Hybrid builds: Do they have merit?

Honestly with high ES and decent HP a Hybrid ES/Life build will never be oneshot. And with regeneration and flasks and ghost reaver on for the ES he has the benefits of quick recovery too, however there is one big question a player has to ask himself:

Since it isn't hard to get 8k ES, isn't it better to get 8k ES with Chaos Immunity and not having to invest anything into HP instead of having maybe 7k ES and 4k HP? And you can easily get above 8k ES, 8k is just what even a mediocre player can get.

For builds that have a hard time using leech like Summoners Hybrid always was a decent option exspecially considering that they are often locked in subpar items like Bones and no shield.

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Emphasy wrote:

Honestly with high ES and decent HP a Hybrid ES/Life build will never be oneshot. And with regeneration and flasks and ghost reaver on for the ES he has the benefits of quick recovery too, however there is one big question a player has to ask himself:

Since it isn't hard to get 8k ES, isn't it better to get 8k ES with Chaos Immunity and not having to invest anything into HP instead of having maybe 7k ES and 4k HP? And you can easily get above 8k ES, 8k is just what even a mediocre player can get.

For builds that have a hard time using leech like Summoners Hybrid always was a decent option exspecially considering that they are often locked in subpar items like Bones and no shield.

Good points. I also think that summoners and totem masters are better off going hybrid.

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kompaniet wrote:

Good points. I also think that summoners and totem masters are better off going hybrid.

Nah, CI all the way.

People most of time just try to hard to make hybrid build.
Look at this https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1405216/page/1
You make standard life crit claw character on right side of the tree. You take all shield defense nodes. You buy regular life items + ES shield and take Ghost Reaver. Now you got 5.5k life, 3k ES and hight block basicaly withaut any aditional investment.

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pijanapanda wrote:

People most of time just try to hard to make hybrid build.
Look at this https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1405216/page/1
You make standard life crit claw character on right side of the tree. You take all shield defense nodes. You buy regular life items + ES shield and take Ghost Reaver. Now you got 5.5k life, 3k ES and hight block basicaly withaut any aditional investment.

The thing is you are still better of going CI, most CI chars start as hybrid and reskill into full CI later. You simply need a lot less investment into ES than into Life to get a high pool. I have a total of 23 nodes invested into ES and still have 8k+ ES. Try investing just 23 points into Life nodes. Another issue Hybrids run into is that life rolls on gear conflict with ES rolls.

As soon as you can reliably regenerate or leech you are better of going CI. Hybrid is only good if you are locked into specific uniques which makes it hard to get high base ES, while also limiting your HP pool. In this case going hybrid gives you a big enough pool so you can survive with a lot less, although Poison, Otherworldly or just enemies dealing chaos damage might be risky.

And of course many right side Life builds are better of as hybrids mostly because getting Life sucks, but they are even better off just going CI. The only option were Hybrid is worth a shot is the one I mentioned above characters that cannot leech and are locked into specific items making it hard to go full CI. But as a summoner if you sacrifice your shield to minions or use a staff or 2h sword you might not get those big ES numbers, exspecially if you have other uniques like Bones or Vis, which have poor ES values as well. In this case Hybrid is essentially your only option, but then again most summoners nowadays just ignore those things just get a good shield and go with it or just use a very good ES chest and helmet which provides a lot, they also usually have a discipline that provides a lot more ES, than what your average Pizza Sticks or Essence Drain character does.

CI - when using leech - is strictly better. It is GGG mistake that they allow CI + instant leech. It is f.. dumb and makes ALL other choices 100% worse

Ci without leech is.. comparable. there are merits of a high buffer, the occultist is ofc crazy good but lack of panic flasks can be troublesome. vaal discipline is cool etc but it has its flaws and as it can be interrupted and requires you to not be frozen it has its inherent risk

hybrid builds have the buffer for oneshots and life flasks. best of two worlds with a drawback (that does not really matter that much in practice) of split buffer

id advise people that repeat the same 'arguments' without really giving it a try - give it a try. make a hybrid, try to make it good and then evaluate your experience.

note: CI + instant leech is a no brainer, everyone knows that. GGG messed it up and there is no value in proving that hybrid < CI.

Back from Christmas+New Year's festivities! Happy New year everybody!

I enjoyed reading all of the posts so far, so I'll add a bit of a recap.

Life+MoM hybrid: So far the only poster in this thread has utilized it in a build as a final layer of defense. Building 7.2k life and utilizing a single aura with essence worm allows full mana utilization for MoM defense.

But, it's a very situational type of build. Some builds are required to utilize multiple auras, and a ring slot can become very expensive in terms of losing resists. It is also notable that this is pretty much a full life build with MoM added on as an additional layer.

There's no intuitive "Build life+mana in equal measure" style of approach that's suitable for an effective MoM build.

So, that particular poster has a very good build, but the circumstances surrounding it are not attainable for every build.

Life+ES Hybrid: Seems very workable with Trickster and Occultist Ascendancies. Both lend themselves to either overcoming Multiple Attribute Dependency or Less Recovery Options. Both are in close proximity to Ghost Reaver and can use a life flask for life recovery.

However, it's been argued that one could simply swap from this hybrid into straight CI and gain a streamlined defense and single health pool. It's a valid argument. The only discernable problem would be prohibitive cost in high ES gear, in which case Life+ES gear could come at a discount, but that is not the scope of this discussion.

It seems, outside of maybe Inquisitor's Pious Path, other Ascendancies would run into all the problems listed in the OP.

Eldritch Battery: Not much discussion about it here, but so far the consensus is it's all bad. Seems to be a relic of an older time when ES was harder to stack to ludicrous levels.

eb was good when it gave you actual mana and AA gave you another reason to care about actual mana, the whole es over mana globe stuff is just horrible imo, that node is dead to me.

I have been testing around with eb on occultist build (most recent build), did few mistakes here and there, biggest of them was insufficient life pool (3.6k at 78lvl), but other than that getting 5k-5.5k life and ~2-2.5k eb+es with mom brings hp to 7k-8k which is just ok. The best thing about this is when u reserve all of the mana- wicked ward forces inevitable es recharge when es depletes. That takes care off es recovery, then u can go with vaal pact life leech for life recovery.

It is an ok build in hybrid class. Thou there are downsides as well-
-es level is inconsistent, can't rely on es as defense (hard to control it);
-Build variation is quite narrow: u have to be an occultist with 2 fixed keystones and sufficient life amount.

In any case it was fun to test smth new:)
I hope ggg will add something to it to make it more attractive to broader spectrum of builds.

I finally found good way to sustain my hybrid EB templar.

Keystones: MoM, Eldritch Battery, Zealoth Oath

Life recovery: Life leech + flasks
ES recovery: Life regen + Enduring Cry

I can reserve 100% of my mana and need only a little invest into Energy shield (I have enough ES while wearing Brass Dome and 2 handed melee weapon).

Works like a charm so far (tier 12 alched maps). Will see how far will I go with it.