What is the point of building defenses?

As far as i am aware, the biggest phys hit you can take in this game is the Elder death explosion with roughly 40k. Not an attack you will typically tank unless you are specifically aiming for it so it's hardly even a benchmark. Next highest should be uber shapers slam with 25k. Against that you'll prevent ~12% with 20k armor and ~30% with 50k so while it won't be enough by itself it still does quite a bit even in the case with 20k armor it's equal to 3 endurance charges.

So yeah the char sheet in game is trash, we all know and armor isn't some all powerful tool against phys hits but it's very useful. The fact that determination is the most used aura ever since it's buff a year ago proves it more than anything else.

Armour is very useful, even in relatively small amounts. The bigger hits certainly expose small to medium armour values though. The idea is that armour is great at stopping smaller hits, but it wouldn't be so good against getting hit by a bus. It's a strange application of reality in a game that is filled with inconsistencies with reality.

I think they should fix the defensive bar to offer three tiers of approximations:

Small Hit, Medium Hit, and Large Hit.

I'm sure there is better or more appropriate wording, but the idea is that it would give players hints on how much physical damage reduction they have and cause the player to realize that armour values become less effective against bigger hits.

I think enough players come to the forums claiming 90% physical damage reduction, not realizing that means very little in the wrong context. They are clearly not paying attention to the way it is worded which is: "Estimated Physical Damage Reduction". I know the devs can just point to the wording, but eventually it makes sense to revisit something if enough people are missing it.

you shouldnt expect to really face tank in this game. one of the biggest layer of defense is moving fast and attakcing or casting only once in between moving. Second big layer si knowledge. I am always amazed at how much top players know about mob types and damage types. Defense is useful but knowledge and moving. Also blowing shit up helps a lot. Hence why people sometimes complain about meta stuff. like heatshiver doubling your damage for instance.

They doubled the effect of armor (which they probably could've done in the earliest years of the game when literally everything was a big hit against armor mitigation, even common small enemies) so it is more of a worthwhile investment and there are also ways to improve its effectiveness like phys taken as element (which effectively makes it a smaller hit vs armor for the calculation).

A friend of mine was concerned that I was losing evasion when going Iron Reflexes, but I genuinely felt so much safer having that extra armor instead. I'm sure what I did was not optimal and I was supposed to fit grace/vaal grace in there somewhere but armor was strong enough that I at least could go with personal preference.

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VolcanoElixir wrote:

They doubled the effect of armor (which they probably could've done in the earliest years of the game when literally everything was a big hit against armor mitigation, even common small enemies) so it is more of a worthwhile investment and there are also ways to improve its effectiveness like phys taken as element (which effectively makes it a smaller hit vs armor for the calculation).

A friend of mine was concerned that I was losing evasion when going Iron Reflexes, but I genuinely felt so much safer having that extra armor instead. I'm sure what I did was not optimal and I was supposed to fit grace/vaal grace in there somewhere but armor was strong enough that I at least could go with personal preference.

to be quite honest i think evasion is such a terrible stat. evasion can be mimicked by simply manually dodging. a lot of memes about always be moving to dodge everything but its kind of true.

damage mitigation layers or shields and such are very useful because when you do get hit, theyre there as the safety cushion.

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yamface wrote:

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VolcanoElixir wrote:

They doubled the effect of armor (which they probably could've done in the earliest years of the game when literally everything was a big hit against armor mitigation, even common small enemies) so it is more of a worthwhile investment and there are also ways to improve its effectiveness like phys taken as element (which effectively makes it a smaller hit vs armor for the calculation).

A friend of mine was concerned that I was losing evasion when going Iron Reflexes, but I genuinely felt so much safer having that extra armor instead. I'm sure what I did was not optimal and I was supposed to fit grace/vaal grace in there somewhere but armor was strong enough that I at least could go with personal preference.

to be quite honest i think evasion is such a terrible stat. evasion can be mimicked by simply manually dodging. a lot of memes about always be moving to dodge everything but its kind of true.

damage mitigation layers or shields and such are very useful because when you do get hit, theyre there as the safety cushion.

Well the problem is evasion as a main mitigation concept to begin with. If it worked so you evaded all damage it would be ridiculous. You would be immortal. But if it only works "most" of the time, then you are guaranteed to die at some point when it hits.

I suppose they could do some parallel things, like I-frames on a movement skill that scales with evasion, or travel skill cooldown reductions, or action speed, or reduction in enemy crit chance/dmg. The issue is there are so many mechanics in PoE it would end up getting abused by non-evasion builds.

Also if its "too good" it ends up being mandatory or subsequently balanced around (looking at you spell suppression)

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Well the problem is evasion as a main mitigation concept to begin with. If it worked so you evaded all damage it would be ridiculous. You would be immortal. But if it only works "most" of the time, then you are guaranteed to die at some point when it hits.

I suppose they could do some parallel things, like I-frames on a movement skill that scales with evasion, or travel skill cooldown reductions, or action speed, or reduction in enemy crit chance/dmg. The issue is there are so many mechanics in PoE it would end up getting abused by non-evasion builds.
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evasion does reduce enemies crits. an attack crit is rolled against evasion to see if it hits and is then rolled against evasion a second time to see if its allowed to be a crit, if it fails it is downgraded to a non crit. so 75% chance to evade means an enemy will always miss 3 times in a row for every 1 hit that lands and 75% of its crit strikes will be reduced to non crits.

some of the shit being written about armour in this thread is making my head hurt whats this shit about it takes up to 20% of its value off guys just keep it simple you need 5x the value of a hit to halve its damage. You basically get 25k armour for turning determination on and wearing any armour gear which means you'll halve even big phys hits (hence why we use it).

Yes its worse vs big hits, big hits are rare and what you have to build pure PDR and phys taken as ele to reduce before it gets to your armour.

Evasion is absolutely OP if you can mitigate the hits you do take, its garbage if its the only defence you use.

OP has clearly never played a tanky character if he thinks building defence is pointless :p, if you have block recovery and any decent block chance you basically can't die in a T12 as it is if you wanted to put no effort in.

The thing about defenses in PoE, is that you can stroll along, even in T16 maps, killing everything around you and everything seems fine, even though your defenses do in fact suck (without you really knowing it). The moment you actually do take a nasty hit, you have no real defense to write home about - and you get "one shot", which again spawns a post on the forums.

The defensive requirements needed today, are much greater than they were just 1 or 2 years ago. But the options are also greater.

If you only level/build your character based on dps, you will experience that disappointment very often: that you look weak compared to the "T12 unmodded map".
Of course, then you and the end game content seem very unattainable.

Without a good defense/offense balance, it is impossible to make a build that will reach all, or almost all, end game things in the game.

It's better to have more good defense settings than just two or three on top and think that you've finished the job.

It is a matter of the players' experience and implies a good knowledge of the mechanics of the game, i.e. creating a good and optimal balance between skills, items and passive points.

Players who often follow the meta build will have more problems when they get into this.

These are most of the defense settings of my current build (it's not my intention to self-promote but to show what a good defense build looks like):

4.6k life/1.2k es, 77% phys reduction, 81% evade, 92/53% suppress, 77% max el. res., 76% max chaos res, 730 life reg. per sec + instant life/es from items, Ignite + shock immune, freeze 141% avoid, chill 20% avoid, avoid interruptions from stun while casting, nearby and hit enemy are blinded and deal 15% less damage, reflect immune, phasing + onslaught, etc.

This kind of build trivializes most things in the game.
The Feared and Uber bosses are the only challenge.
And the final price is below 30 divina.
And it is possible to make dozens of similar and better ones for each ascedancy.