Why is block so important?

some answers in this thread are just hillarious xD

yes you can calculate the estimate damage reduction from block and the ehp scaling because of one simple fact: you get hit more than once.

your charakter blocks a certain amount of attacks in its lifespan. if you have 50% blockchance, you block half the damage you whould have taken over that period of time.

and even if you look at one hit. block reduces 100% of the damage of an attack or 0%. in case it blocks, your ehp becomes infinite. but those calculations dont need to be taken into consideration.

spelldamage can be evaded.

phase acrobatics and

dodge = evade, k?

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Resistances or Physical Damage Reduction (Endurance Charges) however DO act like an increase to eHP. A character with 50% fire resistance has twice the eHP against fire damage a character with 0% fire resistance would have. It is not an RNG mechanism.

nitpicky: 50% fireresist dont equate in eHPx2 because the game has more than just fire damage....

Physical reduction doesnt affect your eHP in a way that you can calculate if you dont know what hit you are trying to reduce.
or: armor sucks against big hits. i rather have block than reducing a vaal smash by 2%.

as an end note: playtime/charakter level/registerdate(oh my god) say nothing about someone being able to do simple math. and you dont need to play PoE atall to understand how block works, since its 1:1 the same in torchlight(2) for example. works a bit different (better?) in D3 tho

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H4NS wrote:

Laughably wrong

Then explain why.

If you have 100 hit points and avoid 75% of all damage, you effectively have 400 hit points. Basic math.

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H4NS wrote:

So if I get hit by a 10k vaal smash I only take 2,5k? Is that what you are saying?

You're trying to turn this into damage mitigation. We're talking about damage avoidance.

Armor, e-charges, and raw hit points are damage mitigation.

Block, evade, and dodge are damage avoidance.

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H4NS wrote:

Exactly

Block is pure RNG, and you can't convert such thing into eHP.

Resistances or Physical Damage Reduction (Endurance Charges) however DO act like an increase to eHP. A character with 50% fire resistance has twice the eHP against fire damage a character with 0% fire resistance would have. It is not an RNG mechanism.

It's funny how you think armor gives EHP while block doesn't.

What does armor mitigate? Physical damage that is based on RNG. Lower physical damage that doesn't crit is mitigated more by armor. Yet high end rolled crits will destroy armor.

Armor gives EHP just as much as block does.

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H4NS wrote:

You can't work out this kind of calculation with a defined range, you have to take ALL possible case scenarios. If you don't, it will eventually fail.

It's also not just against one-hit kills, or relatively big (or even mid) hits... you can't block degens either.

This "calculation" is only close its claim when every hit to the player does 1 unit of damage AND when degens are non-existant.

Yes, and one of those scenarios is that armor will be hit by all hits, including that big crit. The boss has now destroyed the character.

But if the character is only ever hit by one hit out of a hundred, that one could be a big crit or a regular hit. Either way, the build is far more likely to survive.

Starting to see the flaw in your logic yet?

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H4NS wrote:

Elemental resistances will never fail. 75% of mob elemental damage will never damage you. Infallible

...and there's a reason why you have to have capped resistances.

Games like this assume that you'll cap your resistances, and punish you if you don't. But they do not require you to get block, as there are other options you have available.

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H4NS wrote:

That resistances/phys.dam.red. are the only way to raise eHP against damage

No. Mitigation is not the only thing that mitigates. There's something called damage avoidance.

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H4NS wrote:

edit: checked your account, and you have been a member for two years without a single character above 90. The same goes for raics below. I am taking the bait here.

Funny how you base someone's qualifications based on their account. I wonder what you think of Vipermagi. He's the most knowledgeable person on these forums, and I'm sure he'd make you look foolish.

Come to think of it, I'd love to see Vipermagi post in here. It'd be beautiful.

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H4NS wrote:

Anyone arguing against this failed mathematics in school.

Translation:

I don't want anyone to argue against this because I don't want to look like an idiot for digging myself into a hole I can't get out of.

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Natharias wrote:

Come to think of it, I'd love to see Vipermagi post in here. It'd be beautiful.

You most likely won't see it, there's no point. If grade school math always worked we wouldn't need statistics, and on the other hand, it's really not a 400% eHP multiplier, it's 399,99% (add nines to taste).

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Rogomatic wrote:

You can block spells. You can't evade spells. That is all.

if someone shoots a fireball at me I can assure you I will dodge it.

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Thomasmgp wrote:

if someone shoots a fireball at me I can assure you I will dodge it.

That's just popular lore, screen magic. In movies and games it looks like you can easily dodge a rocket launcher aimed at you :)

Using block as a general eHP boost is a bit unrealistic. You need to know what it does best, and as many said before, it blocks many non lethal hits (+reflect, lighting thorns...) pretty reliably, where it does act as an eHP boost. It's still an awesome failsafe even for the big hits, after all 75% is a pretty high chance, but you can't say that block acts as eHP against hits that one shot you. Don't get me wrong I love high block chars because I can tank regular mobs with ease and I know when I have to avoid a big hit myself. And yes max block saves me about 3 out of 4 times in the long run, but I prefer to get out of the way of such hits if possible.

Example:
5k HP + 75% block ~ 20k "eHP"... and then a 10k hit kills you when you fail to block it. You can't say it's effective HP if it clearly is not. eHP is something you can rely on, that effectively absorbs that much damage.

Also as said before it does nothing against degen.

tl;dr - high block is awesome for non lethal hits, but avoid lethal attacks yourself if possible.

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Rhydm wrote:

Using block as a general eHP boost is a bit unrealistic. You need to know what it does best, and as many said before, it blocks many non lethal hits (+reflect, lighting thorns...) pretty reliably, where it does act as an eHP boost. It's still an awesome failsafe even for the big hits, after all 75% is a pretty high chance, but you can't say that block acts as eHP against hits that one shot you. Don't get me wrong I love high block chars because I can tank regular mobs with ease and I know when I have to avoid a big hit myself. And yes max block saves me about 3 out of 4 times in the long run, but I prefer to get out of the way of such hits if possible.

Example:
5k HP + 75% block ~ 20k "eHP"... and then a 10k hit kills you when you fail to block it. You can't say it's effective HP if it clearly is not. eHP is something you can rely on, that effectively absorbs that much damage.

Also as said before it does nothing against degen.

tl;dr - high block is awesome for non lethal hits, but avoid lethal attacks yourself if possible.

Then by that logic, block is far more effective than it actually is. If the hit is blocked, it gives you infinite EHP, since you took absolutely no damage.

You're also not considering the fact that builds will commonly use Acrobatics (if life based), and will always have some evasion. Not only will the evasion help prevent the entire hit, it'll cause crits to be checked twice. So unless the boss has a high crit chance or is extremely lucky on crit rolls, you won't be taking critical damage.

So yes, 75% block gives you 400% EHP.

I said you can't use it as EHP, so that wasn't my logic; that it can give infinite EHP.
Say hi when a boss one hits you for less than your 4x HP (what you are calling EHP) and it suddenly becomes not so effective.

You all know how block works. You're just arguing over whether it can be called eHP or not, and that depends on ones own definition of eHP. It's petty.

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Muldeh wrote:

You all know how block works. You're just arguing over whether it can be called eHP or not, and that depends on ones own definition of eHP. It's petty.

eHP is what my flatmates says when she sees a spider.