Armour mastery bug?

PoB probably calculates your effective hit pool and max hit on the assumption that you're at full unreserved life/mana/es at the start.

There are....quite a lot of conditionals that the game can run on, and most in the Configuration screen are hidden if not applicable to make the stuff that does matter easier to find. If you take this mastery in PoB, there is an "Are you always on Low Energy Shield" toggle added to the configuration that treats you as having 50% ES reserved.

You don't see a change in the armor value because the actual amount of armor your character has is never changed by this.

What changes is how armor is calculated when you take damage. If you are not on low ES when your defenses are factored in, 120% of your current armor value is used. If you are on low ES, armor is calculated normally.

There's a very simple way to see its effect in PoB though. Take note of your Phys Max Hit in the sidebar. Unallocate the mastery then check Phys Max Hit again. It goes down without the mastery. Armor value remains unchanged either way because it's not supposed to change.

Edit: And yes, as Jadian mentioned, you can use the always on low ES toggle to see how that factors in and affects your hit pool as well.

To add to what others have said, there is good reason that your armour doesn't simply go up 20% when you have this and are not on low ES. If you have say, Divine Shield, that is not affected by this mastery whether you do or don't have low ES. Simply put, you don't HAVE 20% more armour, the game just treats it as if you do when you take damage from an enemy hit and are not on low ES.

These are without and with the mastery.



But when i click the always on low energy shield button, i got this, which does changes with the treenote. Which it shouldnt. And why is there now a 3rd max hit number? And the hit pool is different. Seems as if the always low ES at zero is calculated different than my zero ES.
That makes little sense to me.



So i guess that means in my case it works because the games calcs it as no ES.

Always low ES in PoB is different from having 0/xxxx ES. When you select the always low ES option, all PoB does is hack off 50% of your total ES to bring you to low. It doesn't set you at 0. That means you still have 50% of your ES there.

Everything in all three of your screenshots looks as it should.

But i HAVE zero ES due to RF.
So the always low on ES button should change nothing because my ES amount does not change.

And the tree note shoudnt work either while the always low on ES button is activated because it states while not on low ES.
This button should cancel out the tree note.


edit:
another weird aspect is, that PoB as the game itself buffs my RF as if the ES on my gloves and helmet where there.
I had crafted 99% increased armour gloves which lost me <4% dps because of the mising ES which now is at zero all the time. So the game says: ES is there.

At the same time, the game calculates no ES because if it was low, i shouldnt get the defend with 120% Armour bonus.