While the discussion is valuable, it doesn’t benefit from a few people in entrenched positions arguing the other is wrong. Let’s put this one on ice and get back to it later.
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For myself, being an ARPG veteran, this switch was amazing because it meant I didn’t have to relearn an entirely new system and took the burden of learning even more systems off my shoulders.
From what I can see it was a smart choice too, when you have a singular type of defence (glancing blow) that is 100% necessary for every single build then it lacks variety and needs to change. But honestly the only thing that’s changed for me is that instead of protections that really had no cap, resistances being capped at 75% means I have a ceiling to stop at and not have to worry about taking as much as I can possibly fit in my build. I like that limit because it leaves room to gear for other options, creating more variety in builds and gearing now.
I get this is just my personal experience, but I never really liked how essential GB felt, like how crit avoidance has become the new GB (imo) really. But having a resistance cap leaves a lot more room for taking other affixes and maxing out res with just a few items which means you can take those special class only affixes on your chest/head armour instead of needing that location for GB/Protections. This change only made things easier and brought more variety from what I can see, and how I’ve felt playing almost every day since the change.
It’s even made crafting less punishing along with the amazing changes they made to that as well, now if an item fractures before you capped out your res you can likely cap it on another item, and you’re not left struggling because your item cracked at low tier GB or something. Every way I look at it, this new defence system has made things better across the board, at least for me. Better crafting, more options in terms of gearing (I feel better taking a unique in my build now too), easier to understand for newer players, or even veterans like me that are used to the same system from other games and appreciate that it’s an effective system, tried and true as they say.
Again, the only changes I see, is the loss of GB being an essential take (which was bad, and may have just moved over to crit avoidance anyway) and the protections (now resistances) actually have a cap, meaning that there is now a whole bunch more room for other affixes. I don’t feel bad taking the unique class affixes now, or taking a unique item or two in my build. I don’t have to max out GB before I can start taking whatever I like on my gear. Hell I might even go a dodge build now (never touched it before, no class has synergies with it yet, til Rogue is released I assume) now that there’s more space for affixes on items.
The things you say you used to be able to do but are lost now, are still the same things I’m doing now, but with greater ease and less stress. I have a glass cannon build still, I have a bruiser type build, I have a block based build, I have a pure tank build (same as the block based build). I still have all those things and even more. I now have a Spellblade that generates ward so fast he is basically a tank, but has like 50% res. The options are endless now, whereas I felt locked into stuff before, namely GB and stacking protections infinitely with no end in sight for them. Now I’m free to take HP if I want it, or again, the unique affixes that I ignored before for the sake of GB/Protections, which was boring as sin before. I really think it’s improved the game ten-fold for me, and opened up variety in multiple ways for me as well. Maybe take a wider look at the whole scope of the changes? I feel like it’s done a lot more benefit for the game that you may be missing at the moment 
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I agree with the vast majority of your post except the bit about crit avoidance. It is just as necessary now as it was before the resists rework in 0.7.10. I’ve always tried to cap it but now that’s easy what with Woven Flesh giving 100% crit avoidance.
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Ah fair enough, I never really bothered with it and kinda just picked it up where I could, as glancing blow already mitigated so much damage. When the changes got rid of Glancing Blow it naturally moved over to Crit Avoidance (for me at least) as the only other stat similar to GB that could avoid one-shots, per-se.
I mean yeah, Woven Flesh makes that easy to begin with, but eventually you’ll want a different chest piece for some builds meaning you eventually have to gear for crit avoidance, making it a pretty essential stat now. Well, it’s at least sky rocketed in priority for me, personally.
If it was already a guaranteed need to 100% cap it for people before the changes, however, I think it still suffers from the same issue as GB, where when something is that essential to any build ever made, it becomes stale. I guess the same could be said for resistances though, when looking at it that way. But maybe that’s because I come from other games where resistances is the baseline and something like crit avoidance is hard to get, compared to here where they are both baseline, together.
Honestly if there was a way to get crit avoidance without having to use up affix slots I’d be happy, as there is some cool ones out there that can’t be used due to needing crit avoidance. That or reduce the frequency or damage of monster/enemy crits so that it isn’t an essential must take. I feel like having resistances be a must take is pretty standard, but to have more defensive stats that are a must take on top of that starts limiting build variety.
Though, again, that probably comes from my experience in other games and wanting that familiar playstyle here. But I feel like the less that is a must take the better, though you have to have at least one thing that is and I feel resistances is a good one as that’s the standard most people are used to, or if brand new to the genre, is easy to learn. Take Grim Dawn for example (I use it a lot as an example, I know, but it’s the reason I’m even calling myself a veteran of the genre lol), capping resistances is the base line for any build, and then on top of that you can take other forms of one-shot protection in the form of abilities and items, and other layers of defence like damage reduction in multiple forms. After capping resistances, the world of defences is your oyster, but here you have to cap resistances, then cap crit avoidance, then it’s your oyster lol.
In the end though, I’m much happier with where it is now, after the changes, and will be fine if they keep it this way for good, but doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts on it haha.
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Hm, I wonder if next patch will bring to us changes in defence system …
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