Should Armour, Evasion, or Energy Shield CHANGE in Path of Exile 2?

[@DrybearGamers]

What's your take? 00:00 Introduction 00:15 Armour, Evasion, Energy Shield 02:04 The Truth 03:14 Availability of Scaling 07:30 Armour Calculation 11:20 Active Blocking & Dodge Rolling

[@kevin9218]

Armor: maxing it doesn't stop you from getting 1 shot, great at reducing small chip damage, drink flask or get lots of leech to recover damage that gets through Evasion: maxing it doesn't stop you from getting 1 shot, great at reducing overall incoming damage from many hits, drink flask or get lots of leech to recover damage that gets through. Energy shield: maxing it completely absorbs even the hardest hitting attacks in the game and naturally recharges itself a couple seconds later without even burning a flask charge if you can avoid taking a hit for a moment. Yeah, defenses need a little balancing work.

[@Sorain1]

You missed Block, but it's akin to Evasion, especially on the one ascendency that can make it block everything. It's a solid defensive layer IMHO, but you can't have it alone for obvious reasons.

[@kevin9218]

@Sorain1 yeah I didn't count block because it's not a defense that's part of your armor type. Block is very good if you stack it high enough, same problem as evasion though.

[@Sicknificant1]

​​@@Sorain1true block is very good and you can feel unstoppable in maps/large groups of smaller enemies until you run into that one slam attack you couldn't see or didn't remember the boss move pattern bc the last time you saw it was 20 hours of playtime ago. This would be less of an issue without the one portal system or at least let us keep the boss on the map node even if we lose the map and have to start a new one on it. But it is infuriating getting one look at a boss and having to go "well maybe I'll find it again someday before I forget his moveset" Love that the slam attacks simultaneously break your armor and dip into the bonus damage from breaking your armor all in the same hit too so effectively armor stacking is akin to wearing an ES gear but with no ES.

[@209Richsta]

​​@@Sorain1Block and Evasion are not the same. Block is random, evasion is not random at all. Evasion has whats called an entropy system which is a guaranteed hit after u evade a certain amount of hits. It takes monster accuracy per hit and subtracts from ur evasion. So if a monster with 100 accuracy hits ur 1000 evasion, u will always get hit after evading 10 attacks.

[@ANDELE3025]

ES: Maxing it without getting life on all gear pieces (or using the one unique flask+ minimum 24% phys DR from other sources) to actually absorb unjuiced map bosses hardest hitting attacks leaves you with 0 damage unless something like infernalist in demon form and still requires grim feast overflow to actually do so.

[@funkwolf]

Im kind of disapointed of PoE 2, it feels like the meta is basically the same as PoE 1, which is having a build that just spams VFX that fill in the screen and explode everything. If you don't do a build that doesn't do that, you're screwed. I really thought the gam was going to actually be more like a souls-like where combat is more tactical but I feel like they underdelivered on that front

[@obscurside3652]

i feel you, the campaign was pretty good for the souls-like part, at least the first 3 acts, but the game become too easy way too quickly, and end-game is just copy-paste poe 1 league mechanics. I really hope they stick to what they said and make it a true ''souls-like'' ARPG. I've been playing poe since 2013, now that poe 2 is close, i don't want it to become poe 1-2. I want 2 different game, as they have been advertising for years.

[@k1ng617]

@@obscurside3652 100%. My group are late game mapping t15+ maps and we've all come to the same conclusion. Kill them before they can kill you. Armor, Life, Evade, and ES will only save you some of the time-never all of the time. So, just stack damage and aoe and clear stuff before they can get a hit off.

[@obscurside3652]

@@k1ng617 yeah, seems like monsters dmg is all over the place atm, clearly need some tuning. to quote mark also: ''rare monsters arent just bigger version of regular mob, they have interesting mechanics''. wasn't expecting ArchNem.

[@veritaseru]

If they decrease Entergy shield scaling 20% and remove archmage from the game, we'll be more than halfway there

[@Commandelicious]

The problem in end game currently is just this: - You are playing PoE2 and are a bit slow and try to do a nice combo - The monsters are playing PoE1 and are fast as fuck or literally spawn right in your face.

[@moffettRL2727]

End game survivability is awful.

[@flankman9385]

For you

[@jonpro9637]

​@flankman9385 for anyone that doesn't stack energy shield and evasion. Armor is practically worthless

[@EyeXombie]

@@flankman9385 unless you're a sweaty no lifer end game is trash.

[@okkomp]

Skill issue

[@BobbiHernandez59]

​@@okkomp overused npc ai response brain rot issue

[@Dyils]

The fact that your armor becomes useless when it gets "crushed" by a stronger enemy feels really bad. I get that it's more realistic, but since when is that a feature anyone cares about in arpgs? I'm basically immortal against packs of 20 monster beating on me cause their hits are small and most of them get absorbed + add on the passive block and my HP regen can sustain me through the damage. But one big monster with 1 big hit and I get one shot. In other words, armor feels OP against weak enemies and makes you virtually immortal even in big packs, but worthless against just 1 big enemy cause he can basically ignore your armor... It should be somewhere in the middle. Resistances don't become useless against stronger enemies. Neither does ES or Evasion. Why should armor?

[@LC-pp4bb]

Where in the tree do you get passive block from all directions?

[@Sicknificant1]

It makes no damn sense that the SAME hit that breaks your armor also gets the damage bonus of you having no armor. There is no counterplay... only "you're dead." At least give an ability to see it is broken AND then we can play like a bitch avoiding anything and everything

[@stevenhorrocks4919]

Its one of the ascendancy nodes i think.

[@waitingondeletion]

81 Infernalist. Was struggling with tier 13 maps with 40% armor and 2200 energy shield. Changed my chest and helm to pure energy shield and no armor, went up to 6k with my energy shield ascension passive. 12k with grim feast. Armor went from 40% to 10% and I don't feel any difference from physical attacks. Using the oaksworn shield, 39% base block and up to 61% total block after taking the proper passive nodes. Will take a few good jewels to get it to 75%. Sitting at 2k health, all resistances maxed including chaos, and 1100 mana. No evasion at all. Not only am I tankier, I am faster. You actually gain a movement speed penalty the more armor you have.

[@grantlawrence4600]

Lovely that the game explains you get a movespeed penalty per armor. /s

[@Commandelicious]

Block is the only viable defence in my opinion.

[@evilmarius]

I have a 90lvl infernalist doing 15-16 maps. I have around 15k ES and high block chance + reasonable armor and capped res. Still one shotted by random shit. I have also 85lvl poison conc ranger with high evasion and ES. Still one shotted by random shit in an area that my vision obstructed by game design. I wish it was a skill issue so i could work on it. But no, its a game design and also unbalanced defs.

[@markcole2040]

They need to change the formula Krips video explained that even high armor is only really giving 20% dr to strong attacks. If it was just a flat 70% across the board for all attacks like we assumed it was it would be fine

[@Gorlami90]

Armor is just physical damage reduction. You would still need resistances capped

[@Vadered99]

@@Gorlami90 No, it isn't, is the problem. The same amount of armor does less % reduction on larger hits. If I have 10k armor, I reduce a 10 damage hit to 1 damage - a 90% reduction. I reduce a 10k damage hit to only about 8300 - a 16% reduction. Armor works really well on small hits, and really bad on large hits, and there's not enough armor (or life) on the tree to make it useful against the late game physical damage numbers in PoE2.

[@GeraldHarnack-x4t]

​@@Gorlami90That is not the way it works.

[@GeraldHarnack-x4t]

​@Vadered99 Correct. Armor endgame is essentially useless and I wish Drybear would have explained this correctly in his video

[@obesechicken13]

70% all dmg would be insane

[@_fluffypuppy_]

Energy shield or no, late game is ether you make entire screen explode with Christmas lights diarrhea, or you die. They need to completely change their approach to endgame to retain the same slow, methodical and tactical feel as campaign, where you learn how to deal with enemies through trial and error, create skill combos and apply them in appropriate situations. Right now it seems everyone using the same meta build (with slight variations) for each class to explode everything on the screen before it gets to them. Right now POE 2 exists only in a campaign and regresses to POE 1 in endgame

[@sacredatavism]

There is no trial and error as long as late game takes away your ability to try something again.

[@blazedehart2748]

8:47 they could legit just cap armor at 75% DR just like every other resistance and it would work better than it does now.

[@SifSehwan]

And they probably should, but then the problem remains for evasion where in the endgame you just die from anything. The removal of life from the tree looks like a big mistake.

[@blazedehart2748]

@ there’s just too much suffix pressure and no way to take care of it with passives or crafting ie gambling.

[@EdwinSherwood]

@@SifSehwanyeah evasion sucks. When I do hit it’s always game over

[@GeraldHarnack-x4t]

​@EdwinSherwood You need to get the Acrobatics passive.

[@Tport712]

​@@SifSehwanDamn I've only been in the campaign and I felt like evasion worked well. So I guess energy shield really is the best thing to go for right now

[@justinwhite2725]

5:12 you also get an 8% life scalar from candlemass in cruel act 1 Attribute scalars also effectively work on life if you have Strength since a significant amount of uour life will come from Strength (particularly true for Gemling Legionnaire)

[@billythekeg]

I'm a very new player to poe so my opinion is probably horrible but I think adding a notable saying something like "You can no longer Block damage. Gain X% damage mitigation based on armour instead." Or "Block% chance is applied to guard instead. X% of damage taken is applied to Guard before life." would be healthy for the warrior class since getting more tools to mitigate damage before factoring in the armour would give it a massive boost (if I understand how the maths works). They need a molten shell notable is basically what I'm saying.

[@saltwatertaffybag]

Its not that energy shield is OP, its that evasion and armor are completly broken. This is the same issue that Helldivers 2 had. Everone was using the same loadout not because it was overpowered, but because it was the only thing even remotely viable.

[@lyotesharaia4829]

The problem is Effective Health. Anyone who ever played a Tank in an MMO understands this. It doesn't matter how much damage reduction you have if you lack the raw health to survive the reduced hit. If you take a hit for 10k and reduce it by 60%, You still need 4k health to survive it. Getting to 4k plain Health is not easy at this time. Right now, Energy Shield IS that raw health. We have so many more ways to scale Energy Shield than we do raw health. Moral of the story is: Do not focus your entire defensive strategy on a single defense. We have hybrid gear for a reason and a great many nodes that boost 2 defenses at the same time. Between Warrior and Witch start points are nodes for boosting Armor and Energy Shield. Warrior and Merc zone has Armor and Evasion boosting nodes. Energy Shield is a little easy to stack compared to health is the problem. If we had the same amount of Health as we can access in Energy Shield, no one would be complaining. I do see GGG fixing health to shield conversions so that if you take health reduction effects it will subsequently reduce the amount of ES you can convert.

[@B0redZer0]

I think i like Last Epochs implementation of armour the most. In Last Epoch, from what i remember armour is just a flat damage reduction on your character with diminishing returns. This makes it a reliable defensive lair, although it is technically worse than POE's version ahainst small hits. When it comes to defenses, in my opinion, reliability is king. Also as a sidenote, EVASION in POE is not really a diceroll, i forget the exact term, but if you have 50% evasion, every other hit will miss you, 20% every fifth attack will miss. This makes it different from DODGE, which is truly random. The same goes for block.

[@via_negativa6183]

Yeah the thing is any character investing into heavy armor exclusively doesn't even care about those small hits anyway

[@Johnnybsknees]

Blade catcher notable is good if you are stubborn and want to play armour. Double armour applies to critical hits, which are a lot of the dangerous physical hits that can kill you. Also gives +15 strength which is great.

[@ender_cz]

have really high evasion on my deadeye but still dying on some shit on ground, exploding mobs or one shot something i didnt notice... now will convert to energy shield..

[@MrMysteriousDm]

I think armor shouldnt be for only physical. I think a percentage of it should apply to all resistances as well and leave the others the same. Itll help alot. And make armor builds like mine better

[@SLVYER1]

I'm glad only you feel that way, because one of the basis for My reality is - when you heat up metal, it gets hot.

[@truskawka22]

Like in last epoch

[@justinwhite2725]

There's a passive that lets 25% apply to fire damage. I'd like to see ways to convert damage to physical so armour applies.

[@veritaseru]

No. Absolutely not. Instead give access to max resistances on the left side of the tree, like in POE1.

[@blazedehart2748]

12:29 what are the odds of getting max block, life, and armor on passive and gear while also capping res and getting move speed and magic find? 😂😢😭

[@justinwhite2725]

13:36 the closest equivalent is resolute defense. You lose evasion and your evasion is added to your armor. Every duellist I've ever built in poe 1 had this keystone, and i dont know why its not talked about much in poe 2.

[@cyruslupercal9493]

In PoE1 you could double dip and there were strong auras.

[@evotikto]

The current armor calculation is inherently poor design. While the mountain analogy for armor makes sense, why shouldn't that apply to evasion or energy shield? How would you dodge a mountain? And the weight of the mountain would surely crush the energy shield, no? If the single high instance of damage penalty doesn't apply to the other defensive mechanics, then it shouldn't apply to armor. The Warrior was supposed to be thematically tankier than the others, but unfortunately it's one of the most brittle classes the further into the game you get. There either needs to be more life nodes, or a revamp of how armor behaves. I heavily prefer a revamp.

[@MegaSlacker123]

Had a warrior , thought i know ill build a tank build to i can take all the hits to slowly grind down packs of mobs .. turns out you can’t do that I got frustrated because it was waaaaaay to expensive to respec (I also thunk respec should be free in games like this while leveling but that’s another topic all I it’s own ) and I did t want to start again I did start again but with a merc , I’ll see how it goes

[@justinwhite2725]

12:18 Im working on a fire mage titan and resounding shield has become my go to for active blocking. I ise resounding shield on between ember fusilade casts for boss fights just to block. Works great on fast bosses that come in for a lot of hits. That character is currently my best mass clear character befause theres a ton of 'area' effects on the templat part of the tree and titan gets the 50% bonus. Scattershot fireball is absolutely a screen clear. That character is currently armour/ES. Not sure if its worth dropping the armor and going full ES.

[@keldon_champion]

Energy shield is more or less fine evasion and armor not so much. Energy shield has plenty of nodes to both increase its amount as well as how quickly it regens. Armor and evasion without the life nodes on the passive tree you do not have the ability to gain enough of a buffer for them to work well. Armor reducing the damage is good but when your max life pool is so small it doesn't matter, the same issue exists with evasion if you have a 90% evade chance it doesn't matter if 2 10% chance hits kill you.

[@danielzanin8467]

Unfortunatelly that problem,and also de Rarity on gear problem,will only be fixed or looked into next year since they're taking a break for the holidays

[@bravexheart7]

My suggestion is to just play each class through campaign.. leave the end game stuff until they can fix armor after holidays

[@danielzanin8467]

@@bravexheart7 That's what I'm doing haha.My Gemling is doing great actually just melting anything at lvl 93 in T15++ ...and I'm lvling a Monk now

[@scottmilholland176]

Sadly I am feeling exactly what you are talking about. Trying to go life/armor and its not very tanky. Funny that I take all the tanky nodes and wear heavy armor and im squishier than a caster in all cloth armor with ES.

[@Rizso1]

a big issue is that armour atm is missing templar, champion and druid skills to allow for armour stacking. Stuff like moltenshell and divine sheild from poe1.

[@khalidal-zhrani1390]

I totally agree with you, im stacking armor and evasion on my merc, but i get 1 shotted from attacks even though i have 75% res, and that's in T5 maps, let alone the higher tiers. So basically The end game rn is similiar to nightmare mode in other games.

[@LandofMert76]

Is there a target number you should be shooting for in each act?

[@Aether_GM]

Devs have a lot of feedback to get thru 😅

[@MatijaVuk-z9n]

dunno, why ? I want to see they give to Accuracy stat something meaningful to look forward while increasing, we mostly have 100% hit chance easily, I'd love to see accuracy increase our chance to crit, like 20-30 accuracy points giving us 0.1% crit chance increase, or something like that. what do you think ?

[@Sorain1]

Increase chance to hit based on the excess accuracy you have over that required to get 100% hit chance. That'd give stacking it some potential value.

[@MatijaVuk-z9n]

@@Sorain1 that would work too, just anything to give some value to accuracy, there's even a node i passive tree that increases our accuracy based on our crit chance, oh come on, why not vice versa ? :D who needs more accuracy ?

[@arkcantoscreampsnpc7274]

- break armor for players is bad design No other defensive layer can be removed by a single white mob - armor nodes need % or flat life added to them armor is designed in Poe 1 to be used with health stacking yet they removed 90% of health stacking options but still copy pasted armor - evasion is prob fine is they scale up the numbers a bit - es is fine if everything else gets buffed if not then it needs a nerf to be more balanced in line with others

[@1robertgill]

@DrybearGamers SO how does monk acrobatics node play into this discussion?

[@caspenknight7464]

I kept getting one shot by fast slamming enemies on t9 maps, so i took iron reflexes to try and tank the hits. I felt like paper. I had to switch back. (I am a witch hunter)

[@yoji58]

My armor/evasion life stacking merc just hit maps (T2) and I'm feeling it already with 42% armor and 36% evasion. Low gear for sure, but Kripp and others saying by t10 we're getting squashed with "good" gear kinda makes me put this one on the bench and look at more hybrid eva/es builds for now. A month into a year of EA, but that's why we make alts.

[@brandonzanzig3200]

Evasion monk with ES nodes to give bonus Es based off chest Eva os OP. 2k armor/2k ES. Armor is also factored off Evasion on invoker monk. 75% armor, 83% to dodge, 75% all res....its tankier than any build ive tried.

[@chrisochs7112]

ES is just as OP at lower levels once you factor in gear. And gear like Ghostwrithe drops at level 11. I got that myself at level 11 on my first character a witch. The next time I used a health flask was in act 2. I think I died on like 2 bosses total. It's that good.

[@Johnnybsknees]

Decrease the impact of large hits against armor. And increase the life from strength. Maybe they should nerf some ES on the tree but it would be better to mostly bring armor and life up to ES capability I think.

[@TheCloudCreation]

Here's how I look at it: The "tanky" high armor build is the squishiest build in the game. If that statement is true, and it is, then the entire system is fundamentally flawed. GGG should rework it entirely from the ground up, you can't put a bandaid on a system that goes against fundamental RPG class principals.

[@fugoventro9403]

I needed this. I am absolutely getting shredded after I am stunned.

[@aeow8859]

I've been playing through as a warrior on abscond playthrough, even at level 25 I stacked a ton of armour and it didn't feel any more survivable than before, you get absolutely stacked. Also the act 2 titan boss is an absolute shit with melee.

[@manofharlech5775]

I didn't really have troubles with the titan boss as an Ice Strike Monk. I simply glued myself to him and most of his special attacks hit behind me... I don't say it was a piece of cake, certainly not. Nor am I saying I've got him on the first attempt. However, the final Act 2 boss, THAT was a pain in the ass for me. All those area denying skills? Yeah, cool, anyway how the heck am I supposed to kill him if he stays within areas where I can't go without getting killed in 2-3 seconds? At last, I managed to beat him, but only due to sheer luck...

[@cyruslupercal9493]

I just hammered the boss for 5 minutes without barely moving. I leveled a mercenary first, mostly evasion but some armour. The warrior full armour felt way more tanky. Bosses that one shot the mercenary did about 90-80% on the warrior and I could flask that.

For the titan, just hug his empty hand and spam perfect strike for a minute or two.

[@CassetteMelody]

@@manofharlech5775 Yeah I just beat him earlier with ice strike, fight lasted less than 2 minutes. First playthrough on merc took multiple tries and probably took 10 minutes to kill him. The DPS on merc is terrible when not going lighting and/or spamming grenades

[@aeow8859]

@cyruslupercal9493 all that keeps happening when I'm trying to hammer him is I keep bugging out and flying into the air or glitching off the pillar

[@voswouter87]

Armour builds have Giants Blood, allowing them to use a shield next to their 2h weapon.

[@KasKade7]

The honeymoon phase is almost over. People slowly putting off their rose-colored glasses. And realise the game is pretty much in a alpha state. Even the the fundamental mechanics are broken. Some builds doing 10xdmg than others and being unkillable. Armor and life not mattering at all. Energy shield just tanks everything. 40% ES skill nodes?, who the heck tested this? Economy is completely broken by people who farm 4-5 DO worth a hour. Can't buy anything because inflation. Active trade destroyed by gear flippers. The casual and poor players suffer the most and will leave soon.

[@adamwolsey8589]

who cares if other people farm more stuff than you? if you play less, you're going to progress at a slower rate, and you should be okay with, and understand that. I agree there are things that are unbalanced, the game is in early access, instead of leaving a whiny post here, make a post on their feedback area and suggest things that will improve the experience from your point of view.

[@ANDELE3025]

40% ES nodes with -10% life/mana arent the issue because ES is a no DR threshold defense and in raw on paper potential EHP its the weakest defensive layer, you could increase the top passive part of the tree to hit 1450% instead of 640~700 depending on start with the full 124 defense only optimal pathing and it would still be balanced. Much like how passive Block post omni-directional change and Evasion (if people sans the few that actually read learn the difference between "hit" and "attack" by hovering over the tooltip, something i cant believe kripp the refuses to read cardgame cards man did before other folks) are also in a very very strong place and even mix better together compared to on other options. Armor is just bricked because GGG didnt bother with it and grim feast is a very cheap no-prereq 2x multiplier while the equivalent for HP is a unique chest or the worst ascend for non-crit builds or 2nd~3rd worst for crit ones.

[@onlineperson1144]

It's a game for no lifers. They play more than 10 hours a day and ruin the economy. The economy sucks anyway, though, because you need a website to trade anything, and then casual players just get scammed trading anyway. Trading feels awful in POE 1 and 2.

[@MrTimmyGT]

True, now go back to D4

[@25xxfrostxx]

I'm a normie. I'm going to play what they put in front of me and when I get frustrated or bored by system bloat, I'll just quit and play something else. It also already feels like I am going to have to level a character and then shelf it while I level another just so I can vendor every drop through 6 acts just to get the money to spec my main into a workable build which feels terrible. The game has so many problems that are solutions to other problems that are either man made or don't exist.

[@rustymcmartin]

We need some uses for endurance charges and the like on melee classes.

[@RyanTheRedeemed]

Auction house up to a certain item level would help new people get started without rage quitting

[@bappo2693]

Entire balance is in the gutter and needs A LOT of change. It’s literally garbage now.

[@Huntanor]

Luckily the testing phase they told us all we are joining in still 11 months long.

[@Casted_Shadows]

We did pay 30 bucks to do the testing and balancing so feedback is required and that's why we talk about what's trash and what's not while we have the ability to change the games future.

[@blazedehart2748]

Armor calculation is busted. Needs to be a flat % damage reduction to be useful. Right now, it’s only useful if you’ve out scaled the monsters. Which means that it only works in easy content. ES and Evasion don’t have this issue.

[@justinwhite2725]

Evasion has this issue, it's just less obvious because we don't know the enemies Accuracy values.

[@DangLin-Wang-m8b]

My only request for this game is to have an expanded backback/inventory for my sorceress. 🤞

[@SneakyGenius]

Heeeeeeey Drybear its everyone.

[@DrybearGamers]

o/

[@veritaseru]

No

[@F-aber]

i would be totally fine with evasion if acrobatics reduced ev rating by 55% or 60% insead if 70%

[@ANDELE3025]

TLDR: Unskilled takes till 8:05 point before it digresses again. Actual issues are: 1) Grim feast is cheap early and extremely effective for non-bossing 2) Armor calc is so shit that a the beehive helm with -10% all rez or the conversion chest is better from mid tier maps on 3) Enemy mobs are still overtuned even for regular non-overflow ES, god forbid people like OP that reach endgame yet cant bloody hover over evasion/block tooltips.

[@michaelmackrill6917]

Why does GGG put basically no health on the passive tree in poe 2 . This is totally uncalled for.

[@kevin9218]

Evasion should offer a damage reduction for hits that connect, like a glancing blow type defense. If you stand there and take the hit in the face, it's going to do full damage, but if you are trying to evade the attack, but didn't completely dodge the hit, it's going to hit you in the shoulder, or the arm, and do less damage than taking it straight to the face. Something like 25% of your chance to evade a particular hit should reduce damage by that amount. So if you are currently capped at 80% chance to evade a particular hit, and you failed to evade it, the hit would do 20% less damage overall. This wouldn't massively decrease the total damage you're taking from these hits, but it could be enough to prevent you from getting 1 shot if you failed to evade a big hit. Armor value should give not only physical damage reduction, but also an increase to your max life. My reasoning for this is that energy shield and life never lose effectiveness based on how hard you are getting hit. You need more life to be able to survive a big hit if you're using armor, but not as much life as you could potentially get in energy shield. Armor is very effective at preventing damage from small hits, but trash at preventing damage from big hits. Energy shield is basically the opposite, taking a bunch of small hits continuously will break down your shield and prevent it from recharging, leading to your death. But if you are taking a single big hit, you can absorb that, and recharge your shield after a couple seconds.

[@DarkbblueIntoDepth]

Now that explains why my mercenary (armor & evasion) keeps getting one-shot by unique bosses. Still I want to know how people manage to get > 3k HP. I have only 1.5k.

[@meyatetana2973]

I think Armour and Evasion should change to be just as useful as Energy Shield but knowing how modern games go they'll just nerf energy shield so everyone suffers instead.

[@unknownmonkey8661]

3:18 the spreadsheet has completely 0 value and makes 0 sense. Node positioning matters. Particular node values matter. Total sum on the whole chart does not in any form or capacity

[@DrybearGamers]

Hey man I hope you have a happy holiday

[@Commandelicious]

@@DrybearGamers *snorts*

[@brunomattos]

Just stop scaling armour to reduce damage and make it a direct reduction. And make the same possible sum in passive points and items.

[@VicM88]

They should just not have uniques and passive nodes that screw up the defenses so drastically.

[@bravexheart7]

Armor needs to be stronger

[@NapoMMC]

Armour is useless, evasion and acrobatics is awesome, 3x EHP with high energy shield is great, block is pretty good. Armour is useless even at T2-T3. Works ok on small monsters but whenever you find some mobs that to the frontal AoE at range, and you get like 10 of them on a tight coridor, you can't get near to attack, and your armour does not block at all unless you have some ranged option to deal with them. Melee and armour needs a bit of love, ranged and minions are way too good by comparison.

[@chriscole8945]

I have acrobatics with 60% evasion and am still getting hit constantly and one shit by almost everything

[@YM-ex8hh]

avoid armor - having it is like not having it

[@smezbuilds9897]

Evasion is great but we need health scaling on the tree for pure evasion classes. Just a single cluster would fix it

[@carlgeder947]

I agree I’m deadeye ranger and have no access to efficient life nodes I’m lvl 73 and only have 1500 life even with max life on all my gear

[@Drabo7]

@@carlgeder947 im a lvl 74 ranger, i got 1950 life, go for at least 150 life on every item u buy from the trade site.

[@ANDELE3025]

@@carlgeder947 You dont have max life on all your gear then.

[@smezbuilds9897]

@@ANDELE3025 they might have low rolls, but I have at least 100 on all my health and only just breaking 2000 max hp. very hard to get high tier 200+ health on every item and 2k health is not enough of a buffer. I'm level 87 now running tier 15's

[@moneytreeevolutionists9286]

Im an archer teir 3 maps and get 1 shotted with pure evasion build

[@CrazyAnk-vc5tl]

Awesome video and tips thanks

[@warpath375__]

So what the hell do you do if you're a warrior if armour is useless?

[@stratuvarious8547]

Life, Armor and Evasion all just kinda suck right now, even earlier in the game. ES is the only one that's in a good place. GGG keeps nerfing skills and character builds for "being too strong", but have given us practically nothing in terms of defensive survivability, which just really sucks. If they're going to limit our offensive abilities they need to at least give us a chance to survive a few hits and last in the long game.

[@via_negativa6183]

Yes, armor makes no sense and that's not good. Armor being vest for chip damage makes any character utilising it wasting thier time cause you don't care about chip damage with a character that's typically armor /life based. I'm playing a warrior and by far my biggest defence mechanic is block.

[@_xuatu]

Is GG releasing this scheme as a final finished product? If so, it shouldn’t change as it would fundamentally change the game. If everything is up in the air as an “early release” have at her GG. Ya?

[@LC-pp4bb]

maybe if enemies didnt move at the speed of light it would be easier also, I have 30% movement speed and still cant out run normal enemies. its really really dumb.

[@EAZUP]

I wonder how much of this will change in 6 months?

[@ronwarren9315]

And the Monk can double their energy shield with Meditate. So with Meditate and Chaos Inoc, energy shield is way better for end game. Armour is the worst! I'm convinced that GGG just hates melee in POE 2.

[@evilmarius]

Just imagine: -You activate a strongbox in a map. -strongbox creates a black smoke which obstructs your vision. -strongbox also spawns ice shards that freeze you when you got cought. They are also obstructed by black smoke so you cant see them. -strongbox also spawns small mobs that leaves red puddles on the ground and those puddles are also obstructed by black smoke. -while dodging you one shotted by a random shit. -you have no idea why you died. -you lose your map. -you lose your loot. -you lose your xp. -you lose your time. I have capped my resistances, have %90 evasion and 1.2k ES. Armor is basically useless in later game. Evasion is luck. One shot hits you, you die. You stack ES and HP, you die anyway. Im done. Will wait until they fix their bad designs and improve survivability to a reasonable state. Im not wasting my time.

[@urgatorb8]

Fully invest in ES and run Grim Harvest and you’re set.

[@Coach-nb4sq]

Energy shield >>>Evasion>>Armor

[@thelordzenkai]

I always thought armor wasn't universal was kinda dumb.

[@colby8104]

You remind me of a grown up Eddie munster. I don't mean that in a negative way at all. Curious if you ever got that before?

[@owlmostdead9492]

In late game armour is functionally useless, literally. Currently I'm looking into somehow going with ES on my warrior and make it viable.

[@Zordiak17]

armor just simply doesnt work in this game and then you have your 3k life titan at lvl 90 in ssf vs a 20k es ssf summoner.... wtf

[@seanheisey8645]

Either stack ES or die.

[@glezard212]

Honestly there is no survivable in this game.

[@GeraldHarnack-x4t]

Armor is USELESS endgame and I wish you would have explained this up front to people who are just now starting maps and stacking armor thinking that they have "61%" damage reduction on top of their 75% resistances. That is NOT the case. Please, IMMEDIATELY stop using armor if you want to survive past Tier 3 maps.

[@truskawka22]

I didnt know that armour calc. Its stupid .

[@aw2031zap]

We went through all this nonsense in poe1. They are just stubborn. They know armor/evasion need to work a certain way. They know ES/MoM is too easy to abuse. I dunno why they always do this.

[@ANDELE3025]

Evasion (and Block) already works correctly tho, its just most people dont read the tooltip and/or dont cover their secondary defenses if they dont pick up Acrobatics.

[@matixxx1798]

I have 4 characters and can’t get past act 2 🙁. Not blaming the game I could very well just be terrible at the game 🤷‍♂️

[@Marc-andreCournoyer]

I have no issues at all in endgame

[@brunomattos]

Dear GGG, when you made Energy Shield better, cheaper, and more efficient than Armour, was it intentionally to ruin the fun for half the players, or just a miserable failure in game design?

[@Tport712]

Short answer is yes

[@DiscIaimer]

Feel like ES is by far the best, but not because of ES itself, but the tree actually has ES nodes that work as functional HP. Evasion nodes need a MASSIVE buff to be able to reach 85%+ (Gear allowing ofc) with acrobatics. Armor needs nodes that convert elemental to phys. ES is strong as is because on top of having proper nodes, you also have Mind over Matter which adds an additional 5k+ HP on highend gear with massive 1.2k+ regen/sec when your ES DOES run out.

[@ANDELE3025]

Post acrobatics you hit a 8.9k evasion threshold raw no mod no unique just side branching into the evasion options off base gear with a few T3 or better increased evasion rolls, so not really. Wind dancer is as good as grim feast (being a more multiplier it outright starts to offset and can on any attack bonus build fully cancel acrobatics penalty) outright even if you never upgrade it, only unlike GF isnt win more, but also does actually require basic gameplay performance to be active.

[@BossTripp1]

I don’t want to use a shield…

[@aaronhumphrey3514]

The simple answer is yes.

[@nesra8786]

They did not learn anything from poe1. A decade ago I just got bored and moved on. Here we are again, they are making the same game again, because they don't know anything else but how they did poe1. They won't stop, they can't stop.

[@ExcessumGaming]

Ppl forget that ES really sucks under constant dmg or any dots or burning ground effects. You cant regen your shield for several seconds if you take dmg. Anyone using ES with maps with burning ground can know this pain. Best way is to use hybrid of many defensive mechanics.

[@CarlSchwarber]

I don't know why i click on these videos, it's always endgame shit I can't even get through story. Fuck over level myself and follow guides just to get fucking rocked by mobs still

[@origanami]

I would love a "sacrifice all energy shield to gain X" keystone passive.

[@HalIOfFamer]

nerf ES. Ev is almost perfect as it is and Buff armor a lot. Maybe allow pure armor and armor+ something to have better life rolls or a flat bonus to life as well.

[@richardmenz3257]

Seems like if they nerf end game bosses damage and nerf energy shield it fix the issue. The less damage something does the more effective armour is.

[@stephenmclemore7614]

Armor sucks.

[@MakeGamingGreatAgainMGGA]

Why is your name dry bear? Wtffffff

[@rpscorp9457]

would wet bear be better? Come on..i know you want wet bear company....

[@winns35]

Its armor.