get to red maps. Well ofc, if you have enough damage.

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MujuraAburaya#4214 wrote:

The... real question is, why go defense as a softcore player?

Why indeed.

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MujuraAburaya#4214 wrote:

Capped resistance and some life should always be about enough to get to red maps. Well ofc, if you have enough damage.

Damage would be irrelevant here. As I said, I died approaching the monster. In this case, I should have played an off-screening build.

these goatmen are scary AF

esp for melee - jump into pack of them when they ALL just toggled their molten shells up - instant death. no matter the defences. in fact these were the only mobs that could actually kill my CWS character. not bosses, not T17 'scary mobs' - no. goatmen and their moltenshells

i cannot be bothered to check what is going on with them but it seems so bad at times that i actually think there is one extra 0 at the end of their damage numbers

there were also fire skeletal mages (applying exposure and pen???) that were also kinda dangerous but havent encountered that since. maybe hotfixed.

PoB? Without showing your character this is just a rant, not feedback.

From what you've written, your defenses are ok against attacks, but not against spells. For that you need at least one of:

1. spell block
2. suppression
3. endurance charges (at least 5 I would say), combined with over 80% res

If you're melee bottom left, there's no excuse not to have fortify on top of things.

Also, HC players know not to leap slam into a pack of goat mages, unless they have built their character to be able to handle that. Those goats are dangerous.

That's the biggest complaint I have about PoE 1 after asynch trade eliminated my previously major problem.

It just feels like defenses in this game doesn't matter as sooner or later something's going to roll in and nuke you in one hit or be extra cheeky and do it from off-screen. The only solution is to stack an ungodly amount of redundant defense layers to have a chance (not guarantee, but a chance) of not getting instantly obliterated. And the more juiced you make a map, the smaller that chance gets.

And to make matters worse, these necessary defenses get excruciatingly expensive the more layers you're looking for. High armor/evasion/energy shield on the gear with high res is where it starts, but then adding life spikes up the price. Finally if you want a high base suppression chance on top of everything else, you'll need to pay a ton of divs or "craft" gamble for it yourself.

It's one thing I really like about PoE 2. You can cruise on through the game with just armor, evasion, or energy shield and of course capped res. Building block and stuff is for added tankiness if you want to flex your indestructibility.

This is a valid complaint, don't let some members of the community gaslight you. Also, investigating this one particular instance doesn't really matter. We can look at a PoB and nitpick some kind of lack of this layer or that layer, but at the end of the day, as mentioned in here, you're still just going to get one shot anyway. Especially when you juice content, and if you're NOT juicing content (or doing Ubers), then you're not even playing the game. (It would be like playing D2 and never leaving the Blood Moor.)

There's a reason everyone just plays meta ranged builds that stack offense and ignore defense. One of PoE's biggest unspoken issues is that it runs on completely unregulated RNG. They think it makes the game more "hardcore elite," but in reality it just makes it less good.




Everyone can yap their heads off - you'll see - but at the end of the day, there's a reason people only play certain builds. My advice is for you to reassess whether or not you actually want to play this game, sooner rather than later, before you fall into the sunk cost fallacy that keeps this game alive. (There's a reason people only play League, and not Standard. Check this game's Steam charts. People play a new League for a little bit, then they remember that they don't like the game enough to keep going, and they quit until the next new Shiny Jingling Keys League.)

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

That's the biggest complaint I have about PoE 1 after asynch trade eliminated my previously major problem.

It just feels like defenses in this game doesn't matter as sooner or later something's going to roll in and nuke you in one hit or be extra cheeky and do it from off-screen. The only solution is to stack an ungodly amount of redundant defense layers to have a chance (not guarantee, but a chance) of not getting instantly obliterated. And the more juiced you make a map, the smaller that chance gets.

And to make matters worse, these necessary defenses get excruciatingly expensive the more layers you're looking for. High armor/evasion/energy shield on the gear with high res is where it starts, but then adding life spikes up the price. Finally if you want a high base suppression chance on top of everything else, you'll need to pay a ton of divs or "craft" gamble for it yourself.

It's one thing I really like about PoE 2. You can cruise on through the game with just armor, evasion, or energy shield and of course capped res. Building block and stuff is for added tankiness if you want to flex your indestructibility.

Honestly... that just sounds infinitely better, lol...

I haven't tried PoE 2. Be totally honest: Is it better? Like, is it PoE 1 but without all or most of the crap that holds PoE 1 back, that the community gatekeeps and protects for some reason?

And does it have an auction house that didn't take 20 years to add because of said gatekeeping? Lol.

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ShadyC#1006 wrote:

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

That's the biggest complaint I have about PoE 1 after asynch trade eliminated my previously major problem.

It just feels like defenses in this game doesn't matter as sooner or later something's going to roll in and nuke you in one hit or be extra cheeky and do it from off-screen. The only solution is to stack an ungodly amount of redundant defense layers to have a chance (not guarantee, but a chance) of not getting instantly obliterated. And the more juiced you make a map, the smaller that chance gets.

And to make matters worse, these necessary defenses get excruciatingly expensive the more layers you're looking for. High armor/evasion/energy shield on the gear with high res is where it starts, but then adding life spikes up the price. Finally if you want a high base suppression chance on top of everything else, you'll need to pay a ton of divs or "craft" gamble for it yourself.

It's one thing I really like about PoE 2. You can cruise on through the game with just armor, evasion, or energy shield and of course capped res. Building block and stuff is for added tankiness if you want to flex your indestructibility.

Honestly... that just sounds infinitely better, lol...

I haven't tried PoE 2. Be totally honest: Is it better? Like, is it PoE 1 but without all or most of the crap that holds PoE 1 back, that the community gatekeeps and protects for some reason?

And does it have an auction house that didn't take 20 years to add because of said gatekeeping? Lol.

Asynch trading actually was introduced to PoE 2 before PoE 1 got it. It was only by a couple months, mind you.

And in my experience, I think PoE 2 is fine. I'm a little biased against it as a summoner main, because minions are completely different between both games in a bad way (in my biased opinion). However, by and large, the game doesn't suffer from nearly the same pitfalls as the first does. There are some situations where you will get obliterated, but it's because you ran straight into a dense horde of monsters who all attacked at once. Not one singular non-boss monster will nuke you, much less from off screen. Combat is slower too, and one's opinion on that is subjective as I know some people prefer to zoom and boom.

I want to warn you outright to temper your expectations, however. PoE 2 is still in early access. We have no idea if the game's pacing will continue in further development and potentially have the same problems PoE 1 has. If you get into it, just be sure to keep that thought in your mind.

Yeah those goat caster mobs are deadly af, just like the act 1 cannibals that all throw their projectiles at you in sync and insta-oneshot you if you don't have a 0.1 second reaction time. Not only do the goat shaman's fireballs do stupid amounts of damage, but whatever that red fire shield spell they have is also does a lot after it gets popped by dealing damage to them.

Both of these enemies are act 1 mobs, the game just doesn't have proper balance so monsters from early campaign become insanely overtuned in maps even with no damage mods.