Why Energy Shield/Armor Armor?

I was thinking of a potential templar build and I was curious: why would I gear/skill for armor that has ES and armor instead of just pure armor if I'm not going to take CI?

Energy shield and health basically form together your total health pool with the sole exception (unless I'm missing something) that when you still have some of your energy shield left, you have an inherent 50% chance not to get stunned. Other than that, any damage you take is going to go through your armor and then is going to eat away first at your energy shield and then your health.

Everything that follows is based on three assumptions:
1) Not having to deal with Armor/ES gear, means I will just take armor gear -> more armor
2) Not having to deal with armor/ES nodes, means I will take even more life nodes -> more health
3) No CI

So if the above is true, why would I ever gear for armor/ES? The goal is to mitigate as much damage as possible and instead of bothering with ES, I could just skill all +health nodes and go pure armor and I would have more mitigation than if I went for armor/ES. And the extra health from nodes would go into making me less stunnable (because stun chance is calculated based on your max health), mitigating somewhat the loss of ES. And if I did for some reason go armor/ES, all chaos damage would skip over my ES, thereby making my effective health pool vs. chaos damage smaller than if I was just pure armor. Not to mention that I'd be benefitting less from life regen nodes based on max health.

I must be missing something, or if not, ES isn't very exciting without CI.

EDIT: I guess I should specify that I'm thinking about this for a melee-based character. So running away for 6 seconds every few hits doesn't sound very fun.

And Zealot's Oath is not really the answer because you would just be better off going straight ES. I'm trying to find a reason to go hybrid.

You're going to be hitting a few Int nodes, which give an ES bonus which would be wasted if you didn't build for it.
Also you can just run away for 6 seconds and recharge your ES.

If you are taking CI you probably aren't too far away from Ghost Reaver which keeps you in combat with ES up a lot longer than without it. You could always try that if you haven't already. I'd assume that would be pretty standard in a melee CI build though.

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EnderCN wrote:

If you are taking CI you probably aren't too far away from Ghost Reaver which keeps you in combat with ES up a lot longer than without it. You could always try that if you haven't already. I'd assume that would be pretty standard in a melee CI build though.

But I'm not going CI.

Eldritch Battery ;) heheh

IMO - and I mean opinion, because everyone builds for specific things, ES is mainly useful for Ranger builds - and Witches. Which is why you find ES mainly (but not exclusively) on their gear.

Templar, being a hybrid, falls into the middle there - as hybrids tend to do. If you're loading up on spells - which only makes sense else you'd presumably roll a Marauder, you're going to be grabbing +Int which gives a + % to ES. You do sacrifice some armor for this, but - IMO - you'll find that armor alone is going to be very difficult to live with later on. (Pun intended)

The reason being is explained fairly well here:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/99252

Hope that helps.

Edit - I should add that in the end, it is of course up to you. I rather enjoy finding new ways to do things :)

Oh I totally misread it. Well I like Ghost Reaver on my evasion/ES build but that is a bit out of your range as a templar! My templar is pure armor and shield and that works well, haven't messed with ES on him.

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Akiviri wrote:

IMO - and I mean opinion, because everyone builds for specific things, ES is mainly useful for Ranger builds - and Witches. Which is why you find ES mainly (but not exclusively) on their gear.

Templar, being a hybrid, falls into the middle there - as hybrids tend to do. If you're loading up on spells - which only makes sense else you'd presumably roll a Marauder, you're going to be grabbing +Int which gives a + % to ES. You do sacrifice some armor for this, but - IMO - you'll find that armor alone is going to be very difficult to live with later on. (Pun intended)

The reason being is explained fairly well here:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/99252

Hope that helps.

Edit - I should add that in the end, it is of course up to you. I rather enjoy finding new ways to do things :)

Thanks, that's definitely an informative post.

And I think you meant you find ES gear mainly on witches, shadows, and then Templars.

But I guess what it comes down to is this:
Can Armor/ES be better than pure Armor without CI?

For the moment I'm convinced that the answer is no (I highly doubt that int nodes are going to make up for all the lost mitigation from lesser armor values). And if you take CI, it's better to just take pure ES gear.

If the answer is really no, I find it unbelievable that armor/ES gear exists when it's worse than all other options.

I must be missing really fundamental because I can't believe that the system is that weird.

PS. I'm posting about this because I love making weird builds and trying to make them work. I thought the answer to this problem was Zealot's Oath with life regen. But when I found out that Zealot's Oath makes all regen based on max life become based on max ES, there's no reason for Armor/ES armor.

Let me add another point and say that it's very odd to have a low-value ES (from armor+ES gear instead of pure ES) on a melee character. The recharge time is simply too high because of how far you need to run away since you start at melee range, and the ES recharge nodes are quite far away for a melee Templar meaning you need to not get hit by any damage for 6s (plus however long it takes for the shield to recharge).
Zealot's Oath doesn't help either, since you lose %HP regen for %ES regen and you'll typically have a lot more HP than ES if you don't take CI and go for ES+armor gear.

It seems to me that GGG just gave the Templar armor+ES nodes and put in armor+ES gear in the game to match his hybrid position on the tree without considering what that means for a melee character.

Not sure how you'd fix this... some sort of ES gained on melee hit node? More increased ES cooldown recovery nodes near the Templar/Marauder side? Maybe even a keystone passive that grants a bonus to your ES based on the strength you have?

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Beridel wrote:

"

Akiviri wrote:

IMO - and I mean opinion, because everyone builds for specific things, ES is mainly useful for Ranger builds - and Witches. Which is why you find ES mainly (but not exclusively) on their gear.

Templar, being a hybrid, falls into the middle there - as hybrids tend to do. If you're loading up on spells - which only makes sense else you'd presumably roll a Marauder, you're going to be grabbing +Int which gives a + % to ES. You do sacrifice some armor for this, but - IMO - you'll find that armor alone is going to be very difficult to live with later on. (Pun intended)

The reason being is explained fairly well here:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/99252

Hope that helps.

Edit - I should add that in the end, it is of course up to you. I rather enjoy finding new ways to do things :)

Thanks, that's definitely an informative post.

And I think you meant you find ES gear mainly on witches, shadows, and then Templars.

But I guess what it comes down to is this:
Can Armor/ES be better than pure Armor without CI?

For the moment I'm convinced that the answer is no (I highly doubt that int nodes are going to make up for all the lost mitigation from lesser armor values). And if you take CI, it's better to just take pure ES gear.

If the answer is really no, I find it unbelievable that armor/ES gear exists when it's worse than all other options.

I must be missing really fundamental because I can't believe that the system is that weird.

PS. I'm posting about this because I love making weird builds and trying to make them work. I thought the answer to this problem was Zealot's Oath with life regen. But when I found out that Zealot's Oath makes all regen based on max life become based on max ES, there's no reason for Armor/ES armor.

Yeah - I meant shadow :p - playing Ranger ATM with ES lol.

Anyway - "Better" is going to depend on the rest of your build of course, but for me - yes, the ES/Armor combo is doing fairly well ATM but I'm not into Merciless yet either, as well as a ranged class. My experience with armor alone is resting with 3 Mara's in SC (RIP boys you tried).

Myself - if I were curious enough - I'd roll one of each and see what I can make work. Why not?

As a note - I don't think the current system is this way out of design as much as from not being completely tuned yet. The explosion of people after OB hit kinda took everyone by surprise and they are simply scrambling to keep everything running ATM, as well as collecting information to avoid making things worse when they do go to tune it.