Effective HP and Mitigation /rant

This might be more observation than feedback, but I am quite interested to gauge the community's thoughts on HP, effective HP, mitigation, etc. I'm going to be doing a lot of ranting so if you are so inclined, SKIP to the emboldened line of text!

First, I know this has been discussed a lot in the past few weeks. I'm going to get the salt out right away: most of us who played the beta (myself included, I believe in the third iteration) including even the almighty Kriparrian himself said monster damage was too high. Specifically, monster physical damage. Throughout the beta monster damage was never reduced, and perhaps even increased throughout the beta, although I might be off-base there.

Monster damage increases scale with what maps we run, and as much as I love the new mapping system forcing us to run more interesting and harder maps to sustain and move up, this scales the monsters' base damage even higher.

I only began playing in Nemesis. However, I am under the impression that PoE was once "Path of Life Nodes" and even Path of CI. For me, the game never really got that much easier, I would venture to say it got harder since I started playing. I like challenge, I do, I wouldn't play Path of Exile in Hardcore if I didn't. But this level of damage is pushing our characters to the absolute limits of their mitigation!

Armour in the current state of the game, which is to say 20k+ armour, shield defenses, fortify, endurance charges, etc etc are the most powerful and consistent methods of physical mitigation. Most of the high level players are running some or all of these. Now players are forced into fitting in the newly buffed frenzy charges, but almost every build is running enduring cry for charges for flat mitigation. Evasion is quite weak by comparison, as its weakness - 1 shot physical damage - has grown only more threatening without a relative buff to avoidance or evasion. Even with capped dodge, some block, and high evasion, you're still at an increased risk of dying this way. Dodge and Armour however are on par for elemental damage, ignoring block.

Additionally, gating the most powerful chestpiece for physical mitigation by rarity (Lightning Coil) doesn't fix the problem. If it is so overpowered alone, then why is the combination of say, Lightning Coil (30%), Taste of Hate (30%), a Redblade Helmet (10%, ONLY in Warbands, added for effect), and even a Granite Flask on top of all this with 7-8 Endurance charges, Fortify, and armour, allowed together? Let's just to a quick calculation using these numbers. I will omit the redblade prefix.
-Conversion Happens before damage is taken as physical, then Endurance Charges reduce the damage taken, then Armour reduces the damage, then Fortify allows you to take 20% less damage.
1000 phys damage >> 300 lightning (coil)+ 300 cold (Taste of Hate) + 400 physical
Apply resistances and 7 charges at 75% and 28% respectively.
75 lightning + 75 cold + 288 phys = 438 damage
Fortify >> 438(.8) = 350.4
Assuming you have no armour at all, no additional maximum resistance, and 7 endurance charges, you take only 35% of the hit! Sure, you might be taking every single hit, but consider this: if the evasion character has 75% chance to dodge, and say 50% chance to evade, then on AVERAGE lets say, you take 12.5% of all incoming pure physical attacks like the one above. But if you have exactly 1000 hp, you die, and the character with the mitigation above will live.
Of course, you could use any combination - acrobatics with shield defenses and some armour with a granite flask, Coil, Taste of hate, etc, could push mitigation even further.

Here is the most important part of the post: builds are running absurd amounts of HP and ES! The mitigation I illustrated above is specific, out of reach for the vast majority of players. What can we do outside of pushing our health globe to the limit, given the same gear we previously had available to us?

Etup got to level 100 in Hardcore with well over 240% increased life on his tree. Havoc brought his poison arrow character to around 6.5k HP at level 100. Sure, these two players are not representative of the whole but I'll provide a few more examples. RaizQT's explosive arrow Scion famously died with over 9000 (ITS OVER 9000) hp. Fyndel ran at the top of the Warbands ladder with over 10k hp. Hybrid builds have grown more popular because they can achieve 10k+ EHP (3-5k life, 3-5k ES). 5k hp used to be a lot, now it's rather sub-par. Achieving higher levels in most builds requires grabbing EVERY single life node in sight.

I feel like this very heavily limits build diversity.

Not a lot to say about it really aside from your right.

How did RaizQT die? Asking cause I'm planning to go over 9k too and I wanna know :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doflk9_kT58 im watching not to full explanation yet.

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Fhark написал:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doflk9_kT58 im watching not to full explanation yet.

Thanks.

Path of mitigation is definite the way to go because of LL changes.

Using your example - healing 350 HP is way easier than healing back 1000 incoming with measly low LL. I found this out as my CI caster was destroyed with 10K staff wielding ES 4% leech ( which is a lot most ppl only get 6-8K ES with staff) Meanwhile my LC, ToH, fortify tank face tanks all with 5K health and 2% leech.

I don't know if phys needs to be scaled back though. Seems cool to have to worry about it again and i'd like to see some changes to other things to deal with it for the weak builds,.

Namely a 2% LL node behind CI since CI builds are generally mitigation free.

Some 10-15% life nodes behind acro like BM gets to prevent 1 shot on evasion builds.

I'm not sure to really understand what is your point.
In 2.0, pure EHP doesn't work. Well, maybe it does work if you're CI with top gear and 15k ES, but it's not even sure. So you gotta mix it up a bit. 5k hp with max block is a lot better than 9k hp with 0 mitig for example.
Now if you're talking about top players who are racing the ladder in hardcore, yeah they stack defenses. Note that it's better than it used to be, Etup and Havoc tree had quite a bit of damage nodes. But it was always like that. Remember kripp's freeze pulser ? It was all about the ehp. Because you can always kill stuff slower with less dps.

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Dawmz написал:

I'm not sure to really understand what is your point.
In 2.0, pure EHP doesn't work. Well, maybe it does work if you're CI with top gear and 15k ES, but it's not even sure. So you gotta mix it up a bit. 5k hp with max block is a lot better than 9k hp with 0 mitig for example.
Now if you're talking about top players who are racing the ladder in hardcore, yeah they stack defenses. Note that it's better than it used to be, Etup and Havoc tree had quite a bit of damage nodes. But it was always like that. Remember kripp's freeze pulser ? It was all about the ehp. Because you can always kill stuff slower with less dps.

the problem is, they buffed creeps damage too much in 2.0 which now requires too many mitigations in order to survive. achieving 75% block?that takes quite a bit of currency to achieve. Lightning coil?4.5 ex for the cheapest one with the seller online (Warband). Taste of hate?8 ex minimum. To make it even worse, there is a massive inflation on WB. All those factors combined together make for a horrible and tedious experience that just pisses players off while also making many builds useless (CI for instance)

Honnestly, people are overreacting with this "too much damage" attitude. Yes, players are less tanky than they were in 1.3 and yes the game is harder, but you can play it without perfect gear.
I played 4 chars in tempest until now :

- A witch ball lightning, used MoM + AA + acro/phase acro + end charges for defense, worked quite well. Died at 89 in a stupidly easy 72 map with rarity tempest after stucking myself in some doodad with a huge train of mobs and panicking alt tab instead of alt f4.
- A standard cycloner 2h (etup build pretty much) with armor and 7 end charges. Seemed really tanky, never felt in danger. Died at lvl 81 also in a low lvl map because, well, vaal cycloning 150 mobs is not a good idea it seems.
- Redid the cycloner because it was fun, he's 83 I think, did maps up to 75 np
- Currently playing a scion incinerate block. Block is 49, spell block 54, hp 5.2k with MoM/EB/GR. Seems fine but there are burst damages sometimes (rakango or devourers for example). Did maps up to 77 with this guy for now.

All these chars aren't especially crazy geard, no lightning coil anywhere, no taste of haste, the most expensive item is a rathpith on the scion, which I farmed for in like 8-10 days (7ex). They sure have weaknesses, and they'll prolly die at one point in time but by recognizing what things are dangerous for your char and playing safe around those things, it's still very playable.
But yes, it's not the magic AA/EB/CoD 1.3 @ afk can't die ever.

Oh and about CI, it is certainly not useless, you can reach crazy amounts of EHP with CI (think etup's whispering ice had something like 14k ES ?), but it clearly requires very good gear to get going.

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Dawmz написал:

Honnestly, people are overreacting with this "too much damage" attitude. Yes, players are less tanky than they were in 1.3 and yes the game is harder, but you can play it without perfect gear.
I played 4 chars in tempest until now :

- A witch ball lightning, used MoM + AA + acro/phase acro + end charges for defense, worked quite well. Died at 89 in a stupidly easy 72 map with rarity tempest after stucking myself in some doodad with a huge train of mobs and panicking alt tab instead of alt f4.
- A standard cycloner 2h (etup build pretty much) with armor and 7 end charges. Seemed really tanky, never felt in danger. Died at lvl 81 also in a low lvl map because, well, vaal cycloning 150 mobs is not a good idea it seems.
- Redid the cycloner because it was fun, he's 83 I think, did maps up to 75 np
- Currently playing a scion incinerate block. Block is 49, spell block 54, hp 5.2k with MoM/EB/GR. Seems fine but there are burst damages sometimes (rakango or devourers for example). Did maps up to 77 with this guy for now.

All these chars aren't especially crazy geard, no lightning coil anywhere, no taste of haste, the most expensive item is a rathpith on the scion, which I farmed for in like 8-10 days (7ex). They sure have weaknesses, and they'll prolly die at one point in time but by recognizing what things are dangerous for your char and playing safe around those things, it's still very playable.
But yes, it's not the magic AA/EB/CoD 1.3 @ afk can't die ever.

Oh and about CI, it is certainly not useless, you can reach crazy amounts of EHP with CI (think etup's whispering ice had something like 14k ES ?), but it clearly requires very good gear to get going.

2 of the builds you mentioned are cheese builds (cyclone/incinerate) and even with those you seem to have issues (dying in a low level map with an OP build, dying in an easy 72 map with ball lightning and spike damage on your incinerate). Am I saying the build should be invincible?no, but dying in a low level map with 7 end charges and armor should not be happening. Am I fine with difficulty and dying at higher level maps?yes, but the low level maps should scale specifically for lower level players/mediocre builds. I did superior shrine boss (piety) in a lvl 81 corrupted map np. Meanwhile devourer from 75 map 1 shot me. Your argument about Ci does have some points, but the fact it takes insane gear to achieve a similar level to an average hp/es build is not acceptable. It should not take 50 ex gear for CI to achieve what a 10-20 ex hp/es build does.