why is this drawn like a youtube clickbait thumbnail. defences isnt #1 because poe2 is designed to be more mechanic-driven for combat, so mechanics come into play more than numbers. if mechanics are more important than numbers, the numbers arent important. so the numbers are at the end of the priority list. its very shrimple

If combat interaction is secondary to kills per second in your design specc, no numbers game can fix it. PoE designers and players seem to fear "slowness’.

The best defense is a good offense. Enemies can’t hurt you if they’re dead.

The other side of that coin is dead dps is no dps. If you can’t survive, you need to learn mechanics and/or adjust your build so you can survive better.

Keeping both of these lines of thought in mind, offense usually wins out over defense because killing faster results in more enemies dying, faster clear times, and bigger numbers, which most people tend to prefer. Defensive stats/skills lose value when they’re not being used, where offensive stats/skills always have value.

Is this a post similar to those that complain the game is too hard? I can’t tell. Like I play Diablo 4 So i can be braindead, I play poe 2 for a challenge. If defense is “first” (it’s not, it doesn’t rotate like that. You can put stats into defense) then every squishy character can just soak up damage, and that would be Diablo 4 levels of boring.

If your kill things before they can hit you, defence is worthless

And that comes from a guy who almost always plays as a tank

Too few games now (from all I’ve been playing) care about tanking, one of the few exception I’ve seen is Warframe, because they crank up everything to 11 (DPS, crowd control, tanking, …)

I’m pretty sure the design intent was to make your first level of defense learning mechanics and using the dodge roll. If you can do that consistently you can just pump damage and speed, which is what everyone wants to do anyway.