Armor or Energy Shield

[Supertuffe]

I am palying a sorcerer and is struggeling in Act 1, I cant seem to get past the end boss the Count. I am very squishy and cant seem to get high DPS. But regarding defence, is Armor better than Energy shield for a sorcerer? I have got two armor pieces, one with energy shield and one with very high armor value. But does armor value have any effect on sorcerers?

[scown]

honestly energy shield and try your best to not to get touched either cause what i seen elemental damage just destroys ppl using armor.

[Vespertellino]

For act 1 I'd say forcus on your offense entirely
Also early on - whatever defensive stat you can find is alright
In the late game, you won't be leveling your strength, so you won't be using items that have armor on them overall

[Fuinseoig]

General hints - as much movement as you can get, you want to be able to dodge dodge dodge those damn blood icicles in the third phase. Pour all your passive points into damage on whatever part of your skill tree. Also make sure you have every scrap of cold resistance you can lay your hands on. The key to beating Geonor is to stun him, if at all possible, do a ton of damage, then run like hell when he starts attacking and in the icy mist circle with the wolves. Stun hit run, stun hit run, over and over again.

You'll get there eventually, I did even though I was seriously contemplating just giving up as he kept killing me in the third phase. Argh. Good news is, once you get into Act 2, the start of that is nowhere near as terrible. Don't get over-confident or a mob of desert creepy-crawlies will kill you, but once past Geonor you can take it relatively easy for the start of the next act.

[Ghostlight]

This fight was BY FAR the hardest in the first playthru for ever character I levelled. Your gear is rubbish, your build is not there either. In every case I hardly died through the rest of the Normal campaign compared to the number of deaths on this one boss.

My hint: Cold Resistance makes a huge difference

[Fuinseoig]

Originally posted by Ghostlight:

This fight was BY FAR the hardest in the first playthru for ever character I levelled. Your gear is rubbish, your build is not there either. In every case I hardly died through the rest of the Normal campaign compared to the number of deaths on this one boss.

My hint: Cold Resistance makes a huge difference

Every dang boss feels like fighting Kitava in Act 10 of POE1. There, I didn't mind it being a slog, because it felt earned: this was the big guy, it was supposed to be hard no matter how well-prepared you were, and when you finally beat him it felt like a real achievement.

These bosses don't feel the same; they just soak up any damage you inflict and it's slog slog slog. The problem is that you can't really *fight*, you depend so much on dodge roll and run away to avoid attacks and mobs of minions, so you only get a few hits in relative to all the time you're spending.

I don't expect to go up against an act boss, hit twice, and that's it, but running in circles for ten minutes or more just to slog through what shouldn't be this hard doesn't *feel* like a proper fight, because the boss isn't that important, it's just an obstacle to get through to the next part.

I realise that is going to evoke a lot of "git gud" and "my build just wipes out all bosses" and I'm truly happy for everyone who managed to perfectly tweak their build to breeze through. But like a lot of people have said: this early your gear is not great, you're still figuring out the best passive points on the tree to allocate, and just grinding away at a boss who can soak up damage like a Christmas cake soaks up brandy while one blink on your part and you'll get one-shotted for missing the micro-second you have to dodge isn't fun.

I'm finally into Act 2 but the slog of "run, dodge, shoot the bow for a few points damage; run, dodge, avoid the mobs that just spawned; run, dodge, now the boss attack is filling up the area; run, dodge, hit; great, I have now reduced the boss to 98% life so just keep on - oh damn, it got me, time to start over again AGAIN" is draining all the fun out of it.

Either reduce the sponge effect on bosses or let us craft better gear earlier.

[eastcow91]

energy shield + chaos innoc for me + block max.