The fact that we have to go GB/CA right now to even survive is boring. We don’t get to use any of the uniques, or set pieces, because we have to go pieces with GB and CA on it. We have to get 100% on GB and 100% on CA. Which basicly ruines every piece of cool gear. 2 of the FIxs have to be GB an the others have to be CA. YAY WE GET TO PLAY WITH 2 OF THE FIX’S .
Well. POE didn’t fail when you basically need to be resist capped to be viable in maps.
But I think you have a point here, and it’s not about the GB/CA meta. But that it’s ok to have affix taxes, but 4 mods per item feels too restrictive while needing to balance affix tax mods to the point where it feels the choices to make for the remaining mods is limited. Like I mentioned POE, and in POE case, while it’s “mandatory” to cap your resists, they also have 6 mods per item to play around.
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Ive already posted Glancing Blows needs to be removed, you cannot balance ‘all’ damage around people having 50% reduction or simply not
Resists are different because they aren’t so broad, PoE has Phys/Chaos as well and its simply to put pressure on your gear, otherwise it would be too easy
But designing ALL damage around a separate mechanic that also interacts with Block/Resists/Dodge is a disaster and as I posted months ago they should just remove it now, instead of trying to build around it
Feedback - posted on 4/2/20 - theres a decent amount in this thread of feedback
Whilst I think your title is a little sensationalist I do agree with the premise of your post.
Glancing blow by design is not a fun mechanic. You are forced to invest into a defensive mechanic just so you can receive the amount of damage that devs likely balance the game around. The mechanic is just not fun to interact with, unlike other mechanics like block/dodge where you can actually see it working adding depth to gameplay/combat.
I would like to see it removed completely or nerf it so it does not feel mandatory.
I think crit avoidance is busted as well, maybe changed to “reduced crit damage taken” would be easier to balance.
That said we need to remember we do not have same the scope on development that EHG have and the mechanic might make more sense in the future.
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I understand GB though. It is supposed to be the opposite of a critical hit. Maybe they could just combine the two and put them on a spectrum opposed to the enemies crit strike. Having the ability to easily hit 100% GB and CA is a bit too much and makes it mandatory in builds as it is the best defense in the game.
With 6 affix on rare wouldn’t an issue
Agree. I’m even for removing GB completely. The stat is so mandatory for a defensive layout that you either keep it on every itemslot or nerf it until it gets useless. I think you can not really balance around this stat. Also agree with CA, it feels like having a double dodge layout now you have to focus on, leave dodge the way it is and make CA to ‘reduced dmg taken’ as you said.
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Or.make it to where it is near impossible to get 100% maybe but with gb if there is always a guarantee to mitigate a specific amount of damages i belive the certain % will always be mandatory. So completely remove it or rework it maybe.
This touches on a topic I’ve thought about frequently while theorycrafting lately. I’m not an expert but currently I’d say you could speak of 2 requirements for a strong defense, which do not include Gameplay, skill, mobility etc.:
- Surviving and sustaining through high damage over time (GB, Dodge, Prot., Block Prot., CA, Flat damage reduction, health Leech, Ward generation, invulnerability, health regen, …)
- Surviving potential (or close to) one-shot hits (GB, Prot., CA, High Ward stacking, invulnerability, flat damage reduction, …)
Some defensive layers affect both types and some only affect one. Making GB in it’s current form a value that is impossible to push to 100% eliminates its use in avoiding one-shots. Because this is the type of defense that is already harder to achieve for non-ward-stacking builds it would require a deeper redesign of the defensive systems in my opinion (which I would like to see).
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I agree. There should be other ways to work the mitigation. I have never been a fan on so many one shot mechanics personally. I like having them but personally think they should be reserve for more tough enemies only or big boss encounters. Thi makes other forms of mitigation less desirable. like the situation health is in. It doesn’t stack enough so using it as proper mitigation is useless especially since ward is easier to stack and stacks for way more.
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But if it’s mandatory then it’s already been balanced around… If they removed glancing blow & halved the non-dot damage most people would be in the same position they are now in terms of damage taken (because they have glancing blow) but they’d have ~3-5 extra affixes to use. Everyone that doesn’t use glancing blow would be taking less damage.
But that’s what it already does. At 100% crit avoidance it reduces the crit strike multiplier mobs are using.
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Hi guys thought I would just add a point to the post for you to think about!
I see a lot of posts go on about GB, CA and Ward etc, being OP…now I need you just to step back, just for a second, just to look at it from another angle. While I would say I do appreciate your concerns about these traits. But for those of us who for medical reason aren’t as fast and agile as other players. These traits are really useful to help make long term playability of this game sustainable…along with things like controller support.
So rather than just nerfing them, I would like to see them incorporated into the basic defences of all classes. Obviously not at full strength, but just enough to give us all an equal footing in the defence department, from the start. And making it less work trying to max out your gear with just one or two survival traits…I would prefer this, rather than doing what Blizzard did and dumb down the UI several times, like what they did in Warcraft. From its original format to what it is now!
They could simply remove GB and scale the dmg of enemys down. I think it’s a stupid Idea to force poeple into a defence stat for 50% dmg reduction. I don’t think there are to much possibilitys to get defensive layers and to much need to get every possible one of them. I understand the need of building a specific way so only offensive built chars die a lot but right now we need hp, protections, hp reg, heal/leech, GB, CA and whatnot. This feels pretty onesided.
The other side of that is PoE’s speed meta.
Edit: granted, it’s not quite that simple, but if you don’t require players to build tanky then there’s not much to stop them just steamrollering content.
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GB is just an additional defensive mechanic that increases the mitigation effects we already have. So eliminating GB would not need to be rebalanced. You get more slots for defensive affixes that increases the damage mitigation. Perhaps it would not be the same value. But who says that hitting lvl 600 arena wave is the goal to balance defensive stats around? Remove GB and perhaps lvl 400 is the highest you can achieve. Why would this be bad thing?
For CA: I would also like to see it be transformed into critical strike damage decrease. This would make combat smoother. Than it wouldn’t be a gamble if you get a critical hit and be one shot or take meaningless damage. I’d like it more to get medium to heavy hits continuously than 95% no damage and an unlucky oneshot.
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I think it boils down to having different content that scales differently, some with a hard ceiling and some without.
POE’s speed meta is a product of every mechanic being introduced as a “league”. This is fun and has a lot of pros, but it means that during it’s league (effectively an open-beta for the new content), players feel like they should be able to do the content, since it’s in every map, with nearly any character that works for the rest of the content. If the new content is too hard, it isn’t well received, and gets nerfed back until it’s much closer in difficulty to what already exists. This perpetuates the speed meta, since they are basically slowing the players down ever so slightly at best with any new/different content.
So, looking back at LE, if all content is as difficult as the current scaling of the Arena/Monolith, then defense stacking will feel like it’s mandatory. If other mechanics/content use less damage scaling, or have a concrete ceiling that can be balanced around different assumed defenses, then you end up making a choice about what type of content you can be efficient at, but also stat/item build diversity.
I don’t think the speed meta is the result of ~5 years worth of content/mechanics being added to the PoE, though GGG’s view on expecting/adding 5% power creep every league doesn’t help (assuming they can restrict it to 5%). IMO the speed meta comes from the fact that there are so many ways to multiplicatively add damage, and do that massively high damage at range to the entire screen (and beyond) at once that nothing gets close to killing the character, therefore defence is largely irrelevant.
Some of those leagues have added new ways of multiplicatively increasing the damage the player does, such as “% of non-chaos damage gained as chaos”, in addition to how they handle damage conversion (such that the % added chaos is applied at every stage of the conversion). Some of the league mechanics (mainly the more targetted crafting ones such as delve) help advance the speed meta indirectly by allowing players to craft powerful gear more easily, and some modifiers that are only accessible via those crafting mechanics directly progress the speed meta (eg, being able to craft “supported by maim” on a 6l chest).
Have you played a Werebear druid for example with and without 100% GB and CA? Without 100% each you cripple your build a lot. The performance and effectiveness of the build is terrible without it. I get CA but I don’t get it that 100% GB is a “must” sooner or later if you want to go toe to toe with enemys. These are 2 defense mechanics on top of the other protections already in game. I realy think it’s to much to be honest. Protections, dodge, block and CA I’m totaly fine with but GB is stupid the way it is. This could be a rogue mechanik for example so if you don’t dodge you get a glancing blow to mimik a quick and agile class type system wise but I still think it’s rubbish to have this stat widely available for everyone and still have enemys that delete you out of existence somehow and even earlier if you don’t have it.
In POE you build armor healt and resis and that’s mostly it. Sure there are builds with a shield on top of it and dodge iirc but we need to adress more protections and we’ll never get to a point where we have “enough” protections. How does this translates to speed meta? Sure people who don’t build “tank” should die way faster then people who do so but I don’t get how this translates into speedmeta ^^.
I know how PoEs mechanics works, I’ve been playing it on & off since closed beta.
PoE’s defensive gearing is quite a bit different to LE’s. PoE has more affix slots, more ways of getting defensive stats from the passive tree, has fewer resists & resists are capped, so apart from hp/armour/ES there is a cap that can be reached on the defensive stats. But as I put in my post above, that’s not actually what drives the speed meta, it’s that damage is so easily available & is the best way of getting through the highest end content.
Ahhh okay now even I got it thx for your answer ^^. Yes it’s true dmg is obtained rather easy to a certain point when it simply stops because you don’t outgear the content anymore while your protections dimish even faster atm.
I found asimple way to explain my self meanwhile :D. I think LE defence mechanics are overcomplicated. To much stuff, to easy to get what makes it rather dull and messy.