Let's talk about defense (ES, AR, EV)

My next build will be some kind of Shadow with Ghost Reaver and daggers / claws. I want to test how viable the leech really is with ES. If it goes well I might play it when OB comes. Not going to play the regular witch/marauder since I find them kinda boring and it is much cheaper to get insane dagger/claw and ES items without spell dmg/spell crit :).

The question is where a witch gets leech? As with many things it's not clear what counts as a leech ability. Claws for example give life on hit, but that doesn't sound like a leech to me as you get the life instantly once you meet the triggering conditional.

For this same reason I wouldn't count life on kill as a leech. Perhaps % physical damage gained as life is a leech? If so you can get a passive that provides it way over in the realm of the marauder. :)

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Altnaharra wrote:

I'm a huge fan of Iron Reflexes.

Even with the changes to the path trees Evasion being turned into Armor is just amazing. I prefer it to CI even for a Shadow build.

I feel as though its silly to have to spend a ridiculous amount of nodes to grant its full potential as you have to get a lot of nodes for it to work, and spend a lot of nodes just traveling to get them.
(whereas armor nodes are beefy 30% straight ups.)

Though regular Armor just doesn't have the same Classy feel to it like Evasion-Armor does.

I have a character that I right away tried to stack as much armor on as possible. I picked up Iron Reflexes and I also run determination and grace at the same time. That being said I don't think I was ever extremely impressed by armor. I still take a ton of damage as a melee class and have to jump around a lot. Of course I could use a little more health on the character but 1. a little more heatlh isn't going to make that much of a difference and 2. I have already picked up every health node in my immediate area on the skill tree. I also try to get as much heatlh as I can at the same time as stacking AR. Its just underwhelming to me. I will have to try something else in OB because right now I just want to play ranged classes.

My main point I think is that if your going to make big sacrifies to get as much armor as possible then you should benefit by not taking a lot of physical damage. I just don't see that right now. Maybe next time I will actually use evasion or maybe energy shield along with armor and see if it makes much of a difference.

Your basically required to have a crap load of life on hit/life leech to play melee at the end game. I'm not sure if I like that.

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JohnChance wrote:

The question is where a witch gets leech? As with many things it's not clear what counts as a leech ability. Claws for example give life on hit, but that doesn't sound like a leech to me as you get the life instantly once you meet the triggering conditional.

For this same reason I wouldn't count life on kill as a leech. Perhaps % physical damage gained as life is a leech? If so you can get a passive that provides it way over in the realm of the marauder. :)

some types claws have the life on hit implicit, others have the %physical damage leeched back as life.

CI users generally use


that 4% increases to 5 then 6 at later levels, hence it's a free "leech" skill

Thanks for the reply Invalesco. That blood rage gem looks good for my current build as well. Is it given out as a quest reward for shadow at any point?

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JohnChance wrote:

Thanks for the reply Invalesco. That blood rage gem looks good for my current build as well. Is it given out as a quest reward for shadow at any point?

you're welcome :) yup i believe it's a brutus quest reward at ruthless i think or cruel, or both.