My goal wasn’t to illustrate “what could you get in a build.” It was meant to illustrate “what defenses were given (in the tree) to each Mastery.”
So, yeah, if you want to look at “build potential” that’s different data for sure.
I was wondering what this looked like, thanks for putting this together! In particular, I was playing Rogue recently, and realized that they have practically no resistances compared to others. These graphs validate my frustrations 
For Rogue, there’s 40% poison res on base passives. Marksman can have 18% ele res, but only if you use a bow, stack 6 Elemental Arrows and don’t consume those arrows (aka only use non-bow attacks or phys attacks if you take Fire and Steel). Bladedancer has zero resistances 
.
It’s more of a complaint that belongs on a separate balance thread, but 
Yeah, I have similar problems with all Mages (Sorc or SB). They just are too squishy, no matter what I do. Now I can see why with a bit more clarity.
Havent had a peek yet, but did you include lightning aegis for mage? 25% Dr is huge. Unfortunately it locks you into lightning blast or static orb.
My goal was to compare the Passive Trees, and not get into Builds.
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It is not accurate to just compare pure numbers on a sheet. It’s a very interesting information. But you cannot directly judge defensive balance by looking at this. So please be careful with that kind if conclusions.
If you want to discuss defenses, you need to take the whole arsenal into account, including skills and idols.
Rogue has massive dodge support, glancing blow and ward mechanics in the passive tree and on skills and idols (ward on shift use, dodge rating when hit recently, silver shroud).
The classes are all balanced asynchronous. They have strengths and weaknesses and focus in different core defenses and favour different secondary defenses.
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That’s true, but imo Rogue could still use a few more resists in their passives. A lot of my gear suffixes and idols have to be dedicated to resists as a result, meaning less room to work with for other defenses (health, crit avoid, dodge) or fitting in offense idols. Maybe I’m just a 
rogue player, but I found the other classes to be much more flexible when gearing up defenses and idols.
The point is also that the style of “defense” is directly tied to the overall archetype of the characters.
Wards for mages, dodge for Rogues, and so on. But both are only a secondary factor for survivability, resistances will always be primary.
Without resistances, the secondary defensive mechanics would have to be exorbitant to absorb huge amounts of damage.
But if we get that, we’ll still have an imbalance, because we’ll still be able to raise resists.
I see only two ways out. The first is to make everyone equal to everyone else in order to gain resists. And the secondary should not be mandatory, but at will.
Or redesign the mechanism of “secondary” defense mechanics itself, so that it can compensate for the lack of primary resistances.
People are discounting the various implicits that are both base and class/mastery specific items that grant resistances for just being an item. To only look at the passive tree as a gauge of a class’s defensive survivability isn’t a great way to tell if a class defenses are lacking or not.
There’s also the ability to take other mastery passives which I’m not sure is taken into account here, certain attributes (Vitality), skills (Rogue’s Lethal Mirage or Smokescreen), leech (BM) that can be considered defense not taken into account.
This really only looks at one component of how to layer defenses and thus not a great gauge in my opinion if we’re talking in absolutes or overall defensive capability.
Not a criticism at the attempt, and I hope this gets refined and added/expanded upon as I think it’s a good starting point, my view is just more from trying judge based upon this data alone
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All of those things muddy the waters, as they are build-specific. This is just the Passive trees of the single mastery (no dipping into neighbor masteries) to show the imbalance at the get-go.
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This I cannot sign. You nee both, primary and secondary defenses. Resistances have a cap that you want to reach. Either you reach it with passives and few affixes or you have to invest more into affixes and less into passives. Either way opens the path to build secondary defenses with affixes on gear or on the passive tree.
Then you have to take into account the implicit stats of armour and other class specific affixes that also support specific defenses.
Wait, no! Classes are different for a reason. It’s to have different ways to build. How boring would it be to have every class build their defenses the same way?
Absolutely not.
So i apreciate the work to put that stuff toghether. But collecting and visualising numbers is one thing. Making the right conclusion based on that info is another.
Summing up passives and then tell if classes are “balanced” against each other is not how this game is designed. If it was that easy, the devs would have build it this way right from the start.
But no game would build different themed characters with the same mechanics.
The point is that there is theory and there is practice.
How many roles reach 1000 waves ?
And this is a good indicator of which defense is most effective.
As an example, Sork and SpellBlade. Both classes are sharpened for Wards, but where is Sork and where is SpellBlade ?
Why is that? Because the classes are opposite to themselves, one ranged, the other miles. But they obey the same parameter, Ward. How will the developers address this issue?
Or compare the Sentinel, which depends on resists and HP. Nothing extra, perfect defense.
You are partially right. But you do not take into account that the “secondary” is also HP, which in fact, has no limits, except for those that are conditioned by skills and items.
That is, there are only 2 parameters, resistance and HP. The result, the highest survivability. Why is that?
Because there’s nothing unnecessary, the ratio of resources spent, to achieve high levels of resistance / HP.
As a result, we have Sentinel-based classes that show the highest survivability. At the same time, showing acceptable damage, as a result, the best results.
And take the Ward, for example. How many resources does it take to have a good Ward performance? Which, by the way, like HP, have a limitation due to skills and items.
The difference between HP and Wards, in one thing, is how much power to spend to achieve equal survivability (in real combat, not on a dummy).
Here’s an example.
Sentinel, has 200 HP. He is able to survive 199 damage per second, which he recovers with Leech.
Take a mage who has 50 HP. And has 100 wards per second.
On the dummy we will have 50 HP and 400 Wards. (Maybe even more, if we increase Retention). Which is “sort of” higher than the Sentinel.
But if we take not a dummy, but a real fight, if we get 100 damage in a fight. Then we have 50HP. If we get 199 damage, we die. But the Sentinel with 200 HP will survive.
That is, the theoretical size of survivability, and the actual, are fundamentally different.
Because of this, when we use HP, Leech, and resistances, we have higher survivability even on mages. And the Sentinels, who have a higher base in HP and resistances, are in first place.
In other words, Wards don’t work as well as they should in the game. And the basic HP and resistances, have an advantage. This is what the author of the topic showed.
I agree with you. I don’t want to see a “Di 2” level game either, I quite like the Ward/Barrier system.
It’s a question of balance. How developers will solve this problem.
Updated for Druid (no other classes had tree changes).
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