Defensive Suggestions for Non-Melee Builds

What are the community's best suggestions and general guidelines regarding the best defensive options for non-melee builds? Specifically, what skill gems, passives, and gear is recommended for defense for a caster that is not building evasion/acrobatics?

Most of my builds have been Marauders using Fortify, high armor, block, and life. However, now I am working on a totem Templar. In Act 2 cruel right now, so far so good - but I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to survive Merciless and maps.

Obviously I won't be standing in melee range most of the time, but besides that, all I can think about is using life regen, maybe disciple or vitality auras, and popping flasks in emergencies.

Is simply using armour/energy shield gear (no MoM, no EB) viable for a totem build or other ranged casters?

Temp chains, freeze, and chill make for a great "layer" to any defensive setup. Most of my glassier builds have usually incorporated one or more of the three to remove pressure from my other defensive layers. Some things that are rather successful:

Temp chains on Blasphemy - maybe not so useful for ranged, but with enough aoe bonus you can extend the effect to the default ranged enemy distance they like to fire from. It also really helps get out of sticky situations like when you're being rushed by a double pack of scary blues.

Cold Snap - Proliferation - penetration - high-level cast when damage taken. Don't know if you're in the dual-totem variety, but if not this setup has helped me get out of trouble quite often. It doesn't trigger all the time, but once it does there will be a noticeable silence as the trash is shattered and anything that's not will be frozen for around three seconds or so. Might not be feasible if you really stack spell damage though, the link doesn't do much if you just kill all the enemies in the effect.

Arctic Breath - Proliferation - GMP - low-level CwDT. It's not very good on its own but it certainly helps especially in conjunction with Temp Chains. Also since you only really care about the chilled ground this is something that you can use even if you're going dual totems.

I am going dual totems. I'm also going dual curse, possibly tri-curse if I decide to get Doedre's ring. Right now I'm using CWDT with Enfeeble. I'll try adding temp chains to this - although as a Templar, and with my build specifically, I have very low dex.

I'm using flame totem and searing bond, so freeze and chill aren't part of my plans right now, but I may try using spell totem with cold damage at some point. Maybe that'd be a better option. It's just, flame totem and searing bond are so powerful and cheap on their own :)

The best defense for any ranged build is the distance that you put between yourself and the enemy, which you should abuse as much as you can. Along with that there is manual dodging, which getting used to will save you a lot of trouble (it is really easy to do with a totem build, too).
A lot of DPS helps. FOr any ranged character, killing the enemy fast is the absolute best defensive mechanic.

If you are using shockwave totem, then the hatred aura and the knockback works as defensive mechanisms and they CC the enemy while killing them.

But for those things that will eventually hit you, you may look for a decent amount of life/ES. If you are templar you can get a lot of those. I am not a hardcore player but from what I have seen, you can get easily over 4.5 hp and be fine. Getting a lot of armour is nice of course. Resist always capped of course.

Arctic Armour is great for any build as a defensive option. Using any of the defensive mechanincs that Gilrad described will work fine. Inmortal Call with CWDT is always good for those spikes of damage. For your build try using enduring cry if you are able to, as endurance charges make your character a lot tankier with any build.

Consider going with Cast on Stun rather than CWDT. No pesky level requirement and no going off to a 2hp hit just because it pushes some counter over it's limit.

Manual Dodge is by far the most powerful defense in the game.

Blashpemy - Enfeeble (quality if possible) plus some moderate evasion are broken as fuck (and i am talking something like 3-4k eva. its incredible, really).

Other choices: Put a blind gem on your golem, ice golem works best for this because multiple small hits. CWDT frostwall. Or, since you are a totem caster, simply put your totems in front of you instead of ever getting hit.

I got a good defensive suggestion:

Stay far

The best defense in this game by a wide margin is just being ranged/far away from enemies. If you're doing a totem build, you've got that covered already, plus the totems will draw aggro away from you. Otherwise, health+ES creates a pretty substantial amount of effective health to handle what little ever reaches you, especially versus elemental damage, and ES recharge does a pretty good job with sustaining your ES buffer.



If you weren't using them as your primary offense, I'd also suggest using totems for additional defense. Decoy Totem is the obvious (and low-investment) choice, but bosses ignore it way too frequently (and they're the ones whose attacks you want to redirect the most). I prefer using Ice Shot totems or Arctic Breath totems (both with GMP, if you've got room), or Summon Skeletons totems... persistent chilled ground wrecks a lot of bosses, and constantly-generated skeletons are pretty good at drawing aggro and interfering with enemy pathing. But of course, since you're using up your totem capacity for offense, that won't work for your character... just a useful tip for other builds.

Here's a copy-pasta of the skill combos I've written down (let me know if you need acronyms explained):

LS/WB - FA - Fort

Golem/Totem - Blind

Spell Totem - Summon Skeletons - Blind - FC/Minion Life

CwDT (1) - Spell (1) - CoH (max) - Curse (max)

CwDT/CwS (max) - Molten Shell - Tempest Shield - ID

CwDT (1) - BL - Blind (max) - DD/Firestorm/GC

CwDT (x) - GMP - AB

CwS - CS - EP - AoE/Pen/ACD/IB

Blind - Golem - FT - Vengeance

AB - CoH - Enf - TC

AB - CoH - Curse - ID
Hypo on main skill

V/R/R - CoH - Curse

V/R/R - LGoH - Blind

Spectre - Blind - Increased Duration/Minion Life/Speed (Undying Evangelists from A3 - immunity bubble)