Block VS life

Hi

I went against the Phoenix with some amount of block ability and yes, - it helped some times. The phoenix hited me 3 times and my char blocked its hits

but the fourth hit penetrated my block and the phoenix killed me.
but the fourth hit penetrated my block and the phoenix killed me.
but the fourth hit penetrated my block and the phoenix killed me.

I went against the Phoenix with unallocating all block nodes and increased life amount and the phoenix hit'ed me many times and bcoz of life regeneration my life was restored many times after its hits and i won the battle

Block ability is good but this ability may not work in aspect of Probability and the monster's-death-hit will be done

Superficially, - if my block is not 100% it looks useless
If i got block ability for free in aspect of skill points spending then it is good addition to my defence but sometimes i need to spent big amount of skill points to reach those nodes that - in addition - give little amount of block percentage

In what cases should i use block?

thanks

IMHO You treat it as an additional not main layer of defence. That "hope it will work when it really matters" thing.Same as evasion.

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de99ial wrote:

IMHO You treat it as an additional not main layer of defence. That "hope it will work when it really matters" thing.Same as evasion.

Thanks to your reply

If block and evasion abilities work in a way of probability then may be i must miss them and develop life amount bcoz life amount helps anyway without probability?

May be block and evasion abilities which works sometimes (not always) much more better and cheaper that life amount?????

Actually, Block/Dodge and Evasion works in a different way.
Block/Dodge will give an actual, fair % chance for that hit to not damage you.

The fact a "fourth hit kills you" it's just the Law of Great Numbers kicking in at its finest: when repeating the same "roll" on a % chance many times (conventionally, more than 30 times), the overall outcome gets really close to what the % value would hint. Of course, every hit's block chance does not affect their actual chance to happen. Maybe you get lucky and parry 4 hits after another. Maybe you get very lucky and parry every single hit you would get in a map. Maybe you get unlucky and you get hit by the first hit you get in a map and get oneshot. All of those can be statistically calculated with a % chance for it to happen

Evasion is, instead, affected by Enthropy. You can get this link on Wikia:
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Evasion

TL;DR: Evasion only determines how many hits you will miss before getting that one hit that will have a 100% chance to hit you.

Of course, a high enough Evasion can take you against most of the hits you can't kite, thus making you virtually invincible against melees, archers and wanderers if you are skilled enough. a mix of Evasion + block/dodge is favoured because that layer will protect you agains the "sure hit" Evasion cannot miss

Both of them are, of course, useless when dealing against DoTs. Only raw Life/ES/Mana (and regen) will aid you in those cases, and it's why you need to find a balance between your pools and your defence layer.

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Staglaitor_ wrote:

Hi

I went against the Phoenix with some amount of block ability (...)
but the fourth hit penetrated my block and the phoenix killed me.

Congratulations, you just discovered that in 99.99% (*) of situations, what really matters in PoE is having the largest life/ES pool possible to avoid the instakills and have time to mash the life flasks and/or leech life/ES back.

(*) The remaining 0.01% being running naked in ultradeep mine with 97415975194751947 evasion and dodge, but that's not for the average Joe.

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Staglaitor_ wrote:

[...]

In what cases should i use block?

[...]

Your first priority should be to have enough HP to tank at least one big hit. After that point, having high block/evasion/dodge will feel a lot better.

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Maxtrux wrote:

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6_din_49 wrote:

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Thanks everybody!!!