So I've been playing PoE on and off for a few months. Lots of restarts as I toy with builds. Never got all the way to Act II. Mostly waiting for WM2 to start seriously. I ended up starting a chanter/Hard when Beta 3.0 came out, and continued that game after the official release. I noticed that everything seemed much, much easier than I remembered it. Couldn't quite figure out why.
Tonight I noticed all my DR values seemed higher than they ought to be. L8 Pallegina running around in Exceptional Plate with total DR of 25, etc... When I click on the DR for details, I notice the usual 12 plate, 4 exceptional, 3 zealous endurance, 2 survival II.... and a 25% Armor Efficiency bonus. Not all of my NPCs have it. My chanter has it at 30%. Eder is 25% like Palegina. Aloth doesn't have it at all.
So... I do not remember this bonus from any prior playthroughs. Any idea where it comes from?
Anybody else finding things got startlingly easier in 3.0? I'm not remotely a min-maxer. My Chanter doesn't have any stat under 10 and is built for conversation. NPCs are mostly built for what they look like in my head. My DPS King by a factor of two is Eder running around with an Estoc. No custom NPCs. I've done a number of side-quests, but nowhere near all of those available in Act I. Haven't touched the Endless Paths or White March at all yet. Aloth and Durance have cast maybe 10 spells each over the course of the entire game - because I just don't feel threatened enough to bother with anything but the per encounter stuff.
Are there any known bugs when upgrading from Beta to release 3.0 that could mess with Difficulty? I did theoretically revert back to non-beta before installing WM2.