Life vs energy shield question
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idk warrior class has a lot of modifiers to make their life have QUALITY HP with damage mitigation. the number is lower but they also take less damage.
they can fit in their build elemental resistances, armor, life regen, and have plenty of passive skill tree points for more damage mitigation. you guys really need to try playing a mage class because poison and bleed effects ignore energy shield. not really a fair comparison and wouldn't be fair to be 1 shot even easier despite how much energy shield I had. in fact its so bad I prune and sell all waystones with any words containing poison bleed or elemental resistances. |
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" What the F are you talking about. Quality HP? wtf is that. Do you know how armor works? Armor cannot stand big physical hits. The rest of damage will be tanked by very small pool of HP. Armor as Ele is good., but cannot really compete with resistance, at all. Resistance is a linear scale reduction. Purely relying Armor as Ele will suffer the same problem as physical. Big Elemental Hits. Plus, HP have lower pool and are much much more susceptible to DOT. And did you know POE2 have a disgusting mod that just remove armor when hit? Yeah basically running naked. All those Armor also Ele? yeah, useless. Last edited by Exilion99#5481 on Feb 10, 2026, 8:38:23 PM
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First problem when comparing life+armour vs pure ES:
Lets say you have 15,000 energy shield (no damage reduction or mitigation, apart from 75% all resistances). If you take 10,000 dmg physical hit it is 15,000-10,000 = 5,000 energy shield left Same situation with armour, lets say you have 100,000 armour and 5,000 health If you take 10,000 dmg the formula is: Damage reduction vs 10,000 physical hit = armour / (armour + 10x 10,000) = 100,000 / (100,000 + 10x 10,000) = 0.5 = 50% so, 10,000 hit with 100,000 armour is 50% damage reduction which means the 10,000 physical hit gets -50% reduction --> 10,000 x 0.5 = 5,000 damage And this character had 5,000 health so you would be dead 5,000-5,000 = 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Second problem when comparing life+armour vs pure ES: Since pure energy shield (or ES/EV) build usually dont focus health at all your items always provide 3 prefix slots: prefix 1 = % energy shield prefix 2 = flat energy shield prefix 3 = %energy shield + flat energy shield For armour pieces: prefix 1 = % armour prefix 2 = flat armour prefix 3 = % armour + flat armour prefix 4 = % armour + life prefix 5 = life prefix 6 = % life (essence for body armour) You need to choose either focusing on health or focusing on armour, can't get max values on both of them. ------------------------------------------------------------------- There are also other problems: - Chaos Inoculation removes about 1,500 health (base health, since you dont want any life rolls on your gear) and in exchange you don't have to get any chaos resistance which is the weakness of energy shield builds since chaos removes double amount from energy shield. - Just like alot of comments say, there are almost zero life passives in passive tree, but you can easily get 400%+ energy shield from passive tree with str+int or in or dex/int starting locations. - When it comes to surviving in POE2, usually you just take maximum of few hits at a time and not 10+ hits per second. Which means as long as you survive those few hits and can reposition yourself, dodge roll from danger or otherwise react to incoming damage having large energy shield pool outshines any other defense mechanisms. |
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" are you talking about tanking hits from a boss? I'v played warrior I know how strong it is, iv been hit doubly with boss skills that would have otherwise 1 shot me. explain how armor, shields and resistances is fragile, what is it fragile against? |
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" Read the reply above yours. Last edited by Exilion99#5481 on Feb 10, 2026, 8:48:15 PM
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Even to get that amount of ES you have to sacrifice so much damage.
I have negative resistances, right now -45% fire resistance Last edited by TwitchGLHFsport#2155 on Feb 10, 2026, 8:50:49 PM
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" You've made me realize that ES not only have advanges in 3 prefix, but CI also remove suffix pressure for an expensive rare mod, Chaos Res. That's huge. 1 prefix and 1 suffix advantages. No wonder they typically can stack attribute craps even since POE1. There's also issue the ES can scale as damage for multiple things. Dang it. ES is broken af. Last edited by Exilion99#5481 on Feb 10, 2026, 8:52:04 PM
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" Resistances are in suffix slot, you have no excuse for not capping res. Armor/EV also have to cap res. |
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" Health that would have more value than blank Energy shield given armour. Pretty obvious. They arent 1:1 mechanics unless the life build ... has no armour. " Noone is trying to rely on armour applied to elemental and not capping their resistances. If they are then I will give my tried and tested forum response. Of:
Spoiler
Build issue
" If we take out the armour and regen part of things sure. Otherwise no. But then with CI you can flip it back to yes. Theres nuance missing here. " Okay this mod barely does enough to your armour if you ... have any build with armour. Mobs cant remove enough from your build. The mod basically is a free mod with an armour build. It does nothing. 5k armour after standing still for 30 seconds + broken? Great I have over 100k+, 5k is nothing. If you have low armour, enough for this mod to be a danger to you, then again:
Spoiler
Build issue x2
" Why are people standing in 10k+ hits? is the better question. I dont have 5k health and my armour character has... this:
Spoiler
 Ive stood in everything these people complain with, and they have 12k ES and they die: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3902311/page/2#p26557253 So the calculation on things is pretty far off, but thats most likely because armour applied to ele can vary wildly between different people. There are also factors like Brass dome (Crits deal no extra damage) Node on the tree if I DO get crit I defend with 200% armour... POB cant get anything about armour right which is probably never going to change because of things listed above. Also defend against projectiles with 120% of armour... Map mods there or not... TLDR on Armour: Theres a bunch of conditions that come into play with armour to just list a number and then try to make a comparison. " Theres a happy medium for sure. And the suggestions I have for life would bring that more inline without having to make such a difficult choice. Which can vary WIDLY between different ascendancies and classes. Suggestion being:
Spoiler
think access to 3-3.5k with all life rolls on gear, no shield, no titan. Should be a pretty good target for life. So we are talking a very small buff to help out the non titans and mercs with some cushion.
Yea all that stuff about CI and energy shield nodes everywhere totally agree, said all that stuff to death already. Its too much, too easy to get alot etc.. etc.. Mash the clean
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Why am I being attacked? duh, I'm using armor, not evasion. You've been playing since POE1 then u should know. Armor excels at small hits and pretty much trash at BIG hits. BIGS hits are the issue and you need enormous amount of armor + life to survive. If, if the armor mod convert physical to ele instead of armor also ele, as suffix, then Armor would be crazy good. Armor problem is never elemental in the first place, it's big physical hit. Frankly, Life should be removed from suffix so that AR/EV don't need to compete. Life should be in trees or implicit. ES should stop being a defense, instead, replace int base with Ward. ES and Life then can compete AS IMPLICIT and trees. Last edited by Exilion99#5481 on Feb 10, 2026, 9:21:26 PM
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