Coming back after a long absence

Hi all,

I stopped playing shortly after Sacrifice of the Vaal was released, and started again at the beginning of the Essence league. Really enjoying it - masters, Act IV, ascendancy, the works. My thanks to GGG for a truly great game. I have now spent just under USD100 on stash tabs, but I suspect I'm not alone!

Anyway, I wanted to ask a couple of defensive questions which bugged me before and are starting to bug me again now (I've just hit lvl60 with my duelist, Act IV Cruel):

1. How do you cover the necessary status protections with only five flasks? Ideally I want one each to cure burning, shocking, freezing/chill, poison and bleeding - but since they're all suffixes that leaves me no room for Of Iron Skin, Reflexes or the life leech one. That might be ok except for the other problem:

2. How do you avoid getting one-hit-killed? I understand how evasion and energy shield work, but according to the eHP calculator (https://fiddle.jshell.net/dsgqe8rr/embedded/result/) armour is (still) almost useless: I have about 1.9k life and about 2.5k armour. In a level 55 area I get one-hit-killed by anything doing 2k damage - my 2.5k armour achieves almost no reduction of that much damage. When I use my best Granite Flask of Iron Skin, that goes up to about 12k armour - which means I get one-hit-killed by anything doing 3k damage rather than 2k.

Is there any decent resource that sets out how much damage the big melee attackers do? I'm thinking Brutus, Vaal Oversoul, Kole etc. Are they doing 2k or 20k? It would really help to know how much armour I need to aim for to make them survivable. This isn't an academic question - my first death was a one-shot from the Cruel Vaal Oversoul.

On a more general reflection, it seems to me that even with max block and decent evasion eventually something is going to get through and one-shot me. Is that just something everybody lives with? How do you play melee chars in HC if that's the case? Is there any point using armour at all, if you don't have half a dozen endurance charges at all times?

Thanks in advance, hope everyone else is still enjoying it.

1) You don't need all the different status effects unless they particularly bug your build. Most builds I have played can shrug off ignite even in the worst map mod combos. So why should I give a crap if I am immune. Depending on your build, all you should ever have to concern yourself with is making sure a flask is bleed immunity, curse immunity if spellcasting as I find silence to be an easy rip mechanic if you aren't paying attention, and freeze immunity. Things like Atziri runs change the story a bit but that should come with experience and synergistic flask loadouts with your build.

2) Stack the hell out of your % life on passive tree if you are armour and life based. You should have over 1k life by the end of normal and at least 3.5k minimum by merciless act 3 in my experience. Your life is just disasteriously low. 160+% life on tree is the minimum I usually see where 190+ is the most common thing. Once you break 200% you are starting to go overboard since certain boss mechanics are meant to be manually dodged and stacking more life % than that is kind of pointless as those will still 1hit you. While stacking % make sure your + life on gear is plentiful too. +40 and up rolls can keep you healthy throughout cruel and such and once you hit end game you should have 60+ on everything but weapon and belt. Belts can get 100+ easy and cheap due to leather belts implicit and explicit life rolls and a strength roll.

3)The damage monsters do specifically is pretty irrelevant for you right now, you simply need more life.

4)Don't let the perceivable uselessness of armour scare you away from it. Decent armour stacking helps mitigate physical damage as you could have 10k+ life but if you have no damage mitigation, it will be gone with a snap of the fingers. Stacking armour and capping block chance at 75% or 78% with the anvil can make you pretty damn tanky. My girlfriend is doing a block duelist this league and only the telegraphed dodgethisshitmanually attacks can kill her build. Downside is that she hasn't worked her damage up enough to be very desirable but only the worst case scenarios can kill her.

Well the most important thing is that 1.9K life is not enough. MAYBE in cruel, sure, but ideally by the start of merciless you'll have 3kish, 4k by the end. AT LEAST. As for flasks to remove status ailments, the simple answer is... you won't ever really have a flask on your bar for each possible ailment. Prioritize bleed and freeze probably, with shock being close behind. Those three can get you killed the fastest. The "of iron skin" and "of reflexes"... meh. Getting leech from a regular flask like these isn't worth it. Not reliable enough. Armour has great effectiveness if you are taking a lot of little hits, but is basically worthless when you are facing one giant hit (like a Vaal Slam). Attacks like Vaal or Voll's big slams are telegraphed so you can GTFO. They are meant to be one shots, not things you just facetank and mitigate.

For armor based build, you really need endurance charges and fortify. Especially if you are playing melee or close range spellcasting.

Getting more evasion, so less things hit you is a good idea also.

New basalt flasks help mitigate damage. New stibnite flasks blind everything around you and give extra evasion.

Arctic Armor can help.

Blasphemy with either enfeeble or temporal chains.

Fortify is just good in general no matter what build you are. If you're able to make use of it, it'll help you be tanky. In most cases this means all melee builds, whether Life and Armour, or pure ES, Life and Evasion, Evasion Life/ES Hybrid, all sorts of builds. Casters can also benefit by using a Dagger or Staff, and using Vigilant Strike to have 100% hit chance with no accuracy.

For archers and Wanders, you'll need Champion's permanent Fortify, or a weapon swap to get the same results. Most archers and Wanders don't use Fortify.

But everyone else is able to! And everyone else gets substantial benefit.

Excellent, many thanks folks. I did think life was low, and looking at Duelist builds confirmed it - they almost all go left to Marauder life/armour nodes, whereas I've gone right into Ranger/Shadow for lots of extra damage.

I found/crafted a couple of very high EV rares this evening so EV has now gone from 2.7k (40%) to 7.7k (62%), while armour has gone down to 900 (21%), yet I'm doing much better. I'm not tanking so much any more and running away more to get better position, cast curses/warcries etc.

Life is now 2.2k after a bit of respec-ing so I will aim for 3k in Act I Merciless.

I'm going to use dodgethisshitmanually as a hashtag I think!

Thanks again everyone.

Building around block investment is a gloriously horrible idea when a unique flask can do it better for no investment except for a flask slot.

RNG defense (evasion,dodge,block) alone are worthless when planning for surviving 1 shots, hard mitigation (coil, taste of hate, enfeeble, fortify) and a big life or ES buffer is the key.

I can confirm that in standard/softcore especially, I don't care too much about any status-clear flasks save for Staunching and Heat. Getting frozen by a strongbox is a great way to lose ten percent experience, and of course Corrupting Blood is effectively an instagib if you don't have any Staunching flasks (or a lightning-fast trigger finger on the Portal gem).

Grounding is mostly useful for an occasional handful of fights where you know Shock will be prevalent (Avatar of Thunder, Pale Council), Dousing is...pretty much a nonissue. Most builds have enough healing to power through any ignite they survive sustaining - any hit strong enough to leave a life-threatening ignite is likely to instagib you in the first place. Warding is most useful for dealing with Izaro on the off chance he gets his mega-curse idols, but I haven't had a lot of need for it in general clearing save as a great way to know when my Stibnite evasion boost is done. Curing is pretty pointless in regular PvE; I hear it can be helpful in PvP but nobody cares about PvP so nyah.

A better idea on most flasks is to look for improved defensive benefits that mesh with your build. Also a Stibnite somewhere simply because they're a ridiculous mitigation source for any attack-based incoming damage that requires literally-zero investment outside the flask slot it takes up. My favoritest flask everz is



which I would not trade for all the tea in China on the Evasion character using it (note: I will totally trade it for a Vinktar's or Dying Sun or Witchfire Brew or something else nobody would ever trade for a blue Stibnite no matter how bitchin'...but not for the tea). This flask has saved Maiden's bacon more often than any Dousing flask ever could.

Anyways. Other than that, you seem to have all the other stuff well in hand. Welcome back man, and good luck.

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Nephalim wrote:

Building around block investment is a gloriously horrible idea when a unique flask can do it better for no investment except for a flask slot.

RNG defense (evasion,dodge,block) alone are worthless when planning for surviving 1 shots, hard mitigation (coil, taste of hate, enfeeble, fortify) and a big life or ES buffer is the key.

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Nephalim wrote:

Building around block investment is a gloriously horrible idea when a unique flask can do it better for no investment except for a flask slot.

RNG defense (evasion,dodge,block) alone are worthless when planning for surviving 1 shots, hard mitigation (coil, taste of hate, enfeeble, fortify) and a big life or ES buffer is the key.

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That is the goal yes, but often players will layer rng defenses and nothing else and waddle around with 4800 life in t14 maps.

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Nephalim wrote:

Building around block investment is a gloriously horrible idea when a unique flask can do it better for no investment except for a flask slot.

Except that I don't have that flask, whereas I do have a legacy BoR and a legacy Anvil waiting in Standard, so it seemed an interesting idea to me.

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RNG defense (evasion,dodge,block) alone are worthless when planning for surviving 1 shots, hard mitigation (coil, taste of hate, enfeeble, fortify) and a big life or ES buffer is the key.

Well that was the topic of my OP really - the consensus seems to be that we're not supposed to tank the big hitters, but I'm interested in any build that can. Can you set out what's sufficient hard mitigation and life for Merciless Brutus/Oversoul/Kole/Dominus? Those are the four big one-hit threats I think (and obviously map and Vaal bosses but I don't really know them).