Life vs Energy Shield

Hi Guys,

A quick google search gave results that were 1-3 years old. What is the current thinking on life vs energy shield in 2020 heading into Heist. Which is better.

Thank you.

Neither is better, it depends on how you scale your defence layer.

Life will always be better for most builds purely because of the delay before energy shield starts to recharge, and potions. energy shield is easier to get though

Life is easy to understand and perfectly usable, ES is very powerful but requires a decent amount of game knowledge to minimise the drawbacks.

Tbh you can't really say one is better than the other as plenty of builds won't have opportunity to go ES, but if your really min-maxing on a build that can go either ES will be slightly better at very high investment. Pretty much even anywhere else

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Life is easy to understand and perfectly usable, ES is very powerful but requires a decent amount of game knowledge to minimise the drawbacks.

Tbh you can't really say one is better than the other as plenty of builds won't have opportunity to go ES, but if your really min-maxing on a build that can go either ES will be slightly better at very high investment. Pretty much even anywhere else

Pretty much this + ES is usually better to go along with spells and/or dot based attacks like Caustic Arrow/Toxic Rain. Using those on a life based build will make it a pain to play in the sustain department as you will have basically only your life flasks to heal you. There are some niche means to get life leech from spells but it's usually better to just go ES and maybe use ES leech. With Dot skills you pretty much can't leech at all so the selfsustaining properties of ES are also very comfortable here.

On the other hand, using a an attack build with high APS you will probably better off making it life based and use leech for sustain. Going ES here won't have much merrit usually.