Daresso's Defiance

I'd like to thank Fiveby5 for this awesome unique chest.

the mechanic with Endurance Charges is very cool, and overall stats are good too.

also, I bet the 3D art looks a lot better than it is on my "texture quality = mud" setting.

all Daresso' items are great.

People underestimate this shield. But it provides - when needed - pretty much max spell block. For peanuts. IT is VERY VERY effective in practice. OFC having maxed spell block all the time is better but.. lets call it 'baby max spell block' that is MUCH cheaper to get than the 'classic way' and only marginally less effective.

Also it sells for nothing so one can try and corrupt something amazing on it.

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sidtherat wrote:

all Daresso' items are great.

People underestimate this shield. But it provides - when needed - pretty much max spell block. For peanuts. IT is VERY VERY effective in practice. OFC having maxed spell block all the time is better but.. lets call it 'baby max spell block' that is MUCH cheaper to get than the 'classic way' and only marginally less effective.

Also it sells for nothing so one can try and corrupt something amazing on it.

dont you have to be on low life though to take advantage of spell block?
that condition is tricky.

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grepman wrote:

dont you have to be on low life though to take advantage of spell block?
that condition is tricky.

Not tricky, just expensive, as you'd want a shavs for it to work. you could do with a Solaris Lorica, but you'd lose a lot of ES without it.


I tend to combo Daresso's Defiance with Atziri's Step, and if you got a luckily corrupted +4% dodge in those boots, you'd have 50%/46% dodge and spelldodge. I combined it once with Endurance Charge with Melee Stun for permanent endurance charges. Does its job pretty well, but the damage dips down too hard.

you have to be on low life.. so you take spell damage from 100% to ~33% normally and then you get pretty much immune to it. i have a melee char using this + Atziri boots + phase acro and havent died to spells since equipping this shield

that max spell block kicks in where it is needed - when you take spell damage. it really works.

Courage is a good shield, but only crazy-rich/crazy-lucky people with a Shavronne's Wrappings can use it past a certain point.
if you use a Solaris Lorica and a Daresso's Courage for low life spell block - you are giving up on both chest and shield for ES, and those are typically the main sources of ES.

I prefer this beautiful thing

which has no such dependencies.
combined with

it seems to be too hard to understand - you DO NOT build for low life. you just let the health drain to LL status and then enjoy the max block (and not drain any more). only 1shots can kill you (that applies exactly the same with full max spell block - so it does not matter) that way and i got to 85 without one. ofc some 'paper generals' will cry 'unviable' but hey, what do THEY know..

this game mechanics are complex and brute-forcing stuff is not the only way.

well, I just tend to get nervous when my health pool drops too close for comfort :)
it's a clever way of playing for sure, sidtherat - but also one bound to give some HC League guys a heart attack.

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sidtherat wrote:

it seems to be too hard to understand - you DO NOT build for low life. you just let the health drain to LL status and then enjoy the max block (and not drain any more). only 1shots can kill you (that applies exactly the same with full max spell block - so it does not matter) that way and i got to 85 without one. ofc some 'paper generals' will cry 'unviable' but hey, what do THEY know..

this game mechanics are complex and brute-forcing stuff is not the only way.

while Ive never played like that and thus I wont criticize it outright...

Im very skeptical because this playstyle doesnt seem to hold up in theory

the main problem is that you are expected to be in low life state, when in reality you never really want to be in the state of low life and it seems counterproductive and counterintuitive to be in that state for a prolonged time

lets say an average HP pool is 4500
low life kicks in at ~1600. at which point you never want to be; even on softcore this is a point where flasks start to be spam popped. and on HC you have people logging out far before that.

1600 is nothing on high maps, and really nothing in mid-tier maps either. a simple attack or attack+degen will gimp you at low life. you are effectively playing with 1600 life at that point.

so really, the only way it even seems remotely viable is when you have amazingly good evasion or armour AND its exclusively a spell spam fast (ie, elemental spell bosses)
even then, with max block, you still have 1 in 4 chance of next spell destroying you.

sorry, seems like a total clusterfuck in a binary game like PoE, where you either play with full life or you're dead :) maybe Im missing something, if so let me know.