Will hybrid armour / evasion be good after the update?

Was reading over the changes to defenses and I like what I see; however, I didn't notice much mentioned about hybrid armour/evasion builds. Will they be comparable to builds that stack loads of armour or evasion?

People used to talk about hybrid ar/ev rarely, now barely at all. Yes, there are barely any given keystone/unique which would enhance further this hybrid defense. It was talked that it should be good but barely anyone went for it, you could try experimenting on it and telling results.

I imagine it would be God against trash, but most practical approach would be either hybrid defense converted all to armour through iron reflexes + something scaling with armour or full evasions with end charges + other %phys mitigations.

they will be like combined armor/evasion guys right now.
No meaningfull amount of armor and lack of evasion.

this combo is pretty bad because you lack the most important part:

what the heck do with elemental damage, esp spells?

Armour does nothing, Evasion does nothing. Spell suppression 'might' be it but.. it depends on how expensive it is SS to good enough levels.

My take on it is:

phys damage: get whatever AR you get, get a %PDR roll on AR-related shield/body, get 4-5EC, craft 'phys as ele' on Helmet - you are now at around ~50% reduced phys, stacking anything else is a waste of time

attack damage: same story - youll get like 4-5k EV 'from thin air'. get blind.

after that (hopefully you can get it all for few passives) just STACK BLOCK and dont care about AR/EV

sure, you can stack Grace and Determination, pop flasks etc - but.. why? Block is and is going to be the king.

well, now when i think about it "imbalanced guard" supposed to take place in a build with hybrid defense. Shifts defense from trash to big hits and caps at 50%, this allows to have reduced investment into armor and invest saved points into smth else. With armor being buffed it would take quarter of current investment to get same mitigation (excluding %phd). Maybe i should take a deeper look..

with imbalanced guard and spell suppression or more max resistance, it might work... worth a try I guess.

Use all passive points e equipments for DPS, beacuse GGG hate defence and melee !!!.

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Chavolatra wrote:

Use all passive points e equipments for DPS, beacuse GGG hate defence and melee !!!.

yeah I've actually been a little disappointed with what it takes to make a "good" melee build. And I mean like "ethical" melee (EG strike skills). But to be fair, I think melee *might* not be in that bad of a place, it's just that there is stuff that's so over the top that clears the screen way too fast, that by *comparison* melee looks bad. I don't know, I've been playing a lot of D2R lately and I'm on my third character, a melee barb, and melee gameplay feels really good. The problem is when you start comparing to screen-wide clearing spells, it starts to feel disappointing. When I'm playing alongside my partner, who is also playing an "ethical" melee strike build, it's actually a lot of fun. When I play alongside someone who wipes the whole screen before I even get a chance to interact with the enemies at all... it feels like my character is useless. Tough to balance that I guess.

Anyway...

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sidtherat wrote:

phys damage: get whatever AR you get, get a %PDR roll on AR-related shield/body, get 4-5EC, craft 'phys as ele' on Helmet - you are now at around ~50% reduced phys, stacking anything else is a waste of time

attack damage: same story - youll get like 4-5k EV 'from thin air'. get blind.

after that (hopefully you can get it all for few passives) just STACK BLOCK and dont care about AR/EV

sure, you can stack Grace and Determination, pop flasks etc - but.. why? Block is and is going to be the king.

yeah I definitely can relate to this. This is what it seems like right now. I can't exactly predict the future but I'm hoping that going hybrid armour/evasion will be "viable" after Scourge update. You're right about stacking block and spellblock. Also about stacking endurance charges. In regards to going blind, GGG said that using blind isn't going to be that effective unless you have a lot of evasion. So blind might not be so good on a hybrid build. It would be nice to get good defensive utility out of frenzy charges. Maybe a cool keystone or something that gives you some dodge or block per frenzy charge, then going full hybrid red/green build would be a little better in terms of defenses. IDK just spitballing. Thanks for the responses though, good to see others thoughts on this.

I've been reading the patch notes https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3186390 (didn't realize they were up already). It looks like they've lowered the amount of armour/evasion necessary to reach the same degree of physical or attack mitigation as you used to. Obviously this is good for hybrid defenses, because hybrid builds struggle to reach the higher numbers you get by stacking one or the other.

Now the problem is dealing with spells and elemental damage. They're adding increases to maximum resistances to the armour side of the tree, which is very strong; and they're adding spell suppression to evasion regions of the tree...which is yet to be determined in terms of how powerful it is compared to +max resist... The problem I'm seeing now is that as a hybrid armour/evasion character... your phys reduction and attack damage reduction is all sorted out, but when it comes to elemental damage, which mitigation mechanic do you pick? Do you go both spell suppression AND +max resist? Do you ignore both and go for block? I guess this has always been the fun part of POE, the answer isn't always clear and finding the "right" answer is what draws problem solving math geeks to this game.

Thankfully POE devs have been listening to the problem solvers that are drawn to this game. Really, I am happy to see these changes and look forward to problem solving with them as more details are revealed.

PS. Kind of a side note, but I really wish POE had a more modern resistance formula for elemental damage, instead of simply going from 0-100% resists. It's very likely too late now in the game to change it, but I believe the antiquated diablo 2 resist could be better. The current elemental resistance system has exponential growth in terms of effectiveness per point invested, so it's weak at low levels and busted overpowered when you close the gap towards 100% resists. A better system would create a logarithmic curve, like this:



Again, it's realllly late in POE's development to bring up such a gripe, but it's always been a gripe for me so I'll just point it out anyways. Why is the current system problematic? Because every 1% of +max resist after the first is exponentially more powerful than the previous 1%. It would have been better if the system had diminishing returns for each point put into it. People are motivated to put in a lot of effort to eek out even a smidgen of increase, plus a system of diminishing returns gives you at least *some* benefit for heavily investing into it.

Avoid this, is noob trap !!!

The Brass Dome: Unique has been redesigned to more properly embrace its identity of a high Armour Body Armour, while not providing as extreme of a difference compared to a Rare Body Armour with top tier Armour modifiers. It no longer has "10% reduced Movement Speed", "50% increased Shock Duration on you", or "30% reduced chance to Block Attack and Spell Damage". Instead, it now has 350-400% increased Armour (previously 600-650%), “+1-2 to all maximum Resistances”, and “Gain no inherent bonuses from Strength".

Memory Vault: No longer grants “Gain Armour equal to your Reserved Mana”. Instead, it now grants “1% increased Armour per 50 Reserved Mana”.
The Formless Flame and The Formless Inferno: Now grant “Armour is increased by Overcapped Fire Resistance” (previously Uncapped Fire Resistance).

Craiceann's Carapace: Now grants 200-250% increased Armour (previously 300-350%). It provided just a bit too much Armour compared to Rares when considering all the other stats it provided.

Transcendence: Keystone Passive Skill now grants -15% to maximum Elemental Resistances (previously -5%).

Mask of the Tribunal: No longer grants “Nearby Allies have 4-6% increased Defences per 100 Strength you have”. Instead, it now grants “Nearby Allies have 1% chance to Block Attack Damage per 100 Strength you have”. Existing items are unaffected.

Font of Thunder: Now has 400-500% increased Evasion and Energy Shield (previously 500-600%). Existing items can be updated with a Divine Orb.

Rime Gaze: Now has 140-160% increased Energy Shield (previously 180-200%). Existing items can be updated with a Divine Orb.

Doryani's Delusion: Now has 150-180% increased Evasion Rating (previously 180-220%). Existing items can be updated with a Divine Orb.

Garukhan's Flight: Now has 300-340% increased Evasion Rating (previously 320-380%). Existing items can be updated with a Divine Orb.

Lioneye's Remorse: Now has 180-220% increased Armour (previously 200-250%). Existing items can be updated with a Divine Orb.

Magna Eclipsis: Now has 180-220% increased Armour (previously 200-250%). Existing items can be updated with a Divine Orb.

“Avatar of the Chase” Raider Notable Ascendancy Passive: No longer grants “35% more chance to Evade Melee Attacks during Onslaught” or “35% more chance to Evade Projectile Attacks during Onslaught”. Instead, it now grants “10% more chance to Evade Attacks during Onslaught”.

The Snowblind Grace and The Perfect Form: Now grant “Evasion Rating is increased by Overcapped Cold Resistance” (previously Uncapped Cold Resistance). They both now have 80-100% increased Evasion Rating (previously 30-50%), and The Perfect Form now has “10-15% increased Dexterity” (previously 5-10%).

Willowgift: No longer grants “Fortify Buffs you create instead grant 30% more Evasion Rating”. Instead, it now grants “4% chance to Suppress Spell Damage per Fortification”, but removes the less damage taken from Fortification. Existing items will no longer provide Evasion Rating while you have Fortify, though you will need to use a Divine Orb to obtain Spell Suppression from the item.