Energy Shield Mechanics

Energy Shield, in a nutshell, seems to be probably the best of the 3 main defensive methods in this game. I base this on how I understand how it works, and am here to hopefully learn some things and put to rest any misconceptions about it. This discussion is mainly about Energy Shield, so it went into the Witch forum where the topic is most frequently discussed. *IF YOU SEE ANYTHING WRONG PLEASE CORRECT ME* In a nutshell, here's what it seems like the "big three" do.

Armor: Reduces damage taken, but is typically also on a character with massive Health, making it a reliable choice. Does not reduce elemental damage, does not reduce spell damage, doesn't help you avoid debuffs because you are (typically) almost always hit on an armor build.

Evasion: Reduces chance to be hit, good evade and good luck sound like the perfect strategy... until you get bad luck. Evasion is binary in nature, which is a blessing and a curse. Unlike Armor, and other kinds of resistance which always have an effect, Evade is either perfect dodging or massive damage taken. Evade DOES reduce elemental damage if it came from an evadable physical attack, cus it missed. It typically doesn't help vs spells, but Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics can make a build that will even dodge some spells. Evasion will help you avoid debuffs (LIKE BEING FROZEN, YIKES) rather than just have a chance to resist them, but some passive skills in the evade area can help you with that as well. Evasion has many diverse uses, one passive skill will even let you turn all Evade into Armor, possibly creating a much tougher Str tank than pure Str items would allow.

Energy Shield: Adds a barrier over your Health, increasing the damage you can take. It will recharge rapidly if you haven't taken damage recently, and various passive skills can reduce the delay between damage and recharging. Since Energy Shield is non-specific additional "Health" it is equally effective vs physical attacks as well as magical ones, but the Devs added a damage type "Chaos Damage" which pierces Energy Shields and is a specific attack against their users. Other notes include that Energy Shield doesn't help vs debuffs like evasion does, and there aren't any Flasks that heal Energy Shield (yet?). There is also a special passive skill called "Chaos Innoculation" which gives the user immunity to pesky Chaos Damage, and massively boosts the Energy Shield, but sets Health to ONE! There are already various threads about the skill and builds with it.

From what I've seen and experienced in this game, Int focused builds do not seem much squishier than Str and Dex builds. In fact... it seems that hyper focused Chaos Innoculation builds are rather Tanky. There is not a rule against stacking different methods of protection though. For Instance, Templars are Str/Int and typically invest in both stats, and have passives in their area to reflect this: such as "Body and Soul" 20% Increased Armor & Energy Shield. This would lead to a character who's Energy Shield capacity wasn't quite as high, but retained the ability to use Healing Flasks when situations called for it, and had damage reduction applying to both Health and Energy Shield. So is that better than pure Energy Shield? I sure don't know, and that's why I'm here. In fact, I'm only ASSUMING that Armor and Elemental Resistances even apply to Energy Shield, since I have not tested whether they do or do not. If anyone has detailed experience on Energy Shield survival, and any good numbers on whether or not pumping Int is more useful than say grabbing every Energy Shield Delay skill first, that would be greatly appreciated. Not just for witches (mostly for them lol) but for any Class using Energy Shield extensively.

any one know the INT vs ES % or what ever...
i remember seeing it in game but since i don't have beta access yet i cant get ingame to check.

i think it was some thing like 10 INT = 1 ES?

I was considering the possibility of making a Ranger with Chaos Innoculation, since I'd be at range most of the time anyhow and that gives me more time for the Shieldhealth to recharge itself, but it's so far away...

You get a +1% buff to energy shield total for every 5 points of int. Other than that, I have have as many questions as you do. :)

Just to clarify about evasion,

Some evasion is pretty nice, but pure evasion is the just a trap to slaughter people. Acrobatics and phase acrobatics require pure evasion, therefore they shouldn't be considered when discussing it.

I believe the max dodge cap when you have all evasion nodes maxed is 95%, which means you take on average 95% less damage. That is pretty awesome, until you get to the part where 1 out of every 20 hits, you'll be hit for full damage that will, most likely, take you from full HP to dead.

Evasion's great with iron reflexes, or combined with armor or combined with ES, but yeah. Just thought I'd mention since your post discusses the acrobatics abilities, which require 0 armor and 0 ES.

Does armor reduce the damage taken on energy shield? I could'nt find any information about this.

"

Consternation wrote:

Does armor reduce the damage taken on energy shield? I could'nt find any information about this.

armor works "before" ES. details in this post
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/38125/highlight/page/page/2

"

1) Avoiding the hit:
- Chance to hit (accuracy vs evasion) for attacks
- Chance to dodge for attacks, or spells with phase acrobatics

2) Avoiding the damage:
- Block chance for attacks, sometimes spells.

3) Mitigating the damage:
- Armour for physical damage.
- Resistances for non-physical damage.

4) Taking the damage:
- Non-chaos damage removed from energy shield until it's depleted.
- Remaining damage (including all chaos) removed from life.

You need to remember that builds that have a large health pool typically have ways to regenerate that by hitting mobs etc while Energy Shield is stuck at whatever until you stop taking damage for a period of time. That's also one of the reasons that the ES pools tend to be larger than health.