Whats the Best Defence for Melee Characters?

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

imo, armour + evasion with ondars + endurance chargers is the best setup, preferably with a fair amount of life regen and if you can get some block on top then go for it.

Agree with above. Ondars is not neccesary but completly worth it if you are next to it. Armor can be substituted with coil (or MoM) as raics said. I don't usually go that route because armor is easier for gearing and for running the typical skill setups. But, those options are quite powerful if you can swing them. A typical melee char of mine is running 4-5k armor, 6-7 end charges, around 2k evasion, 4-6% regen, LL, 5.5-6k life, granite with %armor, and 2 cwdt setups without IC (low lvl enfeeble, end cry and high lvl molten shell). And of course a 2H weapon. The only things I avoid are map vaal slam and map dominus touch. Pretty much everything else is facetank and spank. I will switch out flasks and purities for bosses.

I think ~10k armour + 7 endurance charges (+ Soul of steel passive) is enough, really, no need to take the coil (it works bad in high phys mitigation scenarios, requires additional aura and makes you shocked much more often). Add Granite of Iron skin in tougher situations. I was playing this comfortably (with 5k life @lvl 85) in high maps even with Abyssus. ofc depends on other factors like life recovery and how fast you kill

on the right side of the tree, evasion/acro/ondars + block, or Iron reflexes + grace + lightning coil

edit: of course, perma IC is an option too. with all the endurance charges, duration passives and EC (or both) casted manually



one of my (theorycrafted:)) builds has both 7 charges and high evasion/Ondars + some block

another one has perma immortall call + acro + atziri boots

Ive played once armour + charges + arctic armour, worked pretty well too

and finally, having ~20k armour with aegis aurora, 70%+ block 50%+ spell block can be really amazing. (you can also add wrlods mark/enfeeble/temp chains curse on hit with tempest shield to the mix)

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First of all thank you for giving me advice!

Now i think i decided what iam gonna do to improve my survivability.
Step 1:I'll be playing both armor and evasion
Step 2:I'll buy Lightning Coil chest for this 30 or 40%
Step 3:I'll pick up Ondars guile Keystone
Step 4:I'll pick up Soul of Steel for the armor boost and more End Charges!

I think this tree will work better and ill have better defence with Armor//Evasion Gear!

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgAAvryC5JARiq9KyD8nbqoqTbXyFSCpbjWSbbQs6XgNbEbYvagHr6emjVivcmxngPajdU426DIJ73pl8AHn034UTe_j_EsDh7yfG62VZhiROlIOPBv6FHEl3_jr2Xy2LOoYwaO77YIHpBn3MnasTjKRznKpz34X4ayqVamtjSb4WfOXtNlhE0zAGp8-agGFUho4LdKbapBVi08nLygql3nkUVBH7w4UIASxTGCjiiP2TZKNfTB8fyvWin11_rrK0xm0vqdlTb02R35gQWNwfVusR2SjrlD-axPJZacaVWEhEuE=

I like that tree. You can get coil, its very strong, but you will need an absolute ton of resistance on your other gear to make up for that -60 lightning resist, you dont want to be running purity of lighting aura with it to cover resists because thats taking up an aura that could be Grace which is too gg an aura to drop. honestly a really strong 1800+ armour chest is a little different mitigation wise but roughly works out the same over all, its better in some situations and worse in others, but ultimately the armour chest will give you resist, rather than take it away. Depends how gg your other gear is.

With hybrid ar+ev, grace gives you a ton of evasion, over 2k, so I run Grace + Hatred on those sort of builds, then stack almost all armour on gear, I dont actually use hybrid armour + evasion gear. If you get hybrid gear youre gonna end up with like 3k armour and 12k+ evasion, where if you wear almost completely armour gear youll end up with maybe 7000 armour and 8000 evasion which is a lot more balanced and useful.

theres a list of all my builds in my sig, a lot of them are hybrid ar+ev melee chars so you can look at the gear I went for, the trees and the stats you end up with if its of any interest. the duelist for example, only evasion I have on gear is evasion gloves, but I have 10,000 evasion because I run grace, rest of my gear is pure armour, even the belt has nearly 400 armour and I end up with a little over 7k armour. That char doesnt have soul of steel etc tho, youd likely get more total armour from the same gear.

With late game gear and the 4 first scion passives the -60% to lightning resistance from Coil will be capped without purity of Lightning.Ill look for gear with high Ev/Armor stats and i already got Devotos devotion that will help.Also if not Coil a hybrid chest 5 or 6 linked with high rolls to %increased armor/eva +life and resistances (expensive option) and finally high armor boots and gauntlets to be able to easily roll 4 red sockets..Finally the high attack speed requires 2% mana leech maybe from rings.And finally a Doryanis Physical Belt or Meginords for damage or a leather belt with 100+ life and some resistances.

As i sum it up the cost of those changes should be about 6 exalts for regrets and 5linked Coil..
So i have to plan every step correctly..Thnx guys

I only use 2 different defences for all my chars:

1.) Lightning coil + taste of hate & high resists is a VERY strong defence not only for melees.
2.) Max. Block & max. spellblock & high resists is also very strong (maybe even stronger) but has many drawbacks because you need to sacrifice a lot of nodes and need expensive gear.

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666lol666 wrote:

I only use 2 different defences for all my chars:

1.) Lightning coil + taste of hate & high resists is a VERY strong defence not only for melees.
2.) Max. Block & max. spellblock & high resists is also very strong (maybe even stronger) but has much drawbacks because you need to sacrifice a lot of nodes and need expensive gear.

Max block basically limits you to only a few build options. Lightning Coil and Taste of Hate don't.

But there's also low-life aurastacking. This gives you a ton of elemental resistance and powerful auras, which makes you party-friendly.

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Natharias wrote:

Max block basically limits you to only a few build options. Lightning Coil and Taste of Hate don't.

Therefore I said: "but has many drawbacks". :)
Edit: changed much to many - seems to be better english to me

Edit2:

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But there's also low-life aurastacking. This gives you a ton of elemental resistance and powerful auras, which makes you party-friendly.

No! The op asked about defences for melee chars.

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666lol666 wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

Max block basically limits you to only a few build options. Lightning Coil and Taste of Hate don't.

Therefore I said: "but has many drawbacks". :)
Edit: changed much to many - seems to be better english to me

Edit2:

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But there's also low-life aurastacking. This gives you a ton of elemental resistance and powerful auras, which makes you party-friendly.

No! The op asked about defences for melee chars.

Having many drawbacks =/= limited build choice. Both are good but both are necessary.

But it is possible to do low-life aurastacking with melee. Low-life aurastacking does not say "spellcaster".

Crown of Eyes, unless I am mistaken, causes things like Pain Attunement to apply to attacks as well. So you can easily make a melee or bow aurastacker.

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Natharias wrote:

Crown of Eyes, unless I am mistaken, causes things like Pain Attunement to apply to attacks as well. So you can easily make a melee or bow aurastacker.

Not any more, it used to say 'modifiers to spell damage also apply to attacks', now it says only 'increases/reductions', multipliers don't work. That's why its price dropped to 4ex, it was 20 or something.

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raics wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

Crown of Eyes, unless I am mistaken, causes things like Pain Attunement to apply to attacks as well. So you can easily make a melee or bow aurastacker.

Not any more, it used to say 'modifiers to spell damage also apply to attacks', now it says only 'increases/reductions', multipliers don't work. That's why its price dropped to 4ex, it was 20 or something.

Well there goes that niche. You can still go crit melee. Not to mention Blood Rage + quality Blood Magic would still drastically help low-life aurastackers that go for attacks.