How much armour is enough for a melee cyclone char for endgame?

So with iron reflexes i got 13k armor and 53% phys reduction im planing to drop grace in favor or herald of ash and lets say heraold of thunder if i drop grace i will have around 7-8k armor and 40% phys reduction, my question, is 40% dmg reduction enough for apex of sacrifice? and what if i lets say drop iron reflexes and go for soul of steel il have like 37% phys reduction and 21% evasion without grace? whats the best option? is the dps from ash and thunder worth the 13% phys reduction i loose? or it doesnt matter much in endgame maps like apex of sacrifice cos of armor mitigation? and yes i have now bonus 1k hp thx to kaoms and will have around 5.2k with 24k cyclone dps and 5% life leach without blood rage or warlords mark, that are the stats and one of the reasons i plan to drop grace and some defensive nods in favor of some dps oriented ones cos i got a kaoms now. thx

Generally I find around 8k armor is when elemental damage starts to become more of a problem than physical damage. Especially if you have Immortal Call set up somewhere on your links.

thx if anyone else has more infos plz post

Typically, most players stop at 5-10k as it is enough, combined with other sources of damage mitigation/avoidance. Besides that higher amounts come with serious investments in nodes and gear.
If you want to rely completely on armor as melee, you have to break 20k as a minimum.
If not, get another form of damage mitigation in addition, and/or greatly improve HP pool, works as well.
Due to the ill-thought armor formula, players usually get some armor to dump the small/medium annoying hits and concentrate on another form(s) of defence.

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Griwas wrote:

So with iron reflexes i got 13k armor and 53% phys reduction im planing to drop grace in favor or herald of ash and lets say heraold of thunder if i drop grace i will have around 7-8k armor and 40% phys reduction, my question, is 40% dmg reduction enough for apex of sacrifice? and what if i lets say drop iron reflexes and go for soul of steel il have like 37% phys reduction and 21% evasion without grace? whats the best option? is the dps from ash and thunder worth the 13% phys reduction i loose? or it doesnt matter much in endgame maps like apex of sacrifice cos of armor mitigation? and yes i have now bonus 1k hp thx to kaoms and will have around 5.2k with 24k cyclone dps and 5% life leach without blood rage or warlords mark, that are the stats and one of the reasons i plan to drop grace and some defensive nods in favor of some dps oriented ones cos i got a kaoms now. thx

0 armour. Because armour is useless, cool kids use Immortal Call or Lightning Coil.

Depends a bit on what else you are doing. Are you running endurance charges? They work very well with armor. Your life pool and regening capabilities play a big role. Some examples: with 4-5k armor, 7 constant endurance charges, 5.5k life and able to leech/lgoh/regen my entire hp in about 2s i feel pretty solid. In the same setup I would feel solid with about 12-15k armor and no charges. That doesn't include popping a granite when needed which should put you above 30k.

Well this is all part of me trying to tweek my char as best as i can, currently when i get kaoms and leave the things they are currently i would probably have 6k hp with 12k armor and 3 end charges and cwdt-ic-ec-id setup if runing grace but considering i get kaoms i could respec herbalism + dont need the dex nods now either and invest like 8 points in something else? i could get executioner and slaughter axe nodes (currently have 25k dps but with those nods kaoms fire boost, ash, thunder i think i could get like 10k more) i could also invest in 2 endurance charges and potency of will but i guess il almost get the same as if i leave it the way it is now maybe even worse cos il loose some 20% to hp

p.s. the charr the way it is now works fine, its just a matter of tweaking and those like aditional 110% bonus dmg just seem to sexy to ignore + onslaught

Having played both an armor/life and evasion/life character for melee, I feel as if armor is too weak in comparison. You have to stack the hell out of it (i think someone said around 20K?) for it to make a difference.

You spend so many slots on mitigation that your damage ends up being blah.

Now I prefer evasion/dodge based characters that use acrobatics/phase/ondar's and I tend to survive much better. Especially with CWDT/IC/EC combo.

It could 100% be that "I'm doing it wrong"...but I've had the same experience on multiple characters.

Personally I prefer hybrid evasion and armor if you are running Grace. However, with 6000 armor rating before a Granite flask you should be fine as a Granite will put up to about 20000 if you have specced into some armor nodes. Endurance charges works really well with armor so get as many as possible.

I don't know, however, if it makes sense to sacrifice that much damage as you are talking about for relatively little extra defense when speccing into more passive armor nodes. You have to remember that for every order of magnitude that damage goes up you have to increase your armor rating 12 times.

Considering that 7.5k armor seems ok im gonna test the more dps version with ofensive auras and dps nods if it does fine i could even try to drop iron reflexes and spend the few points i needed for it to get 2 aditional extra charrges and 0.2hp regen per charge considering that i get q gems it should give me few seconds of phys immunity and with 30% phys reductiona and 20% evasion can be maybe the best option and if i get hit i doubt that regular mobs coudl kill me with over 5k hp and 30% phys reduction between the evades and immortal call immunity

p.s. this is my current build
https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgQAFey5HZkrvYHKkITZqSd4eqmUh2qQbGEhhO907XrvBS1gS14TIVXApgd13D1koxpV_muuUGWnE8kB5zbo_EsUTRiRvJ-nMJ7N0iHBBFW1Xz89_IzP9khYY-8OFCBQR-RR6wk5DgmWl3meV3Z_fuCExHuMZ5tBdCSbdiv3TYCK2XyCB_JBFHH468GjE0wm-BfhTjLqGK2Nz352rHzZ9zLyLxo-ZU29Nkd-vqcs6crTGbRl8HVOpo1br90NKaVOKkp945-Hdmeg_MVNkiP2o4ruDlb6jX0=

the tweek should look like this
https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgQAFey5HZkrvYHKkITZqSd4eqmUh2qQbGEhhO907XrvBS1gS14TIVXApgd13D1koxpV_muuUGWnE8kB5zbo_EsUTRiRvJ-nMJ7N0iHBBFW1Xz89_IzP9khYY-8OFCBQR-RR6wk5DgmWl3meV3Z_fuCExHuMZ5tBdCSbdiv3TYCK2XyCB_JBFHH468GjE0wm-BfhTjLqGK2Nz352rHzZ9zLyLxo-ZU29Nkd-vqcs6crTGbRl8HVOpo1br90NKaVOKkp945-Hdmeg_MUnIIoiLPtZ_jB34mFkUg==