Armour vs Life. The choice

how much life do you have with option 1?

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xhul wrote:

About physical damage, here are my 2 cents, for late game :
> high pool (try 6.5K+)
> Leap Slam + Faster Attacks + Fortify (if you don't play a Champion)
> Enduring cry & Warlord's Mark for endurance charges
> high level Arctic Armour (if you don't use a movement skill for damaging)
> manual Immortal Call + Faster Casting for desperate situations
To give you an idea, with Fortify, 6 endurance charges, and a lvl 19+ AA , you get a stable 39% physical resistance while moving, and 46% while stationary.
By stable, i mean something that works in all situations, high boss fights included.
Armour is just a bonus against trashies, nothing more, so don't rely too much on that.

EDIT :
Soul of Steel, yes, but 4 points is expensive (using those 4 points to take life nodes instead will also protect you from elemental & chaos).

Thanks, you saved me a post. This guy gets it. :)

This is pretty much exactly how I played my Juggernaut in the Flashback league we just had. It worked really well.
Also, while on Juggernaut - do not overlook the movement speed node that prevents you from being slowed below base speed. That one is absolutely fantastic! Makes general mapping so much easier, and safer. Especially with the Beyond mobs around that we had in the league. I skipped the double body armour nodes and picked the movement speed ones instead. Totally worth it.

I have a different take on whats strong defense to most people, and often a different take on what I fear in high maps. Maybe these things are linked and its about playstyle, what were manually dodging and what we try to facetank, the manner in which we like to facetank, I dunno. Im at odds with almost everyone when it comes to making a life based non crit melee though so Ill post how I do it because its not been covered, and will probably never be covered if I dont post it.




https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAEBAABeAecFLQbGCC4Jlg2NEuETTBPJFCAUTRa7F-EYkRmOGj4aVRv6I9Mj9iXfJvgpLi5TMHc26DkOPfxDMUd-Sn1M_02STipOMlBHU7tXDVhjWf5br18_YSFkUmVNZadoZW8ndO12rHrvfLh82X11ggeE2YTvh2qHdorwjM-NfZAKkGyRzpXMlmyXeZpqns2i6qOKpBmnMKknqZStja5Qtiy77byfvTa-p7_VwAHBo8RYxILG2MqQyx7PftIh0jjTb9N-2XzaweJh45_kUelG6hjtP-2D7g7vDu968azyQfOb9kj3Mve5-Ov5Y_xL_MX-a_66?accountName=Snorkle_uk&characterName=Fat_Steve

Ive tried melee a lot of ways. Excessive armour, life, evasion, energy shield, damage, block, Ive tried stacking them all individually, stacking combinations... This is what I felt was best for how I play, this is what my 2H marauder uses atm. I count soul of steel as an endurance charge...

Its 205% life + 3 jewels slots, 337% armour, 155% evasion, 6.7% life regen (8.1% with max endu), 8 endurance charges, 64% movespeed.

I have a little over 24k armour and 13k evasion. I think the evasion is way more important than anything you could realistically do to that armour total for the same points spent. How it feels playing different builds, pulling guestimates from my nose is that an extra 13k armour would give me around 7% less physical damage taken on a decent sized hit and the combo of the evasion + cwdt enfeeble gives me more like 65% less attack damage taken. Thats how it feels to me playing them, and with -max + extra as elemental maps being a thing I care less about 'physical' damage and more about 'attack' damage when Im already sitting at 24k armour + 8 endurance charges.

Honestly when I build melee like this I look at the idea of stacking 30k armour as my main thing or stacking 8k life as my main thing and my thoughts are: Im going to die if this is all Im doing, a lot, compared to having a good amount of evasion, armour and life.

I want to do a heges era + empires grasp crit staff jugger at some point, and its going to be a 30k armour + 200% life type build. I fully expect that to feel weak and die to stupid stuff that I wouldnt be dying to if I didnt have to go to the templar and invest so much in crit at the expense of evasion. But that could be a play style thing as much as anything, it doesnt mean thats going to be the case for everyone.


So my opinion on 'Armour or Life?' is yes, do both of those, and do evasion, along with doing life regen, endurance charges, fortify, enfeeble and movement speed.

@Snorkle_uk
You idea of building layered defenses is good, but most of the time it is also very hard to do.
Not going to templar area means no crit and no aoe nodes.

I am very curious how would you itemize this build.
I am asking this because if I would go full Armor I would farm/buy Celestiar Justicar Div Card and spam chaos it until 2000+ Armor. It's all good and dandy but them I wouldn't any source of evasion to scale. Most probably the helm is Devoto's Devotion for non-crit. The helm slot is the second best source for defenses after the chest. Also without Determination you won't get over 20k armor.

I assume you would want a 2k armor chest to take advantage of the Unbreakable and at least 1000+ base evasion from your other pieces, right?

Also I tried looking up your character but they're all naked. So no info.


My line of thought:
I know layered defenses are best, but I just thought maybe for once I could not care about any physical map bosses like in the T7 map(Tunneltrap anyone?). I still have a bunch of them on Perandus. On my evasion character I couldn't do any/most of the T7 maps, that really broke my progression.
Another thing, crit build are usually full evasion + some dodge and nothing else; that's really really bad against physical damage bosses. The jungle Valley boss is phys spell, which is even worst for an evasion class.

I was thinking that if I wouldn't care about phys damage, maybe I could focus more on elemental and manually dodge it. Except Atziri and Tort. Chamber I didn't find elemental damage to be that bad. Yet.

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Deadpeng wrote:

Snorkle you sound like you have got really expensive gears over there. You have over 20K armor and over 10k evasion at the same time?

Players without good gears do really have to choose between the type of defense they really want.

Exactly my point. I don't see how you can get that. Especially in a challenge league.
My evasion character (evasion only) has like 6k evasion :)

Here is an example of what you can achieve with :
no evasion
no block
no dodge
2K armor
6 charges
lvl20 AA
Fortify on Leap Slam
7K life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVa3SnhbK1E

Meh. I would go for life.
Armor, in my opinion, isn't very good for all the investment it takes. Especially when you can use lightning coil, taste of hate, basalt and stibnite flasks. Not to mention AA and fortify and endu charges. Who the fuck even needs armor, when all these other options require so much less opportunity cost? Pretty stupid imo to stack 50k armor and instantly die to dominus' lightning stream lol.
Also, I'm confused, are you going for 2h axe, or staff?
With a 2h axe tree you can get well over 260% life(counting jewels). With 2h staff you should be aiming for about 220%.

I build my defenses a bit differently from most people in this side of the tree. Basically I've stacked 9k life on the character, I use the retch with legacy VoV and ToH. This means with my flasks up, I'm basically immortal. Third flask is either ruby, basalt, or stibnite. It plays more like an ES build atm lol.

As for snorkle, he gets a lot of armor from gear, and uses grace for evasion. Which is still better than stacking armor to retarded amounts.

Youre gonna have to show me the tree and gear for this build ether, you know me and melee, i want to try it out. I got a retch coming back from perandus in a few days :D

"

nebunelux wrote:

@Snorkle_uk
You idea of building layered defenses is good, but most of the time it is also very hard to do.
Not going to templar area means no crit and no aoe nodes.

I am very curious how would you itemize this build.
I am asking this because if I would go full Armor I would farm/buy Celestiar Justicar Div Card and spam chaos it until 2000+ Armor. It's all good and dandy but them I wouldn't any source of evasion to scale. Most probably the helm is Devoto's Devotion for non-crit. The helm slot is the second best source for defenses after the chest. Also without Determination you won't get over 20k armor.

I assume you would want a 2k armor chest to take advantage of the Unbreakable and at least 1000+ base evasion from your other pieces, right?

Also I tried looking up your character but they're all naked. So no info.


My line of thought:
I know layered defenses are best, but I just thought maybe for once I could not care about any physical map bosses like in the T7 map(Tunneltrap anyone?). I still have a bunch of them on Perandus. On my evasion character I couldn't do any/most of the T7 maps, that really broke my progression.
Another thing, crit build are usually full evasion + some dodge and nothing else; that's really really bad against physical damage bosses. The jungle Valley boss is phys spell, which is even worst for an evasion class.

I was thinking that if I wouldn't care about phys damage, maybe I could focus more on elemental and manually dodge it. Except Atziri and Tort. Chamber I didn't find elemental damage to be that bad. Yet.

honestly Im sort of hesitant to show you the gear form that character because youll think ok well I need a fair bit of money to do it, and you rly dont tbh. I just geared up that char, Ive actually got a little under 24/13 since the gloves/boots/amulet shift around I did recently it seems. Ill list the prices on perandus for items with an amount of defense in the ballpark of mine, enough to get you 22k armour + 11k evasion, where its a rare item I will also be looking for items with high life only.

Hat: Devotos = 1 chaos
Chest: Rare, 1900 armour + 90 life = 1 chaos
Boots: rare, 260 armour + 80 life (&ms) = 1 chaos
Gloves: rare, 400 evasion + 80 life = 1 chaos
Belt: rare rustic, 350 armour + 80 life = 1 chaos

So thats it, 5 chaos budget and you have somewhere in the ballpark of 22k armour and 11k evasion with the build I linked. You then need weapon + rings/amulet, thats whats expensive with a physical melee build, not getting defenses. Defenses is just about what sort of tree you make and if you take the time to look for gear with proper prefixes. You run Grace, no Determination.


T7 maps on that char, presuming you had those listed items + a good 2h axe and jewellery, i think it would eat them up. Ive actually not tried orchard with it, thats a T8 I think, I feel like I wouldnt have an issue with him though. This char has done T15 Daresso with high quant harsh rolls back before he even had as much defense as he has now, and by done I mean deathless, not "i died 3 times but I eventually did it" sort of cheese. I wouldnt stick him into a core, I wouldnt stick anything into a core in all honesty, not if I was trying to gain xp with it at any rate. T7s like jungle valley etc, Id be lying if I said I could remember doing that map on this particular char but Im think it would be fairly trivial. Physical damage bosses are generally trivial with these sort of defenses.

If you have particular ones list them and Ill record that build against them if you want, that char hit lvl89 in open beta 3 years ago, orchard hasnt even been a relevant map for him since it was added to the game so a lot of them I havent even played with him so I couldnt give you an honest assessment, Id have to go try it out.