How to best use Energy Shield?

[Solie]

I like the idea of not having to use health potions and just rely on a regenerating pool. But I'm a bit confused how ES builds work, as some of the finer mechanics of ES are a mystery to me. Like how quickly does it regenerate and how many sources are there to get it lower, is that even a priority at all? What about energy leech?

How big of a balance should I strike between energy shield nodes and nodes that support my build's damage? for instance right now I have a witch spec'd for fire with 3 of the major fire sections filled out in the top and middle left. Is that more than enough damage?

[Omenpapa]

Short answer it is highly dependant on your build.

But to give you some more usefull info too..

I always played CI(chaos innoculation) chars, because I love playing a "wizard" and a pure ES build makes me more wizardy :D

Playing CI is definately a handicap if we talk about the past, and it is a lot mor gear dependant then hp builds. Some ppl still don't understand what even is the point of it, since you don't really gain too much and you do sacrifice a lot.

With the addition of Ascendancy / occultist, this is changed somewhat. W/o that subclass, you pretty much did suicide if íyou went for CI before endgame. It just didnt worth it at all. Now you can go CI even in cruel(I did it with my current char), and didn't really feel underpowered at all.

Occultist's wicked ward and vile bastion makes a world of a difference. If you are new to the game or to CI chars, I highly recommend taking those asap.

In the past CI chars were forced to take ghost reaver too, which is still usefull now, but with the occultist it is not necesseary anymore.

I don't think you should think too much about how many ES or dmg nodes you need. Just go with the flow. If you feel you lack dmg boost tht. If you have survivability issues go for that.

Personally I really dislike hybrid builds (es+hp), but they do perform okay in theory, but probably some1 else should help you with if you interested in those.

Don't forget that with CI you will also be suffering more from any hp based attacks, like stuns,interrupts,elemental statuses etc, and thus you have to spend some points to defend against those.

[mss73055]

In my experience the best use of Energy Shield is to avoid it. In the end the recharge mechanism will make it stink. You want a big fat health pool so you can use potions and physical damage for life leech.

Of course you can pick talents to make the recharge mechanism less annoying. Or you can pick physical damage and beat up things with a big club.

[jbridso]

Using Pure/CI ES is covered above so I'll explain how to use ES in a hybrid sense.

There are two main problems as a hybrid... managing ES regeneration and itemization.

To effectively recover ES with a smaller pool you pretty much have to go with Ghost Reaver + Vaal Pact. The reason being is that the normal % regen from zealot's oath or leech rates from only ghost reaver are far too slow to be effective. ie) if you're running say 4000 hps and a 2000 ES buffer... you'd cut your regen/leech rates by 50% and thus be better off just going straight health. However, with Ghost Reaver + Vaal Pact the size of the pool is no longer relavent and your ES will basically instantly refill as soon as it takes a hit, providing a reliable buffer. You'll have to keep your hps topped up by using either potions or life gain on hit.

The second issue of itemization is a result of the fact that ES directly competes with +HPs on itemization and thus why most players consider ES as an all or nothing defense. There are 4-5 possible affixes and only 3 slots available, so something has to give.

To maximize the possible affixes for each armor slot you need to consider what can possibly roll on each slot... specifically the fact that chest & shield slots roll very high flat defenses compared to other item slots and basically the same +hp bonuses. So for an Evasion/ES build you'd want: chest/shield to roll +% evasion/ES, +flat Evasion, +flat ES and skip the +hps. Helms happen to have a moderately high flat ES so you'd want to roll +% evasion/ES, +flat ES, and +hps. All other slots should prioritize +hps and armor/evasion.

By itemizing in such a way you give up about 200-250 ish base hps and some armor/evasion in exchange for ~1200 ish base ES.

An example of a build using this technique would be a Molten Strike build which uses LGoH + some LL along with ghost reaver, vaal pact and possibly +es gained on hit jewels. With each projectile triggering a LGoH/ESGoH proc you'll simutaneously recover both life and ES... even though your hp pool/armor will be a bit lower you'll have a few thousand extra ES buffer to help absorb the big hits that either land with evasion or pierce armor.

[Solie]

Originally posted by Omenpapa:

Short answer it is highly dependant on your build.

Interesting, CI was indeed the first node I paid attention to and wasn't sure how often I'd be dealing with chaos damage, but I assumed an immunity was a pretty big deal if I was trading away that much health.

[Solie]

Originally posted by jbridso:

Using Pure/CI ES is covered above so I'll explain how to use ES in a hybrid sense.

There are two main problems as a hybrid... managing ES regeneration and itemization.

To effectively recover ES with a smaller pool you pretty much have to go with Ghost Reaver + Vaal Pact. The reason being is that the normal % regen from zealot's oath or leech rates from only ghost reaver are far too slow to be effective. ie) if you're running say 4000 hps and a 2000 ES buffer... you'd cut your regen/leech rates by 50% and thus be better off just going straight health. However, with Ghost Reaver + Vaal Pact the size of the pool is no longer relavent and your ES will basically instantly refill as soon as it takes a hit, providing a reliable buffer. You'll have to keep your hps topped up by using either potions or life gain on hit.

The second issue of itemization is a result of the fact that ES directly competes with +HPs on itemization and thus why most players consider ES as an all or nothing defense. There are 4-5 possible affixes and only 3 slots available, so something has to give.

To maximize the possible affixes for each armor slot you need to consider what can possibly roll on each slot... specifically the fact that chest & shield slots roll very high flat defenses compared to other item slots and basically the same +hp bonuses. So for an Evasion/ES build you'd want: chest/shield to roll +% evasion/ES, +flat Evasion, +flat ES and skip the +hps. Helms happen to have a moderately high flat ES so you'd want to roll +% evasion/ES, +flat ES, and +hps. All other slots should prioritize +hps and armor/evasion.

By itemizing in such a way you give up about 200-250 ish base hps and some armor/evasion in exchange for ~1200 ish base ES.

An example of a build using this technique would be a Molten Strike build which uses LGoH + some LL along with ghost reaver, vaal pact and possibly +es gained on hit jewels. With each projectile triggering a LGoH/ESGoH proc you'll simutaneously recover both life and ES... even though your hp pool/armor will be a bit lower you'll have a few thousand extra ES buffer to help absorb the big hits that either land with evasion or pierce armor.

I've typically been looking at gear as archetypes, like evasion would be for an evade specific build and should be stacked, armor would be the taking the hits approach, with energy shield being like HP but with questionable benefits if there wasn't some way to bring it up faster.

is pairing evade with ES fairly common vs evade and hp? what about armor+ES?


Also this is an unrelated question you may be able to answer too. I've always been a fan of defensive and shield based characters, but there's a lot of focus on clear speed in PoE, especially for leveling. Are there many setups that allow characters without a lot of damage investment to do damage? reflected hits, possibly that lightning block skill? my first real build attempt was righteous fire for this reason, but I'm not sure I can call it very defensive when RF is on.

[mss73055]

Ghost Reaver is a great perk, but this part of the talent tree offers litte reason for it. For elemental leech you need to sacrifice 2 weapon enchants for a disappointing grand total of 0.4%.
While a physical fighter can leech to full in one hit, elemental damage needs many hits at a much lower cast/attack speed.

Armour is a no-brainer. Much like resistance it makes Energy Shield more durable and enhances the effect of life leech. The deal with armour is its STR requirement, where platinum kris requires a level of DEX. You want daggers for Whirling Blades as movement skill.
Evade doesn't hurt once you got ~40% physical reduction.

[jbridso]

Originally posted by mss73055:

Ghost Reaver is a great perk, but this part of the talent tree offers litte reason for it. For elemental leech you need to sacrifice 2 weapon enchants for a disappointing grand total of 0.4%.
While a physical fighter can leech to full in one hit, elemental damage needs many hits at a much lower cast/attack speed.

Armour is a no-brainer. Much like resistance it makes Energy Shield more durable and enhances the effect of life leech. The deal with armour is its STR requirement, where platinum kris requires a level of DEX. You want daggers for Whirling Blades as movement skill.
Evade doesn't hurt once you got ~40% physical reduction.

The approach I've started using is to drop a Devouring Totem... if you read the description the healing provided is leech, as such it will rapidly recover your ES with Ghost Reaver and Vaal Pact. To ensure corpses are always available you link Desecrate + CWDT. Alternatively, you could link Desecrate + Mine/Trap + Minefield/Multitrap to trigger 9-15 corpses at a time.

The other ways to get reasonable elemental leech are via LL gem (will cost dmg though), and Warlord's mark. If you're using elemental "Attack" damage, the leech nodes just above iron reflexes are generic and do not specify "physical" so they do work with all damage types, but only for melee/bow/wand strikes.

[jbridso]

Originally posted by Solie:

Originally posted by jbridso:

Using Pure/CI ES is covered above so I'll explain how to use ES in a hybrid sense.

There are two main problems as a hybrid... managing ES regeneration and itemization.

To effectively recover ES with a smaller pool you pretty much have to go with Ghost Reaver + Vaal Pact. The reason being is that the normal % regen from zealot's oath or leech rates from only ghost reaver are far too slow to be effective. ie) if you're running say 4000 hps and a 2000 ES buffer... you'd cut your regen/leech rates by 50% and thus be better off just going straight health. However, with Ghost Reaver + Vaal Pact the size of the pool is no longer relavent and your ES will basically instantly refill as soon as it takes a hit, providing a reliable buffer. You'll have to keep your hps topped up by using either potions or life gain on hit.

The second issue of itemization is a result of the fact that ES directly competes with +HPs on itemization and thus why most players consider ES as an all or nothing defense. There are 4-5 possible affixes and only 3 slots available, so something has to give.

To maximize the possible affixes for each armor slot you need to consider what can possibly roll on each slot... specifically the fact that chest & shield slots roll very high flat defenses compared to other item slots and basically the same +hp bonuses. So for an Evasion/ES build you'd want: chest/shield to roll +% evasion/ES, +flat Evasion, +flat ES and skip the +hps. Helms happen to have a moderately high flat ES so you'd want to roll +% evasion/ES, +flat ES, and +hps. All other slots should prioritize +hps and armor/evasion.

By itemizing in such a way you give up about 200-250 ish base hps and some armor/evasion in exchange for ~1200 ish base ES.

An example of a build using this technique would be a Molten Strike build which uses LGoH + some LL along with ghost reaver, vaal pact and possibly +es gained on hit jewels. With each projectile triggering a LGoH/ESGoH proc you'll simutaneously recover both life and ES... even though your hp pool/armor will be a bit lower you'll have a few thousand extra ES buffer to help absorb the big hits that either land with evasion or pierce armor.

I've typically been looking at gear as archetypes, like evasion would be for an evade specific build and should be stacked, armor would be the taking the hits approach, with energy shield being like HP but with questionable benefits if there wasn't some way to bring it up faster.

is pairing evade with ES fairly common vs evade and hp? what about armor+ES?


Also this is an unrelated question you may be able to answer too. I've always been a fan of defensive and shield based characters, but there's a lot of focus on clear speed in PoE, especially for leveling. Are there many setups that allow characters without a lot of damage investment to do damage? reflected hits, possibly that lightning block skill? my first real build attempt was righteous fire for this reason, but I'm not sure I can call it very defensive when RF is on.

The main reason for these defenses is to mitigate physical damage... other damage types are simply mitigated via resists and max hps.

Armor = strong vs low physical damage hits, weak vs large physical damage hits
Evasion = strong vs all attacks, ineffective vs spells
ES = works vs all physical damage, offers no mitigation vs physical damage, difficult to recharge

So if you pair Evasion + ES, you end up weak vs physical spell damage... the only reasonable ways to mitigate physical spell damage as evasion is via spell block/dodge. Since acrobatics conflicts with ES (50% reduction), dodge is out of the question so you'd have to use a shield = melee/wand skills only and chase down spell block... and implement a method to recharge a small ES pool. Overall, it's much easier and effective to just go straight evasion, hps, acrobatics/dodge.

Armor + ES on the other hand is fairly effective as the two defenses synergize well. ES will help to offset any large hits that happen to overwhelm armor and elemental damage that ignores armor... while the armor will mitigates the smaller damage hits.


There are a couple of skills that allow decent damage without a lot of investment... namely incinerate and essence drain since you don't have to focus on crit. Reflect skills can do okay damage, but their performance is extremely situational. For instance if you're up against those chimera peacock things that spray shots from their tails they'll perform extremely well, but in most cases it's just mediocre. Typically reflect skills are used more for utility like curse on hit.

For a strong tanky build I'd recommend trying out Molten Strike + LGoH + GMP + Multistrike... claw + shield, the primary hits + every projectile that splashes onto a target will trigger a LGoH (instant heal)... you basically have to get oneshot to die.

[Solie]

Originally posted by jbridso:

Originally posted by Solie:

What about standard block? How does it work exactly? is it full physical mitigation on a block, or only a portion of the damage?

I've heard essence drain is popular lately, I think paired with contagion but i'm not sure how they set it up. Also is going for crit a pretty standard thing on most skills? I noticed crit in passives are usually things like 10, 20% etc. I'm guessing they just multiply whatever your base crit rate happens to be from a combination of your gear and character stats (STR/INT/Agi, but probably just one eof them, I dont remember what increases crit)

[Paroe]

Originally posted by Solie:

Originally posted by jbridso:

What about standard block? How does it work exactly? is it full physical mitigation on a block, or only a portion of the damage?

I've heard essence drain is popular lately, I think paired with contagion but i'm not sure how they set it up. Also is going for crit a pretty standard thing on most skills? I noticed crit in passives are usually things like 10, 20% etc. I'm guessing they just multiply whatever your base crit rate happens to be from a combination of your gear and character stats (STR/INT/Agi, but probably just one eof them, I dont remember what increases crit)

Im pretty sure its full mitigation.
If you want to go block, gladiator is bar none the best blocker in the game.

[jbridso]

A block negates all damage and is a random roll for success with no cooldown, if the attack would have stunned you when it hit, then you'll play a block animation for that duration. Dodge is also a separate full mitigation roll as well, if you happen to have that too.

May as well throw in evasion too... Evasion is not chance based, attacks just add up the % chance to hit and when they loop 100% a hit occurs... ie) a string of hits 30%, 40%, 40% come at you... first hit misses adds 30% to the pool, 2nd hit misses adds 40% upping the pool to 70%, third hit adds 40% so the pool becomes 110% and the hit lands, and subtracts 100% from the pool = 10% pool....

Essence drain is the primary damage dealer, it does huge DoT damage (dot's don't crit), but it's single target. Contagion will spread the effect of Essence Drain when the target dies... so it changes essence drain into a psudo AoE. You can also use multiple projectiles/pierce or something like the spire of shards to turn essence drain into an AoE style attack as well.

Increased Crit and Crit Damage become extremely powerful when stacked and it's how players get up into the 100k+ dps ranges. The crit nodes you see on the tree are % of base... which is either the weapon base crit chance (shown on the weapon) for attacks, or a base rate for spells (shown on the skill gem). You can also improve the base crit rate via the critical strike support gem, and assassin ascendancy nodes for shadow and scion.

Stats do not directly affect crit chance... however, accuracy does affect crit chance for attacks so dex does indirectly affect the odds of landing a critical attack since it affects accuracy.

[Solie]

Originally posted by jbridso:

A block negates all damage and is a random roll for success with no cooldown, if the attack would have stunned you when it hit, then you'll play a block animation for that duration. Dodge is also a separate full mitigation roll as well, if you happen to have that too.

May as well throw in evasion too... Evasion is not chance based, attacks just add up the % chance to hit and when they loop 100% a hit occurs... ie) a string of hits 30%, 40%, 40% come at you... first hit misses adds 30% to the pool, 2nd hit misses adds 40% upping the pool to 70%, third hit adds 40% so the pool becomes 110% and the hit lands, and subtracts 100% from the pool = 10% pool....

Essence drain is the primary damage dealer, it does huge DoT damage (dot's don't crit), but it's single target. Contagion will spread the effect of Essence Drain when the target dies... so it changes essence drain into a psudo AoE. You can also use multiple projectiles/pierce or something like the spire of shards to turn essence drain into an AoE style attack as well.

Increased Crit and Crit Damage become extremely powerful when stacked and it's how players get up into the 100k+ dps ranges. The crit nodes you see on the tree are % of base... which is either the weapon base crit chance (shown on the weapon) for attacks, or a base rate for spells (shown on the skill gem). You can also improve the base crit rate via the critical strike support gem, and assassin ascendancy nodes for shadow and scion.

Stats do not directly affect crit chance... however, accuracy does affect crit chance for attacks so dex does indirectly affect the odds of landing a critical attack since it affects accuracy.

That's cool that evasion is a guranteed stack like that. I suppose if you were fighting a boss with slow big hits, you could count them and choose when to tank with an evade.


I think I remember reading the assassin ascendancy was like, 100% crit on the first hit to a target. So with something like that could you essentially ignore crit and just focus on damage and critical multiplier? I imagine the crit multiplier is mixed in with most of the crit nodes, but some of you would know better than me.



Also with basic attacks, are the full properties of a basic attack carried over to skills that use them? like frost blades for example. I was thinking about trying a build with huge attack speed but later realized it would probably also change a skill's attack speed. So do skill use the full effect of your basic attack damage or a portion?

Also in regards to dual wielding. how does the attack speed work with two weapons equipped? do attacks recieve the full damage of both weapons? and what about while using dual strike? (Whichever skill strike with both at once)