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’.

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.

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