The problem I see with current Armor / Elemental Res damage reduction formulas.

[ninakoru]

On theory seems fair and natural, bigger the hit, less reduction.

In practice is a mess, you only receive chip damage, and out of nowhere, BAM one-shot. I grow tired of it already on PoE, it lures you in a sense of safety and you get the surprise. But is something I expect from PoE, they seem focused on making players life miserable.

In my practice in the game, once you reach wrath 10, all your efforts on "normal" defenses are near useless. 15.4k defense, using the chest multiplier and using 11 affixes in all my gear (many of the normal ones with great value), on top of some points into toughness, to get only 29% defenses on W10, and that's on average, big hits will be far worse...

But as I read, some knights can get ridiculous armor (100k++), mostly ignoring most incoming damage, but seems they also get one-shotted from time to time... (maybe is retaliation?)

Overall seems the default option is just stack max life...

Also, we get the side effect of armor/elemental penetration being useless, as you far outscale with damage any enemy armor.

Possible solution:

A formula independent on enemy damage, much like what last epoch has.

https://lastepoch.tunklab.com/armor

Maybe a scale into 80% or 75% as you reach infinity, instead of 85%, whatever suits your vision, and you got solid defenses if you invest for it.

On practice damage in last epoch is fair, they have plenty of big hits, but you can know if your defenses are enough or not to tank those. Is just the opposite of PoE, you have good knowledge of what kind of damage is coming at you when you know the enemies.

And armor/elemental penetration would be a thing, and absurd armor values would be not a free immortal pass until whatever oneshots them.