THE ARMOR PROBLEM - Path of Exile 2

[@mitchellsink2584]

My wife is playing a warrior. I've watched her leap slam at a pack of mobs, and she has to pop a potion immediately because while she is flying through the air, she almost dies.

[@MonkehSee]

Yeah its ridiculous actually, you can jump over a wall, a hole but cant jump over a snakes spit

[@lucasljs1545]

Yeah, leap should give immunity to melee attacks on air. This way it could be used to leave a pack too. I think melee builds will need to try and focus on regen or some life-back mechanics the way it is now.

[@tinihaumalinowski7764]

Yeah this is terrible, not only ranged mobs hit you miad air but also melee ones

[@thealancorp.2394]

Same issue my wife's bf had

[@Rastei]

Exactly another problem is the amazing isntant recation that enemies have that even you are in the aire traveling by a door you are getting hit in the AIR! is amazing... how many times i have to wait till my estampade slam or whatever hit the ground and mobs just to regain the half hp I just lost for pressing the skill... Its so sad dude...

[@bearrington2024]

From what I gather is that the sheer number and strength of hidden mechanics is what is causing a problem. How is a player supposed to know about the armor formula, or which attacks have overwhelm? So you stack armor, see a giant number, then get 1 tapped by a phys hit. What is the player supposed to learn? How are they supposed to overcome that? This is even before we get into the 1 life maps, or how 1 shot prone the game is. Its okay to be hard, but you can't also be obtuse. Its okay to be punishing, but you cannot also be unfair.

[@grantlawrence4600]

Precisely. Too much hidden info. Inexcusable to have these convoluted mechanics.

[@bobbywogoman7932]

This should be seen by the devs. Don’t get me wrong I love Poe but damn if this isn’t 1000% true

[@innocentsmith6091]

Hidden information is fine if everything works as expected. In other words, intuition tells you "if you fight a boss and it does X damage to you, if you add more armor and fight the boss it will do less than X damage to you." But how it works now is that you might not even get any reduction. Intuition tells you if you take every armor node and use the best armor in the game, even the strong bosses shouldn't be remotely likely to one-shot you with physical damage, since you invested almost all of your character into maximizing it. You've surely sacrificed massive amounts of damage potential to do so, yes? The problem that armor is presented and thus expected to work one way, works another much different way, and sucks ass while doing so. Any reasonable player should expect lots of armor to mean lots of defense, without having to know the formulae, because that's what makes sense.

[@sensaiko]

@@grantlawrence4600 GGG is all about convoluted mechanics. I always wanna like PoE but this things are annoying

[@kresimircosic9035]

First time? PoE had identical issues for years before they reduced ES dominance. Literally years.

[@Yomush]

The cycle of warrior in PoE 2: > Stacks armor > Gets hit by armor breaking monster > All armor is gone in one hit > "Ok I guess i'll go fuck myself" > Dies > Rerolls into Witch

[@procerator]

does armor breaking removes all armor?

[@mynameswouldntwork]

Melee experience fixed!

[@kristianlehnen7793]

don't forget ">Stacks Strength" at the end there

[@Sicknificant1]

​@procerator yep. On top of that, the hit that armor breaks does full damage as if the armor was already broken. Meaning that one shot slams from bosses that break armor one shot high armor builds in the same exact way they would one shot someone with no armor.

[@siccens6168]

Lmao😂😂

[@williamoliveira350]

I really hope GGG watchs this video, I’m almost giving up my warrior, its unaceptable a bulky melee chacaracter in full plate armor to be less tanky than a sorcerer, have less clear speed than everyone else and have clunky animations that kills you in situations that shouldn’t.

[@raphaelcarregari2453]

You new to PoE, I guess?

[@williamoliveira350]

yes, I have only 180 hours in poe 1, but I dont get your point

[@LemonCamel]

​@@raphaelcarregari2453there are very few skills that are clunky like in poe2. Molten blast, for example, makes you step forward a lot. If there were a skill like that in poe1, you could use gems or gear to speed it up

[@riveteye93]

Skill issue, unironically

[@williamoliveira350]

@@riveteye93 Ok ES player

[@TheWarriorXander]

Block is by far the easiest defensive layer to add to a character. I was using a focus off-hand for most of act 1 and 2, but in act 3 my survivability was really starting to fall off. Picked a rare shield off the ground with some resistances and increased armor/es and suddenly my squishy little sorc can facetank entire hordes of enemies while still dealing damage. And that's without using active block. Defences definitely need some serious re-balancing going forward.

[@Sorain1]

I noticed how big a benefit getting a shield was. Block absolutely multiplies your survivability no matter what your defenses are. Active Block just makes it an even more viable investment.

[@raynaldoandhika6836]

Some attacks actually bypass your block, i think magic and aoe? I feel like they need to design that all attack can be blocked, because there's stun threshold. Therefor if their attack too strong, they will immediately break your stun threshold and can damage you. And at least increase base passive block chance

[@Loqque]

@@raynaldoandhika6836 Yeah, but for a mage the worst mobs are the dumbass mobs running at you trying to overwhelm you. Shield is a godsend against these, since you cant really avoid their hits due to their move and attack speed especially on higher maps

[@ravador]

How do you add block to a crossbow character? That's right. You don't.

@@raynaldoandhika6836 All Projectiles including magic can be blocked as long as it's not a boss mechanic but aoe will still hit you.

[@Woolie]

what I don't understand is why they removed things like endurance charges and fortify while keeping the EXACT same balance-philosophy of one-shots being what every character builds around, defensively. ... and then went and gave ES characters 20-25% nodes on the tree and gave life characters a SINGLE 3% node lmfao

[@arkcantoscreampsnpc7274]

What’s funny is that I’ve found at least a dozen sets of nodes that are clearly designed to enable RF builds, that are health tanks like “% armor applies to fire damage taken” and “%max fire res per # uncapped fire res” but then none of the health nodes you would need to actually use RF 😂

[@rankcolour8780]

@@arkcantoscreampsnpc7274 Isn't that for the witch who takes ele as fire and Phys as Chaos.?

[@boo1488]

Love ya vids

[@Deminese2]

I'll never understand especially with fortify being gone. Slow melee has fucking nothing but block as a defensive layer. No real stop gap outside of that from being bursted by ranged mobs while you slowly sunder. Standing still is already a massive detriment so you would think armor would be much better at protecting you while you have to do so.

[@Bienebumsebiene]

BECAUSE AS LIFE CHARACTER YOU HAVE A FUCKING LIFE FLASK.

[@Blood-Lord]

Well said Kripp. Thanks for bringing this issue to light. As a Titan 2hander I've pretty much just went with the tactic of "Kill thing first, before it kills me." Because, tankiness doesn't exist.

[@junk3996]

another thing to keep in mind, heavy body armour still has a movement speed penalty to use. so trying to get a bunch of armour you're actually losing out on movement speed which is a massive defensive mechanic on its own IMO if you're using full armour body armour that should, sure reduce your movement speed, but also inherently give you like 5-10% phys dmg reduc

[@innocentsmith6091]

They should really just get rid of the moving speed reduction. It serves no purpose. Basically no one is making ranged armor characters.

[@RussoTuristo89]

Idk about movement penalty, but i remember the moment i got a white armor/eva base (120~220 each) better than my rare full armor with good modifiers to armor (500~600+). Before: 48%phys res and 1~5% evade chance. After: 42% phys res and 30+% evade... Then put 1 passive into armor/eva mastery +15% and got 47-48% phys red and 35% eva. Too much math for me, GGG please let me rest in the game, i like this "alien shooter" style with a bit of darksouls, but sometimes people need RF gameplay.

[@AceStrife]

And they still don't inform the players at all about this debuff (mechanic). Always hurts me seeing someone find that +move speed shield and thinking they're moving faster with it equipped. From PoE1 to PoE2...

[@madmarduk1936]

It’s the opposite of what should happen. If anything melee characters need a base 10% movement speed increase not a penalty from armor.

[@cheekzclappin]

That's why you need to try and get Boots with 20% movement

[@hilding2063]

I did follow your build, reached lvl 88 with 13,5k armor and 2,1k health there, especially the steppes boss rathbreaker has no issue one shotting you. Now got a twink the FoTM Stormweaver Mind over Matter 2k energyshield 1k health 3k Mana and he survives amazingly well. On top of that in the trials it all adds up and you start out with 12k Honor compared to a armor focused char with just life running the relics with 5k honor.

[@xQuinmasterx]

I agree!

[@ugly_poe]

yap

[@xSol_Raven]

Can't wait for the collab.

[@kmisialak]

Now this is Kripp from 2013! Fantastic analysis.

[@KontrolStyle]

we'll never have that back, but it's close

[@craynak]

@@KontrolStyleyeah his 09/13 era videos were goatee till he just did HS forever.

[@jprec5174]

Yea this is the best ive seen krip in years. I really wish he did more of these. He explains this better than most.

[@1Husseini]

​This thread reminded me of the "Succubus" stupid jokes 😂

[@ajthedemon40]

As a generally new player of PoE (I started in affliction league in PoE 1) to this day I just assumed the physical damage reduction % on the character tool tip was the physical damage I negated. It is a little weird that GGG wants to be more accessible to new players but still has a confusing stat like that.

[@246Rennie]

POE 1 had the same problem and it's also a issue whit evasion since the 0% shown is when attacked by a white mob, not being clear on what armor and evasion does seems to be a hill GGG as decided to die on no matter what.

[@Knights_of_the_Nine]

It's how dark souls does it. Dark souls players still don't understand the system, lol.

[@bearrington2024]

@@Knights_of_the_Nine It makes perfect sense. Armor does nothing so wear what looks cool and doesnt stun you as much and just play the game

[@stebobibo]

Yeah, and it's not the only confusing stat or place where they hide information. Another example is accuracy, where it only tells you estimated chance to hit at 2 meters. Not very helpful info for ranged builds. It's been at 100% all game for me and I'm lv 79 atm. They can at least tell us acc at 6m, too. Another stat is evasion. They don't show est chance to evade accurate hits, or boss hits (which all seem buffed in accuracy), nor do they explain clearly what types of hits are unavoidable (a ton are).

[@ryu_lidu]

@@bearrington2024 Also in DS while armor is largely useless there are some insanely tanky builds that stack HP and poise to kill bosses before getting killed

[@fatihd.7178]

Kripparian made ggg to change some endgame things about survival with his first video. He is so classy and very nice to have him in our community. This feedback is pure class.

[@themargrave]

Sir, this is KZbin, your polite, well reasoned, and complimentary comments are totally out of place.

[@housemana]

@@themargrave brother i believe ur speaking to a bot lol

[@fatihd.7178]

@@housemana not bot lol. I love krip’s feedback videos. His support and valuable comments were really important for poe1 too, which is my fav game all time.

[@gabrielc7861]

​@@housemana Damn bots are getting smart. They are calling other people bots to cover for themselves.

[@shiniesglitters5424]

Energy shield with active blocking is so good especially with ghostwrithe. You have an insane amount of effective HP, and you can just actively block to let your shield regen.

[@AlinaTaylor-p4g]

Very cool video Kripp.❤

[@GamingDualities]

so thats how u got popular huh. scammer and manipulator

[@moritzgoldi453]

1. remove life node from tree (life works like a multiplier for evasion and armor) 2. double value of es nodes on tree 3. only es is viable 4. *Suprised kiwi noises*

[@cmanmaxwell]

Stacking armor, not viable. Layered defense including armor, viable.

[@dshearwf]

@@cmanmaxwell eh it doesnt change the fact that armor is literally the weakest layer in the game by a long shot. Don't forget that armor in poe1 is infinitely more powerful because of molten shell, which we dont have in that iteration rn.

[@Sindamsc]

ES is valuable not bc of nodes, but because of reservation abilities. Without them, ES would be worse than life even if you could get 12k ES, as ES damage mitigation is much worse, and ES recovery would be much slower than life.

[@ANDELE3025]

Life doesnt have any multiplicative ehp effect on evasion. Evasion and Block are functionally binary, ES is raw threshold. In theory each should be viable. In practice armor is borked/useless even if on paper against a hit that is close to player raw skill+supports level stikes it should be effective (and even more EHP compared to non-grim feast ES).

[@Axterix13]

Honestly, I'd say that ES being generically viable isn't quite true either. ES types tend to be ranged, where they can actually let it recharge. Wouldn't work as well if you are constantly getting hit. The main thing that makes ES top dog right now isn't ES. It's Mind over Matter, Eldritch Battery, and a pair of uniques. The first two give you big hp nodes, while the latter negates most of the downside of Eldritch Battery.

[@wondermog4524]

This helps me to realize why playing my warrior feels so bad.

[@trippintoad7223]

same

[@Xenuxable]

switched from warrior to sorc after 50 hours the game became so easy its like i went from playing a souls game to playing a hello kitty game because i oneshot everything from a screen away and survive atacks from bosses with huge energyshield also i oneshot all trials and got all my ascendency points meanwhile my warrior is still stuck at 4 ascendency points because trials is just horrible with animations that take 2 seconds and having to be in melee range while still getting oneshot despite having to be in melee range.

[@wondermog4524]

@@Xenuxable I honestly thought about changing to a Monk, Witch or Ranger. Just feels bad cause I wanted to play Duelist so I went warrior. next closest and now i feel like i grinded so hard to get 75+ and am paying for it.

[@richardmenz3257]

@@Xenuxable similar experiance but I completed all my trails.

[@franklin9039]

@@wondermog4524I played warrior and hit a serious wall around lvl 45, I went ranger and have been absolutely shredding through and just hit cruel difficulty

[@FervorGaming]

I had to make a change from armour evasion to energy shield evasion on my gemling build. This needs a bit of love

[@HiddenStr3ngth]

I am str stacking gemling, 4k life atm on SSF. I have been starting to think about some sort of transition. What's worse, I am a slow melee build... (dual wield 2handers)

[@sobrouesselogin]

I will also have to do that. I have 70% armor right now. Any tips on this transition? I'm also playing gemling

[@DevK0z]

Yeah I been made the switch on mine cause that was my intention from the jump. Only hard part is trying to balance my stats, but I could fix that in other ways.

[@DevK0z]

@@HiddenStr3ngthit shouldn’t be too hard if you can manage it. You’ll only need 86 int for the best Eva/Es Body Armour. If you switch there is an Evasion node in the Ranger tree that increases the Evasion Rating on your body Armour by 100%. If you’re not using your annoit on your amulet, you could also take a node near the Templar/Druid side that increases Energy Shield from Body Armour by 60%

[@kayaltamira]

I love your input. Thank you. The problem as a Bloodmage summoner with life stacking after T10 maps is that, you need life as much as mana to use your skills, investing in ES takes away so many points from minions you almost need to make the decision of sacrificing them or just remain mediocre in your necromancer fantasy, also because of the ridiculous spirit costs. I managed to craft a solar amulet with 58 spirit early game and I can’t afford to replace it. Omen of Wittering is incredibly expensive also now, like, there is no joy in crafting. I have also a lot of extra spirit on my corrupted sceptre that I am unable to replace, I’m still rocking level 14 to warrior minions just because the stats are so much better than anything else I can afford on trade atm or that drops on me. I am at this point where I think I can’t progress even if I’m good at dodging, there are many blind spots in the game that you can’t just anticipate, plus let’s not talk about the crashes that just killed you for something you are unable to control. Without effective ways to scale life on the skill tree, everything costing divines at this point, particularly jewels, Ghostwalker would be a death sentence… there isn’t much left for me to do imo. PoE OG was by far better as progression system. I also dislike the rune system. Getting manuals and having a crafting bench gave you much more freedom over your items. I prefer the original mechanics where you could pretty much make crazy item combinations and I just feel the new to system is quite limited and unimaginative. So you find a better belt that now has 43% fire resistance instead of 30% and now your gloves are pretty much useless too because now you would be better off with another rune or solecore? Okay fine, you wanna make it permanent like Diablo’s tempering system…. Like, make the game more rewarding, or let me farm some special currency through an expedition that will let me make some changes. Why do I need a whole new armour set every time the game blesses me with a good drop when I spent so much time and currency and making my own items? I do like the game and I’m on a guild. We have a lot of fun but I am honestly bored out of my mind now. In PoE 1 you could blast through the campaign and then just farm few maps during the week, always improving, always progressing. Like, I think I prefer D4 endgame at this point at least you could drink wine and have a laugh with your mates killing the maggot a million of times whereas in PoE2 I feel everyone is hoarding their shit, playing solo, scared of the low FPS rates and NDVIA app crashes due to procedural shaders

[@iaxyz]

Bloodmage is rough. The best way I found was to ignore life and all synergies from the ascendancy and go ES with grim feast. I'm in T10 as well and haven't died since my Es respec. Grim Feast is crazy good for just 30 spirit and soooo much stronger than blood remnants

[@kayaltamira]

@ thanks for your comment, means a lot, yh, sanguimancy feels like a nerf tbh, I wish it was optional. I respec to ES too and I dropped my minions, which is sad but I just don’t think I can get minions and enough defences with this ascendency. I’m broke af and I haven’t sold anything good lately so I’m trying to get new gear through expedition currency but so far has been really shit RNG. I have all my res capped, including chaos if you include charm buff with guard suffix and everything, but all my gear have very little to non HP so I am super squishy, I need to manage my health potion and my positioning really good to even cast my skills. Green Feast is helping but my stats are still too low, my chest armour has about 500 ES with double iron rune, but has no life on it, I just can’t get HP mate, it is so frustrating, everything with T8/9 life has no freaking res on it, I don’t know why GGG would think getting HP only from gear was a good idea, like if you’ve got bad RNG or didn’t engage with trading before the economy spike, what then? I’ve been trading since the beginning but at 75-78 is when you need to make the big changes and this is where the exalted devalued. I’m thinking to enchant emotions passive on my amu that gives ES from body armour but I don’t know if it is permanent or I could just reroll other anointment in the future because I can’t afford to screw my neck, I momentarily dropped my focus to get block chance and a tad more spirit from Oak’s unique shield but I’m still super fragile. A mate donated me a freaking wand just so I could sac my minions for good but honestly, is shit to feel like a charity case. I’m really hating it. I was really close to 76 but I logged in today to try my respec and I died 3 times trying to challenge myself with better maps, so I’m back to square one. Like, it is a freaking loophole, I just don’t see myself getting out of unless someone carries me around, which honestly sucks and it is just not the type of group play I enjoy doing. I like to feel like my contribution matters. I think I rather don’t play. My guild has helped with map sustain, otherwise I think I would have been done by 65. Still, is like, no one wants to play together, the loot drops are really awkward to some ppl, particularly new players and like I don’t know, Blood Mage feels like a bad sorc imo not a Necromancer. It’s really sad. I was really pumped for this, I wanted to come up with some really crazy build for everyone in my discord but at the end, the power is not there, this is not a class and ascendency you play on your first play-through, you need a lot of currency and good gear to make it work. Anyhow, sorry for the long text. I needed to let it all out lol. Have a good one!

[@iaxyz]

@@kayaltamira If you need a good build for cheap, Look at the detonate dead guide from ds_lily. I couldn't get anything done before respeccing into dd. The respec itself costs gold but you already have minion nodes. Gear itself is super cheap, 1ex for the wand and 2-3ex for a basic scepter with minion level and spirit. That's all you really need. I'm mostly res capped except chaos but the clear is so good that you don't get swarmed and dd costs practically nothing because you keep it at lvl 7. I think dd is one of the few viable builds on bloodmage. I'm mostly running breach. The higher the monster density, the better dd feels.

[@wheeze9378]

They need to buff player armour asap! My mate running around with 14k ES + 2k life never dies, while I fall over on my 15k armour + 3,5k life warrior constantly.

[@xenxander]

No they need to change how armor negates damage. There are already stupid high armor values.. but if damage only needs to be 1/8 that of your armor to deal 50% damage, these numbers are stupid.

[@andrejandruscha7570]

Same as POE1 when it came out. Best builds were ranged chars with 10k energy shield. The whole system is flawed since 10 years and they still haven't learned ...

[@MichaelPohoreski]

*GGG:* _”You are playing The Vision wrong._ *Gamers:* _”Why do you STILL hate melee?”_

[@rickmel-q7m]

@@MichaelPohoreski the vision is hating melee, like in diablo 2

[@MichaelPohoreski]

@@rickmel-q7m Haha, all too true.

[@taborevan]

so true

[@tomwalker8944]

​@@rickmel-q7m I mean 2 of the best builds in D2 are melee. (Mosaic Assassin and Infinity Spearazon) And the easiest way to beat Ubers is also melee lol. Only reason to be melee in PoE 2 is because you hate yourself.

[@MisfitMonkey]

Another major point people forget with the Armor/melee issues is Giant's Blood as it's become another symptom. Almost all melee Marauders are shield/giant's blood, but not many if any are using two 2handers effectively making the node just a mandatory damage upgrade for shield builds. Life is mandatory so stacking strength is mandatory, so Giant's Blood is mandatory. Fix armor and maybe give us other defensive options and maybe that can fix this cascade of issues.

[@LeiRaion]

Requiring strength stacking restricts our available mod slots on items as well. So... when you have other classes saying "lul just stack rarity and print money idiot" Uhhh.... I can't? I mean, you can once you're already wealthy but getting over that hurdle is disgustingly unfun. Armour is just bad atm as a defensive layer. It's literally the poe1 meme for us right now, just stack damage because bosses are going to just 1 shot you anyways.

[@chaddrusso8850]

Yup I’ve been playing through the cruel campaign with two two handers with little issues but now I’m feeling slog of not having a shield in maps

[@voxaeternus1157]

A shield is required to generate endurance charges too atm, so even if they provided benefits other then buffing warcry's, Giant's Blood is required for endurance charges if you are using a 2h weapon, excluding the clunky weapon switch.

[@MisfitMonkey]

@@chaddrusso8850 It's totally fine during campaign, especially with decent gear, but maps is the wall and that's where I had issues as well. The difference on T15 maps versus my other characters is massive.

[@anlkuyucu6825]

I've just started mapping on my warrior but this video convinced me to leave my warrior behind. So far maps aren't exactly rewarding and they say you should be doing T10+ to hope for better things. My man says that's about where armor starts falling dramatically. I hope they change this nonsense a warrior can't be the worst class against physical damage...

[@billymaderson9158]

At least in PoE 1 we also had fortify, endurance charge phys/ele damage reduction, and molten shell and vaal molten shell that helps armor-based characters survive big hits. In PoE 2, all that stuff is gone so there's pretty much no other option for armor-based characters to deal with large physical damage

[@snaker9er]

I think there is a lot of these types of things that will be making their way into the game in the future. EA doesn't have all that much in it imo

[@zneezer]

The way charges and additional phys reduction worked with armor also means their removal absolutely kills it. Armor was basically balanced around being additive with those and without them it's useless.

[@Knights_of_the_Nine]

They expected a lot of people to use jade armor.

[@ryu_lidu]

@@Knights_of_the_Nine Problem is jade loses stacks when you get hit, it encourages a hit and run playstyle where you barely get hit

[@kanick1983]

you dodge roll.....

[@9thDrunkenGod.]

Great vid m8. I did a warbringer focused on armour since launch early access and tha info was crucial for me, thanx!

[@paetroalexius9299]

I think the one thing not mentioned from poe1 is that armor has damage reduction synergy with endurance charges, so the big hits having armor mitigate only half is also supported by the endurance charge dmg reduction making the hit 25% or less of the total damage. Not having endurance charges work the same way makes armor as a defensive layer not exist, especially cause the current armor formula was created around the way endurance charges work (specifically a cited reason as to why they changed the formula in poe1 to work as it does now).

[@ryu_lidu]

Also fortify was a thing

[@asmosisyup2557]

wait so what do endurance charges do now?

[@ryu_lidu]

@@asmosisyup2557 They make shouts buffs work for more attacks lol, it's pathetic

[@MrBeame]

​@asmosisyup2557 Currently no innate effect. This is the case for all charges. They are mainly used as a spend mechanic to empower certain abilities. There is an aura skill available that gives you stats for each type of charge but it is only for having 1 of each charge it doesn't scale with multiples.

[@uchitel_truda]

Do you think that maybe endurance charges will be introduced when the game is fully released then? Maybe not having this can be explained by the game currently only having half the content?

[@Paul_Hardy]

In interviews during the hype phase for the early access I remember people asking them, "why do you hate melee" and them telling the interviewer that they've learned the lesson. Have you GGG? Have you?

[@zxbc1]

Well in this case it has nothing to do with melee, as he's demonstrating how armor sucks on a ranged char.

[@ashero2092]

@@zxbc1 Ranged classes usually don't use armor and go for evasion, energy shield or combo of the two. Going for either on warrior is a bit problematic due to the starting position on the passive tree. The only exception so far is Merc, but he can easily pivot into a full evasion.

[@rb98769]

​@@zxbc1Let's not be disingenuous here. The only people fully investing in armor right now are melee warriors and a minority of mercs. 90%+ of armor nodes are in the warrior quadrant of the tree, there are zero builds from other classes going out of their way to grab those. It affects everyone, but melee warriors have the most at stake with this.

[@HiddenStr3ngth]

Considering how most rare mods on monsters and the mods in the trials are hellscape for melee and a joke for ranged... doesn't seem like it.

[@Uryendel]

They said game would probably be easier if you play melee instead of range... well, that was a lie

[@KhelbenbX]

On top of that, have you noticed the armor nodes that are in the mercenary area? The armour and evasion nodes are just memes. +80% armour and evasion when on low life (35%) is not going to mitigate shit that oneshots, hell, even a "small" hit from a white mob might finish you off at that point. Defend with 150% armour from attacks that are 6m away from you? it takes 2 miliseconds for any mob to jump into your viccinity, and if you play a melee class you actually want stuff to be close to you. The only good node close to that area is armor applies to fire damage at 25% of its value, that can be useful if you wear cloak of flame... by sacrificing the chest piece (the piece that gives you the most armour). There are exactly 2 NOTABLES that give you any increased max life, each of them give you +3% and they are in opposite sides of the tree. There are a gorillion nodes that give you up to a whooping 40% ES for basically no drawback. The same goes for mana, that's why CI + MoM + EB even without the double dip technology poe1 has (if you dont use everlasting gaze, in that case you can stack mana and ES to have insane "life" pools). Meanwhile titans run around with +200 life in all slots with 4k life. But in the end, this is early access, balancing all of this requires a brain of the size of a building, so lets have some patience and see where it goes.

[@akaxjenkins]

the lack of life on the tree is gonna get someone fired. There's no way. And what did the testers test? The first 3 acts and that's it? I guess that has to be it.

[@jprec5174]

@@akaxjenkins yea clearly they only tested the campaign

[@ryu_lidu]

@@akaxjenkins Lack of life on tree is good, it makes balancing easier, the problem is armor is shit Int based classes SHOULD have insane ES numbers, same as evasion builds getting 95% dodge. Armor should apply to everything and with a different formula, then HP + armor characters would run around with 5k HP while ES builds run around with 10-20k ES but the 5K + armor would be more EHP, also ES regen should be nerfed. Int characters and Str characters should have similar EHP while STR characters would have an easier time sustaining, so while they would be similar against one hit str characters would have an easier time face tanking due to recoup, leech and on hit heals.

[@kailanirhys6107]

GGG is a new, small, indie company. We need to give them a break, and understand they have not made a game like this before. So they are learning as a dev team.

[@onesolopolo4194]

@@kailanirhys6107it’s early access stop being such a spoilt little only child.

[@Shukaiyo]

this explains everything about the "why am i so squishy" my monk and titan even is going through. very helpfull

[@profitfever]

Thanks Krip. This content helps me understand the game. I don’t have time to research this stuff 😅

[@Twisterspi0]

Playing evasion armor hybrid and this is exactly the experience I've hit. Once your at t10 maps even with 75% all res and 45% estimated reduction from armor, you just get one shot by some white mobs (Hyena centaurs that throw javelins as an example) and unless you strength stack, you cap out with 2k life with WELL rolled gear. Why did they think removing % health nodes was a good idea, and then adding 1000% increased energy shield at the start witch.

[@henriquerodrigues7795]

You're right for sure, tho more realistically with well rolled gear you'd cap around 2.5 my deadeye is stacking atts, about 170 strength rn, and without my unique helm, which has no life I cap at around 2.8k Edit: forgot to say this too but I think the original idea of taking out hp% was good, they wanted to unbloat the tree and make it so you didn't have so many layers of needed defense, the problem is twofold tho. 1- they didn't adjust the games philosophy to account for that change, aka everything still one shots you. 2- they treat ES as defense, like armor and evasion, but ES is basically hp, especially with all the gems and auras that exist to support it. So it's removal was completely pointless and makes hp useless

[@nakfr0g]

can’t say I’m having the same experience clearing T16+2 maps as a warrior. Full res caped, svalin warrior and i probably die once every 30+ T15+ maps. I think my gripe with warriors is that my friends playing sorc and ranger don’t die either but they clear 50x as fast. They gave warriors the poe2 slow and methodical treatment then threw it out the window with sorcs who are zooming around poe1 style

[@Bob-t4g7w]

I have full res capped and 70% reductrion from armor and random floor effects one shot me in tier 11+ maps all the time.

[@henriquerodrigues7795]

​@@nakfr0gyeah that's the thing, you're not any more survivable than any other build that clears 5x as fast and also only dies once every 30 maps. It's completely lopsided. In poe1 I'd make a slower and tanky build, I got 40 challenge points in settles with a build like that, rest assured I would NOT die even to Uber bosses, that was the whole point of the build, my clear was slower but I would not die, I carried my brother through all the Uber bosses cuz it was that easy (except exarch, screw exarch balls)

[@ryu_lidu]

@@henriquerodrigues7795 The solution should be, remove hp% from the tree, let ES be what it is now but nerf the uniques giving a billion ES with low investment and change armor formula to be more consistent + let it apply to ALL damage at a giga reduced rate This would make armor stackers have less HP than ES stackers but armor stackers would have a shit ton of value per point of health even against elemental damage I don't think a giga stacked STR + armor character speccing fully into defense should ever get one shotted besides bosses mechanics like the sanctum one and some insane AoE stack/shotgun bcs they're usually telegraphed

[@246Rennie]

It get's extra sad when you think about the fact then in most cases somebody whit 0 armor casting a high level enfeeble whit just a couple of curse effect nodes will take less physical damage from a boss then a armor stacker.

[@ANDELE3025]

Or negative armor and just using block and evasion. Or the bee-stump mask helmet that gives -10 all rez, but 15% actual phys DR.

[@R0NIN_1987]

Ebonics

[@Maldo666]

Thank you Kripp for actually puting in the work and testing the game!

[@mariod.1690]

Very cool video Kripp. Your clear explanation of things is something I enjoy. Ty for that, and I wish you all nice christmas holidays

[@kresimircosic9035]

Let's remember POE2 EA was supposed to release in late 2020. Warrior was made for that version of the game. Everything else was made after apparently. No wonder we are still missing 90% of melee skills and content.

[@Lovyxia]

This is such an unnecessarily convoluted way of doing armor, especially with how resistances have the opposite problem of being so simple that the difference between 80% and 90% is doubling or halving the damage which other ARPGs like Last Epoch have mechanics to make way less all or nothing.

[@ashero2092]

If you make armor as simple as resistances, playing the game on a character that doesn't focus on armor would be impossible. Resistances are simple, because every character is expected to have 75%+ resistances. How are you going to balance enemy physical damage for 20000 armor and 0 armor characters fairly? Not the matter how you plan to calculate the growth in armor numbers through the progression? The only confusing part about armor is the way they show it in the character stat sheet. This arbitrary % reduction says absolutely nothing useful. From other games i've played, they either make armor actually convoluted by dynamically changing it's effectiveness depending on a zone level and level of the enemy hitting you or go even simpler by making it a flat damage reduction. IMO, PoE hits the sweet spot, but they need to show and describe the mechanic better.

[@Nico78Not]

@@ashero2092 Reduce the stat requirements for ES/Armor - Eva/Armor, or give every gear piece armor. Add a rune that adds armor when slotted in gear. Problem solved.

[@nekronox2055]

@@ashero2092 easy, just make it a requirement to have at least 2500 armor (or whatever value) to get basic reduction of phys. Every type of Armor should have some base armor value even pure ES stuff. Never understood why they focused so heavy on the trifecta of Amor/ES/Evasion.

[@NerissaVal]

Last Epoch has the same exact problem where the ES equivalent is hilariously overpowered compared to playing life-based.

[@TheCosmicAstro-]

@@ashero2092 you're over-complicating it. the % armor on stat sheet is effectively % phys damage reduction vs smaller hits. The only time that % armor becomes basically worthless is vs things that will oneshot you or near oneshot you(which is when you want the armor the most). This is just poor design.

[@cizzymac]

So the best defense is to have enough screen clear to destroy everything before it can hit you. Well noted, and thank you as always, Kripp.

[@misterv2899]

Yes, in poe2 nothing fucking matters exept enormous damage an clear speed, that's why i play lightning arrow deadeye. So fucking much better than monk or warrior builds its insane. Sadly i can't stack es but hey, if you have enough damage you don't need any.

[@Alloran]

As it always has been. GGG is good at many things. Creating an endgame experience that doesn't boil down to screen nuking or else is not one of those things. As good as many of the boss experiences are, it is wild to me at how they seem to have learned nothing about pack size, mob movement/attack speeds, projectile/aoe spam, and tuning of mob damage. There's like this secret little rage timer in every pack, if you don't delete them within a few seconds there's going to be so much shit on your screen that kills you that it's effectively impossible to not get tapped.

[@jprec5174]

@@Alloran it just blows me away how they keep managing to make melee worse than diablo 2.

[@gregrussell1787]

If we are lucky they will nerf all the OP builds and 10x enemy HP. Not only is the game so much more fun when you have to think, but we also get to watch the sweats cry.

[@jprec5174]

@ the genie is out of the bottle. Players will soon be conditioned to the poe1 esque endgame

[@alewis514]

Armor has been a meme since several POE 1 leagues as well. Many players will use Determination skill gem + armor flask because that will produce enough armor to protect you against a rapid barrage of small hits (which does happen in POE 1, the mob density in Simulacrum, Deli maps or Breach can be insane). Protecting yourself against big hits is waaaaay harder. You basically need to play an armor stacker build which has literally 4+ MILLION armor. 20 000 armor won't do jack shit in POE 1 where there is arch-nemesis rares buffed by delirium, essence mods, your atlas that has +126% map modifier effect, yada yada yada. Those big goat mobs in T17 maps can slam-dunk you for 30K physical. Only armor stacker with 1M+ armor will be able to cut down this damage to something manageable. In 3.25 they nerfed majority of ways to convert physical to elemental, as players were able to achieve nearly full damage conversion with a few items. Cloak of Flames / Lightning Coil was the start. Then you could convert 8% to chaos from boots implicit, 15% to cold from Taste of Hate flask, 24% to two elements from Watcher's Eye mods. There, you just redirected nearly all your phys to ele and achieved blanked 75%+ reduction on damage. This isn't the case anymore, as convert phys -> ele mods were greatly reduced in availability.

[@dunngyllite7883]

Excellent breakdown, easy to understand even for us non-number-chrunchers. Thanks.

[@fade9004]

Love your POE content and wish you would make more. You explain things in a way where even a simpleton (me) can understand.

[@ggzii]

We solved this in PoE1 half the issues are PoE2 unsolving things.

[@feelsgood7929]

Its not solved in PoE1, armour is shit unless you play one specific ascendancy

[@salihkizildag]

​@@feelsgood7929not exactly, because raw physical damage reduction is easier to get in poe 1 and makes building armour more meaningful

[@Sicknificant1]

@@feelsgood7929 Just not true at all, Witch/Marauder/Duelist/Ranger/Templar all have multiple ascendancies or at least easy access on the passive tree to things making very good use of armour. If you are talking about DEEEEEEEP Delving which is like the only time you'd ever need those extra layers of absurd armour, well then it is still not true bc Inquisitor/Necro/Jugg/Chieftain/Sabo/Assassin/Elementalist/Pathfinder were all making it into thousands of depth which is the only place you'd ever need that much armour to begin with. Unless you are just trying to tank Uber Maven mindgame or Uber Eater's Slam for the fun of it.

[@grimmover]

@@Sicknificant1 Other than Maven's mindgame, you're correct. To tank her slam during the game you just need silly high health pool. My CoC Inquisitor with 33k ES takes that hit on his face and lives.

[@Pshaurk]

If they want to keep armour as it is they should add a large number of explicit nodes for phys reduction in the warrior area. and make a fraction of armour always apply to other elements

[@KaitoverMoon]

Personally I'd like it, but in terms of balance if a node like armor also applying to elemental res did exist you would be forced to take it or gimp yourself with a suboptimal build.

[@reivelt3715]

This. Or make 1 notable that says "% phys is taken as random non chaos element" as there are many max res node in warrior area make this become much more sensible If notable is too easy for anointment, make it a keystone with drawbacks to ailment build up, or reduced stun threshold, making building stun threshold in gear even make sense

[@lavq7000]

​@@KaitoverMoonit already exists a node that applies 25% of armour to fire damage. And it is really strong considering how the mechanic works in tandem with fire resistance

[@RaduStancu]

I feel elemental damage taken is in an ok spot with max rez, but yea, we are really missing flat phys reduction and damage taken as x element.

[@junk3996]

@@RaduStancu yup this is what im thinking as well. for, as far as i know, only shield to roll flat phys reduction i think is a massive oversight. let it roll on body armour as well at least, probably up to 10-12% on top tier rolls. it should also be a corrupt option for body armour and shields alike, as well as damage taken as x element. would be nice for helmets to have damage taken as x element mod as well. but this still doesn't fix or solve the armour issue, its just a bandaid fix (which can quickly get out of hand)

[@calotron357]

Kripp's PoE videos just hit different. No cuts, no bullshit, just great content that helps explain so many unknown nuances (to the laymen like me at least). Great stuff as always!

[@Dereliction2]

He's an expert and incisive thinker. His content inevitably reflects that.

[@gentlemanx7987]

Kripp just always brings these based takes on things. Thanks man. I send love.

[@TricoliciSerghei]

Kripp bringing in the knowledge as always. Thanks for the video!

[@bawzzzz]

The fact you can get your armor broken by mobs is so bad. It's like they added ton of melee related mechanics but in the end those are just stuff that get in the way and make the typical melee-mace-warrior archetype the worst in the game by FAR. Mandatory combos (stun mechanic! ; prime != heavy RIP boneshatter!; armour break mechanic!), get your number 1 defense layer 'broken', super slow windup on game with few attack windows, cant move on windup, terrible life scaling vs ES, terrible map clear skills (also constantly blocked by tiny white mobs). This is after they said they 'fixed' melee but this is what I suspected from the beginning: they just did the opposite. They added tons of interesting mechanics around it but didn't realise that instead of making the archetype more powerful they just ended up making it worse and more cumbersome. Other archetypes don't have to worry about any of it. Move while casting from a distance (massive EHP boost), ES scaling instead of life (also bleed?chaos dmg? who cares w CI), ... Ranger? Just 1-skill-click clear the screen at x3 the speed w more survivability constantly moving around not being near mobs / deadly ground effects. This is a disaster, I have little faith in GGG about melee. Hope they read some of the constructive feedback because they have some work to do.

[@majdan07]

To counter anti melee gameplay you just dont play melee. I have myself a 93lvl titan warrior, clearing t18 maps, some pinnacle bosses like breach t4, but its not fun experience. Moreover it is diminished when from time to time im looking at those other builds and i feel stupid. With warrior im 2x slower with clear speed, i have to sweat sometimes on bosses because, guess what, only defence i have is ARMOUR and life pool (except mandatory resistances). Not cool being warrior right now

[@HiddenStr3ngth]

Yeah, seems pretty much all correct. I am still struggling with my 2h dual wield gemling... to try and make it somewhat playable. Near everything is anti melee, even more vs the slower melee types. Instead you can play ranged and attack while moving, making most mechanics that are hell for melee, utterly irrelevant to you. Well, they have time to improve it, remains to be seen what they do with it.

[@Rastei]

to be fair played marauder in poe 1 with a kind of melee build with a lot of leeach and my warrior feels about similar lol... dying to random mobs while the others build with millions of energu shield tank sirus dmg like with no problem movin around and doing trillion of dmg... so i dont know... It seems that this game is not really designed for melee builds at all. just caster in general because the realitiy in end game you have no time to stop to attack like warrior does in every single skill we use... sandly.

[@bawzzzz]

@@majdan07 I also have a lvl90 4K+ life, 80+ res, max chaos res, max block ignite titan. I did invest so the character can manage to do the endgame content in the end, but as you said it all was a chore along the way and mapping still is. You do feel stupid for even playing it and getting behind on purpose. Leveling a LA ranger ATM without using previous currency and it's a breeze. Nicely ramping up in map with all the QOL none of the headaches and 1/4 of the investment.

[@jprec5174]

They always do this. It's clear two different teams worked on poe2 and settlers league

[@pavelenzo5411]

In POE1 we have good flasks, armour bases and auras(!) that gives as tons of armour, in POE2 only armour on gear and increase on skill tree which is not enough at all to invest in it.

[@erick_ac]

All of that +spell supression, endurance charges, cwdt shields...

[@mattpaulson1608]

Put the Kripparian POE content straight into my veins

[@bohdaicitta]

thanks for this info, looking forward to following your future content

[@Daidera91]

Just wanted to say that I really like your videos, keep it up Kripparrian!

[@busfahrer09]

Thanks for updating your build

[@wulfgarpl]

Also Armor gives you MS penalty. And Doge Roll is based on MS.

[@gabrielc7861]

A rolling doge? Where? I want to see!

[@JamesFuston]

Body armor in general gives you a MS penalty. Slap on an evasion or evasion/ES chest with your character sheet open and watch it drop by ~5%

[@CybearBox]

Yeah. Feels like "Thicc Roll" on Warri.

[@GRIMHOOD99]

​@gabrielc7861lmao 🐕

[@abysmalblade]

I like that the decided that the Ms penalty on armor needed to be a hidden stat

[@Willias]

I really think part of the problem here is that there's only one STR melee class in the game at the moment. Witch, Sorceress, and Monk are all INT or partially INT. So monk has Energy Shield. Ranger and Mercenary are both ranged classes, even though Merc is STR/DEX. Warrior is the only STR melee. So you only have one class that is really concerned with taking hits with Armor. This will have to change when Templar, Druid, Marauder, and Duelist are added. (Templar, Marauder, and Duelist all being Armor using melee classes.)

[@dodang_9147]

Invoker monk is dodge/armor based. it has passive where the more evasion you have, the more armor you get its ascension. they have re-consider passive trees for strength based classes/ascendancy.

[@thatsreallyamoon]

@@dodang_9147 ive been playing it and its fun to help out people doing bosses in the acts, for some reason had insane difficulty with ranger with a meta build and abandoned it.

[@rich1231]

​@@dodang_9147 The meta became CI with evasion and ES. I'm at 1% armor, 12k (80%) evasion and 13k ES and almost unkillable in T15-16s. I tried the ascendancy point to get armor in exchange for evasion but I was actually worse off. The armor plainly SUCKS in PoE 2. Btw, i started PoE 2 with Warrior but by the time I got to the Executioner in Act 1 I realized that it's going to be uphill struggle due to clunky movements and speed. The inability to effectively add life from the passives and make armor useful, as Kripp points out here, proved me right even though I didn't realized it then. And don't get me started on MF in trade league which even farther proved that GGG really hates Warriors like it's in their company's mission... lol

[@dodang_9147]

@@rich1231 my current impression is that armor is more of a stat to counter bleed because bleed is physical damage DoT and it's low damage DoT. this functionality is too specific otherwise. i think they might want to rework armor into something like anti-dot aliment stacking stat so the 3 defences are armor ->anti-aliment evasion -> anti-range ehp -> anti burst damage. ehp should lose to DoT's from minions(currently it does not because there is no mobs specialized in DoT stacking) like ignite stacking. that is why it is imbalanced. Evasion should lose to melee damage and high accuracy minions. Armor loses to burst. currently there is a lot of burst in the game and not a lot of DoT but armor is not really generic counter to DoT for the way it works so it is mostly a useless stat in its current form.

[@cranberrysauce61]

i think armor should give a flat phys damage reduction based on a % of your armor along side the % reduction of the armor, either by default, even by a notable/keystone would make life/armor feel much more tanky so say you have the 20k armor, you get like a flat 1k phys damage reduction, similar to a 1k physical barrier.

[@Deminese2]

I mean you could just make armor give a Physical dmg bubble equivalent to the armor just like Elementalist and witchunter have the Ele bubble and make it restore after X seconds. It would be phys characters version of ES. No need to give dmg reduction just give them a giant EHP for phys.

[@Biyte]

if you look at the formula (or even just the table) , it kind of does, it approaches your Armour/5 basically. If the hit is smaller, it is less than that but it also barely matters at that point, because you'll just reduce a lot of it anyways. for example if you had a modest 1000 Armour, any significant (let's say 2k or more) hit will be reduced by roughly 200 damage. In your 20000 armour example, yeah you really are probably reducing most things by roughly 1-2k. the issue is you're reducing a hit by 4000, you're also eating the remaining 16k lol. Problems are like Kripp says, the existence of overwhelm exists like in PoE1 boss' penetration, armor break mechanics, and the fact that Armour availability and values are lower (PoE1 single affix Armours with like 2000 armour)

[@Alex.Holland]

@@Deminese2 Yup. And there is the armor break mechanic thats a perfect direct counter to it. Armor being a bubble against phys that chips away and energy shield being for elemental hits would be a better system

[@TheSlaske]

Thank you for sharing this! It explains alot of my struggles.

[@BlueBunnyTheThird]

Good video! Thanks! Clears up a lot for people who compared Life to Energy Shield as well, Life is not "a defense" like the other three and thus it makes sense it has almost nothing on the passive tree. The sad thing is though, if you want to go warrior, and you want Giants blood for example, there aren't much options of gohng up north to the Energy Shield nodes... so you are technically a bit stuck to the "i guess I go full armour" route. :P

[@Sweetguy1821]

Meanwhile, you can have 15k ES but almost no life nodes in the passive tree, so you get 1/3 effective hp with armor/health.

[@bawzzzz]

ES vs Life scaling is so ridiculous in this game. Going CI also has so many advantages, like immune to chaos which is big part of the endgame.

[@radicalindividual7774]

But you can get a Kaoms for 1,000 life, and remove Spirit.... While getting a basically 1K Energy Shield Armor. They need to just add back Ondar's Guile, and Molten Strike, with another Loathe Bane, and we can be back in the exact same miserable fundamentally flawed state of PoE1 11 years ago. You'd think after 12 years, and 5 years of this game being designed, they would have a F-ing clue. Guess not.

[@henriquerodrigues7795]

1/3? Try 1/8 especially with all the gems and auras that support ES

[@Sweetguy1821]

@@henriquerodrigues7795 i knew it was bad, I didn't realize the disparity was that crazy.

[@jinz0]

What's c1?​@@bawzzzz

[@mpod89]

When kripp talks PoE, you listen

[@bewilder210]

The armour problem of not being able to mitigate those 2 big attacks from Xesht, in case players fail to dodge them (not all of us are the top 1% gigagod gamer), will make much more sense if only we have more than 1 chance to fight the boss. Its fine with the current boss damage and the amount of pure armour source we can get, IF we have more than 1 chance. But with this 1 portal, 1 chance shenanigans, the boss damage or even general monster damage needs to be tuned down to the point where we won't get one shotted or stun locked to death. With this much punishment, players will gravitate toward even more to the archtetype of enough defences but absurd dps. Kill everything before they able to do anything. And this is a very bad direction because builds will be nerfed, monsters will buffed absurdly, and players left with PoE 1 playstyle. PoE 2 at the endgame is really conflicted about difficulty / challenge vs punishment. The more you punish players, the more players avoid to be punished, not learning about the game and actually overcoming them.

[@Ludocasual]

Very insightful! Thanks Kripp.

[@agustinlopez1509]

Love kripp doing poe videos. Very usefull video thanks ❤

[@vimzim8576]

Determination and Banner of Defiance were huge for PoE1, especially before they got nerfed. You also had Molten Shell, Granite & Basalt flasks and up to 60% armour from a flask mod. You could get good enough amounts of armour without a significant investment on the passive tree. I think the problem was that it was easy to take something that was generous to the average player and turn it into something extreme, I am sure GGG devs still have nightmares about PoE1 armour stackers. I used to love my armour stacking Jugg in PoE1, not sure about after recent nerfs but the last time I played one it had armour in the millions and could face tank even the uber boss mechanics. There was also great synergy with items like replica dreamfeather so armour gave you offence as well, there was also interactions with Aegis Aurora and block so you were even super durable with attacks that weren't physical. I tried going with armour/es in PoE2 and it was okay at first but just switched to pure ES eventually as the armour pretty much did nothing after a while and there is no easy way to scale it. My theory was to convert as much damage to fire on the infernalist, increase max fire resistance and possibly get Heatproofing to apply 25% of armour to fire damage taken as hits but it was far easier to increase life pool via ES than and beef up block than to go that route because it was very hard to scale armour. I think if they are going to use the PoE1 armour formula they have to take into consideration all the other sources of armour we had in PoE1 which we don't and probably never will in PoE2.

[@jprec5174]

@@vimzim8576 my jugg had 100k armor and he still felt like paper, lol.

[@phoenixpills]

@@jprec5174 100k with conversion was good enough but yeah a true armor stacker had way more Armor

[@PsyHoGKVisual]

>armour stackers Why they even care about mirror builds btw? Why they in other hand not even care about ES stakers with 30k average on week 1 and 8k on 1st day? GGG have interests... No. Possession to weaken melee as much as they can. It's very strange to me how my feelings match up that melee builds were given freedom and PoE2 development began.

[@yasinachekzai2567]

Never thought about it like that, but yeah, that's a very valid point. Ghostwrithe (in your case here) basically gives you 66% flat damage reduction, if you were to use a very liberal definition of the concept. Achieving that with armour, across the bord, is literally impossible. That seems like a huge oversight and it can't be working as intended. GGG needs to buff armour, and fast.

[@profanemagic5671]

The node that sets your life to 1 and makes you immune to chaos might be the Problem, honestly. IN THEORY ES has the issue that it does not reduce poison/takes 2x damage from chaos, but in practice that node just ignores the ES downside

[@NoxKlimmek]

Ci effectivly makes you imune to bleed as well

[@MrGAMERSVID]

ghostwrithe + grim feast = incredible hulk

[@akaxjenkins]

grim feast has to get nerfed, hard. There's no way anyone has looked at it and thought it was ok at any level. The testers played up to act 3 normal if that.

[@ANDELE3025]

@@akaxjenkins Its a good effect for a unique, but as a gem it should have a downside or conditional like the mana remnants. Maybe cold effected enemies give ES shards, shocked mana and then ignited for a HP version while fixing/unfucking blood witch?

[@DevK0z]

⁠@@ANDELE3025that’ll just pigeon hole people into playing cold builds. Mana Regen is already good on the tree and life regen/leech sucks.

[@LockeElite]

Kripp with the best takes and explenations out there. More of the community could learn to give feedback in this manner and tone.

[@salexmatei]

+1 for fixing this. Rework the mitigation curve to allow for more reduction than currenty is deducted on big hits. Maybe a node that prevents armour being broken beyond a certain threshold would be good too.

[@Algorhythm1]

You just explained the confusion I was having ever since I entered T14+ maps. I have 72% armor, 68% block, 110% ele resist, and 70% chaos resist - and I was still getting random one-shot from rare mobs on a map that was favorable to me. I was having really fun with the warrior, the frustration as melee on act bosses were fine for me, but getting unfairly one-shotted by rare mobs on such a punishing map system was giving me beyond frustration. I really hope they address this issue.

[@Rastei]

is not even rare that oneshot sometimes lol. I think dmg conversion is plain bug in this game. I got instadeleted randomly 2 times and in youtube there is a video thats what happened to me exactly the same, and wasnt any mob in the screen. just walking by in the map area...

[@TheCosmicAstro-]

@@Rastei unfortunately its likely not a bug. thats just how they have designed damage to function.

[@Sammysapphira]

"110% ele resist"

[@Grimllocke]

Knowing ggg, they will do exactly the opposite. Instead of making armor viable, they will nerf energy shield and mana stacking into the ground, to the point they become as bad as armor. Voila, mitigation fixed (in ggg's mind)

[@jencent6666]

Im on t15 with 90% armor. Yeah. I still able to get oneshots from basic white-trash mobs.

[@waitingondeletion]

I'm an 81 infernalist and I went from 40% armor 2k energy shield to 13% armor 8k energy shield, physical feels exactly the same except I have quadruple the health

[@Fergus-H-MacLeod]

This was certainly surprising. I thought damage mitigation meant... damage mitigation. I can understand in instances of armor penetration, when it comes to taking increased damage beyond the percent displayed but...

[@gileswright4014]

Great breakdown nd run-through. Thanks for the video.

[@trad5479]

We need more of this type of content. Wish you did more of these videos

[@lightness7670]

Armor should have a hyper armor poise mechanic, where taking damage contributes to a buildup (like your stun meter) and once a limit is reached you take damage normally. Before that you take something like 30% reduced damage from all physical hits before armor

[@schwex225]

no, that's a terrible idea. because most of the time in PoE you get hit a lot and frequently as a melee based armour character. if you add this mechanic of building up and then your armour becomes vulnerable, you are most likely gonna have a lot of problems with any encounter that goes more than 2 seconds.

[@ninvusoogoar6098]

You are dumb, this shows me you don't know the game at all

[@MisfitMonkey]

I initially built for a major armor stacking character on my first melee. 72% armor 2hander. Deaths are for two reasons, die in sudden 1 or 2shots, or die because of animation times so you're constantly rolling or leap slamming away to try and get a good position. Switched to a totem build and also built evasion and block but a lot of damage lost, the caveat is using a shield you are WAYYYYY tankier, and you can use totems as you run around and position much much muuuuch easier. I then learned that stacking more evasion and block was WAY more defense than stacking extra armor, it's ridiculous the disparity right now. Enjoyability was night and day difference. We absolutely need more armor stacking nodes or skills that matter, or a scaling buff to it. Or a buff to life pools... or better nodes that redirect elemental damage... better recoup..... aka all the things POE1 has :(

[@vuton7670]

yeah, with just 2 shield cluster at the warrior zone is enough to make you tankier. will have to revised builds around blocks.

[@mrbobo180]

There's a 35% block chance node that gives -30% global defence, which imo is a must as the - effect does effectively nothing cuz armour is shit anyway :)

[@Sicknificant1]

The shield and block will help you with mapping and general but sadly doesn't do dogcrap for you in boss fights where you get hit/armorbroken/oneshot all in the same hit. And your slower/smaller distance dodge roll from MS penalties from armour means that without perfect timing/positioning you don't avoid the hit. Better yet the boss got modifiers to skillspeed or AoE making it legitimately impossible to dodge the attack.

[@mauriceanderson5413]

Eh just make it that 75% means 75%

[@MisfitMonkey]

@@mauriceanderson5413 Unfortunately that would be terrible balancing, it should be tiered showing small/med/large hits and or should have a total Phys reduction stat that shows Armor+phys reduc for boss hits. Moving somewhere in that direction is definitely the goal imo but scaling needs to be accounted for or the game would become very stale very quickly with damage.

[@slaytallicadeththrax4547]

Armor should just work on a curve. If you look into how Warframe's armor system works, it's "I have X amount of armor so I have Y amount of damage reduction", meaning there's no guesswork or anything, you just know you reduce damage by a set amount all the time. So much simpler.

[@g_od2080]

Yeah the number in the character screen is just a lie

[@housemana]

you have no idea what you're talking about. then again, i don't expect much from a reductive unga bunga simpleton to even be able to understand.

[@erick_ac]

@@g_od2080 and a big over complicated lie at that, misleading on top

[@ksiazykgregoire767]

That was very informative, thank you kind stranger.

[@21jersh]

Excellent video. Good Lord you have come a long way.

[@Osiris57]

Determination isnt really used since the latest nerf. Grace is used a lot more, because if you arent investing into armor, just using determination wont save you whereas with grace it still helps far more

[@KingNiros]

Yeah, he was tripping talking about just determination alone does something. It absolutely doesn't. You'd just have a couple hundred armor and get one shot. I usually have 30K+ armor in POE1 and also have %phys damage taken as multiple elements. You have to invest quite a few modes in armor and run determ for it to be great.

[@PsyHoGKVisual]

Are you joking? Before nerf in poe1 determination boosted me from 8k armour to almos 20k and if you use Banner you can boost even more. Grace was used more only because melee builds are suck a long time in poe 1 too so why you even need to make more armour if you can make more evasion and it's just easier, but for melee build armor was mandatory until late campaign because it's free 1k armour from start what definetly make pass through 1st lab easier right after Dominus, and second one too because you can grab a banner and stance and also have around 5k during Izaro fight. It's all give you a huge sustain before determiantion was nerfed into obsolete aura what just give you a reasonable amount of defence. Thanks Aurabots for that.

[@Sicknificant1]

Determination is aboslutely still used by builds that use armour and invest into it. But yes compared to before when EVERYONE would use it bc even without investing talent points into boosting armour, it was still worth it; but yes compared to before much less people build it bc it isn't worth the reservation to get like 15% armor. But builds that increase their armor and phys reduction based on it still get a lot of value from it. There are still tons of builds that do use it and to great effect, but just not 90% of all builds fitting it just bc they could.

[@wirgiukass]

I had no clue that armor works that way. And now it explains why I never really got into POE 1. I like playing tanky characters and getting one-shot by anything feels awful (apart from the big boom boss attacks that you need to dodge) when you invest heavily in your defenses. This makes me think that there is an illusion of build variety in POE, meaning that every single character/archetype you make turns out to be exactly the same - stay away from everything and do props/autotriggers to clear the entire map before the mobs actually hit you. Considering I cannot stand the current trial system and getting one-shot sounds awful, I doubt I will even return for the full launch (unless they change the whole system, which they won't) and I am certain there are plenty more like me.

[@gunnervine]

armor is viable in poe1, its that poe2 lacks a lot of the stuff that makes it viable in poe1

[@MichaelPohoreski]

There IS a LOT more build variety in PoE1. Meme builds to full glass canons. Armor and melee is sh!t in PoE2 despite GGG promising that it would be better (partially due to better character rigging and animation.)

[@GRIMHOOD99]

I can tell you for a fact that majority of poe 1 players don't know armor works like that. But poe 1 has like 5 extra option in terms of phys DR like endu charge passive, auras like flesh and stone, fortify, etc.

[@idoneitatemlususnaturae802]

They think they've made the game easier for new people to understand. They haven't.

[@Efgand0894]

Same reason I quit, found out that other games have better balance and not PoE "vision"

[@karandor]

Dude, this explains my endgame journey completely. Was having issues in T12+, got evasion to armour on my monk and started breezing through content. T15 juiced maps, killed some bosses and they're now +2 difficulty and I'm being 1-shot like crazy. I need to drop the armour and evasion and go full energy shield....

[@midknightcrisis8612]

Except armour ≠ physical damage reduction - unless you specced into iron reflexes instead of the better version invoker gets as an ascendancy, in which case I recommend you grab that instead, _miles_ better than armour

[@rankcolour8780]

You need insane amounts of armour for it to be your main defensive layer and protect you from huge hits, was the same in PoE1. It's great as a secondary layer for little investment or if you can find a way to get it to apply to elemental damage.

[@HiddenStr3ngth]

@@rankcolour8780 It's fine to stack armor in PoE 1. But PoE 1 has waaay more defensive options, and you pretty much need a lot of them at once, to do high tier content. But as basic armor or evasion, you can choose which of the 2 you wanna stack and be fine. Unlike here. Like 2-3 of my last PoE 1 chars, stacked armour, with Iron Reflexes in some cases. Were my tankiest chars ever. (grinded to level 100 too, for 1st time)

[@rankcolour8780]

@HiddenStr3ngth not sure if you are trying to disagree, but you echoed what commented. Did you read the whole thing?

[@karandor]

@@midknightcrisis8612 it gives armour now. It was changed from the original version.

[@Elliott13]

I was totally ignorant of all of this. Really glad i saw this video. Thank you

[@fromoz9294]

that was quite informative. thx

[@thezod2307]

The only warrior that isnt a busted build that will get nerfed but still feels decent to play is molten titan. And it does all content if you can get decent weapons.

[@andrewcampbell9277]

My warrior is 74, he's been 74 for two days and I think he's just gonna stay that way, it feels like crap and all of my friends are doing 10s+ while I'm struggling in 6s

[@dahakamvl]

Yeah, I'm currently on 5s and my only defense consists of oneshotting enemies before they have a chance to attack me...

[@Hator44]

Check out Carnarius molten titan, You will not regret it :D

[@andrewcampbell9277]

@@Hator44 Mine is stuck on Warbringer, I rerolled to Witch

[@karldergrosse-333]

I’ll just wait until they release new classes. Right now i feel like it’s just deadeye and spark spam lol. Build variety sucks because the passive tree is mediocre.

[@chloesmith4065]

Yeah I rerolled ranger and it's like the game is on easy mode

[@SliceofKris]

Worst thing is to get that arm soft cap you need to use rage mechanics, which aren't the most reliable because you need to maintain it by getting hit or using skills that build rage.

[@jprec5174]

@@SliceofKris the rage aura support on totems is laughably small too

[@obesechicken13]

Can't you get rage on hit? I think a support gem provides 3 per hit and jewels 1.

[@jprec5174]

@ its only good for the base attack otherwise every other attack is too slow

[@Vashetrockner]

Thank you a lot for covering this Krip! I don‘t have the data but I think a more transparent fix would be to always apply armour fully and make unblockables or blows that deal over 50% of max health (or whatever is suitable) give you a vuln or armour break stack. It would fit an action game that focuses around evading and blocking but values your investment to mitigate errors.

[@Vashetrockner]

Oh, and it would also make max life investments more valuable.

[@thedrummernator3892]

The best and deepest analytical perspectives as always. Protect this man at all costs.

[@erick_ac]

Also, one of the worst things of armor is that Iron Reflexes is NOT applied properly, the conversion of EV doesn't add anything from your other AR+EV nodes like it did in PoE1. For some reason your passive EV nodes are applied AFTER all your evasion is converted to AR, so they are basically ZERO. I'm currently testing out things (like everyone), so I'm running a lvl90 Merc, giga capped ele fire res at 90%, 40% conversion from phys dmg to fire from Cloak of Flame, with maxxed out Sorcery Ward (with three +1 level from fire, cold and lightning support), which reduces my armour to a total of around 5k and gives me a 2k SorcW shield, and as Kripp said, small hits are literally nothing, meaningless even after SorcW halves my total armour, but don't you dare to take a crit hit because that will literally guarantee a one-shot. And let me tell you another thing, SorcW ONLY takes damage from ele HITS, and in A LOT of biomes/maps it almost NEVER goes to zero because there's literally entire maps where there's ZERO mobs that can ele "hit" (but can ele dmg which sucks), but gets WORSE, when you get your armour broken, your shield GIGA DEBUFFS ITS SHIELD to HALF during ALL armour break. And people tell me "oh just use the passive that uses 200% armour agains crit hits blablabla", I HAVE THEM, but it just goes back to the original point, my armour was halved by SW, so I have the regular 10k AR for the crit hit, but criticals are like +80% (after the other crit reduction passive modifiers), so you end up taking a 180% crit with your regular armour which makes armour, again, meaningless within those thresholds. It's really not more life or a second energy shield since there's a LOT of conditionals you need to note for it to be good. Also, there's literally no point in not taking Iron Reflexes for SorcW (unless you go full EV + Acrobatics, which makes using SorcW and fire cloak irrelevant because you would evade ele hits COMPLETELY anyways), if you are hybrid and you get EV+AR halved, then EV rating sucks so much that even the tooltip tells you like you only have a 10% chance to evade and 20% phys mitigation. The idea of SorcW is super cool and there's some good mechanics with it though, one of them is the timer, the first instance of ele hit that damages it starts the timer of FULL recovery and it's NOT interrupted, so you pretty much guarantee its uptime every so often. Running SorcW could be that HC viable DEX option we have been missing for it's potential reliability. Make it so it can take all ele damage, not just from hits, maybe the SorcW splits the ele dmg taken and half it's taken from your life and half from your SorcW shield. Maybe it can take phys or chaos damage too. At the end, it feels like defenses were balanced against PoE1 stats and enemy mods, but you have to face stronger mobs and with less defensive options, it's really dumb that you can literally eat 2 giga hits from uber bosses and not die with ghostwrite maxxed ES builds but literally die with a maxxed AR build. But hey, it's Early Access, so it's all good feedback.

[@erick_ac]

Also, for those wondering, Cloak of Flame converts phys damage to fire damage, straight, they are not converted into fire-hits, so they are not deducted from the sorcery ward, which for me is great because I have FAR more fire mitigation than what sorcery ward could take.

[@purge2202]

thats not a bug, read the blurb on conversion. Conversion doesnt apply modifiers from the pre-converted stat anymore, it takes the raw values, turns them to new ones, and only applies the mods for the new ones

[@erick_ac]

​@@purge2202 I know, that's why I was comparing it with PoE1 when that does happen. The issue I'm trying to convey is that, as a merc, you HAVE TO path on EV+AR passive nodes, so you eventually end up losing stats compared to going pure attrib

[@purge2202]

@@erick_ac you werent, you explicitly said it wasnt applied properly which showed you didnt understand this was intended behavior. You also seem to not know about the passive that gives 200% armour against crits, which directly counters the damage of the crits even against slams

[@mrbobo180]

​@@purge2202I understand the other guy yapped alot but he said he has the 200% crit node. also I think his main point is the nodes around the evasion to armour keystone for some reason give both an increase to evasion and armour, which doesn't make sense in this game. You're genuinely just getting more shit version of armour somehow, because you will be given nodes like 10% armour and evasion instead of 20% armour.

[@magicpants11]

Armor break feels so bad when you don't notice it in time

[@HiddenStr3ngth]

Yeah, that is crazy... All I have is stacking armor, suddenly I see 15 sec debuff that removes ALL of it. Ok man.

[@Sicknificant1]

Considering late game bosses can slam/break your armor/AND get the bonus damage from breaking your armour in the same hit, you CAN't notice in time. You just die in one hit period and wonder why you aren't playing a different build that doesn't build armor at all if the end result is still getting one shot or not.

[@Cryotron9000]

Kripp there are some really uncomfortable audio pops on my headphones that I only hear when watching your PoE 2 videos. Your stream and all other KZbin videos are fine; it seems to be something to do with you recording KZbin audio while your game is running in the background, or recording KZbin audio over footage from your stream. There's a really bad one at 13:39 right when you are saying "vulnerability." I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this? It makes your PoE 2 videos tough to watch.

[@DudewithPizza]

I'm getting these too, thought it was my audio driver or something. I'm running poe 2 at the same time so wonder if that's related?

[@Maltesse1015]

Great vid Krip! 🎉

[@CREIGNS1]

Very good information, hope GGG gives us more defensive layers!

[@thomasnguyen4427]

now I see how ggg went a thousand steps backwards. According to veteran, hardcore/dedicated gamers, so many problems and issues with game, map, and interaction design, was already an issue discovered & SOLVED by the PoE1 dev team. Someone hypothesized that the PoE2 team split off at a point before the PoE1 team addressed these problems with their proven, player-approved solutions. Now I can’t be convinced to take what I see and get at full, good faith. Gotta be wary of all the random, friction bullshit design.

[@akaxjenkins]

it was gonna be the same game until they decided to separate them. That's the weird part. What you say makes sense but it would not align with what they said at first. The fact that it was gonna be the same game had to be true. They had no reason to lie about that. So then how come they ended up with such different mechanics? Where's endurance charges reducing dmg? Where's fortify? It's not like they had to come up with that. One thing is having them changed a bit and another is not having them in any way, shape or form. I know it's early access but if you haven't added all classes or skills because they are not ready, does that mean that the melee archetype is usable and maybe missing a few tweaks? The tree is missing life everywhere. The life based classes can't increase their life through passives and it would be one thing having too many or too few but NONE? Who thought this made sense?

[@erick_ac]

It's not even hypothesized, they literally told us several times (like in the exilecon conferences) that they did that and the reason behind it was so PoE1 can continue as a separate product with active development. But just recently I think they kinda merged teams to work on PoE2, probably happened when they decided to start working on endgame and put PoE1 league development on halt. Which would explain completely why the PoE2 endgame content is pretty much extracted from PoE1, Breach, Deli, Beyond, Ritual... all having the same mob design and behaviour and usually end in weird scenarios that don't fit within the PoE2 gameplay loop, like for example Deli mobs spawning literally on top of you when there's only 1 blink skill to get away, or how rituals spawn in the worst possible places because of the new map layouts.

[@SurF1Nyt]

Armor fix - roll evasion / energy shield 😂

[@jprec5174]

@@SurF1Nyt solution: convert all armor to life. Lol

[@SBE1]

GGG will nerf it and force you to dodge roll. It has to be what they want: an Elden Ring ARPG.

[@MichaelPohoreski]

PoE2 = *Ruthless Souls Lite* aka _”The Vision”_ /s

[@KMDRG]

There's a way outside of the aura to boost armor, and that's the Iron Reflex effect that converts evasion to armor

[@robertgemes9296]

Kripp's on fire... banger after banger!

[@invictrum]

They just hate melee. They nerfed honor dmg to chars but.. if over 50% of your players HATE honor and think it's not fun/ balanced, why keep it? That's all there is to it. Why try to give a valid reasoning to keeping it if that many ppl hate it?

[@Yelven96]

Because many people also like it? Once we have all the ways to ascend you will have to do sanctum once for your first ascendancy which is super easy for every class. Gonna take you like 5 mins to do it. Then you can be done for your char and never touch sanctum again.

[@invictrum]

​@@Yelven96 "super easy" - oh that's the main complaint ppl have about sanctum? Really? And you think bc a few minority like it they should keep it? Refer to my original comment. Majority don't. Tell me more about how good you are at the game though.

[@Yelven96]

@@invictrum I don't think many people say the first ascendancy trial is too hard. I mean just overlevel it by like 5 levels and you kill the boss in 30s. All the complaints are for the second ascendancy point you get in sanctum which is super hard for many builds. I agree with that. But this is going to change when we have more ascendancy trials. You can't tell me someone is seriously stuck on the first trial... That's definitely a skill issue. And no I'm not a god gamer but the first trial has what, like 20 enemies you actually have to kill plus one boss. How can that be too hard. Edit: Just to clarify. I'm not saying that sanctum is easy or enjoyable for many people. I'm only saying it will stop being a mandatory mechanic except for the first trial. So it will be exactly like poe1 where people who enjoy sanctum will do it and build specialized characters for it and people who hate it just ignore it and never touch it after the first trial.

[@Deminese2]

honor is fine. Get honor resistance and actual defensive layers and you barely take any dmg to it.

[@invictrum]

@@Yelven96 Ok, you can overlvl sanctum and just kill boss fast. But lemme ask you this - isn't this a problem with balancing? The main topic? If ranged can have a much easier time vs melee, that is clearly unbalanced. Fundamentally, if one side has a clear advantage over the other, that's a balancing issue. Also, what benefit does this bring to the players? I really want to know. It's why GGG nerfs/buffs builds, should remove MF, and should put armor, evasion, hp, ES on the same playing field. It's all about balance. When one has too much advantage over the other, why go the disadvantageous route?

[@warrensmith8606]

I was a hc poe 1 player. After playing poe 2 i kinda think if you wanna play hc on poe 2 you pretty much need block. You start casting and some pee shooters appear out of nowhere offscreen and all shoot you at once and youre screwed. Block was prob one of the best defences in poe 1 and now its probably THE best in poe 2. That and as much of a life pool as you can get which is currently ES as much as possible. Then damage conversion. Strangely the infernalist is probably the tankiest class in the game right now. Especially if you go minions. Passive and active block, dmg conversion, high es and the hound also taking some dmg for you.

[@josephgarnett5201]

not true, there is access to the death numbers per class across all chars made, the real answer lies there

[@Ascent9]

I think the magic resist system also needs to be relooked at. For evasion and armor, you get diminishing returns once you get to higher and higher levels of it. However when it comes to magic resist you get better and better returns the more you have of it. At 50% magic resist you take 50% less damage. At 75% magic resist you take 50% less damage than you took at 50% frost resist. I very much agree that all types of damage mitigation needs to be revisited as the damage ramping becomes ridiculous. The jump from Tier 1 to Tier 10 maps isn't anything crazy. However the jump from tier 10 to tier 13 is so unbalanced and you can be waiting many days to get a single gear upgrade that can quickly lead to player burnout. Both the player and mobs have way too high damage ramping and it really doesn't allow for skill expression to come through.

[@ammenz]

On top of what you said, endurance charges now serve no purpose whatsoever for damage mitigation but only as "fuel" for certain skills. The only bonuses they provide occur when consumed and cost skill points on the tree.

[@Dereliction2]

I hope, so much, that the devs listen to and study this video.