Path of Exile 2: Defensive Mechanics in the Right Side - Evasion and Energy Shield

Introduction

What is Evasion and Energy Shield? Evasion and Energy Shield refer to stacking a large amount of evasion and shield values. By evading hits, you maintain a high shield value, and the high shield value helps absorb damage.

The Dilemma of Life Builds in the Current Version

• 1. Chaos Resistance is Hard to Supplement

  In the EA stage, there are no suitable means to craft gear, making it very difficult to supplement chaos resistance. Even if you ensure usable prefixes, gear that can supplement chaos resistance is very expensive. This results in most players' gear being barely adequate, making it hard to fully supplement chaos resistance. If you use a lot of unique items, you might only manage to supplement the three main resistances, with chaos resistance possibly being zero.

• 2. Low One-Shot Threshold

  In the EA stage, there is not a large amount of percentage life, making it hard to increase life values. A character with over 3000 life is already quite good, and only some builds that specialize in stacking life can reach over 5000 life.

Advantages of Energy Shield Builds in the Current Version

• 1. Immunity to Chaos Damage

  Energy Shield builds have a natural disadvantage of taking double chaos damage. However, the Eldritch Battery skill compensates for this by reducing maximum life to 1 but granting immunity to chaos damage. This means you don't need to get any chaos resistance from gear, reducing the cost. With the current version's high chaos damage from monsters, being immune to chaos damage significantly increases safety.

• 2. Immunity to Poison and Bleeding

  Being immune to chaos damage naturally makes you immune to poison. Although you can still be poisoned, it won't reduce your health. Immunity to bleeding is because bleeding only occurs when life is damaged, and with energy shield, you won't bleed.

• 3. High One-Shot Threshold

  Unlike percentage life, energy shield percentages are very high, easily reaching 200-300%. The base energy shield from gear, when amplified, can easily exceed 4000. Additionally, the Vaal Discipline skill provides strong sustain, allowing you to collect souls while killing enemies and overflow your current shield to twice the maximum energy shield. This means with 4000 shield, you can roam with up to 8000 shield by collecting souls.

Why Pair with Evasion

• 1. Strengths of Evasion

  Unlike armor, which reduces damage taken, evasion avoids the damage entirely, giving it a high ceiling. Monster damage generally falls into two categories: high-frequency small damage and low-frequency large damage. Evasion reduces the frequency of small damage and has a chance to completely avoid large damage, significantly increasing survivability.

• 2. Maintaining High Shield Levels

  In most scenarios, when encountering monsters, you will kill a group of them, but their projectiles and attacks will still hit you before they die. Without evasion, you take all this damage, but with evasion, you only take a small portion, or none at all if your evasion chance is high. This allows you to maintain high shield levels, synergizing well with Vaal Discipline to stack your current shield, creating a positive feedback loop.

Key Points for Building Evasion and Energy Shield

• 1. Key Passives

  1. - Phase Acrobatics

     Phase Acrobatics has a misleading downside of 70% less evasion, but it is the core of evasion builds. Without it, evasion only works against basic attacks and projectiles, not heavy hits or area damage. With Phase Acrobatics, you can evade all damage types, making it a game-changer.

  2. - Eldritch Battery

     Grants immunity to chaos damage, with manageable downsides.

  3. - Zealot's Oath

     Converts energy shield recharge to life recharge, making life flasks useful for energy shield recovery. Although it removes the natural recharge, high-quality life flasks with increased recovery can provide substantial sustain.

• 1. Stacking Evasion and Energy Shield

  1. - Composition of Evasion and Energy Shield Values

     Evasion values consist of base value, percentage value, and total increased value. Base value comes from gear, percentage value from passives, and total increased value mainly from the Grace aura. Energy shield values are similar, with total increased value mainly from Discipline.

  2. - Gear Selection

     Choose gear with high evasion and energy shield values. The base values on gear are amplified by 200-300%, making even small differences significant. Prioritize gear with high base values as the foundation for stacking evasion and energy shield.

  3. - Helmet

     The helmet provides the second highest values. For evasion and energy shield builds, the Trickster's Mask grants additional evasion for each point of energy shield, making it the best choice.

  4. - Gloves and Boots

     These slots provide lower values. Focus on getting the necessary attributes and then maximize evasion and energy shield values.

  5. - Rings and Amulet

     Rings can provide over 200 evasion, but also consider your need for base damage. The amulet is crucial, offering significant percentage increases for both evasion and energy shield.

  6. - Buff Skills

     Essential to activate Grace and Vaal Discipline for high evasion and sustain. If you can efficiently generate endurance charges, consider using Enduring Cry for additional evasion and energy shield.

  7. - Passive Tree

     Many high-value evasion and energy shield passives are essential, so the passive tree pathing is relatively fixed. Adjust based on your build's needs to maximize evasion and energy shield.

• 1. Mitigating the Downsides of 1 Life

  When your maximum life is 1, any hit will stun you, and cold damage can easily freeze you. Use a belt with an additional amulet slot to equip stun and freeze immunity amulets. If you still experience frequent stuns, consider getting additional stun threshold from jewels or passives.

By following these strategies and build points, evasion and energy shield builds can excel in the current version, enhancing survivability and overall gameplay experience. I hope these tips help you build a successful evasion and energy shield character and enjoy the game to its fullest!