Why are life nodes required for any build to be viable?

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Necrogue wrote:

I did a few Shipyards earlier with 0 life nodes. Didn't make a video though.

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Necrogue wrote:

See, 0 life nodes. Life OP

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trollforum wrote:

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Necrogue wrote:

See, 0 life nodes. Life OP

No, you just took energy shield instead. ES =/= Life. Basically the same thing...this is just helping my argument.

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grepman wrote:

while all replies are technically correct, Id like to expand slightly on this:

1. Why is survivability so important ?

Because PoE's meta, at least endgame-wise, is defensive. Each ARPG has some kind of meta, and in PoE its definitely defense-based. I doubt its accidental, since we are supposed to be exiles, not some kind of demi-gods who eat devourers for breakfast and crap avian retches out.

Since life steal in the game is capped, and the limited instant lifesteal is hard to get to sustain, especially with recent nerfs, this game is and will be defense-based.

Also, dying is bad as in hardcore, its self-explainable. In softcore, dying a ton after getting into 70ish levels will mean you are unable to gain exp.

2. But why is life nodes/hp pool so important ?

This is purely a design decision. PoE with few minor exceptions doesnt offer much in terms of sustained damage, since you can always spam hit pots, logout, pop a portal or runaway by popping a quicksilver, or any combination of those methods.

The overwhelming majority of dangerous situations in PoE is burst damage : (near)one-shots. This is by design.

Now why life works the best. Armor in this game is designed to be very ineffective against burst damage. Evasion is pretty good, but entropy means you WILL get hit some time.

Block, both attack and spell based is really effective, but caps out at 75%. Meaning, at some point you WILL get hit..

as such, life (or ES) pool is really the biggest and best effective defense against one shots. that's not to say you should have no other defense besides it, because then you CAN get two/three-shotted in succession, but having a big pool is always beneficial.

(also, having a big HP pool means less chance for mobs to stun you or inflict status ailment on you.)

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Startkabels wrote:

Life nodes are required for life based builds because they multiply your life.