Armor vs Evade vs Energy Shield

Hi! I'm kind of new to the game, so I was hoping you cold help me with this question.

Just as the title reads, I want to know how are the values for those three related to each other. I understand that equipment that has "armor" tends to require STR, the one with "evade" requires DEX and the one for "ES" requires INT, but other than that I don't how much of each one is better.

Going through act 3 on normal I was using some equip that had about 120 armor and 120 evade, and I came across a robe that had about 80 ES. But the thing is that the required level for both of them were roughly the same (something about lvl 30, I don't rembember). My character is a witch, and I do have a lot more INT than STR or DEX. So it kind of seemed weird. Do 80 ES equals more or less to 120 armor AND 120 evade for a witch?

I also did a little research on other threads before asking, and I found that armor also reduces damage taken to the energy shield. And also that there is a specific order in which damage is calculated, and it turns out evade comes in before armor or energy shield(?), so having high evade helps "more" than having armor? I hope you can help me with this.

Any answer will be apreaciated. Thanks!!

Hi, I'm still fairly new to the game aswell.

The way I understand it is that Armor decreases the Physical damage that you take (reduces damage to Life and Energy shield), However it's only effective against small hits ie. Hits from normal mobs. If you had heaps of armor and got hit by a boss you will still take a bunch of damage (Eg Brutus)

See http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Armor

Evasion affects the chance for something to hit you (Also note that It is not a random chance based on your evasion, See the below link). Also note that your evasion rating can be countered by an enemies Accuracy rating. Because evasion only affects your chance to be hit and not how much damage you take, When you do get hit, You get hit HARD so you'll most likely need a large pool of either life or energy shield or both.

See http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Evasion

Think of Energy shield as a Life bar on top of your life bar, If you were to take damage (Excluding Chaos damage with goes through your energy shield and directly damages your life) it is subtracted from your energy shield first until you have none left, Then damage is applied to your life instead. Again like with Evasion energy shield doesn't affect how much damage you take, so when you get hit you get hit hard.

See http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Energy_shield

Another source of defense that is worth noting is Endurance charges, and endurance charge is a buff that lasts a short while that boosts your defense during that time, You can have multiple endurance charges on at once (Your maximum amount of endurance charges can be increased through items and passives). Endurance charges are different from armor however as they decrease the damage you take by a percentage, Meaning that it works for large hits as well as small ones.

See http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Endurance_Charge

Thank you! That information is very helpful!

I will try to find a balance on those three based on what you've told me now.