Underutilized Skills: Defense

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Legatus1982 wrote:

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Fruz wrote:

What objective test ?? The character isn't mine.

The objective test of armor vs evasion tank ability, I can clearly see you have both types of builds in your character sheet so it's amusing to me that you continually avoid the actual testing

The character that I pushed the farthest in HC ( SSF, lvl 94 ) was using Acro ( it ripped to reflect, I thought it could handle an attack or two but it actually ot instantly killed ), and it was one of the smoothest ( read tanky if you want, and it's a big part of it ) character I've ever played in HC.

Fixating on [armour only] vs [evasion only] is utterly stupid as said times, times and times again.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

YES I CHOSE NOT TO DO THE RESEARCH BECAUSE I AM, IN FACT, AFRAID OF DYING TO "MECHANICS I DONT UNDERSTAND"

Which probably would not happen if you had not been avoiding the league encounters ...
It's not a shaper level encounter ffs ...

*it's doing fine* ....

*sigh*

It's fine not to want to run a content if you are scared, there is no problem with that, as long as you don't start pretending that your character is completely fine ( there might be content problems, but the sndicate has been nerfed several times, and not necessarily justifiably ).

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Legatus1982 wrote:

Do you realize you made me buy out the entire league's supply of toxic sewers? Fucking christ, I really have no idea how you manage to keep your sanity grinding to 90, I barely managed to maintain sanity myself.

What ? OO
If you don't run unmoded maps, you can actually sustain them when you know how the Atlas works ... like wtf.
And if you know how to build a propery character, you don't need to 'no-life' to 90 as you were saying in the other thread, if you balance offense and defense properly.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

I said he's dead because he's evasion which is less of an opinion or criticism and more a fact of life

...........................

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The_Human_Tornado wrote:

You do realize I got 100 with exactly the same build in SSF HC Deleve just with ground slam instead of Smite and the reason for that is: In Delve wasnt the fucking blood architect bug crashing the game?

like seriously ...
You are really in complete denial.

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Scherge wrote:

If defenses are meant to be played in layers (and i'm mainly talking armour vs evasion here) why is there so much content in the game that's based on stacking only one of both?
For example the Keystones we been talking about: Unwavering Stance, Iron Reflexes and acro.

Also some items here and there, an ascendancy or two AND six characters of which three stand for purely one type of defense/offense/stat and the three between for mixed tactics.

Defensive mechanics are not just about evasion, armour an ES.
There is many more to use, and you don't need to invest equally into each.
That's the whole point, you need to find the right balance for your character, and some of those keystones do have drawbacks that need to be weighted properly to understanda the opportunity cost.


PS : I would not need to bring the #1 SSF HC if there was not some very uninformed "no no, evasion-like is just shit, I know what I'm talking about" baseless claims being thrown in (again) .... I really wish I didn't need to T__T.
But we are talking about defenses, and there are reasons why the keystones in the OP are not popular, and understanding the different defense mechanics is necessary for that.
And examples to illustrate what is the trend, what people use and then explain why are definitely a plus, if not required.

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Fruz wrote:

I'm glad you jumped in here, kind of sorry for pulling you in but your char was the best example I could find easily.
Sorry to hear about the crash :S sucks.

Don't forget that forum warriors will tell you that you get "one shot out of the blue" in PoE ...
The guy told me that my assassin was not tanky (and was an SC build) because I ripped it to Atziri at level 90, so his Jugg had to be better, just to give you a bit of context.

Yea shit happens at least they fixed the bug :)

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Legatus1982 wrote:

I said he's dead because he's evasion which is less of an opinion or criticism and more a fact of life

I am not dead because I am evasion I wanna see how many ssf geared melee juggers and champions survive ONE OF THOSE tier 14 incursion bluepacks that oneshot raiz with 98 when playing his blade vortex char in incursion league combined with the super rippy blood architect beam for 3-4 seconds without flasks and warbringer heal and I am even pretty sure that I wasnt onehsot.

Look at the ladder, there is a huge corpse pile of juggers and champions, what did they die to huh? They were armour, how can they die?

I did shit like that a 100 times before with that char on tier 16 maps and it never was even close when I can press flasks and warbringer and move around and actually hit mobs to stun/freeze/enfeeble them with the shield.

There are for sure better builds for afk tanking the deadliest shit but I doubt that they are so easy to get as melee with SSF gear and with enough dps and attack speed to clear maps fast enough to even get to 99 without giving up.

And the funny thing of my build is that it actually has BASIC phys mitigation just not from armour.

Basalt 15%
Lunaris 8%
3 endus 12%
Grukthul 6%
= 41%

It was either the blood beam degen or ele damage that killed me there and not the evasion.

I also wanna point out that I played TONS of life stacking and armour chars and juggers but never got over 93 in hc until I started to play eithr MoM or Acrobatics or both.

Always died to ele damage and shit like that in red maps, when I started to play with blind/acrobatics that suddenly stopped.

And yea check my gear its really not like I invested ANYTHING in evasion except the stibnite, not even having a jade flask.

Nowadays with all the MUST HAVE items that have very low eva/armour rolls like Tombfist, Ahn helmet, Loreweave it is extremly hard to get significant values (lets say 20-30k) of either armour or evasion without using auras or flasks and because those items also dont give any resistances and only mediocre life you have to care even more to get good life, mana and res on the remaining rare items and that means you are basically forced to neglect the evasion/armor rolls on them.

So the most elegant way I can think of to design a defense that gets 100 with map clearing is as Robmafia and others said a multi layer defense that uses the best deals of each layer. If a layer like armour has not enough to offer for a given char setting and a given cost then dont take it. A player has the best cards if he chains together the best deals that the game offers him and armour isnt a good deal for a lot of builds cause 20-30k armour would require them to not use their basic gear, flasks or auras and the same does NOT go for evasion because evasion just needs a stibnite flask to give a 50% evade chance which is a good deal for pretty much everyone except for those who do not come into melee range of mobs and gladiators who want to maximize their number of blocks for violent retaliation.

and to also contribute something to the thread topic.

I think OP forgot another garbage node: ARMOUR MASTERY. 0.5% life regen, 24% increased armour, 3% inc movement speed, needs 3 skillpoints ... nobody skills that because why would they.

Its literally so garbage that people dont think at it anymore and I just noticed it existed cause I was playing in PoB a little bit.

I would skill cloth and chain and soul of steel a 100 times before skilling armour mastery.

Another thing: Solidity.

Its not even THAT BAD COMPARED to many other block nodes on the skilltree but that doesnt mean anything cause skilltree block nodes are overnerfed af so who the hell would spend 4 skillpoints for all that stuff there?

If it would also have the equivalent number of spell block then it would be already interesting but sadly passive tree spellblock is FOR ANY REASON reserved only for classes that dont start with "marauder" or "duellist" in their names.

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robmafia wrote:

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The objective test of armor vs evasion tank ability

doesn't even make sense. there's no such thing as an evasion tank.

That's kind of my point btw

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Legatus1982 wrote:

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robmafia wrote:

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The objective test of armor vs evasion tank ability

doesn't even make sense. there's no such thing as an evasion tank.

That's kind of my point btw

You could make a acrobatics scion with fortify, mind over matter, 10%+ life regeneration, life leech that continues at full life, endurance charges that auto generate themselves in combat, immunity to stuns/chill and like 220% or more life total. All before gear, getting gear would further trivialize the incoming physical damage.

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Fruz wrote:

The character that I pushed the farthest in HC ( SSF, lvl 94 ) was using Acro ( it ripped to reflect, I thought it could handle an attack or two but it actually ot instantly killed ), and it was one of the smoothest ( read tanky if you want, and it's a big part of it ) character I've ever played in HC.

Fixating on [armour only] vs [evasion only] is utterly stupid as said times, times and times again.

What ? OO
If you don't run unmoded maps, you can actually sustain them when you know how the Atlas works ... like wtf.
And if you know how to build a propery character, you don't need to 'no-life' to 90 as you were saying in the other thread, if you balance offense and defense properly.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

I said he's dead because he's evasion which is less of an opinion or criticism and more a fact of life

...........................

"

The_Human_Tornado wrote:

You do realize I got 100 with exactly the same build in SSF HC Deleve just with ground slam instead of Smite and the reason for that is: In Delve wasnt the fucking blood architect bug crashing the game?

like seriously ...
You are really in complete denial.

"

Scherge wrote:

If defenses are meant to be played in layers (and i'm mainly talking armour vs evasion here) why is there so much content in the game that's based on stacking only one of both?
For example the Keystones we been talking about: Unwavering Stance, Iron Reflexes and acro.

Also some items here and there, an ascendancy or two AND six characters of which three stand for purely one type of defense/offense/stat and the three between for mixed tactics.

Defensive mechanics are not just about evasion, armour an ES.
There is many more to use, and you don't need to invest equally into each.
That's the whole point, you need to find the right balance for your character, and some of those keystones do have drawbacks that need to be weighted properly to understanda the opportunity cost.


PS : I would not need to bring the #1 SSF HC if there was not some very uninformed "no no, evasion-like is just shit, I know what I'm talking about" baseless claims being thrown in (again) .... I really wish I didn't need to T__T.
But we are talking about defenses, and there are reasons why the keystones in the OP are not popular, and understanding the different defense mechanics is necessary for that.
And examples to illustrate what is the trend, what people use and then explain why are definitely a plus, if not required.

You write way too many walls Fruz.

I don't care about 99% of what you just wrote here and most of it is deflecting or misdirecting from the actual point I've been trying to make, which is that armor tanking is objectively better than evasion tanking.

I'm not talking about this in terms of JUST ARMOR or JUST EVASION. It's pretty clear why armor builds are objectively better, ESPECIALLY taken in context of multiple layers. It would actually probably be FAVORABLE for you (and unfavorable for me) to compare pure armor vs pure evasion, except that the evasion would eventually be one-shot (but it would, however, mitigate more over time).

Take your example of "layered defenses", armor vs evasion:
1. Fortify: all builds can get it, doesn't matter
2. Endurance charges: all 3 exist on the armor side of the tree
3. Life: much more plentiful in the armor area
4. Block: all builds can get it, however if you essentially "cant" go block with acro because the 30% dodge simultaneously erases 30% of your block
5. Life regen: much more plentiful in the armor area
6. Max resists: Spread evenly on tree, but loreweave doesn't exist as an evasion base, every other item that increases max resists are either armor or ES based items besides kaltenhalt/soul (which I doubt many/any people use in endgame)
7. Blind: pretty much the one good thing evasion builds have going for them, if youre a saboteur, which is why sabo is doing so well in leagues
8. Life on hit: any build can get it easily
9. Leech: any build can get it easily
10. +Curses/curse buffs: any build can get it easily
11. IC: any build can use it, however it is potentially much more effective for builds with more endurance charges, which are all on the left of the tree
12. Dodge: pretty much only evasion

So what else is there? I'm sure I am probably forgetting a few things but looking at this list it's pretty clearly favoring armor. You can easily offset dodge by getting some extra block as an armor build and from there you are only getting ahead unless you're a saboteur using the free blind.

The ascendancies change things a lot sure, but what ascendancy gives more tank than jugg?

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Kahirn wrote:

You could make a acrobatics scion with fortify, mind over matter, 10%+ life regeneration, life leech that continues at full life, endurance charges that auto generate themselves in combat, immunity to stuns/chill and like 220% or more life total. All before gear, getting gear would further trivialize the incoming physical damage.

You can make the same thing with armor, only you'll get more endurance charges on the left, more life on the left, and everything else you mentioned is easily accessible to anyone or armor builds in particular. So what is the advantage of building what you're describing?

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The_Human_Tornado wrote:

Basalt 15%
Lunaris 8%
3 endus 12%
Grukthul 6%
= 41%

It was either the blood beam degen or ele damage that killed me there and not the evasion.

Degen is highly countered by life regen (and endurance charges for phys degen) which is more plentiful on the left of the tree. As well as higher life totals increasing your life regen per second, as a consequence of regen being life-percentage based. You'd also have more endurance charges pathing into that area.

Anybody can use gruthkul and lunaris.

Additionally as I mentioned above the vast majority of +max resist is found on armor bases (or ES, but basically there are next to none on evasion bases).

So actually based on this I would say it is highly probable you would have lasted longer or survived outright with an armor build if it was degen or ele damage that killed you. I mean I've literally been saying for years that phys spells and phys degen are the downfall of evasion builds because you get like no natural mitigation, and surprise there's a fair chance that's what killed you.

Putting that aside, simple question: do you believe the build you used is tankier than a juggernaut? y/n

EDIT: I'm looking at your build and it isn't even evasion, it's literally an armor character that took acrobatics. I see where you're going with the precentage phys mitigation route, but yeah.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

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robmafia wrote:

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The objective test of armor vs evasion tank ability

doesn't even make sense. there's no such thing as an evasion tank.

That's kind of my point btw

no, it's not.

you're trying to imply that evasion sucks in comparison to armor.

i'm saying evasion isn't tanky. by definition. it's evasive. tanky = absorbing hits/damage. evasion doesn't do that. evasion does the opposite - it evades hits/damage.

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and to also contribute something to the thread topic.

I think OP forgot another garbage node: ARMOUR MASTERY. 0.5% life regen, 24% increased armour, 3% inc movement speed, needs 3 skillpoints ... nobody skills that because why would they.

Its literally so garbage that people dont think at it anymore

i used it during delve.

it only cost 2 nodes (the above and an extra 14% arm) since i was there for the shield nodes underneath.

38% armour, 3 ms was definitely worth it. the extra life regen didn't hurt, either.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

Take your example of "layered defenses", armor vs evasion:
1. Fortify: all builds can get it, doesn't matter
2. Endurance charges: all 3 exist on the armor side of the tree
3. Life: much more plentiful in the armor area
4. Block: all builds can get it, however if you essentially "cant" go block with acro because the 30% dodge simultaneously erases 30% of your block
5. Life regen: much more plentiful in the armor area
6. Max resists: Spread evenly on tree, but loreweave doesn't exist as an evasion base, every other item that increases max resists are either armor or ES based items besides kaltenhalt/soul (which I doubt many/any people use in endgame)
7. Blind: pretty much the one good thing evasion builds have going for them, if youre a saboteur, which is why sabo is doing so well in leagues
8. Life on hit: any build can get it easily
9. Leech: any build can get it easily
10. +Curses/curse buffs: any build can get it easily
11. IC: any build can use it, however it is potentially much more effective for builds with more endurance charges, which are all on the left of the tree
12. Dodge: pretty much only evasion

Most of that stuff isn't really that onesided because...
a) you're comparing left and right in half your points, but a build isn't restricted to his starting side of the tree
b) most builds skip endurance charges etc even when pasing right by them, it's really only juggernauts that are picking them up
c) Loreweave's base armour is a joke, it's as useless in an armour build as it is in an evasion build
d) block + dodge isn't that bad as it sounds on paper, there's some calculus to be done, but you can get nice results with block+dodge... also: how many builds really focus on block besides the free nodes that also have damage?