I have been playing for a while now, but I just can’t keep up with the latest and greatest with the defensive systems. I like that they are willing to tweak them so much while in “beta” (though I question if it’s worth the time without multiplayer in place, that’s another topic), but I keep losing track of what is most important. Are there still “must have” stats for every build, or is it more of a mix now?
Off the top of my head:
Health
Health Regen
Endurance
Endurance Threshold
Glancing Blow
Dodge
Block
Resistances
Armor
Critical Strike Avoidance
Ward
Ward Retention
Imho the defensive system of LE only looks complicated on the first sight due to its different damage types and secondary defences.
The absolute easiest and mandatory defense is Resistances. They straight out add what they show. The mitigation formulae makes it that you can say roughly you get what you see. If you add 5% fire resistance you get about 5% less damage from fire.
The latest affix and implicit changes make that you can easily stack resistances of all sources.
You don’t need to max resistances at all cost.
The rest depends on your class. AS A rogue I’d stack dodge. As a Sentinel Armor. Ward works well on Mage and Lich and HP is always good, even on a low life build as the conversion of Exang for example also scales with max hp.
And Endurance is made for Primalist.
Of course you can use other secondary defences in addition to the one your class supports. You can add dodge to your armour and block of your Sentinel. But Dodge won’t be the most effective defense on your Sentinel.
CSA or “less damage taken fromt critical strikes” (on 2H melee weapons) are probably the only one that each build should ahve, at least if you want to reliably push high without getting random incoming dmg spikes.
Due to the new curve of some of the defenses, you usually need to fully invest into one defensive to get enough benefits out of it and than could take a secondary defense.
Resistance are the onyl exceptions, since they are very easy to cap, but not mandatory to cap.
So i would pick 2-3 from the list you choose and try to fit them into your desired build as best as you can.
Depending on what uniques you might want to pick, some of them will be elss attrative, especially when a certain unique slots denys a slot, on which a particular defensive stat has alot of power on.
Also some of the stats are more or less synergistic, while some are even counter synergistic. (for example Endurance does not work well with Ward builds).
Also Glancing Blow is not a primary defensive layer, since only Rogue can relible build around that.
TL:DR: Pick 1 primary, try to invest as much as possible into it and get some resistances and a secondary defense.
Thanks so much for the quick responses! For some reason I thought resistances were less important now, oh well lol.
@Heavy, which do you consider the Primary defensive layers?
For resistances, if for some reason you can’t cap them, is there a minimum target goal? And would you say there is a priority order to any of them or pretty much all equal? If you had to choose one over the other could you list what order you’d prioritize them?
It really depends on what you’re doing. In Monoliths, you have some thematic timelines. For example, when you’re in Rayeh’s timeline, you know it’s better to have high Void resistance. In Lagon’s timeline, better max Cold and Lightning. And so on… If you can max all resistances, it’s better, but you may also consider regearing a bit before a specific timeline. It will be costly, or will require multiple items that you’ll keep, but relatively easy to achieve.
This is more of a question and my personal approach for arena and arena only, since a viable arena build makes Mono obsolete (remove def, add damage for faster MoF clears so to speak).
Arena is 1 hit death, so:
75% all res
Endurance: 60% and as high as you can get the threshold, maintaining most important damage stats and all res >75%
Max HP according to endurance threshold and limited stats.
Glancing blow where you can get it.
Dodge & armor, look at the graphs & which caps you can reach Dodge tunklab 081. Dodge is cool when you dodge. When you get hit = do not dodge, every point invested was worthless. Armor always counts. Tunklab armor
That’s how I approach it. Anything fundamentaly wrong with it?
I consider primary defensive layers: resistances, dodge, block, armour and endurance.
You can definitely close to cap all resistances and than go all in on one of the remaining ones. (only from affixes)
Depending on your class you can than get some secondary stuff via idols/passives/implicits.
And your CSA (or “less damage taken form critical strikes”, when you are using 2H melee)
If you don’t want to cap them i would say one T5 affix per resistance (or for elemental resistance 2x T5) is totally fine. (which is up to 45%)
Physical resitance i would try to get on body armour or amulet if you don’t have the intend of capping them, since that slots have higher values.
With that method you can also consider the “All Resistance Blessing” from Reign Of Dragons Timeline. to bring all resitances very close to cap
Physical is definitely the most important one.
You can completely ignore poison resistance IMO.
Literally all poison damage in LE is telegraphed or projectiles atm, and evne if you get hit, you can sustain against it with decent sustain layers.
Sentinel is good for resis and block as well as armor
Acolyth and Mage are good for resis and ward
Primalist is good for resis and starts to get some endurence emphasis
Rogue is good for dodge and glancing blow
In theory you can build every kind of defence on every toon but the main benefits are obvious when you take a look at the toon you play.
This. I switched from Void Knight dual wielding to shield and sitting at 56% block and 1k block effectiveness and I feel so much tanky. I’ve lost like 40-45% dmg but as a Rise crit built, 3rd hit is still at 280k tooltip, before cri multi. I’ve faced tanked most monilith bosses with no issue at all.
