Energy Shield vs Armor - Chaos Inoculation?

I have been looking at doing a Chaos Inoculation build, and perhaps this has been asked and answered before but I've been unable to find an answer.

I'm a little confused about having to devote most of your defensive stat to Energy Shield for psueo-health instead of Armor for damage mitigation.

If you're stacking ES for psuedo-health then you won't have much armor/eva for defensive mitigation correct? How is ES suppose to make up for the lack of damage mitigation in the case of using Chaos Inoculation?

If you have 5000 ES (I don't even know if that's possible, I'm just picking a number), only 30% damage reduction from armor, and a mob hits you for 2000 damage.

2000 - (2000*.3)= 1400 damage taken. 3600 ES remaining

v's

If you have 5000 health, 60% damage reduction from armor, and a mob hits you for 2000 damage

2000 - (2000*.6)= 800 damage taken. 4200 health remaining...

Unless I'm missing something it seems like using ES (CI) would not be very efficient at all, but I've heard a lot of people talking about how great Chaos Inoculation is???

Someone please fill me in here...

If you have 5000 life, you'd have 10k ES.

That's why, it's a LOT easier to stack high.

The thing is that armor doesn't protect vs big hits (read wiki).

With armor gear you will have better mitigation but 4k+ hits most likely will be only reduced by factor of 20-30% so you still need a lot of hp. With ES it is much easier to get that lot of Hp, but you wont be having much armor yes. But you only need enough to mitigate smaller hits so little armor suffice or you may run with none and just use granite flasks (with ES you have no need for HP pots).

Obviously there are downsides to ES that freeze / stun /shock are based on your hp (even if you use CI it's based on hidden hp pool) so you will need way to avoid those.

Getting twice the ES to life is bullshit. I am not even sure it is possible to get 10000 ES. Certainly not without sacrificing all armor/evasion. Getting 5000 life though is nothing special.

Infact without discipline aura I would have less ES on my shadow than I have life on my duelist and I am using a shield with hundreds of ES on shadow while my duelist is dual wielding.

CI is weak compared to life builds right now, but it has its benefits. Immunity to chaos damage is pretty sweet and being able to regenerate your entire ES pool in a few seconds helps against some bosses.

CI also makes it so you don't have to worry about chaos damage at all.

Strength grants +0.5 life and +0.2% melee physical damage per point, rounded which means 100 str gives you 50 life then passives will multiply it.

Intelligence grants +0.5 mana and +0.2% energy shield per point, rounded which means 100 int gives +20% to max energy shield. Then passives will multiply it. Getting crazy hi ES is much easier espically since a top end chest can give 1000ES (multiplied many times by passives and int)

Basically you have so much life you don't need to worry about being 1 hit. Also grace + iron reflexes + determination gives a lot of armor as well.

granite flask + ci best combination

Don't let peeps fool you. HP is better then ES in the current state of the game. Getting ES towards 10k is only achieved by those with near perfect gear.

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requiner a écrit :

CI also makes it so you don't have to worry about chaos damage at all.

Strength grants +0.5 life and +0.2% melee physical damage per point, rounded which means 100 str gives you 50 life then passives will multiply it.

Intelligence grants +0.5 mana and +0.2% energy shield per point, rounded which means 100 int gives +20% to max energy shield. Then passives will multiply it. Getting crazy hi ES is much easier espically since a top end chest can give 1000ES (multiplied many times by passives and int)

Basically you have so much life you don't need to worry about being 1 hit. Also grace + iron reflexes + determination gives a lot of armor as well.

"top end chest 1000es"

yeah for like a fortune perhaps, a good ES chest will have 700-800 at top end gear.

also you dont multiply first by int and then by passives:

having 100int and 40% increased es from passives (which give 6% instead of 8% and there are FAR less major nodes compared to life) will mean 60% increased ES.

you can only get base ES from gear, while base life comes from level+str+nodes+gear.

life passives are also way stronger than ES nodes.

NOW:

despite those, CI is still viable, and maybe after this patch (that should realistically buff chaos damage) even serve a purpose (atm running maps at -20%-0% chaos resist is pretty common and easy, so CI doesn't offer anything spectacular for what you lose).

BUT

it is sure as hell much more expensive than going life. So you can go CI but i advice going CI on a second char, not on your first, and be prepared to spend some currency to up that ES (also don't grab CI too early)

None you guys have mentioned CI enables low life/ full life builds, and opens up your health pool to extra mana reservation? That's a pretty big advantage.

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Phantom_Sun a écrit :

None you guys have mentioned CI enables low life/ full life builds, and opens up your health pool to extra mana reservation? That's a pretty big advantage.

how the fuck are you going to reserve life when you have 1 life