Bear Armour + ES druid is too squishy

I have invested pretty much all defensive nodes you can get in a lvl 81 Druid, with ok gear in terms of armour + ES + other benefitial stats (like armour apply to elements), but the Druid is extremely squishy for a melee playstile.
The armour is not that high to reduce incoming physic damage + the ES is also not that high and get to 0 constantly + even high start of ES recharge is not really that capable of maintaing ES in melee range + as you are a hybrid and still need dex for some supp gems, you simply cannot rach a high HP without top-end gear.
Long story short: I don't believe the bear druid was really planned for even decent survivability in the endgame (which is the opposite you'd think from a bear fantasy).
I believe I might change for armour only as I get more gear, but really it doesn't seem that GGG planned for a melee style with Armour + ES that well. It simply has too many downsides to be decent at survivability.
PS: I hava created about 15 endgame chars in the past and this might be the most defensive focused passive nodes I have invested... From experience, it shouldn't be this bad

i assume your res are capped as they should be so i dont ask about that, instead i would love to know your other defensive layers other than armour (es is just hp in blue, not defense at all, it only becomes good when you have it in massive quantitys wich you obviously dont have)

where is block? how much armor are we actually talking? 5k? 10? 20? armopur only starts to feel good at around 15k and becomes good ad 20k when you have 100% as ele aswell (love from smith of kitava) if you are blocking, whats the %? below 40 and i wouldnt be surprised if you regularly die in t10 and below. how much hp do you actually have, including es obviously. how is your chaos res? are you ailment immune or unaffected by it? can you get shocked? how do you recover hp? do you even recover? leech, regen or maybe even both? is the enemy maimed, on jagged ground, intimmidated, armour broken, dude tehre is sooooo much more i just stop because i already edited it once

Tbh I would say you are right... As a simple test I transitioned from ES to pure armour (about 10,3k; 69% applied to elem) and the results were not too diferent. It must be the case that I got to t10 maps I still haven't upgraded my gear to follow in terms of hp, chaos res (which is particularly annoying in ES), ailment resists. As for most of my chars I managed to get / purchase good gear I believe that the gear level I'm currently in is not that comprable. Anyway I'll grind better gear and invested in some other defensive nodes (specially armour now) and see how it evolves from there. Cheers

yup, i have 2,1k HP, 3,4k ES and 80% armour at my wolf, random projectiles kills me in white t xiv maps... like what the fck is even the point in playing this

It seems that in the endgame, armor starts to make sense closer to 90%, which is somewhere around 20,000 armor, otherwise even with 80% armor, the damage seems too great to inflict gigantic damage on the player unless it is compensated by dodging or blocking. Bear form should be given not a bonus to armor, but a 50% reduction in incoming damage in addition to armor.

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eye_356#2542 เขียน:

yup, i have 2,1k HP, 3,4k ES and 80% armour at my wolf, random projectiles kills me in white t xiv maps... like what the fck is even the point in playing this

there is a noteable on the tree, dont know its name atm, slightly above blood magic, middle left and then slightly above, it makes your armour apply at 120% its value vs proj, if you have a decent amount of armour and armour for ele, it is extremly underused and ignored, just give it a shot, well take one, oh well not backshots, nvm i shut up

armour+es isn't working endgame right now. because even if you take all armour+es nodes in passive tree and best rare armour+es armours, you get %50ish armor and ~2k es, ~2k life. for a melee play, this is not enough without extra layer of defenses. you should either go full armour or full es for tanky melee.

There are some important passive skills in Atals that greatly help in tanking. The first is where they give 1 energy shield for every 8 armor on the helmet, i.e., by choosing it and putting a helmet with 1000 armor or more, you immediately get good armor and an energy shield. The second passive skill, on the contrary, gives 3 armor for 1 energy shield, i.e., if you get boots with 400 energy shield, you immediately get 400 shield and 1200 armor, which is a lot of armor for boots.

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Becoul#8922 เขียน:

It seems that in the endgame, armor starts to make sense closer to 90%, which is somewhere around 20,000 armor, otherwise even with 80% armor, the damage seems too great to inflict gigantic damage on the player unless it is compensated by dodging or blocking. Bear form should be given not a bonus to armor, but a 50% reduction in incoming damage in addition to armor.

In case you weren't aware, the armor damage reduction stat that the game shows you is based on a hit by an average white mob of your level. However, armor's effectiveness scales with damage.

The equation is: AR / ( AR + 10 * DMG ), where AR is your armor rating and DMG is the incoming damage.

So if you were hit with 2500 damage and wanted to mitigate half of it, you'd need an AR of AR = (10 * 0.5 * 2500)/(0.5) = 25000 AR. Which is a lot for level 81.

Generally speaking armor is a bit lackluster unless you go full in on it, in which case you have to be a life build. There are some factors that sorta make it somewhat viable. Adamant Recovery and Ruinic Helm on the skill tree are major ones.

At above level 90, the majority of druids lean towards ES more than life or armor, at least on HC, and many even run CI. Not mandatory but still noticeably stronger if you have the gear and the build for it.

Overall to me though sounds more so that your gear is a bit outdated. Shouldn't yet have issues on es+armor+life at level 81 if you indeed have several defensive nodes from the passive tree.

EDIT: Oh yeah and Barkskin is pretty neat. Scavenged Plating is OK too if you happen to be breaking armour.

Armor should give you protection, not make it so that you survive one hit, but die from the second, especially when you are in close combat and you are hit from all sides and you get stuck or stumbled, this is 100% death even with 30,000 armor.