The new defence system and its future

Feedback and Suggestions
171

Then your complaint has NOTHING to do with the penetration system. It has everything to do with the cap system and how easy/hard it is to reach the cap. Resists capped, crit avoidance capped, armor with diminishing returns, dodge with diminishing returns. So right now just max out resists, max out crit avoidance, get enough armor or dodge to where it’s efficient and dump the rest in HP. That has NOTHING to do with penetration system. Taking out the penetration system does NOTHING to change the current dynamics. If anything, you HAVE to max out resists no matter what, which is already happening because resists are so easy to max out.

What you really want to suggest (and correct me if I’m wrong) is to make it hard to reach max resists and the game balanced around not reaching max resists. The second part is the vision they are trying to implement. As to whether they reached it - obviously not. The first part is the problematic part as it is easy to max out resists. Dump prefix slots into non-elemental set resistances, dump 4 suffix slots to elemental resistances and dump the rest of the suffix slots to crit avoidance, HP, armor, dodge, etc.

172

The system in place currently is actually really clever, alot of people do not seem to see it.

It’s not only that you end up with +/-0% resis, but if you have to elss you get into negative, that is a really good design.

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173

It has EVERYTHING to do with the penetration system. The penetration system reduces the effectiveness of the resist system. The entire current resist/penetration dynamic is about getting back to even. It has nothing to do with getting ahead.

Every other defense system you GAIN defensive advantage when you take it. There is level scaling, but it never takes you back to zero. It also can’t take you into negative if you choose to not gear it. Having no dodge doesn’t make you get hit twice with each attack at level 75, for example.

174

Wait what? Let me get this straight. You want resists to not be mandatory right? How do you change something mandatory to not mandatory? Reducing the effectiveness is one way to do it (which the penetration system does). Think about it. You are totally confusing yourself on what you want and what you think is the solution. You are confused about the issue and the subsequent solution. The more effective resists are, the more mandatory it becomes. If 1% resist gives me 4% damage reduction, to hell with the other stats, I’m going to get that 1% resist.

Please, please please understand the math behind the penetration system. Think about your choices as a player understanding the math. Anyone who played Grim Dawn understands this. You absolutely must max out resists and even increase the max resist via stats in that game or you took a shit load of damage. I for one do not want to see this game devolve into “how do I get to 75% resist across the board?” Because then it’s no longer a choice. It’s mandatory. If LE right now is in that state, it’s not because of area penetration. It’s because the damage numbers are not balanced properly or perhaps has everything to do with defensive stat limitations (hard and soft caps on all the defense options except for HP).

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175

You also make it not mandatory by making all other ways to build defense of equal value, which ALSO has the added benefit of creating build diversity.

Right now, resists are BOTH Mandatory, and ineffective. They are mandatory because they are too easy to gear compared to the other defense systems. They are also ineffective because of the penetration system, which also makes people feel like they are losing something by not taking resists because it puts people into defensive debt.

It is the equivalent of “I shouldn’t feel like my character gets worse because I gained a level”, which was a huge thread and ended up getting the monolith completely reworked.

176

There’s no build diversity when you can build everything. There’s no competition for the prefix slots for non-elemental set resists. That creates a scenario where it’s relatively easy to max out resistances AND invest in other defenses that eventually soft/hard caps leaving you with HP as the only scalable option. I personally feel like I’m losing something not taking resists because it’s too easy to do so, not because of the penetration system. The resistance system does what it says it does: reduce incoming damage for the element. I agree with changing the numbers to 1) force build choices so investing in resistances means you invest in it at the cost of something else and 2) normalize damage numbers in light of the penetration system increasing incoming damage in absolute values.

I don’t feel like my character gets worse because I gained a level. Penetration doesn’t show up in the stat sheet. And even if that is the case, I’ll take it over the traditional resist system. After understanding the penetration system I can’t see myself going back to the old system of 1% resist = 4% damage reduction.

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177

They aren’t ineffective though, if you don’t take any resists, you will take more damage. In fact, if you have 0 resists in a lvl 75 (or above) zone, you’ll take 75% more damage.

Also not sure which monolith rework you’re talking about, I assume you’re not meaning the one that had the quest echos in it.

178

Compared to taking 300% more damage with no penetration. It gets really funky sometimes. Really unintuitive. The penetration system is really smart.

179

It probably happened at the same time, but I am specifically talking about it changing from scaling based on your level to being static level zones.

180

Again, this is assuming from a point of max resist at base. I don’t know why you can’t see the difference. It’s the glass half full/empty argument. The resistance glass doesn’t start from full. It starts from empty. It is the opposite of diminishing returns in the standard resist system. Each point is worth more than the last so the more you have the better.

I want a system that rewards me for going into resists, not a system that punishes me for not.

181

And what I’m saying is you have to make that assumption from the player’s point of view. Numbers don’t lie whether you base the game at 20% resist or 75% resist. Every point of resistance gives you 4% reduction in damage no matter what the assumption is.

182

I guess it is a kind of glass half empty/full situation then in that it depends on how you view it.

If you do nothing you will take 75% more damage in a lvl 75% zone due to you not having resists. If you do take resists, then you don’t take that extra damage.

In PoE, if you’re just starting maps & (for some reason) you didn’t have any resists, you’d be taking the 300% more damage that TalkinKorean mentioned, compared to having your resists capped.

From my point of view, I am rewarded for capping my resists because I’m then not taking the 75% extra damage that I would otherwise be taking. But, the benefit of the current system is that if a mob inflicts a stack of shred (2% reduced resists) on me, I’m then going to take 2% more damage which is nice & logical. Without the penetration, that 2% reduced resist would mean I take 8% more damage.

That’s why the devs have the penetration, so any stacks of shred give a logical amount of increased damage taken to the player. If penetration wasn’t a implemented as it has been, the full 20 stacks of shred (-40% resist) would mean you take 160% more damage.

Is that logical?

TLDR: You are rewarded for capping your resists, you’re just not punished as much for getting stacks of shred as you would otherwise be.

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183

I get the sense that the “feeling” that the penetration system invokes is greater than the math behind it. @talkinkorean has actually done a standout job of explaining the current LE resistance system in comparison to other ARPG resistance systems. The math clearly shows that LE’s resistance system is actually far less punishing in comparison to PoE (at 75% resist caps) and especially Grim Dawn (at 80% resist caps).

The significantly less punishing nature of LE’s system may also be part of what’s driving the narrative around gear not being impactful enough. Example; Having 50% resists in each of these games will result in a player taking 100% more damage in PoE, 150% more damage in GD, but only 25% more damage in LE. Clearly it is easy to see why having capped resists are so important in PoE & GD, but in LE the discrepancy in damage received is miniscule (by comparison). The difference between capped and uncapped resistances in those games will be felt by the player far greater than in LE which may be one of the driving factors of players being able to successfully run echoes with naked characters. That said, there is certainly still some balancing of enemy damage to be done in these areas of the game (especially empowered Monolith areas).

If LE did change their resistance system to mimic PoE or GD then resistances will actually become more important than they are now. Currently, any LE character can take at worst 75% more damage at 0% resistances in an area level of 75+ (disregarding others player defenses as well as enemy shred & Marked for Death). Again, we’ll compare this with PoE and GD whose characters will take 300% & 400% more damage at 0% resistances, respectfully.

So, from best I can tell, the complaint is that resists are too easy to acquire in LE and people “feel” it mandatory to cap them. While it is true that resistances offer greater damage reduction in comparison to other defenses in LE, we have seen that they are less required when compared to other ARPG’s. They “feel” mandatory because they are the best source of damage reduction in LE, are easy to cap (especially in comparison to other DR sources), and are one of the only sources of DoT mitigation in the game. Do they “feel” as or more mandatory than the resistances of other ARPG’s? I would argue no, based on the math. Now are resistances a great source of damage reduction in LE? Yes, the best actually.

The “feeling” that the penetration system is punishing you for capping resists may be hard to get past, but once you do you can see that resistances are actually less necessary in LE when compared to the resistance systems of other ARPG’s. This may be both a bad and good thing as;

  • the damage received isn’t punishing enough for some players to warrant using gear with resistances (which may actually be hiding another fault unrelated to resistances, that too much of a players damage comes from sources outside of gear)
  • the damage reduction resistances offer are generally more impactful than any other defensive mechanic while being easier to obtain (but this argument is generally ubiquitous of all ARPG’s)

Resistances in LE are likely always going to feel mandatory to people (just by their very nature) but we could try;

  • introducing other sources of DoT mitigation that can compete with resistances
  • make the scaling of other DR sources less punishing to have them “feel” more obtainable
  • somehow make the penetration system “feel” less punishing to the player (which seems to be more of a seeded issue with how we, as humans, interpret the system rather than the math behind it) - which is likely an impossible task
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184

Technically, it happens the same in LE. A character with max resists in a level 1 zone will take more damage as soon as they go to a level 2 zone, and so on. So it isn’t like that doesn’t exist in this game.

I Think I saw a post on here about someone near capping resists by level 15 or so. (Though it was more about how easy they are to cap).

185

As you would in any other game because the mobs are dealing more damage. So the effect in LE of moving up a zone (till you hit area lvl 75) is the same as in any other arpg.

@AndrewTilley said it very eloquently. You know that the mobs gain penetration per level so you feel punished, even if mathematically you are being punished less in LE for not being capped in a high lvl zone (either through gearing, shred or marked for death). And now that you know it, you can’t un-know it…

No matter how much we tell you the maths that you’re punished less in LE, you’re going to be thinking “but the game stole my resists!”

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186

Current Resistance System

Currently there are a few attributes that reduce incoming damage:

  • Resistances (against certain damage types): Mitigated by penetration, which scales with area level
  • Armor/Dodge (against hits): Diminished by area level

That kind of feels like you just try to keep up with the area progression without actually gaining anything.

I understand why it is like that (I think):

  • Resistances: Do not make the last few percent more effective than the first (which is a problem that comes from additive resistances)
  • Armor/Dodge: Make the smaller numbers somewhat useful/noticeable in the low-level range without reaching too high levels in the late game

Then there are caps on the damage reduction you can get from any of these sources. These probably make balancing enemy damage simpler. But they also feel like a goal: I need to reach this resistance cap, then I can think about anything else. This is where it may feel like an affix tax, you need your gear to be a specific way in order to play the highest level content (even if it may not be true).

Idea: Multiplicative Resistances

To be honest: I’m not a big fan of additive resistances and caps. In another post I already explained some nice properties of a multiplicative system, which I will repeat here (skip over that if you read it before).

Multiplicative means that if you add a piece of gear with 20% fire resistance, then you will get exactly 20% less fire damage, regardless of how much fire resistance you had before. So the new fire resistance is calculated based on the damage that you would have gotten without that new item. The overall fire resistance is determined like this:

FR = 1.0 - (1.0 - FR1) * (1.0 - FR2) * (1.0 - FR3)

We calculate the damage that comes through, therefore we need to subtract the resistances from 1.0 (which represents 100%). With a system like that, you can never reach 100% resistance, and would not necessarily need a resistance cap. This will then take away the perceived goal of reaching 75% resistances across the board and may feel less like a gear tax.

The max roles of single a resistance per tier could look like this:

1: 10%
2: 19%
3: 27%
4: 34%
5: 41%
6: 47%
7: 52%

They diminish in a way that makes two tier ones equal to one tier two etc., so having one very high resistance tier will not trump having two or more lower ones. With two level 7s you would get 77% resistance, with three level 5s you would get around 79%.

Let’s consider an extreme case: 4 level 7s of a single resistance type, which would net around 95% damage reduction against one damage type. Could something like this still be handled? Would balancing be an issue? I don’t think it necessarily would, as you need to sacrifice other stats for that. You could also increase your effective health by going for armour or hitpoints instead. But because there is no cap, you would not be forced to take several different damage mitigation types - so it might not matter whether you go full-on resistances or instead spent some of your affixes on armor for example. And I think this is a big plus: You can use the defense mechanism that you think fits your character the most and are not forced to take different stats just because you hit some kind of artificial cap.

Old Protection System

The old protection system had the same advantage by the way.

Diablo 3 introduced item comparisons based on effective hit points (EHP) at some point (in addition to damage per second). An item might have more health, but less resistances - by calculating the EHP for the player, you could quickly find out whether the item was an upgrade or not mitigation-wise.

The old LE protections did just that for you, as every point of fire protection was one effective hit point against fire. Getting 100 fire protection but losing 50 hitpoints would mean that you gain 50 EHP against fire, but lose 50 EHP against everything else. Pretty simple (well, I’m ignoring dodge etc. to make it appear that simple). However, many people tripped over the reduced resistances when adding hitpoints, leading them to believe their overall EHP and survivability would go down if they added more hitpoints, which wasn’t the case.

Conclusion

I think the old protection system was fine (not talking about Crushing Blow) and I think the current system is also fine. How defenses work in this game won’t make or break it for me. Thanks for reading this far :slight_smile:

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187

Thank god Tilley is a community tester. But if he goes by that horrific name “Drew” then he can just go break a leg or something. :slight_smile:

188

Will dots now get a rework. Hmm…?

189

:joy: Well, then you’ll be pleased to know this is not the case. My friends call me Tilley (it stuck from an early age), and everyone else just uses Andrew.

190

“Tilley” is like a gazillion times better than “drew.” heh

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