Energy is the best defence by far

TLDR: If you want to be tanky energy shield is by far superior to any other option right now.

If you play something like a warrior, you would expect to be pretty tanky in the endgame. But compared to spell casters who spec into energy shield every other defence mechanism is a joke. There are a few reasons for this.

1. Energy shield is the only defence that works against all kinds of damage. If you dont have energy shield, you have to spec into armor to avoid physical dmg, into elemental resistences to avoid elemental dmg, into chaos resistence to avoid chaos dmg. Also you somehow need to get your life up, which is only really possible through items since there is barely any way to get more life in the passive skill tree. So you have to spec into a million different things and in the end you are somewhat tanky. To get actually tanky you also have to invest into block chance because all the other defences are still not enough.

On the other hand you can spec into energy shield and well... you are done. no other defence needed. Because energy shield works against every damage type.

2. There are way too many notes for energy shield compared to life. The only equivalent to energy shield, in the sence that it works against every dmg type, is life. But there is only one note in the entire skill tree that buffs your life by a measly 3%. On the other hand it is no problem to get multiple 100% to energy shield. A very tanky energy shield cahracter can casually tank arbiter one shot mechanics while other characters struggel to tank map bosses.

How to fix it?
1. Nerf energy shield. It shouldnt be possible to ignore all boss mechanics and just tank all pinnacle bosses. just remove a bunch of the energy shield notes.
2. Buff Life. Life is the only equivalent to energy shield in the sence that it works against all dmg. Give us the option to spec more into a high health pool if we wanted to.

We wrote a ton of posts about balance between defences. ES is the winner sadly. But the tactics of Devs for improving one thing is to nerfing one other.

There is no Life passive points to increase 2k more Life especially to those builds that can't reach even 2k life with no ES. 10k ES is insane build and hard die during fight. But 1700life with 85% armour is completely (Removed by Support).

Balance balance balance...where are you balance????.

+1

Considering that damage either hits for nothing or your entire life. ES is superior compared to just regeneration or armor. Evasion works, until it does not.

Obviously the only defensive layer that doesn't have diminishing returns will have an advantage in extreme cases, not sure why this is even debated.

Armour and evasion outperform ES with gear below 'near-perfect', and even longer if you wont abuse Energy Barrier cheese/exploit.

The main problem of this game is being balanced around extreme cases, so lets learn from poe1 and not do that maybe?

the idea behind having no life passives is that armour, evasion, and other damage mitigation can be used to significantly lower incoming damage

and so GGG puts armour fixes on the back burner for no apparent reason and forces people to go all the way to the other side of the tree in order to not get 1 shot by the t4 bosses. i have no idea why it is so low priority to fix

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AintCare#6513 написал:

Obviously the only defensive layer that doesn't have diminishing returns will have an advantage in extreme cases, not sure why this is even debated.

Armour and evasion outperform ES with gear below 'near-perfect', and even longer if you wont abuse Energy Barrier cheese/exploit.

The main problem of this game is being balanced around extreme cases, so lets learn from poe1 and not do that maybe?

At no point in the game do other defences outshine ES. I would say with bad gear it is even worse. Getting to 5 or 6 thousand ES is no problem when you just do a campaign play through. Getting your health pool up to 3 thousand is a challange for a lot of builds even if you are equipped "near perfect".

To avoid getting one shot with a non ES build, you have to severly sacrifice dmg. A decent ES pool is smoething you can casually get on the side.

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teobibu#1278 написал:

We wrote a ton of posts about balance between defences. ES is the winner sadly. But the tactics of Devs for improving one thing is to nerfing one other.

There is no Life passive points to increase 2k more Life especially to those builds that can't reach even 2k life with no ES. 10k ES is insane build and hard die during fight. But 1700life with 85% armour is completely (Removed by Support).

Balance balance balance...where are you balance????.

Big LOL

I have 11K energy shield and I'm hardly insane build. I'm lvl 94 lich bro.

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Tohtori_Murha#4392 написал:

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teobibu#1278 написал:

We wrote a ton of posts about balance between defences. ES is the winner sadly. But the tactics of Devs for improving one thing is to nerfing one other.

There is no Life passive points to increase 2k more Life especially to those builds that can't reach even 2k life with no ES. 10k ES is insane build and hard die during fight. But 1700life with 85% armour is completely (Removed by Support).

Balance balance balance...where are you balance????.

Big LOL

I have 11K energy shield and I'm hardly insane build. I'm lvl 94 lich bro.

Common bro... 11k shield??? It's insane amount to be used as defence. What you expecting from a shot really? To be 20k damage? Balance is s..t unfortunately.

Well, it took few well timed trades and a lot of thinking.

Still, I have 0 chaos res and that chaos spiral from strongbox eats me like a box of candy.

So, not immortal. Very far from it.

I take as much of it as I can and IF I find more dps...Well, ES is the one which suffers. I can take a good punch from rare and unique, but if it is loaded with chaos, one shotted.

What's sort of funny is that things like Chaos energy and poison are supposed to prevent you from investing too much on energy alone. But in reality all they do is pressure you to get Chaos Inoculation and get even more dependent on just ES.