Overhauling Defenses

Hey,

im a noob but i feel like defenses are in a terrible place in poe right now.

My Trapper this league has 74% phy reduction, 73% evade, 100% spell supression (56% dmg prevented), around 4k life and permanent blind aura and i still get oneshotted all over the place permanently.

It just feels bad that offense is the best defense in this game. If you have insane damage and just clear screens, you dont get hit.

But if you dont have that damage but actually use the defense mechanics, it feels worse. I mean what more can i do if i have EVADE, ARMOR, SUPRESS and BLIND. There is not much else i could use in the same build and it still feels horribly bad.

It would probably feel better if i had 20 divine to spend into more damage.

I dont know much about the game but to me as a newbie this concept feels pretty weak and bad. Defenses dont matter / work in my eyes.

Due to how armor works in this game, you can't really trust that tooltip damage reduction. I'm sure your resistances are capped, which alongside your suppression should take care of most spells. What I suspect you're lacking, is proper physical reduction on top of your armor, like endurance charges and/or "physical taken as X element", the latter being a very powerful and somewhat underestimated stat.

A 4k life pool is very low, at least if you're lacking proper mitigation.

The community asked for more defensive options - which we sort of got, but they also made said options more required.

But you are quite right: Your offense will 'always' be your best defense. It has always been like that in PoE. You're "supposed" to get enough mitigation/avoidance to take one hit, and let your avoidance alongside your sustain take care of the rest.

Armour should always be referenced in terms of how much armour you have, not how much phys mitigation the in-game tells you because the in-game calculates off of a laughably small hit (and armour is flat mitigation in this game, so the bigger the hit, exponentially the worse your mitigation). To give you an idea, you need at least 20k armour for it to make a meaningful difference in red maps. If you want to feel somewhat tanky, you need 40k+. You also want to be running a guard skill on top of this.

If you have less than 10k armour (your pot doesn't count if you don't have 100% uptime, since the gaps are where you get killed), which is what I suspect looking at the gear you still have on, it will do next to nothing in red maps.

You need more armor and life. Probably 5k+ life and tooltip 90% phys reduction (not that the tooltip means much, but it gives you an idea).

IMO evasion doesnt work anymore, individual mob dmg is just too high. Previously it was good for evading big hits that went off here and there... right now a blue mob is doing such big hits with its default attack. Ofc some base evasion and a blind aura doesnt hurt, after you have the main defenses up (armor and spell suppession or glancing blows).

Also make sure you have shock, freeze and stun immunity. And some incoming curse effectiveness reduction doesnt hurt.

"

TemjinGold wrote:

Armour should always be referenced in terms of how much armour you have, not how much phys mitigation the in-game tells you because the in-game calculates off of a laughably small hit (and armour is flat mitigation in this game, so the bigger the hit, exponentially the worse your mitigation). To give you an idea, you need at least 20k armour for it to make a meaningful difference in red maps. If you want to feel somewhat tanky, you need 40k+. You also want to be running a guard skill on top of this.

If you have less than 10k armour (your pot doesn't count if you don't have 100% uptime, since the gaps are where you get killed), which is what I suspect looking at the gear you still have on, it will do next to nothing in red maps.

Okay thanks for the info. I switched gear to new character but im pretty sure i was around or below 10k armor, so not enough.

But then i dont know how i can reach 20k or even 40k as a Trapper. I dont have access to much more armor than i already used. I could get some more life with expensive upgrades but no idea about the armor.

When I play a trapper, I generally aim for Skin of the Loyal/Lords. The 100% global defenses is massive when you are running Grace - Determination - Defiance Banner.

As first poster mentioned there's a lot of things that reduce and penetrate.

My Inquisitor last league had 94% Phys reduction. 4% over cap due to this and using Doryiani's Prototype. It was essential to overcompensate and still got ripped by certain lightning attacks.

You can survive sub 5k HP but your certainly need to understand eHP and recovery.

My biggest issue with defense currently is that it's been reworked in a way that defensive Auras are a no brain pick. I never did Aura stacking until the Defense rework. It's kinda boring.

"

remixzwE wrote:

But then i dont know how i can reach 20k or even 40k as a Trapper. I dont have access to much more armor than i already used. I could get some more life with expensive upgrades but no idea about the armor.

Run determination and molten shell, like everyone else is.

"

TemjinGold wrote:

When I play a trapper, I generally aim for Skin of the Loyal/Lords. The 100% global defenses is massive when you are running Grace - Determination - Defiance Banner.

You can blame me for this stat.
But maybe i shouldn´t take responisbility for everything above 30% ?