PvP-only defensive approach: "No-life"

Hi all,

I've been working on a PvP build lately with an unusual defensive approach. As it's working really well so far, I thought I could share this here.

With the recent nerfs to the block chance reduction gem on one hand and life and energy shield on the other hand, it seemed to me that block has again risen in importance, especially for PvP where one-shots are common.

The problem is indeed, when going max block path, you have few points to spare on life or ES and often find yourself one-shot. But why not making this problem into an advantage?

=> If we are one-shot anyway when hit, lets just forget about life, ES and consequently also armour and resistances. While we're so fragile anyway, we might as well also go into low-life and take advantage of this state to liberate mana and have some item/keystone bonuses.

The defensive decision to completely skip life, ES, armour, resistances and run the low-life status is what I call "THE NO-LIFE APPROACH".

Now how will we survive then?

1) We need max block and max spell block.

A 20/20 block chance reduction gem only reduces block by 34%. So even when the enemy is using this gem, block still offers a decent protection. We need maxed out block and spell block. Only very few sources of damage neglect both, and sword builds are not that common anymore.

Certain uniques are very handy to achieve this:



10% block is great, 3% max block to achieve 78% block/spellblock is even greater. The drawbacks are heavy though. If you are a caster and you only move by warping, the 20% reduced movement speed is no issue and the 10% reduced cast speed is manageable.

If movement speed is important to your build, consider this cheap simple item:



As a No-life is also a low-life, this item can completely nullify the drawback of the Anvil. As we don't need life, ES, armour or resistances, we also don't need good gloves so this one certainly qualifies.



An awesome shield. We are on low-life so that's an immediate 120% spellblock. The 32% block is also very good.



Another decent shield, especially due to the 60% spellblock. The 60% spelldamage is sweet for casters.



Forms a natural combo with Rathpith. Together they achieve above 100% spellblock and where the Rathpith adds spelldamage, Lazhwar adds casting speed for magic users.



15% block is the big one here. Great helmet for physical melee builds. The blind adds to not getting hit.

2) We need 40% dodge and 46% spelldodge.

Works extremely well with block. If one of those two defensive mechanisms fails, you still have a chance for the other one to work.

40% block is achieved by picking up Acrobatics and the smaller nodes to the right, and then you can still take Phase Acrobatics for the 30% spellblock.

It is immediately obvious that No-Life can only be done if you benefit from passive nodes around the East of the Skilldrasil. Conveniently, some nodes to the West from Acrobatics there is 9% block to pick up, and some nodes North another 8%.

The 16% extra spellblock from Atziri's Step is immensly valuable against spellcasters. The 30% movement speed is not bad either and the evasion is a free extra that sometimes makes the difference.



So Atziri's Step is mandatory for a No-Life.

The 6% dodge you can still add from Daresso's Defiance is often too low to be worth it.

3) We need to be mobile to manually avoid damage.

I will not give any info about this as any serious PvP-er knows how to be mobile. Lightning Warp, Whirling Blades, Leap Slam and crazy movement speed are all decent options.

NOW YOU ARE A NO-LIFER:

- You have 75%-78% block and spellblock
- You have 40%-46% dodge and 46% spelldodge
- You are highly mobile

Advantages:

- Being on low-life, you can take advantage of Pain Attunement as a caster. If it takes too many nodes to pick the keystone, you can even consider a crown of thorns and look like RNGesus:



As a bear trapper, I could increase my damage a lot with



There is no other weapon that boosts bear trap damage that much, and maybe other specific builds can take advantage from this cheap weapon.

- In general, building a No-Life build is very cheap as it requires only common uniques. No need for highly rolled ES/life tri-resist items.

- As you only need block and some dodge, you save up a lot of gear slots and passive points that are otherwise put in life, ES, armour and resistances. This allows you to focus a lot on damage.

- You only need warding quicksilver flasks. You count on not being hit.

Disadvantages:

- RNG determines if you get hit or not. Sometimes you're dead with just one blow. In general, RNG is in your favour, but you can be unlucky ofcourse. Sometimes I just walk up to the enemy, dodge/block a few hits while I bear trap him and he's dead. If I'm unlucky I just die from the first hit. You have to have the guts to count on average chances in your favour.

- Restricted to certain builds, especially Shadows and Witches.

- There are counters to this defense. Poison Arrow is such an example. Sword with Resolute Technique can be hard, but as I'm a bear trapper myself, any melee is easy.

- In the Arena when there are many people you have to be uber-carefull to avoid damage coming from all sides.

- Not for PvE as you will get hit regularly there and you won't survive long. It's PvP only as there the rule is: "kill before you get killed" and winning 5 times and losing and dying 4 times means you have won. In PvE you should NEVER die.


EPILOGUE:

I have developped this defensive mechanism for my bear trapper. He's at 78% block/spellblock and 40% dodge/46% spelldodge.

Offensively, I have 26k on my bear traps. I don't have any item worth more then 7 exalts.
With succesfully corrupted bear trap and empower I would have a 32k bear trap.

This can be further enhanced by taking elemental damage nodes as half of the bear trap is fire damage.

But I'm only level 69 now, and I'd like to keep it that way. Beating up lvl 85+ opponents with my cheap 69er is just too much fun!

NEXT PROJECT:

As I'm really satisfied with the no-life approach, I will do a new one. As a No-lifer trying to avoid getting hit I'm thinking of a tri-totem Arc build with No-life defenses.

"

Soepkieken wrote:

Beating up lvl 85+ opponents with my cheap 69er is just too much fun!

"

Soepkieken wrote:

my cheap 69er is just too much fun!

"

Soepkieken wrote:

69er is just too much fun!

xD

Corrupt your Atziri boots for +4% dodge :)

problem with this approach is non crits can one-shoot you. Vs casters that's a big problem coz they crit 1/3 aprox. Vs attackers not so much. If u want to test it further add me and we can have a dodge fest.

as for the lvl, 69 is epic, since u get all the perx of lvl scaling in pvp

"

problem with this approach is non crits can one-shoot you. Vs casters that's a big problem coz they crit 1/3 aprox. Vs attackers not so much. If u want to test it further add me and we can have a dodge fest.

as for the lvl, 69 is epic, since u get all the perx of lvl scaling in pvp

Well yeah, non-crits one-shot me, but that's the trade-off for blocking or dodging most of them. You can't have it all you know, both defensively and offensively you always have to make choices what you want and what you have to skip. I was just presenting this defensive system as a viable PvP defensive system, not necessarily the best in any situation, which doesn't exist anyway. Luckily!

No-life can be a smart defensive choice for certain PvP builds, that's all I claim.

I would love to PvP against you, but if you're a pro I'm sure you know how to avoid getting trapped. I'm loving my bear trapper but traps suck against experienced PvPers because they know too well how to deal with them. That's why I will build a new No-lifer, this time based on tri-Arctotems offensively. It was interesting though to see that a bear trap can reach up to 35k without any crit investment.

I add that monday I'll start travelling around Asia for 6 months. So I'll take a long break from PoE, but expect me back in april 2015, especially on the PvP scene!

Cheers and hope some people are happy to have discovered the PvP concept of going No-life through this thread!