Defenses and Defensive Layering

When you see "Defenses" referenced in game, this refers exclusively to Armor, Evasion, Energy Shield, and Ward. But players use the term more broadly and include many other things like Leech, Spell Suppression, Block, and more. Having well balanced defenses begins with protection from Attacks, Spells, and DoTs. You also need defenses against each type of damage; Physical, Fire, Cold, Lightning, and Chaos. A good build combines multiple defensive layers. The easiest way to understand how you build defenses in Path of Exile is through avoidance, mitigation, and recovery. It's important to select synergistic defensive layers, Evasion is great for protecting you against frequent Attacks, but does not stop Spells, or DoTs. So this defense pairs nicely with Spell Suppression, which halves the Spell Hit damage you take.

Damage in Path of Exile follows a strict order of operations (as detailed on the PoE Community Wiki). Here is a simplified flowchart about taking damage in Path of Exile. Because there's an order of operations, some defensive layers are able to interact with each other. For example, the absorption from Elemental Aegis (Magna Eclipsis), or Guard Skills like Steelskin don't deplete when you Block a hit!

Avoidance is your first defensive layer. It prevents you from being hit, taking damage when hit, or being affected by ailments. Most forms of Avoidance are capped between 75% and 95%. Thus, you need other defenses to deal with the damage that gets past your avoidance.

Evasion only applies to Attack hits, therefore it's quite limited and is notoriously unreliable! You feel invincible one minute and like you have no defenses the next. Evasion is scaled with gear, Passives in the Ranger, Shadow or Duelist areas and the Grace Aura.

There are also ways to deal with Bleeding like Slayer's Endless Hunger. Immune prevents the ailment from affecting you, whereas unaffected simply prevents it from harming you. You can turn a debuff into a buff by combining Unique items. Maw of Conquest makes you unaffected by Poison and The Golden Rule to caps your Chaos Resistance by reflecting Poisons you inflict. Some Ascendancies like the Chieftain (Tasalio, Cleansing Water) offer ways to become unaffected by Ailments.

Reducing the duration of Ailments is unreliable, it's better to get 100% Chance to Avoid or become Unaffected. The exception to this is Soul of Abberath which gives 60% reduced Duration of Ignite on You. This reduces the damage Ignites deal so that your recovery can keep you alive. Another way to deal with Ailments is by reducing their effect, you can do this is via Jewel Modifiers or Influence Suffixes. At 100% Reduced effect of Chill, Freeze, and Shock you become immune to these Ailments.

Mitigation comes into the equation after you take a damaging hit. Everyone is introduced to Resistances early in their Path of Exile journey, but by the time you reach endgame you need to familiarize yourself with the many other ways to deal with damage. Some of the strongest forms of mitigation work by applying one defensive effect to a new damage type.

You can make your Armor more effective with Additional Physical Damage Reduction (Endurance Charges) and Chance to Defend with Double Armor. Physical damage is extremely dangerous, so Armor is a core part of the defensive layers of most builds. Armor has strong synergies with Guard Skills, and layers of Avoidance like Evasion or Block that prevent you from taking consecutive hits. Damage Shifting (discussed later) is another way to make your armor more effective. Physical mitigation from Armor caps at 90% by default, or 50% with Imbalanced Guard. If you want even more Armor, run Defiance Banner. You can also Evasion using Iron Reflexes to convert it to Armor.

It's difficult to incorporate Spell Suppression into your build through gear alone and without a shield. Elevore is a particularly effective defensive option. It adds 20-25% Suppression and turns Suppression into recovery in addition to mitigation. This is highly effective while mapping, especially when enemies spawned by Eldritch altars rapidly fire projectiles at you.

Resistances are a core part of your Path of Exile experience from early on. Path of Exile's endgame is balanced around having 75% Elemental Resistances so when you are under 75% you take massive amounts of damage! This is where raising your Maximum resistance comes in to further reduce enemy Elemental damage, plenty of Passives help with this including Prismatic Skin and Crystal Skin. You can also use Eldritch Implicits, or Auras like Purity of Fire, Purity of Ice, and Purity of Lightning.

Positive Chaos Resistance is important for dealing with Chaosweaver enemies, or running Searing Exarch altars. If you want to further improve your defense against Chaos damage after getting 75%, consider the Glorious Vanity Keystone Divine Flesh. The +5% Maximum Chaos Resistance, reduces your Chaos damage taken by 20%. Divine Flesh also applies this Resistance to 50% of your Elemental Damage taken. Warning, Divine Flesh causes all damage to pierce your Energy Shield. You can become completely immune to Chaos Damage using Chaos Inoculation and investing in Energy Shield.

More commonly you'll find "Less" damage taken modifiers. The difference here is that Reduced combines additively, and Less combines multiplicatively. The guard skill Immortal Call is a good example as it gives up to 35% Less Physical Damage Taken and 34% less Elemental Damage taken for a short duration (and can consume Endurance Charges to increase the duration and Physical mitigation). The Elemental Flasks, Sapphire Flask, Ruby Flask, and Topaz Flask are an easy to use and highly effective way to mitigate Elemental damage without the need for Max Resistances. Damage reductions are great to have on a build with high avoidance which doesn't have to worry about taking frequent hits. Like with many other forms of defense if "Hits" is not specified, the reduction applies to DoTs as well.

Damage can't be shifted multiple times! There are diminishing returns when combining multiple sources of shifting, so don't try to re-shift damage. Cloak of Flame doesn't specify "from hits" so it also shifts damage over time, making this item a powerful defense especially for builds without easy access to Armor!

Ward is a core defense that acts as a temporary shield protecting the user from a flat amount of damage for a single hit. So if you have 1,000 Ward and are hit, the Ward breaks absorbing up to 1,000 damage. As a result, Ward is ineffective when mapping because you take multiple hits frequently, but can be quite good against bosses. There's also an entire build archetype which relies on Ward, Cast when Damage Taken Support and self-damage effects to constantly trigger spells. Some items also grant a flat damage reduction, (-damage taken). But the values are low it's calculated before reductions/less damage taken, rendering this defense ineffective.

If your build lacks Armor and Mana instead consider Steelskin which gives immunity to Bleeding, and grants an absorb to increase your effective health pool. Necromancers have access to the exclusive Bone Armour Guard Skill via Bone Barrier, which is a better version of Steelskin.

Aegis skills also benefit from other forms of mitigation, but a good Aegis means you won't need as much recovery on your build. You can only have 1 Aegis skill active at a given time. Despite the naming similarity, Aegis Aurora does not grant an Aegis skill.

Non-Chaos damage is applied to Energy Shield before Life, and any damage to your Energy Shield can't interact with Mind Over Matter while protecting your life! On the other hand, if you use Mind Over Matter with Eldritch Battery, your Energy Shield now protects your Mana further splitting damage. Be warned, this is extremely anti-synergistic with Aegis Aurora which wants as much damage as possible to go to your Energy Shield. Another way to protect your health is Frost Shield, which takes damage before your Life or Energy Shield making it a great defense to add to most builds. The Mana cost of Frost Shield is quite high if you trigger it with Cast when Damage Taken Support so plan accordingly.

Progenesis is one of the most powerful items in the game as it offers generic mitigation that's easy to scale and usable on most builds.

Recovery happens after taking damage, you need to recover so that the next hit won't reduce your health to 0. A great example of this early on is Life Flasks, but recovery takes many different forms. The most powerful forms of recovery tend to be instant and easily scaled, such as Life Gained on Hit or Aegis Aurora's Replenishment effect. Non-instant recovery (Flasks, Regeneration, Leech, Recharge and Recoup) is affected by Recovery Speed. Instant recovery (Replenish, Recover, and Gain on Hit) is not modified by Recovery Speed.

It can be annoying to have to manually use your Life Flask all the time, so you should have another type of recovery that deals with damage passively, but being able to hit your Flask in an emergency when your Life suddenly drops is often invaluable. If you find yourself running out of Life Flask charges, there are several nodes for charge gain (Replenishing Remedies or Flask Mastery) in the Ranger and Shadow areas. You can also use the Ryslatha Pantheon or run multiple Life Flasks if you find yourself running out of charges, but don't spam them together because only the strongest effect applies, and Life Flasks effects are removed upon reaching full Life. You can also use a Mana Flask on a Mind Over Matter build for similar benefits. The Burden of Truth grants Supreme Decadence, which applies Life Flask recovery to your Energy Shield. The Pathfinder ascendancy gives many flask related bonuses.

Because Regeneration never stops working it's a great form of recovery to round out your defenses, it keeps working regardless of your ability to hit enemies. Life Regeneration Speed, or Increased Recovery Rate modifiers magnify the effects of Regeneration. Mana Regeneration is commonly used as an offensive stat, to ensure you're able to deal damage consistently. But when you're using Mana for defense it's an important part of your recovery strategy and is increased through Increased Mana Regeneration, the Clarity Aura, or Regenerating a % of your Mana per second. Regeneration excels on builds with significant mitigation and avoidance, and powerful % Life Regen paired with damage reduction on items like Doppelgänger Guise are among some of the most underrated defenses in Path of Exile! If you're playing a Hybrid build consider the Inquisitor Ascendancy, Pious Path lets your Life Regeneration also restore Energy Shield.

If you have 5,000 Life and hit for 60,000 damage, your damage is double the amount required to cap your Leech instances. Leech is great when you're able to hit enemies, and persists for several seconds which helps at mitigating damage over time. Leech is normally removed upon reaching full life, so you need to hit enemies again to Leech after being damaged. This is why Slayer's Brutal Fervour (often called overleech) is great for builds that Leech! Your Leech continues healing you until the instance expires regardless of whether or not you reach full Life.

A similar effect exists for Energy Shield Leech on Essentia Sanguis which also grants Ghost Reaver. Another way to scale Leech is the Vaal Pact Keystone. This doubles your Maximum Leech (from 20% to 40% of Maximum Life per second) but removes the effects of Life Regeneration. Mapping builds with Overleech that can always hit enemies, greatly benefit from Vaal Pact. But using it can be a fatal mistake on bosses with immunity phases. Many builds grab a single Mana leech node like Mana Leech, Life and Mana Leech or Clever Thief to ensure they can recover Mana to keep dealing damage.

Because it scales off of the damage you take, Recoup is excellent for builds with a low Life pool and hybrid builds. You can find Recoup on nodes like Infused Flesh and Vampirism near the Witch or Shadow areas. Powerful items like Stasis Prison also grant Recoup. If you want Mana Recoup instead there's several passives that grant it including Mana Mastery. Witch has a strong synergy with Recoup through the Nine Lives Keystone. Nine Lives gives Life, Mana and Energy Shield Recoup and applies Recoup effects over 3 seconds instead of 4, greatly increasing the healing. Graven's Secret replaces Power Charges with Absorption charges that grant Energy Shield Recoup. If you have mitigation from Ward, (or similar effects) you can Recoup more than the damage you took.

Remember, you need to avoid taking damage for a couple seconds before it kicks in. Be careful, degenerative buffs like Blood Rage prevent you from Recharging Life or Energy Shield.

Recovery is instant and unaffected by harmful map modifiers such as 60% reduced Life, Mana, or Energy Shield recovery rate. Recovery is important after taking damage you need to be to full health as soon as possible.

Use Evasion, Block or other layers of avoidance to protect yourself from damage until the reservation to ends. This is a great example of one defense negating the downside of another. Because your Life is reserved instead of being lost you can use Petrified Blood without the recovery penalty. The Life lost from Petrified Blood is not damage, thus doesn't interrupt Dissolution.

Now that you know how the individual defensive layers work, how do combine them into a complete build? Look for synergies! Start by grabbing defenses near to your class's starting location, then use defenses from gear to fill in the gaps.

This also frees up your flasks' suffixes to bolster Evasion, Armor, or other defenses. When using a compatible skill that hits rapidly, always equip a claw to add Life Gain per enemy Hit. This build combines Evasion, Spell Suppression, Armor, and Life Gain on Hit to come up with well rounded defenses that excel when mapping. Your biggest weakness is large elemental hits from spells or boss attacks plus damage over time effects (which bypass most of your defenses). This is especially true if you're unable to hit an enemy to recover while taking the damage. Uber bosses often pose a particular challenge for this type of defensive setup. Most uber bosses require more persistent recovery and many of their Elemental Spells have penetration.

From there adding some Armor to mitigate Physical damage works well, and you can use Aegis Aurora to prevent small hits from ever killing you. Because Aegis Aurora gives +5% Maximum Cold Resistance, adding Purity of Ice, eldritch implicit modifiers, and Melding of the Flesh gives 90% all Elemental Resistances. This combination is already great due to the high level of synergy between the defensive layers. If you want to fight Uber Bosses it helps to add Elemental Flasks, a Granite Flask, or a Basalt Flask depending on the enemy damage type to better deal with specific encounters. Energy Shield has innate recovery from Recharge, and Aegis Aurora provides Recovery on Block. Adding the Divine Shield Keystone significantly increases your recovery. Finally, Elemental Ailment Immunity via the Stormshroud Jewel, and 100% Reduced Extra Damage taken from Critical Strikes round out your defenses.

So the end result is a build that excels in almost all areas of the game. Its sole weakness is physical damage over time, something that's extremely difficult to mitigate due to bypassing almost all defenses. This level of defensive investment requires a high budget like Cast On Critical StrikeForbidden Rite, or a skill that scales extremely well without much gear like Deathwish Ignite from the Maw of Mischief. Uber Bosses are challenging, you need impressive defenses to attempt them and this is a great way to do it.

Written by Tenkiei
Reviewed by Crouching_Tuna, Facefoot