What PoE2 Armour is missing that PoE has [Stream Clip]
Summary
- Physical Damage Reduction (PDR) is the critical factor that makes armor effective in Path of Exile 1 (PoE 1) but is largely absent or inaccessible in Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2).
- In PoE 1, PDR is additive with the damage reduction granted by the armor formula, leading to exponential increases in effective tankiness.
- While PoE 2 adjusts its armor formula constants to account for lower monster damage, the lack of easy access to PDR (via Endurance Charges or common gear mods) makes mid-to-low investment armor feel significantly weaker than its PoE 1 counterpart.
- High-investment armor in PoE 2 can still be powerful through mechanics like “Armor applies to Elemental Damage,” but it requires significantly more resources to reach a “good” state.
The Mechanics of the Armor Formula
The armor formula in both games is a division formula that can never truly reach 100% damage reduction (DR). While the hard cap for physical damage reduction is 90%, achieving this through armor alone requires an absurd amount of the stat due to diminishing returns.
- PoE 1 Example: Against a hit of 2,000 damage, 10,000 armor provides roughly 50% reduction.
- The Scaling Problem: To move from 50% reduction to 90% reduction (reducing the remaining damage by five times), you need 50,000 armor—five times the initial amount.
The “Broken” Power of Additive Physical Damage Reduction (PDR)
The reason armor is considered “good” in PoE 1 is that PDR is added to the reduction percentage after the armor calculation. This additive nature makes PDR far more valuable for armor-stacking characters than for those without armor.
- Comparison of 20% PDR added to different builds:
- Chaos Inoculation (CI) / Zero Armor Build: Gaining 20% PDR results in taking 80% of the original damage (a 25% increase in tankiness).
- Mid-Armor Build (50% DR): Adding 20% PDR results in 70% total reduction. The player goes from taking 50% damage to 30% damage, which is a 40% reduction in damage taken.
- High-Armor Build (70% DR): Adding 20% PDR hits the 90% cap. The player goes from taking 30% damage to 10% damage. This makes the character three times tankier (a 67% reduction in damage taken compared to the 70% state).
In this scenario, giving 20% PDR to an armor-based character is 2.4 times more powerful than giving it to a character with no armor.
Availability of PDR: PoE 1 vs. PoE 2
The primary reason armor feels “bad” in PoE 2 is the scarcity of PDR sources compared to the first game.
-
PoE 1 PDR Sources:
- Endurance Charges: Easily accessible via Enduring Cry, charges on kill, or passive tree generation. These typically provide 12% to 28% PDR.
- Pantheons: Can provide up to 8% PDR.
- Watcher’s Eye: Specific modifiers can grant PDR.
- Body Armor: Suffixes and implicit modifiers.
-
PoE 2 PDR Sources:
- Shield Suffixes: Limited to players using shields.
- Rare Strength-based Body Armor: Limited to specific base types, which excludes unique chests and hybrid bases that many builds rely on.
- Values: The PDR values available are often minuscule (e.g., around 8%) compared to the ease of stacking PDR in PoE 1.
Structural Differences and Balancing
The fundamental constants in the armor formulas differ between the two games to account for different monster power levels.
- The Formula Constant: PoE 1 uses a divisor of 5, while PoE 2 uses a divisor of 10.
- Monster Damage: This change exists because monster hit damage in PoE 2 is roughly half of what it is in PoE 1. A boss hitting for 5,000 in PoE 1 might hit for 2,500 in PoE 2.
- The “Secret Ingredient”: Despite the formula adjustments for hit damage, the absence of PDR is what makes armor struggle in PoE 2. Armor only becomes exceptionally strong at extreme investment levels—such as 100,000 armor combined with 300% “Armor applies to Elemental Damage.” At lower levels of investment, such as a caster using Determination and a few Endurance Charges in PoE 1, the character feels much tankier against physical hits than a similar character in PoE 2.