Def mechanic: ES vs physical damage

I've just recently made a witch, and I'm a little confused about the function of ES. From my understanding basic defense mechanics is as follows:

Evasion: dex based, reduces chance of incoming physical damage to hit
Armour: str based, reduces incoming physical damage
Energy shield: int based, reduces nothing from incoming physical damage (???)

Upon physical damage,

a roll is done whether attack is evaded or not,
if no evade, armour reduces the incoming damage,
if Energy Shield is present, the incoming damage is applied to ES.

Based on this, ES provides absolutely ZERO damage mitigation, rather just serves to be a buffer before eating through life.

So how do ES based build deal with physical damage? Do ES builds actually invest in either armour or evasion? Do they just stack ES and make sure they are positioned optimally to avoid physical damage?

ES users will go for the Iron Reflexes node and pick up pieces that have Energy Shield/Evasion on them. That way, when they get IR the Evasion gets turned into Armor, which is then used for mitigating physical damage as much as it will allow. Others might head over to the Templar side of the tree and specialize in Armor/Energy Shield gear and the accompanying Strength nodes in that region allow them to wear said armor. In that case, some even pick up an "Aegis Aurora" shield which has a special property on it in that whenever you block you restore a percentage of your ES based on your armor total.

In some cases, some ES users will also invest into shield block nodes even though they might not be using an Aegis Aurora shield because shield block is quite strong. Physical attacks (most, not all) that are successfully blocked will cause no damage whatsoever and there's no entropy on block, just a binary yes/no depending on the roll. Otherwise, ES users stack ES as much as possible and also run some equipment that has properties like "Cannot Be Stunned" or "Cannot Be Frozen", especially if they go Chaos Inoculation (sp), which most heavily invested ES users do.

Wow thanks a lot! That cleared a lot of my confusion. So it seems that ES can't work alone. Now back to theorycrafting.

There's no defensive mechanism that can work alone successfully. So you'll have to combine ES with any other form of defense. It concerns HP builds as well.
ES+EVA = more likely to avoid being hit, more likely to avoid being stunned when hit, chance to avoid crits
ES+AR = reduced dmg taken, less likely to be stunned when hit
ES+HP = more likely to avoid being stunned, more likely to avoid status ailments
Several forms of defense could be combined for greater effect, it's the best option.
For ex. why aegis builds are OP? They combine HP/ES/AR/block. Four types of defense.
ES= more likely to avoid be stunned
HP= more likely to avoid status ailments (freeze/shock/ignite/stun, works as a dumper), depending on amount
AR= dmg reduction
block
On top of that there's the special aegis regen feature.

"

torturo wrote:

There's no defensive mechanism that can work alone successfully. So you'll have to combine ES with any other form of defense. It concerns HP builds as well.
ES+EVA = more likely to avoid being hit, more likely to avoid being stunned when hit, chance to avoid crits
ES+AR = reduced dmg taken, less likely to be stunned when hit
ES+HP = more likely to avoid being stunned, more likely to avoid status ailments
Several forms of defense could be combined for greater effect, it's the best option.
For ex. why aegis builds are OP? They combine HP/ES/AR/block. Four types of defense.
ES= more likely to avoid be stunned
HP= more likely to avoid status ailments (freeze/shock/ignite/stun, works as a dumper), depending on amount
AR= dmg reduction
block
On top of that there's the special aegis regen feature.

The problem with what you said is that every single of the combinations EXCEPT ES is done in a single base item +mod.

P.e. going armor or evasion you don't have to sacrifice Life because you can roll a single +max life mod on them.

On the other hand going with ES gear you CAN'T have armor/Eva (unless you have 10ns of exalts worth oh hybrid gear)

ES customization needs to be looked at. To keep costs on a level similar to armor and evasion gears you need to not have to roll 3 different ES mods on every single piece of equip to be viable.

A reasonable solution would be to boost the base ES of all items by 100% and Nerf the max ES mods by 100%.

The above will help with customization a ton, max ES will remain the same for well geared characters but low geared CI characters won't have to run with 2k ES and 0armor 0evasion

"

shroudb wrote:

Nerf the max ES mods by 100%.

Do you mean decrease the 140% increased es modifier to 45% or do you mean 140% to 0%?
Or do you mean nerf by 50% instead?
Im a bit confused when somebody says nerf by 100%.

I cannot disagree, good hybrid equipment is incredibly expensive. Theorycrafting doesn't work when we face the financial aspects, lolz.
Pure ES build can be totemer only, where's almost no damage impact on the char.
The cheapest solutions are high ES/HP, or ES/block, where player will have to invest more in nodes than in equipment, but nodes are for free.

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Chesto wrote:

"

shroudb wrote:

Nerf the max ES mods by 100%.

Do you mean decrease the 140% increased es modifier to 45% or do you mean 140% to 0%?
Or do you mean nerf by 50% instead?
Im a bit confused when somebody says nerf by 100%.

I meant half the bonuses (100% reduction based on original value/(100%+100%) or for simplicity halve them.

Say now a random ES shield can have ES from 80 to 600 making buffing the ES nodes really tricky without breaking those who already own GG ES gear.

My opinion would be to buff the base ES and Nerf the mod modifiers so that from a range of 80-600 to get to a range of 150-600.

Similarly a Norma armor has about 600-800 while a good armor piece can have up to 2-3k. The difference is much smaller percentage wise.

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amano_jyaku wrote:

I've just recently made a witch, and I'm a little confused about the function of ES. From my understanding basic defense mechanics is as follows:

Evasion: dex based, reduces chance of incoming physical damage to hit
Armour: str based, reduces incoming physical damage
Energy shield: int based, reduces nothing from incoming physical damage (???)

Upon physical damage,

a roll is done whether attack is evaded or not,
if no evade, armour reduces the incoming damage,
if Energy Shield is present, the incoming damage is applied to ES.

Based on this, ES provides absolutely ZERO damage mitigation, rather just serves to be a buffer before eating through life.

So how do ES based build deal with physical damage? Do ES builds actually invest in either armour or evasion? Do they just stack ES and make sure they are positioned optimally to avoid physical damage?

Well, evasion actually DOESNT prevent physical damage too. It prevents ATTACK damage, and it isnt the same (some attacks deal elemental or chaos damage too, and some spells deal physical).
Energy shield actually prevents ANY damage except chaos. However, in order to work, ES pool should be replenished. Here are some ways to do it:
1. ES recovery. Just dont take any damage for few seconds, and your ES will recover. It is easy to perform for ranged classes and especially - summoners.
2. ES leech. With Ghost Reaver keystone, your life leech will recover ES. It wont recover life, however, so those using Ghost Reaver, usually use Energy Sheild instead of life.
3. ES on block (Aegis Aurora). Just equip this unique, max your block chance, get decent armour and want your ES recovers like crazy.
4. ES regen. Zealot's Oath and Shavrone's Revelations work here.

How pure ES players deal with physical damage?
1. We have higher HP pool. You can stack more ES, than life user can stack life. More HP = can survive harder hits even without mitigation.
2. Block. ES actually greatly benefits from shields, so why dont use blocking as well?
3. Immortal Call. When you are immune to physical damage, you dont need any physical protection, right?
4. Using hybrid gear pieces to have considerable amounts of armour or evasion as well.
5. Fast recovery. Albeit physical hits harder, with enough recovery (life leech with Vaal Pact) you can recover from those hits in no time, if they dont oneshot you (and they dont because of 1.).

For me, 1. 3. 5. together work perfectly so i am never afraid of physical damage. Elemental damage is much more dangerous in endgame even for ES players without any physical protection. I can only imagine, how hard elemental damage is for armour-based characters....