How to maximize armor with minimal investment | SURVIVE BIG HITS - POE2

[@BetaTestCoin]

One thing I want to say here, and I now understand why most people are totally against this. This video is about playing the game for real, not just the ultra late game waystone crazy modifiers on standard trade league, but for playing a hardcore ssf character. This channel is only focused on SSFHC, The only way worth playing in my opinion. I don't care about anything else, no hate just my point of view.

[@RoeDeerMusic]

yeah, cause crip is a well known softcore player.... kappa... ziz well known softcore player... kappa... ssf is not "the only way worth playing", without crafting its beyond bullshit XD you brought up a interesting imagination but there is no real data shown in the vid. its more or less common sense. if we would compare it with evasion then evasion would just be better in the actual state of the game. there is armor break. if you play armor this shreds your defense vs ALL mobs on your screen. the counterpart is accurate wich only affects the enchanted mob. evasion does not only work better vs small mobs iin general, it also reduce elemental dmg from projectiles instead of only phys. it also works vs spells that are projectiles. for all the downsides you get for not playing evasion there are no real upsides. you dont wanna be oneshot? just buffer es.... or do ele conversion with cloak... a way less costly investment for much more efect.... i have 10k hours poe1 hc and ii play poe2 hc too. the tools for utelizing armor are just missing. gaiin on block? not implemented besides 1 unique fortify? not implemented auras? not implemented this is the stuff that made armor work and its just not in the game.... you could say "but armor negates phys spells" but no... at least not below 16k armor cause of overwhelm.... with cloak of flame you could at least cut dmg by 30% at 75% resist. with armor you simply cant.... its ironic that the best in slot body armor for armor users is a freakin cloak lol. if you like playing armor (and i actualy like it normaly too) you rly should be happy about stuff like fortify or gain on block finding its way into the game. and overwhelm/shred getting fixed to the level of theyr counterpart for evasion. i would rly like to play armor but it just isnt as good as evasion in the current state.... lets hope needed stuff comes...

[@BetaTestCoin]

@@RoeDeerMusic I love kripp but let's be real, he's now heavily into card games. He's not the old hardcore player. And ssfhc you will mostly be most of the time not into late game so yes armor is very powerful before lategame

[@RoeDeerMusic]

@@BetaTestCoin not before lategame, also in lategame but not against strong hits. for this we had tools in poe1 but this tools are missiing. the problem is that you could have protection with evasion against this (its a hit, u can evade. if not u can get the node for evading aoe). for armor most people used conversion. like phys taken as fire/chaos whatever. we dont have that tools so we hope that armor at least do something but thats not the case. in my opinion ggg rly needs to think about overwhelm or add conversion (or other tools). yes, your mostly NOT in the lategame on ssf but dont u plan to be there? i mean, there will be a point where u hit that lategame even if this happens later on ssf then on trade. and yes, crip is into card games, true. but you dont lose understanding of game mechanics by playing a card game. what he said was in my opinion very true. playing card games does not de-value this. this dude was one of the first poe content creators and he has much experience on his belt, even with the card games ^^

[@RamenTraveler-r1y]

There is no way that armor is in a fine place while there's literally no life on the tree, meanwhile people are getting 20K ES easily from clicking ES nodes. How does it square that ES can fulfill all of your defensive needs by itself, but you need to invest in other defensive layers with armor? When you hit high end maps you won't even be able to tank small hits with armor, shield is practically mandatory on any armor build right now. Also the idea that we have to sacrifice all our ascendancy points going Warbringer, taking 6 ascendancy points to go Wooden Wall and Encase in Jade, while Stormweavers can easily afford investing all their ascendancies into offense, is laughable

[@BetaTestCoin]

I'm just telling it's possible to survive big hits as a life build. The tree gives a lot of flat life but no % life yes. Not saying ES isn't busted. The main advantage of life build is you do not need to spec a lot into armor, just these three Key nodes. The rest can be anything you want, also spec into strength boost the damage of a lot of skills while giving you life while int now does not give ES. I think it's in the right direction, we haven't all discovered either, but yes ES has insane nodes.

[@arturucka1959]

It's possible but you've just invested 32 skill points from what I can see. 3rd wheel is not that close to any other useful nodes. Plus boss slams deal big aoe (not a proj + not necessarily a crit) AND have phys overwhelm built in. How do you deal with that?

[@BetaTestCoin]

@arturucka1959 jade 10% phys reduct and if you time it right it doubles your EHP, theorically you would still be able to mitigate ~20% from the big hit. Having one totem up makes you take 20% less damage from armor. A level 1 curse removes 11% damage from boss. The biggest non crit hit is 4600. 4600 x .8 = 3680, with totem up x .8 = 2944 minus curse x .89 = 2620. Now if you jade right before getting hit 2620 x .5 because it doubles your hp. You only need 1310hp to survive the biggest hit in the game, without jade 2620. 2620 is totally achievable

[@BetaTestCoin]

@@arturucka1959 what do you mean it's not close any useful nodes? There's a lot of good nodes for HC and if you want all max res you are close to projectile armor. Obviously a softcore build with 0 defenses there's nothing closs you are right. But we talking about playing the game for real, hardcore, survibility nodes are a must.

[@arturucka1959]

@@BetaTestCoin there is not much to take north from jewel socket near blood magic, beside that armour wheel you use, that's why I think it questionable investment with so many points required.

[@lokijantzen8940]

This is just not correct. The armour formula is not a bell curve of effectiveness. Each point of armour is worth as much as each previous point. Armour in total is worth less against higher amounts of damage. This is how it works. DR% = A / (A + D * 12) A = Armour D = Damage eHP% = 1 / (1 - DR%) -> eHP% = 1 / (1 - A / (A + D * 12)) You can tell from this that at any fixed value of damage, as armour increases, effective hit points increases at a linear rate (each point of armour is equivalent). Increasing the amount of damage decreases that linear scaling evenly. This is not a bell curve of damage reduction; it is a diminishing curve. While the percentage does diminish it is an illusion as the effectiveness of each point on your hit point pool is linear. This is difficult to grasp. Additionally, bosses that do large hits also have overwhlem which bypasses damage reduction (subtracted percentile). In effect, sufficiently large hits (including non-crits) with overwhelm completely invalidate armour regardless of other scaling. Yes, this includes the double armour verses a critical because those hits also deal double damage. At a baseline, Xesht invalidates 15.5k armour (down to 0% damage reduction) against slams that can one-shot you if you have less than 3k life. Even with the crit protection node there is zero change here. This gets much worse as you increase Xesht's power by scaling him through your atlas passives. Basically, you can consider all of your armour from zero to 15.5k all as the same (zero) and therefore only begin counting armour past 15.5k as usable armour against Xesht's slam. (If you actually know how to read his stats properly you'll notice I'm showing the lowest possible output from Xesht. It gets much worse.) As it currently stands armour is barely acceptable against physical hits from normals enemies (the estimated percentage is accurate), but as soon as you start introducing enemy damage modifiers on your waystones it drastically favours the normal mobs.

[@RoeDeerMusic]

thats correct. but i dont think that overwhelm will stay like it is. its not poe1 with determination and 2 armor flasks.... they have to adept to the lower values with stuff like overwhelm

[@christianandersen4749]

"minimal investment" = all ascendancy points?

[@BetaTestCoin]

The key point isn't ascendancy but the key in the tree. Warbringer is just the most tanky theoretical ascendancy. For HC yes, it's not like titan isn't tanky either. 15% max life is close to a 20% reduction from with a totem but all the time. just no jade but I think 8% strength and 50% more small passive might offset this.

[@noxyk]

I think you missed the point where the same investment into ES/ Eva will get you far tankier. You cant look at armor in isolation. Moreover mobs break and overwhelm armor - they cant do that to ES/Eva.

[@BetaTestCoin]

this video is about surviving as a hp based character, not about the other 2 type of defenses

[@BassisChannel]

I also use two other useful passives: Impenetrable Shell + Breakage

[@BetaTestCoin]

I don't like breakage but impenetrable shell is broken, I have not even seen it. Makes it even better since it's closer

[@BetaTestCoin]

For full explanation in dept to survive the biggest hit in the game with HP. kzbin.info/www/bejne/ppqUZnedi7Cog6s

[@royalecrafts6252]

The fire cloak is good as well, I get both in the tree

[@crosscy9387]

I think its just wrong to carry the mentality that big hits aren't supposed to be mitigated by armor. There are 3 core defense tags in POE2, its armor/evasion/ES. Evasion and ES both gets increasingly stronger against all 5 damage types the more you stack them, but armor works solely and ONLY against physical damage. By following POE1's mentality that armor shouldn't mitigate big hits, it's basically a trash stat when you could and should be stacking evasion and ES instead which gives you better returns against basically all damage types. As to why armor SHOULD work against big hits, its simple, there simply isn't other mechanics to support physical reduction like POE1, if its only armor in POE2, then armor should be actually good against physical damage, regardless if its big or small. It's not like it works against the other 4 damage types. In current POE2 you stack armor and gain minimal increased survivability against big phys hits, but if you stacked ES or evasion instead, the survivability to Phys is increased linearly as well while you still gain compounded survability (togehter with resistances) against the other 4 damage types. There is actually no advantage to armor if it's not going to be good against phys when the hits are big. As it is now, warriors that stack armor are far less tanky than evasion and ES characters because all you have is SLIGHTLY better mitigation against big phys hits but no increased tankiness against fire, cold, lightning, chaos like ES and evasion stacking provides you. To make this trade off worth while, armor definitely needs to be better. If you can't survive phys slams with armor, then armor is dogshit, it's plain and simple.

[@banishedbr]

yeah, this is why some ppl say LE armor mitigating all dmg tipes is a better idead for an arpg

[@QQWoLPHie]

I find getting about 50% damage reduction with armor and then 34% evasion use rating Max resist and basically you can do t15s all day

[@NullRageGaming]

must be a satire video.

[@BetaTestCoin]

Armor works exactly as intended in POE2, they might tweak it a bit but he is very wrong about not being able to survive big hits. Armor isn't supposed to be heavily invested in as a single defense mechanism, just like evasion or ES, Only stack ES? yes high life pool effectiveness but if you can't ever recharge it's RIP. Evasion? get hit once your hardcore run is over. Maximize your armor video explanation: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eX6VYoKanp5pbtU

[@khianidude]

You are being ignorant of the nuances and workarounds for the downsides of the other defences. ES doesn't care about Recharge because of Grim Feast acting as both ES-on-kill and overflow, and a boss won't be able to one-shot you and have a string of attacks that won't delay Recharge. The one downside for ES gets completely counteracted by a single 30 spirit buff. Evasion is a contingency for the main weakness of Ranged classes, other Ranged enemies that can reach them. A melee enemy isn't supposed to reach an Evasion character, so a Ranged player can use Evasion to avoid the only other damage they can take, if you are taking Melee hits, you are objectively playing Evasion incorrectly. And, again, in a bossing context you would be able to take at least a single hit anyways with a base life pool, unless you are running a glass cannon build, in which you wouldn't be doing bosses other than Sanctum anyways, which rewards not getting hit. The main argument is that the investment to Armour does not reward you proportionally the way ES and Evasion do. If you stack enough ES, you can be like Phaze and literally tank +4 Arbiter on HCSSF for prog. If you stack enough Evasion, you can eventually spec into Acrobatics and effectively achieve the same results of a Block build without requiring a Shield, but at the same time could double dip into that layer of defence with Block. (because functionally it's the same defensive layer, that's why a Svalinn Acrobatics Trickster in PoE1 is literally the most unkillable build in the game). If you continue to look at Armour in a bubble, sure it's in a pretty okay spot. But once you have ES and Evasion to compare to, it's not even close to being as valuable.

[@BetaTestCoin]

@khianidude look my other comment on here. You can survive the biggest hit in the game with just basic level 1 curse, good ascendancy, and 3 key nodes on the tree with around 1400hp. More like 2800 without jade active skill. Totally achievable and I didn't mention a single item unlike your exemple with es or ev.

[@khianidude]

@@BetaTestCoin I'm in more disbelief now. That's your only curse slot for an armour player, people would rather run an offensive Curse, but using Enfeeble is basically forcing you into pure phys builds or just substantially killing the single target dps for converted elemental or chaos builds. "Yeah you can be tanky with armour, just use a curse that makes the boss do less damage so your armour scales better" You know what Enfeeble also makes tankier? ES and Evasion builds. Because it doesn't exclusively interact with Armour. What a joke

[@QQWoLPHie]

You're wearing a silly armor as a workaround. It's not in a fine place.lol

[@ВладимирБушин-п3ц]

no. its still trash

[@stuk5787]

Just reroll a sorc much easier

[@CastleStrongGaming]

Watch Kriparians videos, armor is bad right now and recoup life is awful, FYI for yall 🤘

[@annotated4769]

Armour is fine, other ways of surviving have been adjusted/nerfed so it still feels bad.

[@BetaTestCoin]

@@annotated4769 I personally prefer life

[@annotated4769]

@BetaTestCoin ye, wish recovery was a little easier to incorp though.

[@innerg_92]

Thank you, been struggling to stay sane among all the brain dead talk about x, y or z not working when really the issue is the person doesnt actually know how things are working so it just looks like it doesnt work to their bias. It's so crazy, and I am very glad GGG aren't and will not listen to those feedbacks because they know things work as intended. People just get mad when they fail instead of try to figure it out and learn from the mistakes these days.

[@foowii4421]

Sir, did you play a life/armour character in T15 or higher?

[@TheArnoldification]

Me when I passive aggressively refer to opposing arguments that I can't personally refute or add meaningful input to. Vid's bad. Armor is the weakest defensive layer in the game currently and only really serves to mitigate smaller incoming hits. Every armor stacker is a warrior because the tree essentially forces them to do so which in turn forces them to run giant's blood for 2h + shield because life + armor by itself is basically unplayable in red maps. People were originally building merc as an armor stacker but everyone in later maps dropped this in favor of pivoting towards evasion or cloak of flame. Literal dogshit defense without a shield. The funny part is that armor gets further penalized in pinnacle fights where attacks have a certain amount of phys overwhelm where no such mechanic exists for evasion or ES. Armor is bad, and you're probably bad at understanding numbers/are being disingenuous (i.e. "armor is fine as it is because I think that's how the game should be balanced" but framed within comparison to other, vastly superior defensive layers) if you think it approaches the practicality of es/evasion in any meaningful context