Confused with how to spec out defense for a warrior

[Mister Shan]

Right now I just try to get my armor up really high as well as my resistance to magic. However, I found an amulet that gave me like 20 percent shield gen, and I found it pretty useful against magic I did not have any Resistance for. It was like one get out of jail free card against one ability a boss had.

So now I wonder if it was a bad idea pouring most of my points in strength and my defense into armor. Should I be spreading it out?

[CrappyBark]

Armor is the weakest defense line at the moment, and energy shield is the strongest(with passive investment and being built around, not just slapping on some gear and calling it a day)

Generally I tell people that you're going to have the best time by picking 2 defenses and working on them, my understanding is that armor+evasion is the second weakest due to reliance on armor

Someone did the math and the numbers *seem* to coincide more with pre 3.16 poe https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1hln20p/poe_2_armor_formula_testing_and_estimates/

Which just means that you need much much more armor than the other defenses to still have a lesser effect on survivability. Does that mean it isn't viable? Standalone, yes. Pure armor is just asking to get frustrated. But I think the jury is still out on mixed defense. I am currently trying Armor + ES because I am just making mistakes and living with it(I picked blood mage, I am going crit, I am running armor + es....yeah, it's "interesting" lol)

Best guess is right now ES is still king, and evasion does its job with acrobatics, but don't do anything too drastic because GGG is probably going to start the ball rolling on updates sometime this month and armor might get tuned to be more inline with current POE defenses. I would look into maybe speccing into some ES to add that cushion against big hits, but idk

[wulfster42]

Ok, armor is very specific in what it protects you from, and it does less (or nothing) vs very hard hits. That isn't to say it's useless, if 20 mobs are shooting at you (normal ones) with physical attacks/arrows, armor might reduce the damage they do by 50% or so, even withought focusing on it that much. To make it useful vs harder hits (blue or yellow mobs) you need to really focus on it, and it still won't do anything vs the hardest hitting ones, or any elemental damage etc.

That isn't to say it's useless, at all, especially for warrior.


One of the nodes by the warrior gives you 40% of your armor % increase, as eshield recharge. Warrior is REALLY good at getting alot of eshield and armor % nodes, and, if you go Titan (honestly the only choice for warrior now anyway), you can (and should) get hulking form.

Hulking form changes the 12% armor and eshield nodes, into 18% ones. Pure eshield nodes are just 15%....so you actually get more from them, than someone starting with alot of pure eshield nodes all around them. Eventually if you go to the outer circle of the tree, and head n/ne, you will get the pure e-shield nodes as well (normally 15...but for you 22% each).

By around level 80 or so, because of hulking form you end up with about 100% increased eshield regen rate, just from that 1 node. You also end up with ....I think it was about 400% eshield and a bit over 200% armor.

For your EQ you want to focus mainly on eshield armor (you head up to the north of the tree and get the 8 int nodes (12 due to hulking form) and 25 int node, which helps a freakton with the stat requirements for eq.

Also you have quite a few (5% worth) of +max resists. That can make your fire/cold/light resists 80% (you get 10% bonus resists as well, helping you get there a bit easier).

End game you want 80% resists except chaos (try and get that over 40% if you can). That + your eshield and armor will make you very hard to kill, while still having the most +%damage of any class/ascendency in the game. Used with a q-staff (primarily dex required which really stretches your stats) and ice strike and you blast through everything.

As far as stats, warrior with hulking form gets almost 150 bonus strength points without taking even 1 normal stat node towards strength. You don't even need that much, but 2 8(12) str nodes and the 25 strength node, along with 20-30 strength from keystones that give other things you want, are pretty much automatic (need it just to get your rage set up). So you flat out have 79-89 bonus strength as a warrior without going out of your way at all. That makes it much easier to reach the dex reqs for a q-staff while having a high enough int to wear armor etc that you want.

[bobroonie.bda]

Add what other guys said with the shield build that adds !% to block = 1% to damage and 1% damage for every 15 strength turns both block and strength into damage.

[Time]

armor doesnt work, it doesnt even block spit

[donut32]

run ES and evasion

[DirtyMick]

Strength is still great for max health. But other than that, yes energy shield is the way to go.

[lmg]

Originally posted by wulfster42:

Ok, armor is very specific in what it protects you from, and it does less (or nothing) vs very hard hits. That isn't to say it's useless, if 20 mobs are shooting at you (normal ones) with physical attacks/arrows, armor might reduce the damage they do by 50% or so, even withought focusing on it that much. To make it useful vs harder hits (blue or yellow mobs) you need to really focus on it, and it still won't do anything vs the hardest hitting ones, or any elemental damage etc.

That isn't to say it's useless, at all, especially for warrior.


One of the nodes by the warrior gives you 40% of your armor % increase, as eshield recharge. Warrior is REALLY good at getting alot of eshield and armor % nodes, and, if you go Titan (honestly the only choice for warrior now anyway), you can (and should) get hulking form.

Hulking form changes the 12% armor and eshield nodes, into 18% ones. Pure eshield nodes are just 15%....so you actually get more from them, than someone starting with alot of pure eshield nodes all around them. Eventually if you go to the outer circle of the tree, and head n/ne, you will get the pure e-shield nodes as well (normally 15...but for you 22% each).

By around level 80 or so, because of hulking form you end up with about 100% increased eshield regen rate, just from that 1 node. You also end up with ....I think it was about 400% eshield and a bit over 200% armor.

For your EQ you want to focus mainly on eshield armor (you head up to the north of the tree and get the 8 int nodes (12 due to hulking form) and 25 int node, which helps a freakton with the stat requirements for eq.

Also you have quite a few (5% worth) of +max resists. That can make your fire/cold/light resists 80% (you get 10% bonus resists as well, helping you get there a bit easier).

End game you want 80% resists except chaos (try and get that over 40% if you can). That + your eshield and armor will make you very hard to kill, while still having the most +%damage of any class/ascendency in the game. Used with a q-staff (primarily dex required which really stretches your stats) and ice strike and you blast through everything.

As far as stats, warrior with hulking form gets almost 150 bonus strength points without taking even 1 normal stat node towards strength. You don't even need that much, but 2 8(12) str nodes and the 25 strength node, along with 20-30 strength from keystones that give other things you want, are pretty much automatic (need it just to get your rage set up). So you flat out have 79-89 bonus strength as a warrior without going out of your way at all. That makes it much easier to reach the dex reqs for a q-staff while having a high enough int to wear armor etc that you want.

bulk form does not bulk big nodes, bulk form only bulk up small non attribute nodes,

[Orclover]

ES, just focus on ES or plan on not surviving as much. Nothing else matters. Future proofing doesnt matter because ES has been king in POE 1 for years.

[wulfster42]

Originally posted by Orclover:

ES, just focus on ES or plan on not surviving as much. Nothing else matters. Future proofing doesnt matter because ES has been king in POE 1 for years.

That is what I said. 15% evasion is a small node, 12% armor and 12% evasion is a small node. 10% melee/attack are all small nodes. Hulk boosts all of them by 50%.