I want to talk about Defenses compared to how much damage certain enemy minions do.

Before I even get started, here is my POB: https://maxroll.gg/poe2/pob/q321107n

Now. I have built my character around everything that has continued to murder me in weystones. I have just about every defense the game has to offer yet none of it feels worth it.

I am getting endurance charges and am getting 15% more defenses with the endurance charges through charge infusion. This also scales with the armor that is giving me 11% increased global defenses per socketed core. This is a 44% increase to all defenses.

I have a shield that is granting me 57% block chance with some passives added from the skill tree. That means that I block more than 50% of the time.

I have 55% armor and 80% evasion through means of 10 stacks of scavenged plating, gale fore, 4 stages of wind dancer and increases to evasion and armor through the passive tree.

I also have 4.2k life and 422 energy shield with life regen through support gems and passive nodes.

I also have 100% reduced critical damage bonus taken through 4 soul cores, 40% from my shield and the last 20% from a passive tree node.

Seeing as I have just about every damn defense the game has to offer I am still maintaining a fairly decent dps output but at times with EVERY defense up and active something still has a 1 shot.

What I am running is not difficult. They are all magic tier weystones and will continue to be magic tier until I reach lvl 100 on this character. Now for a enemy to be in a weystone that is not fully maxed with mods and corrupted but still have a one shot potential is absurd. I would understand it more if I was running any serious content but the truth is that I am not. The only other content I can run are weystones with absolutely no mods and that would cause me to rarely ever get a weystone drop to continue through the game.

I do understand that HUGE balance changes are to come but am EXTREMELY curious if anyone else also believes that trying to build a character that can take a hit and not instantly die just isn't worth the time, currency and passive points to do so. Leave a comment if you also believe that MANY enemy minions are still WAY OVERPOWERED. I would appreciate it.

I invested into defensives just to be able to level and get nothing for it which poses another question. Is HARDCORE dead because of how much damage the enemy's are doing?

You need to drop that helmet and get all elemental resists to 75%, this is 100% whats killing you.

With 4000 life and 0 resist you can take 4,000 elemental damage.
with 3000 life and 75% resist you can take 12,000! elemental damage.
(4000 life with 75% resist 16,000 damage)

Pretty much all high damage hits comes from elemental damage.

Even losing 1000 life and then getting 75% resist makes you 3 times as tanky!!!.

I really wish I was able to agree with this comment but elemental damage isn't what kills me. It's phys damage mostly which is what I believed to have been huge crit which is why I got the 100% reduced crit damage taken. Also, why is everyone so against the helmet? It seems that everyone just out right hates that helmet. I have played hundreds of hours on this character and one elemental skill that does get me is the lightning bolt mod that rares have. There is also this witch that drops what looks like a curse zone or something. I still don't know what that is but that also one taps me.

Its not physical damage, it might look like it but you don't actually see the damage type the monsters do.

Just try it and mapping will feel a lot better.

This would mean that I would have to invest in even more gear without actually knowing if it would work or not. I don't want to waste what little I have on a chance that I will still get 1 tapped anyway.

Whats your fire/cold/lightning res if you take off the helmet?

Edit: it is late but I can probably help you tomorrow.

In the meantime, while mapping look for some boots,helmet,ring,amulets,belts with elemental resist and life (movement speed on boots).

I would drop the unique boots and charge infusion too much investment for very little gain, that will also free up passive points to get more damage or survive ability instead of less reservation.

Lightning exposure on frost bomb does not work.

If I take off the helmet my elemental resentences would be in the negative values. Thank you for offering to help me in the future and I do appreciate it but I have spent eight years in Path of Exile just to spend even more hours in Path of Exile 2. I understand that when other individuals see that resentences are 0% they would assume that I take an elemental hit as if my elemental resentences are at 0%. That is not the case. The helmet takes away elemental resentences meaning that I don't have any at all. POB, Max Roll, and GGG have not implemented a code into the game to show that an exile has no elemental resentences as they did with Omniscience. So it only looks like my elemental resentences are set at 0% when in fact, I shouldn't have any elemental resentences.

I truly believe that everyone is against this helmet because of just how strong it actually is and if other exiles would discover how strong it is it would dip into their pockets. Many exiles are money hungry and it seems to be one of the only things they care about so they turn other exiles against this helmet to fill their pockets. A Jedi V.S. A Sith story.

According to your premise (no resistance is better than negative resistance), positive resistance is better than no resistance.

Is that true ?

I do not know if you are talking to me (The poster) in the reply above but I do know that you will not find in any of the above post where I compared resentence types. Whether it's negative, positive or 0% resentences.

Ok so let's assume that no one actually knows if positive resistance is better than no resistance.

Now back to the topic "to make very tanky build with VotN unique helm even more tanky, what can we do ?"

I would search something that gives negative elemental resistances and huge bonuses like VotN unique helm. (with the helm, it doesn't matter if I have -100000000000000000000000 elemental resistances.)

Or I would search something that converts elemental damage taken to any non-elemental damage or something that enables the build to resist elemental damage by non-elemental resistance (physical or chaos).

Edit
I forgot to add that all those my assumption would make no sense if positive value is no better than no value.

Edit2
But it no problem because no sense = no value, that means positive value is no better than no value. :)