I didn't play before Awakening but it seems really off how entire approaches to defensive gearing fall apart once you hit the level 74 maps. I don't dare go into the next tier of map affixes/suffixes right now, I just sell my progression maps and just use my high level character to farm. It's all life and armor gearing or bust past that point in progression, that seems really broken.
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edit: One more thing , totally agree on some of the uniques being way too rare. Part of it is metagame distortion but some of the items are going for insane prices.
They have nerfed a lot of defensive solutions that were very popular, bit by bit. What this means right now is that incoming damage cannot be mitigated with "easy" unique item + keystone combinations any longer, which I would argue masked these problems before and would continue to mask them now. So any imbalances in incoming damage are much more keenly felt. Now GGG has to re-tune damage spikes that much faster, which for the boss fights at least they have done.
To further put into context why we are at this point right now::
- Raw life is always important because elemental damage cannot be avoided except through spell block or spell dodge, which can only be obtained in modest amounts. So whatever you do, you have to stack some form of HP.
- Armour has diminishing returns, the bigger the hit, the less it mitigates.
- GGG wants big and slow physical hits like Brutus, Vaal and now Malachai slams to remain in the game.
- GGG hates "one and done" solutions, across the board. If something looks like the default way to deal with a gap in your build, its days are numbered.
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And because I am a sad individual, a brief overview of some popular defense strategies:
Armour + [Iron Reflexes + Grace] + Life + Kaom's Heart was the old and faithful combo. Stack armour, stack life. Classic Path of Life Nodes. IR, Grace and Kaom's were all eventually nerfed one way or another. Kaom's is still very valuable for certain builds, IR and Grace a lot less so. Somewhere along the lines, they nerfed life nodes themselves, only to slowly walk that back, because obviously.
Chaos Innoculation. Simply stack as much ES as you can, fuck mitigation. 10k+ ES made up for CI's shortcomings, i.e. greater vulnerability to status ailments, particularly shock. Leech (now also massively nerfed) + Ghost Reaver made melee CI a thing for a bit, even though the downsides to CI favour ranged.
ES amounts on gear were eventually nerfed, possibly ES on the tree as well, don't remember. Emerging alternatives made it look a lot less attractive.
Evasion + Life + Acrobatics [+ Phase Acrobatics] got more popular for a bit after Evasion was tuned, or rather monster accuracy. Then the keystones were (slightly?) nerfed. Remains intact for the most part, but for many people it is still too risky for HC. Evasion isn't completely random, but all it takes is for one big hit to get through. There are ways to make it safer for HC (enfeeble and blind, i.e. lowering mob accuracy further, and/or block), but people don't like to compromise their damage too much, because that would compromise clear speed, yadda yadda.
Life + Cloak of Defiance/Mind over Matter + Eldritch Battery + Arctic Armour, i.e. the perfect storm of synergies. Amazing for casters and possibly put a fork in CI and even ES outside of low-level Shavronne's builds. Very OP. Cloak provided easier access to Mind over Matter (30% of incoming damage taken to mana). Arctic Armour mitigated incoming physical damage and fire damage by a flat amount, at the cost of a constant and very high mana drain. EB provided a huge mana pool and subsequently high mana regen. The pieces of the puzzle here fit together perfectly, hence it became a no-brainer for many, many builds.
Cloak was nerfed even before last league. Its MoM used to be better than the one on the tree by 10%, but since we still had to travel to the bottom of the tree to grab MoM the nerf was insignificant. MoM is now right next to the Witch tree. EB was reworked so now ES doesn't add to mana 1:1, the ES mechanic is simply moved from the life pool over to the mana pool. Artic Armour now works more like an aura and only provides its damage reduction (% phys and fire) while you're standing still. Still great for some builds. This synergy however was completely torn to pieces. Fun while it lasted.
Current reigning champion: Life + Armour/Evasion + Lightning Coil, because it's simply a reliable form of damage reduction, no diminishing returns. Phys damage can shock, but high life mitigates that, which you will want to stack regardless. Purity of Lightning handily fills the lightning resist gap and at higher levels provides +max lightning resist, so there are no real downsides to using it. Except for getting blue sockets on the thing maybe.
So far they've only made it rarer, but I wouldn't be surprised if the item itself was somehow further nerfed. It used to provide 40% mitigation, now it's 'only' 30%.
Supplementals to any of the above:
Max (Spell)Block was extremely strong, especially with Aegis Aurora, but then block was nerfed. It's much more difficult to reach max block now, but it is still a good supplementary defense, if completely random (unlike Evasion). Aegis Aurora is still very good.
CWDT + Enduring Cry + Immortal Call [+ Increased Duration]. Take minimal damage, get endurance charges, immediately expend endurance charges for a few seconds of immunity from physical damage. Automatically. This was around since CWDT was introduced and something practically everyone benefitted from, at the cost of a 3- or 4-link.
Enduring Cry was changed from a spell to a warcry so CWDT couldn't proc it any more, forcing people to self-cast Enduring Cry again. Immortal Call's duration was reduced.
