Building defenses on evasion based characters?

Playing deadeye, 2.1k HP and 76% evasion w/ acrobatics. It works, but any big phy hit gets through your dodge you evaporate instantly. Made it to 95, don't really feel like im dying too often, but it doesn't feel good at the level/investment im in to have a character that can die randomly to white mobs.

Is the only answer to fixing this really just going hybrid ES? Even warrior wasn't this bad, armor isn't the only thing you have access to on warrior, you have block on top of that, plus around twice the hp pool. I've got no realistic way of scaling life on deadeye, and if they removed life on the tree, just for everyone to have to take energy shield on the tree and also rework their gear how exactly is that better?

And even if I go hybrid, looking at PoB with some insane helm+boots and hybrid chest I'll probably be 2-2.5k ES at best, relying completely on ghost shrouds and grim feast to have any resemblance of recharge rate/sustain since all those nodes are far out of reach, which again puts on pressure on my build at least to get spirit corrupt on top of good rolled chest/amulet. And it also is going to have some toll on overall dodge chance from evasion since a good chunk is lost going hybrid chest, and the ES conversion node on the tree is 1 for 12 evasion for some horrible reason so going full EVA chest and grabbing that node is significantly worse than a hybrid chest.

Is that 2.5k ES even going to be worth the trouble? Thats going to at best let me survive a phy hit of about 5k or so vs the 2.5k or so I can now, and im going to lose a lot of stuff on the tree like AoE and some damage shuffling around to hybrid.

I'd be happy if I could just invest some points on my tree into life out of stuff I don't absolutely need, having to do that for ES, and change my gear just seems all around worse.

I also don't see anyway to get my phy max hit, which Im assuming is the biggest metric for survivability other than cranking ES, theres no accessible conversion outside of uniques that takes up a slot and do only that, theres no PDR on anything but shields. Is it really just ES and thats it right now?

My Titan has something like 3k life and 4k energy shield using mostly hybrid bases.

So I think you should be able to get at around 3k energy shield. Maybe more.


I don't know if iron reflexes is still a thing (converting all evasion to armour), but as much as people say armour is crap, evasion is double crap without a massive hit pool or armour to reduce the hit when it comes.

I know it is counter intuitive but there's a point where you have to respec into very defensively stuff but at 95 you should be able to cover all bases.

Everyone needs two defensive layers.

Evasion builds are close to useless w/o acrobatics, which requires heavy investment into evasion to bring it to a decent %. You cant really compare numbers with armor+es, because in case of armor you don't have to take some silly node that gives you 70% less armor.

I used to play ranger with 2.5k hps and feel your pain. I got tired of getting 1-shot and switched to play es based mage. My equipment is waaaay far from perfect, yet I have 7k es(14k with overflow). Basically, I don't even notice hits which would kill my ranger outright.

If you decide to add ES to you ranger, try getting sapphire jewels with es(they give you up to 20% max es). This way you wont need to take es nodes from mages area of passive tree. Spectral Ward(gives +flat es based on eva on your body) is a must I'd say. Subterfuge Mask is a good node too, if your build allows to take it. Atziri's Disdain gives you EXTRA flat es, based on your life. You won't get a huge es pool like mage/monk, but any amount of es will be useful since you have only 2.5k life. Even 1k es combined with ghost dance is a huge gain.

Try get yourself Olroth Resolve life flask, which converts excess of life recovery into a guard for 10 sec. You can scale amount of guard with recovery nodes(ranger has a lot of them), flask recovery on belts and herbalism support gem. It won't make you an immortal but will basically double your life pool in risky situations when you expect to get a huge hit. Omens of Resurgence and Refreshment might be useful for certain boss fights when you can't refresh flasks off killing mobs.

evasion is an odd thing for sure. its so good, and yet so incomplete that when used alone feels awful.

in poe1 on life chars if i wanted solid defence i always wanted physical damage mitigation and avoidance paired together. just avoidance and just phys mit both felt like total shit to me.


so the options were almost always

armour + block

armour + evasion

evasion + lightning coil


for me i just cant play a 'pure' evasion char in poe1 without a lightning coil, which felt like it couldnt be good as a design. i dont think everyone felt that way and with the "i have /deaths 372, 3k hp and im blasting boiiiissss!!!" meta people were quite happy playing tornado shot/la rangers with a bit of evasion+spell sup.


i play the game like its hardcore in any mode, i dont want even a single death and i just dont see evasion without a coil or armour or being ci with 10k es, and nothing ive seen in poe2 so far suggests im gonna feel any different here unfortunately.









its a game where they want things to matter, but with damage and defence i honestly think maybe defence is too impactful? the difference taking regular phys damage between having 0 armour and 20k armour is massive. the difference between evading 75% of hits and not against bursts is so big. but theyre such different mechanics that they truly trivialise a type of incoming damage while leaving you fatally unequipped to deal with others. the damage with is almost nothing and the damage without is inevitable death.

so how can stuff be balanced? it means u have to have layers, we always talked about layers in poe1 and its a complex game thats fine but when that means well you HAVE to hybrid 2 of the 3 core defences or use this unique armour to make it work...? is that right? are the tools really there for this to feel like thats how it should work?

sceptical. i sometimes wonder if high evasion should be less 80% chance to evade and more 40% chance, that a damage reduction to a type of damage should never be 70-80% and always be more like 30-40% at the top so that not having that type of layer makes you significantly more vulnerable but still playable?

Again the superstition about defence and layers of defence. Nothing like that in this game is/doesn't work. Just make a glass cannon like everyone else and destroy everything before it can threaten you.

The best defense is a good offense. Playing deadeye you want to be hyper aggressive and destroy the screen before anything can hit you.

For the minimal defense that I require, I've specced out of acrobatics, and went ES hybrid. Now I have 2k HP, and 1.6k ES (3.2k with Grim) and still 80% evasion which helps prevent slip ups from hyper-fast enemies, especially those on juice.

And while I still carry the two death omens with me (heal on low & less XP pen), I don't recall when I have died the last time. I am approaching 96 right now.

Personally I feel like defense was only an issue when I didn't have enough DPS for quick kills, and now defense is only there so that burning ground doesn't directly tap my life.