Armour versus Energy Shield

I'm not a new player to POE, but I've been *very* casual over the years, and now that I finally got a level 80 character, I'm starting to have some real fun! But I'm still on noob on plenty of subject...

I'm flirting with the 5K health, which was my first aim. But while I'm clearing low level maps, I'm still getting hit pretty hard, and makes me realise the health pool itself isn't enough. I've been battling between armour and ES for the last couple of days, and not sure how I should go from there.

I'm copying a build from someone else, and it works pretty good, although I have yet to go beyond 10K dps. I tried keeping my chaos orbs until now, so I got about 35 in stock now.

Can someone give me some hints on what I should invest in or try to farm particularly? I understand armour doesn't count for spell damage, but skill tree wise, everything is pretty much spent into armour/health nodes (nothing in ES)... so I go armour and more health all the way then?

Thanks for any advice.

5k life is plenty, honestly. A lot of builds run with less. However, you're right that some sort of secondary layer of mitigation is generally a good idea. It's not just a choice between armmour/ES/evasion though. There's also Acrobatics, block, Lightning Coil, Mind over Matter, increased max resistances, leech and LGoH...there are lots of defensive options in this game.

Anyway, it sounds like you can't support ES with your build. Hybrid life/ES is perfectly reasonable for some builds, as you trade some awkwardness with leech and chaos damage for much more EHP than pure life, but you need to be able to access the passives to pull it off, and it sounds like you haven't. Assuming you're sitting squarely on the left side of the tree, armour is probably going to be your easiest defensive option.

The most important thing to learn about armour is that the "estimated physical damage reduction" stat on your character sheet is misleading and essentially useless. Armour scales weirdly because of its mechanics - the more damage a hit deals, the less effective armour is against it. As such, your raw armour value is the useful stat (for example, that number needs to be 10x the amount of damage a hit deals to block half of that damage). All this means that when you stack armour, you want to stack it hard. If you don't have five-digit armour you probably should have used some other method of defense.

That aside, if you're having serious survivability issues at 5k life (and your elemental resistances are capped, which I'm going to assume for now) then I'm thinking you might have an offense problem as well as a defense one. Can you make your character list public so I can take a look at it? (Go here.)

By the way, a small but important correction: armour applies to physical damage, not necessarily attacks. Attacks can deal elemental damage, and spells can deal physical damage.

Ok I'm not hidden anymore (the level 80 character... odd name that I won't pronounce here hehe).

I'm not chaos capped (just saying), rest I am indeed.

And this is a capture I just did, to give you an idea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIttYyWUfdI

Okay, totems. Things are slightly different with totems.

You are certainly way too low on armour (from your gear) to make it particularly effective. That's something you can work towards in the future. However, totem builds can get by perfectly fine with 5k life and no other defenses, because totems are a substantial defensive measure by themselves. I can't tell your playstyle of course, but my guess would be that you aren't letting your totems do enough work as meat shields. Generally speaking, you should never be without your totems. For example, if you're indoors and about to enter a new room, drop a totem (or both) in there first. If you're outside, drop totems at the edge of the screen in the direction you're running. Basically, your goal should be to stay as far away from enemies as possible and let the totems do all the work.

What I would do first is upgrade your weapon and shield, honestly. More damage is a very good defense in this game (up to a point) because it means you can kill mobs before you get swarmed. I feel like you probably aren't at that point yet.

Edit: Okay, maybe I can see your playstyle. That said, I've just arrived at work so I'm not going to be able to look at that video for some time. Sorry.

I did a side-grade of my weapon, not sure what to go for. I'm being told to go Dagger, but since I'm Controlled Destruction, crit is pretty much useless (oh and what's that skill, that permits you to travel fast... can't do it with a wand). So what so I go for?

my opinion #1: Don't go poison with spell totem, the less dmg double dips negatively on poison. No other linked gems scale poison in ur 6L.

Opinion #2: Go double spellcrit dagger, run crit, forget controlled desctruction, you can run Inc crit dmg, forget wand, dagger lets u go whirling blades, n since totem casting, reflect don't matter so you can crit as heavily as you want.

Opinion #3: Run Mind over matter (forget about auras you don't need em if go crit) + dodge nodes + spirited response jewel + other dmg taken goes to mana gear. This will make u tanky enough.

Opinion #4: run cwdt firestorm + ball lightning + blind, tht will cover even more lack of defense.

GL

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DiGG wrote:

I did a side-grade of my weapon, not sure what to go for. I'm being told to go Dagger, but since I'm Controlled Destruction, crit is pretty much useless (oh and what's that skill, that permits you to travel fast... can't do it with a wand). So what so I go for?

1. Crit can be still useful with Controlled Destruction as long as you have crit passive. Controlled Destruction don't stop you from crit. The only thing you should consider on going crit or not is whether you have high crit multiplier.

2. You reserved your life a lot, which is a really bad idea as you are life-based with low ES.

3. Don't link aura/buff to faster casting. It will increase you mana reserved with no reward.

4. Place your totem first before you run in.

You gotta admit though, since it's not an elemental build, that chaos damage hits more "efficiently" on mobs though, plus I don't have to be afraid of Elemental Equilibrium maps... or am I wrong?

If I was to drop Poison, I'd go for...? (and again, since the build isn't elemental, what could do a good job at aoe and single target)

I'm game to change plenty, as long as it works better and faster hehe.

"

WillisTheWillis wrote:

2. You reserved your life a lot, which is a really bad idea as you are life-based with low ES.

3. Don't link aura/buff to faster casting. It will increase you mana reserved with no reward.

Blood magic seems all kinds of wrong for this build. You arent spamming hundreds of mana worth of skills every second. You could easily just use a blood magic support gem for your totem. You dont have a large ES pool and yet you reserve half your life.

I suggest refunding out of blood magic.

But if you are intent on using blood magic, i suggest you dont use auras. 2.5k life is NOT worth haste & heralds. I would replace your auras/heralds with a secondary low level CWDT setup with arctic breath (for the chilling effect) and temp chains. Keep them so their minimum level requirement is 38 or less.

I also suggest using your enduring cry more often so that you ALWAYS have max charges up. A cheap high armor shield with extra block could go a long way towards protecting you. Your 6link bladefall does more than enough damage, you dont need to sacrifice 2k armor and 6% additional block for a measly 39% increased damage.

You are seriously missing out on an insane amount of survivability from your poor flasks.

Qaulity up your granite flask then chance it. Roll alterations on it until you get a perpetual of iron skin/staunching/or warding.

Get 2 divine flasks, quality to 20. Then roll Bubbling/Seething of something useful. Instant recovery flasks are practically mandatory. The reason you roll divines (or perhaps hallowed for their efficiency) over sanctified or eternal is because when converted to instant healing they offer the biggest heal.

BF-SpelTot-FasterCast-Inc_Crit_Dmg-ConcAoE-AddedFire (unless u can afford lv4 empower)

For a 20/20 poison to outscale added fire on a lv 21 spell totem, you need about another 50% increased totem/chaos/ or damage over time, which is easy to get, but it takes 2.4 seconds for tht dmg to fully be dealt, if u spec in crit, you can probably just 1 shot n move on, so poison won't be needed;

tho for boss fights, poison is likely to be the superior gem as the fights would get dragged out.

Anyhow,
double crit daggers can get u around 360% increased crit chance, add on some power charge generation using ur basic 3 charges, u'd at least have 500% increased crit chance, and another 300% reasonably from tree for a total of 800%+ increased crit chance. that easily makes 45% chance to crit on bf, tack on the increased crit dmg from dagger/gem/tree, you will do alot more dmg than a non crit version.

GG spell dmg daggers will be hard to find, cheapeast option is to get crit dager with multiplier and craft on spell dmg, or if it has spell dmg then craft on crit multi.
something like this 2x: