Elephant in the room: Defenses in POE

Maybe. But let me indulge. These would be my "dream additions" for the following areas:

<each line with a [] before it represents one node>



Two new clusters in this zone.

On the left hand side is a circle cluster with the following:
[]Armor +8%
[]Energy Shield +8%
[]Energy Shield and Armor +6%
[]Imbued Zeal: Armor increased by 15% when energy shield is greater than 0

On the right hand side:

[]+6% life and +3 life recovered per second
[]+6% energy shield and +0.5% of life recovered per second
[]+6% energy shield and +5 life recovered per second
[]+1.5% of life recovered per second
[]Solitude: 35% increased life regeneration when energy shield is greater than 0

The idea here is that you can use energy shield and armor as a witch or a templar, but you'll want to equally balance your energy shield and life if you want to take advantage of certain properties of these passives.



On left hand side is a circle cluster with the following:

[]Evasion and Life +6%
[]Evasion and Energy Shield +6%
[]Evasion +12% when life is full
[]10% of energy shield is added to evasion rating when energy shield is 0

The idea here is to add some much needed evasion to the Shadow and Witch, while making such nodes still relevant for their classes, since they use energy shield and may also use life. This also is a hard cluster to "min/max" because if your life is 1, you're wasting points here, if your energy shield is very low, you're also wasting points here - but you don't want too much energy shield, because then your life pool won't see much use of the added evasion.



Above Pain Attunement:

[]+8% life
[]+5% life and energy shield
[]+5% life and energy shield
[]+30 maximum life, +20 strength

Below Pain Attunement:
[]+4% to fire, lightning and cold resistance
[]+6% to fire, lightning and cold resistance on low life
[]+3% maximum fire, lightning and cold resistance on low life
[]+3% maximum fire, lightning and cold resistance on low life
[]+30 maximum life, +8% life

The idea here is to make these clusters attractive for pain-attunement users - but not force pain attunement. These clusters are still very good if you're not taking the keystone and simply want to be more defensive. These nodes should be hard to min/max as they require a good amount of investment and thought to see good returns.



This isn't really related to the thread, but I just wanted to share my idea here. Something to further divide players between Resolute Strike and Critical Strikes:

Above Resolute Strike (on the left):

[]+10% critical strike chance, +5% accuracy
[]15% reduced stun threshold on critical strikes
[]20% stun duration on critical strikes
[]Siphoning Strike: Critical Strikes with weapons convert an additional 4% of their damage into life and 2% into mana

Below Resolute Strike:

[]+15% critical strike chance
[]+10% critical damage
[]+8% melee physical damage
[]+15% accuracy with melee weapons
[]Noble Savagery: Critical Strikes with weapons inspire allies with 1 endurance charge

The idea here is to reward players who critically strike. Right now, there isn't really much of an incentive for the Marauder to care about his crits. I don't mind if marauders take resolute strike, but it should be like they're giving up more, potentially. Right now all they're doing is saying, "Well, I'm not really going to get dex and I don't really want +accuracy anyway so who cares about a 5% chance to do 50% more damage?"