Well, first, this was before the full patch notes, new shield, etc.
Second, in Last Epoch, “% reflect” only reflects the final damage dealt to you, so if you reduce damage to yourself, you reflect way less damage. So my idea was to TAKE as much damage as I can without dying. I decided Ward (with super-high ward gain) was one path to simply get hit/take damage but stay alive.
But now that we have the patch notes, and more sources of flat reflect (which doesn’t care how much damage you mitigate), I will work on some new builds. 