how much life is enough these days?

My SRS-Summoner has 4.500HP + 4.000ES at this moment, but it's very rare get hit with this build, my next step it to get HP on my chest...

Only thing it gives it'a a large ammount of ES.
I have life in all the other gear (600)

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titiAlf wrote:

1 k on normal
2 k on cruel
3 k on merciless
5 k for endgame

I consider that bare minimum - otherwise you should expect some deaths. Depends on your build. Picking offensive nodes near life nodes seems to be vital. It's better to do some Act 4 bosses in party - extra decoys make fights much easier.

ya I think that works as a minimum amount, pretty much the figures Id go for.

Honestly I build exactly the same way hc or sc, I wouldnt change a thing. Dying is awful, it just feels so bad, if you accept death isnt the whole thing a bit pointless? I guess if you are an mf character in sc, thats a different goal, ur not trying to make a good build youre simply trying to get a lot of wealth and that trumps all other concerns. A good build is a good build in any league and shouldnt be dying with an "oh well it happens" kind of thing. You might die, it might happen, but youre doing everything you can to avoid it.

less than 175% life on a tree Im thinking hmmmmm, hmmmmmmmm, this is kind of questionable. I feel like youre preparing to fail at that stage. Certainly with my playing skills, maybe there are people who are sharp as it comes and can go all the way deathless on less, for me if I have less than that I feel like its only a matter of time before I get gibbed. I need a certain level of redundancy to account for sloppy behavior.

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Peterlerock wrote:

Yes, you want a high life roll on every non-unique piece of gear.

ya, thats the balance right? They dont put life on most offensive uniques. Can you really deal with using the Rats Nest, Maligaros gloves, Doryanis belt and Mings ring at the same time? I feel like you chose one of those things and get rares with life in the other slots, at the point when youre using all 4, alarm bells are ringing.

With defensive gear its the ele resist, sure you got your Coil, its op as fk, but uve swaped 40% all ele res for -60 light, thats 180% resist you are down from using that chest. Then you add the spell dodge Atziri boots, awesome defense but no resist, and then u want your Rats Nest and Malis, and then your double crit attack speed quiver, and your double crit accuracy neck your Mings ring and then you find you need to go from -60, -60, -120 resists to +110% all res ele weakness cap on what? One ring slot and a belt? Its not going to happen.

I feel like life and resist are a given on most rare slots. The game kind of presumes u have this, certainly for mid-high mapping at least, and the powerful uniques are balanced around you only being able to drop those stats on a few of your pieces before you compromise something in your setup. If you are a rare gear only kind of character you still get them anyway and enjoy having 6k+ life, complete ele weakness cap, positive chaos resist, massive stock defense values etc.

Good information and discussion.

Well, since I started the thread I leveled an ice crash templar to 60. I have around 3.2k life and just killed eyeball piety in cruel. My armor isn't fantastic (I think it's around 33% estimated reduction right now) but I haven't finalized my gear and I went with staves to get a little bit of extra defense. My resistences aren't maxed but I have the capability to max one temporarily for fights by swapping rings. I also use fortify and get the odd end charge here and there.

I have to say I still feel squishy as hell. I've been one-shotted or extremely quickly stunned down a few times. Dominus was surprisingly dangerous in cruel, maybe it's because this is my first melee character in 2.0.

I might just be adding to a chorus of complaining voices, but I finally am convinced that the current state of PoE isn't an improvement. Forcing *everyone* to build off of life nodes, roll life on all gear, roll life on all jewel, etc. etc. is super lame. I've said the same in a couple of other threads, and I've tried really hard to accept it, but I just can't see how this is a good direction for PoE to go in.

When everyone has to be a tank, it sucks.

It's still a fun game, so I guess I'll play Path of Life Nodes (ignoring any interesting offensive nodes) for the time being and pray to Chris this changes eventually.

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wheffle wrote:

When everyone has to be a tank, it sucks.

There's a difference between "you have to be a tank" and "you have to be tanky enough".

You need to find the right balance.

An allout damage tree does not work, an allout tank tree is also nonsense (when not supported by mirror tier weapons/gear to maintain some clearspeed).

This is my current tree (105 points).

*29 life nodes
*35 "damage" nodes (or "utility" that is indirect damage like mana)
*5 jewels (damage/life)
*5 points in defense (Acrobatics)
*travel points, stats

That's pretty close to 1/3 life, 1/3 damage, 1/3 travelling around.

Is that a tank? No. But "tanky enough".
Is that an allout life nodes tree? No.

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Peterlerock wrote:

"

wheffle wrote:

When everyone has to be a tank, it sucks.

There's a difference between "you have to be a tank" and "you have to be tanky enough".

You need to find the right balance.

I suppose so. I still feel like it's always a rat race for life node clusters, and it makes it difficult for me to build with shadow and ranger. Many fun builds I used pre-2.0 don't work, and I'm having a hard time coming up with new fun ones for myself that work.

Maybe it's tuned perfectly for more skilled and hardcore players than me, and maybe that's what they were going for. Perhaps as I gain more experience I will change my tune.

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wheffle wrote:

I'm having a hard time coming up with new fun ones for myself that work.

To me, that's what's so great about PoE.
You're constantly forced to reevaluate builds, skilltrees, items.
You have to think, optimize, come up with new stuff...
The game would be dead without the constant meta shifts.

Though I understand some people not being happy with their builds getting "ruined".

"

Maybe it's tuned perfectly for more skilled and hardcore players than me, and maybe that's what they were going for. Perhaps as I gain more experience I will change my tune.

To make a build work in high end content and get to very high levels, you probably really need good builds (copy or come up with your own).

But to have fun in midlevel maps and get close to lvl 90... that's not that hard.