which type of armor?

[neat exile]

Hey guys, I'm starting to struggle a little with melee classes. I wanted to try out monk and warrior and they are OK-ish but it's quickly getting difficult because enemies hit hard. So my question is: what type of armor combo should I use for warrior and monk?

Pure armor, armor/evasion, armor/energy shield or maybe evasion/energy shield?

[['w']]

I use ev/es with meditation (ascendary) / wind dancer (more ev pushes enemies away) / ghost dance... switched ghost ES regen depending on EV (19k with wind dancer)

blind (blinding strike ) and knockback quaterstaff whirling assault
herald of thunder (maim and blind and shock near to shocked enemy)

~2.6k life
2.6k ES without meditation (doubles it)

Boots with 340 stun treshhold

I only go in melee if I can kill fast, else storm wave with mobility gem and others

[Nightskies]

Straight answer? Shield or shield/evasion for monk, and armor or armor/shield for warrior. But its not that easy.

Where in the game at you at?

Shot in the dark, you probably need higher resists. More health. Some regeneration or life leech.

[Medicles]

Currently stacking Energy Shield supported with Evasion is the best defense for everyone.

[RedShirt]

That's a surprisingly difficult question.
In the end:
Armour is nearly worthless, energy shield is OP if speced, evasion is only worth it when acrobatics is taken and its a lot.

For warrior you normally go armour and later convert phys damage into fire damage, we hope that gets fixed soon.
For monk you go evasion/es.

I suppose you are still in campaign. The biggest survivability boost you can get at that point is resistances. It is very likely that you don't die to physical hits but to elemental ones.

[RawMeatDiet]

Armour is better if you are new to the game, so you can tank most oneshots from bosses if your armor up to date. Evasion feels good during campaign even without acrobatics but you need to pay attention because while evasion is better than armour against trash enemies you mentioned, it is more active and you may need to spam potions if your enemies hit you unluckily.

In short: Evasion is slightly better overall, even for warrior, in softcore anyway. But that's not counting block. Most tankiest warrior will have block and you can make a character that you can afk with while an entire screen of mobs can't kill you during campaign. If you don't want to think, then armour for warrior, evasion for monk. But block is better than no block.

[Uncle David]

whatever works for you I just load up on excessive amounts of energy shield and energy shield regen

[neat exile]

Originally posted by Nightskies:

Straight answer? Shield or shield/evasion for monk, and armor or armor/shield for warrior. But its not that easy.

Where in the game at you at?

Shot in the dark, you probably need higher resists. More health. Some regeneration or life leech.

Still beginning, let's say act 2.

[neat exile]

evasion/energy shield it is then. At least for a monk.

I also wanted to create a tank warrior with shield and I noticed that there are even shields with armor/es and armor/evasion. If armor is currenctly bugged/not effective then maybe I should run armor/evasion on a tank warrior istead of full armor? Or maybe armor/es?

[ex_IllusionisT]

Don't listen to anyone that tells you any of the defenses are bad, including armor.
What you need depends on your build and which nodes are closer.

But you should follow these practices best:
Always max your elemental and chaos resistances.

If you see a node that converts physical damage taken into elemental, take it. There are items that do this as well.

If you see a node that reduces critical damage bonus received, take it.

When you're relying on one primary defense, make sure you have big enough health pool combined with ES to absorb at least 1 big hit. That will allow you time to heal up until the next one comes.

For your warrior, look into Rage, and the node that gives you 1% armor per Rage, and the buff that grants you armor when you break enemies armor.

Only go up on the tree for Armor/ES if there are nodes that way that you need to make your build work. Otherwise just fully stack armor.

My character was so buffed up with armor, when combined with leech, big hits would take away only 2k hp, and it would heal up quickly from my attacks, facetanking anything.

With a proper unique item that converts phys dmg to fire, and then picking the node that lets 25% of your armor be applied to fire damage taken, you'll be unkillable.

You just gotta look in the tree, and examine your defenses.

For your Monk you can go anything.

[RawMeatDiet]

Originally posted by neat exile:

evasion/energy shield it is then. At least for a monk.

I also wanted to create a tank warrior with shield and I noticed that there are even shields with armor/es and armor/evasion. If armor is currenctly bugged/not effective then maybe I should run armor/evasion on a tank warrior istead of full armor? Or maybe armor/es?

Currently ES is best for every class. If you can squeeze in armour into your primarily ES build for warrior then that's good. You won't be able to build ES early for warrior. Maybe in Cruel difficulty. Until then ES not worth it.