Costly access to physical damage reduction is a snowballing problem.

Right now, the main sources of universally accessible and permanent physical damage reduction (in terms of hits) are, that I know of:

- Armour and the auras that provide and enhance it.

- Arctic Armour, if you can stay stationary.

- Minimum endurance charges (up to 12% possible for int or dex builds that can't reach maximum endurance charges, mandating you dedicate a craft on two to three rare items depending on anointment for that small value).

- Generic physical damage reduction (body armor and shield affixes, certain unique items).

- Physical damage taken as other elements (not available whatsoever on the base tree; gear is the only source).

Out of these, armour is the only thing that can be sourced in volume from the skill tree, and that primarily consists of percentile increases as opposed to flat additions, broadly constrained to the strength portion of the tree.

Determination is currently the only reliable option for players to mitigate physical damage without depending on access to gear. This stands in pretty stark contrast to the broad and even incidental availability of elemental resistances.

This then makes Determination feel mandatory for the builds that don't normally use armor, and won't have incidental access to the pure Strength required for the aura - and from there, you'll typically need to invest in reservation efficiency, which then means aura effect, which essentially turns build design into "what auras do I build my skill around?"

Physical damage reduction should be something you have to invest into, of course. But there are way too few avenues to do so, making those few that are available pigeonhole you into the same patterns over and over.

I'm not sure what can or should be done about this, but I'll throw out a couple random thoughts.

- A new option in the Resistance and Ailment Protection Mastery granting access to a moderate amount of additional physical damage reduction (5%?)

- A new option in the Evasion Mastery that gives you -1 Physical Damage taken from Attack Hits per 150 Evasion Rating, up to -100.

- A new option in the Staff Mastery that gives you substantial additional physical damage reduction (10%?) against enemies at close range.

- New options in the Charge Mastery that grant an additional minimum Endurance, Frenzy or Power Charge (may need to replace existing targeted ailment immunities).

- Sources of physical damage taken as other elements on the main skill tree. Two reasonable locations for passive clusters that do this would be the node to which Arrow Dancing is currently attached, and the node to which Ghost Reaver is currently attached; these are far enough from good sources of maximum resistance that their benefit shouldn't become exponential without high investment.

- Move Imbalanced Guard to attach to an attribute node closer to the Duelist/Ranger areas (perhaps the junction node to which Graceful Assault is attached?) so its effect is more accessible to characters running small amounts of Armour without Determination.

More sources, more options, more variety, more viability.