Armor is bad, and it should feel bad.

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Ca1bre wrote:

Determination is a massive armor boost. Unfortunately you can't use it when you're blood magic, for the most part.

Determination is just 50% increased (base) armor. So assuming you've got 600 armor on every slot, it would amount to around 1500 armor. Which again, against small hits, is awesome. Against big hits, it is negligible. The 8k base armor calculation in my initial post assumes you are building armor HARD, and still doesn't do much.

The important thing to note, is that the % reduction you see on your character sheet means nothing and is in fact misleading. You need to spreadsheet it out to really see how effective armor is(n't).

Hi All thought I would post an opinion ( just an opinion)

I really haven't seen much talk on evolving your play styles as you progress? In my opinion face tanking ( which is what most are talking about doing) should not be effective on higher difficulties. With the different skills/supports there are many ways to make your tanking better without just getting punched in the face.

As a ranger I found the following to make my life much easier (this is just example of evolving)

Normal--> Spam rain of arrows, all damage passives
Cruel-->Spam rain/spit arrows, 50% damage/defense passives and get movement speed gear
Merc--> rain/split/range totem with ice arrow. While enemies slowed poisen arrow ground. For bosses make sure frenzy is up, this affects my totem. Passives mostly defensive ( most offense I want already picked). Bosses all 1 shot me so high move speed is a must.

I know this is about Melee, but there are things you can do to make your life easier. Use curse with spell totem support gem, so your totem debuffs while you tank ( even low rank spells should be amazing). Link element/status effects to your skills ( freezing/shocking are wonderful) so enemy can't hit you. Dodge attacks manually ( brutus can almost completely be avoided, so why need 90% reduction?)

This is not meant as insulting, I just think generally most of you are thinking very shallow. (Hp and armor should make me tank!!!). at least most of you can tank a couple hits before death, I get owned in one shot!!

Traps/debuffs/DOTS/status effects, USE THEM! I promise you your life will be much easier!

EDIT: I got a little off topic but Moral of the story is I think armor is there when you happen to get hit, but everyone should be trying not to get hit to begin with. It SHOULD be less effective at higher difficulties or else the game would be a bore.

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jocast wrote:

EDIT: I got a little off topic but Moral of the story is I think armor is there when you happen to get hit, but everyone should be trying not to get hit to begin with. It SHOULD be less effective at higher difficulties or else the game would be a bore.

Thanks for the tip about spell totem casting curses, TBH I never thought of that, and it will make them less annoying to keep up.

The problem I am having with armor isn't really that I can't facetank, it is that I will eventually die to two back to back crits, and no amount of armor will stop that. If I could build enough armor that it would take three crits to kill me, I'll be happy.

I guess my problem is that melee is almost as scary to me as it is to you, and I can only deal damage there.

I think the armor is good.

Hey I feel you. I actually have the passive that turns my evasion to armor. I tried acrobatics, but when I did get hit it was game over. Armor is consistant, yeah brutus hits for 1000+ suck, but you know what to expect. Gambling 0 or 6000+ cause of evasion is not something I could play around.

I look at skills as str/dex/int, where as others say melee/ranged/caster. If you can use a gem, use it, who cares if it isn't exactly what your playstyle revolves around. I would rather use poisen arrow to kill a guy who can one shot me ( takes forever) then risk dying cause I want to spam him with lightning arrow.

Hell even if you have all str, use that zombie skill (level 1) and let him get one shot while you bash there faces in. The exp loss in merciless is not worth the risk.

PS: Just wanted to mention a downside to ES for those that don't know or think its overpowered. ES has no way to refill it manually ( like health potions), it also doesn't refill when under certain effects. Try getting a puncture/poisen/ignite hit, you watch ES drop to almost nothing with one hit, and there is nothing you can do about it ( unless flask can clear status, but who likes those :D), those kind of mobs turn my stomach when I have chaos inoculation, one hit it makes you literally a walking dead man.

since i started playing PoE i always played witch.

now with the start of the Open Beta i wanted to try something new and made a Axe Marauder.

Loved it. awesome to play. a bit easier start than witch.

BUT: no i am lvl 56, 1 Act Merciless. endless dying. i mainly have heath, armor and axe dmg nodes. and so far pretty ok equip. still i just keep on dying. i wouldnt even have finished the Cruel mode without Party.

My skills i use are Haste and Wrath aura. as atk. skills Heavy strike, Leap Jump and Sweep.

im not a fan of Lightning strike also since i have a small mana pool. and groundslamp wich is kinda cool doesnt works with Axe.


I see the Armor issue since a days quiet frequently in several threads. but sadly i didnt see any comments from the Devs yet.

i would be happy if they could tell us that they are working on it since i dont want to be forced to use ranged melee skills to survive.

So..this makes Iron Reflexes useless? I got it..planning on this build:



So....I have it...I haven't been damaged much when hit by boss. I don't know if I want to respec out of it.

A big problem with the current status quo is that it goes against GGG's desire for build diversity. If you're "true melee", you have two choices: take and use the endurance charge passives, or die. I've been trying to come up with a build that would work for a dual-wielding claw shadow, but I can't come up with any good ones that manage to get the endurance charge nodes. Here's the best I can get:



As you can see, this build is terrible. In order to get the endurance charges for when I need them, I would pretty much have to exit the shadow tree immediately. My first 11 points would be going through the starting shadow nodes to get to the exit. Then 33 of the next 37 points will be base stat nodes leading to each endurance node, leaving me with terrible everything in order to reach the last endurance node by level 40-ish, which is probably just beginning Cruel.

Duelist would be better because he's closer to the endurance nodes and has access to some regen and dual wield blocking nodes. Marauder would be best because he has health, regen, amazing resists, and an endurance node right out of the gate. Also because I'm going all the way up to the Marauders starting position already and could therefore make the exact same build on a Marauder and get the endurance nodes in a fraction of the time. But I'm pretty sure from all of the clusters of claw and melee nodes by the shadow that they intended him to be proficient in melee, but that doesn't seem to be the case right now.

Edit: Adjusted numbers to account for passive point quests. :|

It would be nice to see the Marauder's resistance wheel and max resists node moved to the middle of the tree. Everybody needs resists, so I'm not sure why it ended up in the Marauder tree. His defensive starting nodes would still be quite good without it, with a good amount of life and life regen and the only two sources of enemy crit strike multiplier reduction in the tree.

When exactly does melee become unplayable? Right now I am having an easy time with with my melee Marauder hulk smashing everything, with my Ranger I had to rely on traps and tactics and really pick the skills with a measure of thought, lots of kiting and you know, learning how to play to get me to merciless. Both on hardcore.

edit: strangly enough I did find the marauder tougher in the first few levels though.

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FacetiousTomato wrote:

Determination is just 50% increased (base) armor. So assuming you've got 600 armor on every slot, it would amount to around 1500 armor.

No. It's 50% MORE Armour. That means it takes all your Armour from all other sources, including all the bonuses, and multiplies it by 1.5.