There’s been a bit of confusion in recent topics about the changes to resistances, and how certain % of resistance mean you end up taking “4% more (or less) damage”. While many posters will agree (or even insist) that resistances do not exist in a vacuum, most will reason about them in this exact fashion.
I represented a character’s EHP in the following table, comparing the two systems. The character’s base HP is set to 1500, while the exact number is irrelevant, it being different from 100 should make it less confusing.
An argument was made that in order for the system to be rewarding, it needs to be balanced around having 0% resistances, and every bit added would then be a bonus (1).
This argument is incomplete in my opinion, as, indeed, resistances do not exist in a vacuum, and monster damage must be balanced with regards to how much EHP a character may have, not how much % mitigation a single layer gives.
While from a player’s perspective you use tools to mitigate monster damage, the system must be designed from the other end : You give monsters ways to circumvent the player’s defences.
This allows you to see how much EHP differents classes / builds may have (and balance it across the board), depending on various mechanics.
“Linear” systems like resistances (and now armour) are a mere matter of multiplication. The old glancing blows was a problem in that regard: one may have been tempted to say “50% glancing blows = 150% HP”, but that did not really hold in combat, because monster damage is inconsistent (as it should).
Other defensive mechanics
Systems like dodge, crit avoidance and block (to a lesser extent) suffer from the same issue.
Dodge is an “all or nothing” type of mechanic. Mathematically speaking, as you get closer to 100%, your EHP skyrockets towards infinite. But it being probability based means you could also get slapped by a telegraph while at 99%.
Ground DOTs and diminishing returns mean it is a more of a fail-safe than a primary mechanic, and no one in their right mind would just sit around and rely on it to “face tank” (because the point is precisely not to).
From a player’s perspective, monster dodge is a bitch. There’s no way in hell a monster the size of a building will casually “dodge” a meteor.
My suggestion: Give some attacks / spells (Meteor, Glacier’s 3rd explosion, …) a “massive” tag, that prevents dodging. And do the same for monsters with huge telegraphs.
Dark Souls did it with some 2H moves that cannot be parried - it makes sense, and doesn’t subjugate “hit hard, hit once” play styles to chance-based mechanics.
The same could be done with block: certain attacks could have a maximum mitigation on block (say, 15%) and classes that rely on block could have ways to raise that cap to ~25%.
Making resistances matter
This probably means making them harder to gear.
Number tweaks
- Do away with the set affixes. They are virtually useless until you can min-max your gear, but also prevent swapping pieces around and gearing for a specific encounter.
- Reduce access to resistance through passive tree / skills
- Single resistance affixes give 4 / 7 / 10 / 14 / 20 / 30 / 45
- Multi resistance affixes (elemental or poison/necrotic/void) become prefixes
- Said prefixes give 1 / 2 / 4 / 7 / 10 / 15 / 25
- Make single resistance shards more available, particularly during levelling
Increase competition
Currently, only two pieces of gear can have class-specific affixes. These are head and chest pieces, who also happen to be class-specific. My idea would be to expand the ability to craft class-specific affixes on other pieces (at least gloves, belts and boots) - disabling the affixes if the current class doesn’t match. (2)
Because there would be a trade-off, the opportunity cost of some uniques may remain largely the same.
Another alternative her make the rest of the gear class-specific too (boots, gloves, off-hands), creating new items where needed. It makes little sense to have a mage wearing light silk robes and thick plate gauntlets.
Likewise, a sentinel who is otherwise fully covered in plate armour won’t swap to fur boots. (3)
Reduce player damage
As someone else noted, the ease of access to 75% all resistances (and other layers) may be a symptom that players do not rely that much on gear to deal damage.
While not being too gear dependent to clear the story content is a good thing, running around in 75+ areas with a mediocre level 45 weapon should not be easy.
Notes
(1) This of course cannot apply to the “classical system”, as EHP tends towards infinite as resistances increase, and even a “reasonable” 75% cap yields a 400% increase. If damage is balanced around 1500 EHP, then the game will be trivial at 6000.
In last Epoch’s case, this would actually make more sense, as going from 0% to 75% resistances is precisely a 75% EHP increase.
In PoE’s example, Chaos Damage somewhat follows this idea: going from -60% to 0% res is comfortable, going to 75% effectively makes you much tankier. This damage type is much less “spiky” than the others though.
(2) I realise that this may not be a trivial change at all in the current system.
(3) Fashion considerations aside, this is probably an enormous amount of work as well, as would likely have a host of unanticipated consequences with regards to gear matching affixes - STR would have no business rolling on mage boots. Uniques may also have to be moved from bases in order to remain “shared”.
