Whatever happened to mechanics that worked with energy shield? Life based stuff has been so cool

Some really cool life things that have happened in the last 3-4ish leagues:

1) Petrified blood + progenisis (with pathfinder w/ large increases to flask effect too) + free aura w/arrogance support
2) Defiance of destiny (42% of life healed instantly)
3) Dissolution of flesh
4) Strength of blood changes
5) Utula's Hunger
6) Bloodnotch + immutable force + es mastery (straight up hit immune )

And probably a few others I might have missed have made life based characters way more powerful than they have ever been. Now when I look at flat energy shield character it feels pretty lack luster. Even CI + ES has not seen any new support outside the 10% phys taken as chaos mastery.

I like that life characters are getting some love but is es still a thing that is worth building around? (Outside of specific mechanics - energy blade, ci, etc)

Just a few of the combos above basically make a life based character hit immune, and cost very little gear/tree investment (1+2 and 6 above). My brain that is stuck in the past would have never imagined ggg would have allowed hit immunity ever.

Any one see any light at the tunnel/cool changes for es? Or will it go the way ward went without support or any updates from big G?

Divine Shield and Mahuxotl's Machination both interact with Energy Shield in interesting ways.

I do agree that CI and Low-Life archetypes are not very strong nowadays. Hybrid ES+Life builds are much more popular than they have been though, which is good.

we have aegis aurora. that's like all of the things you listed, but combined

I agree that aegis is super strong but it is no where near as strong as blood notch + immutable force + es mastery.

With aegis you still have a 25% to miss the block and take the entire hit .
Bloodnotch works every single time and it doesn’t even use a gear slot. (Just 2 jewels + a few points on the tree)

Not to mention that you can use things like petrified blood and progenisis to add less damage taken to your life hit pool.