Defense questions

Hey guys,

So I am starting fresh again with my buddies who’s main chars failed to progress through cruel. I am going to roll a shadow till they catch up to my templar.

I wanted to run dual claw + dual strike and ethereal knives + fork w/ blind on both or just on EK. I was looking to stack evasion as my main defense but from some other chars I have rolled I have found evasion a bit… lack luster.

I wanted to make sure I got my defenses squared away before I started spending any points so I can effectively progress my char. I guess my questions are…

1)Will pure evasion be viable w/ blind?
2)If evasion just isn’t viable regardless, would it be better to stack evasion then convert it to armor or would stacking energy shield and going with the chaos immunity be the best path?
3)How much resistances should I grab from nodes?

Kind of a side question I felt just tossing in here:

In regards to EK, will it be a viable way to AoE DPS mobs if paired w/ fork (maybe LMP? Not sure what is better), blind, and going with iron grip? I think that’s what is, strength bonus works for projectiles as well.

Thank you guys!

The problem with evasion is simply that it isn't a reliable source of defense, it's chance based and chance based values always inhabit a risk.
You might evade 9 out of 10 hits but if the last hit kills you you're still screwed.

Armor on the other hand is more reliable it might not mitigate as much damage as evasion could possibly mitigate but you are always aware of how much damage you'll approximately receive and you can always react according to that.


Converting Evasion to armor with IR is a viable thing to do, going CI as well it really comes down to personal preferences.
When it comes to resistances it pretty much depends on the build (ranged or melee, caster and so on) you only got to keep in mind that merciless means -60 resistances.

Thanks for the quick reply... So evasion is definitely out as a primary.

I found blood rage in my bank and will probably pair it with CI and the life leech from claws and GR. In the works of stacking as much ES as I can, I’ll have a decent amount of evade still.. would it be worth it going to the Arrow Dodging node? I currently can get just under 200% ES, is this possible to much? Also with all my leech will i be fine skipping all the reduced time for ES to start regenerating?

Definitely feeling way more comfortable with my defenses. I just need to build on my resistances big time now as well. So far I notice I can only easily acquire +26% to all resistances and an addition 15% lightning/cold.

Whats CI stand for? I need help with defence to..Im lvl 33 with 577 HP's and 60% to all resists, i went for prismatic right away and I still die alot, dont understand..I dont have any points in evasion/dodge, is that where im messing up?

Chaos Innoculation.

If you're making a DEX shadow, then you can also go down to Iron Reflexes. For an INT shadow you should definitiely grab the two nullification rings minus the two ES cooldowns for now, and make it a priority to get to unnatural calm and and arcane focus asap. You don't need to take CI until you reach merc difficulty anyway, so just focus on getting your ES high, and then whatever damage type or weapon you are working on second. I've heard from people that have tried claws, ghost reaver & CI that they still take too much damage on merc for it to be viable in melee, so it looks like an INT based shadow will eventually end up using spells and / or bows.

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mlazaro wrote:

Whats CI stand for? I need help with defence to..Im lvl 33 with 577 HP's and 60% to all resists, i went for prismatic right away and I still die alot, dont understand..I dont have any points in evasion/dodge, is that where im messing up?

No you rarely need evasion or dodge, you want energy shield, and the shadow ES passives just happen to also give you some evasion as well. But those trees are mainly important for the ES and all the bonuses from nullifications.

If you don't plan to take CI then stick with HP + Nullification nodes. If you plan on CI, still start off with taking any HP nodes along your path towards both nullifications, and then use respec points to change them into ES nodes as you go up towards the arcane focus and unnatural calm areas.

Shadows can get their ES number very high using both nulifications and the ES passives mentioned above, or go Evasion into IR. You can definitely try out dodge and acrobatics as well on a shield build, but this isn't 'needed'.

At level 33 though you need to be very careful on a shadow. You can't just facetank everything and survive, you have to dps things fast and run away a lot.

At level 48 I have 729 ES and 679 HP, and what I do is dps stuff until my ES has drop ped, and then run around till it recharges (doesn't take very long with 55% reduced cooldown so far).

At level 50 I should be able to get 700 HP and 1000 ES, and then need to focus on finding a strong ES set of armor.

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bhavv wrote:

Chaos Innoculation.

If you're making a DEX shadow, then you can also go down to Iron Reflexes. For an INT shadow you should definitiely grab the two nullification rings minus the two ES cooldowns for now, and make it a priority to get to unnatural calm and and arcane focus asap. You don't need to take CI until you reach merc difficulty anyway, so just focus on getting your ES high, and then whatever damage type or weapon you are working on second. I've heard from people that have tried claws, ghost reaver & CI that they still take too much damage on merc for it to be viable in melee, so it looks like an INT based shadow will eventually end up using spells and / or bows.

Sorry, I am bit thrown off between the first and last sentence.

As I will be going DEX based, are you saying its viable for me to roll melee w/ Iron Reflexes and go CI at the same time or I should stay away from CI and just roll Iron Reflexes and invest more points into evasion if I want to stay melee?

An INT shadow using bows?

I see how this would benefit for using ES as the main defense, but wouldn't it kind of gimp the power in those arrows a bit, as well as how far one could level their skill gems?

I have another thread where I'm kind of wrestling with this issue. Not sure if ES or IR is a better way to go for a bow shadow.

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Kryzen wrote:

Sorry, I am bit thrown off between the first and last sentence.

As I will be going DEX based, are you saying its viable for me to roll melee w/ Iron Reflexes and go CI at the same time or I should stay away from CI and just roll Iron Reflexes and invest more points into evasion if I want to stay melee?

I'm curious what his answer will be as well. I'll just chime in that everything I've heard about CI is that it's only truly advantageous for pure ES builds, which would mean an INT build, because it makes your maximum life 1.

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VideoGeemer wrote:

An INT shadow using bows?

I see how this would benefit for using ES as the main defense, but wouldn't it kind of gimp the power in those arrows a bit, as well as how far one could level their skill gems?

I have another thread where I'm kind of wrestling with this issue. Not sure if ES or IR is a better way to go for a bow shadow.

You don't understand. INT shadows still have access to three +30 dex nodes for bows or rapiers, plus a +20 dex node with 12% IAS but I think its melee only. You take those then travel up to the witch area and take whatever elemental passives you want.

Even a Templar can build elemental bow builds using +30 and +20 dex passives. You just need enough dex to equip and use a bow, that's not hard, and then focus on elemental damage passives.

'INT shadow' simply means your going up to the witch area. 'DEX shadow' means going down to the Ranger area / far bottom right. Either build is valid and can become very powerful, and they can do either melee or ranged, and even spells.