feels geared towards new players. making strong layers more obvious and upfront, while keeping the depth and layering requirement we've all loved. feels a bit like powercreep but the target direction could only deepen the playerbase imo. intelligent design made to make the game more intuitive. it also somewhat strengthens existing defensive power within the tree itself due to bases and ECs, which again feels more intuitive, fun and choice-centric. excellent changes imo, one of my favorite changes in years
For me it seems that the changes has been mostly positive. There is definitely a wider variety of "meta" defensive options and it seems like people are mix and matching a lot of layers that were not considered before. I think that there just needs to be some fine tuning: svalin is OP, block may need a tiny bit of a nerf in it's values you can get in the passive tree or jewels (right now I can get block cap VERY easily). And top-left builds have issues getting phys mitigation. This makes lightning coil and cloak of flame a bit too mandatory for them imo. A new caster option for phys mitigation would be nice (a new support, buff to chaos golem, arctic armour minibuff)
@@wurzelbert84wucher5 that is why I said by default. there should be proper investment on the tree and in gear if you want to stack defensive aura. but as it stands right now aura is in a somewhat weird place
This game is 99% PvE There should be no such thing as "Balance" Just give the players ways of being creative with your game systems If the mobs are too weak, just adjust them......don't nerf the players...don't remove their agency.
It’s nice My characters still only have 4-4.5k life like they used to But I don’t feel as pressured to path to every single life node near my area Which also makes the life mastery even stronger, that also combos well with new body bases so we can go triple defense prefixes and take the life mastery
Them increasing life rolls acrosd the board with more max res availability and the new base types have really helped majority of the ascendacies in the game, now heres for hoping we get back upgrading unquies with a currency item to the newer bases perhaps
I could see them doing a balance pass in the future which moves some existing uniques to new basetypes to buff them if they've become weak after recent changes
I like all defensive changes, only one thing i wish for is new models for those new armour bases lol And how much better ward is now after ggg simply cut in half base restoration time. Also some cool defense synergies, for example: Saboteur's "Born in the shadows" for 15% reduced damage taken aura, Flesh and Stone (Sand stance) for 20% less damage taken, with endurance charges for 4% reduced damage taken per, and arctic armour for 20% less phys and fire damage taken.
Personnaly i've chosed to play svalinn and just use a combination of good form of damage mitigation skipping entirely determination or grace. I'm using crab barrier + arctic armor for physical damage, 85% max res + 7 endurance charges for elemental damage (and phy with EC) and 30k armor from equipment with molten shell for extra defense
Add ward (Ynda's stand + ward recharge rate boots) - when you block stuff 90% of the time, even if a small hit breaks your ward, its unlikely that something big hits you afterwards before ward recharges (especially Bosses who usually stop their attacks charging for a big slam)
Another thing I want to note is that the new armour bases require higher stat requirements- dex being the biggest culprit, making it harder for some builds (builds from Witch in particular) to fit those in to compensate for the shift in where your armour and evasion is coming from. Not only that but the level requirement of these new bases is higher, making it quite dangerous trying to level as a Witch, particularly in HC. It's a good shift but I think some kind of compensation needs to happen for left side / top side of the tree builds. Maybe ward can see more use and be more of an involved mechanic than the niche system it currently is.
Played a Svalinn/EnduCharge/MaxRes Glad and it was insane, 84/80 block. Played a couple CI/Evasion/Suppression based characters and equally as great tankiness. Have not played MoM/Mana stacking in many years since it's hay day, but as far as I know they are also popular and strong again. It's been a long long road since Expedition league with all the nerfs and Aura changes, but finally in 3.25 the game feels in such a good state, as we got given a lot back for defence options. edit - oh and i forgot, since everyone forgot it from day 1; people are even experimenting with Ward!
Your videos have helped me to take my build making to another level. I am not quite up to the level of most big build makers, but I am able to complete more content and my builds are way tankier than they used to be. Thanks.
Excellent take, I comepletely agree. It is nice when GGG manages to change something without removing options. This time around, I think that by changing these few key aspects, they added a plethora of new ways to make defenses work well. Just look at ward, that is actually getting used for the first time, outside of wardloop. Yay ;)
Another reason melding usage is down is due to some players converting all elemental damage taken as to a single type and just maxing out that resistance. This massively benefited builds that have higher suffix pressure on gear such as stat stackers.
Thank you for taking a detailed look into these changes. I had been wondering how the aura nerfs were going and I totally missed the fact that newer bases made up for those defensive nerfs.
I think it was smart the way they did it, someone who is looking to invest into either one or both armour and evasion are going to take them. On the other hand, now you get enough defenses without having to invest in the aura(s) to survive mapping on squishier characters
You've forgotten the best defense in the game, the ability to triple offscreen. Its no wonder the meta never changed from projectiles being tier 0 as it has never been nerfed.
Yep. I was running t16s. One of my maps was -17% max res, 500% crit, 120 phys as cold, 120 phys as fire. The first pack looked at me and I died. I got back in, and just started throwing mines (ice shot miner) and offscreening everything. Didn't die the rest of the map. Just kill it first, it works until actual bossing lol
Great video. Would love a follow up about ward and the 100% elemental taken as other elements covered. The ladder I think is another reason fewer people are using melding,
You missed Sublime Vision + Watcher's Eye + Tempered by War for full Ele to Fire damage taken conversion, which people would stack with Arctic Armour's less Fire damage and Phys damage taken. And is the main reason why Sublime Vision with Purity of Fire is now a Mirror this league.
He didin't miss anything, only a handful of hundred players use that set up. And players have been doing that set up ever since the inception of Sublime vision, which he mentioned in his previous videos.
Seen a video of Palsteron talking about synergy of Beacon Of Madness, Faithguard, Ynda's Stand and Olroth's Resolve. Viability of ward as main source of defence with Ynda's Stand is greatly increased, since you can gain far more ward from your gearpieces than before.
One thing, sorta mentioned, but now talked about in terms of % of gem usages, is due to base types. People start hitting big flat ES as well. So it makes ES popular. Been playing forever, and this happens a lot. Certain ES thresholds are reached where you can tank a lot/everything, then ES starts to become heavy meta. Trickster being a very popular for it helps. There few things, but when ES is strong Hybrid/CI push numbers down as well. Itd be interesting to see grace/determination #s for both leagues compared to discpline.
This was actually Mike gripe with his comparisons is he did a Grace versus determination when reality. It's a Grace versus determination versus discipline
best thing to remedy that is just get high max res and covert phys to ele damage granted you obviously can't get 100% max conversation anymore which I do miss
Short opinion: Big nerf to witch/ranger making physical resistance pretty challenging and more expensive to setup. Buff to left tree ascendancies. The removal of "physical taken as" from some spots really nerfed the builds i usually play on ranger and witch, physical resistance was already hard to get and now its worse, armor nerfs also slightly worsen this and it limits quite a bit of builds, while they still do fine mapping, t17, ubers and other more challenging content is moving out of range for the builds I enjoyed =|. I can mitigate this somewhat with the new bases and more life but they are stupidly expensive with fractures so the builds got far more expensive and really need a good starter to farm before making the builds I enjoy while i could make do before its now a painful slog to level and grind on them, overall its bad for build diversity and customization but I guess well see better or easier builds on the left, more worrying is the increase difficulty with t17 and how profitable they are while also making less builds viable for t17, its a big nerf on the economy while everything is more expensive from the builds that can do t17.
Great video! Overall im liking the changes. I would add that the most important change in the patch notes that wasn't mentioned here is the removal of most mods that ignore phys damage reduction. That was critical and was the main problem with armor in the previous patch. Last league i played a left side of the tree build and fully skipped armor because it was annoying how many things just ignored it, now, besides some specific altar mods, which are fine imo, i can trust that armor will work. Also i have to mention Dawnbreaker, it has always been great and is even better now. I'm always surprised by how little use it has. I think people gets a bit too focused on the ele damage taken as fire and on the reduced block by fire damage taken. When in reality if you just take it as a shield that increased your phys max hit while making it very easy to cap block, the god damn thing is insane. I have made quite a few minions builds with it and having attack block capped with it and bone offering opens up a lot of investment on other areas, and if you want to go lightning coil, congrats, you don't need to scale armor to deal with phys damage basically. IDK, Dawnbreaker is great, Dawnbreaker superiority!
Fwiw my take is that all the changes are largely positive as they're more new-player friendly (more 'obvious' or 'natural' to figure out) and shift us back to a wider variety of defenses instead of the previous dominance of Grace, Determination and Phys Taken As. That said, there's one glaring omission - Spell Suppression is still king. At some point GGG needs to do something about almost every character chasing spell suppression. It's also far from natural how evading attacks is somehow aligned with a mechanic that is essentially just a big damage reduction for spells. Spell dodge makes a lot more sense for that role, but Acrobatics continues to languish in obscurity and is probably overdue for a full rework to untether it from spell suppression entirely cos seemingly no one likes making that trade.
I have a warden going EV glancing blows (staff) with barkskin. Pretty tricky to get going, but feels so tanky. Whatever you don't dodge you're likely to block, then barkskin or suppress kicks in.
This has been one of the most defensively focused building league for me, but haven't used grace, determ, or even spell suppression on a single build so far. Started with a hard res capped chieftan slammer, then a lucky block capped glad with RotP, then a Svalinn ice nova mana hiero. Might try the ward stacker with madness boots thing if ido anotherbuikd this league, or jungroans crazy regen roa thing
I love what they have done to right side defenses. the higher life and armor values feel really good they are almost as desirable as energy shield is on a CI character. I dont love that every left side build now either has to run the maven chest or endu charges to get good pdr. I understand why they did what they did but I really hope that they give evasion and energy shield characters that aren't trickster some good tools back. I also think that full phys conversion should return as a (expensive an rebalanced) possibility in the future.
I remember when Tarekis first posted the EE CI Flicker Trickster on r/pathofexile builds and no-one thought it would work because it didn't have a frenzy item like terminus or farrull's. I feel he doesn't get enouh credit considering it's now one of the main meta builds and has dispelled the notion that flicker is a glass cannon build. Pity in a way as getting fractured ES bases is now crazy expensive.
With new Endurance charges, Juggernaut can be extremely tanky even without bodyarmor with big armor numbers. Budget 10 charges (tree+rings+ascendancy+corrupted boots) and you get massive 50 pdr + 50 edr.
The life increase across in gear is very relevant, playing jugg 99.5% I am going to reach for the first time 100. Endurance charges are too good right now, the pdef also influence bleed I am not even using a bleed flask with 9 end
Ive gotten an int stacking trickster with the new bow rune enchant. Ive got 20k es but i hit like a wet noodle even with the double scaling on the weapon..(cold damage from es and lightning from int)
Was almost instantly a fan of the aura changes and got quite some flack from some redditors and forum-commenters for that. Which made it even more clear that I'm on the right track 😅 Having auras that basically 70% of all high level chars use (melee, caster, range attack, it didn't matter) is not something you want as a game dev. Especially not over a longer time period. It's just uninteresting.
Might be a noob trap; but I have always liked the Formless Flame thematically and have been using it this league with my Chieftain. Seems to have worked well.
I honestly think the nerf to phys to ele dmg taken was a mistake, it was a great defensive layer for people like me who just hate evasion on dex based builds, since 3.25 i find myself enjoying dex classes less and less.
I have been running Arctic Armour, Petrified Blood, Ghost Dance, Spell Suppression and thats it. no grace, no determ and no block. good for mapping but not that great for anything else. ❤
I'm liking the changes, but there is a huge gap problem. There are many "offensive" or utility body armours/gloves/boots that are getting really shafted with the aura changes, and thus many builds that work with that sayid cheap uniques can't get much chance to appear on the league, I really wish they made more mods for rares or just helped a bit some unique bases.
I really wish they would do something about spell suppression. I hate how its a pretty binary stat, you either invest fully into it (or at least get lucky spell suppression) and it seems almost any build no matter starting point wants to invest into it bc how broken that stat is. I think it should be reverted back to spell dodge or something different. so an templar or jugg do no go for 90max ress, 5+ Endurance charges and capped spell suppression and now can add lucky block on top of it.
The max rez stuff just feels like creep to me. Once upon a time just being rez capped was enough. Max rez increases should be for building specialized tanky characters or dealing with elemental-specific content like pinnacle bosses. I think if everyone is going for max rez, enemy damage needs to be reduced instead.
3.25 was a huge buff acroas the board, our defenses got a big buff, and oyd weapons got a large buff in enchantments, as well as melee getting a strict upgrade
Dex classes should be building attack evade and spell suppress. Str characters should be building armor, endurance charges and max res. Int characters should be building raw phys taken as elemental, elemental shifting and raw ehp (energy shield). Also straight up remove determ/grace/disc and add that power back into the tree and gear.
The problem with that is that Dex classes will just get oneshot when the hit comes through. Suppress is a good layer, and evasion works to an extent, but when the evasion fails, you die. So it is not a good solution. They need some form of physical mitigation, which they now pretty much don't have. They would need to either fundamentally change the evasion mechanic, or introduce a keystone, so that you take less damage the more you evade. Not like Wind Dancer which pretty much guarantees a death after evasion fails. Basically something like Glancing Blows but for evasion-based characters, where you can still evade, but the more hits you take you will take progressively more damage. This way you still need to build a lot of evasion, but you won't just flat out die when it fails.
Prefer aura stacking being a thing, it's just better than all defence options, the major issue is monster damage balance is so lopsided even on "non dangerous" map mods, or just unfun in t17s... especially in being one tapped offscreen, but hey... go bow or go home is still the norm. It's good max res is easier to get, higher stat bases also work out well too, all in all it's in a good place now.
think your section about defences on gear lacking. the quality improvement is very huge. if you use a max defence body armor its like 1500 more flat armor on a royal plate and even more on a conqurere hybrid base reaching 4k amr+ evasion. also taking the other bases into consideration each can easy grant 500 more while having life on. (boot maby 200 more) and shields getting some more. meaning the only valuable stat from the auras become the % more. what you miss to adress is the shift from using the auras as main source of defence for top side builds. i will assume they have complety been removed from builds that do not incorporate arm or evasion base items. while before with no arm on gear or very little would grant 12-15k before.
One thing I might add: the changes to the purity mods on Watcher's eye and Sublime Vision have also had a massive impact on high-end defenses, particularly Sublime Purity of Fire with Tempered by War. It's even stronger than the old phys taken as fire mods the changes replaced in a lot of cases.
Players: i'mma use these auras to die less. ggg: too many ppl r using these aura. we r going to nerf this. players: how do we live now? ggg: just use something else.
xibaqua+purity watcher+sublime vision best def i have on a pathfinder so far. I prefer to not use progenesis and this type of defence fit in my build so nice.
Some say this is a Boat League, i say... this is Endurance Charge League. Monster steal charge mods? Dont worry, Immortal Call exist. Less CDR rate mods? Well... Just hope that ur dmg is fast enough to clear the monster. XD
bases buff was great but huge nerf to specific builds that rely on many uniques. my friend who plays srs scion was the case. both grace and determ became kinda bad, had to drop both and swap to flesh and stone + svalin
I personally think tue fhanges go into a good direction, sadly top side tree got hit heavy with this since they now struggle a lot to deal with physical damage, especially with lower/mid investment since they used a lot of phys taken as x in the past
I love not having to use Determination/Grace on every build now. The one nitpick I have about the higher tier armors is that now I have to level new characters to 84 to equip all my items instead of 68-70 like before. Blighted maps with 90% exp and lower tower costs makes it mostly easy, but it's a minor thing to think about now when rerolling. The change also makes me more interested in ilvl86 bases on the off chance I get a t1 defense roll.
I feel like block (and in particular lucky block) is just way too strong for how little you need to invest in it. Not only does Svalinn get 88% effective block when capped but you also need 10% less to cap it since your max is down to 65. So even less investment. My Ascendant gets 50% from Gladiator Ascendant, and 1 wheel caps attack block at 68%, Tempest shield and the other spell block wheel caps spell block. It's basically 88/88 for like 10 points and 1 Ascendancy
Feels kind of pointless to care about physical damage. Phys taken as being so rare and it feeling impossible to get any meaningful amount of armour on a lot of builds feels like a problem. Sure we got new armour bases but that didn't change uniques or make it easier to get good rolls on those new bases. Normally I'd aim for 50k ish armor on a build this league I was barely going over 7k with a flask and the aura.
100% of phys conversion was pretty easy last leagues. I played two builds that was utilising it - ipm doom pathfinder with taste of hate, double conversion purity of elements watcher, helmet with 16% conversion and dawnbreaker all i needed to get that 100%. Also played CWS dd cheiftain and it was even easier with lightning coil, corrupted dawnbreaker with 27% phys to elements, watcher for 10% from purity of fire, helm and that's it - with this setup you could run transcendence with melding and still get 90% all ele res.
Evasion, suppression and max res has mafe me feel surprisingly tanky. Plus the life buffs. I basically only die when I recklessly juice maps which feels correct.
the only thing i don't like is how they deleted eternal damnation from the game, the draw back is simply untenable, to a lesser extent defiance of destiny nerf i'm also sad about but that one still does it's job, just half as good
I think svalinn is a mistake, and going forward lucky block should be the sole domain of gladiator. Other than that, i'm still playing, so the game's in a good state. Still trying and failing to reallly make my trickster reroll pop off though.
Thank god you removed the unnecessary meme intros. I personally prefer your content(before the intros) over other channels because it was straight to the point and the tone felt like Im watching a documentary or academic commentary will be guaranteed to learn something. Keep it up
I understand why phys to ele had to go, but its so sad that trancendence is soo shit/not playable at all. I would love it to just apply the buff to ele without disabling armour for phys dmg. The -15 all max ele res is hard enough
I think we might not have seen the biggest impact on shift in defenses yet. At least for high budget/ top end buildd Yndas stand does not only making ward meaningfull. Palsteron and Enginerring Eternaty having just recently send out videos with very different approaches to ward build that is really close to be unkillable. And non of them is about ward loop. That might be a big thing in the rest of the league, though the ebtry barrier to get those builds working might be to big for many.
I hate that Ralakesh's Impatience exists in the game, Every single build i plan collapses into Ralakesh being the best-in-slot item. Just because of charge-stealing / removal mods on rares / maps.
The attriubute requirements on some of the newer pieces of the gear is a annoying barrier to entry if your classes isn't naturally pathing through those kinda nodes. Its like 293 strength for Royal plate which if your wanting to play some kinda build that uses armour but lacks the strength the defense nerfs on determination really hurts you.
@@cykablyat6348 Execpt in terms of value attribute is the lowest for legitimate enchantments, unless you have mods that don't gain any value from those. Which is the sad thing about it.
Generalist defences are in a horrendous spot as a result of phys taken as nerfs and the rift between good ascendancies and bad ascendancies is bigger than ever before. It is no coincidence the top 6 most played ascendancies all have easily abused defensive combos, and the 13 others are left in the dust.
In general characters feel more tanky and melee feels better. But I still think the one thing that needs more base types and addressing is Melee weapons, because a lot of melee weapons are locked behind hyper expensive crafts, and unique melee weapons are kind of being left in the dust in terms of build enabling power as many are just not viable for endgame. Not to mention builds preferring specific weapon types, like slam builds needing maces or axes over swords when some slam skills appreciate more speed like consecrated path. I think we need more melee base types but not just only available in the endgame but during the campaign as our options there are very dry in terms of variety.
The only thing I don't like about the changes is that, since a bunch of phys taken as is gone, it's very very hard to get good phys max hits now in comparison to before. All the changes they made only helps against small hits. Overall it's ok for bottom side trees that can get good access to max endurance charges. But for witch/ranger/shadow, it feels really hard to solve phys max hit in an interesting way.
Honestly, I find the changes pretty bad, I have really struggled to create a solid defence build outside of block and leech.....so trickster or slayer. Jug seems nerfed to death, all cool unique body armours are now trash since you cant use auras to make up for the defence...I am really struggling to enjoy the league, I love the league but dying 200 times by level 96 is.....hard. Even cast on stun chieftain struggles unless you have like 100div investment. IT seems like a lot of builds cant really deal with small hit any more. Dont get me even started on 2 handed melee builds that don't go head over heels in leech.....you cant really tank ubers or t17 bosses and PDR is a massive issue....so yea I am really struggling making fun builds this league, its seems its one of the 3 defence setups (ward, block, leech + resistances/regen/some armour/ some other crap) and die 100 times. Endurance charges are also....weird. So Jug could cap all resistances and get to 90% PDR with endurance charges os easily. But changes to the resistances, enduring cry changes etc make it a gimmick now and you hurt a lot. So I made a build with 60% PDR and EDR and still got 1 shot most of the time....and to get a lot of endurance charges you need to sacrifice some life, no block, little leech, gear now is resistances heavy so good luck on dps mods...JUG is dead in my eyes. Yes I know of the all ele taken as fire but that's 300 div just for the jewels.... For example doppleganger is pointless now in the bigger picture .....the 15% life mastery is worse then 140 life etc etc
i dropped poe last day, thats shit how i supposed to 0% convert or reduce dot damage and, i hate idea of all playing endurance charges now for def near chatge tree. Just cant stand that i have one shot even i havent lot damage modes on map to farm. Game got me boring to play her rules and tired, ggg jerks which are lazy on good changes for poe 1
Yeah, you get what +1000-1500 more armor from base defence changes? In turn we lost 20% more armor essentially. AND we lost phys to elemental/chaos so overall defences got nerfed alot.
![HOW I MIRROR CRAFTED MY TRIPLE ELEVATED ARCHMAGE BOOTS [ Path of Exile 3.25 ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AI14FVaCv8M/mqdefault.jpg)
![HOW I MIRROR CRAFTED MY TRIPLE ELEVATED ARCHMAGE BOOTS [ Path of Exile 3.25 ]](/img/tr.png)
What are your thoughts on defences in 3.25?
My Glad blocks everything forever and then a degen puddle melts him in 1s. But I'm still having the most fun I had in PoE in years!
feels geared towards new players. making strong layers more obvious and upfront, while keeping the depth and layering requirement we've all loved. feels a bit like powercreep but the target direction could only deepen the playerbase imo. intelligent design made to make the game more intuitive. it also somewhat strengthens existing defensive power within the tree itself due to bases and ECs, which again feels more intuitive, fun and choice-centric. excellent changes imo, one of my favorite changes in years
@@TBrius88 grab lethe shade so you have time to react
For me it seems that the changes has been mostly positive. There is definitely a wider variety of "meta" defensive options and it seems like people are mix and matching a lot of layers that were not considered before.
I think that there just needs to be some fine tuning: svalin is OP, block may need a tiny bit of a nerf in it's values you can get in the passive tree or jewels (right now I can get block cap VERY easily).
And top-left builds have issues getting phys mitigation. This makes lightning coil and cloak of flame a bit too mandatory for them imo. A new caster option for phys mitigation would be nice (a new support, buff to chaos golem, arctic armour minibuff)
@@lavq7000 It's definitely made mixing and matching the way to go, and made more options viable and accessible which is always nice
I like the idea of making auras less mandatory
honestly you should be restricted to just one defensive aura by default.
@@MrWilliGaming Hard restrictions are killing possibilties to create creative builds, the soft balancing of GGG is the better way!
same tbh. also, it would be nice if a white mob getting five aura buffs from nearby rares didn't onetap half the chars without three defensive layers
@@wurzelbert84wucher5 that is why I said by default. there should be proper investment on the tree and in gear if you want to stack defensive aura. but as it stands right now aura is in a somewhat weird place
This game is 99% PvE
There should be no such thing as "Balance"
Just give the players ways of being creative with your game systems
If the mobs are too weak, just adjust them......don't nerf the players...don't remove their agency.
The better life rolls have made building a lot easier too.
It’s nice
My characters still only have 4-4.5k life like they used to
But I don’t feel as pressured to path to every single life node near my area
Which also makes the life mastery even stronger, that also combos well with new body bases so we can go triple defense prefixes and take the life mastery
Them increasing life rolls acrosd the board with more max res availability and the new base types have really helped majority of the ascendacies in the game, now heres for hoping we get back upgrading unquies with a currency item to the newer bases perhaps
I could see them doing a balance pass in the future which moves some existing uniques to new basetypes to buff them if they've become weak after recent changes
I like all defensive changes, only one thing i wish for is new models for those new armour bases lol
And how much better ward is now after ggg simply cut in half base restoration time.
Also some cool defense synergies, for example:
Saboteur's "Born in the shadows" for 15% reduced damage taken aura, Flesh and Stone (Sand stance) for 20% less damage taken, with endurance charges for 4% reduced damage taken per, and arctic armour for 20% less phys and fire damage taken.
I'm with you on the models. Each armour base should have it's own unique 2D and 3D art.
True. And lets be honest, the less armour/more skin the better the armour.
Personnaly i've chosed to play svalinn and just use a combination of good form of damage mitigation skipping entirely determination or grace. I'm using crab barrier + arctic armor for physical damage, 85% max res + 7 endurance charges for elemental damage (and phy with EC) and 30k armor from equipment with molten shell for extra defense
What’s your class and sub class?
@@truereligion0564 marauder juggernaut
Add ward (Ynda's stand + ward recharge rate boots) - when you block stuff 90% of the time, even if a small hit breaks your ward, its unlikely that something big hits you afterwards before ward recharges (especially Bosses who usually stop their attacks charging for a big slam)
What do you have slotted in Svalinn? Not arctic armor, and idk what crab barrier is.
@@midknightcrisis8612 jokes on you, I'm using mageblood
Another thing I want to note is that the new armour bases require higher stat requirements- dex being the biggest culprit, making it harder for some builds (builds from Witch in particular) to fit those in to compensate for the shift in where your armour and evasion is coming from. Not only that but the level requirement of these new bases is higher, making it quite dangerous trying to level as a Witch, particularly in HC.
It's a good shift but I think some kind of compensation needs to happen for left side / top side of the tree builds. Maybe ward can see more use and be more of an involved mechanic than the niche system it currently is.
Played a Svalinn/EnduCharge/MaxRes Glad and it was insane, 84/80 block. Played a couple CI/Evasion/Suppression based characters and equally as great tankiness. Have not played MoM/Mana stacking in many years since it's hay day, but as far as I know they are also popular and strong again. It's been a long long road since Expedition league with all the nerfs and Aura changes, but finally in 3.25 the game feels in such a good state, as we got given a lot back for defence options.
edit - oh and i forgot, since everyone forgot it from day 1; people are even experimenting with Ward!
Why svallin with glad? Glad alr have lucky block without reduced max block chance
Your videos have helped me to take my build making to another level. I am not quite up to the level of most big build makers, but I am able to complete more content and my builds are way tankier than they used to be. Thanks.
Glad to hear that!
Excellent take, I comepletely agree.
It is nice when GGG manages to change something without removing options. This time around, I think that by changing these few key aspects, they added a plethora of new ways to make defenses work well. Just look at ward, that is actually getting used for the first time, outside of wardloop. Yay ;)
Another reason melding usage is down is due to some players converting all elemental damage taken as to a single type and just maxing out that resistance. This massively benefited builds that have higher suffix pressure on gear such as stat stackers.
Thank you for taking a detailed look into these changes. I had been wondering how the aura nerfs were going and I totally missed the fact that newer bases made up for those defensive nerfs.
I think it was smart the way they did it, someone who is looking to invest into either one or both armour and evasion are going to take them. On the other hand, now you get enough defenses without having to invest in the aura(s) to survive mapping on squishier characters
You've forgotten the best defense in the game, the ability to triple offscreen. Its no wonder the meta never changed from projectiles being tier 0 as it has never been nerfed.
Yep. I was running t16s. One of my maps was -17% max res, 500% crit, 120 phys as cold, 120 phys as fire. The first pack looked at me and I died. I got back in, and just started throwing mines (ice shot miner) and offscreening everything. Didn't die the rest of the map. Just kill it first, it works until actual bossing lol
Multiple of the top builds in HC aren't projectile-based.
LS and MS are not the proj skills I’d think about when the subject is offscreen clear, lol
Hell yeah brother, sc culture strong
never nerfed what do you think proximity shield mobs got introduced for.
Great breakdown, thanks!
Great video. Would love a follow up about ward and the 100% elemental taken as other elements covered. The ladder I think is another reason fewer people are using melding,
Enduring composure on small cluster getting me through the league
Love being able to use blood magic
They also make 21%+ quality bases as drop-only, making it harder to maximize the defence potential on gear
You missed Sublime Vision + Watcher's Eye + Tempered by War for full Ele to Fire damage taken conversion, which people would stack with Arctic Armour's less Fire damage and Phys damage taken.
And is the main reason why Sublime Vision with Purity of Fire is now a Mirror this league.
He didin't miss anything, only a handful of hundred players use that set up. And players have been doing that set up ever since the inception of Sublime vision, which he mentioned in his previous videos.
That's not a new build, I literally did it in Kalandra league. And that build has always been expensive.
Purity of Fire Sublime has always been a mirror~ish
Same as last league
Seen a video of Palsteron talking about synergy of Beacon Of Madness, Faithguard, Ynda's Stand and Olroth's Resolve. Viability of ward as main source of defence with Ynda's Stand is greatly increased, since you can gain far more ward from your gearpieces than before.
Great video.
One thing, sorta mentioned, but now talked about in terms of % of gem usages, is due to base types. People start hitting big flat ES as well. So it makes ES popular. Been playing forever, and this happens a lot. Certain ES thresholds are reached where you can tank a lot/everything, then ES starts to become heavy meta. Trickster being a very popular for it helps. There few things, but when ES is strong Hybrid/CI push numbers down as well. Itd be interesting to see grace/determination #s for both leagues compared to discpline.
This was actually Mike gripe with his comparisons is he did a Grace versus determination when reality. It's a Grace versus determination versus discipline
Running Relic of the Pact as my current farming character, so right now I'm using the portal tanking strategy.
phys mitigation is practically impossible to get it's crazy
best thing to remedy that is just get high max res and covert phys to ele damage granted you obviously can't get 100% max conversation anymore which I do miss
This is probably the smoothest patch for defense for me. Block and some phys to elemental shift is so easy and feels so good.
I am a fan of the changes thus far.
Honestly really liked the defense changes. Although this made certain unique bases that already had bad defense rolls even more obsolete
Short opinion: Big nerf to witch/ranger making physical resistance pretty challenging and more expensive to setup. Buff to left tree ascendancies.
The removal of "physical taken as" from some spots really nerfed the builds i usually play on ranger and witch, physical resistance was already hard to get and now its worse, armor nerfs also slightly worsen this and it limits quite a bit of builds, while they still do fine mapping, t17, ubers and other more challenging content is moving out of range for the builds I enjoyed =|.
I can mitigate this somewhat with the new bases and more life but they are stupidly expensive with fractures so the builds got far more expensive and really need a good starter to farm before making the builds I enjoy while i could make do before its now a painful slog to level and grind on them, overall its bad for build diversity and customization but I guess well see better or easier builds on the left, more worrying is the increase difficulty with t17 and how profitable they are while also making less builds viable for t17, its a big nerf on the economy while everything is more expensive from the builds that can do t17.
Great video!
Overall im liking the changes. I would add that the most important change in the patch notes that wasn't mentioned here is the removal of most mods that ignore phys damage reduction. That was critical and was the main problem with armor in the previous patch. Last league i played a left side of the tree build and fully skipped armor because it was annoying how many things just ignored it, now, besides some specific altar mods, which are fine imo, i can trust that armor will work.
Also i have to mention Dawnbreaker, it has always been great and is even better now. I'm always surprised by how little use it has. I think people gets a bit too focused on the ele damage taken as fire and on the reduced block by fire damage taken. When in reality if you just take it as a shield that increased your phys max hit while making it very easy to cap block, the god damn thing is insane. I have made quite a few minions builds with it and having attack block capped with it and bone offering opens up a lot of investment on other areas, and if you want to go lightning coil, congrats, you don't need to scale armor to deal with phys damage basically.
IDK, Dawnbreaker is great, Dawnbreaker superiority!
You are noob.
The most heavy damage ingame is ele hits.
Fwiw my take is that all the changes are largely positive as they're more new-player friendly (more 'obvious' or 'natural' to figure out) and shift us back to a wider variety of defenses instead of the previous dominance of Grace, Determination and Phys Taken As. That said, there's one glaring omission - Spell Suppression is still king. At some point GGG needs to do something about almost every character chasing spell suppression. It's also far from natural how evading attacks is somehow aligned with a mechanic that is essentially just a big damage reduction for spells. Spell dodge makes a lot more sense for that role, but Acrobatics continues to languish in obscurity and is probably overdue for a full rework to untether it from spell suppression entirely cos seemingly no one likes making that trade.
I have a warden going EV glancing blows (staff) with barkskin. Pretty tricky to get going, but feels so tanky. Whatever you don't dodge you're likely to block, then barkskin or suppress kicks in.
I don't the impact on everyone else but I've used ward a lot more as a defensive layer in conjunctions with block.
This has been one of the most defensively focused building league for me, but haven't used grace, determ, or even spell suppression on a single build so far. Started with a hard res capped chieftan slammer, then a lucky block capped glad with RotP, then a Svalinn ice nova mana hiero. Might try the ward stacker with madness boots thing if ido anotherbuikd this league, or jungroans crazy regen roa thing
I love what they have done to right side defenses. the higher life and armor values feel really good they are almost as desirable as energy shield is on a CI character.
I dont love that every left side build now either has to run the maven chest or endu charges to get good pdr. I understand why they did what they did but I really hope that they give evasion and energy shield characters that aren't trickster some good tools back. I also think that full phys conversion should return as a (expensive an rebalanced) possibility in the future.
I like the extra cluster for max res on AoF keystone. Max res goes brrr.
Arctic Armor + Flesh and Stone > Determination as long as you stand still to attack or cast.
Add in the jewel that gives you grasping vines and dmg per vine
New F&S is not as good as it used to be imo
@@sergeychistov8162 it is 19% DR base to shit next to you, that is crazy strong for some builds
@@sergeychistov8162huh? It was literally crap before now (for melee) its insanely good
You're not always gonna be standing still and attacking is the thing and flesh doesn't work against things like minotaur rocks
I remember when Tarekis first posted the EE CI Flicker Trickster on r/pathofexile builds and no-one thought it would work because it didn't have a frenzy item like terminus or farrull's. I feel he doesn't get enouh credit considering it's now one of the main meta builds and has dispelled the notion that flicker is a glass cannon build. Pity in a way as getting fractured ES bases is now crazy expensive.
Great video 👍
With new Endurance charges, Juggernaut can be extremely tanky even without bodyarmor with big armor numbers. Budget 10 charges (tree+rings+ascendancy+corrupted boots) and you get massive 50 pdr + 50 edr.
yea and you get 1 shot still....since all your gear is now full of resistance etc....
The new armour bases have been great, I'm half-expecting new weapon bases in the same manner in 3.26
characters using both were mostly armour stackers
As an endurance charge stacking righteous fire/fire trap player absolutely nothing has changed.
The life increase across in gear is very relevant, playing jugg 99.5% I am going to reach for the first time 100. Endurance charges are too good right now, the pdef also influence bleed I am not even using a bleed flask with 9 end
Ive gotten an int stacking trickster with the new bow rune enchant.
Ive got 20k es but i hit like a wet noodle even with the double scaling on the weapon..(cold damage from es and lightning from int)
What skill?
Was almost instantly a fan of the aura changes and got quite some flack from some redditors and forum-commenters for that. Which made it even more clear that I'm on the right track 😅
Having auras that basically 70% of all high level chars use (melee, caster, range attack, it didn't matter) is not something you want as a game dev. Especially not over a longer time period. It's just uninteresting.
Tanking shaper slam feels good
Might be a noob trap; but I have always liked the Formless Flame thematically and have been using it this league with my Chieftain. Seems to have worked well.
I honestly think the nerf to phys to ele dmg taken was a mistake, it was a great defensive layer for people like me who just hate evasion on dex based builds, since 3.25 i find myself enjoying dex classes less and less.
I have been running Arctic Armour, Petrified Blood, Ghost Dance, Spell Suppression and thats it. no grace, no determ and no block. good for mapping but not that great for anything else. ❤
I'm liking the changes, but there is a huge gap problem. There are many "offensive" or utility body armours/gloves/boots that are getting really shafted with the aura changes, and thus many builds that work with that sayid cheap uniques can't get much chance to appear on the league, I really wish they made more mods for rares or just helped a bit some unique bases.
I really wish they would do something about spell suppression. I hate how its a pretty binary stat, you either invest fully into it (or at least get lucky spell suppression) and it seems almost any build no matter starting point wants to invest into it bc how broken that stat is.
I think it should be reverted back to spell dodge or something different. so an templar or jugg do no go for 90max ress, 5+ Endurance charges and capped spell suppression and now can add lucky block on top of it.
The max rez stuff just feels like creep to me. Once upon a time just being rez capped was enough. Max rez increases should be for building specialized tanky characters or dealing with elemental-specific content like pinnacle bosses. I think if everyone is going for max rez, enemy damage needs to be reduced instead.
3.25 was a huge buff acroas the board, our defenses got a big buff, and oyd weapons got a large buff in enchantments, as well as melee getting a strict upgrade
svalinn is hard carrying block lol
but block with staves is really strong right now too.
Dex classes should be building attack evade and spell suppress.
Str characters should be building armor, endurance charges and max res.
Int characters should be building raw phys taken as elemental, elemental shifting and raw ehp (energy shield).
Also straight up remove determ/grace/disc and add that power back into the tree and gear.
The problem with that is that Dex classes will just get oneshot when the hit comes through. Suppress is a good layer, and evasion works to an extent, but when the evasion fails, you die. So it is not a good solution. They need some form of physical mitigation, which they now pretty much don't have. They would need to either fundamentally change the evasion mechanic, or introduce a keystone, so that you take less damage the more you evade. Not like Wind Dancer which pretty much guarantees a death after evasion fails. Basically something like Glancing Blows but for evasion-based characters, where you can still evade, but the more hits you take you will take progressively more damage. This way you still need to build a lot of evasion, but you won't just flat out die when it fails.
Prefer aura stacking being a thing, it's just better than all defence options, the major issue is monster damage balance is so lopsided even on "non dangerous" map mods, or just unfun in t17s... especially in being one tapped offscreen, but hey... go bow or go home is still the norm.
It's good max res is easier to get, higher stat bases also work out well too, all in all it's in a good place now.
I'm using svalin and raised my block cap. lucky block is op
A lot of life + petrified blood + dissolution of the flesh.
think your section about defences on gear lacking. the quality improvement is very huge. if you use a max defence body armor its like 1500 more flat armor on a royal plate and even more on a conqurere hybrid base reaching 4k amr+ evasion. also taking the other bases into consideration each can easy grant 500 more while having life on. (boot maby 200 more) and shields getting some more. meaning the only valuable stat from the auras become the % more. what you miss to adress is the shift from using the auras as main source of defence for top side builds. i will assume they have complety been removed from builds that do not incorporate arm or evasion base items. while before with no arm on gear or very little would grant 12-15k before.
One thing I might add: the changes to the purity mods on Watcher's eye and Sublime Vision have also had a massive impact on high-end defenses, particularly Sublime Purity of Fire with Tempered by War. It's even stronger than the old phys taken as fire mods the changes replaced in a lot of cases.
yea and its costs 300 div...
That's not a new build, I literally did it in Kalandra league. And that build has always been expensive.
Annoying how hard it is to get endurance charges when not on the left side.
Players: i'mma use these auras to die less.
ggg: too many ppl r using these aura. we r going to nerf this.
players: how do we live now?
ggg: just use something else.
as a result of those changes charge stacker slayer should be stronger than ever before.
xibaqua+purity watcher+sublime vision best def i have on a pathfinder so far. I prefer to not use progenesis and this type of defence fit in my build so nice.
Some say this is a Boat League, i say...
this is Endurance Charge League.
Monster steal charge mods?
Dont worry, Immortal Call exist.
Less CDR rate mods?
Well... Just hope that ur dmg is fast enough to clear the monster. XD
bases buff was great but huge nerf to specific builds that rely on many uniques. my friend who plays srs scion was the case. both grace and determ became kinda bad, had to drop both and swap to flesh and stone + svalin
I personally think tue fhanges go into a good direction, sadly top side tree got hit heavy with this since they now struggle a lot to deal with physical damage, especially with lower/mid investment since they used a lot of phys taken as x in the past
I perfer the old enduring cry.
Now, phys mitigation fully rely on blocking.
Armor 'more' buff helps, but just abit.
I don't think it's the same, this is the first league where I'm able to reach 95% chance to evade without grace or WE. Back then I needed both
I love not having to use Determination/Grace on every build now.
The one nitpick I have about the higher tier armors is that now I have to level new characters to 84 to equip all my items instead of 68-70 like before. Blighted maps with 90% exp and lower tower costs makes it mostly easy, but it's a minor thing to think about now when rerolling.
The change also makes me more interested in ilvl86 bases on the off chance I get a t1 defense roll.
Determination is garbage unless you stack just armor.
I feel like block (and in particular lucky block) is just way too strong for how little you need to invest in it. Not only does Svalinn get 88% effective block when capped but you also need 10% less to cap it since your max is down to 65. So even less investment. My Ascendant gets 50% from Gladiator Ascendant, and 1 wheel caps attack block at 68%, Tempest shield and the other spell block wheel caps spell block. It's basically 88/88 for like 10 points and 1 Ascendancy
champion used to get 70% evasion naked in previous leagues so its not that powerful
Retaliation should be triggered like reckoning
Feels kind of pointless to care about physical damage. Phys taken as being so rare and it feeling impossible to get any meaningful amount of armour on a lot of builds feels like a problem. Sure we got new armour bases but that didn't change uniques or make it easier to get good rolls on those new bases. Normally I'd aim for 50k ish armor on a build this league I was barely going over 7k with a flask and the aura.
100% of phys conversion was pretty easy last leagues. I played two builds that was utilising it - ipm doom pathfinder with taste of hate, double conversion purity of elements watcher, helmet with 16% conversion and dawnbreaker all i needed to get that 100%. Also played CWS dd cheiftain and it was even easier with lightning coil, corrupted dawnbreaker with 27% phys to elements, watcher for 10% from purity of fire, helm and that's it - with this setup you could run transcendence with melding and still get 90% all ele res.
Evasion, suppression and max res has mafe me feel surprisingly tanky. Plus the life buffs. I basically only die when I recklessly juice maps which feels correct.
the only thing i don't like is how they deleted eternal damnation from the game, the draw back is simply untenable, to a lesser extent defiance of destiny nerf i'm also sad about but that one still does it's job, just half as good
I think svalinn is a mistake, and going forward lucky block should be the sole domain of gladiator.
Other than that, i'm still playing, so the game's in a good state. Still trying and failing to reallly make my trickster reroll pop off though.
Thank god you removed the unnecessary meme intros. I personally prefer your content(before the intros) over other channels because it was straight to the point and the tone felt like Im watching a documentary or academic commentary will be guaranteed to learn something. Keep it up
I understand why phys to ele had to go, but its so sad that trancendence is soo shit/not playable at all. I would love it to just apply the buff to ele without disabling armour for phys dmg. The -15 all max ele res is hard enough
I think we might not have seen the biggest impact on shift in defenses yet. At least for high budget/ top end buildd
Yndas stand does not only making ward meaningfull.
Palsteron and Enginerring Eternaty having just recently send out videos with very different approaches to ward build that is really close to be unkillable. And non of them is about ward loop.
That might be a big thing in the rest of the league, though the ebtry barrier to get those builds working might be to big for many.
Melding + chieftain = + 4 if you get fire + 1 element.
I hate that Ralakesh's Impatience exists in the game,
Every single build i plan collapses into Ralakesh being the best-in-slot item.
Just because of charge-stealing / removal mods on rares / maps.
The attriubute requirements on some of the newer pieces of the gear is a annoying barrier to entry if your classes isn't naturally pathing through those kinda nodes. Its like 293 strength for Royal plate which if your wanting to play some kinda build that uses armour but lacks the strength the defense nerfs on determination really hurts you.
cant you tailoring orb armours tho, its like 170 str for the best str chest base
@@cykablyat6348 Execpt in terms of value attribute is the lowest for legitimate enchantments, unless you have mods that don't gain any value from those. Which is the sad thing about it.
@@ZealValdez its pretty good with how good tattoos are also
Generalist defences are in a horrendous spot as a result of phys taken as nerfs and the rift between good ascendancies and bad ascendancies is bigger than ever before. It is no coincidence the top 6 most played ascendancies all have easily abused defensive combos, and the 13 others are left in the dust.
Also block meta is rising too.
We need defences at deborder.
better defense for most class, but nerf for champion
Its the same every other league GGG goes more than 50% of our players are playing a certain class = op lets nerf them.
In general characters feel more tanky and melee feels better. But I still think the one thing that needs more base types and addressing is Melee weapons, because a lot of melee weapons are locked behind hyper expensive crafts, and unique melee weapons are kind of being left in the dust in terms of build enabling power as many are just not viable for endgame. Not to mention builds preferring specific weapon types, like slam builds needing maces or axes over swords when some slam skills appreciate more speed like consecrated path.
I think we need more melee base types but not just only available in the endgame but during the campaign as our options there are very dry in terms of variety.
Lightning strike is the best defense in the game, off screen kills=defense lol
Ward? Acrobatics?
gg
Cap spell suppress mandatory on 100% of builds or you'll die to a normal mob pack
Thats not rly true
Defenses are cheeks now. I miss old champion. Investing in a bunch of shit armor nodes on the tree is awful.
The only thing I don't like about the changes is that, since a bunch of phys taken as is gone, it's very very hard to get good phys max hits now in comparison to before. All the changes they made only helps against small hits. Overall it's ok for bottom side trees that can get good access to max endurance charges. But for witch/ranger/shadow, it feels really hard to solve phys max hit in an interesting way.
Noob
They need to nerf Nimis builds and reduce their range by like 50%.
Honestly, I find the changes pretty bad, I have really struggled to create a solid defence build outside of block and leech.....so trickster or slayer. Jug seems nerfed to death, all cool unique body armours are now trash since you cant use auras to make up for the defence...I am really struggling to enjoy the league, I love the league but dying 200 times by level 96 is.....hard. Even cast on stun chieftain struggles unless you have like 100div investment. IT seems like a lot of builds cant really deal with small hit any more. Dont get me even started on 2 handed melee builds that don't go head over heels in leech.....you cant really tank ubers or t17 bosses and PDR is a massive issue....so yea I am really struggling making fun builds this league, its seems its one of the 3 defence setups (ward, block, leech + resistances/regen/some armour/ some other crap) and die 100 times.
Endurance charges are also....weird. So Jug could cap all resistances and get to 90% PDR with endurance charges os easily. But changes to the resistances, enduring cry changes etc make it a gimmick now and you hurt a lot. So I made a build with 60% PDR and EDR and still got 1 shot most of the time....and to get a lot of endurance charges you need to sacrifice some life, no block, little leech, gear now is resistances heavy so good luck on dps mods...JUG is dead in my eyes. Yes I know of the all ele taken as fire but that's 300 div just for the jewels....
For example doppleganger is pointless now in the bigger picture .....the 15% life mastery is worse then 140 life etc etc
i dropped poe last day, thats shit how i supposed to 0% convert or reduce dot damage and, i hate idea of all playing endurance charges now for def near chatge tree. Just cant stand that i have one shot even i havent lot damage modes on map to farm. Game got me boring to play her rules and tired, ggg jerks which are lazy on good changes for poe 1
Yeah, you get what +1000-1500 more armor from base defence changes? In turn we lost 20% more armor essentially. AND we lost phys to elemental/chaos so overall defences got nerfed alot.
nothing much to talk about. Svalin