Can we all agree that armour needs this buff to even the field.

Is anyone else tired of running a super armour set up and still getting demolished by SPELL damage trash mobs.

Lets be honest here there is an overwhelming amount of spell damage in poe, it is the real danger and armour builds have almost nothing to counter it and end up eating all that damage to the face.

I think a fair comprimise would be that for every 10k armour you have you would get 10% spell absorbtion/deflection.

You could do it so armour from flasks doesnt count and only your base armour came into the calculation so you could not abuse it from flasks.

I think that gives armour based builds an even footing in the defense department.



These armours are just not really that good anymore. Evasion builds have a MUCH MUCH better survival rate over armour as they can at least dodge some of the spell damage.



Far better survival rate in these evasion chests then any armour builds ive played of late..



Survival on a complete other level with ES compared to evasion and especially armour..



This used to be great, even amazing, but for some reason GGG did not like it.. MOM was good i have no idea why they ruined it.



Falls in line with ES builds, probably even more defensive then most general es builds as you usually have a plethora of buffs to come with it.

Armour is currently bad for two reasons, neither of them the reason you're suggesting.

One, there's a bug with projectiles.

Two, it's got that BS diminishing formula crap that makes it less effective on large hits...Except you need it the most ON large hits.


If you are getting shredded by spell damage, with overcapped res...Then you are doing something very wrong. Armour is ONE defense, Res is another, but behind it all, you always need a solid EHP pool.

As far as spells being the real danger...Until Shaper, no, not really. The biggest one shots you get faced with are physical damage attacks, and the rare phys spells. You may have seen the video with that guy with 25K ES getting one shot by Uber Izaro's wind slash? That's phys damage. Not a spell either. Phys is the threat, in this game...Until Shaper's death beam...Oh but wait. Shaper ALSO has a giant Slam....And that's phys...Oh, and the death beam? Looks like a spell, yeah...But it also seems to have a large phys component, so armor would help with the beam....


The big issues with armor are the bug and the BS scaling formula. If they fixed the formula (and the bug, OFC), all would be well. I have NO clue why they keep armor in this useless state, but GGG is not stupid people, clearly, so there is SOME intention behind it. It's not like they don't know armor is bad, or why it's bad. They made an entire game, there's no freaking way they're so dense that they are unaware.

"

Nssheepster wrote:

They made an entire game, there's no freaking way they're so dense that they are unaware.

You're new here ain't ya? ;) Just kidding!

But seriously, the game has some significant balance problems and Armour is one of those. At least the projectile issue is being fixed in a couple of days, but the underlying main problem about one shot massive hits still exists.

Wait, you think evasion builds are good for taking big spell hits? You can't evade spell damage. I think you're referring to Spell Dodge.

The best ways to deal with the biggest elemental spell hits in the game are:
1.) High res (aka use appropriate flask)
2.) Lots of raw HP (think about an ES build)

Wait, you think that Brass Dome isn't good?

Brass Dome is one of the most interesting and insanely powerful items I've seen in a long time that isn't obvious at first look. You just need to combo it with the right mechanics (there's one particular jewel, and a particular mod you can roll on flasks).

@Nssheepster

As for the bug, it's being fixed in the next patch. And high armor values actually do work very well to mitigate damage (for example, 38k armor makes uber izaro, with no ele buffs, barely tickle).

"

Nssheepster wrote:

Armour is currently bad for two reasons, neither of them the reason you're suggesting.

One, there's a bug with projectiles.

Two, it's got that BS diminishing formula crap that makes it less effective on large hits...Except you need it the most ON large hits.


If you are getting shredded by spell damage, with overcapped res...Then you are doing something very wrong. Armour is ONE defense, Res is another, but behind it all, you always need a solid EHP pool.

As far as spells being the real danger...Until Shaper, no, not really. The biggest one shots you get faced with are physical damage attacks, and the rare phys spells. You may have seen the video with that guy with 25K ES getting one shot by Uber Izaro's wind slash? That's phys damage. Not a spell either. Phys is the threat, in this game...Until Shaper's death beam...Oh but wait. Shaper ALSO has a giant Slam....And that's phys...Oh, and the death beam? Looks like a spell, yeah...But it also seems to have a large phys component, so armor would help with the beam....


The big issues with armor are the bug and the BS scaling formula. If they fixed the formula (and the bug, OFC), all would be well. I have NO clue why they keep armor in this useless state, but GGG is not stupid people, clearly, so there is SOME intention behind it. It's not like they don't know armor is bad, or why it's bad. They made an entire game, there's no freaking way they're so dense that they are unaware.

It just feels to me when im playing an armour based build that im taking huge chucnks of damage from spells with capped res ofc.

Comparing the build i play using these armours i listed and other astral plate / glorious plate builds to evasion based, kintsugi/qotf/assasins garbs. The evasion builds have a far better survival rate.

As for ES based builds, none of the above applies when you have a 10k+ hp pool anyways. Other then the one shots ofc.

"

Aldora_the_Summoner wrote:

"

Nssheepster wrote:

They made an entire game, there's no freaking way they're so dense that they are unaware.

You're new here ain't ya? ;) Just kidding!

But seriously, the game has some significant balance problems and Armour is one of those. At least the projectile issue is being fixed in a couple of days, but the underlying main problem about one shot massive hits still exists.

XD. No, been around more than a year now. I can...understand why GGG went for one shots. I don't agree, and I don't approve, and I think they had many other options. But I can understand what they wanted with the one shotting.

If the ONLY issue was the one shotting, then I'd be fine...Annoyed when I died to them, but fine overall. The various other issues are kinda compounding...

TLDR I can ignore a few issues. I can't ignore a lot of issues.

"

stormyknight wrote:

It just feels to me when im playing an armour based build that im taking huge chucnks of damage from spells with capped res ofc.

Comparing the build i play using these armours i listed and other astral plate / glorious plate builds to evasion based, kintsugi/qotf/assasins garbs. The evasion builds have a far better survival rate.

As for ES based builds, none of the above applies when you have a 10k+ hp pool anyways. Other then the one shots ofc.

The one shots are the issue..If you are dying to repeated small spells, that's an issue with your gameplay, not the game.

Also, as stated, Evasion doesn't work on spells anyways...Just Dodge. And you COULD go Armor and still get Dodge, just grab Iron Reflexes and wear Hyrri's Ire and Atziri's Step. There, you have dodge, and armor.

As far as nothing applying above 10K...No, it applies less when you're above 10K AND HAVE MITIGATION. EHP alone is NOT enough in this game.

"

zSavage wrote:

Wait, you think evasion builds are good for taking big spell hits? You can't evade spell damage. I think you're referring to Spell Dodge.

The best ways to deal with the biggest elemental spell hits in the game are:
1.) High res (aka use appropriate flask)
2.) Lots of raw HP (think about an ES build)

Wait, you think that Brass Dome isn't good?

Brass Dome is one of the most interesting and insanely powerful items I've seen in a long time that isn't obvious at first look. You just need to combo it with the right mechanics (there's one particular jewel, and a particular mod you can roll on flasks).

@Nssheepster

As for the bug, it's being fixed in the next patch. And high armor values actually do work very well to mitigate damage (for example, 38k armor makes uber izaro, with no ele buffs, barely tickle).

Like ive played a lot of builds and i was just saying armour feels very squishy, as for brass dome yeah, it feels worse then coil for sure, and much worse then kinsugi.

The build im using it on has 33k armour with no flasks and determination/grace IR conversion. It feels squishier then almost every other defense archtype ive played.

You can see the character in my account overview, the gear is not exactly bottom tier and still feels average. This is an IR build.

I'm pretty alright with how my IR archer stands the damage. For instance, all phys spells from evangelists, spikes on death by porcupines, koalas failing from sky or shaped academy boss tornados feel pretty harmless up to, say, t12-t13 maps (in contrary to how eva chars stand them). Even fairly big hitters like Wasteland boss, or some nasty rare devouers drop my hp just by about half (nice to have 2nd chance, in case I failed with kiting). Armor is at 23k now, but I have to support it with many little perks to turn it into viable defense.
First of all, it's ranged char, so it's exposed to damage way less often than melee chars. It's pretty fast (~60% mov speed increase) which paired with Blink Arrow gives very good kiting potential. I distract mobs with Siege Balista all the time too- S. Balist has long uptime, it's sturdy, attracts mobs (for some reason) and hits like truck.
For more passive things, I use Arctic Armor, Vaal Pact (1,1% phys damage leeched as life, and my toolpit is 100% phys one). Life pool is bit less than 5,1k, I dropped B. Rage almost at all when I took V. Pact. Just in case, I keep it in 6th socket of my 6s5l bow so when I rarely use it, I always cut it by double tapping "x" when it's not neccessary anymore. Also SA which I use for AoE and main attack has great range and offscreen ability. For single/utility I use my fav. weirdo Frenzy+Pcoc setup which is fastest and most reliable Power and Frenzy charge generator. Both 6l SA and 5l Frenzy are very cheap on top of that all. (27 and 17 mana/hit respecively). I checked that pretty carefully (i.e. spammed single target on boss at enfeblee+phys reduction+no regen map), happy to say that there are no gaps in at all.

If am I glad about this char? Hell yea. Is it by any means tough, tanky or endgame viable? Hell no.
"No one said it's gonna to be easy" I guess ;p

And there goes my CI witch..she wears bikini, foil hat and sandals and tanks half of red map bosses with pretty nasty mods on top of that. So "If anyone is tired by using armor (and life)?" is not the right question here. The right question is "do you have what it takes to run armor/life character?"
Well, do you, exile? ;)


(both chars are visible in my profile, they are these only two leved chars in essence.)

"

Nssheepster wrote:

"

stormyknight wrote:

It just feels to me when im playing an armour based build that im taking huge chucnks of damage from spells with capped res ofc.

Comparing the build i play using these armours i listed and other astral plate / glorious plate builds to evasion based, kintsugi/qotf/assasins garbs. The evasion builds have a far better survival rate.

As for ES based builds, none of the above applies when you have a 10k+ hp pool anyways. Other then the one shots ofc.

The one shots are the issue..If you are dying to repeated small spells, that's an issue with your gameplay, not the game.

Also, as stated, Evasion doesn't work on spells anyways...Just Dodge. And you COULD go Armor and still get Dodge, just grab Iron Reflexes and wear Hyrri's Ire and Atziri's Step. There, you have dodge, and armor.

As far as nothing applying above 10K...No, it applies less when you're above 10K AND HAVE MITIGATION. EHP alone is NOT enough in this game.

Thats a terrible amount of dodge and is pretty much useless. You either go high dodge (40-50%) or no dodge at all. The armour side of the passive tree needs something to help with ele damage, like reduced ele damage bonus on those armor nodes. Someone investing in many armour nodes (which are generally very bad) could make some good use of an additional 20-25% reduced ele damage. On the ranger tree you can spend a whooping 5 passives to get 40% dodge 30% spell dodge. That's overall better mitigation than all the armour nodes combined.