Chaos damage cannot bypass Energy Shield must be available in Skill tree

my suggestion would be a passive node that does the following:

chaos damage does not bypass energy shield.
-75 chaos resistance, -25 max chaos resistance.

This way low life is feasable without gear but the gear is still desireable.

I would also put 3 nodes near (but not off) this that somewhat mitigate the penalty.

2 x +7 chaos res, 1 x + 8 chaos res, +1 max chaos res.

Placement wise this should be very close to CI to allow for reasonable respecing.