Queen of the Forest with Iron Reflexes?

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FnTsTiC wrote:

What if I have level 1 Cast When Damage Taken - Enduring Cry - Warlord's Mark - Increased Duration gem setup? Will this be enough for endurance charges?

Yeah, I was thinking something more in line with 'seven endurance charges plus soul of steel node', seven is a nice, tidy number. Unfortunately, your tree is incompatible with it so I'd sooner just stick with eva.

You know, I've got a goddess scorned molten striker build with acrobatics, a smattering of evasion (socket colors are a problem), 4,5k life and lightning coil. It was an east-west side build before with armor and 6 charges, back when we had nice 1h crit nodes on the left but I respecced it fully to the right after the patch. Survivability is a lot better now, half-assing armor gets you nowhere.
And that's the main difference between the two, evasion-ondar-acro gets you great results for moderate investment but doesn't really have anywhere to go from there because evasion lacks true synergies, armor-endurance nets you awesome results but investment is equally great, for anything less you get shit.

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raics wrote:

And that's the main difference between the two, evasion-ondar-acro gets you great results for moderate investment but doesn't really have anywhere to go from there because evasion lacks true synergies, armor-endurance nets you awesome results but investment is equally great, for anything less you get shit.

I have 7k armour, and according to the poe wiki I reduce the damage of every attack by 7000/12 = 583, yet I still take a ton of damage from bosses and decent damage from monsters?

Also, I have 8% life leech, is it worth it to get Cherrubim's Maleficence?

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FnTsTiC wrote:

I have 7k armour, and according to the poe wiki I reduce the damage of every attack by 7000/12 = 583, yet I still take a ton of damage from bosses and decent damage from monsters?

That's not how it works, your armor is compared versus incoming hit to determine how much it can absorb, you got the full formula on wiki.

So, if you get hit for 500 damage, your 7k armor will absorb 54% of it.
If you get hit for 1000 damage it will be 37%.
For a 2000 damage hit it will be 22%.
And from a 3000 hit it will absorb only 16% damage.

What makes it work versus hard hits are endurance charges which stack on calculated armor reduction amount regardless of incoming damage. Lightning coil also directly synergizes by reducing incoming damage which allows your armor score to compare against lower damage values. Enfeeble curse will also act in similar fashion so it will end up reducing incoming damage more than its 'less damage' stat says. There's also arctic armor which acts on leftover damage and can allow you to get stupidly tanky - unfortunately, incorporating that in a south-west build is somewhat tricky and unnecessary so you won't see it often.

So you see, armor is crap by itself, what makes it good are its direct synergies with other defensive mechanics where evasion has not a single one. With every addition it grows exponentially stronger, the problem is your build can't commit fully to it, that's why it's better to stick with evasion.

Queen of the Forest + Anvil + Iron Reflexes could be quite amusing on a Cyclone build. I still wouldn't recommend it, though. You'd basically have to use Leap Slam or something just to get around the map.

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raics wrote:

And that's the main difference between the two, evasion-ondar-acro gets you great results for moderate investment but doesn't really have anywhere to go from there because evasion lacks true synergies, armor-endurance nets you awesome results but investment is equally great, for anything less you get shit.

It's not quite true that an avoidance build has nowhere to go from there. Quality Enfeeble greatly improves the effectiveness of Evasion (it's good with Armour as well, but the effects are not as dramatic). Dodge-stacking with items like Daresso's Defiance and Darkray Vectors is also potentially quite strong with Acrobatics. Finally you can blind enemies (although this actually works OK even with Iron Reflexes, as long as you don't take Unwavering Stance).

If I have 2 CWDT setups:

1. CWDT - Enduring Cry - Spell Echo - Increased Duration and
2. CWDT - Enduring Cry - Warlord's Mark (gives 30% chance for Endurance Charge on kill) - Increased Duration

with a max of 4 endurance charges (from merciless bandits), 9-10k armour and Lightning Coil, and Enfeeble curse(I can get 1 more additional curse from amulet to have both Enfeeble and Warlord's Mark activated), would it be better than evasion?

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FnTsTiC wrote:

If I have 2 CWDT setups:

1. CWDT - Enduring Cry - Spell Echo - Increased Duration and
2. CWDT - Enduring Cry - Warlord's Mark (gives 30% chance for Endurance Charge on kill) - Increased Duration

with a max of 4 endurance charges (from merciless bandits), 9-10k armour and Lightning Coil, and Enfeeble curse(I can get 1 more additional curse from amulet to have both Enfeeble and Warlord's Mark activated), would it be better than evasion?

Increased Duration won't do anything for you in the first setup. I would only include Increased Duration if you're planning to use Immortal Call (which is a good idea on any build, but especially a non-Armour build).

Whether it's better than evasion depends on who you are having problems with. Versus physical melee, physical spells and reflected physical damage, armour-stacking is stronger. Evasion/Ondar's/Acro/PA is only moderately effective against those (physical spells especially are something of an Achilles' heel for evasion builds), but on the other hand will protect you very well from archers and somewhat well from elemental/chaos attack damage, plus there's a bit of spell avoidance thrown in with Phase Acrobatics.

Both Lightning Coil and Enfeeble are great to use on an evasion or armour/evasion build, by the way. As you say, the worry on an evasion build is getting hit by too much damage in one shot, but with LC+Enfeeble, you take about half the physical damage per hit that you otherwise would have. Enfeeble will also make it very hard for attackers to hit you.

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Incompetent wrote:

It's not quite true that an avoidance build has nowhere to go from there.

Yeah, it's not really 'nowhere', there's always fine tuning to be made but the results from investing a load of resources centered around eva aren't really that dramatic nor does it scale so well.

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Incompetent wrote:

As you say, the worry on an evasion build is getting hit by too much damage in one shot, but with LC+Enfeeble, you take about half the physical damage per hit that you otherwise would have. Enfeeble will also make it very hard for attackers to hit you.

Yup, enfeeble is the curse of choice for evaders, armor can get similar mileage from temporal chains but for eva enfeeble is miles better. You should consider warlord's mark with it only if your build has serious leeching problems like that scorned build I mentioned.

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Vipermagi wrote:

Bit of a waste of a Spell Echo there. Can't repeat a triggered Skill. :)
Similarly, Enduring Cry has no Duration whatsoever.

Increased Duration increases the duration of the supported skill, so shouldn't it increase the duration of the created endurance charges?