Nnew to POE: how important is defense

[CILinkz]

hi im new and im wondering is defense more important than attack? and on top of that, are Life, Shielding, Armor and Evasion equally important or is one more valuable than the other?

[Vespertellino]

Defense is a lie
Especially early in the game

[Vespertellino]

Late in the game as well
It only somewhat works in the midgame atm

[9g6t7g967t]

In my experience, At least in early game. You want as much offense as possible. As long as you are meeting a few resist checks you get enough defensive stats through random gear to survive most things.

[GetUrAssToMars]

It really depends on your class and build OP.

They do somewhat different things and scale depending on your stats.

Elemental resistance is very important no matter what tho

[Nico]

One of the most important defenses are your elemental resistances. Getting them high is really helpful an by the time you get into the endgame you really want to try to max them out at 75%. From armor/evasion/ES you do usually also focus on one of the 3 depending on your main stat. And more life is ofc also always helpful, especially if you do not have ES.

For the start it's probably enough to just try to get one decent resistance mod on each of your items as well as one other good mod. Rings can have resistances as an implicit, so those also help a lot.

[T0b1maru]

Oef. People giving recommendations based on campaign experience it seems. :P
Defenses are the most important part of your build. If you cannot achieve enough layers of defense you will have a really hard time progression in late game.

Remember, after lvl 70 you loose 15% of your level each time you die.
Without the proper defenses to survive you will never actually progress after that.

Though, this is in the current EA state. Let's hope changes happen in the near future.