I just don't understand defensive stats and why they're so difficult to build up.

I'm playing a ranger so obviously I have to run evasion but yet it feels like attacks hit me as if my evasion and dodge chance just don't exist. I don't know what to do at this point since this league has been really bad luck for me as I'm just not getting anything good for gear or currency while trying to run a MF build and i don't wanna have to start ALL OVER just to be able to run tier 3 maps without dying in one hit to trash rares.

it will be very hard not to die with 3.2k life..

7k evasion is low end.. but if you get more life, kill fast and move very well, you may survive..

"

CrimsonReaper676 wrote:

I'm playing a ranger so obviously I have to run evasion

Not necessarily... you're close enough to Shadow's nodes to take an Energy Shield-based approach instead, plus there's the Iron Reflexes keystone which converts your Evasion Rating into Armour.

Anyways, the trick to optimising defences in Path of Exile is that it's the opposite of optimising your DPS. In DPS, you want to focus all your resources into 1 single super skill. In defences, you want to get just-enough of multiple different defences. You'll often see this called "layering your defences." It's inherent in the design of the game - every layer of defences has its weaknesses, so you're meant to cover up those weaknesses with other layers.

For example, Evasion Rating when stacked (I'd say more than 12k Evasion to start feeling it, not 7k), is great against Attack DPS. But it doesn't help against Attack one-shots, any Spell Damage, nor any Damage over Time.

Armour has its own weaknesses - it's great against physical hit DPS. But large physical hits make Armour less proportionally effective, and Armour itself does nothing against elemental or chaos hits, nor anything against DoT.

Enfeeble drastically lowers all incoming monster damage, but won't do anything to entities you can't curse ahead of time, such as Hexproof monsters, Curse Immune monsters, environmental traps, and if you're doing self-cast instead of Blasphemy, times when you're simply ambushed and can't react. Also, less effective against bosses.

Fast Recovery of your pool (most commonly: Life Recovery) is almost essential to any character, but is crippled by certain Map modifiers, and obviously can't help against true one-shots, and is of limited help against burst DPS that feels like one-shots. Forms of Life Recovery include Life Leech, Life Regeneration, Life Recovery on Block, and Life Gain on Hit.

Stacking enough DPS, range, and AOE to vaporise all incoming enemies helps to an extent, but doesn't help against ambushes, struggles against phased bosses, and sometimes will just run up against too-tanky enemies, like Expedition monsters with Block.

Endurance Charges are great against any physical damage, but by default does nothing terribly helpful to elemental and chaos damage (ideal characters should be resist capped before Endurance Charges), and is difficult to find sources of generation without losing DPS.

Fortify is strong, but generally only easy to get on melee characters and does nothing against Damage over Time.

--

Overall, you need multiple of the above mechanics to "feel tanky." In my experience, it's mandatory to have at least 1 Recovery mechanic, at least 1 Avoidance or Block mechanic (for anti-DPS), and at least 1 mitigation mechanic (for one-shots), like Endurance Charges and/or Fortify.

Thankfully, they've added certain mechanics over time to help each defensive mechanic cover its weaknesses more effectively without having to invest so much in other layers. For example, if you're dead-set on stacking more Evasion Rating, you have the option to take the Wind Dancer Keystone passive, but you'll need to stack quite a bit more Evasion than only 7k. You can do this by rolling Evasion prefixes on your gear and juicing a Grace aura (getting it to corrupt level 21, getting increased aura effect, etc.) Additionally, you can further reduce damage from hits you take with Kintsugi Exquisite Leather unique body armour.

Also, as Ludvator mentioned, 3.2k life is a very low amount of pool. All the defensive mechanics I mentioned up above should be measured in addition to getting as much pool (Life) as you can muster wherever it doesn't cost much to get it - i.e. at least one high-tier prefix on each piece of applicable gear, and any Life nodes close to DPS nodes you're pathing towards on the passive tree.

Took a quick peek at your character for more specific guidance:

• Your gloves slot doesn't have any maximum Life. It can roll up to +89 with a single affix, more if you want to invest more. Get more life in this slot.
• Your ring slots have a total of +37 maximum Life, when they can roll up to +79 each on single affixes, for a total of +158. Get more life in this slot.
• I don't see much in the way of dealing with Freeze on your build. You probably want to roll a flask with the "of Heat" suffix to deal with that for now. You can grab any base normal flask you want (such as Jade Flask or Stibnite Flask), and then take it to The Menagerie, and beastcraft "of Heat," which will allow you to cure and gain immunity to Chill or Freeze if you use the flask while Chilled or Frozen respectively.
• I don't see much in the way of dealing with Bleeding and Corrupted Blood on your build. You probably want to roll a flask with the "of Staunching" suffix to deal with that for now. You can grab any base normal flask you want (such as Jade Flask or Stibnite Flask), and then take it to The Menagerie, and beastcraft "of Staunching," which will allow you to cure and gain immunity to Bleeding or Corrupted Blood if you use the flask while Bleeding or having Corrupted Blood respectively.

EDIT: Forgot to mention. The good stuff:
-You grabbed some Leech. That's good.
-You're grabbing as many Life Nodes as you path towards. That's good. Keep doing that as you level up.

"

adghar wrote:

Took a quick peek at your character for more specific guidance:

• Your gloves slot doesn't have any maximum Life. It can roll up to +89 with a single affix, more if you want to invest more. Get more life in this slot.
• Your ring slots have a total of +37 maximum Life, when they can roll up to +79 each on single affixes, for a total of +158. Get more life in this slot.
• I don't see much in the way of dealing with Freeze on your build. You probably want to roll a flask with the "of Heat" suffix to deal with that for now. You can grab any base normal flask you want (such as Jade Flask or Stibnite Flask), and then take it to The Menagerie, and beastcraft "of Heat," which will allow you to cure and gain immunity to Chill or Freeze if you use the flask while Chilled or Frozen respectively.
• I don't see much in the way of dealing with Bleeding and Corrupted Blood on your build. You probably want to roll a flask with the "of Staunching" suffix to deal with that for now. You can grab any base normal flask you want (such as Jade Flask or Stibnite Flask), and then take it to The Menagerie, and beastcraft "of Staunching," which will allow you to cure and gain immunity to Bleeding or Corrupted Blood if you use the flask while Bleeding or having Corrupted Blood respectively.

EDIT: Forgot to mention. The good stuff:
-You grabbed some Leech. That's good.
-You're grabbing as many Life Nodes as you path towards. That's good. Keep doing that as you level up.

As i mentioned in my post, my luck is really bad and i can't even afford good items atm so im stuck with whatever i pick up. I have no way to give my self any better defenses unless i manage to get ahold of several EX.

"

Ludvator wrote:

it will be very hard not to die with 3.2k life..

7k evasion is low end.. but if you get more life, kill fast and move very well, you may survive..

i have no way to increase my life without buying expensive gear.. same with evasion/dodge. At this point I'm probably better off starting a fresh character because i feel i wasted my time on my current.

"

CrimsonReaper676 wrote:

"

Ludvator wrote:

it will be very hard not to die with 3.2k life..

7k evasion is low end.. but if you get more life, kill fast and move very well, you may survive..

i have no way to increase my life without buying expensive gear.. same with evasion/dodge. At this point I'm probably better off starting a fresh character because i feel i wasted my time on my current.

well for example your rings and gloves have vendor tier rolls, not worth even 1c, you could buy better ones with high life rolls for handful of chaos. If this is too much, rerolling will not help

seriously, ranger, as well as any other char, needs to have at least 5k HP to survive in yellow+ maps. no matter if it has some layers of defenses or is pure glass cannon. no matter if you play SSF, 20c budget or 50ex build..

other posters provided good advices, if you follow them your char may become playable

edit: btw, playing MF is pointless when your char cant handle it. Any build, that can run maps 30% faster will outperform your char in drops. Not even considering map tiers..

"

CrimsonReaper676 wrote:

"

Ludvator wrote:

it will be very hard not to die with 3.2k life..

7k evasion is low end.. but if you get more life, kill fast and move very well, you may survive..

i have no way to increase my life without buying expensive gear.. same with evasion/dodge. At this point I'm probably better off starting a fresh character because i feel i wasted my time on my current.

Rings with the same resists and double the amount of life you have are listed at 10c.

You can get gloves with at least the amount of All Res you have with at least 40 life for less than 10c.

Those are significant improvements you can make for 20-30c.

Your skill tree is not well geared towards survivability either. You have a whole bunch of jewels that are eating lots of skill points that could be better served being routed towards other areas that will balance DPS and defense. Your chaos res is also at -60 so improving that would help a lot.

Here's what I could come up with with about 10 minutes in POB that trades a very modest amount of DPS for a fair increase in defense, without improving your gear at all. All it took was to rework your skill tree and add Greater Multiple Projectiles Support to maintain clearing ability.

https://pastebin.com/V484hAfC

DPS goes from 63k to 56k but life, life leech, evasion all go up. Your effective hit pool goes up by almost 2k from both physical and elemental damage. I couldn't find Freeze chance in POB but I'd bet that your freeze chance goes way up, which will help with survivability too. There's probably some additional improvement to be made by reworking your skill gem setup. Even modest gear upgrades will amplify these improvements significantly.

"

IntellectSucks wrote:

"

CrimsonReaper676 wrote:

"

Ludvator wrote:

it will be very hard not to die with 3.2k life..

7k evasion is low end.. but if you get more life, kill fast and move very well, you may survive..

i have no way to increase my life without buying expensive gear.. same with evasion/dodge. At this point I'm probably better off starting a fresh character because i feel i wasted my time on my current.

Rings with the same resists and double the amount of life you have are listed at 10c.

You can get gloves with at least the amount of All Res you have with at least 40 life for less than 10c.

Those are significant improvements you can make for 20-30c.

Your skill tree is not well geared towards survivability either. You have a whole bunch of jewels that are eating lots of skill points that could be better served being routed towards other areas that will balance DPS and defense. Your chaos res is also at -60 so improving that would help a lot.

Here's what I could come up with with about 10 minutes in POB that trades a very modest amount of DPS for a fair increase in defense, without improving your gear at all. All it took was to rework your skill tree and add Greater Multiple Projectiles Support to maintain clearing ability.

https://pastebin.com/V484hAfC

DPS goes from 63k to 56k but life, life leech, evasion all go up. Your effective hit pool goes up by almost 2k from both physical and elemental damage. I couldn't find Freeze chance in POB but I'd bet that your freeze chance goes way up, which will help with survivability too. There's probably some additional improvement to be made by reworking your skill gem setup. Even modest gear upgrades will amplify these improvements significantly.

30c takes a WHILE to get when you're only able to do low tier maps at a somewhat decent pace. And again, RNG has been really bad for me this league.