Defense query and build advice

Hi,

So, I know this has been discussed a lot, and I've read a number of threads, but still trying to get a feel for it. Trying to decide between armor/ES blend or full ES. Playing Templar Hierophant MoM, and thinking of going full 100% mana cost reduction, with ZO for ES and life leech for HP, so have a very high potential EHP and pretty solid sustain. Currently at the end of Cruel, have been mixing ES and armor pretty effectively, but the armor being split seems to result in me having pretty minimal damage reduction, and the need to split defense passives between life, armor, ES and mana feels like I'm going to get some severe diminishing returns.

First off, I'm wondering if this whole build idea is even viable. I was initially aiming to go RF, but decided against it as I realized that ES RF builds are really hard to pull off if even possible. The need to get ZO, GR, and high life regen, sprawled out all over the tree, and the fact that your always going to have -some- lifepool adding to your RF degen really makes it a hard build to manage. It might still be doable, but I don't feel it's a good build for a beginner to be trying, so instead I'm just trying to be tanky and still manage some sort of damage output.

At this point idk if I should keep going with some tweaks, seriously respec, or just start over.

This is my tree at current, with 74 pts spent. Realize it's pretty all-over-the-place, and know I am going to have to retool things some. Sitting on 16 refund points, and will get a few more as I go through Merc(not to mention having a number of orbs of regret). Kinda just looking for ideas atm, along with wondering about the armor question, whether it's worth bothering with armor at all in a heavy ES build. Oh, and Btw, currently running Firestorm and Flame Surge as my pack/single target setup. And I play on a laptop computer with some serious intermittent lag spikes, hence my interest in tanking. And I mainly play solo for similar reasons.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAUCAASzBg4Jqgn2C2EMXxEtGS4cpxzcJy8n7SkuKU8snDLROtg8BTwtQYdDyEVHRZ1PBFNSU6VXDVugXsBmVGebaGVo8nwOfEt8g4Kbg1-DzIUyhXuIWouMjHaPGpBVlnSaO5rgnjyf36IAp1Wtja4-r2y2hrc-wGbAmsau1HzUj9i92WHZ_Ovu7DjvfPGs85v53fno_go=

hei there,

splitting points between energy shield, life, mom (mana), armor and some damage is indeed difficult.

First of MoM and energy shield doesn't work very well together, thou there is a possibility to use "corrupted energy" jewel to make work es/life/mana at a same time, meaning that all regenerations, leechs and pots adds up to a single recovery. But it's probably not worth going for.
The easier solution would be just drop MoM and use auras instead, it will sure pay off. Using only enfeeble aura already pays of dropped MoM (in most cases if you are hybrid), since enfeeble also increases tankiness of your ES pool as well, furthermore you can use second curse aura by picking whisper of doom node and then using temporal chains curse aura, and still you will have 30% mana left for any further use.

Or if going life/MoM without much ES, best way to stack mana is using cobalt grand spectrum jewels with armor gear. Using The Aylardex amulet (http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/The_Aylardex) with corrupted mod on helm you might get 50% mom effectiveness. this means that your mana pool have to be equal to life pool, thus having 5k life, will result in 5k mana requirement which with success will result in 10k hitpoints with a freedom to use armor. Also i will point out that acrobatics is also very solid option if it won't cost a lot of skill points.

have written these points there aren't much of the hierophant influence in the build, dunno, there are just so much better builds not using all these at the same time ES/life/MoM/armor, just focusing on less- life/MoM/armor_or_evasion+acros or ES/auras or just life/auras/armor_or_evasion, using less there is just more freedom to max defenses and to get satisfying damage output.

But of course nothing restricts for experimenting, after all only doing experiments will gain knowledge in these areas.

Hmm. Interesting.

Tbh, a part of all this was wanting to get -some- sort of use out of Hierophant, since the idea of him felt really interesting. The power/endurance charge node feels really solid, and the mana/ES nodes are fascinating, and when I realized I could pull off 100% mana cost reduction decently easily(50% from Hierophant, 47% nearby in tree, + one ring) it seemed a great fit with MoM in general. And when I started reading that basically no one liked him I found myself wanting to try even more. But I'm sort of coming to an understanding of why no one likes him. The abilities are just so contradictory. Bonus mana and lots of mana regen plus mana cost reduction. ES buff plus mini MoM. I was trying to figure some way for these to work together somehow, but idk. I feel like any build that uses those 2 nodes is going to have to settle for mostly ignoring the benefits of one or more sub-effects.

And of course the free bonus ES sort of undermines the idea of trying to run RF, which I was initially aiming for due to not having easy access to much damage boost, since hierophant has basically none. Though I gave up on that a while back.