Armour/ES hybrid is viable in HC…kind of

Finished my HC play through of my Oracle to lvl 90 and was determined to play Armour/ES. This defense combo feels a lot better than Armour/Evasion, but there are some pretty big caveats.

1. I’m playing the plant build which is range and pretty strong. I don’t think Armour/ES would feel great as a melee

2. It takes a lot of investment to feel decent. I don’t have god tier gear but I have above avg gear for HC. Below are some of my defensive numbers:

a. 2.8k hp
b. 3.2k ES
c. 168% of armour applied to elemental damage
d. 8k armour (honestly don’t know how to get above 10k without giving up most of my damage)
e. EHP 23k
f. All resist including chaos at 75%

3. I have no room on gear for rarity… unless I get a lucky prefix roll on a ring.


I’m tired of playing blue life characters but frankly I don’t know if the effort is worth it to do anything else in HC. There are still quite a few hits in the game that will one shot me even after all my investment, but a high ES character would survive.

I’m leaning towards the solution being more life on the tree because pure evasion is just abysmal, but if that’s too much of a jump, armour at least be buffed against bigger hits, dots, and ground effects.