Some of the misconceptions and exaggerations about defenses and builds
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There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about ES, life, etc.
First off I'd absolutely agree that ES is overtuned compared to life, and that most melee skills (including pretty much whole of Mace) feel underwhelming and janky. Those things need fixing. But it's very common to read complete exaggerations here. Here's some of the misleading statements I keep reading: ES needs only a couple of passive nodes of investment -> No, ES builds commonly have from 30 up to 45 passive nodes for ES. Case example, a 12k ES build from HC: https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaalhc/character/draxgodx-4253/polukaloiservers The fact is that both ES and life+armour builds need a minimum of around 30 nodes on defense if they want to reach certain thresholds of survivability. You will be oneshot without ES -> Technically it's possible that you do have a max juiced map with a combination of mods that lead to a situation where the max damage roll of a specific boss mechanic is such that you get wiped. But if we look at the max damage you can ever take from end game content aside of those particular mod combinations, it's certainly possible to have the defenses to survive basically any mechanic. One of the highest damaging attacks you'll ever be met with could be, for example, the Arbiter slam. The max roll is 5800 physical and 3000 fire. Here's some of the examples of surviving that: With 0 stacks of scavenging plates and no shield, this Smith: https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaalhc/character/fastlanu-4807/Hood_Legend Without MoM, this Blood Mage: https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaalhc/character/ArChanum-2445/Nualia_Tobyn This Shaman without uniques: https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaal/character/phkhai251096-7759 This Shaman using Cloak of Flame instead of AR armor: https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaalhc/character/Extragonoff-1762 This level 86 Smith: https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaalhc/character/SkunekPL-4261/SkunekHC I left Titans out cuz it's so easy to reach on Titan. Warbringers also reach those numbers with Jade. Witchhunters reach them with Sorcery Ward. Oracle with Harmony Within. Armour doesn't do anything vs bit hits -> It indeed is less effective vs big hits, but it's absolutely not nothing. It can be the thing that lets you survive the biggest singular physical hits. For example, 20k armour is reachable by many builds without even including e.g. scavenged plating. With 20k armor, the Arbiter slam's 5800 physical is mitigated by 20000/(20000 + 10 * 5800) ~= 26%, turning 5800 damage to 4292 which is a lot more survivable. There's of course other mitigation you can add to that. E.g. shield's 8%. Now you're taking 3830 damage. Some builds will include conversion to elemental or chaos. Even 5% drops another couple of hundreds of damage off. It is true though that for the majority of armor-based builds, the gear is more expensive in total and the margin for error is smaller than it is with ES builds of similar expense. But that's more about ES vs armor, rather than about armor itself being useless - it isn't. ES is easy -> Honestly, with the right build and gear, all setups can be easy in PoE, requiring no more player skill than the ability to press a couple of buttons in a loop. The vast majority of players never reach those builds though. Generally speaking ES takes a while to start to properly scale. With the nerfs and reworks to the spirit skills that supported ES, the campaign is probably a bit harder on HC with pure ES than life or life+ES. Until you can minimize the charge delay and maximize charge speed or get significant direct ES recovery, you'll be faced with situations where you keep taking chip damage that stops you from recharging. Once the stats related to ES are maximized, it becomes very good and does give a higher functional survivability than armor does. Is that enough to make it easy - eh, depends. There's essentially immortal builds with and without ES, with the ES builds being more common, but again, most players will die every so often whether or not they have ES. Last edited by tzaeru#0912 on Dec 22, 2025, 1:43:07 PM Last bumped on Dec 23, 2025, 4:22:46 PM
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I don't think your example works in your favor.
With 20k armor and 3.5k health and a host of other damage mitigations you are not going to survive that slam if you take the fire damage into account. So you need to invest into armor, health, ele res, chaos res, armor applies to ele and chaos, spirit into scavenging plates, additional forms of damage reduction from shield, etc. to have your bases covered. With 9k ES and 0% fire res you will survive the slam. And that is very easily achievable. But additionally your damage will also be lower as melee, you won't be able to damage as you kite prolonging the fight, you will be way more susceptible to eating the damage of ground degens, eating the CC, etc. Not even health regen is a saving grace. It is yet another thing you somehow need to heavily invest in or it does nothing for you. A 50-100 health per sec regen is not much if you have just lost 3k life. But you kinda need to invest in that too because otherwise bleed will wreck you. If you just mitigated say that 3k slam but it had bleed on it, you are now faced with 450dmg physical dot for 5 seconds (total of 2250). Yet another thing some ES builds don't have to worry about at the measily price of 1 notable (and neither about chaos dmg or poison, so no worries about chaos res either making gearing significantly easier yet again). See how this is a problem? It's not even comparable how easy it is with ranged + ES vs melee + Armour. Just play the numbers for a bit. Say what would it take for that slam to go below 3k from the armor alone? Answer: 54135 armor. That's assanine. So we arrive at another problem that ES doesn't have to face but armor does: Diminishing returns. Last edited by Slart1bartfast#0332 on Dec 22, 2025, 2:30:56 PM
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" All of those builds linked would survive it. I specifically calculated it both myself and checked those builds in PoB with the appropriate calculation settings. " Yup. There probably should be significantly more ES left after a single hit when comparing builds of similar investment. Otherwise, ES is just weaker due to the recharge mechanics. " Sure; I didn't try to argue that melee wasn't in many cases underperforming compared to ranged options. " Yes; and ES builds invest in less recharge delay and higher rate of recharge. Granted, getting very high health regen is hard. It's theoretically possible to push to like 25% a second on combined regen and leech, but it's an extreme investment and does have a negative effect on your DPS. 5% is fairly easy to achieve. 10% with some effort without massive compromises. And you of course have life flasks. " Other than perhaps some very particular map mod combinations, I don't think there's anything in the game that would hit even close to that much physical while also having bleed. Off the bat I don't recall any of the big-hitting bosses having bleed. I think Zelina has bleed, but she isn't available in maps, I don't think? Her bleed attack scaled to level 82 would be pretty stronk tho! I don't really recall bleeding having been much of an issue in end game when I've played my life characters, but yeah, I did skip on some maps when they had mods like increased dmg and bleed chance. It's also pretty popular to run staunching charm. " I'd not say that the price is just 1 passive. If you go CI, you have to invest very highly into ES, if the idea is that you have good survivability on HC. " Most life builds can have at least some form of phys mitigation or other defense (other than ES or MoM) in addition to armor, so shouldn't really calculate it on armor alone. Additionally, I don't see why it was important to get the slam damage below 3k on armor alone. I do think that the point of attacks like that is that you have to invest into surviving them at all, and that surviving them half your health intact would require extreme and very expensive investment. Cuz, the game doesn't hit you for more than that. And if those attacks don't almost kill you, then nothing will, and you can facetank. |
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Seeing how you can have ES pools that are 2 to 5x more then typical life pool, there's no reason why armor shouldn't be calculated like resistance or any normal formula. The armor formula from GGG has been bad since day 1, they don't want melee to tank but ES comes in such abundance that ES does exactly that and make ES users tanky, this is annoying to no end.
Tech guy
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" In my opinion, the way armour works is the better system, and e.g. the "linearly to cap"-way how resistances work is the inferior system. It's also fairly common, lots of games use these kind of asymptomatic polynomials for scaling. I suppose WoW would be the most obvious example. Based on my experience playing HC - which I say simply because building and gearing is a bit different on HC than SC, and I've no experience to speak about how it is on SC - by late game you need around 3 times the ES to be on par in comfort with the life builds. Right now something like 4 times is the more typical difference. Last edited by tzaeru#0912 on Dec 23, 2025, 12:06:47 PM
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I think the gist is that life/armour/block/regen/resistances/flat reductions/x taken as y etc. etc. - basically builds that do not use ES as a primary layer - comparatively need more invested into them to obtain a commensurate feeling of "tankiness" and it forces either a slower progression, or a more risky one, for non ES players.
ES weakness has always been attrition-based battles and/or sustained damage-taken scenarios. However, since it is a flat amount of hit points it has the inherent capability to compensate for these vulnerabilities and weaknesses by giving more time for a player to react to the damage it is vulnerable to. Many vulnerabilities are also easily mitigated through simple and accessible means such as charms and/or skill points. Almost every build, ES or not, can kill mobs fairly easy by the time they are kitted out at endgame. However: A skilled player with nothing but 10k ES, and some charms and skill points can eat mistakes in dangerous boss fights and live to tell the tale. That same player, life-based, with the same level of investment, will likely just die. There is just way too much investment required for non-ES based characters required to hit a similar eHP. The trade off here is supposed to be the fact that non-ES deals with sustained/attrition scenarios much easier, but those scenarios just don't really cause issues for players who are already skilled. That means that skilled players will naturally gravitate towards ES-based builds, because the inherent advantages of ES are more valuable to them than the inherent advantages of being life-based - it better complements their capabilities and playstyle. Bringing "life" up to the same level means that you need all sorts of non-hit-point related defensive investment to meet a similar "big-hit" eHP, and a lot of it is gated behind RNG in the form of gear with specific prefixes and affixes as well as augments or specific corruptions/uniques/jewels/annoints/abyss mods etc. It is just comparatively a lot, so it "feels" worse when you're trying to achieve it in game, and if you're in hc, you're more likely to realize an "unlucky" big hit before you can get all those pieces in place. That's just the price of having it all. What does the monk say again - "Skill beats size, every time". He makes a good point. Last edited by karsey#2995 on Dec 23, 2025, 3:08:30 PM
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" Yes; this is the crux of the issue when ES is overtuned. I'll do a quick comparison between two chars from poe.ninja. Based on: Having enough max hit survivability to survive the theoretical max roll damage of hardest hitting high difficulty mixed type attacks with enough attack speed that it's easy to sooner or later miss the dodge roll; And having 3x the ES over life. The 3x is based on my anecdotal experience of rip'ing life chars, pure ES chars, and ES+EV chars in the maps on HC. If ES and resistances are more or less your only defense source, you need about 3x more ES than the typical life builds have life. I'd consider it pretty ideal balance if the typical, medium-high investment led to an ES char surviving with roughly half of their ES, and a life char to survive at all. So, in the light of that, an 12k ES char (Disciple of Varashta) has: 32 pure defensive nodes, possibly a couple of more if you count dual-purpose nodes. 4 from ascendancy. Minimal loss of pathing efficiency from reaching them. Gear: Shield 2 ES mods; helmet 2 ES mods + 2 slots for mana and int; robe 2 ES slots and 1 life slot (life scales ES a bit due to Enhanced Barrier); amulet ES slot, life slot. Boots 2 ES slots and int. Three unique armor slots, two with OK defense additions. A 4k life char (Smith of Kitava) with sufficient EHP has: 31 defensive nodes, notably with all but 1 ascendancy point for defense. I included most of the +str nodes, since they give life. Though, Brute Strength gives some damage from strength. Minimal loss of pathing efficiency from reaching the nodes. Gear: No shield due to talisman. Helmet: 2 armor mods, 1 life mod, 1 regen mod. Smith, so they lack a rare armor, but regen from armor. If this wasn't a smith, usually there would be 4 life/armor-related mods on the armor. Ring: 2 life mods. Other ring: life. Gloves: 2 armor, 2 life. Belt: armor, life, regen. Boots: 2 armor, 1 life, 1 regen. That's 13 vs 19 mods for survivability. If we assumed that this wasn't a Smith, it'd prolly be 13 vs 22. If we count the uniques, it's 15 vs 20 (or 23 on a non-Smith). So, in this example, the ES build has between 25% and 50% fewer defensive mods, depending on exact inclusion criteria. Worth noting that albeit I can't get exact calcs out of PoB since some of the stuff these builds use is not currently supported, I think it's reasonable to estimate that the ES build has more DPS, probably something like 30% more. If we look at the gear prices - the uniques are a bit messy to include, so I'll skip on those. The closest equivalent for the helmet I can find for the life build is 8 div; for ES build, 2 div. For life builds boots, I actually can't find equally good boots. For ES, 4 div. I deliberately skipped on picking Titan and Lich, as their scaling is a bit off the chart. Smith is prolly beneficial for the life build, as it decreases a bit of gear pressure in the end and the ascendancy nodes are strong. I think these two chars were roughly representative of the typical situation. My general experience playing this game would also match with the observation that while the passive tree investment is fairly similar, or even mildly in favor of life+armour builds, the gear is another thing. Depending on the exact build, there's from 25% to 50% fewer defensive gear mods you need on an ES build of similar survivability. That means that the gear is significantly cheaper and you can ensure more investment on DPS. Additionally, most of the ES builds have higher DPS and better clear, which means that they'll also be getting more currency and more drops, making gearing up easier via that as well. Also, if you do go full in on ES and spend 35, 40 nodes on it, and do have all gear slots for ES, you end up scaling to like 20k ES. Only max-investment Titan can reach even close to similar practical survivability on the life side. Last edited by tzaeru#0912 on Dec 23, 2025, 1:28:52 PM
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Spoiler
" Right well maybe I should have put "Bringing 'life' up to the same practical level for a player of similar skill and capability..." Because I think saying that ES is "overtuned" is not really the right turn of phrase. We're comparing the inherent benefits of those two layers within their complementary playstyles: ES typically demands a "don't get hit often" playstyle - at the top end it can tank large hits. Life-based is the "you can get hit often, but to also survive the largest hits, you're going to need 1000 div of very specific gear, 95 levels, and to not be unlucky". The issue is skilled players are very good at not being hit by anything except mis-dodged large hits, which means ES is going to naturally be the preferred primary defensive layer amongst skilled players. It makes ES overrepresented at the top of the ladder but that doesn't necessarily mean that ES is overtuned - I personally think it says more about content being under(mis?)-tuned, or at least designed to be approached in a manner which allows for ES's inherent advantages to be so prominent. To be clear, that's specifically the "delete or be deleted" aka "zoom" playstyle that people love so much. I think if the content and combat put heavier emphasis on actual mechanical dodging even outside of bossfights, we would still see a preference for ES at the top end, but we wouldn't see complete dominance. A brief look at the poe2ninja hcssf ladder right now shows that 25% of the characters do not have any significant amount of ES. So is energy shield overrepresented? I think yes, a little. I also think that there are a lot of other more important factors at play here which are what's making this happen rather than it strictly being a balance issue related to the inherent properties of energy shield as a defensive layer itself vs life. I think it's more related to the content of the game and that it's easier to be a skilled player who doesn't get hit often than it is to be avoid every big hit. Even with perfect "mathematical" balance in place for damage numbers in the game, I still don't think we'd see 50/50 representation just due to the playstyle of skilled players being more aligned with the benefits of using ES as a primary defensive layer - it's worth repeating: "Skill beats size, every time." Balancing "ES vs Life" in the current context of the game means balancing content to create more attrition/sustained combat scenarios. Which I would be fine with, however, for those fond of the "zoom" playstyle, you can not have your cake and eat it too.
Spoiler
At least without completely destroying the identity of ES itself and actually just making it blue life in every manner so that they are both practically the same, in which case, why have it at all?
Last edited by karsey#2995 on Dec 23, 2025, 4:01:54 PM
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" ES by itself is very inconvenient against chip damage from masses of mobs, throwing masses of various spells at you. People tend to praise how they are facetanking boss slams with ES, but in mapping you have to constantly watch your hp orb and retreat/strafe excessively. Armor/evasion always work to full extent regardless of how many debuffs and dots and ground degens you caught. |
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