Path of Exile 1 vs. Path of Exile 2: Defensive Mechanics

Path of Exile 1: Diverse Defensive Systems

PoE 1’s passive skill tree offers three robust defensive archetypes tied to Dexterity, Strength, and Intelligence, enabling varied playstyles.

Dexterity: High evasion, 4,000–5,000 HP, 100% spell suppression (doubles EHP against spells), and max hit mitigation via Acrobatics. A bit squishy but still feels good.

Strength: High armour, endurance charges (4% physical damage reduction per charge), and fortification (1% damage reduction per stack). 5,000–10,000 HP, but no spell suppression. Can be quite a bit tankier and be able to "take a hit".

Intelligence: Energy Shield (8,000–12,000+), with leech and regen (e.g., Ghost Reaver). Low/no life builds, with no armour or suppression. Mage/caster archetype with high quality defenses.

PoE 1 has multiple ways of obtaining full ailment immunity for all classes via talents or gear combination. This depth of defenses game design rewards strategic buildcrafting.

Path of Exile 2: Defensive Shortcomings

PoE 2 removes life nodes from passive tree, pushing defenses onto gear and creating significant issues, as noted in community feedback on Reddit and PoE forums.

Armour Weakness: Scales poorly against high-damage hits, ineffective in endgame, unlike PoE 1’s synergy with endurance charges.

No Life Nodes: Flat life scaling relies on gear and Strength, but base values are low, forcing players toward Energy Shield (ES) nodes. A Reddit post notes players path to ES regardless of class due to weak alternatives.

Inefficient ES: ES nodes require heavy investment for modest gains (e.g., +60% ES with 20% reduced recharge uptime), leading to slow recovery and low pools (4,000–5,000 ES).

Gimmicky Defenses: Lacking PoE 1’s spell suppression or endurance charges, players are instead suggested to invest dozens of points onto ailment/stun threshold nodes, which then fail against white mobs. A reported 20-second stun lock on a tanky Warrior in version 0.2 highlights broken crowd control mechanics.

Conclusion

PoE 1’s defensive layers—evasion, armour, and ES—offer strategic depth and viability of builds. PoE 2’s removal of life nodes and reliance on inefficient ES and weak armour undermine build diversity.

PoE includes an additional defense, Ward:

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Ward

...though ward is only available through certain scarce equipment:

Ward is a defence capable of taking damage from hits before life or energy shield. It can only be found on item bases and uniques related to Expedition and Kingsmarch.

Combined with other defenses and perks, it can be a potent addition to your character's defenses. =^[.]^=

Both games have pretty similar flaws in their current defense systems.

You only notice it more with PoE2 because Poe2 lacks the numbers.
PoE1 Defenses are actually still considerably weaker than they used to be too.

Armor: The concept of little hit Vs big hit is curved by the sheer amount of armor. For instance, have you ever made a Duelist recently who didn't use Iron Reflexes? It would be foolish not to.

Evasion: Has the same problem it always did without Dodge and a small amount of flat DR. There's few sources of that in both games now. It's hard not to use Arctic Armor and similar.

ES: Pretty much always been the high end option long as I can remember. In PoE1 it's used because we reserve mana for auras to stay alive. In PoE2 it's just free HP.

SS/Max Res: Neither were a good idea. The concept of maxing out resists instead of using a diminishing returns system is incredibly outdated. Resistances should range from 0% = Ouch to 20-30% fine and 35-40% low returns but worth it for special situations. Don't need SS or Max Res.

In the end movement is the best defense in both games. Stat defenses are designed to fail.

There is no defensive mechanics in PoE2.
Bad designed Armor, Critical Kills from random mobs - this is slot machine mechanics.

A small mistake: PoE1 endurance charges grant not only 4% phys reduction, but 4% ele reduction as well. Armor works much better in PoE1, because it is an additional layer of defense, not the only one. You want to couple it with phys taken as ele, fortification and endurance charges. This possibility has led to a meta in which players don't even need high armor values to feel pretty tanky. PoE1 defences are so much superior in every way possible and honestly, they add an additional dimension to the game.

Overall, we need more attention regarding this matter.

"

Xzorn#7046 が発言:

Both games have pretty similar flaws in their current defense systems.

You only notice it more with PoE2 because Poe2 lacks the numbers.
PoE1 Defenses are actually still considerably weaker than they used to be too.

Armor: The concept of little hit Vs big hit is curved by the sheer amount of armor. For instance, have you ever made a Duelist recently who didn't use Iron Reflexes? It would be foolish not to.

Evasion: Has the same problem it always did without Dodge and a small amount of flat DR. There's few sources of that in both games now. It's hard not to use Arctic Armor and similar.

ES: Pretty much always been the high end option long as I can remember. In PoE1 it's used because we reserve mana for auras to stay alive. In PoE2 it's just free HP.

SS/Max Res: Neither were a good idea. The concept of maxing out resists instead of using a diminishing returns system is incredibly outdated. Resistances should range from 0% = Ouch to 20-30% fine and 35-40% low returns but worth it for special situations. Don't need SS or Max Res.

In the end movement is the best defense in both games. Stat defenses are designed to fail.

Great analysis. I was poe1 player long time ago (open beta, 1.0 and 2.0) and this issue happened there. As time goes, you realise the flaws in their design. You can still play the game, sure, but once you see the reality behind the numbers you can't unsee it.

Poe1 nowadays fixes it with all the defensive layers (suppression, end charges, damage conversion) on top of that to make the game "playable" (idk if it's the case, long time ago since i don't play it) but the design's still flawed.

I still like the idea of the 3-defenses paradigm in poe2, but their mechanical design tends to "feel bad", especially at endgame. I also love the change to no life on the passive tree, but the life value feels low. My take on the triple defense system for a modern game would be:

Armour: Numeric value that translates to % reduction vs monster level with diminishing returns, so the higher number the higher reduction, scaled by monster level. Maybe modern design should scrap fire/cold/lightning/chaos res and armour should reduce all damage, and just bring luxury stats that mitigates ele damage/ailments.

Evasion: I like the idea in poe2 to evade all strikes and projectiles but life pool it's kinda low so you can still die to random oneshots. Evasion's weakness should be barrages of attacks: you can't dodge them all, and if 2 or 3 hit you, you are dead.

ES: I like the slow recharging rate so you are forced to play differently in poe2, or invest into recharge. I think it's ok in poe2, but the high ES pool vs hp pool makes it the best option right now.

Ele/chaos res: I think they should be scrapped, what should make ele/chaos damage special are ailments imo, so the dangerous part from ele/chaos attacks could be the ignite/chill-frozen/shocked/poison part. In that regard, ailment protection (not necessarily ailment treshold) should be an utility/luxury stat. You should rely on your Ar/Ev/ES to mitigate ele/chaos damage.

i like the lower numbers overall. nothings worse than inflated numbers and endless scaling. poe1 is worse than d3 now and poe2 already feels similar in endgame. Change the formula of armour to provide more defense but dont let us get 40k+ armour like in poe1.

Ironically the campaign in poe2 is more of what I had in mind compared to endgame. Just less of the insane rng for itemization. Poe2 doesnt know what it wants to be right now. I would love it if they kept the ceiling low for both dps and defense and maybe continue the endless grind and numbers in poe1 instead. The needed economy reset every few months doesnt help that many dont want to spend time in the game. Ideally I would like to see another solution. Maybe a true ssf league with different balancing.

Oh well.

"

Sulik7#2502 が発言:

Great analysis. I was poe1 player long time ago (open beta, 1.0 and 2.0) and this issue happened there. As time goes, you realise the flaws in their design. You can still play the game, sure, but once you see the reality behind the numbers you can't unsee it.

Poe1 nowadays fixes it with all the defensive layers (suppression, end charges, damage conversion) on top of that to make the game "playable" (idk if it's the case, long time ago since i don't play it) but the design's still flawed.

I still like the idea of the 3-defenses paradigm in poe2, but their mechanical design tends to "feel bad", especially at endgame. I also love the change to no life on the passive tree, but the life value feels low. My take on the triple defense system for a modern game would be:

Armour: Numeric value that translates to % reduction vs monster level with diminishing returns, so the higher number the higher reduction, scaled by monster level. Maybe modern design should scrap fire/cold/lightning/chaos res and armour should reduce all damage, and just bring luxury stats that mitigates ele damage/ailments.

Evasion: I like the idea in poe2 to evade all strikes and projectiles but life pool it's kinda low so you can still die to random oneshots. Evasion's weakness should be barrages of attacks: you can't dodge them all, and if 2 or 3 hit you, you are dead.

ES: I like the slow recharging rate so you are forced to play differently in poe2, or invest into recharge. I think it's ok in poe2, but the high ES pool vs hp pool makes it the best option right now.

Ele/chaos res: I think they should be scrapped, what should make ele/chaos damage special are ailments imo, so the dangerous part from ele/chaos attacks could be the ignite/chill-frozen/shocked/poison part. In that regard, ailment protection (not necessarily ailment treshold) should be an utility/luxury stat. You should rely on your Ar/Ev/ES to mitigate ele/chaos damage.

I played back when the game had 3 Acts myself. It was pretty similar to PoE2 now except for one major difference. The enemy density. You did not want to get overwhelmed back then or you'd get stun-locked, spam pots and die but it was also much easier to avoid that situation.

When it comes to Armor/Evasion/ES/Resists and even player damage I think they're just using way too large of numbers. If the average rounded character had 30-35% DR/Evasion then they don't need the big hit vs small hit. They can simply make certain attacks hit hard.

Having caps on stats is utterly pointless if those caps don't mean anything.

There was one thing I forgot to mention which is out of control in both games. Recovery. PoE1 turned into a twitchy zoom game because we can fully heal ourselves in 1.5 seconds. Currently there's meme videos in PoE2 of players AFK farming using Dual or Tri layer recoup.

It's sad to see the same exact flaws being repeated.

Here we go again... Comparing 13 year old game with gazillion expansions to a beta...

"

It's sad to see the same exact flaws being repeated.

In GGG office back then in pre-production:

- Let's make a big new expansion.
- No, let's make a completely new game!
- But we don't know how to make new games.
- Let's pretend, then, that we are making a new game!