Armour vs Evasion for cold crit CI? Help please.

Okay so I'm playing my first PoE character ever, I'm a lvl 63 witch and currently I got around 2300 ES with Discipline aura.
My armour is at 111, 2% phys reduction.
My evasion at 9% chance to evade.

My resists are nearly maxed out but I'm having trouble with fast run speed phys damage monsters, unbelievable I know.

Anyway I was thinking about upgrading my shield to something along the line of a 1k+ armour shield.
I also got the option to buy a 250 armour 250 ES shield aswell.
So what I'm asking is would it be smart for me to get a 1k+ armour shield to try and raise my phys dmg reduction or should I just get the 250 armour/ES instead?

Also, is evasion an option?

evasion is not reliable at all, it is much better to depend on armor

the mainstream CI-based build simply just accumulate ES, while using molten shell and granite flask to tank like a boss

some people (like me) might consider taking iron reflex node for the sake of comfort
there are also few nice critical damage nodes along the way to iron reflex

Thanks for the answer!
Was looking at Iron Reflex earlier today and I'm wondering then if all my passive nodes for +10% evasion rating still work, and if I'm going iron reflex I assume I should stack evasion instead of armour, since I get the bonuses from my passives?

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rickah wrote:

Was looking at Iron Reflex earlier today and I'm wondering then if all my passive nodes for +10% evasion rating still work, and if I'm going iron reflex I assume I should stack evasion instead of armour, since I get the bonuses from my passives?

yes all the passive nodes with +% evasion (such as nullification) will work
the game will calculate your evasion first (from grace and items), then it will convert all your evasion into armor and multiple with +% armor nodes (such as body and soul)

i currently run dual spork totem build for MF farming, but will probably change to FP build later

my tree at lvl 81 looks like this

i will be maxing throatseeker nodes soon and possibly also heartseeker at ranger area later (or nullification)

Well to answer the question in the title is no ....and no. You dont need armor / evasion on your gear. Just stack es and some decent granite flasks. There is also the arctic armour skill.... Other than that, its all about knowing to kite and having some tools to distract and kill the enemy (taunts, curses traps etc)

In other words I need to change my skillset a bit, currently got ice spear on 4L with spell totem, elemental proliferation and lmp.
FP on 4L with lmp, faster projectiles and faster casting.

Then I got cold snap and frost wall as my other 2 "offensive" skills while having discipline, clarity and blood rage as auras.

Like I said before, my problem atm is for example act3 flicker strike rares and other phys dmg monsters who can close the gap on me quickly.
So I thought a boost to armour might be a faster/easier thing to do to increase my survivability rather than boosting my ES.
Reason was I saw a 1700 armour shield earlier on forum, and several around 1200-1500.
Thought that could be an easy boost that could help keep me alive for the time being until I can afford other options.

Use spell totem + summon skeleton. With 6 summoned skeletons the chances of getting hit are suddenly 1:8 (6 skels, totem + you) instead of 1:1 (1:0,95 actually). It works like a virtual evasion armor. You would need a shitload of real eva (and orbs) to get to an evasion rating of 88.5%.
Get/make 2 Surgeon's granite flask of iron skin (x% of increased armor + refills when you deal a critical strike) for when things get ugly and you're good to go.