Flay' Flicker Finder - 800,054 DPS, 50/390MF, fast clear speeds. [New pics in MF gear/FAQs]

I attack more than 15 times per second with flicker. Multiply that by the average damage on the flicker and you have DPS.

Single Target Flicker *800,054 DPS*
Flicker > Multistrike > Melee Physical > Weapon Elemental Damage > Critical Strikes > Critical Damage.

AOE Flicker *454,734 DPS*
Flicker > Multistrike > Melee Physical > Melee Splash > Critical Strikes > Critical Damage.

Lightning Strike *115,689 dps*
Lightning Strike > Faster Attacks > Lesser Multiple Projectiles > Power Charge on Critical.

Offenses with 90% chance to hit, 90.9 crit chance and 887% crit multiplier*

Defenses with Flasks *3k ES 42% reduction 50% evade 75% ele res*

When I go for highest possible MF, I drop Anger and use Purity of Elements instead to make up for Andvarius. I swap out Maligaro's, Darkray, and my amulet and ring for more MF. I also swap in the IIR gem instead of critical strikes. I am down to 14.08 attacks per second.

MF Offenses with 88% chance to hit, 70.5 crit chance and 779% crit multiplier

Magic Find *25% IIQ and 390 IIR

MF and Single Target *375,862DPS*
Flicker > Multistrike > Melee Physical > Weapon Elemental Damage > Critical Strikes > IIR.

MF and AOE Flicker *270,912DPS*
Flicker > Multistrike > Melee Physical > Melee Splash > Critical Strikes > IIR.

Keystones
Pain Attunement
Ghost Reaver
Ondar's Guile
Vaal Pact

Current Passives at Level 90
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgYABX0FtQzyDkgOrQ_EEHsRLxGWFHUWvxjbGYoZ1RqPHhohYCgqKLUqOCsKLIUtHy9vMFQwfDMMO3w-z0CgQ5xHBkyzUDBRR1M1VupW9VoaWqZcil8qX2pjQ20ZbWxwUnBWcLt0QXTxd9d713zOfeN_K3_Gh9uIQo2_j_qQG5fQmVeZmpoTm7Wdo6Kjpcumf7GztMW1SLb3uMq5Prl8vea-OsBRwQDBxcHzwuzDbdaK2RPbGtte227b1NzH44Tp_utj6-TsGO1B707y4fPq9Uv22vsJ_Kv-K_-T_94=

I killed all the bandits in normal and cruel. I went for a frenzy charge in merciless. Another frenzy charge means faster hitting and more evasion and less chance of ever running out of frenzies on long flickers and desync.

Skill Links
6l Flicker in Chest
Flicker > Multistrike > Melee Physical > Melee Splash > Critical Damage > Increased Item Rarity.
I typically run AOE with the typical Flicker setup and Item Rarity. I switch to WED for bosses. I switch out IIR when I am helping out friends or leveling and don't care about items. More damage is always safer. High enough damage freezes everything and you don't take any damage at all, except from ranged spells and reflect.

4l Lightning Strike in Gloves
Lightning Strike > Faster Attacks > Lesser Multiple Projectiles > Power Charge on Critical.
This helps us build and keep charges. It also helps with long range when you want to clear without running into a pack. On a thorn shrine, divine shrine, or around a boss or giant room of mobs.

4l Auras and Curse in Helm
Reduced Mana > Grace > Anger > Critical Weakness
Grace is important for additional defenses. Anger is just a bit more DPS and makes everything catch fire. If you wanna run a purity or haste or clarity for easy mana, any of those work.

4l CwDT in Boots
CwDT > Immortal Call > Enduring Cry > Righteous Fire.
Righteous Fire is overleveled so it is not supported by CwDT and I cast it on bosses to melt them quickly. It's dangerous and should be used only when you have constant mobs to kill and leech life from.

3l Shield
Wrath > Discipline > Hatred
These three are the most important auras: Discipline to make up for low ES. Wrath means perman shocked. Hatred freezes everything.

3l Blood Rage in Dagger
Increased Duration > Blood Rage > Smoke Mine
Blood Rage is a staple. Increased duration makes sure it never runs out and you flicker into a pack without rage and don't gain frenzy charges and die. Smoke mine gives you 9 seconds of 20% increased run speed so you can make up for the lame boots with only 10% run speed. I can't think of anything more useful

Gem Quality
I was poor when i started this build, and used non-quality level 1 gems, which I leveled myself, and flipped for 20 quality, and then leveled again.

1. Get a flicker strike with 20 quality as soon as you can. More crit on our main attack means more damage and that is great. Level this gem to 20.

2. Get 20 quality on Blood Rage at the same time as Flicker. Quality on Blood Rage means more life leech and since we rely on life leech to live, this is as important as quality on flicker. Level this gem to 20 too.

3. Get 20 quality on critical weakness and power charge on crit next. Both of these gems will increase your dps significantly. Crit weakness is straight up more damage on cursed mobs. PCoC is great the quality lets it do its job better. As crit chance goes up, keeping up charges because super easy. Once you get a charge, keeping it up is easier, because you become more likely to get another power charge as your crit goes up from the charges you hold.

4. Get 20% quality on melee splash. More AOE is awesome and makes your damage and freezing/chilling powers greater.

5. Get 20% on Lightning Strike. It makes projectiles pierce and makes taking on giant packs with LS possible. I only level LS to 12 because that is all the str I have. More levels is just slightly more damage. More quality is a much improved skill.

6. Get 20% quality on Faster Attacks, IIR, LMP, Critical Damage.

7. Get 20% quality on everything else, except the auras and reduced mana. It really doesn't matter on auras or mana since the quality provides nothing to us.

I leveled with Flicker from level 15 or so. The most important low level stats are life and mana plus life on hit and mana on kill.

For skills I just used flicker and blood rage. Flicker on everything with a high DPS dagger, Mightyflay at 35, and everything dies easily. You will die sometimes, but not frequently. Pick up the rest of the skills as you can. Use Hatred for extra DPS until you can run more auras. Flicker in a 4L is good enough until 60. In the RRRG 4l use: Flicker > Melee Splash > Multistrike > Melee Physical. Use several mana flasks to keep the flickering up. Use a life flask to keep up life under Blood Rage degen.





At about level 60 you can go Chaos Immune as soon as you get Ghost Reaver, Vaal Pact and about 1000 ES. When you have the gear and the points to get these, go CI. Stay CI until you get a Shavronne's. Once you get a Shavronne's take out CI and get Pain Attunement. Like this

Pros
Run 5 auras. Can switch them for utility. Groups like your support.
Insane DPS and clear speed. Fastest clearing build ever.
High MF. 50/350. Kill fast and find items.
High Evasion means good defense and that projectiles don't hurt you.
Fun flicker style. Crunch everything mobs into ice chunks.

Cons
Low ES and Armor means you will die often. Not a build meant for endless level gain.
This is as expensive a build as I can imagine, but you have to have money to make money.

Stomping an easy Canyon Map
http://youtu.be/wMrY8oByEcA

Shocking an extra damage extra cold damage Plateau
http://youtu.be/lcZvafby5OU

Smashing Jungle Valley with temporal chains and chilled ground.
http://youtu.be/4dzvthYhXCs

Dark Forest freezing twinned Oak bosses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w02cZ38Ut7g

Second half of a Gorge map. Recording trouble on the first half.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj49v877KlM

Temp Chains and Chilled Ground Vaal Kill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs1dYg3UmEg

A:My build is not accessible to new players. It is not easy to save up to get a Shavs. However to be honest I don't think getting a Shavs is impossible for anyone who really wants one. I can make about a ex an hour with this build, running maps and vendoring/selling only the stuff I find. No flipping. No big unique drops. Just selling decent rares and orbs, and vendoring for alterations, and chaos sets. That means without much luck it would take a week or two to get a Shavs. A little longer for everything else.

The goal for this build is to be both the highest possible consistent single target dps and aoe dps build in the game. To hope to do this without any expensive items is to hope in vain.

A:I farmed piety until about level 77 because Lunaris 3 has great sized packs for chain flickering and piety drops lots of items. Put everything you find worth anything up in your store easily using the Procurement program and separate Store stash tabs. Then, make sure you put buyouts for at least the best 5 items in your store. Use the chaos set recipe and you will make good money on piety. Sell the poor rares for alterations, and convert to fusings and buy exalts with about 80 fusings. And then just keep at it until you find better stuff to sell.

A:Faster flicker is better and I don't have real mana problems. I have about 1000 mana so that I can sustain my flicker with increased max inflow from mana leech on my Crown of Eyes. I went around the map for extra max mana to help sustain the faster use of mana. The faster you hit the faster you kill and the faster you instantly leech life and the faster you move so you get in and then out of damage. The faster dagger is amazing for a faster lightning strike. Finally the faster I hit with flicker the faster I get shock stacks on everything. My DPS is effectively double what I posted because everything is always triple shocked and is poisoned with adder's touch and is burning from righteous fire. I am almost capped on crit chance with the curse so a slower higher crit dagger is not going to benefit me as much as a faster hit.

Attack speed benefits DPS by making flat modifiers repeat more frequently. So that makes the flat damage from anger and wrath much more powerful. It also make the flay physical damage on my rings and ammy hit on more attacks so add more to DPS. Hatred is not a flat bonus so doesn't change total DPS for fast or slow hits.

Let's look at a simple example of fast vs. slow. If my slow dagger base hit is 100 and I hit twice a second with flicker I do 200 DPS. If I run a flat wrath aura for lightning damage on top of that worth 50 lightning damage per hit, I would do 100 + 50 per hit or 300 per second with 2 hits.

Say I do only 50 damage per hit of physical with a faster dagger that hits 4 times a second. While the two daggers, both slow and fast have the same base DPS, 200 PDPS, the faster is more effective DPS. When you toss on the flat 50 lightning damage from wrath you still hit four times a second, for 50 physical + 50 lighting, or 100 each time, four times a second for 400 DPS. The faster dagger is 33% more DPS, even though the base daggers have the same PDPS.

This is why faster is always better if you can handle it mana wise. This faster-attacks equals bonus-damage-from-flat-modifiers effect works for flat elemental damage from anger and wrath auras, from flat physical and elemental damage on jewelry and other gear. It also makes the effect of a flat bonus on the dagger itself add more DPS to the dagger itself. E.G. my dagger has a 17-35 flat damage that means more DPS on an ambusher than on a Demon Dagger.

Faster is more DPS AND because the hits are a little lower damage reflect is easier to absorb because it is also lower per hit and our armor soaks it up better.

While it is harder on manna that problem is surmountable. Faster is also much much better for defense. I attack so fast that I don't take much damage ever. I flicker in and out before mobs get off their spells. I could probably run with 2k es and not die on most maps except to reflect packs. Finally for reflect high physical and slow hits overcome armor and kill you fast elemental hits don't hurt much on reflect

A:I think my perfect weapon would be an Ambusher base itemlevel 77 with the following affixes.

prefixes
Physical % - 160%+
Flat Physical - 19-39+
Hybrid Physical and Accuracy - 75%+ and 100+
suffixes
Critical Chance- 35%+
Attack Speed - 26%+
Accuracy - 321+ or Critical Strike Multiplier - 35+

A spell damage suffix is not quite as high damage as additional physical damage built into the dagger because the damage built in acts as a multiplier, whereas the spell damage is simply additional physical and elemental damage with all the other additional damages. I would now prefer to take a second hybrid flat physical prefix in place of a spell damage prefix, taking whichever comes first.

I am trying to craft the above Ambusher from the ground up. Hopefully I will have some luck.

Doing the math and adding in 20% quality on the dagger with whetstones makes a dagger that does 124-383 damage and 2.016 attacks per second for 511 Pdps with 9.02 critical hit chance, with minimum top tier rolls. It could divine somewhat higher.

A:You can only keep it up when you are running out of mana. That means you can't have spike mana regen from mana on kill, because it cancels the buff to reach full mana. That means you have to have enough max mana that you regen/max leech back enough to not quite keep you going. This works at a 5l Flicker, with IIR as the 6th, and with about 1,000 mana. Once you flicker 1 time, hit the flask. You will flicker for a long time before you run out of mana. If you have about 1,200 mana you will keep going almost forever with the flask. You will play better with the 6% max resists (assuming you have overcap resists) and more IIQ/IIR, but it will be harder to learn to time popping it after you start a flicker. Basically it goes LS twice, RF, Flicker twice, Divination Distillate, then pop the granite or diamond flask after that as needed.

A:A couple tips.
1. Get more es to absorb the first hit. The end cry and immortal call on cwdt should save you after that point.

2. Get molten shell with cwdt as well to help absorb the damage and give you more armor.

3. Use a granite pot with 100% increased armor as well and use it before you launch into a reflect pack.

4. I have 16% leech. You may not be one shotting yourself but instead 5 shotting yourself with melee splash reflect reducing your es a little each time until you can't take the last hit.

5. I use lightning strike on double phys reflect as it does much less physical damage.

6. I wear more MF gear to nerf your top end damage. I would have so much in full dps gear that I would not be able to use of against reflect without instantly dying.

7. I watch for and never flicker into a thorned shrine

A:Yes, when do Dominus in the Palace, I swamp WED in place of Melee Splash. It makes the fight easier. That is the only gem I regularly swap, and only on bosses.

I also swap out lightning warp for purity of elements when doing a elemental weakness map. Run purity instead of anger. Also possible to run a purity of fire in place of anger or purity of lightning in place of lightning warp. These two are useful in crematorium and Dominus but not necessary.

A:There is something called an effective hit point pool. It's the number of hit point as you have times the reduction in damage from your defenses. It is important to get this as high as possible. Getting high defense and no hit points is dumb, just like high hit points and no defense is silly.

It is typically easier to get some of both, because the cost of getting extremely high either one in passives and gear is usually too much. For example to get 10,000 ES and have no armor is insanely expensive and won't protect your from physical damage as well at 7,000 ES and armor that gives 40% physical reduction.

That being said, usually defenses are subject to increasing diminishing returns and hit point pools are not, in the same way. So aiming to get more hit points when you have defense and hit points is usually the best option for defense.

I am not saying at all that EHP = HP. I am saying that the easiest way to boost EHP is to get BOTH the cheap improvements to defenses as well as the cheap increases to HP. While a high HP is sufficient to deal with almost all damage, it is not always the easiest way to do so.

For example, what you dismissed as not defense (probably because it is a given in all builds) is maxed resists at 75%. This means all elemental damage is reduced to 25% of what it would be.

If you have 8,000 ES and take 25% of the damage from elemental attacks from say the Crematorium boss, Megaera, then you will be taking lots of fire damage. Maybe a couple thousand a hit when in the fire. You can take maybe 4 hits from her.

Say I want to live through the fire twice as easily. Should I aim for 16,000 HP? Of course not, that is impossible. Instead get a couple ruby flasks, which reduce her damage temporarily by 40%. That means you effectively increased your HP by 40% and also increased your HP recovery by 40%. A flask is therefore better against her, temporarily than 8,000 more ES, because the side effects of recovery are also increased relative to the damage taken.

If you really want to kill her, get 6% more max fire res from divination distillate, a ruby flask for 10% more, and use purity of fire for 5% more. Getting your fire res to 96% completely trivializes her damage. You take 4% of the damage done by fire. With 3,200 ES, and temporarily with 96% fire res, my effective ES is effectively 20,000 and my defenses are better (13,333 EHP) than if I have 8,000 ES and just use a flask for 85% fire res. It is much better especially for CI because reducing the damage also removes secondary problems like stuns, and status effects, whereas increased ES does not reduce them, and then you have to spend additional efforts to counter both the damage with higher ES, and the effects with dream fragments, eye of chayula and so forth. Actual reductions in damage are better than higher ES.

This same principle makes actual HP pool important, but not everything for all types of damage. As the hardest damage to take in this game is elemental (aside from physical reflect, which is handled mostly by CwDT + IC) I think the best way to deal with damage in the game is auras + flasks + divination distillate.

This is how I kill Dominus on level 78 maps with 3,200k ES. I use purity of lightning, a topaz flask that refills on crit, and divination distillate. The combo reduces his lightning damage to nothing, and I can eat a touch of god, and keep on trucking.

A:I don't worry too much about flickering into packs with 3k ES because for everything except for bosses my cold damage from Hatred is enough to freeze on first hit and each hit refreezes. I also have really high evade so I don't get stun locked, even if I do get stunned sometimes. When stunned I just make sure to pop the granite and diamond flask and get one flicker in and I am back to full health and everything is frozen again.

Stuns have a 50% chance to be avoided from ES and another 50% or more from my evasion so stun locking doesn't really frighten me. If I see a crazy shrine or huge pack of mobs, i just Lightning Strike it dead from range, and avoid the risk.

A:I think in isolation as a main skill ST is probably better than LS because it can multi hit, and always passes through mobs. LS hits once and with quality has a 60% chance to pierce. But! In the times when ST shines I prefer to instead flicker. The times when I fear to flicker or need a pcoc refresh I think LS works better.

LS travels faster than ST and goes farther. That means I can spam LS against dominus from off the screen in the residence and get some power charges and some frenzies before rushing. ST would require me to get so close to Dominus that he would see and start to target me and attack/cast at me.

This same pattern exists with a giant pack like those around some shrines in domination. I have seen packs of about 50 mobs before. To flicker into them and not kill might mean death. They can surround you and drown you. I just LS from really far away until I whittle the pack down to only 20 voidbearers. Then I flicker the rest dead. For ST I may have to close too close and would take damage from the pack where LS is a true ranged attack almost like a bow. ST is a hybrid and works better for tanking than LS probably does but not as well at longer range.

Finally ST being slower to travel to its peak distance means I don't get the PCoC as quickly as the LS gives it to me. ST probably does more damage than LS as it travels and would tank mobs better with a Life Leech thrown in, but flicker does more than ST on both counts so I use the LS as utility and Flicker as damage. I feel like LS gave me Power charges faster because of its faster travel speed.

And finally, yes, LS will shock a single target much better than ST or Flicker because it gives more lightning damage than either. So the utility of LS means that it complements the flicker build better than ST. IMHO. If you use flicker differently and want to use ST as the main skill and flicker as the utility then your reasoning will be different.

A:I took arcane vision because i am low life and hate doing maps where I can't see diddly squat. It's purely for easier playing. I also took it because I really need more int to wear Shavs and use my gems. I have 40 Int from the nodes by Arcane Vision.

A:Removing Chayula will make you more likely to be stun locked it's true. The point of a flicker strike build is to one or two shot everything. Dead mobs dont stun. If MK3 plays all the time with US, then he doesn't want to learn to adjust his play style depending on the pack type to get by without it.

I would say it is only really useful on stage 1 of a Dominus fight. That stupid lightning stream can chain stun you. I used Chayula there for a while but have outleveled the need for it, because he is now too squishy. I can solo nonmap Dominus in a out 1.5 seconds.

Its only useful when you are not quite strong enough for the content. But even then, If you learn what sort of mobs have attacks that stunlock, like void bearers with gmp and other fast hitting mobs, you can just LS that rare type of mob dead and flicker into the rest of the packs.

Chayula is only so so. I much prefer to run Grace for 50% evasion. That avoids stuns as well as damage, while with chayula you just avoid the stun but have to soak up more damage. Along with evasion, ES by its nature gives another 50% chance to avoid stun. Blocking gives another 30% chance. Since all of those multiply together to give you about 82% chance to avoid stuns on any one hit, and higher on projectiles, but lower on spells. That chance is high enough that you can take 95% of mobs without being chain stunned. The few packs that are problems are easily recognizable. Hasted rare fast hitters on maps with more attack speed can be a problem. Continue to learn the game better and you can get by.

I think unwavering stance is not worth the increased damage you take. However my build incorporates Grace. If you don't have it your results may vary. Even then I would take other defensive block nodes like Poutsos did and not take unwavering stance. Putting 6 points in block by the ranger and the shadow areas for 14% more block and 60% increased defenses from shield is much better defense for the points than US because of the minimum 8 point wasted nodes going the distance to US. If you want real defense, use a Stone of Lazhwar and Rainbowstrides and high block chance.

I don't have a Chayula any more. I sold mine and am leveling just fine. Almost 89. If you can't face the risk of death and prefer certainty to speed and risk, you shouldn't be playing a flicker at all, IMHO

A:I agree that with low life you are more likely to die because you will have lower es. However, I made this build because I wanted to play a flicker and also MF. You can't afford to solo high level maps as a flicker with no MF. I can solo maps because I make a huge amount of currency with my MF. I found all the currency to get my crown and my 6l shavs in two weeks. I make amazing orbage from drops. So yes I can afford to buy and roll maps to level however I want. Which I never had when I did your build and had 6k es. I also die less on this character than when I played my ci flicker. The only explanation is the evade or maybe I just know the game better now. I am now level 88 and going on 89. I don't die. I can flicker in full 6 man groups. I also have a set of high es gloves and boots which helps some but I am not sure it is worth losing MF. MF is the point of this build. After I level I grind crazy maps and make great currency and sometimes die. I then buy a set of maps and roll them and level without a death. I host maps and make some currency back. It's worked so far. I plan to go to at least 91 or 92.

I am also attempting to prove that enough dps will overcome all problems. If I hit fast enough and hard enough nothing will get a chance to touch me. Just like the piety in lunaris 3 is dead before she can attack, I think if I reach 1,000k dps I can instagib every mob and boss and not worry about defenses as much even in 6 mans. I run 77 maps without a death. I may be wrong but I like the theory. It feels to me that killing five times faster than you did on your flicker may be fast enough to take less and almost no damage. Especially if I get enough to permanently freeze everything. Right now I am close.

A:I try really hard to have frenzy charges on all the bosses. Really really hard. I rush into them from the last pack of mobs. Luckily the hardest bosses usually have small adds that give us free frenzy charges. If I lose all my frenzy charges I just Lighting Strike them dead. It's much slower but works on almost all bosses.

A:When you get a shavs and go low life, it's not a big deal because then it is a percentage of your life, and not your es. 3.8% of my life is only 1% of my ES, since my ES is much. So the blood rage is not a high damage by percentage once you get enough ES.

Without ci chaos can hit us hard. When it comes from a spell or from a melee attack or degen.

Blood rage itself and shavs and mean that I take damage from blood rage constantly which means I do not regen my es outside of leech until blood rage expires. The damage is minimal. Its based on 3.8% of our life,and with 850 life and no chaos resist that is about 51 chaos damage a second. Even 3k es soaks that up really easily.

But if you aren't leeching you don't regen es at all. I typically never let my blood rage expire and recommend it on a q inc duration. So just keep leeching and attacking and you will never have a problem.

If I really just have to shut off blood rage I press x and swap weapons and since it is in my weapon it turns off instantly. But I also lose 3 auras so I almost never do that.

A:The best way to keep up with mana costs of fast flickering is by leeching mana and having a high base max mana which raises your leech per second cap. We do enough phys damage that we always leech our max per second. The max is 12.5% leech per second, so if you have 900 mana (i do - mostly on rings and neck with some passives) you leech 113 per second. So you start with about 300 unreserved mana, gain about 113 mana a second, and also get regen on top of that, so you can flicker about 6-7 times, then wait a second or two, which I spend running to the next pack. Repeat. When on a boss, I start flickering and then pop my mana flask (divination distillate).

A:As far as taking the 18% physical damage node, I far prefer a skill point. 18% increased physical damage is pretty pathetic in the grand scheme of things. My DPS is as much from my elemental damage as from my physical damage, so 18% doesn't improve my lightning or fire damage. It is also way past the point of diminishing returns. With my current gems and gear and passives I am just shy of 500% increased physical damage right now. Adding 18% increased physical damage to that is effectively 3% increased physical damage and that is about 1.5% increased actual DPS. That is not worth the skill point in my opinion especially because I don't need more damage right now.

I think that 18% increased damage in cruel is OK but I prefer a skill point. A skill point can get you 25% more crit chance or more crit multi, or even 8% increased mana is better in my opinion. 18% increased physical damage adds 18% on top of about 500% increased physical damage I already have from other passives and gems.

18 on 500 is 3.6% increased physical damage or maybe 2% increased dps because it doesn't increase the elemental auras. 2% is good but I like utility like mana or the 18% es node or something else. But that's me. If you want that damage its not bad. What you will likely find is that you 18% when you take it at level 50 is closer to 6 or 7% more damage but it gets pushed out as you get more and more other increased damage from everything else

I would much rather use the skill point for the 20% accuracy bonus with Depth Perception, which provides a much higher bonus to an elemental crit build than 18% physical damage, and which is on of my goals for more skill points from leveling

A:My priority on jewelry is first Crit Multiplier, Accuracy, Flat physical damage, Mana, and then Elemental Damage.

A:Like all the other monsters. I hit them with my flicker and they die in a couple hits.

A:Evasion with Ondar's Guile is significantly better defense for our build than Iron Reflexes and the loss of our evasion. While neither helps with spells, evasion and ondars trumps armor by far.

Damage sources:
Spells have physical and elemental damage.
Projectile attacks have physical and elemental damage.
Melee attacks have physical and elemental damage.
Reflect has both physical and elemental damage and is a melee attack.

Here is what armor does:
Armor only negates a portion of their physical damage from the above sources. If I got 10k armor it would at the most negate up to about half the damage of a physical damage hit and not more than 850 (1/12 of your armor may be negated) damage. This is good but I already shoot up to 7k plus some endurance charges from my granite flask in the situations when I know high physical damage is incoming. Armor does nothing to spells except EK and nothing to really negate the dangerous type of damage which is cold and then lightning in that order. Fire is not usually a problem cause its so slow and doesn't shock or freeze which can lead to my death. Armor helps a little with physical reflect but not with elemental reflect.

Here is what evasion with Ondar's does:
Like armor it does nothing to spells. Not even spell projectiles. But! Evasion negates 95% of projectile attacks including their elemental damage!!! Evasion mitigates every other melee attack as well including their elemental portion because the hit never hits. That means it reduces physical and elemental damage from melee attacks by 50% over a series of hits. It doesn't reduce the magnitude and we can still be one shot by hard attacks buuuuut... Drumroll... Evasion also reduces crits to normal attacks so we are not easily crit. Half the projectile and melee attacks are evaded and another half of the crits that hit are reduced to non crits. This affects both the elemental and physical portion of the hit. Evasion also means we avoid a large chunk of our own reflect damage out right and a portion of our crits are reduced to normal hits. This makes evasion much much better to us for reflect.

If you have come this far and play my build you know that the only thing that stops us is freeze and shocks and spell damage. Eveasion helps there more than armor. Of course I would use armor if I didn't have to lose my evasion. But I prefer evasion, because I can run grace. To go IR and armor I would also need to run grace and also determination, which uses two auras instead of one for evasion.

All this is in regards to my build which is an es build. I think armor is awesome for life characters who can avoid elemental status effects because their high life reduces the duration or completely avoids the effects as elemental damage below the threshold. Armor would be much better in this situation.

In an ES build where low max life means elemental damage not only damages but freezes and shocks characters for long periods, armor does not benefit as much as evasion which avoids many elemental effects outright. So for all es build evasion is better IMHO.