Energy Shield passives

Ignoring the whole CI problem, pure ES casters really need better ES passive nodes to become viable again.

Right now, you won't have enough buffer to reliably survive physical damage in endgame.
Yet you still have all the usual drawbacks of an ES buffer tank - no phys/attack mitigation/avoidance & low hp, thus easy to stun, very long status ailments and weak against chaos damage. CI's 50% more used to be the answer to this problem.


Of course you could pick up every single ES passive in the tree, including ES/armor & ES/evasion passives from Templar & Shadow and gimp your build that way. I don't think this was intended.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

I fully agree with you, and will fight this cause should it be necessary.

I hope this doesn't imply you are against buffing CI.
It's pretty mediocre right now and needs something.

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zankioh wrote:

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Mark_GGG wrote:

I fully agree with you, and will fight this cause should it be necessary.

I hope this doesn't imply you are against buffing CI.
It's pretty mediocre right now and needs something.

There are ways to buff the CI build that don't involve buffing CI itself.

You just have to look at any top players, especially in HC, almost everyone uses Eldritch Battery to convert ES for more auras, and even Witches are going with HP builds... If that doesnt tell you how worthless ES is right now, I dont know what will

Alright, i give up.

I tried to make a ES Witch Viable, but i'm done, i'm stuck at level 48 and i can't get farther than Act 3 Cruel Werehouses.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAP0HYw5IEHsRLxFQEZYUsBdQHNwd2SepKwo6MDvhQ1RHBkwtT79XK19qZ71tGXNTdYp4un5Zf8aCHofbiGuP-pMnmZqboZ97oqOnK6yYtMW297vWwQDBxcHzwuzDbdQF2xrb5-L344Tmgetj7Bjub_fX

Only place i can level is in a group, or by wasting portal scrolls and dying to almost every named mob i encounter without a 5 minute kitefest. Its absolutely horrendous and there's no value in energy shield whatsoever, even though as you can see i picked up quite a damn lot of ES nodes.

Sorry, you were supposed to do this instead. Except, with Divine Toughness too.

The five tax points spent solely to get a +10% resist all at the end while energy shield and resist is unlocked already...

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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grimwald wrote:

Keep all the nodes what they are now, but either put a 15-25% Energy shield increase on Chaos Inoculation.

FFS, no. CI should not be "hey, we took away all your red life, but here's a bunch of blue life instead!"

If CI gets a buff, may it please, please, please be anything but more ES.

I fully agree with you, and will fight this cause should it be necessary.

If ES acted exactly like health, I would agree with you.

But the reality is that the red life is mechanically different than blue life, meaning that simply swapping them is fine for a Keystone passive.

ES regens. Whether you like the mechanic or not it's a health bar with built in regen. You also have 50% reduced chance to be stunned with ES up.

So I see absolutely no problem with CI saying, "hey, we took away all your red life, but here's a bunch of blue life instead!" because the blue life acts differently than the red life.

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mack1510 wrote:

Alright, i give up.

I tried to make a ES Witch Viable, but i'm done, i'm stuck at level 48 and i can't get farther than Act 3 Cruel Werehouses.

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAP0HYw5IEHsRLxFQEZYUsBdQHNwd2SepKwo6MDvhQ1RHBkwtT79XK19qZ71tGXNTdYp4un5Zf8aCHofbiGuP-pMnmZqboZ97oqOnK6yYtMW297vWwQDBxcHzwuzDbdQF2xrb5-L344Tmgetj7Bjub_fX

Only place i can level is in a group, or by wasting portal scrolls and dying to almost every named mob i encounter without a 5 minute kitefest. Its absolutely horrendous and there's no value in energy shield whatsoever, even though as you can see i picked up quite a damn lot of ES nodes.

I see you have Ghost Reaver, how much Life Leech do you have on the support gem right now?

I have a CI build I'm working on and it will use Ghost Reaver / Vaal's Pact. I haven't seen or heard anyone with high level experience (around your lvl, ~50) with this.

I'll be using Power Siphon with many of the Wand Physical Damage nodes, so that along with the support gem should be some decent Leeching for my ES (and instant Leeching). With CI I can use Blood Rage for more Leeching also.

I mean, this sounds like a a really big chunk of Leeching going to my ES, instantly with Vaal's Pact.

If a build like this can't make CI/ES work, there's a big problem.

EDIT - Sorry, I meant to add this to my post above, didn't mean to double post.

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Glowyrm wrote:

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mack1510 wrote:

Alright, i give up.

I tried to make a ES Witch Viable, but i'm done, i'm stuck at level 48 and i can't get farther than Act 3 Cruel Werehouses.

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAP0HYw5IEHsRLxFQEZYUsBdQHNwd2SepKwo6MDvhQ1RHBkwtT79XK19qZ71tGXNTdYp4un5Zf8aCHofbiGuP-pMnmZqboZ97oqOnK6yYtMW297vWwQDBxcHzwuzDbdQF2xrb5-L344Tmgetj7Bjub_fX

Only place i can level is in a group, or by wasting portal scrolls and dying to almost every named mob i encounter without a 5 minute kitefest. Its absolutely horrendous and there's no value in energy shield whatsoever, even though as you can see i picked up quite a damn lot of ES nodes.

I see you have Ghost Reaver, how much Life Leech do you have on the support gem right now?

I have a CI build I'm working on and it will use Ghost Reaver / Vaal's Pact. I haven't seen or heard anyone with high level experience (around your lvl, ~50) with this.

I'll be using Power Siphon with many of the Wand Physical Damage nodes, so that along with the support gem should be some decent Leeching for my ES (and instant Leeching). With CI I can use Blood Rage for more Leeching also.

I mean, this sounds like a a really big chunk of Leeching going to my ES, instantly with Vaal's Pact.

If a build like this can't make CI/ES work, there's a big problem.

EDIT - Sorry, I meant to add this to my post above, didn't mean to double post.

Had a 2% leech gem, planning on leveling it to atleast 4% because i can't handle the mana cost at the moment and it wasn't that great of a boost.

I mean it was really a very small boost to ES, it didn't drain anything near enough. Wondering if tacking it onto my spell totem and/or minions would give me ES every time they attack, probably not.


It's meh overall, would be better with claws maybe, or mass AOE spells. But Arc definitely does not do it.

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mack1510 wrote:

Alright, i give up.

I tried to make a ES Witch Viable, but i'm done, i'm stuck at level 48 and i can't get farther than Act 3 Cruel Werehouses.

Only place i can level is in a group, or by wasting portal scrolls and dying to almost every named mob i encounter without a 5 minute kitefest. Its absolutely horrendous and there's no value in energy shield whatsoever, even though as you can see i picked up quite a damn lot of ES nodes.

Eh... when I've been saying ES/CI witches aren't viable, I've meant they're not HC viable.
Death is sometimes unavoidable, lag/desync/disconnects are extremely dangerous, you will need better gear than other tanks and you will need to sacrifice a lot of passives and gear to survivability.

But the problems you are experiencing are something completely different...
Your build's kinda bad. You're branching into multiple directions for rather useless reasons, wasting most passive points on tree traversal and you lack any meaningful damage. Ghost Reaver is not the answer for CI casters, especially if you lack damage to leech with. You'd want a Blood Rage CI shadow to get the most out of Ghost Reaver, Life Leech gem alone is useless.