Why is armor so bad in general, especially compared to energy shield?

Here's a link to a Kripp video explaining this problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw-uD-vz_5s

If this is true, this is deeply fucked up for all melee characters, as it makes investing in armor pointless compared to trying to get energy shield gear. And it's not like melee has it easy compared to ranged classes already. Why doesn't armor work ad advertised, and *actually* reduce the incomining damage taken by the stated percentage??

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Dieuw#7225 wrote:

Why doesn't armor work ad advertised, and *actually* reduce the incomining damage taken by the stated percentage??

Because despite claiming otherwise, GGG hates melee and wants it to die by making it the worst playstyle in their games.

Armor does not compete with energy shield. Life competes with Energy Shield. Armor competes with other forms of mitigation.

In PoE1 armor was better than it is now in PoE2, but it wasn't the best way to mitigate physical damage, it has diminish returns which make armor very strong to small hits but bad to big hits.

In PoE1 it has always been more efficient to convert physical damage taken to elemental damage taken (Cloak of the flame, Lightning Coil) and mitigate that extra elemental damage with Elemental Resistances than stack armor.

Armor not doing anything against the ramping elemental dmg is the biggest issue.

Large hits are only really a thing in boss fights (which sucks tbh), and 5 second long attacks from large monsters who wield a treetrunk.

Which is all fine and good until things like warrior having exactly zero support for any damage conversation. They only have armor and life regeneration. And if armor gets armor broken and the reduction is dependant on the damage of an incoming hit, then essentially as a warrior I have no chance vs endgame bosses. a 5000 damage hit that ignores 30% of armor will always one shot me even if I have the best gear. If I had a 9000 hp energy shield, I could take two seperate hits and be completely fine.

Energy shield cannot be armor broken, and it isn't dependant on the damage of an incoming hit. It *always* works at full strength, and STACKS on top of life for your total healthpool, AND it has increadible item support with %increases to your total energy shield. Where are imilarly strong options for life/armor? They don't exist, and even if they did, by the nature of armor scaling down with enemy strength and energy shield not, they will always be inferior as defensive options.

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krenderke#3861 wrote:

Armor not doing anything against the ramping elemental dmg is the biggest issue.

Large hits are only really a thing in boss fights (which sucks tbh), and 5 second long attacks from large monsters who wield a treetrunk.

Large hits do happen in the later maps, though. But even if they are rare, it is rather stupid that armor is at its worst when you need it most. And it means you are being double penalized, as the damage is both going up while your mitigation is going down. ES, conversely, only has to deal with the first bit, the damage going up.

It was dumb in PoE1. It is still dumb now.

That said, I think armor is lacking in a few ways. There isn't enough hp scaling to go with it, to provide a nice layered defense. It only helps against physical, which is great, but not going to help against the elemental or chaos caster. There aren't really game play changing nodes/gear like you have ES.

Armor is basically the fire element of defenses, while ES is the lightning... the latter gets all the fun toys, while the former is disadvantaged.