Awakening: Armor vs Evasion vs Energy Shield

[Roenie]

I'm giving the game another go with the Awakening expansion. In my experience the relative strength of the defence types tended to shift around between game versions. I haven't played in years and my characters have been in the reset state for god knows how long.

What's the best choice of defence for the first character I respec for the new expansion? I'm guessing ES is always out of the question unless you have the gear with high enough ES stats to pull it off - which I don't. What about armor versus evasion? Is one currently stronger than the other? Are there combinations of two defence types to recommend?

Is there anything content wise in Awakening that might influence your recommendation?

Cheers.

[Lagwin1980]

ES is much easier than it was to build around now but it's still not as easy as armour.

Evasion seemed to get quite popular over the months before the expansion, it hasn't really changed but people started understanding it.

With armour or evasion you'll be backing it up with life...particularly evasion since when a hit gets through(and it will eventualy) you don't usualy have anything to mitigate the damage.

You not have the fortify support gem, a nice defence boost if you are wanting to go melee.

And you might want to look into getting endurance charges.

[CyberDown]

so Iron Reflexes is no longer a standard skill on every...single...build...that wasnt CI now?

[Roenie]

Lagwin, thanks,

You said people have started understanding evasion. What did they learn?

[Rafein]

Es is great if you can pull it off. more gear dependant than others, since you'll most likely not take any life

Evasion vs. Armor, I prefer evasion. Evasion gives you a chance to dodge incoming damage completely. Armor reduces incoming damage.

And as I recall, armor only works for physical attacks. Resist lowers your damage vs. spells. Evasion, you can put points in to dodge spells and projectiles, giving you a chance tke no damage from them.

[Shajirr]

One important thing - Armour works ONLY for physical damage. Dodge evades all attack damage, be it phys, chaos or elemental.

Also with dodge you will get Spell Acro, which adds 30% chance to dodge spells, which can be brought to 46% with Atziri Boots. Armour doesn't have anything like that against spells at all.

Many bosses have elemental attacks / spells for which armour is completely useless.

[Drake]

Armor doesn't just work on attacks, it works on physical spells too (ie. EK, shockwave totem, or the tornado spell some unique mobs have). That is the weakest point of an eva acro build so it all depends on what you want, resist phy spells or not be annoyed by ele attacks.

You can also choose not to choose and build an armor/eva char, did it a couple of times it works great and you don't get OS on your weak spot.

[Incunabulum]

I prefer Ar/Ev mixed over either Ar *or* Ev. ES is, as has been mentioned very gear dependent and (IME) Ev/ES isn't very good - you don't have a huge amount of ES, and when its gone, an (un)lucky crit or two and you're toast.

Ar/Ev will generally allow around 50% miss rate (not including any Block you might have) with Ar cutting down the damage from hits that make it through.

Ev by itself is decent as long as you back it up with some Life - its high enough on its own that most attacks will miss.

But, if I were just choosing one, I'd take Armor.

[Lagwin1980]

Originally posted by Roenie:

Lagwin, thanks,

You said people have started understanding evasion. What did they learn?

That going pure evasion with nothing else to back it up was not a good idea.

Like i said people used to play whith heaped evasion and no investment in life, all it took was one monster to crit them and they died.

You get life and the hit you take has a fair chance at not killing you outright unless it's maybe a boss and even better evasion and all the nodes for it are rount about the other keystones like ondars guile(nerfed not to arrow dancing on the new tree) acrobatics and phase acrobatics.

The worst for pure evasion was probably going up against spell casters since if you didn't move or had phase acrobatics you would get hit and spells had a chance to shotgun.

[Matthew]

Just saying "ES" isn't really descriptive enough. There is a rather large difference between full ES CI, ES/HP, whether you are using ghost reaver or not, etc.

I usually play CI summoners and I can only add my thoughts on normal mode so far, which is... not very good. I did okay on the A4 encounters (going in blind) at least better than many others were doing, but even with the faster ES downtime, there is so much crazy AoE damage that it is very difficult to find any breathing room to regen any shields.

I definitely think CI no leech will be possible, but it will play out like it always has, which basically boils down to simply not being as consistent as leech builds. Not something I'd recommend for HC players. I don't have vaal discipline yet and that will certainly help.

Personally for all the hate armour recieves in this game, I do think it is the best. Perhaps like Incunabulum said, maybe even Ar/Ev. My Mara rarely ever dies, partly due to overall tankiness and partly due to the simple ability to hit a instant effect potion to get through damage spikes. And he is melee. For sure, the spectral throw life builds which were popular a couple leagues back are still as viable and probably one of the easier ways to get through the game.

I should also add I have the least experience with full evasion builds, so I cannot add too much on that front.