Is health and armor worthless at high level?

[Phlynx]

Watched several vids saying conversion and es is the only way to go, is this true?

[Vaal]

There are a lot of ES nodes in the skill tree vs almost none for life (str nodes dont count), take it with a grain of salt.

[Knavenformed]

STR as a requirement for armor is inherently good.

Personally I hate playing anything not based on STR + Armor since it makes boss mechanics much more fair

Can't say for end-game but I feel much more comfortable with STR HP stacking than having a lot of ES and no negation.

[DarkFenix]

Then those vids were made by imbeciles. ES is not the only way at all.

[wing]

Pretty much, it's much more important to minmax in poe 2 compared to the first game since you lose your map if you die, and armour is worthless and life is meh. ES is by far the best

[Absinth Minded]

ES is sadly the best option. Evasion helps but makes you too squishy, armor, for whatever reason, stops working the harder the enemies hit you. Which is such an esoteric and stupid system that I strongly suggest that you go for ES in endgame.

[Neithan]

Guess OP missed the videos of full-out strength + armor (with max res ofc) warriors with raised shield facetanking everything..

There is several ways of staying alive, if you invest right.

[Vaal]

ES is good if you pair it with Chaos Inoculation/Mind over Matter. So you can ignore chaos, poison and bleed damage. And to die you have to lose all your ES, then your mana and then your only HP.
But you're weak to stuns and freezes so pick your poison.

[parent child bowl]

Yes, armor is terrible and HP is a lot worse than ES.

[parent child bowl]

Originally posted by Neithan:

Guess OP missed the videos of full-out strength + armor (with max res ofc) warriors with raised shield facetanking everything..

There is several ways of staying alive, if you invest right.

That's block doing the job. Not armor and HP.

[Neithan]

Originally posted by parent child bowl:

Originally posted by Neithan:

Guess OP missed the videos of full-out strength + armor (with max res ofc) warriors with raised shield facetanking everything..

There is several ways of staying alive, if you invest right.

That's block doing the job. Not armor and HP.

It's not only block, it is (with most stuff in this game) a combination of things, blocking alone won't keep you alive, you either can't block everything, or if you could, you will always take part of the damage instead.

Not saying that some things might be more effective than others, and ES might be the "FotM" right now, but other things do still work, and with other mechanics like damage mainly, people forget to "stack". Sure there is big passive nodes that can change stuff so going full-in on a single stat works, but in general, stacking and "layer'ing" is what you want to do.

[parent child bowl]

Originally posted by Neithan:

Originally posted by parent child bowl:

That's block doing the job. Not armor and HP.

It's not only block, it is (with most stuff in this game) a combination of things, blocking alone won't keep you alive, you either can't block everything, or if you could, you will always take part of the damage instead.

Not saying that some things might be more effective than others, and ES might be the "FotM" right now, but other things do still work, and with other things like damage mainly, people forget to "stack" stuff. Sure there is big nodes that can change stuff so going full-in on a single stat works, but in general, stacking and layer'ing is what you want to do.

Stacking armor is pretty much the worst thing you can do though. The investment is way too high for the reward. You're better off going for conversion or ES and getting block and a moderate amount of armor and evasion.

Yes, there is more than one answer to defenses, but in endgame, armor stacking is the worst of them all.

[Empukris]

ES is the easiest option but by far not the only option. Beside you are already late into the party. ES gear is expensive AF. Exactly due to this stereotype that popularised by those streamer. It is due to jewels, skill nodes are plenty, and "easy" to scale up with the correct gear. Easy is 1 week ago, now those gear cost least a few divines upward. Good luck.

[RawMeatDiet]

Early endgame armor is doable. I am seeing big improvements in tanking ability on my hardcore character when I do tier 2 maps with more armour.

[Neithan]

Don't forget, while I would never excuse everything with EA, balancing the different def mechanics is one thing I give them some time with.

[parent child bowl]

Originally posted by Neithan:

Don't forget, while I would never excuse everything with EA, balancing the different def mechanics is one thing I give them some time with.

The problem with that is that armor seems to work the same it does in PoE 1 and I don't have much hope that it will change.