Those who are new to Path of Exile will soon come to realise how attack-focused the game really is. This leads many of us to invest heavily in attacking traits as we make our way through Wraeclast. But before you invest your PoE currency into being able to wipe out everything in your path, you should reconsider. As you progress through the game, you will come to discover that you are easily slain from minimal hits.
This will soon become a source of annoyance to you, which is why it’s important that we spend time looking at our defence. With that being said, the following tips should come in useful to you, so you aren’t being swept aside by enemies later in the game.
PoE Armour
Before you go scouring PoE Trade for new items, consider putting your efforts into armour. This will be serving as one of your defence stats, which is strength-based. This will defend you against the physical damage that you take, no matter where it comes from. This will obviously decrease as you take higher amounts of damage. Even so, there’s more to do to help protect ourselves.
Energy Shield
You’re going to need some backup for your armour, and a good way of doing this is through the intelligence-based defence stat of the Energy Shield. This provides you with an extra pool of health before your main health pool starts to be affected. Once your Energy Shield has fully depleted, your health bar will then start to decrease. In this situation, you need to avoid being hit for a period of two seconds so that the pool can start to fill up again. You won’t be protected by chaos element attacks, but luckily there are certain items that will aid you in protection from these kinds of attacks.
Blocking
When you block an attack, you will be able to cut out taking damage altogether. This will cap at 75% chance, but you can add more to it if you were to find certain uniques. With that in mind, you might want to invest those Exalted Orb elsewhere to start getting items that will provide you with better chances of blocking.
There’s an extra 15% chance of you blocking when using dual-wielding weapons. The same bonuses apply with the use of shields and staves as well. Once more, these stats can be boosted with the use of passive skills, as well as particular item effects to have you blocking like a champion. A blocking spell meanwhile is found via Ascendancies and other passives or even equipment.
Using Evasion
Our next defence stat is Evasion, which is dexterity focused. The name is pretty self-explanatory, guiding your character to safety by dodging attacks. Not only will you avoid the attack damage altogether, but also the status ailments that come with them. To increase you Evasion stats, you’re going to be looking for certain items, as well as passive effects. By collecting these, you can get your stats all the way up to having a 95% chance of evading attacks. The attacks that come in are counted when dodged, so you are going to get hit eventually. This counter does reset once you have been hit. As good as high Evasion stats are, they will never be able to guarantee that you don’t get hit.
Dodging
This shouldn’t be mixed up with Evasion, but you would be forgiven for thinking they are the same given the name. The Dodge mechanism is actually more randomised, and only goes up to 75% in chance of working. The mechanic is separated into dodging attacks and spells. There are Flasks, Ascendancies and certain passives that will help to increase your chances too.
Getting Resistances
We have spoken a lot about defence stats that can be altered by attributes. However, with Resistances we are going to be far more focused on flasks instead. As you start to get to the endgame experience that Path of Exile provides, you’re going to rely on Resistances a lot more. At this point of the game, the enemies that you come across will be attacking you with potential status ailments. There are map modifiers as well that will have an effect on your resistance.
With the knowledge on the defences that you have now, you should be able to protect yourself far better. Paying as much attention to your defence as your attack is going to prove key when you are reaching the later stages of Path of Exile.
What are your thoughts on the defence stats in Path of Exile? Let us know in the comments section below!
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