Do Protections need a rework?

[VapingNeckbeard]

i’m making this thread because the conversation was in danger of derailing another topic and i think this subject bears some discussion. i’m not taking a firm stance here, but just want to engage with others to see if my understanding is correct or flawed in some way. it could also be nice to have a resource to point people to in the event newer players are as confused by this system as i have been.

@Llama8

That’s why they’re called protections rather than resistances, they don’t work the same way as in other games (where they’re absolute resistances), in LE they are relative (to your HP).

If you think about it as the damage you take being spread evenly over your hp & your protection, so if you have protection = hp, then only half of the damage will be applied to your hp (health / (health + protection). If protection = 3x hp, then only 1/4 would be applied to your hp.

i can’t be alone in finding that unintuitive and confusing… it seems like either it should be treated as HP or treated as a percent reduction, not this combination of the two.

so just to see if i understand this correctly, let’s consider two builds:

Build A has 500 life and 1500 protections

Build B has 1500 life and 500 protections

Build A takes 25% of incoming damage, so a hit of 1000 damage (unmitigated by anything else for the purpose of this example) will do 250 damage and leave us with 250 health

Build B (if i’ve done my arithmetic correctly) takes 75% of incoming damage, which reduces the hit to 750, leaving us at 750 health

it seems like the build that focused on life over protections comes out ahead, having more HP left to absorb further hits, although both builds end up at half health in this scenario. that seems counter-intuitive to me because for most classes (except sentinel) reaching 1500 protections takes considerably more investment than reaching 1500 life. not to mention the fact that most builds just won’t get that level of protections on every element, which means protection-focused builds will probably still be vulnerable to damage from at least one element.

perhaps i’m mistaken, because i’m just basing this on my own experience of the game so far. i always find protections to be the most aggravating part of gearing and have mostly tended to forgo stacking them, most of the time being satisfied if i can get to around 30% elemental protections and whatever i can manage for the other three.

to elaborate on my idea that the system seems like it needs a rework: (and just to be clear, i’m mostly writing this because it helps me make sense of it, not necessarily trying to make an argument or be didactic)

if the protections were simply treated as EHP, Build A would take no damage and Build B would take 250 damage. i can see how that would be perhaps too generous to the player… if they were to change it to function this way they would definitely need to reduce protection numbers across the board to keep it balanced.

if the protections were simply presented as percent-based resistances as has been the standard in most ARPGs, along with the 75% cap we’ve come to expect, it would be clear to both builds that they need to bolster the other part of their defenses. Build A would have 75% resists, but only 500 life, and most likely would see the need to acquire more life. Build B would feel a bit beefier, but knowing that they only have 25% resistance would make it obvious that they need more.

i understand the devs wanting to make unique systems for the game and avoid the well-worn paths of other ARPGs that invite unwelcome comparisons, but the system we have in place just seems unnecessarily complicated. protections are presented as a type of EHP, but in reality give a percentage of protection just like traditional resistances.

perhaps i’ve misunderstood LLama’s post and the protections system as a whole. if anyone can correct my misapprehension, i would greatly appreciate it. in any case, if they have no plans to change or rework the system, i think it could do with a better in game explanation.

[bencuk]

By your calculations on either build they would both take 2 hits and die. Seems to me like neither build have an advantage other the other.

Here is the formula from the last epoch wiki.

Amount of Protection / (|Amount of Protection| + Total Health Pool)

Total health pool = hp+ward

[Llama8]

@VapingNeckbeard

it seems like the build that focused on life over protections comes out ahead, having more HP left to absorb further hits, although both builds end up at half health in this scenario. that seems counter-intuitive to me because for most classes (except sentinel) reaching 1500 protections takes considerably more investment than reaching 1500 life. not to mention the fact that most builds just won’t get that level of protections on every element, which means protection-focused builds will probably still be vulnerable to damage from at least one element.

It depends how you want to view it. Yes, option B has a bigger HP number left (750 compared to 250), but they take larger hits. If you ignore leech & regen, then it doesn’t matter how your hp+protections are split, you’ll end up in the same place, relatively speaking, which ever way you go. Both of your examples ended up with 50% of their max health.

However, builds generally don’t have no form of recovery & this is where high protection/low hp builds have the advantage. If you can leech or regen 100 health per second, build A takes 2.5s to get back up to full life, build B takes 7.5s, so the window of opportunity for being killed by a second hit is conciderably longer for a high hp/low protection build. But that’s the only difference between the two. Both die to the same big hit (2,001 damage), but on non-kill hits, build A can leech back to full hp much faster, 3 times faster infact, which is the ration of protections between the two builds (1,500:500).

The benefit that high hp/low protection builds have is that hp “protects” you from death against every damage type, so if your personal skill/ability to not get hit is good enough to keep you away from being hit till you’ve regen’d/leeched back out of that danger window, then a high HP build might be easier to gear for.

if the protections were simply treated as EHP, Build A would take no damage and Build B would take 250 damage. i can see how that would be perhaps too generous to the player… if they were to change it to function this way they would definitely need to reduce protection numbers across the board to keep it balanced.

Flat damage reduction from protection would be so much harder to balance, I would imagine.

if the protections were simply presented as percent-based resistances as has been the standard in most ARPGs, along with the 75% cap we’ve come to expect, it would be clear to both builds that they need to bolster the other part of their defenses. Build A would have 75% resists, but only 500 life, and most likely would see the need to acquire more life. Build B would feel a bit beefier, but knowing that they only have 25% resistance would make it obvious that they need more.

That would shift the need from as much protection as you can get to, as much as you need to hit cap, then as much hp as you can get. It’s not a bad way of doing it, it’s just “boring” in that that’s how every other aRPG does it & I like that EHG are trying something different, even though it does require a bit of a mental shift.

perhaps i’ve misunderstood LLama’s post and the protections system as a whole. if anyone can correct my misapprehension, i would greatly appreciate it. in any case, if they have no plans to change or rework the system, i think it could do with a better in game explanation.

No, you understood it fine.

[Llama8]

@bencuk

By your calculations on either build they would both take 2 hits and die. Seems to me like neither build have an advantage other the other.

Each build has 1 advantage over the other. Build A (low hp, high protection) is much quicker to regen/leech back to full, build B is easier to gear for (since health “protects” against all damage types).

[bencuk]

Makes sense

[Kelvedler]

@VapingNeckbeard

if the protections were simply presented as percent-based resistances as has been the standard in most ARPGs, along with the 75% cap we’ve come to expect, it would be clear to both builds that they need to bolster the other part of their defenses. Build A would have 75% resists, but only 500 life, and most likely would see the need to acquire more life. Build B would feel a bit beefier, but knowing that they only have 25% resistance would make it obvious that they need more.

Game has similar mechanic in form of glancing blow. You can treat it as 50% resistances.
Yes it doesnt help with DoTs, likewise resistances dont protect from physical damage.

I’d rather see how this system works out, so far its not as terrible as armor in poe.

[Heavy]

@Kelvedler

Game has similar mechanic in form of glancing blow. You can treat it as 50% resistances.

I would not even bring glancing blow in this discussion, it’s an entirely different mechanic which sits a layer below protections.

@Kelvedler

Yes it doesnt help with DoTs, likewise resistances dont protect from physical damage.

We should make the baseline of discussion equailized here. There are no “resistances” in this game. Just protections, which works as already very detailed described in the replies before and we do have damage reduction.

Armor does work exactly the same as all other Protections in this game.
Not 100% on topic here, but just so people can visualize the different defensive layers and their order of application:

Dodge → Crit Avoidance → Block → Protections (calculated together with Ward + Health + Block Effectiveness) → Damage Reduction → Glancing Blow.

@VapingNeckbeard

i can’t be alone in finding that unintuitive and confusing…

It is different from similar games, but i personally don’t find this confusing or unintuitive. I assuming that alot of people do find this confusing just for the reason “they think they know how itworks”, until finding out that it doesnt work this way.

That’s a general issue if very similar games within the same genre do things differently and people just thinking they already know how all things work.

I can’t even count how many people i do have encountered that didn’t even bothered to check how protections work and just assumed they know how they work.

I personally really like LE’s approach to this, since generally building “just health” can also be effective, which is not the case in most other similar games. Especially for people playing casually they don’t need to deal with all the “gear tetris” when trying to fix all their protections, one of the most annoying things about Grim Dawn and PoE for me personally.

While a very good build still needs to have equal defensive power for all damage types to be consistent, having a few protectiosn not on par with the rest is way less punishing in this game. Especially since there are also alot of secondary defensiv layers like dodge, and GB

[Llama8]

Though being pedantic, as long as dodge & block happen first in the damage calculation, the others can happen in any order & it shouldn’t make any difference.

[Kelvedler]

@Heavy

We should make the baseline of discussion equailized here. There are no “resistances” in this game. Just protections , which works as already very detailed described in the replies before and we do have damage reduction .

As far as i understand, the main question of this topic is not how do protections work in this game, but if they should be changed. Thats why i brought GB into discussion, to compare it with resistance cap, mentioned by OP.

[Macknum]

@Llama8

Flat damage reduction from protection would be so much harder to balance, I would imagine.

Why do you think so? Diablo, PoE, GD and the bunch are all balanced arround max resis and that’s it. If EHG balances the game arround max dodge, CA, GB, 90%+ protections and 90%+ dlock protections as well as other stuff that happens this might explain the dmg numbers we see from time to time.
WITHOUT static damage reduction numbers to balance the game arround everything is harder. Look how many people said “Remove GB and half the enemys dmg!”. This trade I’ll take instantly ^^.
EHG simply wanted to introduce something different and that’s okay but they simply alinate some people while others might come to the conclusion that EHG is killing the patient with the cure.
I’m no fan of the damage reduction methods of LE because they are overcomplicated and artificaly bloated. To me it looks like they needed stuff for the crafting slots and randomly threw stuff togheter for the sake of it.
Non the less I can work with it even when I dislike it.

[VapingNeckbeard]

@Llama8

However, builds generally don’t have no form of recovery & this is where high protection/low hp builds have the advantage. If you can leech or regen 100 health per second, build A takes 2.5s to get back up to full life, build B takes 7.5s, so the window of opportunity for being killed by a second hit is conciderably longer for a high hp/low protection build. But that’s the only difference between the two. Both die to the same big hit (2,001 damage), but on non-kill hits, build A can leech back to full hp much faster, 3 times faster infact, which is the ration of protections between the two builds (1,500:500).

somewhere deep in the fog of my mind i think i remember learning this about the game when i was first getting into it. i had forgotten it until i read your explanation and then i remembered seeing some high-wave arena videos with characters that only had 500 HP and this was more or less the explanation for how they managed it. thanks for the refresher!

@Kelvedler

Game has similar mechanic in form of glancing blow. You can treat it as 50% resistances.
Yes it doesnt help with DoTs, likewise resistances dont protect from physical damage.

I’d rather see how this system works out, so far its not as terrible as armor in poe.

i think part of my annoyance with the protections system is that we also have to aim for 100% GB. it’s given the same treatment as having 75% resistances in other ARPGs: your build must have it except in extreme niche cases (like having 900k ward), and yet we still need adequate protections. it’s like a double tax.

you’re absolutely right about armor in POE though. that is a nightmare system, and so annoying to think about that i specifically never play builds that try to use armor for defense.

@Heavy

It is different from similar games, but i personally don’t find this confusing or unintuitive. I assuming that alot of people do find this confusing just for the reason “they think they know how itworks”, until finding out that it doesnt work this way.

That’s a general issue if very similar games within the same genre do things differently and people just thinking they already know how all things work.

you may have nailed my issue in this statement. i suppose, having written out the mechanic and realizing i do have a solid understanding of it, i don’t find it that confusing. my irritation very likely stemmed from the fact that, as you said, i was expecting things to work like other games. it’s probably because of that expectation that i initially thought this protection system acted as EHP and was baffled when i realized it was still percentage based. just a disconnect between what i expected and what the game does.

i’m not that annoyed by needing to reach the 75% cap in other games because it’s a thing i’ve grown used to. it’s also a simpler form of math for my dumb brain to have to deal with. "do these numbers add to 75? good. "

@Macknum

To me it looks like they needed stuff for the crafting slots and randomly threw stuff togheter for the sake of it.
Non the less I can work with it even when I dislike it.

i think you’re half-right here. it’s not that they threw random stuff together, it is a calculated and intentional “affix tax” to keep player power in check. i support the spirit of this idea in general, if not this specific aspect of it. i do think we could use with a little simplification.